The Project Gutenberg EBook of Twentieth Century Negro Literature, by Various
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Title: Twentieth Century Negro Literature
Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating
to the American Negro
Author: Various
Editor: D. W. Culp
Release Date: July 6, 2006 [EBook #18772]
Language: English
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TWENTIETH CENTURY
NEGRO LITERATURE
OR
_A CYCLOPEDIA OF THOUGHT_
ON THE
_VITAL TOPICS RELATING_
_TO THE AMERICAN NEGRO_
BY
ONE HUNDRED OF AMERICA'S
GREATEST NEGROES
EDITED AND ARRANGED
BY
D. W. CULP, A. M., M. D.
AN AUTHOR AND LECTURER, ETC.
_COPIOUSLY ILLUSTRATED_
WITH
_One Hundred Fine Photo Engravings_
PUBLISHED BY
J. L. NICHOLS & CO.
MANUFACTURING PUBLISHERS
ON THE EXCLUSIVE TERRITORY PLAN
TORONTO, CAN.
NAPERVILLE, ILL.
ATLANTA, GA.
COPYRIGHT 1902 BY J. L. NICHOLS & CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
SOLD ONLY ON SUBSCRIPTION THROUGH OUR AUTHORIZED
AGENTS AND NOT TO BE HAD IN BOOKSTORES. ANY ONE
DESIRING A COPY SHOULD ADDRESS THE PUBLISHERS.
[Illustration: Dr. D. W. Culp]
Dedication.
To all persons of whatever race and of whatever section of our country,
who in any way contributed, in the Nineteenth Century,
to the financial, intellectual, moral and spiritual elevation
of the Negro,
the editor dedicates this book with the ardent hope,
that before this century shall have ended,
the Negro,
through his own manly efforts,
aided by his friends,
shall reach that point in the American civilization,
where he will be recognized and treated as any other American citizen.
PREFACE
The idea of putting this book on the market originated in the
following considerations:
_First._ There is considerable ignorance, on the part of the white
people of this country, of the intellectual ability of the Negro, and,
as a consequence, the educated Negro does not receive, at the hands of
the whites, that respectful consideration to which his education
entitles him.
_Second._ At this time, when the attainments made in the nineteenth
century by the other races and nationalities are being paraded, the
friends of the Negro are particularly interested to know something of
the attainments made by him in that century.
_Third._ There is a strong desire, on the part of those white people
who are deeply interested in the American race problem, to know what
the educated Negroes are thinking on the topics touching this problem,
since it is believed that, if this problem is to be correctly solved,
it will be solved by the combined efforts of the intelligent elements
of both races.
_Fourth._ A book, in which the aspiring Negro youth of the land can
study the character sketches and the literary productions of the
scholarly men of their own race along with their study of the
character sketches and the choice literary productions of the
scholarly white men of the country, is a desideratum.
_Fifth._ The majority of the Negroes need to be enlightened on those
vital topics relating to themselves, and on those questions touching
their development in civilization.
The object of this book is, therefore: (1) To enlighten the uninformed
white people on the intellectual ability of the Negro. (2) To give to
those, who are interested in the Negro race, a better idea of the
extent to which he contributed to the promotion of America's
civilization, and of the intellectual attainments made by him in the
nineteenth century. (3) To reflect the views of the most scholarly and
prominent Negroes of America on those topics, touching the Negro, that
are now engaging the attention of the civilized world. (4) To point
out, to the aspiring Negro youth, those men and women of their own
race who, by their scholarship, by their integrity of character, and
by their earnest efforts in the work of uplifting their own race, have
made themselves illustrious; also, to enlighten such youth on those
ethical, political, and sociological questions, touching the Negro
that will sooner or later engage their attention. (5) To enlighten the
Negroes on that perplexing problem, commonly called the "Race
Problem," that has necessarily grown out of their contact with their
ex-masters and their descendants; and also to stimulate them to make
greater efforts to ascend to that plane of civilization occupied by
the other enlightened peoples of the world.
Now, among all the books on the Negro, there is none whose object is
so worthy, comprehensive, and specific as that above set forth. In
this the superiority of this book to all others, on the Negro, may be
seen. And the superior value of this book is also apparent from the
following considerations: (1) This is the only book in which there is
such a magnificent array of Negro talent. Other Negro books of a
biographical character are objected to, by the intelligent people who
have read them, on the ground that they contain too few sketches of
scholarly Negroes, and too many of Negroes of ordinary ability. But
such a criticism cannot be made on this book since, as a matter of
fact, all of the one hundred men and women, appearing in it, are among
the best educated Negroes in the world. (2) This is the only book from
which one can get anything like a definite and correct idea of the
progress made by the Negro since his Emancipation along all lines. (3)
There is no book but this one in which there can be found expressed
the thoughts of any considerable number of educated Negroes on so many
political, religious, civil, moral and sociological problems touching
the Negro, which are interesting alike to the politician, the moralist
and the sociologist.
But it is not to be understood that the one hundred men and women
mentioned in this book are the only Negro scholars in this country. So
far from this, there are hundreds of other Negroes who are as
scholarly, as prominent and as active in the work of uplifting their
race as the one hundred herein given. These one hundred appear here,
rather than others, for no other reason than that they are better
known to the editor. Now, in sending forth this book, the editor
ardently hopes that it will not only accomplish the objects herein set
forth, but that it will also do much towards bringing about a better
understanding between the two races in the South.
D. W. CULP, Palatka, Fla.
[Illustration: W. H. Crogman, A. M.]
PROF. W. H. CROGMAN, A. M.
Prof. W. H. Crogman, A. M., who occupies the chair of Greek
and Latin in Clark University, Atlanta, in Christian
character, scholarship in his department, literary ability,
general culture and distinguished services stands, it is
safe to say, among the first four, if not at the head of the
Negro race. In all the particulars mentioned, he would honor
a professorship in any college in the land.
Prof. Crogman was born on the island of St. Martin, May 5,
1841. In 1855, Mr. B. L. Boomer, chief mate of the vessel,
visiting the island, became interested in the boy, then an
orphan, and induced him to come to the United States. Mr.
Boomer took him to his home in Middleboro, Mass., sent him
to district school in the winter, and always took great
interest in him. Mr. Boomer's brothers were all seafaring
men, captains or officers of vessels. With one of these the
boy, Willie, began to follow the sea. This beginning
afterward led to a life of eleven years on the ocean. He
visited many lands, and observant and thoughtful, obtained a
wide knowledge of various nationalities and parts of the
world. His visits included especially England, various
points on the Continent of Europe, Calcutta and Bombay in
Asia, various places in South America and Australia.
In 1866, at the suggestion of Mr. Boomer, that an academic
education would make him useful, Prof. Crogman, then at the
age of twenty-five, began to earn means to attend an
academy. He worked and laid by money till two years later in
1868, he entered Pierce Academy, in Middleboro, Mass. He
remained there two years, taking an English course with
French and bookkeeping.
After completing his academic course, in the Fall of 1870,
Prof. Crogman started for the South to give his life to the
Christian education and elevation of his race. He was
recommended by the Boston Preachers' Meeting to the work in
South Carolina, and was employed by Rev. T. W. Lewis as
instructor in English branches, at Claflin University,
Orangeburg, S. C. Here he remained three years. In this work
he became impressed with the need of a knowledge of Greek
and Latin and began the study of Latin by himself. To gain a
knowledge of these branches he went to Atlanta University in
the Fall of 1873. This resulted in his completing there the
full classical course in 1876. Prof. Francis, of Atlanta
University, who was one of his teachers there, was present
at the reception and in a most happy speech paid a high
tribute to Prof. Crogman's manhood, industry, thorough
scholarship and rapid advancement during his college life,
completing as he did the four years' course in three years.
He spoke also of Prof. Crogman's carrying off as his bride
one of their noblest and most gifted and cultured young
ladies, Miss Lavinia C. Mott, of Charlotte, N. C.
Immediately on his graduating from Atlanta University, Prof.
Crogman was called to a position on the faculty of Clark
University, where he has been ever since, having occupied
his present chair since 1880. Letters expressive of their
highest appreciation of him and his work were read from
several of his students, who now themselves occupy prominent
positions.
Prof. Crogman is author of "Talks for the Times," a book in
which almost every phase of the Race Problem is discussed in
a very practical and fascinating style. Speaking of this
book, the "Independent" says:
"We notice this collection of 'Talks for the Times' with
unusual pleasure. They are worthy of the strong and
cultivated gentleman who is their author. They deal largely
with Negro education, educational institutions and
educators, but occasionally deal with general topics, such
as 'Life's Deeper Meanings.' The author speaks of his race
and speaks in strong, polished English, full of nerve and
rich in the music of good English prose."
The "California Christian Advocate" says:
"We are minded to say, 'here is a volume that must be
intensely interesting to all who are interested in the
culture and continued advancement of the Negro.' But why
should we thus write? It would be nearer our deliberate
estimate to say, 'Here is a book made up of manly and
vigorous addresses by a vigorous, scholarly and independent
thinker.' Whoever values the result of scholarly
investigation will be interested in this volume. We do not
hesitate to say that but for the noble identification of the
author with his own people in such addresses as 'The Negro's
Need,' 'The Negro's Claims,' and 'The Negro Problem,' no one
who reads this book would guess that Professor Crogman was
other than a vigorous minded Anglo-Saxon. And yet to our
thinking, it is much to say that 'Talks for the Times' is
the production of a ripe scholar who is of almost pure
African blood--a man who almost entirely by his own exertion
has climbed steadily up the ladder of scholarship until he
is no mean exponent of the culture of our day."
INTRODUCTION.
BY PROF. W. H. CROGMAN.
I am requested to write an introduction to this volume of essays,
written by representative men and women of the Negro race and touching
almost every phase of the Negro question. Certainly it is a hopeful
sign that the Negro is beginning, with some degree of seriousness, to
turn his eyes inward, to study himself, and try to discover what are
his possibilities, and what the obstructions that lie in the way to
his larger development. Undoubtedly this is a rational method of
procedure, and the one most likely to reward his effort; for it is
only in proportion as we become interested in ourselves that we enlist
the interest of others, and only in proportion as we respect ourselves
that we command the respect of others. The story is told of a Negro
who, at some time during the War of the Rebellion, being asked why he
did not enlist in the army, replied: "De Norf and de Souf am two dogs
fightin' over a bone. De nigger am de bone and takes no part in de
conflict." That this is not the language of an intelligent Negro is
quite evident, if, indeed, it be the language of a Negro at all. So
common has it been in this country to caricature the black man, to
represent him as a driveler in speech and a buffoon in action, that I
am always loath to accept as his those many would-be-witty sayings
which, too often, originating with others, have been attributed to
him. But be the author of that remark whosoever he may, one thing now
is perfectly apparent--the Negro has reached beyond the "bone" stage.
He is no longer content with being a passive observer, a quiet
looker-on, while his character and interests are under discussion. He
is now disposed to speak for himself, to "take part in the conflict."
Any one desiring evidence of this will find it in the following pages
of "Twentieth Century Negro Literature."
This book will do good. It will enlighten many of both races on topics
respecting which they seem to be profoundly ignorant. Not very long
ago a Negro delivered an address in one of the largest churches in
Atlanta. It was an occasion in which a goodly number of white people
was present. They expressed themselves as being delighted. One man
said to a colored bishop that he didn't know there was a Negro in the
state that could have delivered such an address. The fact is, both the
good bishop and the writer of these lines might have found him twenty
who could, at least, deliver an address as good, and ten, probably,
who could deliver a better. Well, we don't know each other--we white
and black folk. We are neighbors, yet strangers. Our thoughts, our
motives, our desires are unknown to each other. Between the best white
and black people, in whom alone vests the possibility of a rational
and peaceful solution of the race question, there is absolutely no
communication, no opportunity for exchange of views. Herein lies the
danger; for both people, as a consequence, are suspicious, the one of
the other. Not infrequently, with much uncharitableness, we attribute
wrong motives to those who are truly our friends. Were we acquainted
with one another, as we ought to be, we would doubtless be surprised
to discover how little we differ in our thinking with reference to
many of the vexed questions confronting us. Indeed, it has always been
the belief of the writer, frequently expressed, that neither of the
races is as bad as it appears to the other. May we not hope, then,
that "Twentieth Century Negro Literature" may have the good fortune of
falling into the hands of many white friends.
On the other hand, the book must be stimulating to the Negro people,
especially to those of the younger generation, now blessed with large
educational privilege. It must awaken in them self-respect,
self-reliance, and the ambition to be and to do. By the perusal of its
pages they will be led to see more clearly the path of duty, and to
feel more sensibly the weight of responsibility resting upon them. The
first generation of Negroes after emancipation exhibited to a painful
degree the spirit of dependence, an inclination to lean on something
and on somebody--now on the politician, now on the philanthropist. The
reason for this, of course, is not far to fetch. The spirit of
dependence is invariably a characteristic of weakness. It was not to
be expected that the first generation emerging from slavery would
possess all the heroic qualities. Gradually, however, the Negro is
realizing the importance of self-help. Good books, among other
agencies, will deepen this impression, and ultimately lead him to
imbibe in all its fulness the sentiment of the poet,
"Destiny is not about thee, but within;
Thyself must make thyself."
The contributors to this volume are worthy of notice. They are among
the best we have. Some of them are personally known to the writer.
They are men of experience, scholarly men, shunning rather than
courting notoriety--just the class of men to guide a people, alas, too
easily led astray by pretentious ignorance. From a number so large and
so meritorious it would seem invidious to select any for special
mention. It may not be out of place, however, to say a few words with
reference to the editor and compiler, Dr. D. W. Culp. Born a slave in
Union County, South Carolina, like many a black boy, he has had to
forge his way to the front. In 1876 we find him graduating in a class
of one from Biddle University--the first college graduate from that
school. In the fall of the same year he entered Princeton Theological
Seminary, and at the same time pursued studies in philosophy, history,
and psychology in the university under the eminent Doctor McCosh. His
first appearance in the university was the signal for a display of
race prejudice. To the Southern students especially his presence was
very obnoxious. Several of them immediately left the college and went
home. To the credit of their parents, it should be said, they were led
to return. Before the expiration of three years Mr. Culp, by exemplary
conduct and good scholarship, won the respect and friendship of the
students in both university and seminary, the Southerners included. He
was graduated from the seminary in 1879, and immediately found work as
pastor under the Freedmen's Board of the Northern Presbyterian Church.
He served in the pastorate several years in different states, was for
a time principal of a school in Jacksonville, Florida, the largest
school in the state. Becoming, however, more and more interested in
the physical salvation of his race, he entered upon the study of
medicine in the University of Michigan; but was finally graduated with
honor from the Ohio Medical University, in 1891, since which time he
has followed the practice of medicine. For a passionate love of
knowledge, and for persistent effort in trying to secure it, Dr. Culp
is a noble and inspiring example to the young and aspiring Negro.
Clark University, South Atlanta, Georgia,
December 16, 1901.
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
The writers of this book are one hundred (one for each year in the
century) of the most scholarly and prominent Negroes of America.
PAGE
ANDERSON, J. H., D. D., Pastor of the A. M. E. Zion Church,
Wllkesbarre, Pa. 323
ATKINS, REV. S. G., President of the State Normal and Industrial
College of North Carolina 80
BAKER, HON. H. E., Washington, D. C. 399
BIBB, PROF. J. D., A. M., Atlanta, Ga. 449
BLACKSHEAR, MR. E. L., President of Texas Normal and Industrial
College, Prairie View, Texas 334
BOWEN, MRS. ARIEL, S. H., Atlanta, Ga. 264
BOWEN, REV. J. W. E, Professor in Gammon Theological Seminary 29
BOWSER, MRS. ROSA D., Teacher in Richmond, Va. 177
BOYD, DR. R. F., Physician and Surgeon, Nashville, Tenn. 215
BRAWLEY, REV. E. M., D. D., Secretary and Expositor of the National
Baptist Publishing Company 254
BRAGGS, REV. GEO. F. JR., Rector of Episcopal Church, Baltimore, Md. 356
BROOKS, REV. W. H., D. D., Pastor Nineteenth St. Baptist Church,
Washington, D. C. 315
BROWN, REV. S. N., Pastor of Congregational Church, Washington, D.C. 68
BUTLER, HENRY R., A. M., M. D., Atlanta, Ga. 221
CARVER, GEO. W., Professor of Agriculture, Tuskegee Institute 388
CHAPPELLE, REV. W. D., Secretary of Sabbath School Department of the
A. M. E. Church 63
CHEATHAM, HON. H. P., Recorder of Deeds, of the District of Columbia 57
CLINTON, BISHOP G. W., A. M. E. Zion Church, Charlotte, N. C. 115
COOPER, E. E. Editor of the Colored American 464
COUNCIL, PROF. W. H., President of Alabama Normal and Mechanical
College, Normal, Ala. 325
COX, PROF. J. M., President of the Philander Smith College,
Little Rock, Ark. 295
CROMWELL, J. W., Washington, D. C. 291
CROGMAN, W. H., Professor of Greek and Latin, Clark University 7
DAVIS, REV. D. W., Pastor of Baptist Church, Manchester, Va. 38
DAVIS, REV. I. D., Pastor Presbyterian Church, Goodwill, S. C. 124
DUNBAR, MRS. PAUL LAURENCE, Washington, D. C. 139
ELLERSON, REV. L. B., Pastor Presbyterian Church, Jacksonville, Fla. 313
FLIPPER, REV. J. S., D. D., Presiding Elder of North Georgia
Conference, Atlanta, Ga. 257
FORTUNE, T. T., Editor of The Age, New York City 227
FRANCIS, DR. J. R., Physician and Surgeon, Washington, D. C. 204
FRIERSON, A. U., Professor of Greek, of Biddle University 241
GILBERT, J. W., Professor of Greek in Paine College 190
GILBERT, REV. M. W. D. D., Pastor of Baptist Church,
Charleston, S. C. 287
GOODWIN, G. A., Professor in Atlanta Baptist College 132
GREEN, HON. JOHN P., Government Position, Washington, D. C. 89
GRIMKE, REV. F. J., D. D., Pastor of Presbyterian Church,
Washington, D. C. 427
HARLLEE, PROF. N. W., Principal of High School, Dallas, Tex. 299
HAWKINS, PROF. J. R., Secretary of Educational Department of the
A. M. E. Church 153
HEARD, REV. W. H., D. D., Pastor of Allen Temple, Atlanta, Ga. 442
HEWIN, J. T., Attorney, Richmond, Va. 110
HILYER, ANDREW F., Washington, D. C. 375
HOLSEY, BISHOP L. H., C. M. E. Church, Atlanta, Ga. 46
HOOD, BISHOP J. W., of A. M. E. Zion Church, Fayetteville, N. C. 51
HUNT, H. A., Principal of Industrial Department of Biddle University 394
JACKSON, MISS LENA T., Teacher of Latin in High School,
Nashville, Tenn. 304
JOHNSON, REV. J. Q., D. D. 270
JOHNSON, PROF. J. W., Principal of Grammar School,
Jacksonville, Fla. 72
JOHNSON, REV. H. T., D. D., Editor of Christian Recorder 186
JONES, PROF. J. H., President of Wilberforce University 83
JONES, T. W., Prominent business man, Chicago, Ill. 370
JORDAN, D. J., Professor in Morris Brown College 129
KERR, REV. S., Rector of Episcopal Church, Key West, Fla. 320
KNOX, GEO. L., Editor of the Freeman 454
LEWIS, PROF. W. I., Reporter for Evening Metropolis,
Jacksonville, Fla. 272
LOGAN, MRS. WARREN, Tuskegee Institute 199
LOVINGGOOD, PROF. R. S., President of Samuel Houston College,
Austin, Tex. 48
MASON, MRS. LENA, The Evangelist, Hannibal, Mo. 445
MASON, REV. M. C. B., Secretary of the Freemen Board of the
M. E. Church 34
McCLELLAN, PROF. G. M., Teacher in High School, Louisville, Ky. 275
MILLER, KELLY, Professor of Mathematics in Howard University 158
MORGAN, REV. J. H., Minister, Bordentown, N. J. 383
MORRIS, REV. E. C., D. D., Editor of National Baptist
Publishing Co., Helena, Ark. 259
MURRAY, HON. G. W., Providence, S. C. 231
ONLEY, D. W., D. D., Dentist, Washington, D. C. 347
PARTEE, REV. W. E., D. D., Pastor of Presbyterian Church,
Richmond, Va. 309
PETERSON, B. H., Professor at Tuskegee Institute 236
PETTIFORD, W. R., President Alabama Penny Savings and Loan Co.,
Birmingham, Ala. 468
PETTEY, MRS. BISHOP C. C., Newbern, N. C. 182
PORTER, J. R., D. D. S., Atlanta, Ga. 191
PROCTOR, REV. H. H., Pastor of Congregational Church., Atlanta, Ga. 317
PURCELL, I. L., Attorney, Pensacola, Fla. 104
RICHARDSON, PROF. A. ST. GEORGE, President of Edward Waters College,
Jacksonville, Fla. 330
ROBINSON, G. T., Attorney, Nashville, Tenn. 108
ROBINSON, PROF. R. G., Principal of LaGrange Academy 302
RUCKER, HON. H. A., Internal Revenue Collector for Georgia,
Atlanta, Ga. 202
SCARBOROUGH, W. S., Professor of Greek of Wilberforce University 414
SMITH, MRS. M. E. C., Teacher in Edward Waters College,
Jacksonville, Fla. 246
SMITH, R. S., Attorney, Washington, D. C. 92
SMYTH, PROF. J. H., President of Reformatory School of Virginia,
Hanover, Va. 434
SPRAGUE, MRS. ROSETTA DOUGLASS, Washington, D. C. 167
STORUM, PROF. JAMES, Teacher in High School, Washington, D. C. 75
TALBERT, MARY B., Buffalo, N. Y. 17
TALLEY, T. W., Professor of Science, Tuskegee Institute 338
TERRELL, MRS. MARY CHURCH, Washington, D. C. 172
THOMPSON, R. W., Associate Editor of the Colored American 351
TUCKER, PROF. T. de S., Baltimore, Md. 418
TURNER, BISHOP H. M., D. D., LL. D., A. M. E. Church, Atlanta, Ga. 42
TURNER, PROF. C. H., Professor of Science in Clark University 162
WALLACE, W. W., Editor of Colored American Magazine 349
WALLER, REV. O. M., Rector of Episcopal Church, Washington, D. C. 363
WALKER, PROF. H. L., Principal High School, Augusta, Ga. 342
WASHINGTON, PROF. BOOKER T., President of Tuskegee Institute 142
WHITAKER, REV. J. W., Traveling Agent for Tuskegee Institute 359
WHITE, HON. GEO. H., Washington, D. C. 224
WILDER, DR. J. R., Physician and Surgeon, Washington, D. C. 210
WILLIAMS, REV. J. B. L., D. D., Pastor of M. E. Church,
Fernandina, Fla. 120
WYCHE, REV. R. P., Pastor of Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, N. C. 123
YATES, MRS. JOSEPHINE S., Kansas City, Mo. 21
YOUNG, PROF. N. B., President of Florida State Normal and
Industrial College 125
CONTENTS.
THE FOLLOWING TOPICS ARE DISCUSSED IN THIS BOOK BY ONE HUNDRED WRITERS:
TOPIC PAGE
I. DID THE AMERICAN NEGRO MAKE, IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY,
ACHIEVEMENTS ALONG THE LINES OF WEALTH, MORALITY, EDUCATION,
ETC., COMMENSURATE WITH HIS OPPORTUNITIES? IF SO,
WHAT ACHIEVEMENTS DID HE MAKE? 17
II. WILL IT BE POSSIBLE FOR THE NEGRO TO ATTAIN, IN THIS COUNTRY,
UNTO THE AMERICAN TYPE OF CIVILIZATION? 42
III. HOW CAN THE FRIENDLY RELATIONS NOW EXISTING BETWEEN THE
TWO RACES IN THE SOUTH BE STRENGTHENED AND MAINTAINED? 57
IV. SHOULD THE NEGRO BE GIVEN AN EDUCATION DIFFERENT FROM
THAT GIVEN TO THE WHITE? 72
V. SHOULD THE IGNORANT AND NON-PROPERTY HOLDING NEGRO BE
ALLOWED TO VOTE? 89
VI. IS THE CRIMINAL NEGRO JUSTLY DEALT WITH IN THE COURTS OF
THE SOUTH? 92
VII. TO WHAT EXTENT IS THE NEGRO PULPIT UPLIFTING THE RACE? 115
VIII. IS IT TIME FOR THE NEGRO COLLEGES IN THE SOUTH TO BE PUT
INTO THE HANDS OF NEGRO TEACHERS? 125
IX. WILL THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO SOLVE THE RACE PROBLEM? 142
X. WHAT ROLE IS THE EDUCATED NEGRO WOMAN TO PLAY IN THE
UPLIFTING OF HER RACE? 167
XI. HOW CAN THE NEGROES BE INDUCED TO RALLY MORE TO NEGRO
BUSINESS ENTERPRISES AND TO THEIR PROFESSIONAL MEN? 186
XII. WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT MORTALITY AMONG THE
NEGROES IN THE CITIES OF THE SOUTH AND HOW IS THAT MORTALITY
TO BE LESSENED? 199
XIII. WHAT SHOULD BE THE NEGRO'S ATTITUDE IN POLITICS? 224
XIV. IS THE NEGRO AS MORALLY DEPRAVED AS HE IS REPUTED TO BE? 236
XV. IS THE YOUNG NEGRO AN IMPROVEMENT MORALLY ON HIS FATHER? 254
XVI. THE NEGRO AS A WRITER 270
XVII. DID THE AMERICAN NEGRO PROVE, IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY,
THAT HE IS INTELLECTUALLY EQUAL TO THE WHITE MAN? 287
XVIII. WHAT PROGRESS DID THE AMERICAN WHITE MAN MAKE IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY ALONG THE LINE OF CONCEDING TO
THE NEGRO HIS RELIGIOUS, POLITICAL AND CIVIL RIGHTS? 291
XIX. THE NEGRO AS A LABORER 299
XX. THE NEGRO AS A CHRISTIAN 309
XXI. DOES THE NORTH AFFORD TO THE NEGRO BETTER OPPORTUNITIES
OF MAKING A LIVING THAN THE SOUTH? 323
XXII. WHAT IS THE NEGRO TEACHER DOING IN THE MATTER OF
UPLIFTING HIS RACE? 330
XXIII. IS THE NEGRO NEWSPAPER AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE
ELEVATION OF THE NEGRO? 347
XXIV. ARE OTHER THAN BAPTIST AND METHODIST CHURCHES ADAPTED
TO THE PRESENT NEGRO? 356
XXV. THE NEGRO AS A BUSINESS MAN 370
XXVI. THE NEGRO AS A FARMER 388
XXVII. THE NEGRO AS AN INVENTOR 399
XXVIII. WHAT THE OMEN? 414
XXIX. WHY THE NEGRO RACE SURVIVES 418
XXX. THE SIGNS OF A BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO 427
XXXI. NEGRO CRIMINALITY 434
XXXII. THE AMERICAN NEGRO'S OPPORTUNITIES IN AFRICA 442
XXXIII. THE NEGRO AND EDUCATION 445
XXXIV. A NEGRO IN IT 447
XXXV. THE NEGRO'S ADVERSITIES HELP HIM 449
XXXVI. THE AMERICAN NEGRO AND HIS POSSIBILITIES 454
XXXVII. IMPORTANT LESSONS FROM THE AWFUL TRAGEDY 464
XXXVIII. HOW TO HELP THE NEGRO TO HELP HIMSELF 468
THE EDITOR'S BIOGRAPHY, BY WALTER I. LEWIS.
Daniel Wallace Culp, compiler and editor of this book, was
born about forty-seven years ago, of slave parents, four
miles from Union Court House in South Carolina. His mother,
Marilla by name, was an excellent type of the devout
Christian woman of her day; she believed firmly in that God,
whose inscrutable wisdom directed the ways of her race
through paths that were truly hard. She hesitated not to
teach her son Daniel to love, fear and obey the God in whom
she trusted, using whatever light she had.
Christopher Brandon, to whom Daniel and his mother belonged,
was one of those slave-holders in South Carolina who did not
believe in the institution of slavery, but being uncertain
as to whether his slaves would be better off if he freed
them, he held them, establishing a sort of patrimony in
which his slaves were allowed such superior opportunities
and advantages that the less favored neighbors styled them
"Brandon's free Negroes." This distinction carried with it
its disadvantages as well, for on account of the ease and
comfort allowed them, they were despised alike by the
hard-hearted slave-owners and the less fortunate slaves.
Brandon was kind to his slaves, who were made to work enough
to keep a plenty at home to live upon. He also protected
them against whatever ill treatment begrudging neighbors
might be prompted to offer.
Brandon was a bachelor. He made a favorite and close
companion of Daniel to the extent of having him occupy the
same bed with him. This affection of the bachelor master
lasted until his death, which occurred several years after
the emancipation.
It is said that in his expiring moments this good man,
Brandon, called for young Daniel, who was then too far away
to be on hand in time to hear what was to have been said
before death ensued. Thus died a man who was brave enough,
in the midst of environments that were exacting to the
extent of active ostracism for his assertion of his belief
that the Negro is a real human being, possessed of a mind,
soul and rights to happiness, and should share in the
community of responsibilities.
At an early age Daniel became anxious to know what is in
books. This ambition was fed by his former master, who
became his first teacher. This make-shift tutelage continued
until 1869, when this rapid little learner caught a sight of
better intellectual food. Accordingly he left his rural
home, his soul charged with greater things, and entered
Biddle Memorial Institute, now Biddle University, at
Charlotte, N. C.
As a student Daniel did not attract any special attention
until he had passed the preparatory and entered the regular
classical course of that institution. It was here that he
won great distinction in his faculty for acquiring a ready
knowledge of the languages and the higher mathematics. So
rapidly did he advance in these studies that it was found
necessary to place him in a class alone, none of his mates
being able to keep up with him. This separation was from a
class of about twenty young men from the Carolinas,
Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee. For five years he studied,
making an advancement that was frequently a marvel to the
teachers, some of whom were at times puzzled to sustain
their place of superiority over him.
In 1876 Daniel Wallace Culp graduated from Biddle
University, being the first graduate from the classical
department of that institution, with the degree of Bachelor
of Arts.
Having decided to study theology, he, in the fall of the
same year in which he graduated from Biddle, entered
Princeton Theological Seminary. At the same time he entered
Princeton College to study the History of Philosophy and
Psychology under the great Dr. McCosh.
The presence of a colored student in the classes at
Princeton College (which has no connection with the
Theological Seminary) was particularly obnoxious to the
young men of the South, of whom there were several then in
attendance. This brought on a crisis. The young white men of
the South packed their trunks and left for their homes,
declaring with much emphasis that they would not sit in the
lecture room with a "nigger." But, strange to relate, their
parents showed better sense by requiring them to promptly
return. In the meanwhile efforts were made to have Dr. Culp
discontinue his attendance at these lectures, all of which
he positively refused to do. The young men from the South
finally became friendly, and things moved on smoothly, Dr.
Culp winning the respect of all the students by his
gentlemanly conduct and scholarship.
In the Theological Seminary he was regarded as one of the
brightest students in his class, excelling in the study of
the Hebrew language and theology. He graduated from this
seminary in the spring of 1879.
Now came the most trying time in the life of the young man
who had been sated with frequent conquests while in the
pursuit of knowledge. Dr. Culp was assigned to an humble
Presbyterian Church at Laurens, S. C., under the auspices of
the Freedman's Board of the Northern Presbyterian Church.
His work was to preach and teach at that place. He remained
at Laurens one year, when he was called to the pastorate of
Laura Street Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, Fla.
In the fall of 1881 he was appointed principal of Stanton
Institute, the largest colored college in the state of
Florida. For a while he filled both the pastorate of the
church and the principalship of Stanton, but finding it
impracticable to hold both he finally resigned the
pastorate, after having served the church for five years. He
was principal of Stanton four years. Rev. F. J. Grimke, D.
D., succeeded Dr. Culp as pastor of Laura Street
Presbyterian Church.
Desiring to help his people in what is known as the "black
belt" of Florida, he severed his connection with the Stanton
Institute and went to Lake City and established the Florida
Normal and Industrial Institute. There he prepared many
young men and women to teach in the district schools. This
school was operated under the General Congregational
Association of Florida, of which Dr. Culp is a member.
In 1886 he accepted an appointment from the American
Missionary Association to take charge of the church and
school at Florence, Ala. He did not remain there long before
the same board appointed him to the pastorate of the First
Congregational Church in Nashville, Tenn. It was here that
Dr. Culp became deeply concerned about the physical
salvation of his race. To fit himself to do actual work
along this line, he resigned his pastorate over the
strongest protests of his members, and entered the Medical
School of the University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor. After
remaining in this college for some time, studying with the
avidity and success of former years, he left and entered the
Ohio Medical College, where he could enjoy the advantages of
the study of the superior hospital facilities. Here he
graduated with honors in 1891, and again came South,
locating in Augusta, Ga.
Shortly after his arrival in Augusta, Dr. Culp having
demonstrated his high capabilities and fitness, was elected
by the City Council to be superintendent and resident
physician of the Freedmen's Hospital in that city. This
position was coveted by several white physicians, hence the
election of Dr. Culp created no small stir. The excitement
was great for some time. Finally it became apparent that to
continue to hold this position would be hazardous in a
number of ways, and upon the advice of his wife and friends
Dr. Culp resigned, after serving one year.
Afterwards he built up an excellent practice of medicine in
the city of Augusta, but owing to the fast failing health of
his family he moved to Palatka, Fla., and after two years of
successful practice he moved to Jacksonville to give his
children, a promising girl and boy, the advantages of the
schools.
After remaining in Jacksonville for about seven years, Dr.
Culp yielded to the entreaties of the people of Palatka and
returned to that city, where he now is, having won the
fullest confidence of the people as a successful physician.
Dr. Culp married Mrs. Mary Emily Jefferson, of Jacksonville,
in 1884. She was at that time a prominent teacher in the
public schools of that city. His union has been blessed with
two children, a girl, Charlotte Marilla, fourteen years old,
and Julian McKenzie, twelve years old.
Dr. and Mrs. Culp are both profoundly interested in the
education of these children, hoping to fit them to be useful
to their race.
Dr. Culp is classed as a thorough race man. Freed from the
monstrous visions which many delight to parade as arguments,
he abides by a strong faith in the destiny of the valuable
elements of his race. That his people are destined to reach
a high point in civilization has been his private conviction
for years, not being very free, however, to say that this
will be attained in America.
Dr. Culp also seriously believes that if the race problem is
ever solved in this country, it will be done by the combined
efforts of the intelligent elements of both races. His great
interest in the physical salvation of his race has moved him
to both lecture extensively and write books and pamphlets on
health topics during the past seven years. Notable among
these are his books on smallpox and vaccination,
consumption, etc., all of which have done good among the
people whose means of information on the proper care of
health are the poorest.
Dr. Culp has good standing with the editors of the leading
magazines. By these he has been invited repeatedly to write
articles on the Race Problem. This invitation he has
accepted more than once, and when he writes, he displays a
degree of literary ability that is striking. His purpose in
compiling and editing this book is but one of the several
great plans he has in reserve to publicly demonstrate what
he regards as actual service for the inspiration of his day
and generation.
TWENTIETH CENTURY NEGRO LITERATURE.
TOPIC I.
DID THE AMERICAN NEGRO MAKE, IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, ACHIEVEMENTS
ALONG THE LINES OF WEALTH, MORALITY, EDUCATION, ETC., COMMENSURATE
WITH HIS OPPORTUNITIES? IF SO, WHAT ACHIEVEMENTS DID HE MAKE?
BY MARY B. TALBERT.
[Illustration: Mrs. Mary B. Talbert.]
MRS. MARY B. TALBERT.
Mary Burnett Talbert was born at Oberlin, Ohio, in 1866, her
father's family having gone there from Chapel Hill, N. C.
She is descended on her maternal side from Richard Nichols,
who compelled Peter Stuyvesant to surrender New Amsterdam
and who for a short while was Governor of the State of New
York.
She graduated at the early age of sixteen from the Oberlin
High School, and through the generosity of Ex-President
James H. Fairchild was enabled to attend Oberlin College.
When applying for admission to the class in trigonometry,
the instructor doubtfully admitted her, as so many of the
High School pupils had found the subject very hard and
preferred a review of other mathematics. She entered the
class, however, on trial, and made a term's record of 5 per
cent, with an examination of 5.5 per cent, 6 per cent being
the highest mark for lessons in college.
During the next term she entered the class of mechanics, and
made a perfect record for term's work and examination.
While attending school she was well liked by her classmates,
being made Treasurer of Aeolian, one of the two college
societies for young women, and was also one of six
representatives chosen for Class Day Exercises. She was
given the place of honor upon the programme, and recited an
original poem, "The Lament of the Old College Bell, Once
First, Now Second."
Mrs. Talbert graduated from Oberlin at the early age of
nineteen, being the only colored member of her class after
the withdrawal of the late Lieutenant John Alexander.
She started out in life equipped not only with a great love
of learning but with all the encouragement which made it
possible for her to follow the inclinations of her mind.
In 1886 she accepted a position in Bethel University, Little
Rock, Ark.
Some women make themselves teachers, but Mrs. Talbert was a
born teacher. The late Professor John M. Ellis, in writing
of her, said: "She is a lady of Christian character and
pleasing address. As a student she has an excellent record
and standing in her class, showing good abilities and
industry and fidelity in her work. She has the qualities
natural and acquired to make a superior teacher."
In January, 1887, she was elected Assistant Principal of the
Little Rock High School, the highest position held by any
woman in the State of Arkansas, and the only colored woman
who has ever held the position. Mrs. Talbert resigned her
place after her marriage to Mr. William H. Talbert, one of
Buffalo's leading colored young men, and was urged after
marriage to reconsider her resignation and take up her work
again.
Leading educators and literary men, such as Charles Dudley
Warner, Samuel A. Greene of Boston, L. S. Holden of St.
Louis, and others who visited her classes, and, having seen
them at work, registered their names with written comments.
Professor Albert A. Wright of Oberlin writes as follows:
"Mary Burnett received her education in the public schools
and college of this place, where her parents have resided
for many years. She has won the respect and approval of her
teachers by her successful accomplishments of the tasks set
before her." Mrs. Talbert received the degree granted to
students of the Literary Course in 1894, and is a member of
the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, being the only
colored woman in the city of Buffalo eligible.
As the hand upon the dial of the nineteenth, century clock pointed to
its last figure, it showed that the American Negro had ceased to be a
thing, a commodity that could be bought and sold, a mere animal; but
was indeed a human being possessing all the qualities of mind and
heart that belong to the rest of mankind, capable of receiving
education and imparting it to his fellow man, able to think, act,
feel, and develop those intellectual and moral qualities, such as
characterize mankind generally.
Let us glance at the intellectual Negro and see if he has made any
progress commensurate with his opportunities during the nineteenth
century.
Intuitively we turn to that great historian of our race--who for seven
years worked with such care and zeal to write a thoroughly trustworthy
history of the American Negro, and to-day stands as our first and
greatest historian--George W. Williams. In prefacing his second
volume, he says: "I have tracked my bleeding countrymen through widely
scattered documents of American history; I have listened to their
groans, their clanking chains, and melting prayers, until the woes of
a race and the agonies of centuries seem to crowd upon my soul as a
bitter reality. Many pages of this history have been blistered with my
tears; and although having lived but a little more than a generation
my mind feels as if it were cycles old.
"A short time ago the schools of the entire North were shut in his
face; and the few separate schools accorded him were given grudgingly.
They were usually held in the lecture room of some colored church or
thrust off to one side in a portion of the city or town toward which
aristocratic ambition would never turn. These schools were generally
poorly equipped; and the teachers were either colored persons whose
opportunities of securing an education had been poor, or white persons
whose mental qualifications would not encourage them to make an honest
living among their own race."
It will not be necessary to enumerate the various insults and
discouragements which faced the noble pioneers of our race who, seeing
their fellow men denied the opportunities and privileges of securing
an education, scorned by the press and pulpit, in public and private
gatherings for their ignorance, set about to lift the Negro from his
low social and mental condition.
The Negro turned his attention to the education of himself and his
children; schools were commenced, churches organized, and a new era of
self-culture and general improvement began.
In Boston we see Thomas Paul, Leonard A. Grimes, John T. Raymond,
Robert Morris and John V. DeGrasse.
In 1854 John V. DeGrasse was admitted to the Massachusetts Medical
Society, being the first instance of such an honor being conferred
upon a colored man in this country.
In New York we find Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, Dr. Charles B. Ray,
Charles L. Reason and Jacob Day doing what they could to elevate the
Negro and place him on a higher intellectual plane.
Philadelphia also added her quota to the list of noble men who were
striving to show to the world that the American Negro, although
enslaved, was a human being. We find such men as Robert Purvis,
William Still and Stephen Smith.
In Western Pennsylvania and New York were John Peck, John B. Vashon
and Peyton Harris and all through the North, each state held colored
men who were anxious to do what they could to elevate the race, and it
seems as if God gave each one a special duty to perform, which
combined, made one mighty stimulus to the young colored youth to do
what he could to build up the Negro race.
Do you ask if the Negro has advanced intellectually, I need only to
refer you to the showing made by the men and women of our race to-day.
The works of Frederick Douglass, John M. Langston, Blanche K. Bruce,
J. C. Price, are living testimonials of what the Negro accomplished a
generation ago.
When we consider the fact that the Negro was of such import that laws
were made making it a misdemeanor to educate the Negro, both before
and after the Civil War; when we consider the Greek text books of
Professor Scarborough of Wilberforce used by one of the oldest
Colleges in America; when we consider the Presidents and Principals of
various Negro schools in our country, such as Livingston, N. C.;
Spellman Seminary, Atlanta, Ga.; Wilberforce, Ohio; Virginia Normal
and Collegiate; Shaw University; when we consider the place that our
honored clergy occupy among the intellectual men of the world; when we
consider the work of Booker T. Washington, we must admit that the love
of knowledge seems to be intuitive. No people ever learned more in so
short a time.
Every year since the Civil War the American Negro has been taking on
better and purer traits of character.
The Negro of to-day is materially different from the Negro of
yesterday. He delights in the education of his children, and from
every section of our Southland come letters asking for competent
colored teachers and educated ministers. The young man and woman who
educate themselves in our Northern colleges and normal schools do not
always have to turn their attention to the far South to seek fields of
labor, but in an honest competition, gain places of honor and trust in
the North.
Think of the scores of young colored women all over our Northern
states teaching the "young idea how to shoot," and not a black face in
the class. We find colored women with large classes of white pupils in
St. Paul, Minn.; Chicago, Ill.; Detroit, Mich.; Cleveland, Ohio;
Buffalo, N. Y.; and other Northern cities. "From the state of
semi-civilization," says Williams, "in which he cared only for the
comforts of the present, his desires and wants have swept outward and
upward into the years to come and toward the Mysterious Future."
Several hundred weekly newspapers, a dozen monthly magazines,
conducted by Negroes, are feeding the mind of the race, binding
communities together by the cords of common interest and racial
sympathy. The conditions around which the Negro was surrounded years
ago have disappeared and the Negro is as proud of his own society as
the whites are of theirs. Sociological study and laws have given to
our present generation the will power and tenacity to establish and
maintain a social standing equal with any of the races of the world.
Without a question of doubt he has shown moral qualities far in
advance of those which dominated in slave history and under which he
was constantly subjected.
Has the Negro made any achievements along the lines of wealth? needs
only a review of statistics to answer the above question, for where
once was the rude cabin, and one-room hut, we now see the beautiful
homes with well kept stock and farm, hygienic stables as well as
artistic lawns. The first experiment the general masses of negroes had
in the saving of money was under that institution known as "The
Freedman's Saving and Trust Company." The institution started out
under the most favorable auspices. The depositors numbered among its
rank and file, day laborers, farmers, mechanics, house-servants,
barbers and washerwomen; thus showing to the entire country that the
emancipated Negro was not only working but by industry and economy was
saving his earnings. We know too well of the misplaced confidence in
that bank and how after a short time the bank failed and thousands of
colored men and women lost their earnings. During the brief period of
its existence $57,000,000 were deposited. Although the Freedman's Bank
caused many a colored person to shrink from any banking institution,
yet some were hopeful and again began to save money. Throughout the
entire South we find scores of colored men who have excellent farms,
elegant homes and small fortunes.
"In Baltimore a company of colored men own a ship-dock and transact a
large business. Some of the largest orange plantations in Florida are
owned by colored men. On most of the plantations, and in many of the
large towns and cities colored mechanics are quite numerous."
The total amount of property owned by the colored people in all the
states is rated at over $400,000,000.
In the North, East and West we see many colored men with handsome
estates run high into the hundred thousands. Almost every large city
and town will show among her population a Negro here and there whose
wealth is rated between five and ten thousand dollars or more.
Rev. A. G. Davis of Raleigh, N. C., in an address at the North
Carolina Agricultural Fair, said, "Scan, if you will, the long line of
eight million Negroes as they march slowly but surely up the road of
progress, and you will find in her ranks such men as Granville T.
Woods, of Ohio, the electrician, mechanical engineer, manufacturer of
telephones, telegraph and electrical instruments; William Still, of
Philadelphia, the coal dealer; Henry Tanner, the artist; John W.
Terry, foreman of the iron and fitting department of the Chicago West
Division Street Car Company; J. D. Baltimore, engineer, machinist, and
inventor, of Washington, D. C.; Wiley Jones, of Pine Bluff, Arkansas,
the owner of a street car railroad, race track and park; Richard
Hancock, foreman of the pattern shops of the Eagle Works and
Manufacturing Company, and draughtsman; John Beack, the inventor,
whose inventions are worth tens of thousands of dollars; W. C. Atwood,
the lumber merchant and capitalist."
And now in review let me add that the social conditions of the
American Negro are such that he has shown to the world his aptitude
for study and general improvement.
Before character, education and wealth, all barriers will melt, and
these are necessary to develop the growth of the race.
From abject serfdom and pauperism he has risen to a plane far above
the masses of any race of people.
By his industry and frugality he has made himself master of any
situation into which he has been placed, and none will deny that his
achievements along all lines have been commensurate with his
opportunities.
SECOND PAPER.
DID THE AMERICAN NEGRO MAKE, IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, ACHIEVEMENTS
ALONG THE LINES OF WEALTH, MORALITY, EDUCATION, ETC., COMMENSURATE
WITH HIS OPPORTUNITIES? IF SO, WHAT ACHIEVEMENTS DID HE MAKE?
BY JOSEPHINE SILONE YATES.
[Illustration: Mrs. Josephine Silone Yates]
MRS. JOSEPHINE SILONE YATES.
Mrs. Josephine Yates, youngest daughter of Alexander and
Parthenia Reeve-Silone, was born in Mattiluck, Suffolk
County, N. Y., where her parents, grandparents and
great-grandparents were long and favorably known as
individuals of sterling worth, morally, intellectually and
physically speaking. On the maternal side Mrs. Yates is a
niece of the Rev. J. B. Reeve, D. D., of Philadelphia.
Mrs. Silone, a woman of education and great refinement of
character, began the work of educating this daughter in her
quiet, Christian home, and both parents hoping that she
might develop into a useful woman spared no pains in
endeavoring to secure for her the education the child very
early showed a desire to obtain; and with this end in view
she was sent to Newport, R. I., in her fourteenth year,
having already spent one year at the Institute for Colored
Youth in Philadelphia, and Mrs. Coppin, then Miss Fannie
Jackson, with her vigorous intellect, aided the inspiration
the mother had begun. In 1877 Miss Silone graduated as
valedictorian of a large class from Rogers High School of
Newport; and although the only Colored member of her class,
and the first graduate of color, invariably she was treated
with the utmost courtesy by teachers, scholars and such
members of the School Board as Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
T. Coggeshall, and others.
Two years later she graduated from the Rhode Island State
Normal School in Providence, and soon began her life work as
a teacher. During the eight years spent in Lincoln
Institute, Jefferson City, Mo., she had charge of the
Department of Natural Science, and was the first woman to be
elected to a professorship in that institution.
In 1889 Miss Silone was married to Prof. W. W. Yates,
principal of Phillips School, Kansas City, Mo., and removed
to that city, where since she has been engaged in either
public or private school work.
From the age of nine years she has been writing for the
press, and her articles have appeared in many leading
periodicals--for a long time under the signature "R. K.
Potter." Mrs. Yates has long been a zealous club worker and
is well known as a lecturer East and West. She was one of
the organizers and the first President of the Kansas City
Woman's League; and in the summer of 1901 was elected
President of the National Association of Colored Women,
which organization she had already served as Treasurer for a
period of four years.
Mrs. Yates is the mother of two children, whose education
she carefully superintends, and is ever ready to comfort the
sick or to stop her round of duties to give counsel or
render help along any line possible to the many young people
and others who seek her door.
The measure of the success of a race is the depths from which it has
come, and the condition under which it has developed. To know what the
Negro actually accomplished in the nineteenth century, one must know
something of his life and habitat previous to the year 1619, when
against his will or wish, he was brought to the Virginian coast; must
also know his life as a slave, and his opportunities since
emancipation.
History shows that the Negroes brought from Africa to this country to
be sold into slavery were at the time in a more or less primitive
stage of uncivilized life; while the methods used to capture and
transport them to this "land of the free and home of the brave,"
recently revived through the vivid pen pictures and other
illustrations running in serial form in Scribner's, Pearson's and
other reliable periodicals (accounts which bear the impress of truth,
and are hardly liable to the charge of having been written within too
close range of time and space, or vice versa, to be strictly
truthful), indicate the demoralizing and debasing effects of the
"system" from its initial period, this followed up by the blighting
influences of slave life, even under the most favorable conditions,
for nearly two hundred and fifty years, left upon Negro life and
character just the traits it would have left upon any other people
subjected to similar conditions for the same length of time.
It may be said, and with truth, that slavery gave to the Negro some of
the arts of civilized life; but it must be added, that, denying him
the inalienable rights of manhood, denying him the right to the
product of his labor, it left him no noble incentive to labor at these
arts, and thus tended to render him improvident, careless, shiftless,
in short, to demoralize his entire nature.
It is further stated that the system gave him Christianity. Did it
give him piety? Could it give him morality in the highest sense of
these terms?
Constantine could march the refractory Saxons to the banks of a stream
and give them their option between Christianity and the sword, but the
haughty monarch soon found that a religion forced in this peremptory
and wholesale fashion did not change the moral nature of the soldier;
and we submit that Christianity, language, and the arts of civilized
life, absorbed amidst the debasing influences of a cruel and infamous
bondage could not be productive of a harmonious development of body,
mind and soul; of strong moral and intellectual fiber; or of ideas of
the dignity of labor; of habits of thrift, economy, the careful
expenditure of time and money; or knowledge of the intimate
relationship of these two great factors in the process of
civilization. These are results attained only where the rights of
manhood and womanhood are acknowledged and respected. The lack of
these results or basic impulses to advancement represent defects in
the Negro character, preventing a more rapid development in the
nineteenth century and directly traceable to his enslaved state; and
the origin or cause, the growth and subsequent development of these,
and other defects, must be taken into consideration before the Negro
is stamped as the greatest criminal on earth, wholly irredeemable;
before he is condemned in wholesale manner for not having made more
rapid strides toward advanced civilization in little more than one
generation of freedom. Indeed, it speaks well for the intrinsic merit
of the race, that although public opinion freely admits that the
natural outcome of bondage is a cowardly, thieving, brutal, or abject
specimen of humanity, even in the darkest hours of slavery, there were
many, many, high-born souls who, if necessary, at the price of life
itself, maintained their integrity, rose superior to their
surroundings, taught these same lofty sentiments to others.
Emancipation and certain constitutional amendments brought freedom to
the material body of the erstwhile slave, but the soul, the higher
self, could not be so easily freed from the evils that slavery had
fastened upon it through centuries of debasement; and because of this
soul degradation the Negro, no less than the South, needed to be
physically, mentally and morally reconstructed.
Reconstruction, the eradication of former characteristics, the growth
and development of new and more favorable ones, is with any race the
work of time. Generations must pass, and still it need not be expected
that the process will be full and complete; meanwhile, what measure of
success is the Negro achieving? Were his achievements in the
nineteenth century, educationally, morally, financially and otherwise
at all commensurate with his opportunities?
The year 1863 saw four million Negroes come forth from a state of
cruel bondage with little of this world's goods that constitute
capital; with few of those incentives to labor that universally are
requisites to the full and free development of labor and capital. The
knowledge the Negro had of agriculture, of domestic life, and in some
cases, his high-grade mechanical skill, gave him something of a
vantage ground, but for nearly two hundred and fifty years he had been
so "worked" that it would be expecting too much to demand that he at
once comprehend the true dignity of labor. Nor was it to be expected
that to his untutored mind freedom and work were terms to be
intimately associated. Then there was a certain amount of
constitutional inertia to be overcome, a natural heritage of the
native of a tropical or semi-tropical climate, but quite incompatible
with the fierce competition of American civilization, or with the
material conditions of a people who owned in the entire country forty
years ago, only a few thousand dollars; and among whom education was
limited to the favored few whose previous estate either of freedom,
or by other propitious circumstance, had rendered its acquisition
possible. Organizations for business enterprise or any purpose of
reform and advancement, outside of the Northern cities, was
practically unknown.
Evidently one of the first things to be done by which the Negro could
be reconstructed and become an intelligent member of society was to
educate him; teach him to provide for himself; making him more
provident and painstaking; teaching him self-reliance and
self-control; teaching him the value of time, of money, and the
intimate relationship of the two. Certainly not a light task. These
lessons could only be learned in the practical school of experience,
then, not in a day. And what has been accomplished? Forty years ago
there was not in the entire Southland a single Negro school; before
the close of the nineteenth century there were twenty thousand Negro
school houses, thirty thousand Negro teachers, and three million Negro
school children happily wending their way to the "Pierian Spring."
Under the "system," generally speaking, it had been considered a crime
to teach the Negro to read or write; and the census of 1870 shows that
only two-tenths of all the Negroes of the United States, over ten
years of age, could write. Ten years later, the proportion had
increased to three-tenths of the whole number; while in 1890 only a
generation after emancipation, forty-three per cent of those ten years
and over were able to read and write; this proportion before the close
of the century reached forty-five per cent.
To wipe out forty-five per cent of illiteracy in less than forty
years; to find millions of children in the common schools; to find
twenty thousand Negroes learning trades under the soul inspiring
banner of free labor; to find other thousands successfully operating
many commercial enterprises; among these, several banks, one cotton
mill, and one silk mill; to find Negroes performing four-fifths of the
free labor of the South, thus becoming a strong industrial factor of
the section is to furnish proof of achievements in the nineteenth
century of which we need not be ashamed; and considering the
restrictions of labor unions, the fields or classes of labor from
which the Negro is practically barred regardless of section, quite
commensurate with the opportunities afforded him during the period in
question.
Within forty years the system of instruction in the American schools
has undergone some radical changes for the better; and if the system
in vogue at the beginning of this period, with the study of the
classics as the pivotal point, did not fit the practical needs of the
average Anglo-Saxon youth, with his heritage of centuries of culture,
it is not strange if some blunders were made in attempting to shape
this same classical education into a working basis for a people
emerging from a state of bondage in which to impart even the elements
of education, was considered a crime, generally speaking.
Industrial, manual, or technical training had not, forty years ago,
taken firm hold upon the educational system, and school courses for
Negroes were planned after classical models, perhaps better suited in
many instances for students of a more advanced mentality and
civilization; for humanity at large can scarcely hope to escape the
slow and inevitable stages and processes of evolution. Individual
genius, however, bound by no law, may leap and bound from stage to
stage; and we point with pride to Negroes whose classic education in
the early decades of freedom served not only to prove their own
individual ability, but the capacity of the race for, and
susceptibility to, a high degree of culture at a time when such
demonstration was a prime necessity.
We do not consider that any mistake was made in at once providing for
the classical or higher education of those who were mentally able to
receive it, and as brilliant achievements of the nineteenth century
from an educational standpoint, we refer with a keen sense of
gratification to the two thousand five hundred and twenty-five or more
college graduates who are helping to raise the standard of the race
from all points of view; to the real genius of the race that has given
us Douglass, Langston, Bruce, Washington, Tanner, Scarborough, Page,
Grisham, Miller, Dubois, Wright, Bowen, Crogman, Johnson, Dunbar,
Chestnutt and others too numerous to mention, whose names should be
enshrined in the hearts of present and future generations; to the
forty thousand Negro students pursuing courses in higher institutions
of learning; to the twelve thousand pursuing classical courses; to the
one hundred and twenty thousand taking scientific courses; to the one
hundred and fifty-six institutions for the higher education of
Negroes; to the two thousand practicing physicians; to the three
hundred newspapers and the five hundred books written and published by
Negroes; to a gradually increasing discrimination in all those matters
of taste and form which mark the social status of a people, and give
to the individual, or the mass, the, perhaps, indefinable, but at the
same time, distinctive, stamp of culture.
These achievements, alone, within less than forty years of freedom,
serve to demonstrate our fitness for civilization, and also, that as
the years pass there is a still greater necessity for Negroes who
possess a broad, a liberal, a well balanced education; and at the same
time a similar need for Negroes possessing shrewd, business ability; a
high degree of mechanical skill; extensive knowledge of industrial
arts and sciences, and of profitably invested capital.
From the early years of freedom a few leaders, as at Hampton,
realized, that the great mass of Negroes needed first of all
experimental knowledge of the dignity of labor such as could never
result from labor performed under the conditions of slavery; that they
needed to know more of skilled labor in order to be able to meet and
enter the fierce competition of American industrial life, or even to
live upon the plane of American civilization; and in spite of adverse
criticism, these leaders proceeded to establish industrial and manual
training schools for the Negro, with such elementary training as from
their point of view seemed most beneficial. That the methods chosen
have been rich in results, it is only necessary to know something of
the deep and extensive influence of Hampton, Tuskegee, Normal, and
other industrial schools, in directly, or indirectly, improving the
environment and daily life of the masses.
The insidious and ultimate effect of slavery upon the normal and
spiritual nature of the enslaved is to blunt, to entirely efface the
finer instincts and sensibilities, to take away those germs of manhood
and womanhood that distinguish the lowest savage from the beasts of
the field. Continue this soul-debasement for centuries, deny the slave
the right to home, the right to family--ties which universally prove
the greatest stimulus to courage, patriotism, morality,
civilization--then declare the emancipated slave a brute, for whom
education does nothing, because in little more than a generation he
has not wiped out all of the degradation that the conditions of
generations instilled and intensified!
Criminologists, discussing the apparent increase of crime in this
country, assert that this apparent increase is largely due to the more
complete records kept of criminals within the last forty years than
formerly, and the better facilities for ferreting out crime and for
subjecting offenders to the penalty of the law; and it may be added,
in the Negro's case, as recently stated by a Kansas City judge, a
native of Georgia, noted for his unprejudiced views and fair dealing,
"It takes less evidence to convict a Negro than it does a white man;
and a longer term in the penitentiary will be given a Negro for the
same offense than will be given a white offender. That is why I have
been so frequently compelled to cut down the sentence of Negroes." The
entire history of the chain-gang system corroborates these
statements--a system that helps to increase the reported number of
criminals; and although race riots, lynchings and massacres may seem
to indicate the opposite to the uninitiated, the Negro is not a
lawless element of society. In the United States a natural
restlessness has possessed him since emancipation, and it requires
time to work out and adjust conditions under which he can develop
normally from the standpoint of morality as well as from other points
of view. Meanwhile, the prime necessity to raise the moral status is
the development and upbuilding of that which in its highest
embodiment, was denied him in the days of bondage--the home. We need
homes, homes, homes, where intelligence and morality rule. And what
was accomplished in this line in the nineteenth century? From owning
comparatively few homes forty years ago, the Negro advanced before the
close of the century to the position of occupying one million five
hundred thousand farms and homes; and of owning two hundred and
seventy-five thousand of these; many of them, as shown by views,
forming a part of the exhibit at the Paris Exposition and elsewhere,
compare favorably with the homes of any people.
As to the intelligence and morality that constitute the environment of
the great mass of these homes owned by Negroes, the statistics of
education and of crime show that Negro criminals do not, as a rule,
come from the refined and educated classes, but from the most
illiterate, the stupid, and the besotted element; from the class that
has not been reached by the moral side of education, if at all. Says
the compiler of the eleventh census: "Of juvenile criminals the
smallest ratio is found among Negroes." This speaks well for the
general atmosphere of the home life of our youth; while the bravery
displayed by the colored man in every war of American independence has
demonstrated his ability to risk life fearlessly "in defense of a
country in which too many states permit his exclusion from the rights
of citizenship." Such sacrifice presupposes a moral ideal of the
highest type.
The position of the women of the race, always an index to the real
progress of a people, in spite of slanderous attacks from unscrupulous
members of her own and other races, is gradually improving, and was
materially aided and abetted by the liberal ideas that especially
obtained in the latter half of the century with reference to the
development of women--irrespective of race or color--along the line of
education, the professions, the industrial arts, etc.
As to the advancement of the Negro from a financial standpoint, it is
possible that his achievements during the period in question might
have been greater; yet both from within and without there have been
many hindrances to overcome in the matter of accumulating wealth.
One of the greatest crimes of the slave system was that in practically
denying to the slave the right to the product of his labor or any part
thereof; it, to all intents and purposes destroyed his acquisitive
faculty; thus he had small incentive to labor when free; and as the
years went by, accumulated little in the shape of capital; showed
little interest in profitable investment of his savings, if he were so
fortunate as to have any. The great number of secret orders, and other
schemes for the unwary, the main object of which apparently was to
"bury the people" with great pomp and show, drained his pockets of
most of the surplus change.
The Freedmen's Bureau sought to establish Negroes as peasant
proprietors of the soil on the farms and plantations of the stricken
South, and dreams of "forty acres and a mule" for a long time
possessed the more ambitious only, in many instances, to meet a rude
awakening; but notwithstanding the fact that the system of renting
land, combined with the credit system of obtaining the necessities of
life while waiting for the production and sale of the crop, is not
conducive to the ownership of land on the part of the tenant;
notwithstanding the very natural tendency on the part of the Negro to
disassociate ideas of freedom and of tilling the soil, added to a
desire to segregate in large cities in place of branching out to the
sparsely settled districts of the great West and Northwest, there to
take up rich farming lands and by a pioneer life to mend his fortunes
in company with the peasants of other nations who are thus acquiring a
firm foothold and a competence for their descendants; we repeat--in
spite of the facts mentioned--before the close of the century the
Negro had accumulated farms and homes valued in the neighborhood of
seven hundred and fifty million dollars; personal property valued at
one hundred and seventy millions; and had raised eleven millions for
educational purposes. From these, and such other statistics as are
available, relative to the achievements of the Negro in the United
States during the nineteenth century, bearing in mind our first
proposition--the measure of the success of a people is the depths
from which it has come--we conclude that educationally, morally,
financially, the Negro has accomplished by means of the opportunities
at his command about all that could be expected of him or any other
race under similar conditions.
That the Negro has made mistakes goes without saying. All races as
well as all individuals have made them, but--"Let the dead past bury
its dead."
The great problem confronting this and future generations is and will
be, how to surpass or even equal our ancestors in bringing about
results that make for the upbuilding of sterling character; how with
our superior advantages to make the second forty years of freedom and
the entire future life proportionally worthy of honorable mention.
"Build to-day, then strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base,
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.
Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
And one boundless reach of sky."
THIRD PAPER.
DID THE AMERICAN NEGRO MAKE, IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, ACHIEVEMENTS
ALONG THE LINES OF WEALTH, MORALITY, EDUCATION, ETC., COMMENSURATE
WITH HIS OPPORTUNITIES? IF SO, WHAT ACHIEVEMENTS DID HE MAKE?
BY REV. J. W. E. BOWEN, D. D.
[Illustration: J. W. E. Bowen, D. D.]
J. W. E. BOWEN, A. M., PH. D., D. D.
Dr. John Wesley Edward Bowen was born in New Orleans. His
father, Edward Bowen, went to New Orleans from Washington,
D. C. He was a free man, a boss carpenter and builder by
trade, and able to read, write and cipher. He was highly
esteemed, was prosperous in business, accumulated some money
and lived in comfort. Dr. Bowen's mother, Rose Bowen, he
says, was the grand-daughter of an African Princess of the
Jolloffer tribe, on the west coast of Africa. When he was
three years old his father bought him and his mother out of
slavery. When he was thirteen he went to the preparatory
school of New Orleans University for colored people,
established after the war by the Methodist Episcopal church.
When he was seventeen he entered the University proper, and
five years later he was graduated with the degree of A. B.
At the age of seventeen he was converted in a Methodist
revival meeting, and nine months later was licensed as a
local preacher, and has been preaching ever since.
Soon after his graduation Dr. Bowen became Professor of
Latin and Greek in the Central Tennessee College, at
Nashville, in which position he remained for four years. In
1882 he resigned his professorship and entered Boston
University, where he studied four years, taking the degree
of B. D. in 1885; and the degree of Ph. D. in 1887 from the
school of all sciences of Boston University. He also did
special advanced work in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Chaldee,
Arabic and German, and in Metaphysics and Psychology.
He was the first colored man in the Methodist church to take
the degree of Ph. D. and the second colored man to take the
degree in any university in this country.
Soon after leaving the university, Dr. Bowen joined the New
England Methodist Conference, and was appointed pastor of
the Revere Street Church. While in New England he also
preached acceptably in many white churches--serving one for
a month, and was asked to become their pastor after this
period. After serving St. John's colored church in Newark
three years, he became pastor of the Centennial Methodist
Episcopal church in Baltimore, and at the same time
professor of church history in the Morgan college for
colored people in that city. During this pastorate he
conducted a phenomenal revival in which there were 735
conversions.
Dr. Bowen next was the pastor of Asbury Methodist Episcopal
church in Washington for three years, and at the same time
Professor of Hebrew in Howard University for colored people
in that city. He here acquired a national fame as a scholar,
orator and thinker. During this pastorate he pursued the
study of the Semitic languages in the school of
correspondence of Dr. W. R. Harper, then at Yale University.
When he resigned his positions at Washington, he became for
one year a Field Secretary of the Missionary Society of the
Methodist Episcopal church, retaining his Washington
residence.
Dr. Bowen was next elected Professor of Historical Theology
in Gammon Theological Seminary for colored people at
Atlanta, Ga., which position he still holds. In consequence
of the resignation of the president, the Rev. Dr.
Thierkield, he has been for several months the chairman of
the faculty, and the executive officer of the institution.
He is also the Secretary of the Stewart Foundation for
Africa, a member of the American Negro Academy, and a member
of the American Historical Association, which last society
numbers among its members some of the most learned men in
this and other countries. Dr. Bowen received the degree of
A. M. from the University of New Orleans in 1886, and that
of D. D. from Gammon Theological Seminary in 1892.
Amid all these engrossing occupations, Dr. Bowen has been a
voluminous writer and an indefatigable lecturer. His
publications include a volume of sermons and addresses,
"Plain Talks to the Colored People of America," "Appeal to
the King," "The Comparative Status of the Negro at the Close
of the War and To-day," "The Struggle for Supremacy Between
Church and State in the Middle Ages," and "The American and
the African Negro." He has now ready for the press a volume
of "University Addresses" and a volume of "Discussions in
Philosophy and Theory;" also "The History of the Education
of the Negro Race."
Dr. Bowen was voted for at the last General Conference for
Bishop. He stood second on first ballot. His friends predict
that he will be elected at the forthcoming General
Conference.
Inference and conjecture are the stock methods of argument of the
unintelligent or the superficially informed. Such indisposition or
incapacity leads to erroneous conclusions. Nothing but an appeal to
facts involving careful and painstaking labor and a wise sifting of
facts, that myth and legend be eliminated, should claim the attention
of thinking men. It must be confessed, however, that in any discussion
that relates to the comparative status of the Negro over against his
standing in slavery full and accurate data are lacking. The
statistical science of to-day was unknown then, and it is next to the
impossible to affirm positively the relative superiority or
inferiority of present day growth over those of that day. This
statement is not made to deny the truth of the immense stride of the
latter times, but it is made as a reasonable off-set to those
prejudicial and dogmatic declarations of the superior conditions of
slavery over those of freedom. Dogmatism is the argument of the bigot.
It is not wide of the truth, to say that the claims of certain writers
that the Negro has retrograded physically, morally and socially, lacks
the confirmation of veritable data. It is admitted that the modern
diseases of civilized life have made inroads into his hardy nature,
but the universal declaration of inferiority is not proved. It is also
true that in isolated cases physicians of that day noted the
comparative freedom of the blacks from the maladies of ennui and
bacchanalian feastings, but no half-kept record of that day is before
us to justify the statement that the Negro of to-day is superior to
his mighty sire of ante-bellum fame that stood between the plow
handles all day and danced or shouted all night. The increase of
zymotic diseases is admitted, but there has been a corresponding
increase of power in many lines that will more than counteract this
baleful growth.
Again, over against this admission may be placed another statement of
fact, not to minify the truth already alluded to, but to illustrate
the futility of basing an entire argument upon one arm of a syllogism,
viz.: the Negro's numerical growth since freedom sung in his ears, is
a clear evidence of physical vitality. This growth has kept pace with
the glowing prophecies of statisticians.
Let us subdivide the subject, that the facts may be grouped in a
logical order. Let us study the growth of the race under three heads:
Numerical growth, material growth, moral and social growth.
Growth in numbers is growth in power of resistance, and this is basal
in the life of any people. If there be not found in a people a power
to resist the forces of death and to reproduce itself by the natural
laws of race increase, then such a people should not be counted in the
struggle of races. In other words, race fecundity contains the germs
of intellectual and national existence.
At the distance of forty years from slavery, the declarations of the
early extinction of the Negro, under the conditions of freedom, are
comical and absurd. It was affirmed with all the authority of divine
prophecy that the Negro race could not exist under any other condition
than slavery, and this concern became a basis for contending for his
continued enslavement.
The unvarnished facts brought to light by cold mathematicians are now
before us, and a few interesting and startling discoveries are placed
before us. In the next place growth in material productions and the
possession of the fruits of civilized life deserve attention.
The story of the burdens and disadvantages of the Negro at the
beginning of his days of freedom has not yet been committed to paper.
It will require a black writer to perform this deed. But it is within
the limits of truth to affirm that history can furnish no burdens upon
a race's shoulders parallel to those upon the shoulders of the
untutored black man when he was shot out of the mouth of the cannon
into freedom's arena. A Hindoo poet, of English blood, has written a
beautiful poem upon the "White Man's Burden," but it is poetry. "The
Black Man's Burden" is a burden that rests upon his heart, and, like
the deepest feelings of the human heart, it cannot be reduced to cold
type. Thomas Nelson Page describes the untoward beginnings of the
race:
"No other people ever had more disadvantages to contend with on their
issue into freedom. They were seduced, deceived, misled. Their habits
of industry were destroyed, and they were fooled into believing that
they could be legislated into immediate equality with a race that,
without mentioning superiority of ability and education, had a
thousand years' start of them. They were made to believe that their
only salvation lay in aligning themselves against the other race, and
following blindly the adventurers who came to lead them to a new
promised land. It is no wonder that they committed great blunders and
great excesses. For nearly a generation they have been pushed along
the wrong road. But now, in place of political leaders, who were
simply firebrands, is arising a new class of leaders, which, with a
wider horizon, a deeper sagacity and a truer patriotism, are
endeavoring to establish a foundation of morality, industry and
knowledge, and to build upon them a race that shall be capable of
availing itself of every opportunity that the future may present, and
worthy of whatever fortune it may bring."
Slavery did not teach him economy; on the contrary, it taught him
profligacy, and, where he learned to economize, it was in spite of the
system. His wastefulness is not yet a thing of the past, but he has
made commendable advance in learning how to save. What are the facts?
In the state of Georgia alone, the Negro has dug out of the hills more
than $30,000,000 of taxable property. This amount represents more
than five times the entire wealth of all the Negroes of the United
States, North and South, bond and free, taxable and personal, at the
birth of freedom. But when we collect together the wealth of the
entire race, the figures read like romance.
Some facts for reflection:
Four millions of slaves were valued at $3,500,000,000. Negroes own 87
per cent of their homes in fee simple; 89 per cent of their farms are
unencumbered.
They own, Banks 3
Magazines 5
Newspapers 400
Value of Libraries $ 500,000
Drug stores 500,000
School property 20,000,000
Church property 42,000,000
160,000 farms 400,000,000
150,000 homes 350,000,000
Personal property 200,000,000
With these facts undisputed, the question, Has the Negro kept pace
with his opportunities? contains its own affirmative answer. It is an
incomparable achievement that the Negro should have accumulated and
saved this vast amount of wealth within the short space of forty
years.
In the social and intellectual life the Negro has surpassed all hopes.
There can be furnished by the race a thoroughly equipped man for any
chair of learning for a university. He began with the blue-back
spelling book and has steadily grown in learning and power until he
now occupies a respectable position in the literary world.
But the pivotal point that is determinative in this discussion, and
that which is considered the conclusion of the whole matter, is the
moral and social question, as well as the domestic virtues of which
woman is the queen. The accumulation of property, and the achievements
in the world of letters, admirable as they are in themselves, and for
purposes of civilization, are secondary and valueless in the final
analysis, if there is no corresponding moral development and social
power. The evolution of the family, based upon monogamy, is one of the
chief glories of Christianity over against the libertinism and
polygamous practices of paganism.
Speaking of the women of our race, we cannot but speak the things
which we have seen and heard. With Dr. Crummell, "In her girlhood all
the delicate tenderness of her sex has been rudely outraged. In the
field, in the rude cabin, in the press-room and in the factory, she
was thrown into the companionship of coarse and ignorant men. No
chance was given her for delicate reserve or tender modesty. From her
girlhood she was the doomed victim of the grossest passions. All the
virtues of her sex were utterly ignored. If the instinct of chastity
asserted itself, then she had to fight like a tigress for the
ownership and possession of her own person, and oftentimes had to
suffer pains and lacerations for her virtuous self assertion. When she
reached maturity all the tender instincts of her womanhood were
ruthlessly violated. At the age of marriage, always prematurely
anticipated under slavery, she was mated as the stock of the
plantation were mated, not to be the companion of a loved and chosen
husband, but to be the breeder of human cattle for the field or
auction block."
Has this condition of affairs changed? I answer unequivocally, yea, a
thousand times, yea. A negative answer would be the quintessence of
ignorance. From a recent careful survey of every Southern state
through nearly one hundred trusty observers, I have the testimony that
the young women are pure in large numbers, and are rapidly increasing
in an intense desire and determination to preserve themselves chaste
and pure from the lustful approaches of the sinner, and that the
number of legally and lovingly married families, purely preserved in
the domestic and social virtues among husbands and wives, sons and
daughters, is so far beyond the days of slavery that a comparison
would minify the difference.
The marvel is, that the Negro has sufficient moral vitality left to
cut his way through the whirlpool of licentiousness to the solid rock
of Christian character. From the harem life of promiscuous and
unnameable sins of slavery, some of which were the natural and fatal
growth of pagan vices, others the fruit of prostitution, to the making
of one clean, beautiful, noble and divine family and home, covers a
period of intense, moral, spiritual and intellectual development, more
significant than the geologic transformation of ages. Be it known that
this one family can be duplicated by a hundred thousand and more.
The moral and social darkness has not been increased either in quality
or intensity. The splendid results of philanthropic effort have
served only as a small tallow candle which has been brought into the
darkness of this Egyptian night, and the darkness has thickened
relatively only because the light has been brought in. That faint and
flickering light reveals how great the darkness has been, and is. Some
think that the shadows are lengthening into eternal night for the
Negro, but that flickering light within has upon it the breath of God
which will some day fan it into the white and penetrating blazes of
the electro-carbon searchlight, that shall chase away the curse of
slavery. Thus, from every point of view, the growth of the Negro has
more than kept pace with his opportunities.
FOURTH PAPER.
DID THE AMERICAN NEGRO MAKE, IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, ACHIEVEMENTS
ALONG THE LINES OF WEALTH, MORALITY, EDUCATION, ETC., COMMENSURATE
WITH HIS OPPORTUNITIES? IF SO, WHAT ACHIEVEMENTS DID HE MAKE?
BY REV. M. C. B. MASON.
[Illustration: Rev. M. C. B. Mason, Ph. D.]
REV. M. C. B. MASON, PH. D.
Rev. Dr. M. C. B. Mason, senior corresponding secretary of
the Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, was born of slave parents near
Houma, La., March 27, 1859. In 1857, two years before young
Mason was born, his father purchased his own freedom, paying
$1,350. The papers were never legally made out and his
father had to wait with other members of the family for the
Emancipation Proclamation to secure their freedom.
Young Mason was twelve years of age before he had ever seen
a school-house, having entered school in July, 1871, and
mastered the alphabet the first day. Subsequently he
attended a school of higher grade and in 1888 graduated from
the New Orleans University from the regular classical
course. Two years afterward he entered the Gammon
Theological Seminary at Atlanta. Ga., graduating therefrom
in 1891. Immediately after his graduation he matriculated in
the Syracuse University, at Syracuse, N. Y., taking the
"non-resident course" leading to the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy.
In July of the same year he was elected Field Agent of the
Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
being the first colored man ever called to such a position.
So successfully did he prosecute his work that at the
General Committee meeting, which met in New York in 1893, he
was elected Assistant Corresponding Secretary, and in May,
1896, at the General Conference in Cleveland, composed of
537 representatives, only 69 of whom were colored, he was
elected Corresponding Secretary, with a majority of 104
votes against 11 competitors, all of whom were white. Four
years later at the General Conference which assembled in
Chicago, Dr. Mason was re-elected and made Senior
Corresponding Secretary, receiving the largest vote ever
given to any General Conference Secretary in the history of
the Methodist Episcopal Church. This is all the more
remarkable when it is remembered that there were 14
candidates in a body composed of 701 representatives, of
whom only 73 were colored. It will be remembered also that
the salary paid a General Conference Officer of the
Methodist Episcopal Church is the same as that paid to the
Bishops, and Dr. Mason is no exception to the rule.
The Doctor is quite a success as a money raiser and has
secured hundreds of thousands of dollars during the ten
years he has been connected with this great educational
institution of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The
Freedmen's Aid and Southern Educational Society has educated
hundreds and thousands of men and women of our race, and has
an average attendance of over seven thousand young men and
women of color in its schools every year. Dr. Mason is thus
brought in contact with more young men and women of the race
than any other Negro in America. And the whole race is very
largely indebted to him for the work which, through this
institution, he is accomplishing.
As an orator the Doctor has no superiors, and few equals. He
is in great demand all over the country, especially in the
North. We are told that he has been offered $6,000 per year
with a guarantee for ten years, if he would resign his
present position and take the lecture platform. This offer
he has constantly refused preferring to remain in the work
where he can be more useful to his own people.
During a recent trip to Europe he was in constant demand for
lectures in London, Glasgow, Belfast and among the English
colony in France.
The progress made by the Negro since emancipation has challenged the
admiration and wonder of the world. In all the annals of the world's
history, there is no parallel to it, and this progress, remarkable as
it is, has been in all lines, and in all departments of his life and
activity. Indeed, it would be quite a problem to be able to declare in
what particular line he has made the most progress. To secure some
adequate conception of what he is to-day, we must compare him with
what he was yesterday. In no other way can we come to any
comprehensive idea of the progress which he has made and the work
which he has accomplished.
A generation ago, he had practically nothing. He started out with
scarcely a name--poor, ignorant, degraded, demoralized, as slavery
left him. Without a home, without a foot of land, without the true
sense of real manhood, ragged, destitute, so freedom found him. He
stood at one end of the cotton row with his master at the other and as
he stepped out into the new and inexperienced life before him his
master still claimed him and the very clothes upon his back. Under
these peculiar circumstances and amid these peculiar difficulties he
began life for himself. He had, however, learned how to work; so much
he brought out of slavery with him; and right royal service it has
rendered him. What is he to-day? From this humble beginning of a
generation ago when he had absolutely nothing he has begun to acquire
something of this world's goods. He has been getting for himself a
home, some land, some money in bank, and some interest in stocks and
bonds. His industry, thrift and economy are everywhere in evidence and
he is bravely and consciously struggling toward the plane where his
vindication as a man and a citizen is what he is and what he has
acquired. In Louisiana he pays taxes on twelve millions, in Georgia on
fourteen millions and in South Carolina on thirteen millions. A recent
statistician, writing for the New York Sun, estimates his wealth North
and South at four hundred millions. During the last few years much of
this accumulation of property is in farm land which everywhere is
rapidly increasing in value. In this matter of securing a home and
some land, the Negro's achievements are certainly commensurate with
his opportunities.
In education his progress is even more clearly manifest. There are
to-day 2,912,912 Negro children of school age in the United States. Of
these 1,511,618 are enrolled in the public schools and the average
attendance is sixty-seven per cent of the enrollment. In addition to
the 1,511,618 who are enrolled in the public schools 50,000 more are
attending schools under the care and maintenance of the church. In
this work all the leading denominations of the country are
represented. The Freedmen's Aid and Southern Educational Society of
the Methodist Episcopal Church among the first, if not the very first
to engage in this work, has under its care forty-seven institutions of
Christian learning, twenty of which are mainly for the education of
the colored people. These institutions are scattered all over the
sixteen former slave states and have possibly sent out more graduates
as teachers, preachers, physicians, dentists, pharmacists and
industrial workers than any other institution or set of institutions
doing work in the South. In addition to the work of the Freedmen's Aid
and Southern Educational Society there are the American Missionary
Association, under Congregational auspices, the Baptist Home
Missionary Society, the Presbyterian Home Missionary Society, the
Lutheran Evangelical Society--all of which support institutions for
Christian learning for the education of the colored people throughout
the South. These schools are mainly for the higher and secondary
education of the Negro and have accomplished untold good. There are
to-day nearly 30,000 Negro teachers in the United States and a careful
estimate will show that these church schools have sent out over
20,000 of them. And these teachers, prepared by these church schools,
commonly so called, were the first to take their places in the public
schools as rapidly as they were opened and these, in the very nature
of the case, represent a very large per cent of the teaching force
even at the present time.
Again distinctively Negro bodies of churchmen, especially Baptists and
Methodists, are also carrying forward a commendable work of Christian
education among their own people. Some schools of excellent standing
in the African Methodist Episcopal, the African Methodist Episcopal
Zion and the Colored Methodist Episcopal Churches are doing most
effective work and the results are being felt in all directions.
The work of industrial education is steadily growing in all sections
of the South, and is destined more and more to occupy a prominent
place in the education of our people. The emphasis placed upon this
line of education at Hampton Institute, Hampton, Va., Claflin
University at Orangeburg, S. C., and Tuskegee Institute at Tuskegee,
Ala., is having its effect in many other places. New Orleans,
Louisiana, Wilmington, Delaware, Nashville, Tennessee, and several
other cities have adopted some lines of industrial education in their
public schools, and in some places it is compulsory. Consequently,
industrial education, which, a few years ago, was mainly confined to a
few institutions, has been, in some form or other, adopted in a large
number of cities both in the North and in the South. The results of
this line of work are already seen. Hundreds of industrial artisans
and trained mechanics are scattered here and there all over the South,
and are practically and effectively solving the problem.
In addition to the work of general education, Negroes have entered all
the learned professions, and are succeeding beyond the most sanguine
expectations of their friends. This is especially true in medicine,
pharmacy and dentistry. The Negro lawyer has done well. He has had a
difficult field, and the fact that some have acquired sufficient
ability and influence to practice before the Supreme Court of the
United States, speaks well for the race in this difficult field. But,
the success of the Negro physician is perhaps the most remarkable in
any line of professional work to which he has aspired. From the
results of careful study made by an eminent statistician, it was found
that the average salary of white physicians in the United States is
about $700, and the average salary of Negro physicians is $1,444 per
annum. The encouraging feature about this whole matter is that as
physicians among us increase, the greater is the increase in the
average salary. While dentists and pharmacists have not succeeded
quite so well, yet the success of the physician has directly opened an
avenue for the pharmacists, and has indirectly helped the dentist.
Consequently, in nearly every town of any considerable size in the
South to-day, there are four or five prosperous Negro physicians, with
two or three drug stores, where Negro pharmacists carefully compound
their prescriptions, and have the confidence and respect of the entire
community.
The Negro is progressing morally. From whatever standpoint you view
him he is getting away from the past and wiping the reproach of Egypt
from him. Any careful observer will see at once that in the field of
ethics and morals a veritable revolution has taken place among the
Negroes during the present generation. There is still, however, much
room for improvement, and to this perhaps, more than to any one thing,
the race must now turn its attention. Some questions regarding his
inability to learn have all been settled by the remarkable
achievements which he has made in all lines of intellectual endeavor,
but it must still be confessed that in the field of morals and
manners, the charge is still made, and that not without some semblance
of truth, that evidences of the essential qualities of sturdy and
manly character are not as clearly manifest among us as they should
be.
Here the problem comes home and the Negro, as ever, is the most
important factor. The pertinent question is not what shall be done
with the Negro, but rather what will the Negro do with himself. This
is the question, and the answer he gives to it will largely depend, in
no small degree, whether he shall continue to be an insignificant
element in this Nation or become more a living factor in its growth
and development. Here I repeat it, is the question and this is the
problem. Intellectual ability is good, but individual purity is
better. Rights and privileges are in themselves good, but to make
ourselves worthy of them is infinitely better. It is encouraging and
gratifying to know that so many are getting a correct interpretation
of life's deeper meanings and are daily coming into possession of
higher and purer ideals. Who can say that the Negro has not made
progress commensurate with his opportunities?
FIFTH PAPER.
DID THE AMERICAN NEGRO MAKE, IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, ACHIEVEMENTS
ALONG THE LINES OF WEALTH, MORALITY, EDUCATION, ETC., COMMENSURATE
WITH HIS OPPORTUNITIES? IF SO, WHAT ACHIEVEMENTS DID HE MAKE?
BY REV. D. WEBSTER DAVIS.
[Illustration: Rev. D. Webster Davis]
REV. DANIEL WEBSTER DAVIS.
Randall and Charlotte Davis, who were valued servants on a
Caroline County farm, found themselves, March 25, 1862, the
parents of a little black boy, who brought gladness and
sorrow to their hearts. Gladness, because the Lord had sent
them a boy, and he was their boy, bone of their bone, flesh
of their flesh, blood of their blood. Sorrow, because, while
he was their child, he was "_Marster's_" child too; he
belonged to "_Marster_" more than he did to them.
War was raging. The Negro cabins knew little else but
muffled prayers, stifled songs, unuttered sermons--all for
deliverance. From the cabin to the broad fields of tobacco
these emotions and utterances were carried daily. Father
preached, mother prayed. Singing was but the opening of the
oppressed heart. Those were troublous years, heart-aching
years. Years of consecration, fixed and unceasing, to the
God of Freedom. In such an atmosphere the boy was nurtured
and reared.
The war was over. The boy over whom mother and father had
prayed had changed from a chattel, a thing of barter, to a
free child, belonging only to mother and father. What a
change!
Entering the public schools of Richmond, step by step, grade
by grade was passed with honor and public commendation,
until June, 1878, when D. Webster Davis graduated from the
Richmond High and Normal School, receiving at the same time
the Essayist Medal.
In 1880 the subject of our sketch commenced to teach in the
public schools of Richmond and has taught therein
continuously ever since, and is to-day rated as one of the
best and most progressive in the system.
September 8, 1893, Mr. Davis married Miss Lizzie Smith, a
teacher in the Richmond public schools. From this happy
union three children have been born.
In October, 1895, feeling that the time had come for him to
be about his Father's business he was ordained to the
ministry.
From a child he babbled in verse, and the poetic muse
brought in 1896, "Idle Moments" and in 1898, "Weh Down
Souf." These two books established the name of Rev. Mr.
Davis as a poet and have given him front rank with his
contemporaries in verse-making.
Guadaloupe College, Seguin, Texas, recognizing the
meritorious work of Rev. Davis bestowed upon him the degree
of A. M. in 1898.
Rev. Mr. Davis is at present pastor of the Second Baptist
Church of Manchester, where he has an ideal growing church
of young folks, which work he began in 1895.
In the winter of 1900, the Central Lyceum Bureau of
Rochester, N. Y., engaged the services of Rev. Davis for a
four-weeks' reading tour, reading selections from his own
works. The whole tour was an ovation, showing that texture
of hair and color of skin cannot destroy that aristocracy of
intellect, that charmed inner circle wherein "a man is a man
for a' that."
The Lord has been good to Rev. Daniel Webster Davis,
blessing him with intellectual force, blessing him with
poetic utterance, blessing him with oratorical ability,
blessing him in domestic felicity. Not yet in his prime, yet
so richly endowed in the gifts which make men strong and
powerful, it is hoped that he may be spared many years to
work in the Master's vineyard, and many years to labor for
the uplift of his race, oppressed and downtrodden.
May he expand and grow greater, remembering that he is God's
servant, endowed for the benefit of his race, blessed, so
that he may bless his people made strong, so that he may
reach down and lift his people up, growing brighter and
better unto the present day.
To the superficial observer, it would sometimes appear that the
American Negro did not make achievements commensurate with his
opportunities, during the nineteenth century. Yet, on taking a more
comprehensive view, the student of history and sociology must decide
in the affirmative.
In deciding upon the comparative progress of a race, along the lines
of a higher civilization, care must be taken as to the standard by
which he is to be measured, and what has been his real opportunities.
Civilization is a plant of slow growth, as evidenced by the history of
all Nations that have accomplished great things in the past. There is
a difference, as wide as the heavens, between the refined and cultured
Englishman of to-day, and the rough, uncouth Norseman of the ninth
century; but more than a thousand years were required to bring about
that transformation. A difference, as wide as the poles, exists
between the ancient Gauls, who were conquered by the Franks in the
tenth century, and the Chesterfieldian Frenchman of to-day; yet the
same time elapsed between these two periods. There is just as marked a
difference, in many respects, between those twenty uncouth savages,
brought to the shores of Virginia in 1620, and the best specimens of
the American Negro of to-day, and yet only 287 years lie between the
former and the latter.
The next question that naturally rises is, "What have been the real
opportunities of the American Negro?" Brought here a savage from his
native wilds, and thrown into abject, and, in many cases, cruel
slavery, he yet received from this iniquitous institution something of
God. As Dr. Booker T. Washington so well says: "He went into slavery,
practically, without a language, and came out speaking the beautiful
English, the finest language to convey thought, ever devised by the
mind of man. He went in without a God, and came out with the Christian
religion." These are powerful agencies for civilization, and yet, the
debasing influence of slavery has done much to hinder, while it has
done something to help him. Only a comparatively few Negroes came into
direct contact with the best side of American civilization, during
slavery. The housemaids, coachmen, body-servants and, in many cases,
the cooks came in direct contact with the civilization of the "Great
House," and their superiority, and, in many cases, that of their
ancestry, is still apparent. The "corn field Negro" (and they
outnumbered the others 200 to 1) received none of the influences of
this civilization, and none of the opportunities accorded the more
favored servants around the "Great House."
When we take into consideration all of these circumstances, coupled
with the fact that when "cut loose" from slavery in 1865, it was a
matter of "root hog or die" with him for many years; and that only
thirty-six years have passed away since this happy event, his
achievements have been marvelous.
Optimist, as I try to be, I am not one of those who believe that the
Negro has reached the delectable mountain, and that he is as good as
anybody else. He is far from perfection, far from comparison with the
more favored Anglo-Saxon, in wealth and culture, yet he has made
progress commensurate with his opportunities.
It is a well-known philosophical axiom, that "action is equal to
reaction, and in a contrary direction." The American Negro is now
meeting the reaction consequent upon his violent action in the
direction of civilization and culture; but, this reaction is only
temporary, and, even the realization of his condition by the leading
thinkers of his race, is a sign of hope, and an evidence of
substantial progress that must tell for good.
Now, what achievements did he make? First, as to wealth: According to
the census of 1900 he has forty million dollars in church property,
and twelve millions in school property. He has 140,000 farms, worth
$750,000,000, and 170 million dollars in personal property. This is
the result of thirty-six years of freedom. One noticeable feature is
that the great bulk of his wealth has been accumulated in the South,
where the large majority of the American Negroes live. No one fact is
more startling in history, than that a people, once held as slaves,
have been able to live and thrive among the very people by whom they
were held. This accentuates the fact that, after all, nowhere has the
Negro better friends than can be found among the white people of the
Southland. His property aggregates $75 per capita for every man, woman
and child in this country, which is certainly no mean showing for
thirty-six years of freedom.
As to education, he has reduced his illiteracy forty-five per cent,
he has written more than 500 books, publishes 300 newspapers, three
of them dailies; he has produced 2,000 lawyers, a still larger number
of doctors and 32,000 teachers. He supports several colleges,
seventeen academies, fifty high schools, five law schools, five
medical schools and twenty-five theological seminaries. It is true
that all of the education he is obtaining is not practical; and also
true that many so-called educated ones are shiftless and trifling; but
this is no more than was to be expected under the circumstances.
He has built 29,000 churches, and this must mean something. It is true
that in the past, his ministers have in many cases appealed to the
passions, rather than to the intellect; and yet, under these old
preachers, many of them honest, earnest and Godly men, the Negro has
made gigantic strides in morality. He is yet far, very far below what
we would like to see him, but he is coming. The new gospel of work is
striking a responsive chord in the American Negro's heart, and he is
beginning to see that he must be able to _do_ something if he would
_be_ something.
Happily for him he learned to work, during the dark days of the past,
it only remained for him to learn to put brains in his work. This he
is fast learning under the apostles of industrial training. Since the
fiat went forth, amid the groves of Eden, when man lost his first
estate, "by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread," God has never
reversed his edict. Work must be his salvation, as it has been the
salvation of all other races. To put into poetry the words of an old
friend:
I ain't got no edikashun,
But dis, kno', is true:
Dat raisin' gals too good to wuch
Ain't nebber gwine to do;
Dese boys, dat look good nuf to eat,
But too good to saw de logs,
Am cay'in us, ez, fas' ez smok'
To lan' us at de dogs.
These great achievements have not been accomplished alone. The great
American Home Mission Society, the American Missionary Association the
Freedmen's Bureau, and the various churches and societies of the North
and South have contributed liberally of their time and means to aid us
in an upward struggle. The South itself has contributed its millions
to the aid of their former slaves; they have given for his schools,
they have aided him in building his churches, and there is scarcely a
single home among us, humble or palatial, that has not been erected
largely by the aid of Southern capital. But for the friendly aid of
these people among whom the great bulk of the American Negroes live,
we could never have climbed as far as we have on the ladder of
progress. The Negro is fast learning that, if he would be free he,
himself, must strike the blow, and he is teaching his children the
gospel of self-help.
The heights are still beyond, but he is slowly rising, and day by day
hope grows brighter. May God continue this progress until he shall
stand shoulder to shoulder with the highest civilization and culture
of the world.
TOPIC II.
WILL IT BE POSSIBLE FOR THE NEGRO TO ATTAIN, IN THIS COUNTRY, UNTO THE
AMERICAN TYPE OF CIVILIZATION?
BY BISHOP H. M. TURNER, D. D., LL. D., D. C. L.
[Illustration: Bishop H. M. Turner.]
BISHOP H. M. TURNER, D. D., LL. D.
Bishop H. M. Turner, D. D., LL. D., D. C. L., was born near
Newbury Court House, South Carolina, February 1, 1833 or
1834. His mother's maiden name was Sarah Greer, the youngest
daughter of David Greer, who was brought to this country
when a boy and sold in Charleston, S. C. Greer was the son
of an African king. His father, the African king, sent seven
African slaves for the return of his son, but the captain of
the slave ship dying before he returned, the son received
his freedom when South Carolina was still under British
rule, upon the ground that Royal blood could not be
enslaved. Henry McNeal Turner was the oldest son of Hardy
Turner and Sarah Greer Turner. Henry grew up on the cotton
fields of South Carolina, and when eight or nine years old
he dreamed he was on a high mountain and millions of people
were looking up at him for instruction, white and colored.
He then procured a spelling book and commenced to learn to
read and write, to prepare to give that vast multitude
instruction. He got a white boy to teach him his alphabet
and how to spell to three syllables. By this time he was
large enough to wait in a law office at Abbeville Court
House, S. C. The young lawyers took great pleasure in giving
him instruction in their leisure moments for pastime. He
gained a respectable knowledge of history, arithmetic,
geography, astronomy and some other branches, but would not
study grammar, as he thought he could talk well enough
without a knowledge of grammar.
He made such remarkably rapid progress that by the time he
was fifteen years old he had read the Bible through five
times, and by the aid of Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary and
the young white lawyers he became a good reader, and read
Watson's Apology for the Bible, Buck's Theological
Dictionary and very largely in Dr. Adam Clark's Commentary
and other books. He became acquainted with the African M. E.
Church, joined the same, leaving the M. E. Church South, met
the Conference in St. Louis, Mo., and was admitted after an
examination. Bishop D. A. Payne, D. D., LL. D., appointed
him to a mission in Baltimore city. While he served his
appointment he studied English Grammar, Latin, Greek, German
and the Hebrew languages, and became what was regarded as an
excellent scholar. He studied the rules of elocution under
Dr. Cummings of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and was
regarded as quite an orator. He was appointed in charge of
Israel Church, Washington, D. C., and his fame became so
notable that President Lincoln appointed him Chaplain, the
first colored man that was ever made a commissioned officer
in the United States Army. He served his regiment so
faithfully and gained such a reputation that President
Johnson commissioned him a Chaplain in the regular service
of the United States Army. He resigned in a short time and
commenced the organization of the A. M. E. Church in
Georgia, and was so abundantly successful that the General
Conference elected him manager of the Publication Department
in 1876. He served there four years with headquarters in
Philadelphia, and in 1880 the General Conference sitting in
St. Louis, Mo., elected him Bishop, and on the 20th of May
he was consecrated to that holy office. Bishop Turner has
worked up territory enough as an organiser of the A. M. E.
Church to demand five conferences. He has organized four
conferences in Africa, making eleven conferences that he is
the founder of.
Dr. Turner was for many years superintendent in the church
for the whole State of Georgia and was the first Bishop of
Africa, which position he held for eight years, while having
his regular conferences in the United States. He says he has
received over forty-three thousand on probation in the
African M. E. Church. He has been a member of the Georgia
Legislature twice, a member of the Constitutional
Convention, Postmaster, Inspector of Customs and held other
minor positions, and was at one time regarded one of the
greatest orators of his race in the United States.
This interrogatory appears to presuppose that the seventeen or more
millions of colored people in North and South America are not a part
of the American population, and do not constitute a part of its
civilization. But the term "this country" evidently refers to the
United States of America, for this being the largest and the most
powerful government on the American continent, not unfrequently, is
made to represent the entire continent. So the Negro is regarded as a
foreign and segregated race. The American people, therefore, who grade
the type of American civilization are made up of white people, for the
Indian, Chinamen, and the few Mexicans are not taken in account any
more than the Negro is, by reason of the live numbers, and not because
they are regarded wanting in intellectual capacity, as the Negro is.
The above is an interrogatory that can be easily answered if the term
"American" is to include the United States and the powers that enact
its laws and proclaim its judicial decisions, as we have no
civilization in the aggregate. Civilization contemplates that
fraternity, civil and political equality between man and man, that
makes his rights, privileges and immunities inviolable and sacred in
the eyes and hearts of his fellows, whatever may be his nationality,
language, color, hair texture, or anything else that may make an
external variation.
Civility comprehends harmony, system, method, complacency, urbanity,
refinement, politeness, courtesy, justice, culture, general
enlightenment and protection of life and person to any man, regardless
of his color or nationality. It is enough for a civilized community to
know that you are a human being, to pledge surety of physical and
political safety to you, and this has been the sequence in all ages
among civilized people. But such is not the condition of things as
they apply to this country, I mean the United States. True, we have a
National Congress, State Legislature, Subordinate and Supreme Courts,
and almost every form of government, necessary to regulate the affairs
of a civilized country. But above these, and above law and order,
which these legislative and judicial bodies have been organized to
observe, and execute justice in the land, we are often confronted
through the public press with reports of the most barbarous and cruel
outrages, that can be perpetrated upon human beings, known in the
history of the world. No savage nation can exceed the atrocities which
are often heralded through the country and accepted by many as an
incidental consequence. Men are hung, shot and burnt by bands of
murderers who are almost invariably represented as the most
influential and respectable citizens in the community, while the
evidences of guilt of what is charged against the victims, who are so
inhumanly outraged, are never established by proof in any court, and
all we can learn about the guilt and horrible deeds charged upon the
murdered victims comes from the mouth of the bloody handed wretches
who perpetrate the murders, yet they are not known according to
published accounts. But enough is known to get from their mouths same
horrible statements as to why this and that brutal murder was done,
and invariably, it is told with such oily tongues, and the whole
narrative is polished over and glossed with such skillfully
constructed lies, that the ruling millions lift up their hands in holy
horror and exclaim "they done him right."
Why, the very judges surrounded with court officers are powerless
before these bloody mobs. Prisoners are cruelly, fiendishly and
inhumanly dragged from their very custody. Sheriffs are as helpless as
new-born babes. I do not pretend to say that in no instance have the
victims been guilty as a whole or in part of some blood-curdling
crime, for men perpetrate lawless acts, revolting deeds, disgraceful
and brutal crimes, regardless of nationality, language or color, at
times. But civilization presurmises legal adjudication and the
intervention of that judicial authority which civilized legislation
produces. And when properly administered the accused is innocent till
he gets a fair trial; no verdict of guilt from a drunken lawless mob
should be accepted by a civilized country; and when they do accept it
they become a barbarous people. And a barbarous people make a
barbarous nation. Civilization knows no marauders, mobs or lynchers
and any one adjudged guilty by a drunken band of freebooters is not
guilty in the eyes of a civilized people. For the ruthless and violent
perpetrators of lawless deeds, especially when they are incarnate, are
murderers to all intents and purposes, and popular approval does not
diminish the magnitude of the crime. Millions may say, "Well done,"
but God, reason and civilization stamp them as culprits.
I confess that the United States has the highest form of civilized
institutions that any nation has had. Let us take a cursory glance at
the institutions in this country. It has common schools by the tens of
thousands; colleges and universities of every grade by the hundred;
millions of daily newspapers are flying from the press, and weekly
papers and monthly magazines on all imaginary subjects; it has a
Congress and President, Governors and State Legislatures without end,
judges, various courts and law officers in countless numbers. Hundreds
of thousands of school teachers, professors, and college presidents,
and Doctors of Divinity, thousands of lecturers and public declaimers
on all subjects, railroads, telegraphs and telephones in such vast
numbers as stagger imagination itself, churches and pulpits that are
filled by at least a hundred and twenty-five thousand ministers of the
gospel, and Bibles enough to build a pyramid that would almost reach
to heaven; a land of books upon every subject scattered among the
people by the billions, and in short, we have all the forms and
paraphernalia of civilization. But no one can say, who has any respect
for truth, that the United States is a civilized nation, especially if
we will take the daily papers and inspect them for a few moments, and
see the deeds of horror that the ruling powers of the nation say "well
done" to.
I know that thousands, yea millions and tens of millions would not
plead guilty of having a part in the violent and gory outrages which
are often perpetrated in this country upon human beings, chiefly
because they are of African descent, and are not numerically strong
enough to contend with the powers in governmental control. But that is
no virtue that calls for admiration. As long as they keep silent and
fail to lift up their voices in protestation and declaim against it,
their very silence is a world-wide acquiescence. It is practically
saying, well done. There are millions of people in the country who
could not stand to kill a brute, such is their nervous sensitiveness,
and I have heard of persons who would not kill a snake or a bug. But
they are guilty of everything the drunken mobs do, as long as they
hold their silence. Men may be ever so free from the perpetration of
bloody deeds, personally, but their failure to object to any
outrageous crime makes them particeps crimines.
I forgot to say in cataloguing the crimes committed in the United
States that persons for the simple color of their skin are thrust
into what are called Jim Crow cars on the public highways and charged
as much as those who are riding in rolling palaces with every comfort
that it is possible for man to enjoy. This is simple robbery on the
public highways and the nine United States judges have approved of
this robbery and said, "well done," by their verdict.
Such being the barbarous condition of the United States, and the low
order of civilization which controls its institutions where right and
justice should sit enthroned, I see nothing for the Negro to attain
unto in this country. I have already admitted that this country has
books and schools, and the younger members of the Negro race, like the
younger members of the white race, should attend them and profit by
them. But for the Negro as a whole, I see nothing here for him to
aspire after. He can return to Africa, especially to Liberia where a
Negro government is already in existence, and learn the elements of
civilization in fact; for human life is there sacred, and no man is
deprived of it or any other thing that involves his manhood, without
due process of law. So my decision is that there is nothing in the
United States for the Negro to learn or try to attain to.
SECOND PAPER.
WILL IT BE POSSIBLE FOR THE NEGRO TO ATTAIN, IN THIS COUNTRY, UNTO THE
AMERICAN TYPE OF CIVILIZATION?
BY BISHOP L. H. HOLSEY.
[Illustration: Bishop L. H. Holsey]
BISHOP L. H. HOLSEY.
Bishop Holsey was born a slave near Columbus, Ga., July 3,
1842. In 1862 he was married to Miss Harriet Turner, a young
girl who belonged to Bishop Geo. F. Pierce, of the M. E.
Church South, who performed the marriage ceremony in his own
house. His early life was spent in Sparta, La. He was
licensed to preach in 1868 in the M. E. Church South, and
served the Hancock circuit for nearly two years. In 1870 he
pastored the church in Savannah, Ga. Early in 1869 he became
a member of the colored conference which belonged to the M.
E. Church South. This conference was composed entirely of
colored ministers. At this conference Bishop Holsey was
ordained deacon by Bishop Pierce and a year later he was
ordained elder. In the fall of 1870 his conference elected
him a delegate to the first General Conference of the
Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, held in America. This
conference was held in Jackson, Tenn., where the first C. M.
E. Church in America was organized. In 1871 he was sent to
Augusta, Ga., as pastor of Trinity Church and served there
until in 1873 he was elected Bishop of the C. M. E. Church.
In 1881 he was sent to London, England, to represent the C.
M. E. Church in the first ecumenical council. In that
council Bishop Holsey represented his church well. He was
also sent as delegate to the same council, which met in
Washington, D. C., in 1897. He is the founder of Paine
College in Augusta, Ga., which is now in a flourishing
condition. Bishop Holsey has always taken an active part in
all that concerns the C. M. E. Church. He has written all
the messages but one to the General Conferences and has
suggested its entire legislation up-to-date. He also wrote
the Manual of Discipline, and composed the hymnal of the
church, and he is the author of a book of Drawings and
Lectures, containing an autobiography. He has written much
for his church and done many other good things, too numerous
to mention here.
This question is one of pre-eminent importance and interesting alike
to both races. Civilization means culture and refinement. The American
type of civilization is somewhat different from the European and
Asiatic; but, in the main features or characteristics, the world's
great civilizations have always been the same in tone and design.
Patriotism, religion, and a thirst for power are the most prominent
features of all civilizations. All civilizations have their
imperfections. One of the strong features of the American type of
civilization is the widespread and terrible social prejudice, which
seems to be greatly increasing.
In this country the negro is despised and rejected, simply because he
has a black skin, and social traits that distinguish him from other
races. We cannot see, neither do we believe, that it is possible for
the Negro to attain unto the American type of civilization, while he
lives in the same territory and in immediate contact with the white
people. This, however, applies especially to the former slave states.
Eight-tenths of the Negroes are at present in the old slave states,
and if they remain there, which is very questionable, they will never
be brought into the political, religious and social fabrics. They can
never become full-fledged and free citizens like the white people. As
a race, the Negro cannot enjoy in this country, like the Anglo-Saxon,
the immunities and privileges guaranteed to him by the Constitution.
The civil rights, the ample protection and the broad and liberal
sentiment that protect and inspire the white people, are nowhere in
America accorded to the black man. He is everywhere proscribed,
because he is a Negro. No matter how much culture and refinement he
may possess, he does not receive at the hands of the prejudiced whites
that respectful consideration to which his culture entitles him. If we
enter the field of legislative enactments by the Southern people, we
find the prejudice still more pronounced.
Every enactment that has found its way to the statutory documents of
the Southern States, where the rights and privileges of the two races
are involved, shows race prejudice; then this thing is getting no
better, but worse. As the Negro rises from the darkness of the past
and approximates the American standard of civilization, the feeling
against him becomes more intense, bitter and decisive, which does not
speak well for the American civilization.
No Negro, however highly accomplished, can be brought into the social
fabric. The lowest Greek, the dirtiest Jew, the vilest Russian, and
the most treacherous Spaniard can be absorbed and assimilated into the
social compact, but the Negro, because he is black, cannot enter into
this compact.
Unless the Negro can enter the political and social compacts in some
part of this country, there is no way for him to attain unto the
American type of civilization. Can this be done? We think not, because
as the Negro migrates to the North or to the Northwest, the process by
which he enters the arena of full citizenship annuls and destroys his
social characteristics in a greater or less degree.
There is, at present, among the majority of Negroes in the South, an
unrest. Millions of them are waiting and wishing for somebody to lead
them from the land of oppression and proscription to some more
congenial clime, outside of the land of their nativity, but they do
not want to depart, unless they can be assured that by so doing, they
can better their condition. As it is, many are going to the North,
East and West, and the time is fast approaching when the Black Belts
of the South will be things of the past, unless the white people
change their way of treating a Negro. The cotton fields and sugar
farms now maintained by the Negroes will eventually be deserted by
them, if the whites continue to oppress them. This, perhaps, would be
beneficial to the South, as it would relieve them of the perplexing
Race Problem. Now, if the Negroes were as free and as safe in their
homes; if they had the same feeling of security of life and property;
if they had the same treatment before the courts and had all the
rights and privileges of a full citizen, as the white man, he would
not be long in attaining to the American type of civilization. All
Southern people, and many Northern people, for that matter, do not
believe that the Negro is capable of as high a degree of civilization
as the Anglo-Saxon. They believe him to be by nature inferior to the
white man. But I contend that the Negro is not by nature inferior to
the white man, but that he is as capable of reaching the American type
of civilization as the white man. This is obvious from the phenomenal
strides made by him within the past thirty-six years along material,
moral and educational lines.
No one seems to take on and absorb the American civilization more
readily than the American Negro, and if he has the same advantages and
was allowed to enjoy the same full and free citizenship along with his
white neighbor, his advancement in civilization would be as rapid as
that of the white man.
There are to be found now not a few Negro men and women whose culture
and refinement would not suffer by comparison with that of the best
white people of this country. It is not native incapacity and the want
of vital manhood that limit the Negro's progress in civilization, but
it is the fight made against him on the ground of his previous
condition. Remove this and give the Negro the white man's chance and
he will keep pace with the white man in his march toward civilization.
THIRD PAPER.
WILL IT BE POSSIBLE FOR THE NEGRO TO ATTAIN, IN THIS COUNTRY, UNTO THE
AMERICAN TYPE OF CIVILIZATION?
BY R. S. LOVINGGOOD, A. M.
[Illustration: R. S. Lovinggood, A. M.]
PROF. R. S. LOVINGGOOD, A. M.
Prof. R. S. Lovinggood was born in Walhalla, S. C., in 1864.
He came to Clark University, Atlanta, Ga., in 1881, and
remained in school nine years, completing the college course
and taking a course in carpentry. Immediately after
graduating, he began to publish the "Atlanta Times," a
weekly paper, which he continued for two years. He sold out
his interest in the paper, and was elected principal of a
city school in Birmingham, Ala., where he taught with great
success for three years. Here he was married to Miss Lillie
G. England, in 1894. In the fall of 1895, he was elected to
the chair of Greek and Latin at Wiley University, Marshall,
Texas, and entered upon his work with enthusiasm. His wife
died in January, 1896, leaving him a boy only ten days old.
He continued his work at Wiley University for five
consecutive years. His success was notable in this position.
He wrote a work which has received favorable mention in
several papers of high grade. The title of the work is "Why
Hic, Halc, Hoc for the Negro?"
He was married a second time on April 25, 1900, to Miss
Mattie A. Townsend of Birmingham, Ala. In the fall of 1900,
he was elected to the presidency of Samuel Houston College,
Austin, Texas. His success here has been notable. Though
this is a new school, he enrolled 205 the first year. This
is its second year, and the enrollment will doubtless reach
300.
Prof. Lovinggood is a good scholar, a fluent speaker, and an
earnest Christian. He was a delegate to the General
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Chicago in
1900. He is quite popular with the preachers and the people
wherever he goes. A bright future is before him and the
young school of which he is president.
I presume it is not necessary to show in detail what the American type
of civilization is, or will be. Whatever that type is, or may be; will
the Negro attain unto it in this country? Of the American type of
civilization this much may be said, that this is a "government of the
people, for the people and by the people; that all men are created
with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness;" that governments derive "their just
power from the consent of the governed;" that in such governments each
individual is entitled to all the rights vouchsafed to any other
individual in that government; that every one is entitled to stand on
his merits as a citizen of the government.
Taking this view of the American type of civilization, will it be
possible for the Negro to attain unto it? Will the time ever come when
the Negro will stand on his merits in our government? Will it ever be
that the Negro will stand the same chance to be Mayor, Congressman,
Senator, Governor, President? That he will be tried for crimes as
other men are tried? No one who believes in the innate capacity of the
Negro to achieve as high a type of civilization as any other race,
will question that it will be possible for him to achieve the
American type of civilization along the lines of invention, commerce,
philanthropy, scholarship, etc. The Negro _can be_ industrious,
patriotic, courageous. He can be useful in the community in which he
lives. He can be as good as anybody else. No one doubts that he can be
as meritorious as any other. Geographical lines cannot prevent the
Negro from being meritorious. Now, if he is meritorious, will he be
treated according to his merits in both church and state? Is it
possible in this country that he will be treated according to his
deserts? I take this to be the gist of the question, and it is a hard
one to answer. The prejudice against the Negro is more severe than
that against any other people, and the prejudice grows stronger. Even
the Christian churches are yielding to it. I remember that the
Plebeians in the Roman Empire, though of the same blood as the
Patricians, were excluded from the Comitia, the Senate and all civil
and priestly offices of the state for several hundred years. Though of
the same color, the statute of Kilkenny prohibited the Irish and
English from intermarrying in the fourteenth century. Prejudice ran
high, and has not ended yet. The wail of sorrowful Ireland continues
to go up before England for justice. I remember the sad story of
Kosciusko and the Poles. The Poles were white.
Here we are of a different color, ex-slaves, poor, beaten back by
prejudice. Who can tell our future? We can only hope and give the
reason for the hope that is in us.
I believe it is _possible_ for us to succeed in America. I should
despair if I did not believe this. Why do I believe it? Here is my
ground for hope: First, the Negro is the only race that has ever
looked into the face of the blue-eyed Anglo-Saxon without being swept
from the face of the earth. There is that docility, that perseverance,
that endurance, long-suffering patience and that kindness in the Negro
which rob the pangs of the hatred of the white man of much of their
deadly poison. The Negro thrives on persecution. He never loses faith.
Individuals may lose hope, but the race will never. The Negro does not
run against the buzz-saw of destruction, and this fact should be put
down to his credit. The saw will not whirl forever.
Second: The success of the last thirty-seven years gives hope of
ultimate triumph. The Negro has increased in intelligence, in wealth,
in moral worth, in population, etc. It is useless to give figures. All
right-thinking men admit this.
I take no part in that view of a few pessimists, that the Negro race
grows worse; that the "old time Negro" is better than the young "new
Negro." The old Negro was submissive because he was not allowed to be
otherwise. There is no character in slavish goodness. Character must
be developed in freedom of action. Under freedom, a few young Negroes
have gone to excess, but, thank God, under freedom, hundreds of
thousands of young Negroes, in schools and out of schools, are
struggling up the hill of virtue, of industry, of learning, not goaded
on by the lash of the master, but impelled by a holy ambition that
does not halt at temporary defeats.
Third: So I believe the Negro will be as good as any. He will produce
his poets, historians, philosophers, inventors, his men of commerce,
his humanitarians. His present disenfranchisement will keep him along
these lines. The best people in America are helping him. Besides the
Negro's own efforts in such organizations as the A. M. E. Church, the
American Missionary Association of the Congregational Church, the
Freedmen's Aid and Southern Educational Society of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, the Home Mission Society of the Baptist Church, and
many other organizations are behind him with millions of dollars, with
prayers and with the souls and the flesh and blood of the best men and
women of the world. There are good men North and South--white men--who
desire the Negro's success. Their number will grow. With these helps
the Negro can become noble in character. He can merit the best at the
hands of the American people. If he is as good and useful as any other
class of people, will he be treated as any other class?
Fourth: Now, I will go a little further and say I know it is
"possible" for the Negro to attain unto the American type of
civilization; but, is it "probable"? I even believe it is probable.
The Negro is included in the "all men are created with certain
inalienable rights." He is included in the "Our Father." He is
included in the "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do
you even so unto them." Now, if the nation adopts some separate and
unjust manner of treatment of the Negro, it must repudiate the
Declaration of Independence. It must repudiate the Lord's Prayer. It
must repudiate the Golden Rule. Can it do that and survive? Can it
practice injustice upon the Negro and survive? Sin recoils upon the
sinner. Injustice to the Negro will destroy the Nation. For that
reason good white men and women are striving to bring the Nation up to
that high plane of righteousness where justice is meted out to all
alike. These good white men and women ought to conquer. I believe they
will. Not to-day, but to-morrow. Thus the Negro, striving to be the
best in the community, the white men, striving to reduce to practice
the Golden Rule, may it not come to pass that "They shall beat their
swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks," and that
the country of Lincoln shall thus become the "land of the free and the
home of the brave," where all men of all races shall be treated in all
departments of life according to their worth?
FOURTH PAPER.
WILL IT BE POSSIBLE FOR THE NEGRO TO ATTAIN, IN THIS COUNTRY, UNTO THE
AMERICAN TYPE OF CIVILIZATION?
BY BISHOP J. W. HOOD, D. D., LL. D.
[Illustration: Bishop J. W. Hood, D. D.]
BISHOP J. W. HOOD, D. D., LL. D.
The subject of this sketch was born in Kennett Township,
Chester County, Pa., May 30, 1831. His father's house being
near the line between freedom and slavery was a station of
the Underground Railroad. Hence, the boy was very early
impressed with the evils of slavery and imbibed an intense
hatred toward that institution, and an intense love for his
afflicted race. This sentiment has been a great factor in
shaping his conduct through life. His moral and religious
convictions were fixed in early life. He was sensible of a
call to the ministry, but hesitated a long time because he
felt a lack of necessary qualification. He was licensed to
preach in 1856; ordained a deacon in 1860; elder in 1862,
and bishop in 1872. He entered upon a course of studies soon
after he was licensed, and has been a hard student ever
since.
His first appointment was to a mission in Nova Scotia. In
December, 1861, he was appointed to missionary work in the
South. Following the army, he reached New Berne, N. C.,
January 20, 1864. As a traveling minister he always had
encouraging success, especially in North Carolina, in which
State his denomination has a larger following than in any
other. Two of its most important institutions are located
there, namely, the Publication House at Charlotte and
Livingstone College at Salisbury. Bishop Hood is one of the
founders of the college, and has been President of the Board
of Trustees during its entire history.
He has been married three times, and has six living
children, all of whom have been mainly educated at this
institution. The Bishop is an untiring worker, and has
traveled as much as 20,000 miles a year. He once preached
forty-five sermons in thirty-one days, driving from five to
twenty-five miles a day. He is a natural presiding officer
and governs his conferences with an ease and quietness that
is astonishing.
He is an author. His first work was a book of twenty-five
sermons. The second a pamphlet, "Know, Do, and Be Happy."
The third, a history of the A. M. E. Zion Church (625
pages).
The fourth a pamphlet, "The True Church, the Real Sacrifice,
the Genuine Membership." His fifth, and most important, is,
"The Plan of the Apocalypse." He has in manuscript, a work
on the Millennium; also the material for a second book of
sermons, and is now writing an Autobiography.
Bishop Haygood of the M. E. Church South, who wrote the
introduction to the Book of Sermons, says: "Bishop Hood has
traveled the continent to and fro. His ability, his
eloquence, his zeal and usefulness, have commanded the
respect and confidence of the best people of both races."
As one of the members of the Ecumenical Conference that met
in London in 1881, Bishop Hood made a lasting impression.
These sermons speak for themselves. Their naturalness, their
clearness, their force and their general soundness of
doctrine, and wholesomeness of sentiment, commend them to
sensible and pious people. I have found them as useful as
interesting.
Those who still question whether the Negro in this country
is capable of education and "uplifting," will modify their
opinions when they read these sermons, or else will conclude
that their author is a very striking exception to what they
assume to be a general rule.
The subject of this article is one upon which much thought has been
spent, and yet, excepting the color of the skin and the texture of the
hair, the Negro has more the appearance of the white American than any
other race. A cultured colored woman, with gloves on her hands and a
veil on her face, is hard to distinguish from a cultured white woman a
little way off.
And the same is true of men when the complexion is not seen. We shall
take the position that the inherent possibility of the Negro is equal
to that of any race. Notwithstanding his environments are against him,
yet he has the inherent power to break through them, and will break
through them and reach the highest plane of Christian civilization.
This is indicated by the progress he has made in the few years in
which he has had any chance for development as an American citizen.
Almost everything has been against him. Every possible effort has been
employed by his enemies to keep him down; but in spite of all he
rises. Like Israel of old, the more he is oppressed the more he
prospers.
His possibility is indicated by the stock from which he comes.
It is the impression of many that the Negro has no history to which he
can point. There could be no greater mistake than this. If it had been
in the power of modern historians of the Caucasian race to rob him of
his history it would have been done. But the Holy Bible has stood as
an everlasting rock in the black man's defense. God himself has
determined that the black man shall not be robbed of his record which
he has made during the ages past.
The first and most illustrious of earth's historians has left on
record statements which set forth the fact beyond reasonable doubt
that an ancestor of the Negro race was the first of the earth's great
monarchs; and that that race ruled the world for a long period; and
the statements of Moses are confirmed by the testimonies of the
earliest secular historians, whose writings have come down to our
time. Ethiopia and Egypt were first among the early monarchies, and
these countries were peopled by the descendants of Ham, through Cush
and Mizraim.
Palestine was peopled by Canaan, the younger son of Ham, upon whom the
curse was pronounced; and, notwithstanding the curse, his posterity
ruled that land for hundreds of years. They were in it when the
promise of it was made to Abraham; and four hundred years later, when
Israel came out of Egypt, they were still in full possession of it.
And, although the land was promised to Israel, yet two tribes, the
Jebusites and Sidonians, resisted the attacks of Israel for more than
four hundred years after they entered upon their promised possessions.
Neither Joshua, nor the Judges of Israel, could drive them out. Not
until David became King were the Jebusites driven out from the
stronghold of Zion. (Even David failed to drive out the Sidonians.) It
was from the ancient seat of the Jebusites, Jerusalem, also called
Salem, the seat of royalty and power, that Melchizedek, the most
illustrious king, priest and prophet of that race, came forth to bless
Abraham, as seen in Gen. XIV., 18:19. There have been many wild
notions respecting this personage, for which there is no good reason.
Dr. Barnes, a standard author, whose commentaries have been adopted by
the Presbyterian Board, takes the position that there can be no
question but that Melchizedek was a Canaanite.
That the Phoenicians, who were the founders of Carthage in connection
with the original Africans, were the descendants of Canaan there ought
to be no question; but, since everything honorable to the Negro race
is questioned, we will simply give the testimony of Rollin. He says:
"The Canaanites are certainly the same people who are called almost
always Phoenicians by the Greeks, for which name no reason can be
given, any more than the oblivion of the true one." Thus it is seen,
that up to Rollin's time there was no question as to the fact that the
Phoenicians were Canaanites. Rollin did not know why this, instead of
the true name, was given; neither do we know; but we may easily
conjecture that, since it was the Greeks that gave this name instead
of the true one, it may have been their purpose to hide the fact that
the people to whom they were so greatly indebted were the descendants
of the accursed son of Ham. This would be in perfect accord with the
conduct of Caucasian authors now. We have also the testimony of Dr.
Barnes that the Phoenicians were descended from the Canaanites. In his
notes on Matt. XV., 22, of the woman of Canaan who met Jesus on the
coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he says: "This woman is also called a Greek,
a Syro-Phoenician by birth" (Mark VII., 26).
Anciently the whole land, including Tyre and Sidon, was in the
possession of the Canaanites, and called Canaan. The Phoenicians were
descended from the Canaanites. The country, including Tyre and Sidon,
was called Phoenicia or Syro-Phoenicia. That country was taken by the
Greeks under Alexander the Great, and these cities, in the time of
Christ, were Greek cities. This woman was therefore a Gentile, living
under the Greek government, and probably speaking that language. She
was by birth a Syro-Phoenician, born in that country, and descended
therefore from the ancient Canaanites. On the same text Dr. Abbott
says: "The term Canaan was the older title of the country and the
inhabitants were successively termed Canaanites and Phoenicians; as
the inhabitants of England were successively called Britons or
Englishmen."
Of Carthage we may remark that through all the hundreds of years of
its existence as an independent government, it remained a republic.
Rollin, speaking of the government, says: "The government of Carthage
was founded upon principles of most consummate wisdom; and it is with
reason that Aristotle ranks this republic in the number of those that
were held in the greatest esteem by the ancients, and which were fit
to serve as a model for others. He grounds his opinion on a reflection
which does great honor to Carthage, by remarking that from the
foundation to his time (that is, upward of five hundred years) no
considerable sedition had disturbed the peace, nor any tyrant
oppressed the liberty of the state. Indeed, mixed governments such as
that of Carthage, where the power was divided betwixt the nobles and
the people, are subject to the inconveniences either of degenerating
into an abuse of liberty by the seditions of the populace, as
frequently happened in Athens, and in all the Grecian republics, or in
the oppression of the public liberty by the tyranny of the nobles; as
in Athens, Syracuse, Corinth, Thebes, and Rome itself, under Sylla and
Caesar. It is, therefore, giving Carthage the highest praise to
observe that it had found out the art by the wisdom of its laws, and
the harmony of the different parts of its government, to shun during
so long a series of years, two rocks that are so dangerous, and on
which others so often split. It were to be wished that some ancient
author had left us an accurate and regular description of the customs
and laws of the famous republic."
While we agree with Rollin in his lament of the want of a more
complete history of that ancient Negro republic, yet, if those
Caucasians who are wont to arrogate to themselves all the excellencies
of the world, and deny that the Negro ever has been great, or ever can
be, would take time to read what has been written with sufficient care
to understand it, they would lose some of their self-conceit and add
much to their store of knowledge.
That the ancient Egyptians were black, both the Holy Scriptures and
the discoveries of science, as also the most ancient histories, most
fully attest. But as some profess to have doubts on this point, we
shall take some testimony, which, we think, no fair minded man will
attempt to dispute.
The Psalmist calls to memory the wonders which God wrought for his
people, and celebrates in song his dealings with Israel in Egypt, and
frequently calls Egypt the land of Ham. How can this be accounted for
if Egypt was not peopled by the posterity of Ham? But he goes further
than this; he calls their dwellings the tabernacles of Ham. "He smote
the firstborn in Egypt; the chief of their strength in the tabernacles
of Ham." Psalm lxvii, 51: "Israel also came into Egypt; and Jacob
sojourned in the land of Ham." Psalm cv, 23: "He sent Moses, his
servant and Aaron whom he had chosen. They set among them his signs
and wonders in the land of Ham." Psalm cv, 26:27: "They forget their
God their Savior which had done great things in Egypt; wondrous things
in the land of Ham." (Psalm xvi, 21:22.)
The man who, after reading these passages, can doubt that the
Egyptians to whom Israel was in bondage were the descendants of Ham,
is beyond the reach of reason. The repetition seems designed to settle
this fact beyond question. We might add, if it were necessary, that
the Book of Canticles is an allegory, based upon Solomon's affection
for his beautiful black wife, the daughter of Pharaoh, King of Egypt.
In the sixty-eighth Psalm we have a prophecy which connects Egypt
with Ethiopia, as follows: "Princes shall come out of Egypt. Ethiopia
shall soon stretch forth her hands unto God."
Rollin, in speaking of the fact, that all callings in Egypt were
honorable, gives this as a probable reason: "That as they all
descended from Ham, their common father, the memory of their still
recent origin, occurring to the minds of all in those first ages,
established among them a kind of equality, and stamped in their
opinion a nobility on every person descended from the common stock."
Again, treating of the history of the Kings of Egypt, Rollin says:
"The ancient history of Egypt comprises two thousand one hundred and
fifty-eight years; and is naturally divided into three periods. The
first begins with the establishment of the Egyptian monarchy by Menes
or Mizraim the son of Ham, in the year of the world 1816." On the next
page he says of Ham: "He had four children, Cush, Mizraim, Phut and
Canaan." After speaking of the settlements of the other sons he
returns to Mizraim and says: "He is allowed to be the same as Menes,
whom all historians declare to be the first king of Egypt."
In speaking of the sons of Ham, Rollin says: "Cush settled in
Ethiopia, Mizraim in Egypt, which generally is called in Scripture
after his name, and by that of Cham (Ham) his father."
That ancient Egypt was the seat of the arts and sciences, there can be
no doubt; the evidences of this still remain. The cities built by the
early kings of Egypt have been the wonder of all succeeding ages.
Sesostris stands at the head of the list of the great Egyptian
warriors. Rollin says: "His father, whether by inspiration, caprice,
or, as the Egyptians say, by the authority of an oracle, formed the
design of making his son a conqueror. * * * " (See Rollin, Vol. I, p.
161.)
The record given by Rollin indicates that Sesostris was among the
wisest, as well as among the most powerful monarchs of the earth.
Napoleon was a great warrior, but he died in exile, a prisoner of war.
Alexander was a great general, but he made a foolish march across a
desert country almost to the destruction of his army, for the foolish
purpose of worshipping at the shrine, and being called the son of
Jupiter Ammon. This so discouraged his forces that he never
accomplished the object of his ambition.
Sesostris made no such blunders in his campaigns. He went forth
conquering until he met a providential interposition; his climax of
wisdom was displayed in his turning back when he discovered that not
merely mortal beings, but the Great Immortal, opposed his further
conquest.
He returned to his own country to enjoy in peace and prosperity the
fruits of his unparalleled victories. His conduct toward those cities
which resisted in attacks most stubbornly was in striking contrast to
that of Alexander. As Alexander advanced to invade Egypt, he found at
Gaza a garrison so strong that he was obliged to besiege it. It held
out a long time, during which he received two wounds; this provoked
him to such a degree that when he had captured the place he treated
the soldiers and inhabitants most cruelly.
Sesostris, on the other hand, was pleased with those who defended
their possessions most bravely; the degree of resistance which he had
to overcome was denoted by him in hieroglyphical figures on monuments.
The more stubborn the resistance, the greater the achievement; and the
more worthy the people to become his subjects.
If the descendants of the accursed son of Ham could establish and
maintain for five hundred years a republic which was never disturbed
by sedition nor tyranny, and enjoyed a civilization in some respects
better than the boasted American civilization, there is no reason why
any other branch of Ham's family may not attain to the highest and
best civilization.
Our opinion is, that within two hundred and fifty years the American
Negro will reach that Christian civilization taught by the Son of God
to a degree equal to any race on the face of the globe. He has in him
the elements for such a civilization to a degree not possessed by some
other races.
But the limit allowed this article has been reached.
TOPIC III.
HOW CAN THE FRIENDLY RELATIONS NOW EXISTING BETWEEN THE TWO RACES IN
THE SOUTH BE STRENGTHENED AND MAINTAINED?
BY HON. H. P. CHEATHAM.
[Illustration: Hon. H. P. Cheatham]
HENRY PLUMMER CHEATHAM.
Men who attain to real leadership and those who lift as they
climb; broad in mental resource, generous, and strong in
manly impulse, they forget self and become the embodiment of
principles that make genuine progress and win the hearts of
their comrades by the compelling force of character and
personal magnetism. Promoting the well-being of a race,
multiplying the happiness of the individual, these captains
of moral thought practically accept the duty marked out by
the Great Teacher and "cause two blades of grass to grow
where but one grew before."
Such a man as pictured above is Henry Plummer Cheatham, one
of the most successful forces in the public life of the
twentieth century Negro. His career has been visited by
success because he has richly deserved it. Mr. Cheatham was
born in Henderson, N. C., some forty-odd years ago. He was
educated in the public schools of his county and at Shaw
University, of his native state. He was a promising lad, and
with prophetic spirit laid deep the foundation upon which a
brilliant character was to be built. His first public office
was that of registrar of deeds in his native county. So
conspicuous was his work and so worthily did he impress
himself upon the judgment of the people, Mr. Cheatham was
nominated and elected to the Fifty-first Congress, and was
again chosen to sit in the Fifty-second Congress. When
President McKinley reached the White House, one of his
earliest appointments was that of Mr. Cheatham to be
Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, a post which
has come to be regarded as carrying the insignia of
leadership in the political councils of the race. That he
has performed his duties capably and zealously, goes without
saying. He is an ardent adherent of the merit system, and in
both appointments and promotions the merit system has been
his invariable guide, declining to be influenced by
considerations of person, politics, religion or color. He
has been instrumental in enrolling more Afro-Americans upon
the governmental roster than any other Negro living.
Mr. Cheatham is a positive race man and is a foremost
champion of the idea that the Negro's best development must
come along natural lines, and that material progress is as
much the result of sensible and persistent individual effort
as of legislation and adventitious aid. He believes in
practical education for the masses, technical education for
the captains of professional thought and industrial
leadership. He is unusually effective upon the "stump," and
has been heard with pleasure and profit in many states
during national campaigns.
Prosperity to a nation is most secure when all elements and classes of
that nation are at peace, one with the other. Christianity reaches the
height of its sacred mission when the spirit of co-operation and
brotherly love is most conspicuously in evidence. National prestige
and the influence of a people in the councils of the world are
invincible when the contributing forces of the land are happy and
united. The problems of civilization are solved when wars are silenced
and "rumors of wars" are heard no more.
America, as we have come to call the land of our birth, has not grown
to her present proud proportions upon "flowery beds of ease." Her
strong place among the powers of the earth has not been gained without
resort to martial strife. But, it is a gratifying fact, that up to
this hour every struggle against outside foes has made American people
stronger from within, and every victory, in our long, unbroken line of
successful campaigns, has bred a warmer spirit of homogeneity and knit
us together in closer bonds as a national unit. Foreign foes offer our
country no danger to-day. Our army and navy are without peers upon the
globe, and, despite our marvelous sketch of coast line, we have
nothing to fear from foreign invasion.
The disease that threatens us _most_ is from within. If salvation be
needed, we must pray to be "saved from ourselves." To "make clean our
hearts"--to face in proper spirit the duty that lies before us--should
be the earnest supplication of every true American citizen. A spirit
of unity is our urgent need at the opening of the 20th century.
Thanks to the wise economic policies of those intrusted with the reins
of legislation and government, our country is enjoying a period of
unexampled commercial prosperity. Business is booming, money is easy,
crops are abundant and labor is receiving a fair return for energy
expended. But, in our mad rush for the material things of life are we
not forgetting the spiritual wants of the citizen, are we not
neglecting the moral qualities that make nations enduring and the
principles that must live when cities decay and dynasties cease to be?
In fine are we not veering too far from the altruism of our fathers,
in the apparent subordination of human rights to the acquisition of
power and of wealth? This dangerous ambition breeds in our midst
socialism and industrial unrest, exemplified in strikes and lockouts.
It fosters anarchy--a spirit of lawlessness, from which but a few
weeks ago the nation suffered the loss of a beloved chief magistrate.
It stirs up racial antagonisms, and defies the ameliorating influences
of Christian brotherhood. All difficulties surrounding our labor
problems, however, are easy of solution, for while capital and
mechanical industry may be frequently at war for one reason or
another, the outbreaks are merely sporadic and short lived. They are
invariably adjusted, from time to time, either through arbitration or
equitable concessions. Capital and industry are of one color, and the
complications are purely superficial. The one contention, that
"passeth all understanding" and which defies the skill of the
ethnologist, the psychologist, and all who deal with the ancestral or
philosophical aspects of mankind, is the "race-problem."
I say "race problem" advisedly, because sociologists, in analyzing the
issues growing out of the relations between the white American and the
colored American, have eliminated from the discussion all difficulties
surrounding their settlement--save the impossible effacement of race
or color. All have admitted that the bronzed American may have
character, intellect, capacity, wealth, industry and comeliness--yet
he is a social "Pariah" because of his social identification. A
problem that otherwise would be simple is thus converted into a
perpetual issue by reason of race, and hence we have a "race problem."
The race issue is particularly acute at the South--not because the
Southern Negro differs materially from his Northern brother in
character or attainments--but because in the Southern states the Negro
abounds in the greatest numbers, and because upon her fertile soil he
was once held in bondage. As a slave, the Negro came to be regarded as
one whose inferiority must continue from generation to generation. The
Civil War brought freedom in its wake, and one of its results was to
clothe the emancipated servitor with the full vestments of
citizenship. By proclamation and legislation, the ex-slave was made
the political equal of his white master, and if numbers are to be
counted the slave class became the superior force in the reconstructed
Southland. That the new Negro citizen was honest and well-meaning, no
one doubts. It must be confessed, however, that the masses were
ignorant of the high responsibilities charged to them, and it is but
natural that many mistakes were unwittingly made. Indeed, the wonder
is not that many errors could be laid at the door of the amateur
"statesman," lawmakers and suffragists, but that more grievous
blunders were not made. The result, all things considered, is highly
creditable to the heads and hearts of the leaders of that trying
epoch. The masters did not take kindly to the seeming domination of
their former bondmen. The anomalous situation was made infinitely
worse by the gross frauds and maladministration of Northern white
carpet-baggers, who misled the trusting Negro into false channels and
bred in the minds of the landowners and former slave-magnates a bitter
hatred for all that savored of the Negro and the party that they held
responsible for their humiliation. Readers of history are familiar
with the stirring scenes that went abreast with the efforts of the
whites to free themselves from the consequences of the war. With the
accession of President Hayes came the restoration of the democracy to
local control in the Southern states. All are acquainted with the
"reign of terror" and the depredations of red-shirted adventurers and
night-riders. The instinct of white supremacy solidified that section,
and later came the era of lynchings. General disorder prevailed
wherever the racial problem was brought actively to the fore.
Of late we have heard much of "constitutional conventions," and the
press has been filled with arguments pro and con as to the necessity
for eliminating the Negro from politics or abridging his right to
vote. There has been going on for years a seething cauldron, with the
Negro as the burning impulse; but evidence is gradually accumulating
to warrant the belief that a healthier atmosphere is coming out of the
storm. Passions cool after full vent is given, and the sober second
thought of races and nations invariably makes for peace, for law and
for justice. Upon this established principle of metaphysics the Negro
must base his hope for happier results in the near future. The South
has awakened to its vast opportunities, and there seems to be a
well-defined and determined effort on the part of the intelligence,
the culture, and the wealth of that section to make the most of its
bountiful resources. The commercial era opening in the South,
gradually bringing into control the conservers of Christianity, of
peace and of civil equity, will develop better conditions for the
Negro; for among the aristocracy--among the landowners and moneyed
classes--the black man has always found his best friends and most
ardent sympathizers. They understand the Negro more thoroughly than
many Negroes understand themselves, and the facts will bear me out in
saying that when our people have needed advice, or have appealed for
aid for churches, schools and for industrial opportunities, the
high-grade white classes of the South have never turned a deaf ear.
They have never been wanting in their approval of the self-respecting,
thrifty and law-abiding Negro, and have always been ready to
encourage him in the acquirement of a home, a farm or other real
property--frequently lending the money for the first large payment.
Many times they have exerted their influence to guarantee fair play
for such Negroes in the courts--even when their causes were laid
against a white man, or where white men had accused them of crime. It
cannot be denied that injustice has been practiced against us in all
sections of the South, and it is also true that the Negro's ignorance
and credulity have made him an easy prey to the unscrupulous; but
ignorant whites have suffered likewise, for he that knoweth little, no
matter what his race, is the natural victim of the sharper. With the
keenest of sleuths in our detective departments of the North, and with
courts and juries of unimpeachable integrity, crime stalks boldly in
its greatest cities, and arrogant corruption goes unwhipt of justice.
So, in the Southland, there are crimes and criminals and the law will
be powerless to bring them to book until a nobler sentiment is created
by the supremacy of the better classes, and the relegation of the
riotous element, through the vigorous and constant efforts of the
rightful rulers of the South--the educated and peace-loving citizenry.
In no case has any outrage against Negroes been given the approval of
any responsible officer of the law. Violations of the letter and
spirit of the statutes are committed over the protest of the
authorities, and those who desire the aggressive execution of all the
laws in the future must exercise more care in the selection of men
intrusted with the power of administration. More attention must be
paid to the character and personal fitness of candidates standing for
office. The Negro can and will help to do this. The regeneration of
existing conditions among the whites must come from an enlightened
public spirit and a broader culture, such as are being bred through
the public schools and through the introduction of improved methods in
business and social life. First-class white men must take hold of the
reins of government throughout the Southland. The Negro is an
imitative creature, and he takes on the color of his environment. If
it be charged that he is frequently immoral, dishonest and shiftless,
the dissolute whites with whom he has been closely identified have
furnished a model that he has copied only too faithfully. Let the
Christian element become a more prominent factor in state affairs, and
the Negro will at once grow in character and address by virtue of the
inspiring example thus set for him.
This phase of the "Negro problem" carried to its logical conclusion
becomes the "white man's problem." Will the Southern American rise in
his majesty, dismiss his prejudice and prove equal to the lofty duty
allotted to him? Will he give the Negro a man's chance in the battle
of life, and depend upon his own natural gifts of mind and heart for
his supremacy?
The political phase of the race problem I shall touch but briefly.
There is no call for the Negro "to get _out of politics_;" as the term
is popularly used. The fact is the Negro should begin "to _get into
politics_" in the truest sense of the word--that is, to begin at the a
b c of political power and come up by the usual processes of
individual development. The suffrage is a privilege conferred by the
state. States make certain restrictions for their own protection as
sovereign commonwealths. Although it is unfortunately a fact that the
restrictions are enforced more rigidly against black illiterates and
black non-property-holders than against the whites, of similar
deficiencies, the conditions are there and can only be fought down by
intelligently meeting the requirements, whatever they may be. No
educated Negro is refused the right of suffrage by any constitutional
enactment. No property-owner is made to feel himself outlawed by
virtue of suffrage restrictions.
The moral is plain. Get education. Be thrifty and economical. Get
lands and money. Get character and personal culture. These qualities,
united, pass as good coin in any state North or South. They go far to
minimize the disadvantages of color everywhere. Without them no race
is strong anywhere. They are potent in allaying the race feeling
aggravated by too many of us, through voting under the leadership of
scheming politicians who are opposed to the best interests of the
masters of the Southern soil, and who have no use for black men except
on election day. In the matter of suffrage, I would suggest that the
black voter place himself in touch with his white neighbors. The
interests of each are identical. It is of far greater importance to
the Negro to have the friendship, respect and confidence of his
next-door neighbor than who shall be President of the United States.
It is of more moment to him who shall be sheriff or member of the
state legislature and city council than who shall go to Congress. This
suggests that the Negro use clear judgment in casting his ballot, and
that he use that instrument to identify himself with the law-abiding
and progressive forces about him. The Negro's natural home will ever
be in the South. The careful exercise of suffrage in promoting the
interests of that section, eliminating partisan bitterness and
vengeful spirit, will be one of the most powerful agencies in
maintaining and strengthening friendly relations between the races
there.
Further, let the Negro make for himself a place in the business world.
Let him develop hotels, groceries, stores and shops of all kinds, thus
affording employment to our competent young men and women. Let him
perfect himself in the useful arts; till the soil, and become an
indispensable factor in the uplift of the community which he calls
home. The farmer, the artisan, and industrious wage-earner form the
backbone of racial progress, for they support the church, are patrons
of the schools, and are steady conservers of public morals. From this
firm center, a lever is furnished which holds up the house of the
minister, the editor, the teacher, physician, the artist, the lawyer,
and all of the so-called "polite" professions. Let the Negro build up
his own social circle, and strive to perfect it through an exemplary
home life. While a part of the general social system the Negro people
can be to the Whites, as Booker T. Washington so well puts it,
"separate as the fingers" in social contact, but "one as the hand" in
all that tends to sustain and improve the State and Nation.
In short, let the white man be just, if he cannot be generous. Let him
give the Negro what is due him. Weigh him honestly as to character and
manly worth. Let the Negro be patient, persevering, philosophical,
thrifty, self-respecting and far-seeing. Brains and energy will
eventually win their legitimate place in the equation of civic virtue,
and the forces of right will gravitate, the one towards the other,
just as the flowering plant turns to the sunlight. In peaceful
conditions, nurtured by mutual sympathy, mutual suffering and mutual
triumphs, will be forged a bond that shall in due season draw the best
in each of the great races of the South in closer and more friendly
communion. Our beloved America shall throw off the shameful shackles
of racial prejudice. Progress towards a sweeter civilization will be
the watchword for all. Then, there shall be, indeed and in truth, for
every class, color, condition and section in this land, "One God, one
country, and one flag." There is hope ahead.
SECOND PAPER.
HOW CAN THE FRIENDLY RELATIONS NOW EXISTING BETWEEN THE TWO RACES IN
THE SOUTH BE STRENGTHENED AND MAINTAINED?
BY REV. W. D. CHAPPELLE, D. D.
[Illustration: W. D. Chappelle, D. D.]
WILLIAM D. CHAPPELLE.
Rev. William D. Chappelle was born in Fairfield County,
South Carolina, November 16, 1857. At twelve years of age,
he was sent to the common schools of Winnsboro, S. C., to
Northern teachers. So eager was he to learn that he cut
light wood up at night and carried it to town on his head,
using the money thus obtained to buy his first book. After
finishing the common schools, he entered Fairfield Normal
Institute, and there prepared himself for a teacher, which
vocation he pursued for several years. After his conversion
he felt called to the ministry. Accordingly, he joined the
Columbia Annual Conference in 1881, and feeling his
inability to effectually preach the Gospel of Christ, he
entered Allen University, there taking a collegiate course,
at the same time serving missions near Columbia.
With a wife and one child, he found that the mission work
was inadequate for his support, having very often to cease
his studies in school and go out and teach for two or three
months to relieve the wants of his family. This was very
discouraging to him, but he courageously worked on until
Bishop Dickerson relieved him of some of his
responsibilities by giving him a room in his back yard. This
he gladly accepted that he might earn some money with which
to buy books and thus sustain himself in his struggle for an
education.
I know of my own personal knowledge that he had very often
to walk sixteen miles on Sundays and preach twice, getting
back home at 11 or 12 o'clock at night to be enabled to make
recitations on Monday. Nevertheless, he struggled on and
graduated at the head of his class in 1887.
He was ordained deacon in Bethel A. M. E. Church, Columbia,
S. C., March, 1883, by Bishop Dickerson, and ordained elder
by Bishop James A. Shorter at Greenville, S. C., in 1885. He
graduated from Allen University in 1887, in a class with six
other young men--four preachers and two lawyers. In 1887 he
was elected a delegate to the General Conference which met
in Indianapolis, Ind., and he has been elected to each
successive General Conference ever since. He served eight
years as a pastor, holding three appointments, and ten years
as a presiding elder. He was appointed to the Manning
District in 1889, and after serving there four years he was
appointed, by Bishop Salter, to the Orangeburg District, the
largest district in the State, and served there five years.
Bishop A. Grant appointed him to the Sumter District in
1898, which district he served until the General Conference
met in Columbus, Ohio, 1900, where he was elected
Corresponding Secretary and Editor of the Sunday School
periodicals of the A. M. E. Church.
Dr. Chappelle also served two years as President of Allen
University, his alma mater, being elected just ten years
after his graduation from that institution.
He has had a successful career as teacher, as preacher and,
now, as business manager and editor. He ranks, also, as one
of the leaders of his race, as a scholar and writer of no
mean ability. He is an able debater, having few superiors as
an extemporaneous speaker. Acute in thought and incisive in
speech, he is a fluent talker.
Unlike most men of a literary turn of mind, he combines fine
business acumen with his intellectual ability, and has
accumulated property, real and personal, to the amount of
ten thousand dollars, situated in Columbia, S. C., and
Nashville, Tenn.
The subject above assigned me is a momentous one and involves an issue
which is not settled, nor will it be settled until the relation which
now exists between the two races is based upon that moral "ought"
growing out of the ethical rule given by God for the government of
man. For it must be conceded that all friendly relations are based
upon ethical treatment. A relation upon any other basis is forced,
and, therefore, not genuine. The so-called Negro problem which is
being agitated by the public press is forced upon us by fictitious
sentiment, conceived in prejudice, and watered by opportunity, and a
disregard for law, and truthfulness of statements made concerning the
Negro as a citizen.
When a relation is fixed by such undue advantages, that relation is
NOT, for it is ex-parte, and the party having the public ear creates
the sentiment, and thus forces the party which is _not_ heard to
terms, whether those terms be satisfactory or not. Then, it can be
plainly seen that such relations are not real, for they are not based
upon that law under which all men are created and governed.
Now, I lay down the following as a general proposition which I think
will stand the test of critics, whether they be of the North or South.
It is the rule of international law to have a friendly relation
between nations, states and individuals, and that relation is made by
representatives of all the parties concerned. The agreement must be
mutual and that mutuality must be based upon righteousness--that
righteousness which makes sacred the rights of all the contending
parties.
If the friendly relationship existing between the two races in the
South is mutual, then the development of the Negro will fasten and
rivet such a relation. But if it is not mutual, and undue advantages
have been taken of him, his development will make it impossible for
such relations to be strengthened and maintained.
To perpetuate a relationship, it must first be based upon the
principles of right, guaranteed by the force of all competent power,
that power being common to all parties concerned. This is the sum
maximum of all ethical science and is complete. To add to it, or take
from it, would change the rule. Then, the solution to all ills must
be measured by that sense of conscience unimpaired, emanating from
that innate rule of human duty based upon moral obligation.
Now, there must be a standard of righteousness, not fixed by man, but
by a superior power; for it is not man's will which he must obey, but
the will of his Maker. This will can be shown in two ways only. First,
by revelation, and, second, by example, both of which have been
verified and demonstrated in the sacrifice made by Christ for the
world of mankind. This relationship can and will be sustained, because
Christ sought to know the nature and power of the second party. He
enters into a covenant fixing that relationship forever, between the
two. Now, if the so-called superior race, with the boasted power of
all the heavy centuries of the past, has given to the inferior race in
its undeveloped condition, that consideration which is necessary to
sustain and maintain the relationship which now exists, then, the
relationship is real and the education and development of the Negro
along economic and commercial lines will but make this relationship
stronger. And the future of the two races in the South, under such
conditions, must be bright and glorious.
But, I fear we have been hasty in our conclusions when we measure the
relationship which now exists in the South, by constitutional rights
and enactments. The Constitution of these United States makes the
people a compact, and therefore equals in immunities, privileges and
rights, with a common flag as the symbol of our common protection.
Every citizen, then, of these United States--let him be of any race
variety--owes to that flag its protection, and, in return, that flag
is to protect him. So that the relationship of all the citizens of the
United States to the flag is the same; being the same to the flag,
they are the same to each other from a civic point of view.
I agree that there is such a thing as "State rights," but such rights
must be local and subsidiary and must in no case conflict with, or
counteract, the rights of a citizen growing out of a common
Constitution whose jurisdiction holds the sisterhood of states
together. To sustain and maintain such a sisterhood the compilers of
the Constitution gave the general government the right to summons such
states to protect her in the discharge of her duty. So that it is seen
that the government is exercising a power that was given it by the
sovereign people, acknowledging equal rights to all and special
privileges to none. Among these are life, liberty and the peaceful
pursuit of happiness. These are the rights which are guaranteed by the
Constitution.
Now, an agreement entered into by the people of any part of these
United States which does not conform to the stipulated rights
mentioned above, is not a contract and can not be considered binding
under the law. Therefore, a relationship based upon privileges of one
and the denied rights of the other, cannot be friendly and must,
sooner or later, be dissolved. I, for one, cannot concede that the
relationship between the races in the South is friendly. It is, for
the most part, peaceful, but that peace grows out of a fear of the law
in the hands of an unfriendly and prejudiced people who feel that the
Negro race has no rights which they are bound to respect. Accepting
this position, the Negro quietly moves on, trying to make for himself
and family a living, but he feels keenly the class legislation which
proscribes him to the "Jim Crow" cars, to the rear seats in street
cars, behind the doors in public restaurants, and a hundred other
indignities heaped upon him. He is also denied the right to vote,
which is the greatest evil done him and the only protection that the
Constitution gives him.
Now, I ask, "Can there be friendly relations with such environments,
and, if they are friendly, can they be sustained and maintained?" I
assert that the infringement of any right is an unfriendly act,
whether the one whose rights are infringed upon is conscious of the
unfriendly act or not. If he is unconscious of it, it is all the more
unfriendly. I assert further, that whenever existing conditions make
it necessary for one race to suppress another, the suppression affects
both races alike. The stronger race ceases to develop that strength
which is necessary for the growth of a nation, and to prepare it to
meet the great problems which are indispensable in the fostering of a
government such as ours. And the weaker race is deprived of the
opportunities which are necessary to cultivate those innate powers
which are intended by God to be developed in the rounding out of good
citizenship. In fact, the denial of freedom to any race, along any of
the walks of life, has a tendency to teach that race irresponsibility;
for responsibility must rest with the volition of the human family.
"The Nashville American," in a recent issue, admits that the Southern
white people have made no progress in the great world of thought,
because they had everything their way. The solid South practically
destroyed its opportunities to develop thinkers in the political
world, and the prejudice they entertain and foster by mere sentiment
was not conducive to the production of strong men, or the development
of great thinkers or leaders of distinguished constructive ability. In
some sense the South has for some time lived in an eddy. There has not
been that broad sweep of the current of thought which once made it
strong and powerful. And the reason for this is assigned in their
surroundings, their highest ambition being to suppress the Negro in
the civil walks of life.
Now, we are confronted with a condition--call it a relation, if you
please--in which the interest of the entire Southland is involved, and
we, as the Negro race, are called upon to express ourselves as to the
basis of this relationship and the perpetuity of the same. The facts
above stated make it extremely difficult for one to conscientiously
concede, first that the relations are friendly; and, second, that they
can be sustained and maintained. As a matter of fact, the subject
assigned me can be easily answered by saying that the friendly
relations which now exist can be sustained and maintained by
destroying the system of public instruction; by making no protest
against the encroachments upon our liberty; by destroying the medium
of the Christian religion, pulling down our altars, demolishing our
churches and hanging crape on the door-knobs of all places of public
instruction. This we are unwilling to do, and, as God gives us
strength and light to see our plain duty, we shall work, watch and
wait for that surrounding which shall be congenial to a healthful
development of a Christian manhood, when the sphinx of this age shall
have passed into the oblivious past; and mankind, transformed from
brutish prejudice to that lordly prince, divested of all racial
prejudice, shall stand upon that plain of reason where all are equals.
We must see that our rights under the Constitution are one thing and
the enjoyment of those rights quite another thing.
Now, then, shall we, because these rights are denied us, fail to teach
our children that these rights are ours? And can it not be seen that
for us to concede that the relationship, now existing between the two
races in the South, is friendly, is an admission of the righteousness
upon which such relation is based? And even this very book will be
brought in evidence against us.
A friendly relation grows out of real friendship, so that it is
necessary here to explain friendship. Mr. Webster gives the meaning of
friendship as a state of being friends; a friendly relation or
attachment, to a person, or between persons; affection arising from
mutual esteem and good will; friendliness; amity; good will.
"There is little friendship in the world," says Bacon. There can be no
friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
Dryden says, "Aptness to unite; conformity; affinity; harmony and
correspondence are the signs of friendship." These grow out of that
soil and are the forerunners of that friendship out of which a
relation must be had to be called friendly.
Now let us analyze this term "friendship." "Amity"--from the Latin,
amare to love, or friendship in a general way between individuals,
societies or nations. "Goodwill"--I wish you well, peace and
prosperity. "Integrity"--moral soundness; completeness; honesty;
rectitude.
We have given some of the terms which Mr. Webster used in the
explanation of the word friendship. Our purpose for so doing is to see
if it is possible to base the relationship which now exists between
the two races in the South, upon all the synonyms or any one of them.
I confess with candor that I cannot see (nor can any lover of liberty
who holds sacred the rights of the human family, regardless of race,
color or previous condition of servitude) even a semblance of amity in
the treatment which the Negro gets at the hands of the dominant race,
in fact, it is just the opposite, the relationship is forced and also
one sided.
The seemingly friendly relation is forced from the Negro; that is, he
must show up friendly or be lynched by the first angry mob who becomes
thirsty for Negro blood.
If we sustain a friendly relation based upon the integrity of the
Southern whites, there could be no lynching; the friendship of the
white man would cause it to cease at once.
Would to God that they would interpret our actions in the light in
which they are rendered and not make us suffer for what somebody else
has done, simply because we are weak and unable to protect ourselves
against the insanity of the prejudice.
The Southern white people, in their haste, are making an unenviable
history at which they will blush in the years to come.
Three innocent people in the State of Mississippi have just been taken
from the officers and lynched, two of whom were women. Can a race of
people said to be friendly towards another race reach such hasty
conclusions? Would not friendship suggest an investigation in order
that the facts in the case may be had? But we are living in the midst
of a people whose civilization is christianized, thus having in it
that friendship which characterised Christ in taking the sins of
mankind upon himself. "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I
command you" (Bible). This text makes friendship conditional and
reciprocal; that is, there can be no friendship without mutuality; so
that the relation which now exists is not based upon friendship, for
the relation which is made to exist is not in accordance with that
moral rule given for the government of man, therefore things are not
what they seem to be in the Southland.
I tell you that the Negro is not satisfied with his condition and the
more he learns of the common rights of the human family, the more he
sees the great wrongs "perpetrated" upon him and the reasons for the
same. You cannot educate a people and crush them, history does not
narrate an instance.
THIRD PAPER.
HOW CAN THE FRIENDLY RELATIONS NOW EXISTING BETWEEN THE TWO RACES IN
THE SOUTH BE STRENGTHENED AND MAINTAINED?
BY REV. S. N. BROWN.
[Illustration: Rev. Sterling N. Brown]
REV. STERLING N. BROWN, A. M., B. D.
Rev. Sterling N. Brown was born in Roane County, East
Tennessee, November 21, 1857. He attended the first free
school ever taught in his county. He entered Fisk University
(Nashville, Tenn.) in 1875, and for some years, during his
terms of vacation, taught school to provide the means with
which to pursue his studies. He was converted when quite a
boy and has been able since, almost continuously, to lead
men to Christ. He began to preach early after his
conversion, and many revivals have followed his ministry.
The first great awakening where, under God, he was the
instrument, was at Kingston, Tenn., where every child in
school, of over one hundred in number, became Christians,
and when the whole town was stirred as never before. Many
hardened sinners were brought to Christ in the meeting.
Several of the converts are now actively engaged in the
ministry. Mr. Brown's acceptance as a preacher made it
possible for him to spend the entire vacations of his last
years at college in supplying the pulpits of his
denomination in different parts of the South.
He graduated from the college course of Fisk University in
1885, and took the degree of A. M. in 1891. He is also a
graduate from the Oberlin Theological Seminary with the
degree of B. D. He was called, June 1, 1885, to the Mount
Zion Congregational Church, Cleveland, Ohio, and was by that
Church ordained to the gospel ministry. This church was
composed of a few faithful but discouraged members. They
worshipped in a small frame chapel without either attraction
or convenience.
Soon the membership was increased, the church took new
courage and a great ingathering came, the old building was
torn away and in its place a beautiful and convenient house
of worship was erected. Mr. Brown served Mt. Zion for nearly
four years when he accepted a call from the Plymouth
Congregational Church, Washington, D. C., April 1, 1889.
This church, under his pastorate for eight years, had a
steady and most healthful growth. In January, 1897, he
gathered about him a few leading men and women of the race
and organized a church in Northwest Washington, in the midst
of a large unchurched population. Park Temple, the name of
the new church, at once took an important place in the
community and its influence for good was felt far and near.
For five years the work grew and throbbed with life. Its
lines of work, so practical and successful, awakened such
interest in an older sister church nearby that overtures
were made for a union, and so, October 1, 1901, the Lincoln
Church and Park Temple were merged into a new organization
to be known as Lincoln Temple, with the Rev. Mr. Brown as
pastor. The new Institutional Church with a large main
building and a branch work gives promise of an unusual
church movement. The pastor of this church is one of the
hardest worked men in the city. He was for three years a
most active and influential member of the Washington Board
of Education, and has been for seven years and is yet
Professor in the Theological Department of Howard
University. He is an able minister, a good pastor, and a
practical man of affairs. His long public life in the city
has added to his influence and in every best sense, he is
still a growing man. He is full of sympathy and helpfulness,
and so is continually drawn upon by all classes and
conditions of people. He is regarded highly by public men of
both races for his conservative views, good judgment and
genuine public spirit.
Mr. Brown is a tireless worker, and one who looks always
upon the bright side of things. He has an ear to hear man,
but keeps also an ear attentive to the voice from the
clouds. When he has settled upon a plan no discouragement
can change him. Once convinced of the righteousness of his
course he pushes ahead with no wavering. Many a time in his
works he seemed headed for a stone wall, insurmountable and
impassable, but he went up to the wall with as much courage
and faith, as if there lay before him a beautiful green
sward, inviting to his sandal. Thus through the years of
school life and the years of his active ministry he has gone
forward.
Any superficial or narrow view of the present conditions existing
between the Blacks and Whites of this country will surely be
discouraging. It is a time for an unbiased, comprehensive, and
discriminate study of the situation. This, I think, will point to a
basis of a coming final adjustment.
No people have ever achieved lasting distinction or greatness without
hardships. God's way of development seems to be through trial. The
Negro has not been, and will not be, excepted in this regard. The
tests of life have been well borne by him and he has clearly
demonstrated certain essential elementary characteristics. From
slavery is learned his amiability, vitality and patient endurance, and
from freedom, the spirit of hope, forgiveness, and his ability for the
highest improvement.
At this time, when the race problem is demanding renewed
consideration, we note with interest the extreme as well as
conservative views. The unfriendly discuss the Negro in the light of
his savagery, his bondage and his mistakes. They read history "with
their prejudices and not with their eyes."
Just as white men candidly and otherwise hold their individual
viewpoint of the subject, so do colored men differ as to their
opinions. We, too, have extremists and conservatives among ourselves
and friends. This is what ought to be expected. Why should an
intelligent colored man be different in his thoughts and conclusions
from his white brother of equal intelligence? What the American school
and spirit do for the one may be expected for the other. There are
certainly strong grounds for extreme views and for even more extreme
measures. But who can rationally deny the wisdom of moderation and
sensible counsel? Personally I cannot bring myself to accord with
either one of these views. The extremist spits fire, swears vengeance
and talks loudly. He might offer his life as a sacrifice, and yet he
reckons without his host. The conservative builds without hope, is
easily cast down, and thoroughly pessimistic. There is a middle ground
that can and must be taken.
Were it not that we have unshaken faith in the great heart of our
American government, we might, like the captive Jews, hang our harps
upon the willows, and, as if in a strange land, find no song to sing.
The fact that the very warp and woof of American institutions are the
eternal principles of right and justice encourages the hope that the
incident of color, race or previous condition can not always be a bar
to preferment. An equal chance and fair play to all the citizens are
absolute essentials to the continued life of a republic such as ours
is to be. It is in this self-evident truth that is found a sure ground
of confidence. Upon this bed-rock of America's boasted pride for
interest in her humblest citizen may be built the superstructure of
the future of the race.
I do not share in any disparaging view of the ultimate outcome of
conditions. The white man's attitude North and South towards the Negro
is now well defined. There is to be no more special legislation in his
direct interest; he will be expected more than ever "to weed his own
row," and by self-endeavor continue to prove his right to be.
It would be amusing, if it were not so serious, to find the varied,
strange theories for the black man's future well-being. Deportation,
colonization, and a voluntary political self-effacement have all been
advocated.
There is much said and written that would imply the need of some
special kind of training suited alone for the Negro. If he has any
special need whatsoever above his brother in white it is due to
mistreatment and not to natural conditions. His phenomenal development
along all lines indicates what is in him and what may be possible for
him.
The race numbers from eight to ten millions, pays taxes upon property
to the amount of nearly $300,000,000. They have graduated from
universities, colleges, high, normal and professional schools about
forty thousand. There are in all grades from the common school up
about one and a half million pupils.
Men of the race own and control about three hundred newspapers,
journals and periodicals. This is substantial progress for only
thirty-six years, and yet this is no day for boasting or fine-spun
flattery. As long as the great bulk of the race are in abject poverty
and ignorance, and while more than a million of colored children of
school age are not attending school for want of accommodation, and the
number increasing more rapidly than facilities for education, and so
long as the unsettled race question seriously agitates the American
mind we do well to be deeply concerned. But it is unreasonable and not
helpful to be over alarmed. It is time for the race to be sober and
thoughtful, and if present conditions bring this about a sure blessing
will result.
Among the mistakes of our years of freedom have been the surface view
of life, and an ever present dependence upon politics and by-gone
friends. The present shock from eliminating certain manhood rights in
the Southland necessarily creates a sensation, but is also sure to
quicken for us new life, purpose and hope.
The Negro question is only one aspect of America's larger problem. Can
it be truthfully said that every worthy citizen shall have an equally
fair opportunity in the race of life? It seems to me clear that racial
adjustment at the South may be reasonably hoped for when the parties
most interested unite upon the spirit of the golden rule. This and
this alone will insure friendly relationship. The white man must make
up in his mind to be fair, and just, and to recognize the fact that
the Negro deserves a chance for the highest, broadest and best
possible life. Will the Southern white man ever willingly accord this
common right? Yes, I think so. But the alienation is not all on one
side. For thirty-six years the fact has been specially emphasized that
the Southern white man is the black man's enemy. The result is a
natural one. Antagonism and race friction have enlarged rather than
lessened. The time has fully come when the colored pulpit, press and
leadership throughout the country and specially in the South should
seek to make friends of these people with whom the blacks must
necessarily live. We can not over-estimate the value of education and
the getting hold of homesteads in the progress of the race, but these
alone are not sufficient.
Our churches must mean more for right living. The sacredness of the
home, of the married life, of honesty, of integrity, of uprightness
and of right character must more than ever be impressed. The churches
must be more practical and less sentimental. Instead of encouraging
late hours--thus opening the evil way to our young--and spending long
seasons in mere shouts and gesticulations, let there be training
classes, mothers' and children's meetings, and those within reasonable
hours. Let our pulpits and press rebuke crime among us as well as away
from us. Let us organize and encourage good citizenship committees in
all our churches and in every community. Let us draw the line between
the idle and industrious among us. Let us urge vagrant laws upon that
set of men who will not work but form the criminal class in all our
cities. Let us more than ever show ourselves ready to help rid the
community of objectionable persons and places. Let us not say less--if
well said--for right public sentiment must be made, but let us do
more. There must be a studied use of "Yankee" common sense. It is not
to be expected that the Southern man's training, relative to the
Negro, can be readily displayed. But having been born and reared under
Southern skies and for parts of ten successive years taught there is
one country, and having former slaveholders among some of my warmest
friends, I am prepared to believe that there is no innate hindrance to
a life of peace between the races.
I can not think that the best people of the South will long endure the
savage methods of avenging their madness. They must have a better
second thought and will ultimately welcome the spirit of maintaining
law and order.
With all, there is but one way to settle the race question. It must be
squarely and justly met upon the uncompromising basis of right. The
Negro is a human being with clearly demonstrated capabilities, and it
can not be that the world's foremost nation will need to further climb
the ladder of fame by keeping the foot of the strong upon the neck of
the weak.
When men are possessed and led by the Gospel of Jesus Christ then will
there be peace and harmony and good will among all the people. "They
shall" then "neither hurt nor destroy in all" His "holy mountain;"
"for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the
waters cover the sea." God hasten that better day! Amen.
TOPIC IV.
SHOULD THE NEGRO BE GIVEN AN EDUCATION DIFFERENT FROM THAT GIVEN TO
THE WHITES?
BY JAMES W. JOHNSON.
[Illustration: Prof. J. W. Johnson]
J. W. JOHNSON, A. B.
J. W. Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Fla., and after
finishing the public schools of his native city he went to
Atlanta University, from which institution he graduated with
the degree of A. B. in 1894. The same year he was appointed
principal of the Central Colored Grammar School, which
position he now holds. In 1895 he edited and published the
"Daily American," an afternoon paper. The publishing of this
paper was one of the greatest and most creditable efforts in
journalism ever made by any member of the race. In 1898 he
was admitted to the bar, and in 1899 to the Supreme Court of
Florida. In 1901 he was elected President of the Florida
State Teachers' Association.
Mr. Johnson is a man of varied talents. He has a reputation
as a pleasing speaker and fluent writer. He has devoted much
of his time to literature, and is a contributor to the
leading magazines. Mr. Johnson is a poet of more than
ordinary talent and ability, and is widely known as the
writer of the words of "Lift Every Voice and Sing," a
national hymn for the Colored people of America. He is also
the author of many songs and ballads, and also of the lyrics
of two comic operas.
In answering the question involved in the above subject it becomes
necessary to define the word "education"; for the term, "education
given to the whites," is too loose and broad to be easily or logically
handled. If the word is used in its ordinary sense, then it embraces
every known form of education, from instruction in the elementary
English branches on up through to instruction in the most abstruse
sciences; and I can see no reason why the blacks should not receive
the same instruction as the corresponding class among the whites. Mark
you, I say, as the corresponding class among the whites.
If by the term, "education given to the whites," is meant higher
education as opposed to industrial training, the question can not be
answered in the form in which it is stated; for there is no "the
Negroes" in the unit sense. Since its freedom the colored race has
classified itself into almost as many grades, as regards ability and
capacity, as there are to be found among the whites; it is, therefore,
no longer possible to speak of "the Negroes," meaning that they are
all upon the same mental and moral plain. It is as absurd to say that
every Negro should be made to receive an industrial training as it is
to say that every Negro should be given a college education.
The question of higher education or industrial training is one that
depends entirely upon the individual; and there should be no limit
placed upon the individual's right of development. I think it a great
folly to educate a colored man beyond his capacity; I think it an
equally great folly to so educate a white man.
It is needless, and not within the limits of the subject, for me to
make any defense of higher education for Negroes; but, I do say that
every man, be he black or white, should be allowed to make the most of
all of his powers, his possibilities, and his opportunities. I
recognize the fact that the great majority of Negroes must, and, I
hope, will be engaged in agriculture and the trades; that is true of
every race; but there is, and ought to be, no power to say that
this or that individual in any grade of society shall not break
through his environments, and rise above his conditions. And I think
it safe to say that the proportion of colored men and women who have
been given an education beyond their capacity for receiving and using,
is very little larger than the same among the whites; and, in the
years to come, as the race shall more and more fit itself to the
grinding process which it takes to turn out a people, that proportion
will become less and less, and each individual will settle to his
level, or rise triumphant over obstacles and circumstances to the
place for which his ability and aspirations fit him.
But let us consider our subject in a deeper sense; if by education is
meant that training, those influences by which the habits, the
character, the thoughts, and the ideals of a people are formed and
developed, then, the answer hinges upon the answer to another
question: Is the Negro to remain in this country a separate and
distinct race, or is he to become one of the elements in the future
composite American?
If, as some claim, the Negro is to remain in this country a separate
and distinct race, then, in this deeper sense of the word, he should
receive an education different from that given to the whites.
Because the Negro and the white race, although they have the same
inherent powers, possess widely different characteristics. There are
some things which the white race can do better than the Negro, and
there are some things which the Negro can do better than the white
race. This is no disparagement to either. It is no fault of the Negro
that he has not that daring and restless spirit, that desire for
founding new empires, that craving for power over weaker races, which
makes the white race a pioneer; neither is it the fault of the white
race that it has not that buoyancy of spirit, that cheerful patience,
that music in the soul, that faith in a Higher Power, which supports
the Negro under hardships that would crush or make pessimists of
almost any other race on earth.
There have been given to each race certain talents, and for them each
will be held accountable, and rewarded accordingly as they shall use
them. Two boys in the same family may be gifted differently, one with
an artistic, the other with a scientific, turn of mind; both cannot
become artists, nor both scientists, yet they may each become equally
great in their respective spheres. It is for the Negro to find out his
own best and strongest powers, and make the most of them. He cannot by
merely imitating the white man arrive at his fullest and truest racial
development. He cannot and will not, as an absolutely distinct race,
evolve, along the same lines, the _identical_ civilization of the
white race, but who shall say that along his own lines he may not
evolve one equally as glorious and grand?
It is true, situated as he is among the most advanced people of the
world in the very height of their power, with almost all of the ideals
before him belonging to that people, the American Negro is greatly
handicapped in distinct racial development; but the task is, perhaps,
not an impossible one. Some of the most accessible means have not yet
been fully employed; for instance, the race has never been made
entirely familiar with the deeds and thoughts of the few men of mark
it has already produced. In this deeper sense of education the knowing
of one Crispus Attucks is worth more to the race than the knowing of
one George Washington; and the knowing of one Dunbar is worth more
than the knowing of all the Longfellows that America will ever
produce.
If the Negro is to remain in this country a separate and distinct
race, and is, as such, to reach the highest development of his powers,
he ought to be given an education different from that given to the
whites; in that, in addition to whatever other instruction he may
receive, those virtuous traits and characteristics which are
peculiarly his should be developed to the highest degree possible.
If, on the other hand, he is to become, in time, one of the elements
in the future American race--and this seems the more plausible answer
to the question--his education ought to be purely American and not in
any special way Negro.
History affords no precedent of two races, distinct yet equally
powerful, living together in harmony; one has always reduced to a
secondary position or destroyed the other, or the two have united. So
it will be a question, if the Negro succeeds in making himself the
equal of the white man in intellectual attainment, wealth, and power,
whether or not what is now antipathy between the two races will
develop into outright antagonism; and if we are to judge from human
experience through all the past we must say that it will. If the Negro
shall succeed in making a new record in history so well and so good;
but if he is to follow the precedents of the past, it will be a far
nobler destiny for him to become an integral part of the future
American type than to drop into an acknowledged and permanent
secondary position.
And may it not be in the great plan of Providence that the Negro
shall supply in the future American race the very elements that it
shall lack and require to make it the most perfect race the world
shall have seen?
If the Negro is to become an inseparable part of the great American
nation his education should be in every way the same as that of other
American citizens.
SECOND PAPER.
SHOULD THE NEGRO BE GIVEN AN EDUCATION DIFFERENT FROM THAT GIVEN TO
THE WHITES?
BY PROF. JAMES STORUM, OF WASHINGTON, D. C.
[Illustration: Prof. James Storum]
PROF. JAMES STORUM.
Prof. James Storum was born in the city of Buffalo, New
York, March 31, 1847. His mother, Mary Cannady, was a native
of Sussex County, Virginia, where she lived for twelve
years, when her father sold his farm and moved to Ohio and
located with his wife and eight children near Urbana. His
mother was a woman of strong character, deep religious
convictions, and piety, and full of energy and enterprise, a
counterpart of which is seen in her worthy son.
His grandfather, Charles Storum, of Duchess County, New
York, was a soldier in the Revolutionary War, and did
valiant service for the independence of this Republic. He
died in 1843 at the age of one hundred years. Prof. Storum
began his school life in the public schools of his native
city. He was admired by his associates for his manly
qualities and good fellowship, and was held in high esteem
by his teachers for his studious habit and exemplary
deportment. At the age of thirteen he embraced religion and
united with the Michigan Street Baptist Church, where both
his parents were useful and active members.
He frequently heard his parents express their purpose to
send him to college, and as he grew older and better able to
appreciate the value of education, the desire grew very
strong within him to fit himself for a larger field of
usefulness. In due time he entered Oberlin College, and
after spending eighteen months in the preparatory department
he entered the college proper, and graduated with the class
of 1870.
Immediately after his graduation, Prof. Storum came to the
city of Washington to teach in Wayland Seminary, one of the
schools fostered by the Baptist Home Mission Society. He
taught at Wayland thirteen years. Here, as in every walk in
life, he exerted a most wholesome influence over the young
men and women attending the seminary, whose graduates are
found in all parts of this country. They delight to speak of
the inspiration and high incentive they received from Prof.
Storum while under his instruction.
After leaving Wayland, Prof. Storum taught in the public
schools of Washington one year, whence he was called to the
city of Petersburg, Virginia, to organize the Virginia
Normal and Collegiate Institute, provided for by the
Legislature of the "Old Dominion." He remained here three
years and endeared himself to the pupils of the new school
and to the citizens of Petersburg, irrespective of race,
political bias or denominational creeds. He then returned to
Washington and from that time until the present he has been
teaching in the public high school.
Prof. Storum has ever been interested in and connected with
the various enterprises whose aim has been the improvement
and elevation of the Colored people. For five years he was
secretary of the Capital Savings Bank of Washington and a
member of the Board of Directors of the Industrial Building
and Savings Company. For three consecutive years Prof.
Storum was president of the Bethel Literary and Historical
Society, the most prominent association of its kind in the
country. Through his influence and by his energy the library
and reading room were established and are now the most
interesting and prominent features of the society.
In addition to his many and exacting duties, Prof. Storum
has written and lectured on a great variety of subjects,
religious, political, educational and financial.
He was happily married in 1872 to Mrs. Carrie Garrett
Browne, a teacher in the public schools of Washington. There
are three surviving children. Their domestic life has had
its sunshine and its shadow. The darkest cloud that has
overhung their household was the death of their oldest son,
who died eight years ago at the age of eighteen, and who had
given promise of being an unusually brilliant and useful
man.
The excuse for presenting this article is the oft repeated declaration
that there should be one kind of education for the more favored class
and another kind of education for the less favored class of our
citizens. This declaration was never mooted until these latter years.
The following incident will serve to illustrate the position taken by
the advocates of this subject: A young man of more than ordinary
ability, having a fine mind, and exceedingly apt and ambitious to
learn, came to one of the schools in the South supported by Northern
friends. He had had some advantages and had proved his capabilities to
learn. He was giving great satisfaction to his teachers. He was
prepared to take up one of the advanced studies, and did so and wrote
to his friend telling him of the studies he was pursuing and the
progress he was making. His friend, a would-be philanthropist, replied
that he would not assist him if he pursued such studies. "You only
need to learn to read, write, and cipher a little to teach your
people." Yet this same man thought it necessary to take the common
school course, a college course, and a professional course to teach
his people. What class of people will have confidence in or give their
support to a teacher, preacher, lawyer, or physician who knows only
the A, B, C's of his profession? It is an historical as well as a
scientific fact that no people have ever risen to influence and power
without a strong intellectual and moral class permeating and leavening
the entire mass. From the very beginning of our educational system the
idea that the system and method of education should be different for
the different classes of our people never entered the mind or thoughts
of our educators nor any part of the body politic.
In the Southern part of our land the ruling class denied educational
facilities to the colored people, and quite generally throughout the
South it was made a penal offence to teach a colored man, woman, or
child to read. The reason for this was well understood. Education
produces intelligence and unfolds to one his powers and capabilities,
and an intelligent people cannot be enslaved.
After the close of the war of the rebellion, schools were opened for
the colored people. The newly-emancipated were not entirely oblivious
to some of the advantages and benefits that follow from education, for
they were constantly in touch with the master-class, so that when the
opportunity was offered the colored people flocked to the schools in
numbers far beyond the accommodations given. The colored people showed
such avidity for learning and made such surprising progress that it
seemed almost miraculous. Dr. Mayo says: "No people in human history
have made such progress as the colored people of the United States." I
can see no reason why the colored people should be differently
educated from mankind generally; nor can I understand why persons
should urge a different education unless they are hostile to and
bitterly opposed to the progress of the colored people.
The aim or purpose of education is, always has been, and will ever be,
preparation for complete living, that is, to be useful in one's day
and generation and to live happily. "To secure this requires the
acquisition of knowledge found in two fields of human endeavor. First,
man and his experience and achievements and external nature; second,
training to intelligent and productive activity in the use of this
knowledge and the proper enjoyment of it."
What the education of the youth of a nation shall be depends upon the
aim, purpose, and character of the government.
The history of the education of a people is the history of its
civilization. Its civilization is not to be found in its material
success, nor in its achievements in arms; but its civilization is
manifest in its intellectual, moral, and esthetic development. It
follows, then, that the education of a nation is to be found in the
characteristics of its civilization; this includes religion, politics,
justice, art, and mode of thought. The history of education fully
attests this fact.
The government of Egypt was monarchical in form. The ruling classes
were educated; the lower classes were not; yet while they were the
beasts of burden and forced to toil under the most exacting
taskmasters they were of a mild and kind disposition, the result of
their religious training.
The government of the Jews was Theocratic; their civilization was
distinctively religious; their education was along religious lines.
Their poets sing of the love, the power, the majesty, and the
everlasting dominion of "I AM THAT I AM." Through the Jews indeed are
all the nations of the earth blessed, in that they have preserved and
transmitted through the ages the religion of their King and His
Anointed.
Greece had two distinct ideas of government. The Dorian, as
exemplified by the laws of Sparta, whose fundamental principle was
that the individual existed for the state and must obey the behests of
the state. The Ionian, as we find it in the constitution of Athens,
whose basic principle was that the state existed for the individual
and the individual was a freeman. The educational system of Sparta was
entirely military, in keeping with the aim and purpose of the state.
The boys at the tender age of seven years were taken from their homes
and placed in state schools to be taught the art of war, and how to
endure all of its hardships and privations. The educational system at
Athens reflected the aim and purpose of the Athenian State; it was
humanistic. The intellectual, ethical, and physical powers of the
child were developed. In that little peninsula of Southern Europe
there were two distinct civilizations having very little in common and
always antagonistic. Sparta developed human machines, men of great
physical force, but contributed nothing to the civilization of the
world, nothing for the betterment of mankind. Liberty, patriotism,
love of home and kindred, are the characteristics of the Athenian
civilization. The contributions of Athens for the civilization of the
world and the elevation of mankind are beyond human conception. The
mind of man cannot conceive of the innumerable blessings that have
flowed from Athenian civilization, the great reservoir of thought and
perfected art. The profoundest thoughts of philosophy, the most
electrifying words of statesmen and orators; the grand, sublime and
patriotic strains of the muses, the illimitable beauty and symmetry of
her art have been bequeathed to the world by Athens, "THE EYE OF
GREECE." But above and beyond these is the principle of personal
liberty and popular government that has come down to us from the
Athenian Commonwealth. The aim and purpose of the Athenian Republic in
its educational system was to train the children to become useful
citizens, capable of aiding in the management of the state. Aristotle
says: "Education should be regulated by the state for the ends of the
state; * * * as the end purposed to the State, as the whole, is one,
it is clear that the education of all the citizens must be one and
the same and the superintendence of it a public affair rather than in
private hands."
The aim and purpose of the Roman government was to bequeath to
humanity moral energy and jurisprudence, the latter of which is the
basis of all modern law. A strong and an abiding faith subsisted
between the Roman State and each of her citizens. "I am a Roman
citizen," was the proudest allusion a man could make to himself, for
he knew that the great Roman power was behind him to protect him in
his rights. The children of the Romans were educated to be of use to
the state. Cicero says: "The fatherland has produced us and brought us
up that we may devote to its use the finest capabilities of our minds,
talents, and understanding. Therefore, we must learn those arts
whereby we may be of greatest service to the state, for that I hold to
be the highest wisdom and virtue."
The aim and purpose of our government is to maintain and perpetuate
the idea of constitutional liberty and to develop a popular government
in which each inhabitant shall feel a personal interest in all that
pertains to the government, and the government in turn shall feel
itself obligated to protect and defend the interests of the humblest
citizen within its dominion. Our government is "of the people, for the
people, and by the people."
In this country there must be but one system of education welding all
the people in one aim and purpose. Unity of thought, unity of action,
and sympathy, unity in American life and duty, is and must ever be
maintained in the stratification of American society. The government
must be unique and homogeneous in its aim, purpose, and sympathy. The
entire question of American citizenship is especially important in
harmonizing the elements. Herbert Spencer says: "The education of the
child must accord, both in mode and arrangement, with the education of
mankind as considered historically; or, in other words, the genesis of
knowledge in the individual must follow the same course as the genesis
of knowledge in the race. * * * It follows that if there be an order
in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge,
there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of
knowledge by the same order. As the mind of humanity placed in the
midst of phenomena and striving to comprehend them, has, after endless
comparisons, speculations, experiments and theories reached its
present knowledge by a specific route, it may rationally be inferred
that the relationship between mind and phenomena, is such as to
prevent this knowledge from being reached by any other route; and that
as each child's mind stands in this same relationship to phenomena
they can be accessible to it only through the same route."
Man is a trinity in his nature, consisting of mind, soul and body;
these must be developed and the same means must be employed to bring
it about. Intellectual, moral and physical training must characterize
our system of education. The intellectual and the physical is being
emphasized and the moral training must be made more prominent than it
has been in the past. The aim and purpose of the founders of this
Republic was to preserve in the substrata of the government those
noble and lofty principles of the Christian religion for the
maintenance of which they left their native land that they might plant
these principles in the virgin soil of America.
Manual training is now being made an attractive feature in our
schools, though by no means a new feature. Manual training must be
made to strengthen the intellectual and moral training or it will fail
in its purpose and end as an educational value. Trade schools are one
thing, manual training schools another thing. It is not the purpose
nor the end of manual training schools, as a branch of our school
system, to teach trades _per se_, but rather to aid the pupils to find
out their natural bent and to strengthen the trend of their ambition
along chosen lines; or, in other words, to help the pupil to discover
his powers, capabilities and capacity, to reveal the pupil to himself.
Dr. Mayo says: "The higher education according to the last American
interpretation is just this: The art of placing an educated mind, a
consecrated heart, and a trained will, the whole of a refined manhood
and womanhood, right at the ends of the ten fingers of both hands, so
that whether you eat or drink or whatsoever you do you may do all to
the glory of God."
There were two distinct civilizations attempted in this country; one
was planted at Jamestown, Virginia, the other at Plymouth,
Massachusetts. They were antagonistic in thought, aim and purpose. The
civilization at Plymouth was an example of the "survival of the
fittest," the errors of the one must be engulfed in the ever abiding
principles of the other. The educational feature of the one must yield
to the educational feature of the other. There must be but one system
of education for all the people, great and small, black and white.
This is essential for the peace, comfort, and prosperity of the
nation.
This is an Anglo-Saxon country. The thought of this country is
Anglo-Saxon. The progress of this country is Anglo-Saxon. The colored
people of this country, like all others born and reared on our shores,
are Anglo-Saxon in thought, in religion, in education, in training,
and hence it is unsafe and dangerous, not to say impracticable, to
educate them or any other class of our citizens along different lines.
The people of this nation must be one in purpose, one in aim; there
must be a common bond uniting them in a common sympathy and
fraternity. To secure this end all the people must be trained to the
highest wisdom. "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." Hence,
says Milton: "To govern well is to train up a nation in true wisdom
and virtue and that which springs from thence, magnanimity and
likeness to God, which is called godliness. Other things follow as the
shadow does the substance."
THIRD PAPER.
SHOULD THE NEGRO BE GIVEN AN EDUCATION DIFFERENT FROM THAT GIVEN TO
THE WHITES?
BY REV. S. G. ATKINS.
[Illustration: Prof. S. G. Atkins]
PROF. S. G. ATKINS, A. M.
Prof. S. G. Atkins, President and Founder of The Slater
Industrial and State Normal School, Winston-Salem, N. C.,
was born of a humble, yet high, because Christian,
parentage, in Chatham County, North Carolina, June 11, 1863.
Through this humble slave, yet Christian, parentage, there
came to this youth principles of industry, morality and
Christianity which formed the broad, deep, and solid
foundation on which has rested his eventful and useful life.
In early life he learned that "the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom." In the days of youth he remembered his
Creator.
Like many of the world's noblest and best characters, Prof.
Atkins started life's journey at the plow handles; clearing
the ground of roots and stumps, splitting rails, opening the
furrow, planting and harvesting the crops, constituted the
duty and pleasures of his early life.
Early evincing an insatiable thirst for knowledge, all the
advantages of the village school were given him. His
progress here was phenomenal. His eagerness to know truth;
his power of mind to perceive, comprehend and analyze; his
retentive memory, soon gave him first place among his
fellows in the school in the village. A few years passed; he
in the meantime having prepared himself, the master-mantle
of the village school falls upon him. His work here caused a
widening of his intellectual horizon. In the year 1880,
therefore, he entered the Academic Department of St.
Augustine Normal and Collegiate Institute, Raleigh, N. C.,
and graduated with distinction in 1884.
Immediately after leaving college, President J. C. Price,
the famous colored orator, invited him to join the faculty
at Livingstone College, Salisbury, N. C. At this post he
proved himself one of the most useful men in the faculty. At
times he filled various positions in the college. The
Grammar School Department, under his management, was a model
department, and was the pride of the college. He taught
here, serving well and at a great sacrifice, six years.
Prof. Atkins retired from the Livingstone College to enter
the public school work in which he had long taken a deep
interest. This interest had been manifested chiefly in
connection with his devotion to the work of building up the
North Carolina Teachers' Association, which body he helped
to organize and of which he was President for three
successive years. His first extended work in this field was
as Principal of the Colored Graded School, of Winston, N. C.
This position of responsibility he held, with increasing
success, for five years, when he gave it up, against the
protest of the Board of School Commissioners of Winston, to
become President of The Slater Industrial and State Normal
School. This Institution had already been projected by him
to meet a want among the colored people in the community
which he soon saw that the public school could not meet,
viz.: a deeper ethical culture and the training of the youth
of the community, not only in books, but also in some useful
handicraft which would the sooner furnish the basis for
strong personal character and sound home-life. His first
step in this direction had been the founding of the
settlement known as "Columbian Heights," to serve as a
background for the Institution, which would do this. The
settlement was founded in 1891, and the Institution
projected in 1892. Prof. Atkins, as the first settler on
Columbian Heights, and as the organizer and both Secretary
and agent of the Board of Trustees, pushed the work of The
Slater Industrial School, encouraged and supported by the
industrious efforts of the members of the Board, until in
1895 he was called to the Presidency of the Institution.
From that date to the present his labors have been an
inseparable part of the history of the school.
Hon. C. H. Mebane, Superintendent of Public Instruction for
North Carolina, says of him: "If I had fifty such men as
Prof. Atkins in North Carolina, I could make a complete
revolution in educational work in a short while, a complete
revolution as to moral uplift and general good of the negro
race."
In addition to his work as an educator, Prof. Atkins has
taken much interest in the work of the American Academy of
Social and Political Science, of which he is a member. He is
also a member of the American Statistical Association, and
has been twice elected Secretary of Education of the A. M.
E. Zion Church.
The esteem in which he is held by leading men of the nation
wherever he is known is fairly indicated in the following
statement of Hon. J. L. M. Curry, LL. D., ex-minister to
Spain and agent of the great Peabody and Slater Trusts for
educational purposes. Dr. Curry says: "I regard President
Atkins, of The Slater Industrial and State Normal School at
Winston, N. C., as one of the most worthy and capable men
connected with the education of the Negroes in the South.
His intelligence, courtesy, good deportment, high character
and efficiency as the head of a school have won the
confidence and goodwill of the people among whom he lives,
and of all who best know his work and worth."
"The education of a Negro is the education of a human being. In its
essential characteristics the human mind is the same in every race and
in every age. When a Negro child is taught that two and two are four
he learns just what the white child learns when he is taught the same
proposition. The teacher uses the same faculties of mind in imparting
the truth as to the sum of two and two. The two children use the same
faculties in learning the truth; it means the same thing to them both.
In further teaching and training the methods may vary, but variations
will depend less on differences of race than on peculiarities of the
individual."--Bishop Haygood.
The above quotation from Bishop Haygood indicates my answer to the
question. This question is simply a revival of the old superstition
concerning the Negro that manifested itself in the inquiry as to
whether the Negro had a soul. Civilization and fraternity have so far
developed that it would be hard in these days to find a person whose
skepticism concerning the Negro would find a doubtful expression as to
the Negro's humanity. The light has become too strong for the
existence of that kind of mist; hence the unsympathetic critic has
been forced to find a new way of putting his wish begotten thought.
There is still a higher authority for a negative answer to the
question, "Should the Negroes be given an education different from
that given to the whites?" in the following language: "God had made of
one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of all the
earth."
This declaration of St. Paul goes to the core of the matter, unless it
is proposed to revive the old superstition that the Negro is not
included as a part of the "nations of men." It is a strange fact that
nobody ever proposes a modified or peculiar form of education for any
other nationality.
It is the glory of the backward peoples of the earth that they are
adopting the forms and methods of education which have made Western
civilization the touch-stone of the world's progress.
But the implied contention that the Negro should be given an education
of a different kind is not absolute. Most disputants on this
subject--so far as published statements go--allow that after a long
period of adaptation and modified training the American Negro may
reach a stage in his mental evolution that he may assimilate the same
kind of mental food that is admittedly suited to the Caucasian,
Mongolian and others. This view of the matter leaves out of the count
another great fact, viz., that the American Negro is more American
than anything else, that he is not an alien either by birth or blood.
Whatever exceptions might be alleged against Africa can no longer be
made a bar to him.
But let us recur again to the evolution theory, and I will not
undertake to consider this theory as Darwinian.
It is not generally advanced as a presumption that the Negro is not
yet a thoroughbred, but it is presented in certain catchy and specious
phrases such as suggest the necessity of beginning at the bottom
rather than at the top, the necessity of giving to the colored
American a kind of colored education, the necessity of making his
civilization earthbound and breadwinning rather than heavenbound and
soul-satisfying--the necessity of keeping him close to mother
earth--as he "is of the earth earthy."
In those assumptions it is forgotten that education is not a question
of mechanics; it is rather a question of ethics and immortality.
Education is primarily an effort to realize in man his possibilities
as a thinking and feeling being.
Man's inheritance is first from heaven, from above. That is the
respect in which education differs from all merely constructive
processes. The stimulating and quickening power is from above.
Historically this is eminently true.
Education has been a process from above. It is not my intention to
enter upon the discussion of the merits of any particular kind of
education. My contention is that because the Negro is a part of
humanity, because he is an American with an American consciousness and
with a demonstrated capacity to take on training after the manner of
an ordinary man he should not be treated as a monstrosity. Bishop
Haygood sets forth the only proper line of distinction in education in
the following sentence: "In further teaching and learning the methods
may vary, but variations will depend less on differences of race than
on peculiarities of the individual." The "peculiarities" here
indicated unquestionably exist. They may be noted even in the same
family, but these peculiarities are found in differences which lie
deeper than the skin. There is no philosopher, unless he "is joined to
idols," so bold as to base his presumption of difference in human
beings upon the skin, for then his judgment might have to depend on
whether the skin is dark, copper-colored, brown, white, yellow,
freckled, red, etc. Human differences, all will admit, are essentially
differences of _individual souls_, and this does not preclude the
importance of environment and other incidental influences.
The great fact is that mind is mind--of like origin and like
substance--and that it has been found to yield to like treatment among
all nations and in all ages. There is no system of pedagogy that would
hold together for a moment if the idea of the unity of the human race
and the similarity of mind were invalidated. Philosophy itself would
be threatened and all science would be in jeopardy. Investigation and
practice never fail to support this theory of the solidarity of the
human race. In the schools where it has been tried it has been found
not to be a matter of color, nor even of blood--and certainly the
differences have not depended on race affiliation. It has been a
question of the individual and of local environment.
But so positive and indivisible is the human identity that even the
influence of individualism and environments is overcome by the great
universal processes of education, the great processes of mind
quickening and mind development. In many of our best institutions
there sit side by side the representatives of many nationalities and
races, and it has never been found in the work of these
institutions--as far as I have been able to discover--that any one
color or race could monopolize the benefits, but, on the contrary, it
has been found that the benefits were realized according to individual
temperament and power.
My position is not one in reference to non-essentials but essentials;
it is not a contention based even so much on degree, but rather on
quality and capability. I would not contend that environment would not
make a whole group of children more or less backward, and I do not
dispute the fact that because of better environments the whites
represent as a whole a higher state of civilization. But I hold that
this is true not because of race identity but rather because of
individual embarrassment. Give a white child and a colored child the
same environment and their progress or backwardness, I hold, would be
essentially the same under the same stimulants and encouragements.
Wherever colored and white children have been put to comparative tests
too little attention has been paid to difference of environment, and
too often there has been a dormant presumption that the same
environment would not have produced the same results upon white
children. Wherever these tests have been made it has been too often
overlooked that the facilities for their education were not equal;
they may have been nominally equal but the fact remains that they were
not really equal.
Considering the inequalities of environment and educational facilities
the results of most of the comparative tests are complimentary to the
colored child and demonstrate the similarity of his mental
susceptibilities--demonstrate that he is but a normal constituent part
of the great human race with substantially the same limitations and
capabilities as other members of the great human family.
FOURTH PAPER.
SHOULD THE NEGRO BE GIVEN AN EDUCATION DIFFERENT FROM THAT GIVEN TO
THE WHITES?
BY PROF. J. H. JONES.
[Illustration: Prof. J. H. Jones, D. D.]
REV. JOSHUA H. JONES.
The Rev. Joshua H. Jones was born at Pine Plains, South
Carolina, June 15, 1856. He professed religion at ten years
of age and joined the Shady Grove A. M. E. Church of the
Bull Swamp Circuit, South Carolina. At the age of fourteen
he was made Sunday School teacher, and at the age of sixteen
Sunday School superintendent. By the time he was eighteen he
had served in all the local spiritual offices of the church,
and was then licensed as a local preacher by the quarterly
conference of said circuit. The pastors soon discovered his
usefulness and aid to them. He was a diligent student and an
ardent churchman, and acquired education rapidly. At the age
of twenty-one years he entered the Normal Department of
Claflin University, Orangeburg, South Carolina, and in 1880
finished the Normal and College Preparatory Courses. He then
taught and preached one year, after which he returned to
Claflin University, and in 1885 graduated with the degree at
A. B. Not daunted nor yet satisfied with his attainments he
came north, studied awhile at Howard University, Washington,
D. C., thence to Wilberforce University, where in 1887 he
graduated from the Theological Course with the degree of B.
D. In 1893 Wilberforce University conferred upon him the
degree of D. D. in recognition of his superior worth and
ability. In June, 1900, he was elected President of
Wilberforce University, and a year later Claflin University
conferred upon him the degree of M. A.
As a minister of the Gospel he has been pastor in charge of
Williams Chapel, Orangeburg, South Carolina; Branchville
Circuit, South Carolina; Fort Motte Circuit, South Carolina;
Wheeling, West Virginia; The Holy Trinity Church,
Wilberforce, Ohio; Lynn, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode
Island; Columbus, Ohio; and Presiding Elder of the Columbus
District, Ohio Conference; Pastor at Zanesville, Ohio. In
all an unbroken period of thirty-six years of church work
and twenty-eight years in the ministry he has never known a
failure. His labors have been indefatigable and his
ministrations clean and inspiring.
In his public services he has been an inspiration to the
race. For fourteen years he has been a Trustee of
Wilberforce University, five years Trustee and Secretary of
the Normal and Industrial Department at Wilberforce, and a
constant and ardent helper in the establishment and
development of the same. For six consecutive years he was
elected and served as member of the Columbus Board of
Education, and through his efforts six colored teachers were
put into the mixed schools of Columbus, Ohio, as teachers.
In private affairs he has been industrious, frugal,
economical and administrative. He has accumulated a
comfortable estate and stands well with the banking and
business circles of Columbus, Ohio, and pays taxes on a tax
valuation of $10,000.
He has always been an ardent lover of his race, of his
church, of his country and his God, and has always been a
striking figure in the circles of men wherever his lot has
fallen. Fifteen years ago he was elected Dean of Allen
University, Columbia, South Carolina; eight years ago
Professor of Theology in Payne Theological Seminary, neither
of which he was able to accept because of heavy demands upon
his energy elsewhere. In 1890 he was elected delegate to the
Methodist Ecumenical Conference and has been several times
delegate to the General Conference of the A. M. E. Church,
and in 1900 was a strong candidate for the Bishopric,
receiving fifty or more votes on the first ballot. In his
present position he bids fair to give the church good
service.
If this question is to be answered affirmatively or negatively, I
emphatically say no. If the question be asked inquiringly, carrying
with it the thought of race experience, race opportunity, race status
and the variations growing out of these, then I would give the dubious
answer, _yes and no_. In the first place, all things are educative
and all forms of education have a definite relation to all other forms
of education, and all educational processes have definite relations to
all other educational processes, so all of these factors make for
unity in education, and the completest education is that which
embraces the greatest number of educational factors. It is perfectly
true that educational processes may be varied so as to suit varying
ideals or they may be varied so as to accomplish certain ends, for
unvarying sequences follow definite antecedents; even so educational
systems may be framed for the accomplishment of varying results or
definite results as the framers of such systems may determine to suit
the conditions of mankind as conceived at any given time. The end in
view in an educational system is everything. What the chosen end of
any system of education may be ought to depend upon the institution of
the country in which a people lives and every educational system
should be framed so as to utilize all of the agencies and involve all
of the processes that make most rapidly for the achievement of the end
in view.
If the end in view is serfdom for the Negro, then a vast amount of
industrial training by rote, minus the natural sciences and mechanic
arts for the generation of capacity, plus such rudiments in
arithmetic, reading and writing as will enable him to be an efficient
workman under the directions of others is the requisite. If it is the
desire to make the Negro a useful agent in the production of wealth
through the operation of the basal industries, in the largest quantity
or the highest quality for the smallest amount of outlay, then a still
higher class of training would be necessary, whether this production
of wealth be for the good of self or for the common good of society.
But if the end in view is to prepare him for the higher
responsibilities of American citizenship, involving as that
citizenship does the relationships, obligations and duties which
devolve upon freemen and equally binding upon him as upon the whites
in a democratic society or in a country of the people, for the people
and by the people, it is evident that such a system must have
structural affinity with such a system of education carried on by the
whites and for the whites. In other words, such must be his education
that his whole being is developed and in him there is the largest
generation of capacity, insight, foresight, the power to think with
proportions so as to give him that mastery over his environments and
over the questions of common good which will enable him at all times
to do the right things, the wisest things, the best things under any
given circumstances in the midst of which he may be thrown. Any
educational system that has an aim short of this as its end will
certainly fail to prepare the Negro for the high duties which belong
to a free individual in a democratic society.
Why should the Negro be given an education different from that given
to the whites? Is he not a man? Is he not a free man? Is he not a
citizen? Is he not held responsible by society for the performance of
duties enjoined upon him by law? Is he not a subject of government? As
a subject of government, ought he not participate in the affairs of
the government? I think it will be admitted by all fair-minded men
that all governments are for the welfare of the governed. Now, since
the Negro is more interested in his own welfare than anybody else is
and since to have a thing well done you had better do it yourself,
since also his welfare is shaped by any government under which he
lives, it must necessarily follow that his best good requires that he
participate in the affairs of that government if he is to continue to
be a free man. It is argued--and that not without some degree of
reason--by part of the more favored people in this country, that the
gift of the high privileges of citizenship carries with it the demand
that the recipients of these gifts possess the capacity to exercise
them for the common good of all who belong to the body politic. They
also argue that human conditions for government are grounded in
intelligence, virtue and property. So good, so well. But how is the
Negro to acquire intelligence, virtue and property according to the
American standard if his education is to be according to an
un-American system? There are four fundamental American doctrines that
both experience and philosophy attest as being right: (I) The right of
education is a human right. (II) That the schools furnished by the
state should be open to all of the children of the state. (III) The
safety of the state depends upon the intelligence of our citizens of
that state. (IV) As a matter of self-defense the state should compel
all of its citizens to become intelligent. These doctrines have their
root in the great truth that every individual is a member of society
and that therefore society has an interest in him, in his capacity, in
his intelligence, in his worth, and in turn is injured by his
incapacity, his lack of worth, his ignorance. The great war-cry of
American leadership is "Educate, educate, educate;" yea, more,
"Educate your masters." No man lives unto himself. God has made every
man dependent, associative and co-operative, and hence the good of
every individual is found in the common good of society and the
common good of society is found in the good of the individual. Every
man who is not at his best or not doing his best is to that extent a
failure and a hurt to the common good.
To me it is perfectly clear that if the Negro is to be in this country
and not of it then his education should be different from that given
to the whites. But if he is to be in the country and of the country it
follows without argument that he must be educated in common with all
of the people of the country so that the nation may have a common
ideal and a common consciousness so that our whole society may have or
feel a common interest in our common country. To be more explicit,
whether or not the Negro should be given the same kind of education
the whites are given depends upon whether or not the whites have the
proper kind of education. I should rather contend that if the whites
have the proper kind of education for mankind, then that given to the
Negro should be exactly like it. If the whites have not the proper
kind of education for mankind, then it follows that the Negro should
be given a different kind, for whether or not one man should have the
same thing as another depends upon whether or not that thing is fit
for mankind in general. This would naturally force upon us the inquiry
as to what kind of education the whites receive. If upon proper
inquiry we find that theirs is the proper kind for man, in this same
finding we should discover that this is the proper kind for the Negro.
Here differentiation begins, even in the field of education itself. A
careful study of the constitution of man, involving the
fundamentalities that grow out of his intellectual, moral, industrial,
social and political nature will lead us, I think, to see that much of
the white man's education is to be regretted and repudiated; much of
it is to be approved and appropriated. All training given in avarice,
hatred, prejudice, passion, sensuality, sin and wickedness, growing
out of self-conceit and vanity, must assuredly be repudiated. But all
things embraced in their education that make for the good, the true,
the beautiful, the just and the elevation of mankind should be
embraced, seized upon, masticated, digested and
assimilated--transmuted into the elements of Negro character, forming
a part of the very sub-consciousness of his being. In short, whatever
education the whites have had or do get which makes for human
enlargement, for righteousness, and brings man into closer
relationship with God and gives him a fuller conception of the laws of
God made manifest by the operation of His laws throughout the cosmos
enabling him to discover the relationships which he sustains to God,
to his fellow-men, to the lower creatures which inhabit this earthly
sphere in which man lives and the laws that govern the universe,
expressing modes of existence and orders of sequence, together with
the principles of industry, frugality and economy, which determine the
material accumulations necessary for the maintenance of life, these
the Negro should know as largely as possible, for certainly they have
been fields of educational processes found necessary for the white man
through many generations. It is to be noticed that for centuries the
white man has studied in order to get a thorough grasp, first of all,
upon the intellectual tools--so to speak; in other words, to know how
to read, write and cipher in terms of his own language, and at the
same time to lay a foundation broad enough to pursue useful knowledge
in all other directions possible. For instance, having mastered his
own language to a reasonable degree, he takes the Latin and the Greek
that he might acquaint himself with the development of the
institutions out of which his own was evolved as well as to make
double his hold upon his own; he studies Hebrew and the cognate
languages to get mastery of the great truths, philosophy and
institutions of a great people, adding to his own thereby; he studies
the modern languages, German, French, Spanish and Italian, that he may
gather the best fruits of the achievements of these nations and add
them to his own store; yea, he covers the whole field of philology
that he may add to his own store the best that has been garnered by
all of the nations of the earth; he studies the literature, science
and philosophy of all living races of his day and time with the same
end in view and when he has swept the field of historic times he
delves into the mysteries of geology and archæology and follows the
mute footsteps of man through Neolithic and Paleolithic times to the
very zero of human beginnings and comes back laden with truths to
enrich the thought of his day.
He studies natural science as God manifested in nature, by observation
and experiment; he commences, with God through the discovery of the
reign of law, classifying and systematizing the same and thus
broadening his own vision and adding to the store of knowledge in our
day and generation. As a preparation for this scientific research, he
studies mathematics from the elementary principles through the largest
elaborations of Euclid, Keppler, Newton and Copernicus, and their
illustrious successors; he studies sociology, biology and mechanics;
he studies civil and sociological laws and principles to the end that
the intricacies of democratic business intercourse might be the more
fully and clearly understood, mastered and applied in civilized
processes. No form of industry has escaped him, no law of frugality
has eluded him; whatever has in it an element of truth or virtue, he
has pursued with a relentlessness that knows no failure. As a student,
he has gone the rounds of the world in search of truth and has come
back rich in the knowledge of the things that God would have us know.
How the Negro can live in the midst of a civilization created by such
a people, drawing upon such vast resources as we have but faintly
indicated and be given an education different from that of this
people--and yet live among them with any degree of security--for the
life of me, I cannot see. If, to keep up with the requirements
of such a civilization as America furnishes to-day, a white
child--notwithstanding his inheritance--has to go to school from his
earliest days away into the years of his majority and be
systematically trained in all of the subjects as taught in the
kindergarten, the public schools, the secondary schools, the
academies, the universities, and the professional schools, how much
more imperatively necessary must it be that the Negro should have like
training. It seems to me that he should not only have the same
training but that he should have more of it than the white man has.
His education should be physical, moral, intellectual, social,
industrial and political, and his educational processes should have
the highest structural affinity with the educational processes of the
whites so that he may be brought into national and political
assimilation with the white man's institutional life.
TOPIC V.
SHOULD THE IGNORANT AND NON-PROPERTY-HOLDING NEGRO BE ALLOWED TO VOTE?
BY JOHN P. GREEN.
[Illustration: Hon. John P. Green]
HON. JOHN P. GREEN.
Hon. John P. Green was born in 1845 at New Berne, N. C., of
free parents. As a boy twelve years of age, he went with his
widowed mother to Cleveland, Ohio. He was educated in the
Cleveland public schools, graduating from the Central High
School in 1869.
He was admitted to the bar of South Carolina in 1870.
Returning to Cleveland, he for nine years served as justice
of the peace. In 1881 he was elected member of the Ohio
Legislature, serving three terms. In 1897 he was appointed
to a position in the postoffice department by President
McKinley.
He was also delegate to the National Republican Convention
in 1872, in 1884 and 1896.
All citizens who are industrious, honest, brave and patriotic should
vote, without regard to their color; for, a man may possess all these
characteristics and yet be "ignorant." Ignorance is only relative
anyway.
(a) The Negro is a citizen. See XIV Amendment to Constitution, etc.
(b) He is industrious, and by his industry has not only helped to
develop the resources of the United States but he has produced much of
the property which is unjustly held by many white voters, and withheld
from him; especially in the South.
The property of the South is due not more to the capital invested in
the agricultural and manufacturing enterprises of that section than to
the labor of the Negro, who furnishes the foundation of all
wealth--labor--there.
(c) The untutored Negro has shown himself to be honest; he has never
betrayed a trust imposed in him. During the great Civil War he was
true to the trust imposed in him by his master at the front, who
confided to his care the sustenance and even life of his wife and
little ones. This was the supremest test of his honesty, which he
sacredly discharged. Since the war, he has faithfully adhered to and
followed the fortunes of the Republican party, by the mandate of which
he was emancipated; even though in doing so he has suffered all the
evils which a hostile opponent can invent to plague and swerve him
from what he considers the path of gratitude and honor.
(d) He is brave; as the records of our wars will prove. His blood has
stained many battlefields where, under "Old Glory," he fought for the
Union and Liberty; not only on American soil, but also in foreign
lands. The Negro, in contending in war, for the life and liberties of
this Republic, has literally covered himself with glory.
(1) That he is patriotic goes without saying, in the light of what
has been written in the foregoing paragraph. With all his coarse and
homely ignorance, the heart of the American Negro, when yet a slave,
throbbed with patriotic love and loyalty; and this, too, at a time
when his college-bred and intelligent (?) master was doing his
uttermost to destroy this glorious fabric of Union.
It is only reasonable to assume that a man whose ignorance does not
blind him from shooting right, can, and will, under proper
instruction, which is given in prints and on the stump to all other
voters, vote rightly.
(2) The first and most potent step in the direction of humiliating the
Negro and relegating him to a condition of mental serfdom, is to
deprive him of the ballot. It is the only token of real power which he
possesses, aside from his brawn, which the white American really
covets; and once shorn of that, he would, like Samson, be passive, in
the hands of the Philistines.
(3) Another suggestion which may be urged in behalf of the suffrage
rights of the "ignorant and non-property-holding Negro" is, that he is
a hopeless minority; nor could he, by any means, control the destinies
of this country, if the intelligent voters of the land would but be
vigilant and prompt in the exercise of the franchise, imposed in them.
It is a sad reflection that the alleged fraud and corruption which
existed under "carpet-bag rule" in the South during the reconstruction
period could never have existed had the white voters of the South, who
were yet clothed with the elective franchise, given their countenance
and affiliation to the Negro voters, instead of standing aloof from
them and leaving them to be swayed by a set of _educated men_, many of
whom were neither "to the manor born," nor particularly interested in
the welfare of the several communities in which they operated.
(4) We must never lose sight of the fact that the welfare of the
Republic is not resident altogether in the _brains_ of the voters. The
_heart_ plays a very conspicuous part in the casting of a pure and
salutary ballot. As between a voter possessing a pure, kind and
patriotic heart but an uncultivated mind, and another endowed with all
the learning of the universities, but swayed by ulterior and
unpatriotic designs, one would experience little or no difficulty in
making choice of the former, even though clad in a black skin.
(5) The fact that a Negro is a "non-property-holding Negro" should not
militate against his right to exercise his rights of citizenship; for,
many of the most useful and valuable of our voters, of both races,
are "non-property-holding" voters. The fact of holding property is
frequently predicated on conditions altogether fortuitous--a reverse
of the wheel of fortune, a large or expensive family--a drought or
flood, as well as many other contingencies all play conspicuous parts
in preventing good and true citizens from accumulating property, even
to the extent of an humble homestead; while fire, cyclone and flood
often reduce a man of great possessions in a day to the conditions of
a "non-property-holding" citizen; and did his right to vote depend on
his property holding, he would be utterly bereft of it. On the
contrary, it is no extraordinary thing to see a man of less than
average intelligence endowed with "worldly goods" through a turn of
the wheel of fortune or the expansion or contraction of a "margin,"
where men win or lose all on the casting of a die.
It does not seem to have occurred to many of those who are exceedingly
anxious to deprive "ignorant and non-property-holding Negroes" of the
ballot, that ignorance in a white man is just as vicious as ignorance
in any other class of citizens; yet they go on eliminating, by laws of
questionable validity, the hard working, wealth producing Negro of the
South, while in most instances the ignorant, dilettante and faneant,
with a white skin, is not only permitted to vote, but even protected
in the exercise of the function.
Upon the whole, after mature reflection, an affirmative answer would
seem to be the proper one to the foregoing proposition. Under our
present Constitution, yes; the "ignorant and non-property-holding
Negro" ought to vote.
TOPIC VI.
IS THE CRIMINAL NEGRO JUSTLY DEALT WITH IN THE COURTS OF THE SOUTH?
BY ATTORNEY R. S. SMITH.
[Illustration: Atty. R. S. Smith]
ATTORNEY REUBEN S. SMITH.
Reuben S. Smith, attorney-at-law, No. 420 Fifth Street, N.
W., Washington, D. C., was born in Jackson County, Florida,
April 1, 1854. He received his early education in the common
schools of Marianna, in that county, and at Howard
University, Washington, D. C. Before coming to Washington he
taught school for a time and in 1876 served as an alternate
delegate-at-large from Florida to the National Republican
Convention, held at Cincinnati, Ohio. As a resident of the
national capital he served as a clerk in the United States
Treasury Department, in the office of the sixth auditor and
in that of the second auditor. He was also Washington
correspondent of several newspapers, but after graduating
from the law department of the Howard University, in 1883,
was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the District
of Columbia, and has since been successfully employed in the
practice of his profession. He has not only established a
lucrative private business, but has acted as attorney for a
life insurance company and other corporations. In November,
1899, he was unanimously elected moderator of the conference
of the Congregational churches of Virginia, Maryland, West
Virginia and the District of Columbia, and is Superintendent
of the Lincoln Memorial Congregational Church Sunday School.
Mr. Smith was a delegate to the National Republican
Convention held at Chicago in 1880, and a special agent of
the eleventh census of the United States (1890), assigned to
the work of collecting the statistics of the recorded
indebtedness of the State of Florida. It is therefore
evident that he is a man of versatility as well as
ability.--_Biographical Encyclopedia of the United States_.
The subject of this sketch also served as assistant
sergeant-at-arms of the Philadelphia National Republican
Convention of 1900. He has been attorney in several
important cases in the Supreme Court of the District of
Columbia, involving damage suits against large corporations,
and has been generally successful. He has also been retained
in many equity, real estate and contested will cases,
wherein he has been equally successful. He has been almost
exclusively engaged in civil practice during his experience
of fourteen years as a practitioner before the Supreme Court
of the District.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith are domiciled at No. 715 Second Street,
Northwest, where they have resided for the past twenty
years. Two children survive to them: Master Jerome
Bonaparte, a student at Howard University and Miss Rosa
Virginia, a pupil in the Washington High School.
At first glance the above question would seem to be fully answered
with one word comprising but two letters, namely, N-o. And yet, upon
second thought, it will be seen that that answer would not apply, for
the reason that the alleged criminal Negro seldom reaches a
court-house in the South before alleged summary justice is visited
upon him by an unreasoning Judge Lynch.
The fact that the question is asked whether the criminal Negro is
justly dealt with in the courts of the South, would imply that there
is at least a doubt as to the genuineness of the justice meted out to
him there. In legal phraseology, a criminal is one who has been duly
convicted of crime. This being so, it would seem that my first inquiry
should be, whether the Negro who has been legally ascertained to be a
criminal is justly dealt with in the South, in the matter of his
punishment therefor? This line of inquiry leads me into the
investigation of the convict lease system which obtains in certain
Southern states, and other unlawful abuses of colored criminals there.
It is not my purpose in the limited space allotted to consider this
phase of the subject at great length, but rather to briefly point out
its manifest injustice.
One of the greatest wrongs of the South is its convict lease system;
and its lynch law, and its disfranchising statutes are like unto it.
Although the emancipation proclamation, written and promulgated by the
immortal Lincoln, has been operative for more than thirty-six years,
yet a species of slavery still exists there, fostered and nurtured by
the statutes authorizing the convict lease system. So vile became this
evil in Anderson county, South Carolina, that the leading officials
there denounced it as brutal and barbarous, a crime against nature and
nature's God--a crime against civilization and humanity.
Some of the specific charges against the system were that these
unfortunate beings, without regard to sex, were huddled together in
prison quarters like so many cattle. It has been a foul blot upon the
escutcheon of the South, second only to the murderous stains made
thereon by the lynchers. It is a disgrace even to the civilization of
medieval times. For cruelty and outrage it is unparalleled in the
annals of civilized society. Siberia itself is preferable to the
convict camp. Given the worst form of human slavery plus the
barbarities of prison life; add to this the horrors of a Spanish
prison, and you have somewhat of an idea of the iniquitous institution
of the barbarous convict lease system.
But as if compounding crime, it is asserted with many of the
appearances of truth, that Negro boys and girls, upon trivial charges,
are convicted and sent to the convict camp for the express purpose of
securing to the lessees of convicts the benefit of their unrequited
toil until they reach their majority. Thus confined among confirmed
criminals they naturally partake of the character of their
environments, and conceive and multiply vice and criminology. This
system punishes the real criminal unjustly. The ill-gotten gain it
offers furnishes the incentive to thrust the innocent into prison
pens.
Then, too, it is claimed with the appearance of truth that
unscrupulous white men in certain Southern localities actually trump
up charges against Negro men and procure their convictions and
sentence to the convict camp for the double purpose of affording the
lessees the comparatively free labor of the alleged criminals and to
deprive them of the right to vote. While heartily approving of such
reasonable punishment as shall deter crime, I can command no language
strong and severe enough to condemn in fitting terms the cruelties and
deviltries heaped upon the Negro in certain sections of the South in
the name and for the sake of those who profit by the convict lease
system.
It is undisputed that some of those sent to the convict camp have been
properly found guilty; some have been illegally convicted; some
deserve proper punishment, while some, by reason of their tender
years, should have been put into reformatories, where they might have
been rescued from a life of crime and brought up as law-abiding
citizens. Such institutions may have been intended to protect society
from the dishonest and vicious and to repress crime, but they are
really made hotbeds of vice; and where sufficient vitality remains in
the unfortunates, they actually propagate and multiply criminals.
But if the question should become so varied as to inquire whether the
Negro in the South charged with crime is justly dealt with in the
courts thereof; in other words, is he afforded a fair trial there?--it
could not be fully answered without taking into consideration the
heinous crime with which the Negro is generally charged. There is
nothing more revolting than rape, unless it be mob-rule. There is no
true man, white or black, who would not rejoice to see condign
punishment visited upon the brute legally proven guilty of this most
diabolical crime.
The South justifies lynching on the ground that it shields the victim
of the crime from the publicity to which a trial of the perpetrator
would expose her. That is to say, the lynchers prefer to violate the
organic law, which provides that no one shall be deprived of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law. They put the mob
above the judicial system of the country, and arrogate to it greater
power to protect the honor of the outraged female and uphold the
majesty of the law than a court of justice. It is a sad reflection
upon the administration of justice even to intimate that the mob which
ruthlessly defies the law is better qualified to administer justice
than the court established by law to try and determine the guilt or
innocence of persons charged with the commission of crime.
In the dark ages of English history, it frequently happened that the
person charged with the commission of crime was first executed and
afterward his trial was had, and if a verdict of not guilty was found,
his bones were disinterred and given a state funeral. But the Negro
charged with the commission of crime in the South is frequently not
granted a trial before or after execution; so that the Negro is not
justly dealt with in the courts of the South, even after he has been
hung, drawn and quartered, or burned.
In some instances where the Negro is fortunate enough to confront his
accusers in a court in the South, the caste prejudice against him too
often reduces his trial to a mere mockery of justice.
The cornerstone of the Republic is justice, to establish which, under
liberty, its founders set foot upon these hostile shores in the early
part of the seventeenth century. From that time to the present the
slogan of every campaign, the rallying cry of every battle, has been
justice in some form or other. And yet, in the alleged interest of
innocence, justice, in certain localities, is often outraged, law
dethroned, and mob rule exalted.
Whether or not the Negro charged with crime is justly dealt with in
the courts of the South can only be answered relatively, for in some
localities fair trials are granted even to Negroes charged with the
commission of crime. But for the most part, it must be admitted that
Negroes brought into the courts of the South accused of crime against
white people are not accorded a fair trial.
The reason of this unjust dealing with the Negro in the courts of the
South is not far to seek; he is looked upon as an alien; then, too,
the doctrine that he has no rights which a white man is bound to
respect is exploded in certain localities only in theory, for in
practice it is still unmistakably prevalent.
The crying need of the times is a wholesome respect for law and order,
and a righteous condemnation of mob rule everywhere. Every pulpit
North and South should speak out against mob rule and lynch law. The
eloquent divine in Greenville, Miss., who recently denounced with
righteous indignation the damnable outrages of mob violence in that
state, was as a voice crying in the wilderness. For some reason his
brethren of the cloth have not seen fit to join him in a crusade
against this abominable sin. If the Southern clergy could only be
induced to preach against this evil occasionally, there would soon be
created throughout the sin-ridden districts such a healthy public
sentiment and respect for law and order that these crimes against the
state would soon become things of the past; nor could there be found
throughout our broad land a miscreant, who, under the influence of the
spirit of lawlessness, would take the life of our Chief Magistrate;
nor would there be anywhere such an illiberal public sentiment as
would openly criticise our Chief Executive for dining a representative
member of the race whose feasts even Jupiter did not disdain to grace.
But let us consider the alleged crime for which lynching is attempted
to be justified. L. H. Perkins, Esq., of the Kansas Bar Association,
in an address to its annual meeting, in July, 1901, said:
"Lord Coke observes: 'There are crimes that are not so much as to be
named among Christians.' It is difficult for us in Kansas to believe
that certain crimes exist; crimes against nature, practiced by force
upon defenseless childhood, disclosed in criminal records of great
cities; but there is one crime in Kansas that we have learned to know.
It ought not to be named, much less permitted in a Christian land. The
crime and its fit punishment, can scarcely be discussed; but how else
can it be expunged? Shall it be by fire? Must he who writes the story
of this new-born age still further shock the world and foul the fair
name of America by pictures of a howling mob, profaning every law of
God and man; with every bulwark of our rights thrown down, the gates
of hell unchained, and passion, loose, unbridled as hurricane,
roaring above the prostrate guardians of the peace, annihilating in an
hour the civilization of six thousand years?
"Death in flames! Savage, bloodthirsty vengeance! Three things this
savory orgy lacks: salt and sweet herbs and a good appetite.
"There is a law that in the last extremity, in the presence of
impending death, all barriers are removed, all ranks are leveled, all
rights are equalized. Supreme necessity is supreme law. Can it be
possible that some such overmastering impulse at times dethrones the
public mind, and, while the fit is on, the latent cannibal runs riot
in the land? It seems it must be so; and, if it be, 'twill be until we
rise to the necessity.
"We may excoriate the cannibal, but which of us will now affirm the
provocation is not great? Poor, helpless woman! Why don't she learn to
shoot? This monstrous crime pursues her like a nightmare. It is an
ever present peril to every woman in the land. Must she shun every
alley and fly from every bush lest lascivious eyes be on her and
unbridled, brutal passion block her way? Of all the hobgoblins abroad
in the night, in fact or fancy or in song or story, there is none so
hideous as the stealthy form of the lecherous brute that leaps forth
out of darkness and drags defenseless woman to her ruin.
"And can it be that we who make the laws; we who have wives and
daughters and sisters and mothers who are dearer than life itself; we
who honor woman, not for her strength but for the very attributes that
render her the prey of force; can it be that we can make no laws that
will protect her, or satisfy the public that justice will be done?
"Concede that in the sight of God the crime of rape is worse than
murder, yet is it plain that the punishment should be death? In the
interest of woman herself were it not better that the brutal ravisher
have somewhat more to bear if he do also murder? Else would not the
motive to silence forever the most dangerous witness be complete?
"I offer the suggestion of three degrees for rape--the first to cover
only ravishment by brutal violence and force; the second all the
intermediate grades save statutory rape, which alone shall constitute
the third degree. I am no firm believer in the justice of our age of
consent, and would leave corporal punishment for statutory rape to the
discretion of the trial court. The terms of imprisonment as now
prescribed are doubtless long enough, but let us add to them the sting
and shame of the ancient whipping post. For the third degree, in the
court's discretion, not more than seven lashes. For the second degree
two floggings of twenty lashes each, soundly administered within
twelve months. And for the first degree, three several floggings of
forty lashes each within twelve months, and then castration. There is
much reason in this ancient penalty, and the time has come when it
should be revived. If, as some say, this morbid and unbridled passion
is disease, then treat it like appendicitis--remove the cause."
Mr. Perkins is on the right track. I am glad that he neither endorses
lynching nor takes stock in the absurd report from certain sections of
the South that all Negroes are ravishers of white women. I think his
suggested remedy against rape a good one for white and black.
But to return to the consideration of the other phase of the question,
I desire to say that Mrs. Helen Douglass, the widow of the lamented
Frederick Douglass, is accepted authority on the convict lease system,
and consequently I am indebted to her for most of the data used in
this article touching that subject. In a well prepared lecture on
convict leases, Mrs. Douglass introduces her theme as follows:
"We know what happens when manufactories are shut down and a vast
amount of accumulated material is suddenly thrown upon the market. For
250 years the South had been manufacturing a peculiar article; had
been literally stamping this article with its own lineaments and
putting it upon a market created especially for it. The war came! The
manufactories were closed; the material was on hand; what should be
done with it? Never in the world, perhaps, has there been a clearer
demonstration of the irrevocable nature of law, as affecting society,
and the awful power of habit as the sum of reiterated choice."
At the Prison Reform Convention, held in Atlanta in 1888, Dr. P. D.
Sims of Chattanooga, Tenn., said that, the impoverished condition of
the South succeeding the War of the Rebellion, caused it to drift into
the convict lease system, for which there were many excuses, but no
justification. The lessee buys from the State the discipline of
prisoners solely for gain; that neither the State nor the lessee had
regard to the element of reform or consideration of a philanthropic
character; that although many good men were engaged in it, the system
was wrong. He presented the statistics of thirty-nine State prisons,
showing that in the non-leasing prisons, the annual mortality was
fifteen per thousand, while in the leasing, it was sixty-four per
thousand, and that in the former, escapes were but five per thousand,
and in the latter, they were fifty-one per thousand. He appealed to
the South to change the system.
The lease system was adopted in Georgia in 1869, both Democrats and
Republicans favoring it. The first year there were 350 convicts to be
hired, and the second year the number doubled. An investigation showed
that one company paid nothing to the State for the labor of its
convicts, and that although the law provided for a chaplain, the State
had none; that convicts were worked on Sundays contrary to law, and in
some instances whipped to death. The evils of the system became so
flagrant that a Senator on the floor of the Senate Chamber declared
that the rich and powerful were allowed to go free, while the poor
white person and the ignorant Negro were shown no mercy. It was proved
that even a governor of the State was himself a lessee, working State
convicts for private gain, under a $37,000 bond in force until 1899,
although he was the convict's only protection against the wrongs of
the lessee.
The ease and facility with which colored persons were sent to the
penitentiary kept a goodly supply of prisoners on hand. While it was
burdensome to taxpayers to keep them within walls, it was unjust to
mechanics to allow them to learn trades; ergo, they were leased out to
grade streets, to work on railroads, in mines and the like, where
their physical powers might be availed of, but where they could learn
nothing, save yes and no, axe and hoe.
By an act passed in 1876, by the legislature, the Marietta and North
Georgia Railroad Company was leased 250 convicts for three years, to
grade its road where the people were too poor to pay for it. The rest
of the convicts the governor was authorized to lease to three
penitentiary companies for twenty years for $500,000, to be paid in
annual installments of $25,000. In a test case by two of these
companies, in the Supreme Court of Georgia it was decided that the
lessees acquired a vested right of property in the labor of these
convicts, which the legislature could not disregard unless their labor
was required by the State, in which case the lessee demanded
compensation. The Supreme Court consequently granted an injunction
restraining the keeper from delivering said convicts to said railroad
company, thereby securing to the lessees a legal right of property in
the labor of the convicts till the contract is legally terminated.
In an investigation of 1896, presided over by Governor Atkinson, Capt.
Lowe, a lessee, testified:
"We do not think ourselves liable for the conduct of whipping bosses.
They are given their commissions by the State, and we insist that they
are answerable to the State alone. We cannot direct the whipping of
convicts; it must be done by the bosses. If all the convicts were
disabled by whipping, we think the State would be liable to us for
loss of time, because the whipping bosses are the agents of the
State."
Lessee Lowe admitted he was a close corporation, being president,
secretary, treasurer, boss and everything else of the company, which
held no meetings, had no stock, and declared no dividends.
Attorney-General Terrell held that the convicts were under the care of
the lessees, whose duty it was to see that they were treated humanely,
citing the order of 1887 by Governor Gordon, to prove that while the
whipping bosses were appointed by the governor, they were under the
control of the lessees. Governor Atkinson said that he did not dream
for a moment that the lessees did not consider it their duty to see
that the convicts were properly treated.
Mr. Huff, addressing the legislature, said, that "any attempt at
reformation of the present system is an absurdity, a swindle and a
fraud. It is a damnable outrage. The lessee contract would not stand
fifteen minutes before a petit jury. I could hang any of the lessees
before a petit jury in two and a half hours," said he.
One convict testified that in his case the skin came off with every
blow inflicted by a soaked strap drawn through sand; that twenty
bastard children were in one camp. A female convict testified that
during her prison life of fourteen years she had borne seven children.
A lessee testified that such irregularities as bastard children would
occasionally occur as long as women were guarded by men.
Dr. Felton, addressing the Georgia Legislature, said:
"I stated ten years ago that the State was acting as a procuress for
convict camps; the legislature is keeping up the supply in accordance
with the demand. I repeat the accusation here and now."
In 1895 a number of convicts had their feet so frozen that the flesh
and toes rotted off. Governor Atkinson enlightened the legislature of
the deplorable condition existing in the convicts' camps through the
report thereon by Hon. R. F. Wright, showing nearly fifty misdemeanor
camps. In the chain-gangs were twenty-seven white and 768 colored
convicts; generally both races and sexes being together day and night.
Among these were eleven children under fourteen years of age. Some
slept in rude floorless houses; some in tents on the bare ground, and
a few in bunks. The bedding was scant and filthy, and full of vermin.
The camps were poorly ventilated, the sleeping quarters being
generally sweat-boxes, constructed to prevent escapes. There were no
hospitals and no preparations for comfort or medical treatment. Female
prisoners dressed in male attire, worked side by side with men.
A member of the legislature declared:
"Most lessees would rather see the devil in their camps than a
Methodist or Baptist preacher. I do not urge the bill for the Negro,
but for the safety of homes and property. Crime has increased in the
United States more than in any other country on the globe. I plead for
the orphan boys and girls of the State. Better send them to a
bottomless hell than to James' camp."
Said the lamented Colonel Alston:
"The public knows how hard it is to get testimony in a case like the
lease question. If a guard kills a man, he is not going to tell of it.
If a lessee chooses to whip one to death, who is to know it? If he
starves them, who is the wiser? I never expect to give up the
agitation of this question till I can point to my native State
redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled from this great sin, and the
finger of shame shall no longer be lifted at her, as a State that is
banking on the crimes and misfortunes of her defenseless and ignorant
population."
Three months after this Colonel Alston was shot dead in the State
Capitol of Georgia, by a sub-lessee during a controversy arising from
the leasing of some convicts; whereupon Governor Atkinson declared
that, under heaven and by God's help, he meant to lift up the
administration of the laws of the State to that high plane that will
put an end to these things.
Mr. Byrd of Rome, Ga., by authority of Governor Atkinson, inspected
the misdemeanor camps in 1897, and reported that private chain-gangs
were being operated against law, and in spite of the decisions of the
Supreme Court of Georgia, and that the average penal camp of the State
penitentiary is a heaven, compared to the agony and torture endured by
the misdemeanor convicts in many of these joints. He said that Mr.
Wright did valiant service for humanity by showing that a bondage
worse than slavery was being inflicted upon the convicts, who were
confined in these "hells upon earth."
In one camp, he said, an ante-bellum residence had been converted
into a prison by removing every window, and closing up every aperture,
leaving not even an auger hole for light or air. In the center of a
room only 18 feet by 20, was an open can, the reeking cesspool of this
dungeon in which sat a sick Negro convict confined in this dark
sweat-box, perishing.
In another camp, after the visit of Mr. Wright, the guards took turns
at beating a convict to death and buried him in his shackles. A
respectable citizen asserted that they caught the convict by the
shackles and ran through the woods dragging him feet foremost, and
that when these facts were sworn to before the Grand Jury of Pulaski
County, it was thought best to hush them up and keep the matter out of
the newspapers, and out of court, as the superintendent of the prison
camp had friends on the jury.
Another case sworn to before the coroner's jury was that of a guard
who had whipped nearly all the life out of an old Negro, who said:
"Boss, is ye gwine to kill me?" The guard replied with an oath in the
affirmative, whereupon the convict begged to be shot and thus freed
from his sufferings. He was chained up to a tree where he died in
thirty minutes.
In another camp a white convict was being boarded at a hotel ten miles
away, and doing a prosperous business at painting, while another white
convict who had been made night guard and given a gun and the keys to
the camp, had it so free and easy that he threw up his job and
decamped.
Mr. Boies of Pennsylvania, in his instructive work, discusses the
convict lease system, and shows that the sentences of Negroes in the
South are double those of white men for the same offenses; that for
petty larceny a Negro may be condemned to the criminal class for life,
albeit he had to steal or starve. He shows that the criminal machinery
of the South is frequently used to nullify the Negro's right of
suffrage; that no hand is extended to lift him up when he falls, and
no effort is put forth for his reformation, and for this reason the
South turns out one-third of the criminals of the whole country; that
Massachusetts expends $20 per capita upon the children of her public
schools, while Mississippi with a heavier tax, expends but $2 per
capita.
In the Evening Star of Washington, D. C., of November 16, 1901, an
exhaustive article on the prison camps of Florida appeared. Although
guardedly, it favored the effort to make the criminal self-supporting,
arguing that as he lives on the public when at large, he should not
be permitted to continue to live on the public when in confinement.
But it admits that the convict lease system is faulty. It says:
"At present, offenders of all grades and ages are thrown together, and
the younger ones learn more evil than they knew at the time of their
arrest, growing daily more depraved and vicious so long as they remain
in bad company. It may be possible, however, to employ most of the
convicts at tasks which will not require their close association,
either at work or in quarters, and if that desideratum can be reached,
the last argument against the leasing of prisoners will be met, and
the system will be continued indefinitely, such minor matters as the
corruption of inspectors, of which Alabama has complained, being
capable of rebuke through legislation.
"There are now thirteen camps in Florida, each one of which is
technically a State prison, and they are under the watch of a
supervisor, who must visit them at least once in sixty days, examine
the buildings, food, clothes, and bedding, question keepers and
convicts as to work, punishment and health, enforce compliance with
the laws and report to the governor every month. All leases are for
four years, and the only cost of its criminals to the State are the
salaries of supervisors and a sum of $300 a year for chaplain service.
"The country expends at least $200,000,000 per annum in maintaining
its convicts. In the city of New York alone, the annual assessment for
that purpose is $6 per citizen.
"Where the labor unions have not prevented it, society has made the
criminal pay his own bills. In the South where the people are
beginning to show a keenness for money that is not surpassed in the
North, but where, as yet, capital is not gathered into such immense
and usable sums as in the central and eastern States, a new policy has
been adopted with regard to the offender. He is generally a Negro,
hence he is sent back to slavery. He is sold to a farmer, a distiller,
a phosphate miner, or a manufacturer, for a term of years, and his
employer pays considerably less to the State than he would otherwise
lay out in wages.
"In Alabama, if a State prisoner or long-termer escapes from his
employer, he must pay into the public treasury $200, and $100 if a
county prisoner or short-termer escapes.
"When an inspector is present at a whipping, the turbulent convict may
be given twenty-one lashes on his bare back; in the absence of the
inspector, the whipping boss is limited to fifteen lashes.
"The guards are of the poor white class, dull and illiterate, and
receive from $20 to $30 per month and their 'keep.'
"In Florida shackling is seldom practiced except as a punishment for
running away, as it interferes with the work of the convict. Guns and
bloodhounds are much in evidence in the convict camps. Nothing is done
for the betterment of the convicts intellectually or otherwise.
Missionaries are graciously permitted to distribute tracts among them.
"White convicts are generally assigned to offices and cook shops, or
become gang foremen. For the white prisoner, whatever his offense,
there is always a hope of pardon, but the Negro prisoner, unless he be
a crap-shooter or chicken thief, congratulates himself on being
consigned to open air work in the convict's camps, for he remembers
how dreadfully easy in Florida it is for a Negro to be lynched."
Judge M. W. Gibbs of Arkansas said he had known white employers in the
South to be in collusion with magistrates to have colored men
committed on the flimsiest pretext, simply that they might obtain more
free labor on their plantations by means of the convict lease system.
The eleventh census shows that in the United States there were 2,468
county jails and only 44 reformatories. There were no reformatories in
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
Great Britain supports over 400 reformatories and inebriate schools,
and they have closed 56 out of 113 prisons and jails in ten years, and
thereby reduced to that extent the amount of material for the
manufacture of criminals.
Said Judge Calhoun, of a recorder's court in Georgia:
"I tremble when I contemplate the future of little boys who come
before me for the first time, and are sentenced to the chain-gang.
Some of them are bright-faced and intelligent; some are orphans; many
thoroughly penitent; and, I believe, nearly all could be reclaimed,
could they be sent to a reform school and surrounded with an
atmosphere that would benefit instead of contaminate."
Mrs. Helen Cook, wife of Hon. John F. Cook, of Washington, D. C., has
established an organization in the District of Columbia, known as "The
Woman's League," which is doing a wonderful work in reducing the
number of those who are brought into the courts to be justly or
unjustly dealt with. Let the good women of the race throughout the
country follow her example and do something to rescue the perishing.
In conclusion, let us hope and believe with the widow of the Sage of
Anacostia, that "Meanwhile Hampton and Wilberforce, Howard and Shaw
and Fiske and Atlanta and Tuskegee and other like institutions are
silently setting the seal of manhood and womanhood upon a race whose
face, with ours, is set toward a higher and better civilization."
SECOND PAPER.
IS THE CRIMINAL NEGRO JUSTLY DEALT WITH IN THE COURTS OF THE SOUTH?
BY ATTORNEY I. L. PURCELL.
[Illustration: I. L. Purcell]
ISAAC LAWRENCE PURCELL.
Isaac Lawrence Purcell, the subject of this sketch, was born
July 17, 1857, in Winnsboro, S. C. His father, John W.
Purcell, by occupation a carpenter, was born in 1832 in
Charleston, S. C., being one of the old free families.
Isaac Lawrence first attended a school provided by the
Episcopal Church for Colored youths. He afterwards attended
the public schools of his city and, in 1871, entered
Brainard Institute, Chester, S. C., where he remained one
term. In 1872 he entered Biddle University at Charlotte, N. C.,
where he remained until in the Fall of 1873, when the
color line was removed at the South Carolina University. He
entered the competitive examination for the scholarship in
the South Carolina University from his county, being the
only Colored applicant. In the Fall of 1873 he entered the
South Carolina University, where he remained until the
Spring of 1877, when the act of the Legislature of the State
went into effect again drawing the color line, so he with
the other Colored boys had to leave.
Mr. Purcell returned home, and under his father's
instructions learned the carpenter's trade. He went to
Palatka, Fla., in 1885, where he studied law, and was
admitted to practice law in the Circuit and inferior courts
October 8, 1889, and at once commenced the active work of
his chosen profession at Palatka, Fla.
At the first term of the Circuit Court after his admittance
he represented plaintiffs in several large damage suits, two
against the city of Palatka; in both he got verdict for his
clients; one was appealed to the Supreme Court. He was
admitted to the State Supreme Court January 19, 1891, where
he has successfully represented many cases. January 19,
1897, he was admitted to the United States Circuit and
District Courts, and November 8, 1901, was duly admitted to
the Supreme Court of the United States. He has represented
some of the most important cases coming before the courts of
his State. He came to Pensacola, his present home, in
February, 1899, and has by his energy and ability built up a
fine and growing business.
In politics he is a Republican, and has attended as a
delegate every State, congressional and county convention
since coming to the State, several times presided over State
and congressional conventions, was for twelve years chairman
of the Republican Executive Committee of his county, Putnam.
For many years an alderman of the city of Palatka, Fla. In
1895 he was elected as a delegate to the Republican National
Convention which convened in St. Louis, 1896. He has never
held any office of profit, always honest and fearless in his
opinions and his advocacy of right.
His private life has always been consistent; while not a
member of any religious denomination, always attends the
services of the Episcopal Church; is a temperate man; is
generous and kind in disposition; was married October 24,
1895, to Miss E. L. Andrews, of Orangeburg, S. C.
First: What constitutes a court? In the South as in the North and
other parts of the country, to constitute a court, there must be a
judge, whose duty it is to preside over the court, a sheriff and
deputies, and a State's solicitor, who looks after the interests of
the State, and last, but by no means least, comes the jury, whose duty
it is to discharge or pass on the innocence or guilt of the prisoner
according to the law and evidence as offered; it requires all these to
constitute an organized court of law.
First: The judge should be a man selected on account of his nobility
of character, of heart, of soul and of mind; a man of experience and
training, a man of affairs, learned in the affairs appertaining
strictly to his branch, as also in literature and science; a man
merciful, kind and generous, of a sterling character, temperate,
though positive and unbiased by private opinion, in a word, he should
be a man, the representative of justice, though not usurping that
power as abiding in himself, but as the instrument of that power;
whose moral character ought to be without blemish, a man whose habit,
integrity, shrewd judgment and wise counsel place him above the
average man, making him of the people and for the people.
Sheriffs and deputies ought to be honest and fearless, having the
highest regard for the life and liberties of the people; they should
be kind and generous, yet positive and fearless, ever ready to defend
the life and liberties of the people, using their office only in
consonance with the prescribed law in aiding the conviction of crime,
but not as a means of revenging personal wrongs or injuries of the
people whose color is their only sin.
THE JURY: The jury ought to be composed, if possible, of men of
learning, whose moral character, love of truth, unbiased by racial
prejudice or private opinions, being only representatives of the
people, who in the name of the people adjudge, condemn or acquit
according to the evidence, not from any private opinion, but governed
by such law as is made in the statement of the judge bearing upon the
case given previously to their retiring; if these men of learning can
not be found, as in most cases, let others who, for the above
qualifications minus learning, be substituted in their stead. In the
selection of the jury in the most cases they come as the most refined
element of the scum and refuse of the party class, whose labor in the
election of some democratic officer, can only be rewarded under these
terms; being unqualified to fill even the most inferior office of
their party, in a majority of cases, not even one of these is
acquainted with even the lowest element of learning, and if,
perchance, one can be found, he is made foreman. The Negro is never
thought of, but if, perchance, one should be selected, and in such a
manner is he prominent, even his color makes him conspicuous, he also
is on a par with his companions; men of influence are never selected.
Before I conclude with the jury may I say a word of those who select
them? In most States they are selected by the county commissioners, in
some by a jury commissioner. These commissioners, in most cases, are
none other than tools, instruments who have no minds of their own, but
like a reed before a gust of the mighty wind that blows nobody good,
as serfs and pampered menials bend irrespective of that higher
principle, that innate quality of man that places him above the brute
creation, serving in abject slavery for the carrying out of party
crime and cunning as well as subtle devices.
A court constituted of such elements as described, is an "Ideal One."
One to be desired, and the only one at whose hands justice, and only
that as gold refined, shall be tried, counterpoised and mete out to
every man justice, in the name of Heaven and at the hands of man.
But may I ask how are our courts of the South constituted? are any two
of the above qualities to be found in the most prominent of our
Southern courts of criminal jurisdiction? If Diogenes of old would
seek in our Southern courts for such a man, hereto, as in Greece, such
an one could not be found, for truth is no longer enthroned on its
sacred altar.
Having defined the true elements of which the courts of our Southland
are constituted, I shall pass to consider, THE MANNER IN WHICH THE
Negro is dealt with in these courts. Is the criminal Negro justly
dealt with in the courts of the South? is a question that I think is
more frequently asked than words can answer, language describe, or
man's wisdom unravel. Our woes have gone out to the ends of the earth
and, the stagnant waters can no longer contain its contaminating
germs, and now, even on the other side of the globe, we hear the
re-echo of our cries from this damnable cruelty wafted back to us by
the zephyrs that sustain expectations impregnated with hope telling of
some bright future.
What of the Negro in the sunny South? what of his rights as a citizen?
what of his treatment at the bar of justice? are questions also
propounded on the other side and since the trial cause of the alleged
rape has been made clear, we expect and are looking forth to the dawn
of a brighter future.
In our civil courts, in other words, our courts where property rights
are tried, I must say, that where tenement rights are concerned,
justice is meted out to the Negro even against the white man when
elevated to our higher courts, this is the only sphere in which a
lenient form of justice is prescribed and given the Negro. The same
cannot be alleged of him when his life, his liberty, or reputation or
citizenship is at stake.
Against a fellow Negro, he is in some instances protected, as against
a white man, seldom, if ever. In this latter it is not justice that is
the object of our courts, but the impeachment and condemnation of a
fellow man, giving vent to a vindictive racial prejudice. Be the crime
of the Negro ever so trivial, when against the white man, the sheriff,
having to carry out the oath; the jury, their party plans; the judge,
his selfish means; and, therefore, no evidence, however palpable,
however substantial and convincing can shield the Negro under such
instances. The skin of a white man being held sacred, cannot be
violated or polluted by the touch of the Negro's hands, be it in
self-defense, or in defense of his manhood, or in the defense of wife,
daughter or some other female relative. On the other hand, seldom, if
ever, can a white man be convicted when charged with striking a Negro,
or for any insult he may offer to his wife, sister, daughter or
mother; the juries being all white, they consider this no crime for a
white man.
May we notice the following facts of the records of our courts; may I
here testify and, without a fear of successful contradiction, that by
these, as matter for the criminal statistics of the race serves no
purpose.
First: Because our best citizens, the better class of our thinking
men and the most virtuous of our people are not tried at the hands of
an impartial jury, and innocence made to bear the stamp of guilt, can
in no way be accounted justice; for instance, in a case of assault and
battery, although the party charged is able and does prove, by legal
evidence, that his actions were prompted only by resistance in
self-defense, however convincing, if a white man can be found, if even
he does not know anything, but can allege a negative, this unjust
evidence counterpoises the balance of justice and the Negro is found
guilty. If, on the other hand, larceny be charged, it is almost an
impossibility even to attempt to defend, if there be a white witness
against you, it being taken for granted that every Negro is a thief.
Now in courts of justice according to my judgment, and according to
the law, every man is presumed to be innocent until his guilt is
proven beyond a reasonable doubt, by legal evidence, and such evidence
must be furnished or obtained by the prosecution. But men are daily
convicted in our courts, simply because they are Negroes.
In concluding, let me say, that a majority of my people labor under
appalling disadvantages, but I hope that the time is not far distant
when our courts will be constituted as the "Altars of Justice," the
judges and their associates, as its priests, and the American citizen,
be his color what it may, can come and there receive at the hands of
unblemished and unspotted servants redresses for wrongs, compensation
for impeached innocence and justice for his wrongs.
The time is coming when all racial prejudice shall have passed away,
and when color will no longer impede our obtaining what is due us, and
when the Negro will receive a fair and impartial trial before a jury
of his peers; then will justice and equity rule sublime, and the Negro
being protected in all his rights; his liberty, life and reputation
will be held sacred, and virtue and worth will be considered; and man,
the prince of God's creation will be crowned for doing justice unto
man.
THIRD PAPER.
IS THE CRIMINAL NEGRO JUSTLY DEALT WITH IN THE COURTS OF THE SOUTH?
BY GEORGE T. ROBINSON, A. M., LL. B.
[Illustration: Capt. Geo. T. Robinson]
CAPTAIN GEORGE T. ROBINSON, A. M., LL. B.
George Thomas Robinson was born in Macon, Miss., January 12,
1854, of slave parents. An orphan, in 1865, he set out to
fight life's battles with no one to guide and protect him.
He has risen to a place of distinction--a journalist of
note, a lawyer of high standing, a learned professor of law,
an orator of repute, a molder of thought, and a reformer. He
received his first inspiration from a remark which he heard
Hon. C. S. Smith, now a bishop in the A. M. E. Church, make
to a public school of which he was a pupil. It was: "A boy
can make of himself whatever he has a mind to." George said
to himself, "I will make speeches, too." Since that time
Captain Robinson and Bishop Smith have delivered many
addresses together. They spoke at the Emancipation
Celebration in Nashville, 1st of January, 1892, which took
place in the Representative Hall of the capitol. They were
the principal speakers.
An afternoon paper on the 2nd said: "The ablest address of
the occasion was delivered by Capt. George T. Robinson on
Abraham Lincoln. The speaker electrified the audience."
"Cap." Robinson graduated from Fisk University in 1885 and
from law in Central Tennessee College, now Walden
University, both of Nashville, Tenn. He is a professor of
law in the university.
In 1875 he refused a seat in the Legislature of Mississippi,
in order to complete his education. In 1886 he delivered the
commencement address at Lane College, Jackson, Tenn.; the
same year he began the publication of the "Tennessee Star"
in Nashville. In 1887 he was made a Captain in the Tennessee
National Guard by Governor R. L. Taylor, In 1888 he was on
the invitation committee to invite President Cleveland to
Nashville and served on Gen. W. H. Jackson's staff as
commander of a division in the parade. In 1893 he was a
nominee on the Citizens' ticket for the city council. In
1896 he was appointed a member of the executive committee of
the Negro department of the Tennessee Centennial and was
chairman of the Military Committee. But the entire committee
resigned before the exposition opened.
Settling in Nashville in 1886, he soon forged his way to the
front and became a champion of Negro rights. Hon. George N.
Tillman says of him: "He is one of the best and ablest men
of his race in the State." Bishop Evans Tyree says:
"Professor Robinson is a giant physically and mentally." Mr.
Robinson's fame rests on his journalistic career.
The "Star" was regarded as one of the ablest edited Negro
journals ever published. After several years of successful
work for God and humanity, it consolidated with the
"Indianapolis Freeman."
The "Star" made its advent in the midst of a big social
scandal with a pastor of the most prominent Baptist Church
in the city, the central figure. With the large following
the divine had, it was not only unpopular, but dangerous to
fight him, especially since he had been acquitted by the
courts; and a large majority of his congregation endorsed
the verdicts. The editor routed the opposition. He told the
preacher that he had to quit that pulpit and leave the city.
This was the beginning of a reformation in colored society
in the city which was far reaching, and brought editor
Robinson into prominence. "He woke up one morning and found
himself famous." His article, "A Pure Ministry," caused the
reformer to be welcomed to Nashville as a Moses.
I answer this question in the negative.
There are some exceptions, but proof is too abundant to gainsay the
assertion.
In the first place, all of the machinery of the law is in the hands of
the white man. He is judge, jury, sheriff, constable, and policeman.
Race prejudice and antipathy so over-ride reason, that the average
dispenser of justice is blinded to a sense of right, especially when a
white man appears against an accused Negro. What is sop for the white
man, is not always sop for the black man. As a matter of fact, the
black man is discriminated against in everything in the South, and it
would be unreasonable to expect the courts would do otherwise.
The presumption of law is that the accused is innocent, and that
presumption stands as a witness in his favor until overcome by
credible proof. But in the average court of the South, this applies to
white men only. The Negro is presumed to be guilty, and the burden of
proof is placed upon him to establish his innocence.
Cases have come under my observation where the accused Negro was not
only tried without being represented by counsel, but on ex parte
evidence, the black defendant not being permitted to testify in his
own behalf or to introduce proof. These cases were not in courts of
record.
The organic law of the land guarantees not only trial by jury on an
indictment or presentment, but entitles the accused to be heard by
himself and counsel and to introduce witnesses. In some instances, the
accused is not even in court. The matter is prearranged and the
imprisoned wretch is informed afterward and forced into agreeing to
the "sentence," as the easiest way out of trouble. It is a rare thing
now to see a Negro on a jury In the South.
Even the Federal courts are ignoring him. A white man does not
consider a Negro his peer. Then from a white man's standpoint, a
colored man tried by a white jury is not tried by his peers.
The Constitution is violated in letter and spirit, in order that the
criminal Negro may not be justly dealt with. The greater the demand
to keep the convict ranks filled up, the more unjustly is the black
criminal dealt with in the severity of the sentence.
The very fact that Negroes are not permitted to serve on juries, even
when all the parties are black, proves that it is for the purpose of
preventing justice being done the accused Negro.
One of the most popular courts in the South is the Court of Judge
Lynch. This "court" comes pretty nearly voicing the sentiment of the
section where it thrives and does a large business. Members of this
court are summoned as jurors to try Negroes, in legal courts, and thus
the mob spirit is carried into the very temple of justice and is meted
out to the black criminal in the name of the law. In such cases, who
could expect a just verdict? Again, the professional juror, believing
his job depends on the number and severity of the convictions of
Negroes, is always ready to strain a point in order to convict.
Instead of giving the accused the benefit of the doubt, he seeks to
ease his guilty conscience by rapping criminal laws.
The Negro who outrages the person of a female, is worthy of death--a
legal death. His crime is no less heinous because his victim is
colored--the crime in either case is blacker than the hinges of
midnight.
A mob composed of white men takes the ravisher of a white female and
burns him at the stake or hangs him and riddles his body with bullets
or dismembers his body.
In such a case the criminal is not only unjustly dealt with, for both
the moral and civil laws are violated, but a great sin is committed
against society, the moral sensibilities are blunted and the crime
intended to be suppressed is given new impetus.
Mob violence is the violation of every penal law. The victim has no
show whatever.
A mob is not composed of men who have it in their hearts to respect
the rights of the victim of their fury.
This is the cause of so many innocent, inoffensive Negro men, women
and children perishing at the hands of mobs. Mob violence leads to the
utter disregard for law and order, and increases crime, making
criminals of "some of the best citizens."
There can be no such thing as dealing justly with the criminal Negro,
as long as the rule is to deal unjustly with all Negroes.
For instance, take the black laws, notably the Jim Crow car laws and
the infamous election laws, the most outrageous ever inflicted upon a
free people. The Negro has been legislated out of the legislative
halls, leaving the white man clear sailing in enacting unjust laws
which discriminate against all Negroes alike, regardless of condition,
culture, refinement, wealth, position or station.
The law places the mark of Cain upon him. His aspirations and
ambitions must be curbed in spite of his fitness by character and
training. The worthlessness of the Negro does not cause the opposition
that the prosperity of the best of the race does. The legislator and
constitution maker aims his darts at the latter class.
This state of affairs obtains in every Southern State; and the fact
that the ballot, our only safeguard, has been taken from us, shows
that the criminal Negro need not expect to be dealt with justly.
The nearest approach to fair play is to be had in the larger towns and
cities of the South, and even here the chances are against the Negro.
But it will not always be thus. A change will come sooner or later.
Let us be courageous, do our best and trust in God.
FOURTH PAPER.
IS THE CRIMINAL NEGRO JUSTLY DEALT WITH IN THE COURTS OF THE SOUTH?
BY ATTORNEY J. THOMAS HEWIN.
[Illustration: J. Thomas Hewin.]
J. THOMAS HEWIN.
J. Thomas Hewin was born in Dinwiddie County, Va., December
24, 1871. His parents were slaves. He was left an orphan at
the age of thirteen, with no knowledge even of the alphabet.
At the age of seventeen he was seized with a desire for an
education. Finding no opportunity for mental improvement, he
went to Richmond, Va., in 1889, where he found employment in
a stone quarry. He took his books with him and studied at
meal-time. In the fall he became janitor of a business
college. Finding that he could do his janitor work mornings
and evenings, he entered the public school of Richmond and
afterward graduated from the Richmond Normal School as
valedictorian of his class.
So thrifty was Mr. Hewin, that when he graduated from
school, he had a bank account of $1,375 to his credit.
He also graduated from the Boston University Law School, and
after returning to his native state was admitted to the bar.
He was especially helpful to the unfortunate of his race.
He organized in Richmond the Anti-Deadly Weapon League among
the young colored men of the place, for which he received
the commendation of the press and people. He is a member of
the Baptist Church, an ardent worker among his people, a
power as an organizer and an orator of the Frederick
Douglass type.
For a man of color to approach a subject of this kind, first of all,
he must crucify "self." He must not imagine that he is writing to suit
the whims, fancies and caprices of a single individual, but must
confine himself to the pure and unadulterated truth. To discuss this
question from a lawyer's point of view, that is to say, by detailed
cases, would be unintelligible to an ordinary layman's mind.
Therefore, we must confine ourselves to the subject from a layman's
way of understanding legal matters. The Negro occupies to-day a
peculiar position in the body politic. He is not wanted in politics,
because his presence in official positions renders him obnoxious to
his former masters and their descendants. He is not wanted in the
industrial world as a trained handicraftsman, because he would be
brought into competition with his white brother. He is not wanted in
city positions, because positions of that kind are always saved for
the white wardheeling politicians. He is not wanted in State and
Federal offices, because there is an unwritten law that a Negro shall
not hold an office. He is not wanted on the Bench as a judge, because
he would have to pass upon the white man's case also. Nor is he wanted
on public conveyances, because here his presence is obnoxious to white
people.
But let us not lose sight of our subject which is: Is the criminal
Negro justly dealt with in the courts of the South? Permit the author
of this article to say that there is no section in this country where
there is not some prejudice against the Negro.
Whether the Negro be tried for a crime he commits in the North or
South, he will get as fair a verdict upon the law and evidence as
presented in a Southern court as in the courts of any State in this
Union. When we see such awful examples of brutality and inhumanity as
occur in some sections of our common country against the Negro, we do
not wonder that people who live in distant lands say that there can be
no justice for a Negro in the Southern States. This assertion has been
repeated so often, that now it is a common thing for men to say that a
Negro can get no justice in the South. Yet it is important for us to
note that not one of these miscarriages of justice is traceable to the
partiality of the courts. They are the result of men's prejudices, who
are not willing for the Negro's case to be tested upon its merits,
because they know that in nine cases in ten he would be acquitted in a
court of justice; and for this reason they take the law into their own
hands, rather than submit it to an intelligent, cool and unprejudiced
judicial body as every court is. Is there a man under heaven who would
charge this state of affairs up against the courts of the South?
Certainly, no one can be found who would do it. It has been my
experience in my State in the trial of criminal cases that in nine
cases out of ten, the white juries are in sympathy with the poor,
ignorant Negro. I think the game rule will hold good in other Southern
States. When we approach the subject of criminal law, we must
constantly bear in mind that the object of every criminal prosecution
is twofold: (1) to reform the criminal; (2) to make an example of him,
so that the public will be deterred from the commission of the same
offense. It is not the severity of a criminal prosecution that deters
crime, but it is the certainty of punishment, when crime is committed.
While it is true that the courts of the South as constituted, at
present, give the Negro equal justice upon the law and facts of his
case, yet we must bear in mind that a criminal prosecution is not
ended with judgment in the courts. There are other humane principles
to be put into operation, in order that the criminal may receive the
benefits of his punishment. The relation of the Southern courts
towards the Negro in this respect is particularly weak. Splendid
examples of this may be seen in the "Convict Lease System," prevailing
in the States of South Carolina, Arkansas and other Southern States.
Under this system a Negro may be convicted of a felony calling for a
minimum term of imprisonment, and yet serve out a life-time in prison.
It is a system which, instead of reforming the Negro, gradually
re-enslaves him. It has become such an outrage upon justice and common
decency that the eyes of the civilized world are upon the United
States to see how long a democratic government will tolerate such an
outrage upon common justice and a defenseless people. Yet, when we, at
home, begin to trace the causes of this evil, we invariably ascribe
them to the courts of the South. Wrong! Wrong! The courts of the South
are not legislative bodies, but judicial bodies whose function it is
to interpret the laws made, and not to make laws. That right in a
republic, like ours, belongs exclusively to the legislative
department, and not to the judiciary. The failure on the part of the
public to distinguish between the legislative and judicial branches of
the government accounts in a large measure for the criticism that has
been made upon the courts of the South in their dealings with the
criminal Negro. It is well for us to bear in mind that a court cannot
make a law, but can only confine its opinion to the law as it is. It
is a well-known fact that the United States and the several States
composing the same are governed by written constitutions; also, that
in a constitutional government all laws must be uniform in their
operation. Hence, no law can be made that will operate more harshly
upon a Negro than upon a white man who is guilty of the same offense.
The criminal Negro naturally thinks that he is dealt with unjustly in
the court. I have never seen in my practice a Negro who did not think
that a white judge and a white jury were not his enemies, and that
they were looking for false evidence upon which to convict him, and
were not desirous of passing upon his case on the law and evidence as
presented. This, in a large measure, accounts for the enormous fees
paid by Negroes to white attorneys for the simplest trouble they may
get into. They believe that a white man has more influence in a court
than a Negro lawyer, as though the laws were based upon favors to
individuals rather than upon fixed rules of judicial construction. As
for the judiciary of other States, I cannot speak, but for Virginia,
I can and will say, that for the integrity of her judiciary--a fairer
and more impartial set of men cannot be found in this country. Never,
in my life, has anyone of them treated me amiss in their courts, nor
can I point to a single case where snap judgment was meted out to a
man of color, for the simple reason that he was colored. The
experience of my brother members of the Bar in other States seems to
tally with mine in this respect. Though I did once read of a
Mississippi judge who told some colored men who had assembled in his
court to listen to the trial of one of their race that this was a
white man's country, and that Negroes had no business in a court room,
unless there on business. Lest we forget it, we will say it now that
the greatest of all virtues is charity. The numerous complaints we
hear about the maltreatment of the Negro, do not come from within, but
from without. They come from people who know nothing of the position
we occupy in the South. They tell us that the Southern people are our
enemies, that they are doing us all the harm that can be done to any
people. Worst of all, our people in many instances, are silly enough
to believe them--ignorant of the fact that their success depends upon
making their next door neighbors their friends. The same people take
this charge and lay it to the courts of justice. Shame that in a
democratic government like ours a free people should be slaves to such
tricksters whose only object is to create discord among a poor and
defenseless people! When we hear people charging the Southern courts
with treating the Negro unjustly, it reminds us of an old colored lady
who was once warning a young colored man about dying in his sins. The
young man wanted to know if the fire in hell was hot. The old lady
said, "Hunney de olde sinners fetch their fire wid dem." If the Negro
gets a harsh verdict at the Bar in a Southern court, it is because he
brings his fire with him. Just why it is that the Negro cannot see
things in the same light, I do not know. It is a rule of physics that
action is equal to reaction and in the contrary direction. By the side
of that we can put this statement, that a man is worked upon by that
which he works. The Negro, as a rule, labors under the belief that he
is an object of persecution and proscription, and in turn that insane
belief so works upon him that it is useless for anybody to endeavor to
make him believe otherwise. There is one thing I must say before I
close and that is this, that if the Negro wants to break down the
great undercurrent against him in the courts of the South, he must do
all in his power to establish among his own people the element of
caste--a line between the good and bad. He must frown upon those who
do wrong, and uphold those who do right. He must lay aside the old
adage that you must never do anything against your own color. If a man
is my color, and he is wrong, I am against him. If a man is my color
and he is right, I am for him. Let the Negro adopt this as a maxim,
and justice in the courts of the South is his, now and forever.
TOPIC VII.
TO WHAT EXTENT IS THE NEGRO PULPIT UPLIFTING THE RACE?
BY BISHOP GEORGE WYLIE CLINTON, M. A., D. D.
[Illustration: Bishop Geo. W. Clinton.]
BISHOP GEORGE WYLIE CLINTON, A. M., D. D.
The career of Bishop George Wylie Clinton, A. M., D. D.,
furnishes indisputable evidence that merit wins success, and
that industry, joined with native and acquired ability,
cannot be denied pre-eminence. His is a story of a man, who,
starting life with a definite goal in view, has allowed
neither the blandishments of flattery nor the frosts of
discouragement to hinder his progress; but, impressing his
great personality upon all with whom he came in contact, he
moved steadily forward, and is now one of the best examples
of erudition, eloquence and practicability in the Negro
pulpit.
This remarkable man was born March 28, 1859, in Lancaster
County, South Carolina. As a child he was religiously
inclined and thoughtful beyond his years, and none who knew
him was surprised, when at the age of ten years, he became a
member of the A. M. E. Zion Church. When quite young he was
sent to the public school, and afterwards to a private
school where he remained until 1874, when he entered the
South Carolina University. In 1876 when the Democrats
succeeded in electing Wade Hampton governor, all the colored
students were forced to withdraw from said university and
thus, after finishing the Junior Classical year he went to
Brainard Institute, Chester, S. C., from which he graduated
with very high honors.
Young Clinton finished his education by taking Theology,
Greek and Hebrew at Livingstone College. Realizing that the
urgent need of his people was education, he became a
successful and conspicuous educator. For ten years, with all
his energy, he was engaged in the public education of his
people, being at one time Principal of Lancaster (S. C.)
High School and Industrial Institute; and he held a similar
position in the Howard Graded School of Union, S. C. Both of
the above schools made marvelous advancement while under his
management. He founded a private school at Rock Hill, S. C.,
out of which has come the widely known Clinton Institute. As
a writer, Bishop Clinton is easily among the best which the
race has produced. In his style there is wonderful richness,
energy and variety. His chaste, pleasing and conservative
writings made the leading papers of his State seek his
contributions.
He founded the A. M. E. Zion Quarterly Review, which he
issued for two years with increasing success; and in 1892 he
transferred it, free of debt, to the General Conference. His
eminence as an editor was so pronounced that said General
Conference elected him editor of the Star of Zion. During
his incumbency in this office he added to his fame as a
thoughtful, versatile writer, and inaugurated the plan by
which the A. M. E. Zion publication was established.
Naturally, his greatest fame was made in the pulpit, for he
is a most eloquent man, and possesses much magnetism. Added
to a most pre-possessing personality, and a sonorous but
well modulated voice, the Bishop has all the graces of a
finished orator, and all the charms of a deep, earnest
scholar. Like Martin Luther, he intended to study law; but
the Bible overshadowed Blackstone. He began to preach at
twenty years of age and in 1896 was elected Bishop in the A.
M. E. Zion Church.
In spite of a multiplicity of duties, the Bishop finds time
to serve as President of Atkinson College; and so well has
he supervised and managed its affairs, that it is enjoying
great popularity and is maintaining a high intellectual
standing.
He was married, February 6, 1901, to Miss Marie Louise Clay
of Huntsville, Ala. His wife is a highly accomplished lady,
and a soloist of national repute. He has one son, George
William, being the issue of his former marriage to the late
Mrs. Annie K. Clinton. The Bishop lives in becoming style at
Charlotte, N. C., where he owns some valuable, and
well-located property. His mother, for whom he has always
manifested the deepest affection, makes her home with her
distinguished son. Bishop Clinton is yet young; and the
church and the race have every reason to hope for many more
years of the distinguished services of this brilliant
leader.
From the establishment of the gospel system the pulpit has occupied an
important, unique and potential position in all things pertaining to
man's well being along moral, social and spiritual lines.
It has not failed to concern itself about other affairs that tended to
man's betterment. It may be stated in brief that at one time or
another the pulpit has taken a deep interest and exerted a helpful, as
well as a healthy influence in whatever has tended to man's highest
and best welfare. Speaking of the Christian ministry, Daniel Webster
on one occasion said: "The ministers of Christianity, departing from
Asia-Minor, traversing Asia, Africa and Europe, to Iceland, Greenland
and the poles of the earth, suffering all things, enduring all things,
raising men everywhere from ignorance of idol worship to the knowledge
of the true God, and everywhere bringing life and immortality to
light, have only been acting in obedience to the divine instruction;
and they still go forth. They have sought, and they still seek, to be
able to preach the gospel to every creature under the whole heaven.
And where was Christianity ever received, where were the truths ever
poured into human hearts, where did its waters, springing up into
everlasting life, ever burst forth, except in the track of a Christian
ministry?
"Did we ever hear of an instance; does history record an instance, of
any part of the globe Christianized by lay preachers or lay teachers?
And descending from kingdoms and empires to cities, countries, to
parishes and villages, do we not all know, that, wherever Christianity
has been carried, and wherever it has been taught by human agency,
that agency was the agency of the ministers of the gospel."
In the above high tribute from one of the greatest American statesmen
since the Republic began its existence, we have set forth the peculiar
work as well as the grand achievements of the pulpit. But as has been
stated in the previous paragraph the pulpit has ever sought to uplift
man on every line where his uplifting meant his highest good.
The Negro pulpit has not been an exception in the great work of
uplifting mankind, especially that part of mankind with which it is
ostensibly identified. No other pulpit ever had a more difficult task
or labored under greater disadvantages than the Negro pulpit. In the
very beginning the Negro pulpit had the leadership and the
enlightenment of the race in spiritual and intellectual knowledge
thrust upon it, when it was neither qualified nor regularly organized.
Despite the disability within and the disadvantages without the Negro
pulpit became the pioneer in the first movements to better the
condition of the race by lifting it from the degradation and
disorganized state in which it was left by slavery.
In almost every effort and successful plan which have been inaugurated
since the race began its life of freedom the Negro pulpit has been the
prime promoter and the advance guard. When other leaders have
faltered, failed or retreated, the Negro pulpit has remained steadfast
and redoubled its efforts.
As is indicated in the quotation from America's greatest orator,
Daniel Webster, the chief and first work of the pulpit is spiritual
instruction.
As an evidence of the success of the Negro pulpit along this line the
race may point to a larger percentage of Negro Christians according to
population than is true of any other people in this Christian land.
While it is true the Negro brought the Christian religion over from
slavery as the best heritage which that cruel system bequeathed to
him, it remained for the Negro pulpit to give shape, tone and organic
significance to Negro Christianity.
In organizing the Negro into separate and distinctly racial societies
for the conduct of religious worship and church government the Negro
pulpit did a work which has given the race greater prestige and more
clearly demonstrated its capabilities and possibilities than any other
work which has been done by or for the race toward uplifting it. When
the Negro proved his ability to organize and conduct successfully a
religious denomination of great size and strength, it proved its
capacity to develop and govern itself along any other line. Surely the
words of the prophet in which he speaks of a people "scattered and
peeled," "a nation meted out and trodden down," seem fittingly
applicable to the condition of the Negro just emerged from slavery.
It was this people, thus situated, that the Negro pulpit took hold of
and formed into church societies and religious denominations, which
now have followings which number up into the hundred thousands and
possess property valued at millions of dollars deeded to, and held by
and for the race.
Quickly seconding the work of organization followed the work of
education. Before the free school began the Negro preacher became a
teacher of his people to the full extent of his ability. Those who
were sufficiently qualified found employment as public school
teachers, while the more progressive and better qualified began to
plan for institutions of higher grade to better qualify themselves and
prepare teachers and leaders for the future weal of the race.
Whether we point to Wilberforce at Xenia, Ohio, secured to the A. M.
E. Church through the late lamented Bishop D. A. Payne, D. D.;
Livingstone College, over which that prince of American orators and
foremost of Negro educators, Dr. Joseph Chas. Price, presided, from
its permanent organization to his universally mourned death; the State
University; the Chief Negro Baptist School located at Louisville,
Kentucky, or the scores of other schools of high grade, it is a fact
beyond dispute that the Negro pulpit began the initiative and has
exerted the most helpful and controlling influence since they were
founded.
A majority of the college, seminary and high school presidents and
principals, as well as some of the strongest members of the several
faculties, are men from the pulpit or men who do double duty by
serving as best they can the pulpit and schoolroom.
In politics as well as in other spheres some of the most effective
work which has been done for the uplifting of the race has been done
by the Negro pulpit.
To the writer's personal knowledge some of the ablest, most faithful
and useful men found in the constitutional conventions, legislatures
and county offices during the reconstruction period were men from the
Negro pulpit.
The Rev. James Walker Hood (A. M. E. Zion), now Bishop J. W. Hood,
D. D., LL. D., in the Constitutional Convention of North Carolina, in the
Legislature, and as Assistant Superintendent of Education for the
State, did a work which contributed not only to the uplift of the race
but to the best interest of all the people of the State.
Rev. Henry McNeal Turner, D. D., LL. D. (A. M. E. Church), as
legislator in Georgia, exerted an influence which is still felt in
that State.
Bishop B. W. Arnett, D. D. (A. M. E.), whose efforts in the Ohio
Legislature secured the repeal of the "Black Laws"; Rev. D. I. Walker
(A. M. E. Zion), as school commissioner and State Senator from Chester
County, South Carolina; Rev. J. E. Wilson (M. E.), as school
commissioner and postmaster at Florence, South Carolina; Rev. Wm.
Thomas (A. M. E.), and R. H. Cain (A. M. E.), Legislator, Congressman
and later Bishop; Rev. H. R. Revels (M. E.), United States Senator,
whose deportment in the United States Senate and in other walks of
life called forth the highest encomiums from the Southern press; Rev.
Henry Highland Garnett (Presbyterian), and Rev. M. G. Hopkins
(Presbyterian), and Owen L. W. Smith (A. M. E. Zion), United States
Minister to the Republic of Liberia, each and all have contributed
much to the uplifting of the race in the political sphere. But the
Negro pulpit has not confined its efforts along the line of race
organization to the religious sphere. Knowing, as every thoughtful
leader and man of the race must know, that material possessions,
financial standing and social combination for material well being are
indispensable, the Negro pulpit has not failed to project, foster and
encourage organizations of a character to benefit the race along the
above lines. In Masonry the Negro pulpit has ever held a commanding
influence and served a most useful purpose. The same is to some extent
true in Odd Fellowship and other societies which have been helpful to
the race. But the most substantial organization now operated by and
for the Negro race in this country are the True Reformers, Galilean
Fishermen and Birmingham, Alabama, Penny Savings Bank.
The well-known and much lamented Rev. Wm. W. Brown (M. E.), C. C.
Steward (A. M. E. Zion), W. R. Pettiford (Baptist), were the chief
factors in founding and firmly establishing these healthy and helpful
race institutions, which are still doing a thriving and widening
business which is not only uplifting the race but benefiting the
community at large. The Hale Infirmary, established by the widow of
the late Elder Hale (A. M. E. Zion), of Montgomery, Alabama, in
compliance with the expressed wish of her husband while living; the
Orphanages of Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina, established and
now being managed by Revs. Jenkins and E. A. Carroll (Baptist), in the
above cities; also the Orphanage at Oxford, North Carolina,
established by ministers of the Baptist Church, according to
information obtained by the writer; the Episcopal Industrial School of
Charlotte, North Carolina, founded by Rev. P. P. Alston (Episcopal),
are but a few of the many ways in which the Negro pulpit is uplifting
the race. In the literary sphere the Negro pulpit has made numerous
and valuable contributions which stand to the credit of the race and
add to American literary productions.
Bishops Payne, whose "History of the A. M. E. Church" and "Domestic
Education;" B. T. Tanner's several works; Levi J. Coppin's "Key to the
Bible," and "Baptized Children;" W. J. Gaines' "Negro and the White
Man;" Dr. H. T. Johnson's "Logos;" Rev. Whitman's works; Rev. T. G.
Steward's works; Bishop J. W. Hood's (A. M. E. Zion) "Negro in
Christian Pulpit," "History of the A. M. E. Zion Church" and
"Apocalypse Revealed;" Bishop J. B. Small's "Pulpiteer," "Human Heart"
and "Predestination;" Dr. W. J. Simmon's (Baptist) "Men of Mark;"
Bishop Holsey's (C. M. E.) sermons and addresses; Dr. C. H. Phillip's
(C. M. E.) "C. M. E. Church History;" Dr. G. L. Blackwell's (A. M. E.
Zion) "Model Home;" Rev. Geo. C. Lowe's (Congregational) poems; Rev.
J. D. Corrother's (A. M. E. Zion) poems; Rev. W. H. Nelson's (M. E.)
"A Walk With Jesus;" Dr. Alexander Crummell's (Episcopal) sermons and
addresses and papers, with scores of books I can not mention for lack
of space, besides others I have not seen or heard about, are
contributions which cannot help but inspire and uplift the race. The
greatest and most widely known race organization that is endeavoring
to uplift the Negro along social lines and combat the prejudices,
caste regulations and other efforts to crush out race manhood and turn
back the hand in the dial plate of the Negro's progress, is the
Afro-American Council, headed by that born leader of men, the
eminently pious and ever aggressive race leader, Bishop Alexander
Walters, D. D. (A. M. E. Zion), and his most substantial following is
made up of representatives of all the Negro pulpits in America.
In the Negro Press Association the Negro pulpit is largely and ably
represented and the preacher editors are doing their work well. The
above brief and partial (but partial only for lack of broader
information and of more space) is but a feeble testimony to what the
Negro pulpit is doing toward uplifting the race.
In the religious sphere the Negro pulpit stands out in bold prominence
as the chief agency in the work of uplifting the race. In organizing
and perpetuating existing organizations the Negro pulpit now, as
before, leads all other agencies.
In the work of education the progressive pulpit is always a patron and
supporter, as well as a workman which needeth not to be ashamed.
In the endeavor to constrain the people to a settled condition,
instill the principles of Christianity in all the affairs of life, and
promote peace and harmony between man and man, regardless of race, the
Negro pulpit is doing a work which is ever adding new stones to the
grand building of race progress and influence. I know no single agency
which is accomplishing so much in the task of uplifting the race as
the Negro pulpit. What the great Negro religious and social
organizations are doing, especially in such establishments as the A.
M. E. Zion, A. M. E. and Baptist Publication establishments at
Charlotte, North Carolina; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Nashville,
Tennessee, and Jackson, Tennessee, is due largely to the management
and business skill of the Negro pulpit. Now as in the past the Negro
pulpit constitutes the true leadership of the race.
Having been the pioneer in almost every race uplifting enterprise it
will ever heartily co-operate with those who have come along in the
paths blazed out by the Negro pulpit until the race shall take its
place among the foremost peoples of the earth in every good work for
the advancement of man and for the glory of God.
SECOND PAPER.
TO WHAT EXTENT IS THE NEGRO PULPIT UPLIFTING THE RACE?
BY REV. J. B. L. WILLIAMS, D. D.
[Illustration: J. B. L. Williams, D. D.]
REV. JOHN B. L. WILLIAMS, D. D.
Rev. John B. L. Williams, D. D., was born in Baltimore, Md.,
November 22, 1853. His parents, John W. Williams and
Elizabeth Williams, were examples of piety, and were of
prominent family connections in Baltimore. At an early age
he was placed in a Roman Catholic School. Later in life he
attended the city public schools and Douglass Institute. At
17 he was converted and joined the Methodist Episcopal
church. At 18 he was divinely impressed with a call to the
ministry. At 19 he became an apprentice at cabinet work and
undertaking and completing his apprenticeship engaged in
business for three years in Baltimore. In his 22d year he
was licensed to preach by the Quarterly conference of John
Wesley M. E. Church in Baltimore.
In March, 1876, he abandoned his business and left Baltimore
to accept an appointment at Oak Hill, Ga. The same year he
joined the Savannah Conference in its organization by Bishop
Levi Scott, and he has rendered efficient service in the
leading charges of the Conference: Newnan, three years; Loyd
Street, Atlanta, one year; Presiding Elder Atlanta District,
four years; M. E. Church at LaGrange, five years. He was
honored by his brethren to the election of secretary of the
Conference fifteen successive years. While pastor at Newnan
he was principal of the city public school. At LaGrange he
served two years as a member of the faculty of LaGrange
Seminary and one year its principal. In 1882 he entered
Clark University, taking studies in the college preparatory
course. The same year he entered Gammon Theological Seminary
and graduated in 1885 with honor. In 1891 he was transferred
by Bishop H. W. Warren to the Florida Conference to take
charge of Ebenezer M. E. Church in Jacksonville. He served
Ebenezer Church five years, during which time its membership
was doubled the last year, being marked by a great revival
which lasted two weeks and resulted in the conversion of 130
persons. His next charge was Trinity Church, St. Augustine,
where he served five years with success. He is now pastor of
Trinity M. E. Church, Fernandina. As a preacher he is
deliberate, convincing, persuasive and instructive. His
sermons are well constructed, choicely worded, rhetorically
polished, full of thought and eloquently delivered. He was
honored with the degree of Doctor of Divinity by Wiley
University of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Marshall,
Texas, May 20, 1895.
The Christian pulpit has ever been acknowledged to be a great power
for good among all people. Coming as it does divinely commissioned and
bearing to man a divine message, it has a claim upon the attention and
the acceptation of mankind. Its claim to be heard is founded on the
fact that it has something to say--some truth to communicate about
God, His character, His purpose concerning man, His unbounded goodness
and infinite love--about man, his duty and his destiny, and the great
salvation offered to him. The Christian pulpit is peculiarly and
inseparably interwoven in the social life, moral deportment and
religious growth of the people. In its character it is to be the
representation of the highest standard of ethical deportment and the
best example of religious life. From it the people are to receive
their inspiration for that which is pure, exalted and ennobling. To
the Christian pulpit the people look for the loftiest ideals of
life. In this respect the Negro more than any other people has been
largely dependent upon the pulpit. Emerging as he did more than a
quarter of a century ago from a thraldom which fettered his body and
imprisoned his intellect and buried him in ignorance, it was the
Christian pulpit represented at that time by the good old fathers of
those dark and trying days--to whom the good and lamented Bishop
Haygood paid high compliment in one of his addresses--they it was who
saved their people from conditions which would have been vastly more
deplorable but for such moral and religious instruction as they were
able to impart. As a race we have moved an amazing distance from that
period. Schools, seminaries and universities have sprung up as if by
magic. Educated young men and young women have gone forth from these
institutions determined to do their best for God and humanity. The
Negro press has also arisen and swayed a mighty influence for moral
and religious good, but neither the school nor the press has been
recognized as an efficient substitute for the pulpit. What was true as
regards the place and power of the pulpit to uplift the people in the
dark days of the past is equally true now in these days of light and
knowledge. The educated and Christian pulpit is an indispensable
factor in the elevation of the race to-day.
The extent to which the Negro pulpit is uplifting the race is to be
seen in the gradual but certain and permanent reformation taking place
in the social and moral life of the race. Social distinction, based
exclusively upon moral character, is being clearly defined and rigidly
observed. The moral standard has been elevated and the conceptions of
the race in relation to ethical life has been greatly improved and
beautifully exemplified in the lives of thousands. The home life of
the race is purer and the sacredness of the marriage vow is gaining
pre-eminence over the divorce system. The home life of the masses is
gradually being touched and improved by the far-reaching influence of
the Negro Christian pulpit, and there are signs and indications of
better things and happier conditions. From these pulpits the Gospel
goes forth with simplicity and power. Its truth and teaching is made
to touch, shape and direct the practical side of Christian life. The
evils which exist and which are a menace to the best and purest modes
of life are strongly denounced and openly rebuked by the Negro
Christian pulpit, and the race is being led to understand that sound
moral character is the foundation upon which to build a strong,
symmetrical, well-rounded manhood.
The religious life of the race is being uplifted by the Negro
Christian pulpit. Sound is being displaced by sense in the pulpit.
Senseless emotion by thoughtful and reverential worship in the pew,
and a clear conception and deep knowledge of divine truth is being
gained by the people. The individual of pessimistic temperament may
say that the masses are not being influenced and lifted up by the
Negro pulpit, but this would be a mere statement and not an actual
fact. The pessimist lives in an unwholesome atmosphere, he will not
see the sunshine because he prefers to stay down in the valley beneath
the cloud of doubt and surmounted with the fog of hopelessness. The
educated Negro pulpit is mainly optimistic and sees beyond its
immediate surroundings. It sees to it that the leaven of sound
doctrine and moral ethics are being put into the meal, and from
personal developments believes that in process of time the whole lump
will be leavened. The Negro pulpit is awake to the gravity of its
responsibility and it is putting forth its best efforts and mightiest
endeavors to uplift the race socially, morally and religiously.
Evidences of this aim and purpose are not difficult to be seen in all
communities.
THIRD PAPER.
TO WHAT EXTENT IS THE NEGRO PULPIT UPLIFTING THE RACE?
BY REV. R. P. WYCHE, D. D.
[Illustration: Rev. R. P. Wyche.]
REV. R. P. WYCHE, D. D.
Robert P. Wyche was born near Oxford, the county seat of
Granville County, N. C. His father was a carpenter by trade
and early taught his son the use of tools. In his humble
home he was taught the dignity of labor, fidelity to duty,
obedience to God and faith in prayer. These simple lessons
shaped the course of his life probably more than any other
influence. For a while he attended night school, as he
worked in the day in order to earn the means to buy his
books and to pay other necessary expenses. Robert was
ambitious to excel. From the night school he went to a
private school at Henderson, N. C. This school was conducted
by the Rev. J. H. Crawford, a Presbyterian minister. Here
Robert prosecuted his studies with eagerness, fitting
himself to enter the preparatory department of Biddle
University. The President of the university, the Rev. S.
Mattoon, D. D., became interested in Robert, whom he
esteemed as a promising student, and assured him that no
worthy student should leave school for the want of means.
After graduating in 1877 his first thought was to enter the
medical profession, but afterward he abandoned this idea and
began seriously to consider the call to the ministry. After
teaching school for a short period he returned to the
seminary and took the full course in theology. He was
licensed and ordained by the Presbytery of Catawba and was
called to the pastorate of Seventh Street Presbyterian
Church, at Charlotte, N. C. The degree of A. M. and the
honorary degree of D. D. were conferred upon Rev. R. P.
Wyche by Biddle University. He is at this time Moderator of
the Synod of Catawba.
He married Miss Belle Butler, a popular educator, who unites
with her husband in every measure for the true elevation of
the Negro.
The question has been raised as to the part taken by the pulpit in the
uplift of the race. The most casual observer must conclude that there
are influences at work which are elevating the Negro race, and it is
interesting and instructive to trace out the work which is done by
each individual agency.
The pulpit has long been recognised as a potent factor in the
formation of character, and the Negro pulpit is not an exception to
the general rule. Its influence may be elevating or degrading. The
character and the ability of the man in the pulpit will determine its
nature and extent.
The office itself implies an active interest in the elevation of man
from the lower to the highest stage of life. But the uneducated
ministry proved itself unequal to the task of teaching and leading the
people along the difficult path to true excellence.
Some of the most stubborn opposition to the progress of the race was
found in that class who had good reasons to fear the loss of power as
the race advanced in intelligence. All of the higher interests of
the people suffered at the hands of this class of leaders.
But let us now turn to another and better class of leaders. There are
ministers who have enjoyed the benefits of a Christian education. This
class of men form a strong factor in the elevation of the Negro. The
present attainments of the pulpit are far-reaching in their beneficent
influence upon the race.
The Negro pulpit is absolutely necessary to the higher moral
development of the Negro. This development should lie at the
foundation of all of his attainments, for men cannot reasonably hope
to rise permanently along other lines while they neglect moral
culture. The moral influence of the pulpit is now creating correct
views of life in the Negro and leading him to good citizenship. The
practical pulpit teaching along this line is having its effect in the
moral uplift of the Negro. In this way the pulpit is serving as an
uplifting force. Moral stability is the only solid foundation of an
enduring elevation.
Considered from an intellectual point of view, the pulpit is of great
value to the Negro race. The example set by the Negro pulpit in
acquiring its intellectual status is worthy of imitation, and the
youth of the rising generation will profit by it. The positive
instruction and counsel coming from safe and trusted leaders will
certainly yield its fruit. We cannot estimate the worth of the pulpit
as the moulder of the thought, the character and the destiny of the
race.
The financial status of the pulpit, under existing conditions, may be
considered comparatively good. It has been made what it now is by
industry, economy and self-denial, and stands as an object lesson for
the benefit of those wishing to better their condition. The salaries
paid Negro preachers are usually small, even less than the wages of
mechanics. But these small earnings are carefully saved and wisely
invested. As a result many of the Negro preachers have comfortable
homes, while others of them have small bank accounts. The Negro
minister has learned the dignity of labor and does not hesitate to
labor with head and hands in order to attain to the position of
usefulness and influence in the world. The people are taught in this
practical manner the lessons of industry and economy more forcibly
than in any other way, and they are thus led to secure homes, to enter
into business and to educate their children.
Our elegant church edifices are largely due to the taste, tact and
business qualities of the pulpit. These beautiful edifices exert a
refining and uplifting influence upon the lives of men.
The spiritual power of the pulpit--this is the chief power that it is
expected to wield in the world, for its mission is spiritual, and this
great fact should ever be remembered. Our deepest needs are of a
spiritual nature, and the pulpit offers to supply these deep-seated
needs and to assist us to rise to the rank of "the sons of God."
The Gospel is the divinely appointed means to elevate men in Christian
character. The promulgation of the Gospel and the exhibition of
practical Christianity are the essential elements to an onward and
upward progress.
FOURTH PAPER.
TO WHAT EXTENT IS THE NEGRO PULPIT UPLIFTING THE RACE?
BY REV. I. D. DAVIS, D. D.
[Illustration: Rev. I. D. Davis, D. D.]
REV. I. D. DAVIS, D. D.
The subject of this sketch was born at Laurens, S. C., in
1858. His parents were Nelson and Sarah Davis. In 1870 Rev.
Charles Thompson (a Presbyterian Missionary from the North)
came to Laurens and began services in a part of the town
known as "Tin Pot Ally." The first to be enrolled in his
Sunday School was the subject of our sketch.
After Rev. Thompson left Laurens our little hero went to
school to another veteran, Mr. Wright, who soon learned to
regard him highly. The late Rev. D. Gibbs now took charge of
the church, and our subject was the first to enter his
Sunday School. While the Rev. Gibbs was boarding at his
father's home, the seed of the Presbyterian ministry was
planted.
He now entered school under Rev. and Mrs. McDowell, and
began the study of the Shorter Catechism. A polyglot Bible
was offered for the most perfect recitation of the
Catechism, and he won the first prize. In 1874 he took the
examination and won the county scholarship for the State
Normal at Columbia. From this examination he was given a
teachers' certificate and taught his first school in the
country; at the close of this school he accompanied Rev. and
Mrs. McDowell to Statesville, N. C., and in November Rev.
McDowell had arranged for him to go to Biddle University,
Charlotte, N. C.
He returned home every summer and taught. So acceptable were
his services that scholars were offered to him and held
until his return from school. In 1877 on account of failing
health he remained out of school, and was chosen as the
principal of the city school at his native home. He was
always known as the "Mocking Bird" of Laurens. He was the
chorister in Sunday School and church. Returning to Biddle
University in the fall of 1878, was taken under the care of
Catawba Presbytery as a candidate for the ministry, and
graduated with the degree of A. B. in 1881. In October,
1881, he entered the seminary of Biddle University, was
licensed to preach the gospel in 1883, and was placed in
charge of the Pleasant View Church, Greenville County, South
Carolina, where he served so acceptably that he was desired
as a settled pastor. In 1884 he graduated from the seminary,
and was ordained to the full work of the gospel ministry the
next day after graduating.
He took charge of the work at Lincolnton, N. C., where he
served six years and six months, conducting both church and
school, and was then re-elected principal of the city
school.
The new church at McClintock was built under his
administration. He was chosen moderator of the Presbytery of
Catawba at Monroe, N. C., and in 1887 was sent as a
commissioner from Catawba Presbytery to the General Assembly
of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, which met
at Omaha, Neb. In 1888 the degree of A. M. was conferred by
Biddle University. In 1890 he accepted the call to
Winnsboro, S. C., continuing in the church and school work
here for four years very acceptably. In 1892 was sent as
commissioner to the General Assembly at Saratoga, N. Y. In
1894 he accepted the work at Goodwill, Sumter Co., S. C.,
where he now serves the largest Colored Presbyterian Church
in the United States. He administered communion to 2,000
communicants.
In connection with the church he has charge of the Goodwill
Academy, with an enrollment of about 100 students. In 1895
he was chosen stated clerk of Fairfield Presbytery, which
position he fills with accuracy and ability until to-day. In
1900 the degree of D. D. was conferred upon him by Biddle
University.
He has been Moderator of Fairfield Presbytery and Atlantic
Synod. He is the secretary of the Sunday School Convention,
chairman of the Committee on Vacancies and Supplies of the
Fairfield Presbytery, and chairman of the Committee on
Foreign Mission, Atlantic Synod.
The influence of the Negro pulpit on the race is immeasurable. It is
to the race what the lighthouse is to the ship laden with human souls
upon the tempestuous sea. At the close of the war when the Negroes
were in darkness, the Negro preachers were the first to come forward
to lead them to the light, and whatever may be said to the contrary,
the Negro preachers have done more for the Negro's uplift since his
emancipation than any other class of persons. We delight to boast that
the Negroes pay taxes on $400,000,000.00 worth of property, that they
have thousands of well educated men and women, that their illiteracy
has been reduced forty-five per cent, that they have hundreds of
newspapers, that they have four hundred or more skilled physicians who
are making good money, that they have hundreds of men who are engaged
in business enterprises, that they have thousands of honest, sober,
upright Christian men and women.
Now, to whom are we more indebted for all this than to the Negro
preachers, who have faithfully taught their people to save their money
and buy homes and lands, who have constantly advised them to send
their sons and daughters to the schools, who have urged their people
to patronize Negro business enterprises and Negro physicians and
lawyers, who have shown their people the importance of taking Negro
papers, who have enjoined them to be honest, sober, industrious
citizens?
TOPIC VIII.
IS IT TIME FOR THE NEGRO COLLEGES IN THE SOUTH TO BE PUT INTO THE
HANDS OF NEGRO TEACHERS?
BY PROF. N. B. YOUNG.
[Illustration: Prof. Nathan B. Young]
NATHAN B. YOUNG.
Nathan B. Young was born in Newbern, Ala., September 18th,
1862. He was educated in the private schools at Tuscaloosa,
Ala., at Talladega College, and at Oberlin College. He has
taught school in Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.
He is now President of the Florida State Normal and
Industrial College, Tallahassee.
The answer to this question depends upon what is meant by placing
these schools in the hands of Negro teachers. If it means that they
are to be manned and managed by them I answer, no. If, on the other
hand, it means that they should have some hand in managing these
schools, I answer, yes.
For two reasons I claim that the time has not arrived for the passing
of these institutions into his sole control: the first is a
_financial_ reason, the second is an _intellectual_ or _cultural_
reason.
At present the majority of the Negro colleges and institutions of
higher and professional learning are supported by white people, either
directly or indirectly, and the withdrawal of white faculties and
boards of trustees will mean a withdrawal of white supporters. Whether
this withdrawal will be logical or ethical, it will nevertheless be a
fact. Those whose duty it is to collect funds for these schools can
testify to the certainty of such a result if the experiment should be
made.
The white man is a very careful giver to charitable institutions of
any kind, and he takes every precaution to see that his donations are
wisely expended, and that, too, according to his standards. Hence,
when he makes a charitable contribution he feels safer when one of his
own race is a trustee, or dispenser of the contribution. This explains
the fact that in cases where Negro schools under Negro management make
an appeal for large endowment funds they find it necessary to appoint
a white endowment committee to manage the fund.
The Negro has no standing in the financial world, because he has made
no financial record. This is not so much his fault as it is his
misfortune. He is without the financial experience that he would need
in order to manage successfully large sums of money such as he would
be called upon to collect and to manage in colleges. Without aid from
the white donors these colleges would be unable to do the work of a
college--in other words, with possibly one notable exception, it
takes a white man to get a white man's money, and since it is
necessary to get a white man's money to support these institutions, it
is also necessary to put their management into his hands. This
condition will gradually change as the Negro race accumulates wealth
within itself. This will naturally bring with it that experience which
will eventually enable him to be a successful manager of these
institutions.
It is generally known among those who are familiar with college
management that the financial feature is the most difficult feature in
this work. It requires a rare combination of qualities in a man to
carry on successfully this phase of college work. The managing boards
of white colleges find it exceedingly difficult to find white men
fully equal to the task. If this takes place in the green tree, what
may we expect in a dry?
At present the Negro race, to say the least, is too poor to take on
itself the complete control of its colleges. Such a transfer would be
a calamity, indeed, for under the white management these institutions
are leading only a tolerable existence, are progressing but slowly and
some of them not at all. To take these feeble institutions, then, and
to connect them with a poorer source of supply would be practically to
destroy them--certainly seriously to handicap them.
Besides, even if their financial support were guaranteed, at present a
more serious obstacle would present itself. It would be impossible
from the present supply of educated Negro men and women to get
faculties for them. I mean, to get faculties every whit prepared for
their progressive management. An up-to-date college must have not only
strong financial backing but it must also have strong intellectual and
moral backing. Each teacher should be so trained, intellectually and
morally as to have a very keen appreciation of the deep significance
of the work in which he is engaged. This means that he must in
addition to a careful formal training, have a sort of intellectual and
culture background to cause him to stand out in clear relief before
his students as an embodiment of what he would have them become. He
should, in very truth, be "a scholar and a gentleman."
The fact that a man or a woman is a graduate from some of these
misnamed Southern "_universities_" or "_brevet_" colleges does not
argue that he has a liberal education. The fact is that there are no
Negro universities in this country and less than half a dozen "_bona
fide_" colleges. These reputed "universities" and colleges are but
indifferent high-schools for the most part, and their graduates
without additional study, are not prepared to take a place on a
college faculty. Strange to say, very few of these graduates feel the
necessity of doing additional study before becoming anxious candidates
for presidents of colleges or for professorships.
I stand by the statement that there are not enough really educated men
fully equipped to manage the colleges such as we have, not to say
anything of those that we ought to have. The race is not yet far
enough removed from slavery to have that intellectual and moral
background necessary to the bringing out of college professors and
college presidents. It has taken the white race many generations to
develop an Eliot, a Dwight, a Hadley, and an Angell, not to say
anything about the Butlers, the Harrises, and the Wheelers. These men
are developments--the very cream of the intellectual history of the
Anglo-Saxon race in America. As I have indicated elsewhere, the
trustees find it hard to fill their places when vacant.
The incipient Negro teacher and educator might as well admit the fact
of their incompetency and with the admission bend themselves with
renewed energy to hard study, laying aside all bogus degrees and
meaningless titles, and acknowledge the fact that they are yet
intellectual pigmies. If they will do this, perchance they themselves
may not only add to their own statures but they may also become the
ancestors of intellectual giants, fully competent to occupy the
positions which they fain would hold in the educational world.
Although the time has not yet come, as I believe, for the entire
management of Negro colleges by Negroes, yet the time has come when he
should have some hand in managing both as teacher and as trustee. It
would be a sad commentary upon the Negro race and upon its white
teachers to have these schools remain permanently under white tutelage
and management. It would also be a sad commentary upon the Negro to
have an alien race to continue giving its money to educate his
children. He must be brought gradually to see the necessity of his
supporting and managing his own institutions of learning. The only way
to do this is to gradually place the managing of them upon his
shoulders. Every Negro college ought to have one or more Negro
trustees on the board, as well as one or more Negro teachers on the
faculty. The only way to learn how to swim is to go into the
water--the only way for the Negro to learn how to manage his
institutions is for him to have a hand in managing them.
Of the large number of Negro youth that are graduated every year from
our colleges, there are not a few among them who have in them the
making of fine professors if they were stimulated by the sure hope of
securing a place on the faculty of their "alma mater." It is the
imperative duty of the faculties of these schools to inspire these men
to their best efforts and when they have done so it is the duty of the
trustees to give them a place on the faculty.
I would not, however, make vacancies for them by moving efficient
white teachers, but, when these white teachers fall out because of age
or other reasons, I would appoint in their places competent Negro men.
This policy would at once keep the support of the white donors and
also the support of the Negro patrons. The Negro must have a larger
hand in managing his institutions of learning even from the lowest to
the highest.
I answer, then, that the time has not yet come for the complete
transfer of Negro colleges to Negro management because the Negro is
not yet able to assume the financial control of these institutions,
nor the intellectual control; but he is able to have a larger hand in
controlling them as donor, as trustee, and as teacher. This policy is
being pursued by some of the educational agencies now at work in the
South.
The efforts of the Negro churches, especially of the A. M. E. Zion
church, the A. M. E. church, of the C. M. E. church, and a _wing_ of
the Baptist church, are to be commended in so far as they do not
assume a hostile attitude toward other agencies which pursue a
slightly different policy. There cannot be too much educational
activity among Negroes for Negroes, and there certainly should be no
antagonism among these agencies growing out of differences of opinion
as to policies and methods of work. They should all make "a long pull,
a strong pull, and a pull all together" for the educational, moral,
and spiritual uplift of the masses of the Negro people.
SECOND PAPER.
IS IT TIME FOR THE NEGRO COLLEGES IN THE SOUTH TO BE PUT INTO THE
HANDS OF NEGRO TEACHERS?
BY PROF. D. J. JORDAN, M. S., LL. B.
[Illustration: D. J. Jordan, LL. B.]
PROF. D. J. JORDAN, M. S., LL. B.
Nature has not been extravagant in her gift of geniuses.
What has come to most of our leading men has come by hard
work.
Although Prof. D. J. Jordan possesses talents about the
average, he owes his success largely to persistent work. He
was born near Cuthbert, Ga., October 18, 1866. His father
was Rev. Giles D. Jordan who was for twenty-five years a
highly respected minister in the A. M. E. Church in Georgia.
He inherits many of his excellent traits of character from
his mother, Julia Jordan.
In his early life he was unable to attend school more than
three months of the year, but by close application while in
school and faithful study during vacations, he was always
able to make the next higher class at the beginning of the
following school year.
After finishing the English branches he attended Payne High
School at Cuthbert. In 1892 he graduated at Allen
University, Columbia, S. C., with the degrees of B. S. and
LL. B.
His record at this institution was in many respects
remarkable. He was successful in passing the written
examination given by the Supreme Court of South Carolina,
and was admitted to practice in all the courts of that
state, May, 1892.
After his graduation, he returned to his native city, taught
a term and made preparations to enter upon the practice of
the legal profession, but he was prevailed upon to accept a
position on the faculty of Morris Brown College, in 1893.
He served here as Professor of Science and Dean of Law until
November, 1895, when he resigned to accept the Presidency of
Edward Waters College at Jacksonville, Fla.
He was married December 31, 1895, by Bishop A. Grant, to
Miss Carrie J. Thomas, principal of one of the public
schools of Atlanta. Four children have been born to them.
He was elected as a lay delegate to the General Conference
of the A. M. E. Church which was held at Wilmington, N. C.,
in 1896.
In the spring of '96 he accepted the position of Professor
of Literature at Morris Brown College, which position he
held until September, 1898, when he was appointed Professor
of Mathematics and Vice-President of the same institution.
The degree of M. S. was conferred upon him by Allen
University in 1900. In the Summer school, held at Clark
University in 1901, Professor Jordan was instructor in
mathematics. He has developed with the institution with
which he has been connected, fitting himself for every
promotion which has come to him.
Professor Jordan has an experience of eighteen years in the
class room and is an excellent disciplinarian. The fact that
he has filled four different chairs with credit is
sufficient argument that he is an able "all-round scholar."
His greatest strength, however, lies in his knowledge of
English. His language is chaste; his diction, pure.
As one of the best writers and speakers of the race, he has
contributed articles to our leading periodicals, including
the "Atlanta Constitution," "Atlanta Journal," "A. M. E.
Review" and "Indianapolis Freemen," and has delivered
several commencement addresses.
I am asked to say whether or not it is time for the Negro colleges in
the South to be put into the hands of Negro teachers? The education of
a people is the greatest question that can possibly concern them. It
touches every phase of human interest and holds the key to the
solution of every rational problem arising out of man's duty and
destiny. The foundations of every helpful institution known to our
social system rest upon such conceptions of right and wrong as the
people's intelligence has called into being: for true teaching is not
only the application of methods for the development of one's powers,
but is also a directing or turning of those powers into proper
channels. With any people it will not matter ultimately who now writes
the laws, issues decrees, or enforces judgments if their youth are
kept under wise, efficient instructors. How necessary, then, must it
be to a race so conditioned as is the Negro in America that their
schools should be conducted by only those who are most capable and
worthy!
However, before we attempt to answer the question propounded, it is
important that we fully comprehend its meaning. As I understand it,
the matter might be stated in other words thus: Should Negroes
exclusively be placed now on the faculties of the several missionary
colleges which Northern philanthropy has established in the South
since the close of the Civil War? There were then not only no schools
for us, but there were no teachers and no money with which to employ
teachers. No night in Egypt in the time of Israel was darker than
those years immediately following the Negro's emancipation. And what
must have been our condition to-day had not those pillars of light
been placed in our starless sky? But what is more, for thirty years
the same spirit and the same people who first made these colleges
possible among us, have continued their aid, and still make them
possible to-day.
And now let us see what advantages could be reasonably expected from
such a change in management as the subject suggests. So far as I know,
they who advocate the change establish themselves upon this
proposition, namely, "_Negro teachers_ are best for Negro schools."
And this is true, say they, (1) because being of the same race, there
must of necessity exist such a spirit of sympathy and helpfulness
between teacher and student as we could not reasonably expect were the
teacher and the taught of different races; (2) because placing before
students competent men and women of their own race as teachers sets
before them an example and an object lesson of what the students
themselves may become and do, that cannot fail to be inspiring; (3)
because the employing of Negro teachers in Negro schools furnishes an
honorable vocation to a large number of our own people who otherwise
would possibly be unemployed; (5) because Negro teachers in Negro
colleges, by their presence and work, increase the race pride among
ourselves and win for us greater confidence and respect from others.
These are weighty considerations, and, _per se_, have my most hearty
approval. But however complete may be our endorsement, we must not
forget that unqualifiedly acting upon them in the matter under
discussion would not be without its losses. Let us now consider what
these might be, and then we shall be prepared to decide whether we
would not--
"* * * rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others we know not of."
In the first place, if the people who own and sustain these schools
could be induced to sever their connection with them and turn them
fully into the hands of Negroes, although the colleges are already
built, equipped and advertised, yet, chiefly on account of our
poverty, we should have to close the majority of them at once. This
would be a most serious loss. The amount of ignorance and the lack of
trained leaders among us, together with the small pittance done for us
in the direction of even high-school education by the states and
cities in which we live certainly do not suggest the advisability of
ridding ourselves of even one agency for enlightenment. Far better
would it be for us and for the country if they were increased tenfold.
This view takes into consideration the fact that the great majority of
people who give of their means to support the schools do so because
they have confidence in the ability, integrity and experience of those
who control them. And if any one is so credulous as to believe that
the schools under the management of Negroes could command the amount,
of interest and support as they now receive, I would ask him, why
_have_ Negroes, from Mr. Booker T. Washington down, who are trying to
gain public confidence and assistance for their work, _find_ it
necessary to invite white men to accept membership on their boards of
trustees? One need not go far to find the correct answer. In this
connection, it will be in order to inquire also if there are, under
the control of Negroes, any colleges that receive anything like the
amount of money for their support that is received by similar
institutions under the management of white men?
Furthermore, the placing of the colleges referred to wholly into the
hands of Negroes would be an unnecessary drawing of the race line, and
would very effectually close our mouths against making protest or
complaint on account of our being discriminated against for similar
reasons.
Again, at this time, when there seems to be, on the part of certain
persons of influence, a foul conspiracy against the Negro, it is of
great importance that we have among us persons whose knowledge of the
facts, and whose intellectual and social standing with those whose
good opinion we value enable and impel them to speak out in our
behalf. I recall with much gratification several instances where white
persons connected with Negro schools have used the superior
opportunities afforded them by the accident of race to say good things
of us at a time when a spokesman who had the ear of the king was
sorely needed. If, under present conditions, this class of people be
sent from among us, I fear it might in a measure be with us as it was
with a certain people in ancient times when "a new king arose who knew
not Joseph."
And finally, would it not be highly presumptive and insolent on our
part to demand of others that they deliver into our keeping, without
price, property which they have purchased with their own money, and of
which we have had the use and benefit for a third of a century? Until
we shall be able to buy these colleges and properly support them, even
the serious discussion of the question, it seems to me, is
inappropriate and puerile. When, therefore, you ask me, if in my
opinion the time has come when the Negro colleges in the South should
be put into the hands of Negro teachers, I must answer you frankly,
_no_.
I would not be understood, however, as placing my approval upon
everything pertaining to the management of the schools under
consideration. I do not deny that in some cases teachers are employed
who are not possessed of the proper spirit for doing the best work
among us. They are sometimes haughty, unsocial, and unsympathetic, and
find themselves among us because there is offered better pay for less
work than was found in their own neighborhoods. But these do not
vitiate the schools; they are exceptions. I think, too, that the
faculties of the several schools, together with the boards of
trustees, should be as largely composed of competent, worthy Negroes
as the interests of the institutions will allow. I am sure that such a
policy would both encourage our people and train them in the
management of such interests, and would be fully in harmony with the
spirit and purpose of the institutions' founders. But we cannot state
this as a demand based on what is justly ours; let it stand rather on
its soundness as to what is best as a policy designed to accomplish
the highest results. Before we find too many faults, though, with
these missionary colleges, we ought to show by our full, loyal support
of the few colleges we do control, that we are both able and willing
to do the proper thing when the time shall come, if ever, for placing
the Negro colleges in the South into the hands of Negro teachers.
THIRD PAPER.
IS IT TIME FOR THE NEGRO COLLEGES IN THE SOUTH TO BE PUT INTO THE
HANDS OF NEGRO TEACHERS?
BY PROF. GEORGE A. GOODWIN.
[Illustration: Prof. G. A. Goodwin]
REV. GEORGE A. GOODWIN.
George Augustus Goodwin was born at Augusta, Ga., February
20, 1861, being the eldest son of Mr. George and Mrs.
Catherine Goodwin. His parents taught him until he was old
enough to enter the public schools taught by "Yankee
teachers." Having lost his father at an early age, he
subsequently experienced some difficulty in remaining in
school. However, his now sainted mother, by the assistance
of his uncle, Mr. Charles Goodwin, kept him in school. For
two consecutive years it was necessary for him to walk
twelve miles daily in order to secure proper school
advantages. While yet a lad he attracted the attention of
both races and was several times offered good positions as a
public school teacher. He, however, taught a private school
four miles from the city and was thereby able to attend the
Augusta Institute, now the Atlanta Baptist College. In the
spring of 1879 he united with the historic Springfield
Baptist Church, Augusta, Ga., where, for three generations,
his parents and paternal grandparents had worshiped. May 29,
1884, he graduated from the Atlanta Baptist College as
salutatorian.
On leaving school he took up teaching as a profession, in
which he has been eminently successful in developing
hundreds of young people. He has filled with credit and
satisfaction the principalship of Eddy High School at
Milledgeville, Ga., Union Academy, Gainesville, Fla.,
Preparatory Department, Livingstone College, Salisbury,
N. C.; also Atlanta Baptist College and Waller Baptist
Institute, Augusta, Ga. He was the prime factor in the
movement which resulted in the organization of the present
Georgia State Teachers' Association, of which he was
secretary for a number of years. In the organization of the
Florida Teachers' Association he was one of the original
members. As an institute lecturer he is helpful in many
ways.
Having received a call to the pastorate of the Second
Baptist Church at Gainesville, Fla., his church at Augusta,
Ga., ordained him to the ministry, January 6, 1889. He was
very successful in this work in connection with his school
duties. In July, 1895, he was happily married to the
talented Miss Anna Laura Gardner of Augusta, Ga.
In attempting to answer this question, I do so fully cognizant of the
widely differing opinions which are superinduced by the present
restive state of society. It is a delicate task. In this brief article
it is not possible to be very extensive. Condensation is a necessity.
Taking observations from ancient and modern civilizations as external
evidence, and corroborating the experiences of the present age as
internal evidence, my conclusion is reached. If my judgment is faulty,
let us remember that trite aphorism: "To err is human, to forgive,
divine."
If this be the question of the fawning element among us, then let us
beware of the leaven of the separatists. If the liberal philanthropist
makes the inquiry, let us demonstrate the wisdom of his investment by
our exhibitions of gratitude and common sense. It cannot be a serious
question with the learned sociologist, for he is too conversant with
the philosophy of history and the laws of psychology. Of the popular
idea of the over-ardent lovers of the race, it may be more comforting
to an oppressed people; but truth is better than fiction--facts
than theories. Therefore, with a conscience void of offence to all,
and with the sincere hope that right will ultimately triumph before
all is lost in the mad rush of the enthusiasts, I venture to express
some of my convictions regarding this question. The proposition
categorically stated would be: it is time for the Negro colleges in
the South to be put in the hands of Negro teachers. Such an
affirmation would imply, at least, that these colleges are elsewhere
than in the South; that the colleges in the South are not wholly nor
partially taught by Negro teachers; that those who teach in them for
some cause, real or imaginary, are not equal to the demands of the
times; that the Negro, exclusively, is superior for educating the
Negro in the South; that a crisis is upon us making it imperative to
man Negro colleges with Negro teachers. These inferences
might be indefinitely multiplied; but they are harsh and
fallacious--implications unworthy of the best thought interested in an
issue involving the destiny of a race and this great republic. The
facts in the case are so potent that I shall not attempt a critical
refutation of the inferences deduced, but will consider the subject
more freely on another line, in this way avoiding what might be a
fearful indictment of those least prepared for it. Critically
considering every contingency I see no valid reason for such a course
as the question suggests. In answer thereto wisdom replies, "_It is
NOT time for the Negro colleges in the South to be put in the hands of
Negro teachers._"
This is an intensely practical age; in many respects, it is
utilitarian. "The survival of the fittest," is the almost universal
creed of the age. The American civilization is distinctly Anglo-Saxon.
Whatever does not attain to that standard is out of harmony with real
conditions. The Negro is here to stay. Two radically different
civilizations cannot thrive in one country at the same time. One
advances, the other retrogrades. Every chapter in history verifies the
assertion. It is providential that the American Negro is brought into
close touch with the highest ideals of American life through his most
enlightened Anglo-Saxon brother. Only in this way can the Negro meet
the rigid requirements of the ever-advancing standard of the proud,
progressive Anglo-Saxon. The dominant race is naturally the criterion.
Any other alternative would be abnormal and destructive in its
far-reaching results. The ruling people in this country have the
prestige of centuries of culture. Had the Negro's days of enslavement
been years of culture and refinement equal to that of the best people
about him, present conditions would be greatly changed. However
desirable it may be to elevate the Negro to places of dignity, it
should be borne in mind that his color is not a qualification. These
institutions will, in time, be more generally under the management of
Negro teachers, if the future proves the work of the present _regime_
non-productive of the highest results. Such a change will greatly
depend upon the ability of the Negro to appreciate his real condition
and to utilize, to the best advantage, the means and opportunities now
afforded him. Error now will prove abortive and, perhaps, postpone
indefinitely what might otherwise sooner come in the natural course of
events. Such a transition must not be revolutionary, but evolutionary
if come it must, and come it will. It were better to hope that all
schools in the South were as they are in the North for the most part.
That the Negro himself should so soon contemplate this as practical is
an anomaly. That some evils exist I do not deny. But would separation
and exclusion be a remedy? No. It is praiseworthy in the Negro that
he, in a measure, has kept abreast with the march of this
civilization. He has been responsive to the magic touch and the benign
influences of those who came to rescue him from intellectual and moral
darkness. The Northern teachers and a few Southern heroes began the
work of educating the Negro, at a time, when teaching the Negro was an
extremely delicate innovation--nay, dangerous experiment. Through what
perils, privations, ridicule, and ostracism they passed, only such
pioneers as Drs. H. M. Tupper, D. W. Phillips, C. H. Corey, J. T.
Robert, E. A. Ware, E. M. Cravath, Gen. Armstrong, Miss S. B. Packard,
and others of the immortal galaxy, are permitted to speak from their
high citadel of triumph. Shall these of blessed memory, together with
their associates and workers of less prominence, be forgotten? Shall
they be revered, or shall they be calumniated? Dumb be the lip, and
palsied the hand that would, in any wise, dishonor them and their
efforts to uplift humanity! It will not be remiss on my part to ask
for their successors in spirit and labor, and for their constituency
that consideration which a superior statesmanship and a practical
Christianity dictate.
These institutions, under their present management, have met the
exigencies of the times. Granting that no human effort is perfect, the
fact remains that these institutions have lived up to the high purpose
for which they were founded, and are still being liberally supported
and endowed. What more could be required by rational beings? This
couplet may be suggestive:
"He who does as best his circumstances will allow,
Does well, acts nobly, angels can do no more."
That others could have done better or equally as well remains to be
seen. The history of the country from 1619-20 to 1865 is valid
testimony. It was the influence of the Northern teachers, for the most
part, that the best educated men among us were matriculated at the
great Northern universities. It was by them that Negro schools were
first operated in the South. The needs and magnitude of Negro
education in the South have greatly intensified the philanthropic
spirit of the Northern missionary societies and workers, each year
resulting in a vast expenditure of money and energy. Shall those who
believe "culture is colorless" be affronted; and shall their
representatives be exiled by the beneficiaries? Is the wounded, dying
traveler under the healing ministrations of the good Samaritan
competent to protest against the merciful steward? Is such the
subsequent of all human action? Let justice and reason answer!
Formerly for the Negro literary culture was a sort of forbidden fruit
in the Edenic South. For more than two centuries the cherubim of
social pollution and moral degradation stood at the school-house gate
with sword-like lash in hand, under governmental authority, to defy
the return of the Negro to his pristine eminence in literary culture
and moral probity held many years prior to the rise and supremacy of
his now dominant kinsman. It was the northern missionaries, for such
they are, who threw open the wicket-gate of opportunity unto the
despairing Negro causing him to reach forth his hand unto the tree of
life manifesting itself in the development of the higher faculties of
a being with God's image. The Negro colleges in the South, with
scarcely an exception, were built up by Northern philanthropy. They
are the best institutions available to a great majority of those
seeking the fullest possible development of their intellectual powers.
As a rule, they are superior in equipment, in both standards of
scholarship and discipline at least. This is true by virtue of the
power vouchsafed to their management and teaching force through
superior years of splendid environment. Under such circumstances the
Northern missionary teachers are in their normal condition in
prosecuting the work of Negro education. They are usually dispensers
of exact scholarship, consecrated service, and broad culture. It is
scarcely possible that the Negro, in less than forty years, a creature
of misfortune many years prior to his enslavement, should now be the
equal of his more favored brother in the acquisition of knowledge or
his over-match in teaching ability. Physiologists are quite unanimous
in making the Negro a member of the human race. He, therefore, has the
same faculties and susceptibilities as other members of the human
family. He is governed by the same laws of thought. In what then is
the Negro constitutionally a better educator of the Negro? There is
absolutely nothing in his skin nor sympathies that makes him a
superior teacher of the Negro. Other things being equal preparation is
the only synonym for superiority in teaching. If now the race has
idiosyncrasies entirely different from the rest of the human family,
as some wiseacres would imply by their persistency in making this
demand for a change in the colleges, then maybe it were better to
gratify their wish.
These colleges are more than so much material and apparatus. Through
them the white brother is best prepared to represent the Negro to
those who are to help in his uplift. The peculiar customs in the South
weaken the authority of the Negro teacher in comparison with the
_fiat_ of the Anglo-Saxon teacher. The Negro teacher in the public
schools, and in the schools distinctly his own, is not more
successful, to be charitable, than the Northern teacher in securing
and holding pupils. Nor has it been shown that the Negro teacher
develops the powers of the child any faster, or in better ways of
thinking and acting than does the Northern teacher. Coming to us as
they do, their ability is rarely questioned. They are never anxious to
advertise their fitness for the place by resorting to that unique
process in promotions which seems so often the _naivete_ of many
another in similar spheres without hereditary influences as his
legacy. At some time, in some way, I have been closely connected with
schools of all grades in the South for the Negro--schools owned by the
Negro, taught by the Negro exclusively, schools taught by the Negro
and the Anglo-Saxon. I have been the pupil of Northern and Southern
white teachers; for a brief while a pupil of the Negro teacher; and at
one time janitor of a leading white academy in which help was mutually
given by the janitor-tutor. I confess that I have yet to see the
slightest difference in the general character of receiving and
imparting knowledge, or in developing character on the principle of
color _versus_ culture. To accept any such doctrine would be
pernicious.
These colleges are too important to be used as experimental stations
even to gratify the caprice of the most cautious. Such a change in the
work of these colleges, as the question suggests, should be looked
upon with some degree of suspicion and as inimical to the best
interests of the Negro. Without undervaluing the great importance of
the public schools, it were better to try the experiment with them and
the few secondary schools for Negro education connected with the
several Southern States and managed by white trustees exclusively.
What has been the history of the local academies and schools
transferred to the Negro trustees and teachers not many years after
the Civil War? What of those operated in later years as a monument to
the creative genius of the Negro? For the most part, they remind us
that they have seen better days. They speak a mighty truth which
should be borne in mind by every class of inquirers on this subject.
Self-help and worthy ambitions are commendable, but should be
rational. The Negro needs the help of the Anglo-Saxon without regard
to sections of country. He can advance more safely and rapidly as he
walks arm in arm with his brother North and South. Far be it from me
that I should, in any way, underestimate the heroic efforts of
institutions wholly run by the Negro! Many of them are striking
illustrations of what united effort can do; they serve a purpose which
cannot be overlooked. Only in proportion as he is more a producer than
a consumer, and as wealth and intelligence become common factors in
his social life, will the Negro be able to assume entire control of
these great institutions founded for him by the Northern societies. As
to the ability of some members of the race to adorn any position in
the gift of these colleges no one denies. There are men of superior
scholarship, broad culture, sound character, tact, and executive
ability even to grace similar places in white institutions. They are
exceptions; and yet I do not hesitate to say that were their services
in demand they could do so with comparatively more ease and
satisfaction than if at the head of a strictly Negro institution. The
reason is apparent to those experienced in such matters. Ability and
adaptability are not the only requisites for this work.
If the Negro has not been able to acquire similar institutions by his
own efforts aided by friends North and South, is there any guarantee
that he would properly appreciate them if thus thrust upon him? To ask
such a concession would be an admission of the point at issue. The
South, commercially, believes in free trade; assuming it is right, it
then would not be right to close the intellectual ports of the Negro
against the cultured wares of his time honored benefactors in literary
commerce. The Negro least of all should not ask it.
In Southern courts, where life and great interests are involved, the
most intelligent Negro finds it to his advantage to employ legal
talent of the opposite race because he is conditioned by the peculiar
circumstances of a white judge and jury who, in most cases, seem to
interpret law and weigh evidence in accordance with the prevailing
opinions of the dominant class. In the work of Negro education vital
interests are involved. The Anglo-Saxon teachers have the culture and
the means at their command. They are actual competitors with the Negro
and every other people in this particular missionary endeavor. They
have given the world its highest civilization. Through them, as
instrumentalities, the torch-light of civilization progresses;
Christianity brightens every prospect in every land. Why should they
be discriminated against in educating the Negro in the South? Should
this service and philanthropy be directed to founding and supporting
similar institutions for the more unfortunate class of the stronger
race, there would be no question about the color of teachers though
they be Indian or Japanese. The means used in maintaining these
institutions is not obtained from the Negro nor by his influence.
Would a change in the policy of the teaching force help or hinder in
securing this aid? This change would establish more rigidly the color
line so objectionable to the Negro himself. It would be a backward
movement. In all probability the color of the darker races is due more
largely to some sort of skin disease, than to other causes,
transmitted through the ages since the flood. That is a very
charitable Negro who wishes isolation to prevent inoculating the
Anglo-Saxon if permitted to teach the Negro. The Negro has ample
opportunity for his individuality in his societies and churches. He
has gained absolutely nothing by completely divorcing himself from the
fostering care of the Anglo-Saxon. Observe the contrast between those
Negro churches wholly separated from the Anglo-Saxon and those
partially controlled by the dominant race. Those who have been
somewhat under the guardianship of the stronger race are usually the
highest types of intelligent Christianity. Both races have suffered
by the separation; but it is needless to say how much greater the
Negro has suffered. The Negro has more to gain by co-operation with
his Anglo-Saxon neighbors. Intelligence must be handed down from
generation to generation, from race to race by contact, from
individual to individual. In the schools of the American Baptist Home
Mission Society, for the year 1898-1899, the annual report shows that
out of 321 teachers employed, 124 were Negroes. It will be borne out
by the report of each succeeding year. In a large measure, the other
missionary societies North and South are about as liberal in
recognizing the Negro teacher. Therefore to mix the faculties and
boards of trustees of all these schools would be ideal in most
respects. This would be a happy golden mean. Let us be patient,
considerate, and faithful.
FOURTH PAPER.
IS IT TIME FOR THE NEGRO COLLEGES IN THE SOUTH TO BE PUT INTO THE
HANDS OF NEGRO TEACHERS?
BY MRS. PAUL L. DUNBAR.
[Illustration: Mrs. Paul L. Dunbar]
MRS. PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR.
Mrs. Paul Laurence Dunbar (Alice Ruth Moore) was born in New
Orleans, La., July 19, 1875. Attended public schools there
and Straight University, and was graduated from the latter
institution in 1892. Taught in the public schools of New
Orleans until 1896, when she went to Boston and New York for
study, taking a course in Manual Training at the Teachers'
College. Was appointed a teacher in the public schools of
Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1897, and taught there until her
marriage to Mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar, in March, 1898.
In 1895, Mrs. Dunbar's first book, "Violets and Other
Tales," was published by the Monthly Review Publishing
Company, Boston. The next book, "The Goodness of St.
Rocque," published by Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, in 1899,
was favorably received by some of the best critics. Mrs.
Dunbar has written a number of short stories for some of the
leading magazines and newspapers in the country, among them
McClures, the Smart Set, Ladies' Home Journal, the Southern
Workman, Leslie's Weekly, the New York Sun, Boston
Transcript, and for over a year did regular work on the
Chicago News.
While teaching in Brooklyn, Mrs. Dunbar was actively
interested in mission work on the East Side of New York,
conducting classes in manual training and kindergarten after
the regular hours of public school work was over. Since her
marriage, Mrs. Dunbar has resided in Washington, and has
done some of her best work in short story writing, as well
as acting as secretary and general helpmeet for her husband.
It seems a rather incongruous fact that so many of our Negro colleges
in the South, whose purpose is avowedly the insistence of higher
education of Negro youth, should deny that youth not only the
privilege of teaching in the very institutions which have taught him,
but also deny him the privilege of looking up to and reverencing his
own people. For so long have the whites been held up to the young
people as the only ones whom it is worth while taking as models; for
so long have the ignorant of the race been taught that their best
efforts after all, are hardly worth while, that wherever possible, it
behooves us to place over the masses those of their own race who have
themselves attained to that dignity to which the education of the
schools tend.
It has been my good or ill fortune to number among my acquaintances a
number of young boys and girls who could rattle off with fluency the
names of Greek philosophers of ancient days; who could at a moment's
notice tell you the leading writers of the Elizabethan period, or the
minor Italian poets of the fifteenth century, but who were hopelessly
ignorant of what members of their own race had done. They had,
perhaps, a vague idea of an occasional name here and there, but what
the owner of that name had done was a mystery. Happily these instances
are decreasing in proportion as our schools are filled with teachers
of our own race who can teach a proper appreciation of, and pride in
the deeds of that race.
It is unreasonable to suppose that any teacher of another race, no
matter how conscientious and scrupulous, is going to take the same
interest in putting before his pupils the achievements of that people
in contradistinction to the accepted course of study as laid down by
the text books. How many young students of history in the white-taught
schools remember being drilled to revere the glorious memory of
Lincoln, and Sumner and Garrison and Wendell Phillips, and how few
remember being drilled to remember Crispus Attucks and the
fifty-fourth and fifty-fifth Massachusetts? How many students of
literature are taught of the first woman writer in America to earn
distinction, Margaret Hutchinson, but how few are reminded of her
contemporary, Phyllis Wheatley? How many students remember the
lachrymose career of Byron and how few know of his contemporary,
Poushkin? The student of natural science is taught about Franklin, but
not of Benjamin Banneker; the elocution classes remember Booth and
Macready, and even how excellent an actor was Shakespeare, but they
seldom hear of Ira Aldridge. How many of the mathematical students
remember that Euclid was a black man? And the elementary classes in
art, how glibly they can discuss Turner and Ruskin and the
pre-Raphaelites and the style of Gibson, but they are likely not to
know the name of the picture that the Paris Salon hung for Henry
Tanner.
It is unreasonable, of course, to expect any Caucasian to remember
these things, or if remembering them, to be able to point them out
with the same amount of pride and persistence that a Negro in the same
position would. And therein lies the secret of the foundation of a
family, a government, a nation--pride. Pride in what has been done, in
what may be done, in the ability to reach the very highest point that
may be reached. With that quality instilled in the young from the very
first, the foundation for individual achievement is firmly laid; and
what more can we ask of any education?
It has been said that Negro boys and girls hearing of the deeds of
some great man or woman have exclaimed, "Oh, well, no colored person
could do that!" Fortunately, there are few of these now, but how much
it is to be regretted that such an expression could ever have been
made--at least within the last thirty years?
By all means let us have Negro teachers in our Negro schools and
colleges. Let the boy who wants to be a farmer carry with him the
memory of successful Negro farmers and of a Negro who knew enough
about scientific agriculture to teach him to compete with the best
white farmers in the country. It will be easier for him to reach his
goal, and he will have more respect for his own ability and less
cringing, servile admiration for his Caucasian rivals. Let the boy or
girl whose inclinations tend to a profession get their instruction
from some one whose complexion is akin to their own. It is a spur to
ambition, a goal to be reached. The "what man has done, man may do" is
so much easier from a successful brother than from a successful,
though supercilious, neighbor.
Of course, the good effect of Negro teachers upon the youthful minds
is the only point thus far touched upon. The other side of the
question is obvious. What is the use of training teachers, of spending
time and money acquiring college training if there is no place to use
such training? There is room, and plenty of it, for the college bred
man and woman, and for every place filled by our own teachers there is
so much more money saved to our own race.
The closer the corporation, the wealthier it is. The tighter the lines
drawn about distributing money outside our own great family the more
affluent our family becomes. Every cent is an important item. More
money for ourselves, a better opinion of our own achievements and
ability to do more, higher regard for the raising of Negro ideals, and
a deeper sense of the responsibility imposed on each individual to do
his part towards leavening the lump; these things are dependent upon
our teachers in our own schools.
By all means let us have Negro teachers in Negro colleges.
TOPIC IX.
WILL THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO SOLVE THE RACE PROBLEM?
BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
[Illustration: Booker T. Washington.]
PROF. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, A. M.
Prof. B. T. Washington, the founder and principal of the
Tuskegee, Alabama, Normal Industrial Institute, was born at
Hale's Ford Postoffice, Franklin County, Virginia, about
1856 or 1857. At the age of nine he went with his mother and
the rest of the family to Malden, Kanawha County, West
Virginia. Here he attended the common schools until 1872. In
the Fall of that year he left Malden and proceeded to
Hampton Institute, at Hampton, Virginia. His means were
scanty, but he thought he had money enough to reach that
place. Upon his arrival at Richmond, he found himself minus
enough to pay for a night's lodging. He took the next best,
shelter under a sidewalk. Next morning he got employment in
helping to unload a vessel, thus earning a sufficient sum
with which to continue his journey to Hampton. At this
institution the first year he paid his expenses by working,
with a brother helping him some. The two remaining years he
worked out his entire expenses as janitor. Graduating in
1875, he taught school several years at Malden, the place of
his birth. In 1878 he entered Wayland Seminary and took a
course of studies there. After leaving there he was given a
position in Hampton Institute, which position he held two
years, the last year having charge of the Indian boys.
Meanwhile the Legislature of Alabama passed an act
establishing a Normal School at Tuskegee, Alabama. The State
Commissioners applied to Gen. S. C. Armstrong, principal of
Hampton Institute, to recommend some one for principal. He
recommended Mr. Washington, who went at once to Alabama, and
organized the school July 4th, 1881. The buildings then
occupied were a church and a small dwelling house, with
thirty pupils and one teacher. Since that time it has made
such wonderful progress that, to-day, the site of the
institution is a city within itself. Mr. Carnegie recently
donated to the institution $20,000, with which to build and
equip a library. It is aided by friends both North and
South. Mr. Washington is a splendid example of "grit and
determination," and the history of his life is worthy the
study of every colored youth in our land.
Professor Washington, in speaking of his experiences at
Hampton, says: "While at Hampton, I resolved, if God
permitted me to finish the course of study, I would enter
the far South, the black belt of the Gulf States, and give
my life in providing as best I could the same kind of chance
for self-help for the youth of my race that I found ready
for me when I went to Hampton, and so, in 1881, I left
Hampton and went to Tuskegee and started the Normal and
Industrial Institute."
Professor Washington is in great demand as a speaker in all
educational gatherings. For several consecutive years he has
addressed the National Educational Association, where from
ten to fifteen thousand of the cream of the educational
workers of the nation listen to his addresses with rapt
attention. Without question he is the great leader of his
race, and one of the great men of this age.
"Will Education Solve the Race Problem?" is the title of an
interesting article in the June number of The North American Review,
by Professor John Roach Straton, of Macon, Georgia. My own belief is
that education will finally solve the race problem. In giving some
reasons for this faith, I wish to express my appreciation of the
sincere and kindly spirit in which Professor Straton's article is
written. I grant that much that he emphasizes as to present conditions
is true. When we recall the past, these conditions could not be
expected to be otherwise; but I see no reason for discouragement or
loss of faith. When I speak of education as a solution for the race
problem, I do not mean education in the narrow sense, but education
which begins in the home and includes training in industry and in
habits of thrift, as well as mental, moral and religious discipline,
and the broader education which comes from contact with the public
sentiment of the community in which one lives. Nor do I confine myself
to the education of the Negro. Many persons in discussing the effect
that education will have in working out the Negro question, overlook
the helpful influence that will ultimately come through the broader
and more generous education of all the race elements of the South. As
all classes of whites in the South become more generally educated in
the broader sense, race prejudice will be tempered and they will
assist in lifting up the black man.
In our desire to see a better condition of affairs, we are too often
inclined to grow impatient because a whole race is not elevated in a
short time, very much as a house is built. In all the history of
mankind there have been few such radical, social and economic changes
in the policy of a nation as have been effected within thirty-five
years in this country, with respect to the change of four million and
a half of slaves into four million and a half of freemen (now nearly
ten million). When all the conditions of the past are considered, and
compared with the present, I think the White South, the North and the
Negro are to be congratulated on the fact that conditions are no
worse, but are as encouraging as they are. The sudden change from
slavery to freedom, from restraint to liberty, was a tremendous one;
and the wonder is, not that the Negro has not done better, but that he
has done as well as he has. Every thoughtful student of the subject
expected that the first two or three generations of freedom would lead
to excesses and mistakes on the part of the Negro, which would in many
cases cause moral and physical degeneration, such as would seem to the
superficial observer to indicate conditions that could not be
overcome. It was to be anticipated that, in the first generation at
least, the tendency would be, among a large number, to seek the shadow
instead of the substance; to grasp after the mere signs of the highest
civilization instead of the reality; to be led into the temptation of
believing that they could secure, in a few years, that which it has
taken other races thousands of years to obtain. Any one who has the
daily opportunity of studying the Negro at first hand cannot but gain
the impression that there are indisputable evidences that the Negro
throughout the country is settling down to a hard, common sense view
of life; that he is fast learning that a race, like an individual,
must pay for everything it gets--the price of beginning at the bottom
of the social scale and gradually working up by natural processes to
the highest civilization. The exaggerated impressions that the first
years of freedom naturally brought are giving way to an earnest,
practical view of life and its responsibilities.
Let us take a broad, generous survey of the Negro race as it came into
the country, represented by twenty savages, in 1619, and trace its
progress through slavery, through the Civil War period, and through
freedom to the present moment. Who will be brave enough to say that
the colored race, as a whole, has not increased in numbers and grown
stronger mentally, morally, religiously, industrially, and in the
accumulation of property? In a word, has not the Negro, at every
stage, shown a tendency to grow into harmony with the best type of
American civilization?
Professor Straton lays special stress upon the moral weakness of the
race. Perhaps the worst feature of slavery was that it prevented the
development of a family life, with all of its far-reaching
significance. Except in rare cases the uncertainties of domicile made
family life, during two hundred and fifty years of slavery, an
impossibility. There is no institution so conducive to right and high
habits of physical and moral life as the home. No race starting in
absolute poverty could be expected, in the brief period of thirty-five
years, to purchase homes and build up a family life and influence that
would have a very marked impression upon the life of the masses. The
Negro has not had time enough to collect the broken and scattered
members of his family. For the sake of illustration, and to employ a
personal reference, I do not know who my own father was; I have no
idea who my grandmother was; I have or had uncles, aunts and cousins,
but I have no knowledge as to where most of them now are. My case will
illustrate that of hundreds of thousands of black people in every part
of our country. Perhaps those who direct attention to the Negro's
moral weakness, and compare his moral progress with that of the
whites, do not consider the influence of the memories which cling
about the old family homestead upon the character and aspirations of
individuals. The very fact that the white boy is conscious that, if he
fails in life, he will disgrace the whole family record, extending
back through many generations, is of tremendous value in helping him
to resist temptations. On the other hand, the fact that the individual
has behind him and surrounding him proud family history and
connections serves as a stimulus to make him overcome obstacles, when
striving for success. All this should be taken into consideration, to
say nothing of the physical, mental and moral training which
individuals of the white race receive in their homes. We must not pass
judgment on the Negro too soon. It requires centuries for the
influence of home, school, church and public contact to permeate the
mass of millions of people, so that the upward tendency may be
apparent to the casual observer. It is too soon to decide what effect
general education will have upon the rank and file of the Negro race,
because the masses have not been educated.
Throughout the South, especially in the Gulf states, the great bulk of
the black population lives in the country districts. In these
districts the schools are rarely in session more than three months of
the year. When this is considered, in connection with poor teachers,
poor schoolhouses, and an almost entire lack of apparatus, it is
obvious that we must wait longer before we can judge, even
approximately, of the effect that general education will have upon the
whole population. Most writers and speakers upon the subject of the
Negro's non-progressiveness base their arguments upon alleged facts
and statistics of the life of Negroes in the large cities. This is
hardly fair. Before the Civil War the Negro was not, to any
considerable extent, a denizen of the large cities. Most of them lived
on the plantations. The Negro living in the cities has undergone two
marked changes: (1) the change from slavery to freedom; (2) the change
from country life to city life. At first the tendency of both these
changes was, naturally, to unsettle, to intoxicate and to lead the
Negro to wrong ideas of life. The change from country life to city
life, in the case of the white man, is about as marked as in the case
of the Negro. The average Negro in the city, with all of its
excitements and temptations, has not lived there more than half a
generation. It is, therefore, too soon to reach a definite conclusion
as to what the permanent effect of this life upon him will be. This, I
think, explains the difference between the moral condition of the
Negro, to which Professor Straton refers, in the states where there
has been little change in the old plantation life, as compared with
that in the more northern of the Atlantic states, where the change
from country to city life is more marked.
Judging from close observation, my belief is that, after the Negro has
overcome the false idea which city life emphasizes, two or three
generations will bring about an earnestness and steadiness of purpose
which do not now generally obtain. As the Negro secures a home in the
city, learns the lessons of industry and thrift and becomes a
taxpayer, his moral life improves. The influence of home surroundings,
of the school, the church and public sentiment will be more marked and
have a more potent effect in causing him to withstand temptations.
But, notwithstanding the shortness of the time which the Negro has had
in which to get schooled to his new life, any one who has visited the
large cities of Europe will readily testify that the visible signs of
immorality in those cities are far greater than among the colored
people of America. Prostitution for gain is far more prevalent in the
cities of Europe than among the colored people of our cities.
Professor Straton says that the Negro has degenerated in morals since
he became free; in other words, that his condition in this respect is
not as hopeful as it was during the early period of slavery. I do not
think it wise to place too much reliance upon such a view of the
matter, because there are too few facts upon which to base a
comparison. The bald statement that the Negro was not given to crime
during slavery proves little. Slavery represented an unnatural
condition of life, in which certain physical checks were kept
constantly upon the individual. To say that the Negro was at his
best, morally, during the period of slavery is about the same as to
say that the two thousand prisoners in the State prison and the city
penal institutions in the city of Boston are the most righteous two
thousand people in Boston. I question whether one can find two
thousand persons in Boston who will equal these two thousand
imprisoned criminals in the mere negative virtues. During the days of
slavery the Negro was rarely brought into the court to be tried for
crime; hence, there was almost no public record of crimes committed by
him. Each master, in most cases, punished his slave as he thought
best, and as little as possible was said about it outside of his
little plantation world. The improper relations between the sexes,
with which the black race is now frequently charged in most sections
of the South, were encouraged or winked at, under the slavery system,
because of the financial value of the slaves. A custom that was
fostered for three centuries cannot be blotted out in one generation.
In estimating the progress of a race, we should not consider alone the
degree of success which has been actually attained, but also the
obstacles which have been overcome in reaching that success. Judged by
the obstacles overcome, few races, if any, in history have made
progress commensurate with that of the colored people of the United
States, in the same length of time. It may be conceded that the
present generation of colored people does not compare favorably with
the present generation of the white race, because of the reasons I
have already given, and the further reason that on account of the
black man's poverty of means to employ lawyers to have his case
properly appealed to the higher courts, and his inability to furnish
bonds, his criminal record is much worse than that of the white race,
both in the Northern and Southern states. The Southern states, as a
whole, have not yet reached a point where they are able to provide
reformatories for juvenile offenders, and consequently most of these
are sent to the state prison, where the records show that the same
individuals are often committed over and over again, because in the
first instance, the child prisoner, instead of being reformed, becomes
simply hardened to prison life. In the North, it is true, the Negro
has the benefit of the reformatories; but the unreasonable prejudice
which prevents him from securing employment in the shops and the
factories more than offsets this advantage. Hundreds of Negroes in the
North become criminals who would become strong and useful men if they
were not discriminated against as bread winners.
In the matter of assault upon white women, the Negro is placed in a
peculiar attitude. While this vile crime is always to be condemned in
the strongest language, and it should be followed by the severest
legal punishment, yet the custom of lynching a Negro when he is
accused of committing such a crime calls the attention of the whole
country to it, in such a way as is not always true in the case of a
white man, North or South. Any one who reads the daily papers
carefully knows that such assaults are constantly charged against
white men in the North and in the South; but, because the white man,
in most cases, is punished by the regular machinery of the courts,
attention is seldom attracted to his crime outside of the immediate
neighborhood where the offense is committed. This, to say nothing of
the cases where the victim of lynch law could prove his innocence, if
he were given a hearing before a cool, level-headed set of jurors in
open court, makes the apparent contrast unfavorable to the black man.
It is hardly proper, in summing up the value of any race, to dwell
almost continually upon its weaker element. As other men are judged,
so should the Negro be judged, by the best that the race can produce,
rather than by the worst. Keep the searchlight constantly focused upon
the criminal and worthless element of any people, and few among all
the races and nations of the world can be accounted successful. More
attention should be directed to individuals who have succeeded, and
less to those who have failed. And Negroes who have succeeded grandly
can be found in every corner of the South.
I doubt that much reliance can safely be placed upon mere ability to
read and write a little as a means of saving any race. Education
should go further. One of the weaknesses in the Negro's present
condition grows out of failure, in the early years of his freedom, to
teach him, in connection with thorough academic and religious
branches, the dignity and beauty of labor, and to give him a working
knowledge of the industries by which he must earn a subsistence. But
the main question is: What is the present tendency of the race, where
it has been given a fair opportunity, and where there has been
thorough education of hand, head and heart? This question I answer
from my own experience of nineteen years in the heart of the South,
and from my daily contact with whites and blacks. In the first place,
the social barrier prevents most white people from coming into real
contact with the higher and better side of the Negro's social life.
The Negro loafer, drunkard and gambler can be seen without social
contact. The higher life cannot be seen without social contact. As I
write these lines I am in the home of a Negro friend, where in the
matter of cleanliness, sweetness, attractiveness, modern conveniences
and other evidences of intelligence, morality and culture, the home
would compare favorably with that of any white family in the
neighborhood; and yet this Negro home is unknown outside of the little
town where it exists. To really know the life of this family, one
would have to become a part of it for days, as I have been. One of the
most encouraging changes that have taken place in the life of the
Negro race in the past thirty years is the creation of a growing
public sentiment which draws a line between the good and bad, the
clean and unclean. This change is fast taking place in every part of
the country. It is one that cannot be accurately measured by any table
of statistics. To be able to appreciate it fully, one must himself be
a part of the social life of the race.
As to the effect of industrial education in the solution of the race
problem, we should not expect too much from it in a short time. To the
late General S. C. Armstrong, of Hampton Institute, in Virginia,
should be given the credit, mainly, for inaugurating this system of
education. When the Hampton Institute began the systematic, industrial
training of the Negro, such training was unpopular among a large class
of colored people. Later, when the same system was started by me at
the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, in Alabama, it was still
unpopular, especially in that part of the South. But the feeling
against it has now almost disappeared in all parts of the country, so
much so that I do not consider the opposition of a few people here and
there as of material consequence. Where there is one who opposes it
there are thousands who indorse it. So far as the colored people are
concerned, I consider that the battle for this principle has been
fought and the victory won. What the colored people are anxious about
is that, with industrial education, they shall have thorough mental
and religious training, and in this they are right. For bringing about
this change in the attitude of the colored people, much credit should
be given to the John F. Slater Fund, under the wise guidance of such
men as Mr. Morris K. Jesup and Dr. J. L. M. Curry, as well as to Dr.
H. B. Frissell, of the Hampton Institute. That such institutions for
industrial training as the Hampton Institute and the Tuskegee
Institute are always crowded with the best class of Negro students
from nearly every state in the Union, and that every year they are
compelled to refuse admission to hundreds of others, for lack of room
and means, are sufficient evidence that the black race has come to
appreciate the value of industrial education. The almost pathetic
demand of the colored people for the industrial education in every
corner of the South is added evidence of the growing intelligence of
the race. In saying what I do in regard to industrial education, I do
not wish to be understood as meaning that the education of the Negro
should be confined to that kind alone, because we need men and women
well educated in other directions; but for the masses industrial
education is the supreme need. I repeat that we must not expect too
much from this training, in the redemption of a race, in the space of
a few years.
There are few institutions in the South where industrial training is
given upon a large and systematic scale, and the graduates from these
institutions have not had time to make themselves felt to any very
large extent upon the life of the rank and file of the people. But
what are the indications? As I write, I have before me a record of
graduates, which is carefully compiled each year. Of the hundreds who
have been trained at the Tuskegee Institute, less than five per cent
have failed because of the any moral weakness. These graduates, as
well as hundreds of other students who could not remain to finish the
course, are now at work in the schoolroom, in the field, in the shop,
in the home, or as teachers of industry, or in some way they are
making their education felt in the lifting up of the colored people.
Wherever these graduates go, they not only help their own race, but,
in nearly every case, they win the respect and confidence of the white
people.
Not long ago I sent a number of letters to white men, in all the
Southern states, asking, among others, this question: "Judged by
actual observation in your community, what is the effect of education
upon the Negro?" In asking this question, I was careful to explain
that by education I did not mean a mere smattering, but a thorough
education of the head, heart and hand. I received about three hundred
replies, and there was only one who said that education did not help
the Negro. Most of the others were emphatic in stating that education
made the Negro a better citizen. In all the record of crime in the
South, there are very few instances where a black man, who has been
thoroughly educated in the respects I have mentioned, has been ever
charged with the crime of assaulting a woman. In fact, I do not know
of a single instance of this kind, whether the man was educated in an
industrial school or in a college.
The following extracts from a letter written by a Southern white man
to the Daily Advertiser, of Montgomery, Alabama, contain most valuable
testimony. The letter refers to convicts in Alabama, most of whom are
colored:
"I was conversing not long ago with the warden of one of our mining
prisons, containing about 500 convicts. The warden is a practical man,
who has been in charge of prisoners for more than fifteen years, and
has no theories of any kind to support. I remarked to him that I
wanted some information as to the effect of manual training in
preventing criminality, and asked him to state what per cent of the
prisoners under his charge had received any manual training, besides
the acquaintance with the crudest agricultural labor. He replied:
'Perhaps about one per cent.' He added: 'No; much less than that. We
have here at present only one mechanic; that is, there is one man who
claims to be a house painter.'
"'Have you any shoemakers?'
"'Never have had a shoemaker.'
"'Have you any tailors?'
"'Never have had a tailor.'
"'Any printers?'
"'Never have had a printer.'
"'Any carpenters?'
"'Never have had a carpenter. There is not a man in this prison that
could saw to a straight line.'"
Now, these facts seem to show that manual training is almost as good a
preventive for criminality as vaccination is for smallpox.
We can best judge further of the value of industrial and academic
education by using a few statistics bearing upon the state of
Virginia, where graduates from the Hampton Institute and other schools
have gone in large numbers and have had an opportunity, in point of
time, to make their influence apparent upon the Negro population.
These statistics, based on census reports, were compiled mainly by
persons connected with the Hampton Negro Conference:
"Taking taxation as a basis, the colored people of the State of
Virginia contributed, in 1898, directly to the expenses of the State
government, the sum of $9,576.76, and for schools $3,239.41 from their
personal property, a total of $12,816.17; while, from their real
estate, for the purpose of the commonwealth there was paid by them
$34,303.53, and for schools $11,457.22, or a total of $45,760.75--a
grand total of $58,576.92.
"The report for the same year shows them to own 987,118 acres of land,
valued at $3,800,459, improved by buildings valued at $2,056,490, a
total of $5,856,949. In the towns and cities, they own lots assessed
at $2,154,331, improved by buildings valued at $3,400,636, a total of
$5,554,976 for town property, and a grand total of $11,411,916 of
their property of all kinds in the commonwealth. A comparative
statement of different years would doubtless show a general upward
tendency.
"The counties of Accomac, Essex, King and Queen, Middlesex, Mathews,
Northampton, Northumberland, Richmond, Westmoreland, Gloucester,
Princess Anne and Lancaster, all agricultural, show an aggregate of
114,197 acres held by Negroes in 1897, the last year accounted for in
official reports, against 108,824 held the previous year, an increase
of 5,379, or nearly five per cent. The total valuation of land owned
by Negroes in the same counties for 1897, is $547,800, against
$496,385 for the year next preceding, a gain of $51,150, or more than
ten per cent. Their present property, as assessed in 1897, was
$517,560, in 1896, $527,688, a loss of $10,128. Combining the real and
personal property for 1897, we have $1,409,059, against $1,320,504 for
1896, a net gain of $88,555, an increase of six and one-half per cent.
"The records of Gloucester, Lancaster, Middlesex, Princess Anne,
Northumberland, Northampton, King and Queen, Essex, and Westmoreland,
where the colored population exceeds the white, show that the criminal
expense for 1896 was $14,313.29, but for 1897 it was only $8,538.12, a
saving of $5,774.17 to the State, or a falling off of forty per cent.
This does not tell the whole story. In the first named year twenty-six
persons were convicted of felonies, with sentences in the
penitentiary, while in the year succeeding only nine, or one-third as
many, were convicted of the graver offences of the law."
According to these returns, in 1892, when the colored people formed 41
per cent of the population, they owned 2.75 per cent of the total
number of acres assessed for taxation, and 3.40 per cent of the
buildings; in 1898, although not constituting more than 37 per cent of
the population (by reason of white immigration), they owned 3.23 per
cent of the acreage assessed, and 4.64 per cent of the buildings--a
gain of nearly one-third in six years.
According to statistics gathered by a graduate of the Hampton
Institute, in twelve counties in Virginia, there has been in the part
of the state covered by the investigation an increase of 5,379 acres
in the holdings of colored people, and an increase of $51,150 in the
value of their land. In nine counties there has been a decrease in the
number of persons charged with felonies and sent to the penitentiary
from twenty-six in 1896 to nine in 1897.
I do not believe that the Negro will grow weaker in morals and less
strong in numbers because of his immediate contact with the white
race. The first class life insurance companies are considered
excellent authorities as to the longevity of individuals and races;
and the fact that most of them now seek to insure the educated class
of blacks, is a good test of what these companies think, of the effect
of education upon the mortality of the race.
The case of Jamaica, in the West Indies, presents a good example by
which to judge the future of the Negro of the United States, so far as
mortality is concerned. The argument drawn from Jamaica is valuable,
chiefly because the race there has been free for sixty-two years,
instead of thirty-five, as in our own country. During the years of
freedom, the blacks of Jamaica have been in constant contact with the
white man. Slavery was abolished in Jamaica in 1838. The census of
1844 showed that there were 364,000 Negroes on the island. In 1871
there were 493,000, and in 1891 there were 610,597. In a history of
Jamaica written by Mr. W. P. Livingston, who spent ten years studying
the conditions of the island, we find that, immediately after
emancipation on the island, there was something of the reaction that
has taken place in some parts of our country; but that recently there
has been a settling down to real, earnest life on the part of a large
proportion of the race. After calling attention to certain weak and
unsatisfactory phases in the life of the Jamaica Negro, Mr. Livingston
says:
"This, then, is the race as it exists to-day, a product of sixty years
of freedom; on the whole, a plain, honest, Anglicized people, with no
peculiarity except a harmless ignorance and superstition. Looking at
it in contrast with what it was at the beginning of the period, one
cannot but be impressed with the wonderful progress it has made;
and where there has been steady progress in the past, there is
infinite hope for the future. * * * The impact of Roman power and
culture on the northern barbarians of the United Kingdom did not make
itself felt for three hundred years. * * * Instead of dying off before
civilization, he (the Negro) grows stronger as he comes within its
best influences."
In comparing the black race of Jamaica with that of the United States,
it should be borne in mind that the Negro in America enjoys advantages
and encouragements which the race in Jamaica does not possess.
What I have said, I repeat, is based largely upon my own experience
and observation, rather than upon statistics. I do not wish to convey
the impression that the problem before our country is not a large and
serious one; but I do believe that in a judicious system of
industrial, mental and religious training we have found the method of
solving it. What we most need is the money necessary to make the
system effective. The indications are hopeful, not discouraging; and
not the least encouraging is the fact that, in addition to the
munificence of Northern philanthropists and the appropriations of the
Southern state governments from common taxation, with the efforts of
the Negro himself, we have now reached a point at which the solution
of this problem is drawing to its aid some of the most thoughtful and
cultured white men and women of the South, as is indicated by the
article to which I have already referred, from the pen of Professor
John Roach Straton.
SECOND PAPER.
WILL THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO SOLVE THE RACE PROBLEM?
BY PROF. J. R. HAWKINS.
[Illustration: Prof. John R. Hawkins]
JOHN RUSSELL HAWKINS.
John Russell Hawkins, the oldest son of Ossian and
Christiana Hawkins, was born in the town of Warrenton,
Warren County, North Carolina, on May 31, 1862. At the age
of six years, he began attending the public school of his
native town and made rapid progress in his studies.
When old enough to help his father work, he had to stop
attending school regularly and apply himself to work on his
father's farm. In the mean time, he kept up studies by
attending night school and employing private tutors. At the
age of fifteen, he went with four members of the highest
class in the regular graded school to take the public
examination for school teacher. Of the five examined, he
made the highest grades and received an appointment as
assistant teacher in the same school where he had received
his first training.
In 1881, he left home and went to Hampton Institute,
Hampton, Va., where he spent one year in special study
preparatory for business.
In 1882, he left Hampton and accepted a position in the
Government service, as railway postal clerk, on the line
between Raleigh, N. C., and Norfolk, Va. Here he soon made a
record that classed him among the best clerks in the
service. In 1885, Mr. Hawkins returned to his native town
and was elected as principal of the graded school. Here he
spent two years teaching and reading law under private
tutors.
In 1887, he was asked to go to Kittrell, N. C., to fill the
position as business manager and treasurer of Kittrell
College, then known as Kittrell Normal and Industrial
Institute. So acceptably did Mr. Hawkins fill this position
that in 1890 he was elected to the Presidency of Kittrell
College, which position he has filled with credit.
During the first eight years of his work at Kittrell, he
developed that work so rapidly that the trustees deemed it
wise to accept his recommendations and broaden the work so
as to cover a regular college course. Mr. Hawkins has always
been an ardent advocate of higher education for the Negro
and worked hard to fit himself for giving such advantages to
his students. For five years he spent his summers in the
North, where he could get the best school advantages and
keep himself in touch with best school methods.
Mr. Hawkins has been one of the most successful educators of
the South and has raised large sums of money by public
canvass among the philanthropists of the country. In his
native State, North Carolina, he is a recognized leader
among his people, and by his ability and standing has won
the confidence and respect of all classes. A ripe scholar, a
deep thinker, a ready writer and a polished orator, his
services are almost constantly in demand. Indeed, it has
been said of him that he is one of the finest public
speakers on the stage. He speaks with such power of
conviction as to touch the heart of his audiences and at
once lead them into the subject under consideration with
interest and profit.
In 1896 he was elected by the General Conference of the
African Methodist Episcopal Church as Commissioner of
Education and filled that office so acceptably that at the
end of his first term in 1900, he was re-elected by
acclamation. He is regarded as among the strongest laymen in
his church and one of the best financiers of the race.
One of the finest qualities of Mr. Hawkins is his devotion
to his family and his high ideals in home life.
In 1892 he married Miss Lillian M. Kennedy, of Sioux Falls,
South Dakota, whose companionship and devotion has been a
most important factor in contributing to her husband's
success. They are the happy parents of two children, a girl
and a boy, and are pleasantly located at Kittrell, N. C., in
a very beautiful home.
Every nation of recognized merit and ability, chronicled in the
world's history, is proud to revert to some special feature of its
life, and point with pride to some one thing that has given character
to its institutions and added to its national glory. As far back as
history runs, we find nations, classes and races, pointing out
different things as the stronghold, the ground work, the pillars on
which their fame rests.
The thing to which the Negro can point with most pride, is the
activity and progress made in the development of an ideal home life
and the providing of a liberal education for his people. Indeed, it is
worthy of note, that in both church and state, there is a growing
interest in behalf of extending to all classes the privileges and
benefits of at least a limited education. Nations that once thought of
nothing but war and conquest are throwing their influence in the scale
of popular education.
Countries that have long wielded the scepter of power, and held
thousands subject to the will and opinion of one man or set of men,
are being aroused to the importance of individual thought and
individual responsibility. Churches and organizations that necessarily
began their work with one or two as leaders, who had to do the
thinking for hundreds of others, are now turning their attention to
the work of training and developing the faculties and character of
each one so as to enable him to think and act intelligently for
himself; this is the spirit of the present age. In this lies the hope
and destiny of all classes and all races.
Hence, if there be any particular problem as connected with the Negro
race, in my opinion the solution of that problem will come only by
following the rule of action applied to the uplifting and development
of others.
The Negro is no new specie of nature; he is no new issue in the
category of life; no new element in the citizenship of this country,
and needs no special prescription to suit his needs. His case is one
common to a people whose surroundings and environments have placed, or
caused them to be placed, in a dependent attitude, and his only hope
for rising above the common level of a menial slave is to so husband
his resources as to change these environments and become the master
of, rather than the helpless creature, of circumstances. The faithful
pioneers who carried the torch of knowledge into darkened regions and
cheered the lives of thousands with rays of hope and promise, opened
the way for the liberation of great forces that had long lain dormant
and smothered. Knowledge has been the torch in the civilizer's hand,
and carrying this still we can find treasures still unearthed and
truths still unlearned.
The glories already achieved in the field of science, art and
literature have but aroused us to seek for still greater honors. The
ray of light that has fallen across our pathway, giving hope and
promise of better and brighter things further on, has but fired the
zeal within us, and there is no way of satisfying this burning zeal
save the feasting on the coveted goal--the riches and beauties of
wisdom. One writer says: "As long as one's mind is shrouded in
ignorance he is but the tool of others, and the victim of foolishness
and gross absurdities. He will never experience those pleasures which
come from a well-directed train of thought and which is akin to the
dignity of a high nature. On the other hand, the person whose mind is
illumined with the light of knowledge, and whose soul is lit up, is
introduced as it were into a new world. He can trace back the stream
of time to its commencement, and gliding along its downward course,
can survey the most memorable events and see the dawnings of Divine
Mercy and the manifestations of the Son of God in our nature." 'Tis
not enough to know that we have faculties. 'Tis not sufficient to say
that there lives in us the power to see, to hear, to feel, to reason,
to think and to act; we must develop these powers until we can feel
the benefit of the blessings that come from their use. We will never
be able to reason for ourselves unless we learn to think for
ourselves. The thinking mind is the active mind, and the active mind
is the growing mind; the growing mind moves the man, and the man that
moves helps to move the world. He moves step by step from the common
level of events to things of greater height. He rises from pinnacle to
pinnacle, never ceasing, never tiring, never stopping, ever growing,
ever moving, ever rising till he finds the fountain head of all truth
and all virtue. We are now face to face with a new order of things.
Under this new regime we witness the foreshadowing of a higher sense
of civilization, a higher standard of morals, a broader field of
culture and a purer realm of thought.
Indeed, we are only in the shadow of this great light. 'Tis not the
promise alone that brightens our sky. The dawn has appeared. The music
of the morn has already been heard, and nations are awaking and
rushing to crowd around the altar as worshippers at the shrine of
learning. What lover of letters would doubt for a moment that if
Thomas Carlyle could re-enter the world of letters and dignify the
profession with the fertility of his brain, instead of captivating the
world with his beautiful outline of heroes and hero worship, he would
summon all his powers as an agency to do reverence, as a worshipper
at the shrine, not of things material, not of men, but of _ideas_.
This is the school to which we are crowding. In the development of our
educational system we are enabled to find the highest ideals and
center our thoughts on the highest and purest standard of life.
Only those who think, or those who seek to know the virtues of
intelligence, and to enjoy the beauties of a pure and ideal life, can
enter into the spirit of rejoicing over the approach of the time when
each person will be measured by what is represented in his ability to
exert a potent influence in shaping the destiny of things and helping
to mold public sentiment. The mind can no more be allowed to remain
dormant or inactive than the turf of the field, or the muscles of the
body. It must be stirred up; it must be awakened from its stupor and
quickened into a newness of life.
The opportunity for this general awakening was denied our parents, who
were the victims of slavery, and they suffered the loss of the
prestige and influence that naturally follows; but what was lost to
our ancestry must be redeemed to posterity. We must center our work in
the youth of our land and give them the broadest, deepest and highest
training. The most liberal education should be provided for all. An
education free from bias, free from proscription, free from any label
that will mark them as Negro laborers, as Negro mechanics, as Negro
scholars, but an education that will mark them as artisans, as skilled
mechanics, as scholars, thinkers, as men and women with master minds
and noble souls. In this will we find the reward for our labors and
the hope of the race. I agree with the writer who says: "There is
nothing to be compared with the beauty of an excellent character and
the usefulness of a noble life. To the unlimited, unfettered spirit of
man's mind that can rise above the mountain peaks and sweep across the
ocean bounds. To that unequaled beauty of a pure and spotless soul.
The whole earth, with all its beauties of art and skill, are counted
as naught in the sight of God, as compared with a living creature,
that represents in his body the image of his Creator, and in his mind
and soul the divine principles of the mystery, the power, and glory of
His Son."
'Tis not enough to know that schools and colleges exist, and to boast
of the advantages, and opportunities afforded us. We must lay hold
upon them and become a part of them. We must, by our own efforts, out
of our own means, build, own and control our own institutions for the
training of our youths, and then establish enterprises of business for
the practical display and use of the training received.
The great trouble about our system of education is that the masses
have not yet felt the real good of it. To some it is no good, because
they have simply gotten enough to misuse. You cannot satisfy a man's
appetite by stopping him at the door of your dining room, where he can
get only a smell of the dinner while he sees others eating. Of course
he would turn away in disgust and call it all a farce. You cannot
teach a man to swim by stopping him at the water's edge. You cannot
convince a man that he is at the top of a mountain when you stop him
at the base, where he can look up and see others above him; and you
cannot show a man the virtue of education when you stop him at the
school house door and deny him entrance while others crowd by and pass
through. Let him in. Open the doors wide and let all come in and sit
down to the intellectual feast. We want to bring the people out into
the middle of the stream, into the deep water where they can be borne
up by the strong tide of intellect and follow the current of popular
ideas.
We must take them up and away from the foot of the mountain, place
them on top, where they can bask in the sunlight of intelligence,
where the atmosphere is pure and the virtue of education beams in
every eye. God made man in his own image, prepared him a body,
arranged for his food and raiment, stretched nature before him, and
then commissioned him to go forth and subdue, replenish and have
dominion over all. Yea more than this. He endowed man with reasoning
faculties and for these faculties fixed no bounds; but left them to
work out their own destiny and achieve their own triumphs.
I do not believe God intended for man's mind to remain undeveloped. He
did not intend that His creatures should forever remain ignorant and
shrouded in ignorance. Wherever He places talents there he expects to
find evidence of growth and increase. Hence it is our duty to educate
and prepare all for the intelligent use of what God has given them. If
we expect to have a part in shaping events in this life; if we expect
to be numbered among the learned, the strong, the molders of public
sentiment, the masters of things material, free from abject menial
servitude, we must educate the people.
Let this idea run all through our schools until it permeates the life
of every boy, every girl, every man, every woman; making its influence
felt in every home, every clime and among all nations.
THIRD PAPER.
WILL THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO SOLVE THE RACE PROBLEM?
BY PROF. KELLEY MILLER.
It is a hopeful sign when those who are vitally concerned in the
outcome of the Negro problem are guided in their discussion by the
light of evidence and argument, and are not impelled to foregone
conclusions by transmitted prejudice and traditional bias. The article
of Professor John Roach Straton in the North American Review for June,
1900, is notable for its calm, dispassionate, argumentative treatment,
and for its freedom from rancor and venom. His conclusions, therefore,
if erroneous, are all the more damaging because of the evident
sincerity and helpful intention of the author.
With much erudition and argumentative skill Professor Straton sets
forth the proposition that education has failed to check the Negro's
degenerating tendencies or to fit him for his "strange and abnormal
environment."
There are two leading divisions of the race problem:
1. The development of a backward race.
2. The adjustment of two races with widely divergent ethnic
characteristics.
These two factors are, in the mind of many, antagonistic to each
other. The more backward and undeveloped the Negro, the easier is the
process of his adjustment to the white race; but when you give him
"Greek and Latin and eyeglasses" frictional problems inevitably arise.
Under slavery this adjustment was complete, but the bond of adjustment
was quickly burst asunder when the Negro was made a free man and
clothed with full political and civil privilege. The one great
question which so far remains unanswerable is, can the two be
readjusted on terms of equality? The solution of social problems
belongs to the realm of statesmanship, philanthropy and religion. The
function of education is to develop latent faculties. It was a shallow
philosophy which prophesied that a few years of schooling on the part
of the Negro would solve the race question. If the education of the
colored man has not worked out the fulfillment which its propounders
prophesied, it simply proves them to be poor prophets. The Negro, too,
believed that if he could only learn to read and write, and
especially if he could go to college, that he would be relieved of
every incumbrance that beset him. Education was looked upon as an end
and not as an agency. As his friends were destined to disappointment,
the Negro himself was doomed to humiliation and chagrin. Education
creates as many problems as it solves. It is both static and
dynamical. When Professor Straton says, therefore, that education has
not solved the race problem, he utters a truism. But if he means to
imply that it has not had a wholesome effect upon the life of the
Negro, his conclusion verges upon the absurd.
We are apt to be misled by the statistics showing the decline of
illiteracy among Negroes. All those who can read and write are set
apart as educated persons, as if this mere mechanical information had
worked some great transformation in their nature. The fact, is a very
small per cent of the race is educated in any practical or efficient
sense. The simple ability to read and write is of the least possible
benefit to a backward race. What advantage would it be to the red
Indians to be able to trace the letters of the English alphabet with a
pen, or to vocalize the printed characters into syllables and
sentences? Unless the moral nature is touched and the vital energies
aroused there would be no improvement in conduct or increase in
practical efficiency. Education has a larger function for a backward
than for a forward race. To the latter it merely furnishes a key to an
existing lock, while to the former it must supply both lock and key.
The pupil who is already acquainted with the nature and conditions of
a problem may need only a suggestion as to a skillful or lucky
combination of parts in order to lead to its solution; whereas to one
ignorant of the underlying facts and factors such suggestion would be
worse than useless.
Even much of the so-called higher education of the Negro has been only
a process of artificially forcing a mass of refined information into a
system which had no digestive or assimilative apparatus. Such
education produces no more nourishment or growth than would result
from forcing sweetmeats down the throat of an alligator. Of education
in its true sense the Negro has had very little. The great defect of
the Negro's nature is his lack of individual initiative, growing out
of his feeble energy of will. To overcome this difficulty, his
training should be judiciously adapted and sensibly applied to his
needs. Industrial training will supply the method and the higher
culture the motive.
Professor Straton tells us that $100,000,000 have already been
expended upon the education of this race. Princely as this sum seems
to be, it is nevertheless utterly insignificant when compared with the
magnitude of the task to which it has been applied. The city of New
York alone spends $15,000,000 annually for educational purposes. And
yet if we are to believe the rumors of corruption and the low state of
municipal morality it will be seen that education has not yet done its
perfect work in our great metropolis. Then why should we rave at the
heart and froth at the mouth because a sum of money, scarcely equal to
a third of the educational expenditure of a single American city,
though distributed over a period of thirty years and scattered over a
territory of a million square miles, has not completely civilized a
race of 8,000,000 degraded souls?
The whites maintain that they impose taxes upon themselves for the
education of the blacks. This is only one of the many false notions of
political economy which have done so much to blight the prosperity of
the South. Labor pays every tax in the world; and although the laborer
may not enjoy the privilege of passing the tribute to the tax taker,
he is nevertheless entitled to share in all of the privileges which
his toil makes possible. And besides children are not educated because
their parents are taxpayers, but in order that they may become more
helpful and efficient members of the community. It would be wisdom on
the part of the South to place the future generations under bonded
debt, if necessary, for the education of its ignorant population,
white and black. This would be far more statesmanlike than to transmit
to them a legacy of ignorance, degradation and crime. Pride in a
political theory should no longer prevent the appeal to national aid
to remove the threatening curse.
Professor Straton underestimates the effect of culture upon a backward
race when he minimizes the value of individual emergence. The
individual is the proof of the race. The conception of progress has
always found lodgment in the mind of some select individuals, whence
it has trickled down to the masses below. May it not be that the races
which have withered before the breath of civilization, have faded
because they failed to produce individuals with sufficient
intelligence, courage and good sense to wisely guide and direct their
path? What names can the red Indian present to match Benjamin Banneker
or Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass or Paul Laurence Dunbar?
The Negro has contributed four hundred patented inventions to the
mechanical genius of his country; how many has the aborigine
contributed? The congressional library has collected fourteen hundred
books and pamphlets by Negro authors. These works are, of course, in
the main, commonplace or indifferent. But a people who have the
ambition to write poor books will soon gain the ability to make good
ones. Have any of the vanished races shown such aptitude for
civilization? But these are exceptions. So are the eminent men of any
race. When the exceptions become too numerous it is rather poor logic
to urge them in proof of the rule. It is also a mistake to suppose
that these picked individuals are without wholesome influence upon the
communal life. They are diffusive centers of light scattered
throughout the whole race. These grains of leaven will actually leaven
the whole lump.
"We take these savages from their simple life and their low plane of
evolution and attempt to give them an enlightenment for which the
stronger races have prepared themselves by ages of growth." There is
in this utterance a tinge of the feeling which actuated the laborers
who had borne the heat and burden of the day when they objected to the
eleventh hour intruders being received on equal terms with themselves.
One answer suffices for both: "Other men have labored, and ye are
entered into their labors." It is true that the Negro misses evolution
and his adjustment to his environment is made the more difficult on
that account. Education, therefore, is all the more essential and
vital. The chasm between civilization and savagery must be bridged by
education. The boy learns in a few years what it took the race ages to
acquire. A repetition of the slow steps and stages by which progress
has been secured is impossible. Attachment to civilization must take
place at its highest point, just as we set a graft upon the most
vigorous and healthy limb of a tree, and not upon a decadent stem.
Must the Negro dwell for generations upon Anglo-Saxon stems and
Cancerian diction before he is introduced to modern forms of English
speech? The child of the African slave is under the same linguistic
necessity as the offspring of Depew and Gladstone. He must leap,
_instanter_, from primitive mode of locomotion to the steamboat, the
electric car and the automobile. Of course many will be lost in the
endeavor to sustain the stress and strain. Civilization is a saver of
life into life and death into death. Japan is the best living
illustration of the rapid acquisition of civilization. England can
utilize no process of art or invention that is not equally invaluable
to the oriental islanders. This has been accomplished by this young
and vigorous people mainly through the education of picked youth.
Herein lies the only salvation of the Negro race.
In the meantime the dual nature of the solution and its relative
importance to both races is clearly indicated by Voltaire, the great
French savant: "It is more meritorious and more difficult to wean men
from their prejudices than to civilize the barbarian."
FOURTH PAPER.
WILL THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO SOLVE THE RACE PROBLEM?
BY C. H. TURNER.
[Illustration: Prof. C. H. Turner]
PROF. CHARLES HENRY TURNER, M. S.
Charles Henry Turner was born at Cincinnati, Ohio, February
3, 1867. Both parents were of Negro descent. His mother was
a Kentucky girl and his father a Canadian. Both parents were
temperate and Christian in habits. Neither parent was
college-bred, yet Charles' father was a well-read man, a
keen thinker, and a master of debate. He had surrounded
himself with several hundred choice books and one of the
earliest ambitions of Charles was to learn to read these
books.
The only education of our subject was obtained in the
excellent public schools of Cincinnati, Ohio. From the
Walnut Hills District School Charles passed to the Gaines
High School, from which he graduated valedictorian of his
class. From High School he passed to the University of
Cincinnati, from which he graduated in 1891 with the B. S.
degree, and in 1892 with the M. S. degree.
When a youth in college, Charles hoped some day to be the
head of a technological or agricultural school for Negroes,
and much time and money was expended mastering those
essentials that the head of a school should know. That
youthful day dream has never been realized, but Charles has
been an active teacher for years. Even before graduation he
taught one year in the Governor Street School at Evansville,
Indiana, and occasionally taught, as a substitute, in the
public schools of Cincinnati, Ohio. From 1891 to 1893 he was
assistant in Biology at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Since then he has been Professor of Biology at Clark
University, South Atlanta, Ga. In 1901 he was dean of the
Georgia Summer School.
By training Prof. Turner is a biologist who has contributed
his mite towards the advancement of his favorite science. In
the following list of some of the principal publications of
Prof. Turner, those marked with an asterisk are
contributions to biology.
*Morphology of the Avian Brain; "Jour. of Comp. Neur."
(1891), 100 pp. 8 pls.
*A Few Characteristics of the Avian Brain. "Science"
(1891).
*Psychological Notes on the Gallery Spider. "Jour. of
Comp. Neur." (1892).
*Notes on the Clodocera, Ostracoda and Rotifera of
Cincinnati. "Bull. Sci. Lab. of Den. Univ." (1892), 17
pp., 2 pls.
*Additional Notes on the Clodocera and Ostracoda of
Cincinnati, 18 pp., (1893), 2 pls. _Ibid._
*Notes on the American Ostracoda. _Ibid_, 11 pp., 2 pls.
*Preliminary Note on the Nervous System of the Genus
Cypris. "Jour. Comp. Neur." (1893), 5 pp., 3 pls.
*Morphology of the Nervous System of Cypris. _Ibid_,
(1896), 24 pp., 6 pls.
*Synopsis of the Entomostraca of Minnesota, etc., C. L.
Herrick and C. H. Turner (1895), 525 pp., 81 pls. [C. H.
Turner is only part author of this.]
Numerous abstracts and translations from German and French
published in the Jour. of Comp. Neur.
Reason for Teaching Biology in Negro Schools.
"Southwestern Christian Advocate" (1897).
Object of Negro Memorial Day (1899).
New Year Thoughts About the Negro. "Southwestern Christian
Advocate" (1899).
*Notes on the Mushroom Bodies of the Invertebrates.
"Zoological Bulletin" (1899), 6 pp., 6 figs.
*A Male Erpetocypris Barbatus, Forbes. "Zool. Bulletin"
(1899).
*Synopsis of North American Invertebrates. V. Fresh-Water
Ostracoda. "Amer. Naturalist" (1899), 11 pp.
Living Dust. "Southwestern Christian Advocate" (1901),
xiii chapter.
*The Mushroom Bodies of the Crayfish and their
Histological Environment. "Jour of Comp. Neur." (1901), 50
pp., 4 pls.
The War of the rebellion is over, Negro slavery in America is no more,
and the days of reconstruction have passed into history.
Dr. DuBois in speaking of that period wrote: "Amid it all two figures
ever stand to typify that day to coming men: the one a gray-haired
gentleman, whose fathers had quit themselves like men, whose sons lay
in nameless graves; who bowed to the evil of slavery because its
abolition boded untold ill to all; who stood at last, in the evening
of life, a blighted, ruined form, with hate in his eyes. And the other
a form black with the mist of centuries, and aforetime bent in love
over the white master's cradle, rocked his sons and daughters to
sleep, and closed in death the sunken eyes of his wife to the world;
aye, too, had laid herself low to his lusts, and borne a tawny man
child to the world, only to see her dark boy's limbs scattered to the
winds by midnight marauders riding after niggers. These were the
saddest sights of that woeful day; and no man clasped the hands of
these two passing figures of the present-past, but hating they went to
their long home, and hating their children's children live to-day."
Would some power had clasped the hands of these "two fleeting figures
of the present-past!" Then those "marauders chasing niggers" would
have been subdued and there would not be so many bloody threads in the
weft of the history the New South has been weaving.
The "gray-haired gentleman" has left a grandson who has all the
culture and education money and thrift can buy. He is thrifty and
enterprising, law-abiding and conscientious. He has inherited
prejudices, yet he is sincere. He loves the South no less than did his
grandfather; but he loves the Union more. He would die to save the
Union; he lives to glorify the South. He is known as the new
Southerner and he is evolving a New South.
The "marauder chasing niggers" has left a grandson who is illiterate,
uncultured and thriftless. He despises manual labor, but is too poor
and too ignorant to live without doing it. Unfit to be the associate
of the new Southerner, and feeling himself too superior to mingle with
Negroes, he broods over his hardships and bemoans his fate. He is a
Negro hater and thirsts for the excitement of a lynching bee. This
condoned clog to the progress of Southern civilization is known as
white trash.
The "form black with the mist of centuries" has left two grandsons.
One is a thrifty, law-abiding gentleman; too thrifty to be a beggar
and too busy acquiring an education or accumulating wealth or
educating his race to be a loafer or criminal. In his home are all the
comforts of modern life that his purse can afford. He loves his
country and his Southland, and is educating his children to do
likewise. He even contributes his mite to the literature, science and
art of to-day. He is modest and retiring and is known as the new
Negro.
The other grandchild is a thriftless loafer. He is not willing to pay
the price of an education; but he likes to appear intellectually
bright and entertaining. He often works, but merely to obtain the
means for gratifying his abnormally developed appetites. He laughs, he
dances, he frolics. He knows naught of the value of time nor of the
deeper meanings of life. In the main he is peaceable and law-abiding;
but, under the excitement of the moment, is capable of even the worst
of crimes. This thriftless slave of passion, this child-man, this much
condemned clog to the progress of Southern civilization is called the
vagrant Negro.
Prejudice is older than this age. A comparative study of animal
psychology teaches that all animals are prejudiced against animals
unlike themselves, and the more unlike they are the greater the
prejudice. A comparative study of history teaches that races are
prejudiced against races unlike themselves, and the greater the
difference the more the prejudice. Among men, however, dissimilarity
of minds is a more potent factor in causing prejudice than unlikeness
of physiognomy. Races whose religious beliefs are unlike the accepted
beliefs of our race we call heathens; those whose habits of living
fall below the ideals of our own race we call uncivilized. In both
cases we are prejudiced. When a highly civilized race is brought in
contact with another people unlike it in physiognomy but in the same
stage of intellectual advancement, at first each is prejudiced against
the other; but when they become thoroughly acquainted prejudice gives
way to mutual respect. For an example of this recall the relations of
the nations of Europe to the Japanese.
The new Southerner is prejudiced against the new Negro because he
feels that the Negro is very unlike him. He does not know that a
similar education and a like environment have made the new Negro and
himself alike in everything except color and features. Did he but know
this he and the new Negro would join hands and work for the best
interest of the South and there would be no Negro problem. At present
he does not and cannot know this, for the white trash and vagrant
Negro form a wedge separating the new Southerner from the new Negro so
completely that they cannot know each other. Every unmentionable crime
committed by the vagrant Negro, every lynching bee conducted by white
trash, every Negro disfranchisement law passed by misguided
legislators, every unjust discrimination against the Negro by the
people drives this wedge deeper and deeper.
Render this wedge so thin that it will no longer be a barrier and the
Negro problem is solved. This cannot be done by banishing white trash
and the vagrant Negro; for that is neither possible nor practicable.
The only way to accomplish the thinning of this wedge is to transform
a large number into the new Southerners and the new Negroes. Will
education do this?
In order to transform the majority of white trash and vagrant Negroes
into new Southerners and new Negroes it will be necessary to instill
into them the following regenerating virtues:
1. The manners of a gentleman. Not the swagger of the dude nor the
cringing of a scapegoat, but the manners of a being permeated with the
Golden Rule.
2. Cultured homes. Not necessarily extravagant mansions, but
comfortable dwellings, wherein impoliteness, intemperance, slander and
indecent tales have given place to politeness, temperance, intelligent
conversation and refined pleasantries.
3. Business honesty. Not only punctual in the payment of debts, but
also truthful in making sales.
4. Thrift. Not the ability to hoard as a miser does, but the ability
to spend one's earnings economically, to purchase property and to lay
by a little for a rainy day.
5. Christian morality. Not the ability to shout well, and pray well
and testify well, but the ability to live the Christ life.
6. The ability to do something well that the world desires bad enough
to be willing to pay a good price for it. This includes not only
mechanical but also commercial and scholastic achievements.
7. Ability to lead in the light of modern civilization.
8. Love for justice and contempt for lawlessness.
Experience and thought convince me that the "highest education" is the
only agency that will instill all of these virtues into a people
without detriment to the multitudes that are forced to stop school
before graduation. Highest education is a new phrase; but can we not
truthfully say that there are three system of education in the world
to-day: the lower or industrial education, the higher education and
the highest education?
In each of these three systems the student begins his education by an
attempt to master the English branches, and in each attention is given
to developing the moral side of the pupil.
In the lower or industrial education, parallel with the elementally
English training, or after its completion, the student learns how to
work at one or more trades, but he gets no training in the higher
English branches nor in languages nor science. This system may instill
into students the majority of the regenerating virtues mentioned
above, but it is impossible for this system to impart the ability to
lead in the light of modern civilization. Without this virtue one is
not fit to lead in this strenuous age. A race without competent
leaders is doomed, and any system of education which does not furnish
such leaders is defective and doomed. It has been well said that the
advocates of the lower or industrial education are welding a chain
that will bind the race in industrial servitude for ages.
In the higher education, after completing an elementary English
training, the individual takes a collegiate course in science,
literature, history and language; but no attention is given to
industrial training. Such a course does instill into those who
complete it all of the regenerating virtues mentioned above; but how
about the multitudes that necessity forces to drop out before the
course is completed? It is a sad, sad fact that the taste they have
had of something different renders them not content to be servants,
yet their training is not sufficient to enable them to be anything
else.
In the highest education a thorough training is given in the common
English branches, but parallel with it instruction is imparted in the
care and practical use of tools. The elementary course is followed by
a secondary course, in which, along with instruction in the elements
of languages, literature and sciences, is given a thorough training in
some trade. Above this come the colleges and technological schools,
wherein the pupil specializes according to his natural tastes. In its
ability to instill into those who complete it the regenerating virtues
mentioned above this highest education ranks with the higher
education. In this respect neither is superior to the other. But when
it comes to fitting those who stop before the complete course has been
mastered to successfully fight the battle of life, then highest
education is infinitely superior to the higher education. Indeed it is
the only education that helps abundantly not only the graduates, but
also those unfortunate legions that drop out while yet undergraduates.
In attempting to solve the Negro problem, the industrial or lower
education has been tried on the Negro and found wanting; the higher
education has been tried upon both races and has succeeded but little
better than the lower education; if we will cast aside our prejudices
and try the highest education upon both white and black, in a few
decades there will be no Negro problem.
Clark University, December 1, 1901.
TOPIC X.
WHAT ROLE IS THE EDUCATED NEGRO WOMAN TO PLAY IN THE UPLIFTING OF HER
RACE?
BY MRS. R. D. SPRAGUE.
[Illustration: Mrs. Rosetta D. Sprague]
ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE.
The subject of this sketch was born in New Bedford, Mass.,
June 24, 1839. She is the oldest child and the only living
daughter of the late Frederick Douglass. At the age of five
years she moved with her parents to Lynn, Mass., where the
first narrative of Frederick Douglass, written by himself,
was published. Its publication attracted widespread notice
and stirred the ire of slaveholders in the vicinity from
which he escaped. His many friends fearing for his safety
arranged to send him abroad.
His wife has often told of the demonstrative and
enthusiastic young father catching up his infant daughter
and fervently thanking God that his child was born free and
no man could separate them. Among the many friends who were
solicitous for the family were two maiden ladies, Abigail
and Lydia Mott of Albany, New York, who were cousins of
Lucretia Mott, the well-known philanthropist and friend of
the Negro. These women, who conducted a lucrative business
on Broadway, opposite Bleeker Hall, were also staunch
Abolitionists. Being anxious for the welfare of the little
six-year-old daughter of Douglass, they sought the privilege
of caring for her while the father was abroad. The wife and
three sons remained at their home in Lynn during the
father's absence. Mrs. Sprague has frequently spoken of her
stay with the Motts, who were in good circumstances, and
with their one servant lived in comfort. Their little charge
was amply provided for, and was made contented and happy.
She had a time for play and a time for study. Miss Abigail
gave her instruction in reading and writing and Miss Lydia
taught her to sew.
At the age of seven Rosetta wrote her first letter to her
father, and when her eighth birthday had passed she made a
shirt to give him on his return from England. At this early
age the child was painfully conscious of the trials and
misery resulting from slavery. Many slaves had sought and
obtained shelter with the Motts, and the anxious moments of
their stay made a deep impression on her childish mind.
After the establishment of the "North Star," by her father
in Rochester, N. Y., in 1847, the family were reunited in
that place, a governess secured and for several months the
children pursued their studies at home. Later the father was
convinced that as he was a taxpayer he ought to avail
himself of the privilege of the public schools: and,
accordingly, sent his sons there. But the little daughter
was sent to a private school but recently opened for girls.
Tuition was paid in advance, the little girl was sent, but
never saw the inside of the school-room nor met any of the
pupils. Finally she with her brothers attended the public
schools until the year 1850, when the Board of Education
decided that Colored children should no longer be permitted
to remain in the public schools. At the next meeting of the
Board Mr. Douglass and some Anti-Slavery friends were
present to debate the question why such distinction should
be made. As the result of that conference the doors were
opened to Colored children in that city.
Rosetta being the only girl of color in her room was
subjected for a time to such indignities as only the vulgar
are capable of inflicting. Her complaints pained her fond
father, but his counsel was, "Daughter, I am sending you to
school for your benefit; see to it that you are punctual in
attendance, that you do not offend in your demeanor and cope
with the best of them in your lessons--and await the
results." The daughter strove to obey, and soon found
herself appreciated by her teachers, who classed her as one
of their best pupils. Her companions also changed and sought
her aid in the preparation of their lessons. At the age of
eleven years Rosetta became her father's assistant in the
library. She copied for him, wrapped, addressed and mailed
eight hundred copies of the "North Star" each week.
Rosetta Douglass married December 24, 1863, Nathan Sprague,
who, like her father, had been a victim of the slave-holding
power.
The problems of life are manifold. Wherever we turn questions of
moment are presented to us for solution and settlement. At no period
in the history of the American Negro has his status as a man and an
American citizen been so closely scrutinized and criticised as at the
present time.
The galling chain and merciless lash were the instruments used to
accomplish the humiliation and degradation of the African. Avarice was
the factor in the composition of the character of a large number of
the white men of America that wrought such ravishes in the well-being
of the African.
To-day, after the short space of thirty-six years has passed over him,
from the deep degradation of centuries the descendants of these
Africans are wrestling with the situation as it exists to-day. Through
the avarice of the white man in the past the black man's physical,
moral and mental development was sacrificed. To-day egotism stalks
abroad to crush, if possible, his hopes and his aims, while he is
struggling from the effects of his thraldom.
This latter process is more subtle in its operation--placing, as it
does, a weapon that can with confidence be used by the most inferior
and degraded ones of the white race--so that _color_ and not
_character_ is made the determining factor of respectability and
worth, and as the target is to the archer, so is the Negro to the
white man.
Notwithstanding that the presentation of such facts are not flattering
to the white man or pleasurable to the black man, they are facts which
are to be considered.
Rapid changes have already been wrought in the condition of the
American Negro. His capabilities and possibilities as a factor in the
nation have been marked and encouraging, and yet there are labors to
be performed to further obtain and maintain his position in the land
of his birth. The Negro is but a man, with the frailties that bound
humanity, and cannot be expected to rid himself of them in any way
different from methods adopted for the betterment of mankind
generally. In view of much that has inspired the friends of the Negro
in the years now past with faith in him and the interest and belief in
him of his numerous friends at the present time, he is still an object
of hatred to a considerable number of his fellow citizens.
Ages of deception, vice, cruelty and crime, as practiced by the
Caucasian upon the African in this land, would in itself produce fruit
in kind. We would submit a suggestion to those who are disposed to
criticise very closely and to condemn in strong terms the
delinquencies of the Negro. Allow the Negro two hundred and fifty
years of _unselfish_ contact to offset the two hundred and fifty years
of Caucasian selfishness, and be as assiduous in his regeneration as
you were in his degradation--then judge him.
The twentieth century in its infancy is striving to grasp what it
pleases to call the Negro problem, when it is in reality only a
question as to whether justice and right shall rule over injustice and
wrong to any and every man regardless of race in this boasted land of
freedom. The Negro is made the test in everything pertaining to
American civilization. Its high principles of religion, politics and
morals all receive a shock when a Negro's head appears, upsetting all
theories and in a conspicuous manner proving that the structure of
American civilization is built higher than the average white man can
climb. At this stage of Afro-American existence the question is asked,
"What role is the educated Negro woman to play in the uplifting of her
race?"
As this is unquestionably the woman's era, the question is timely and
proper. Every race and nation that is at all progressive has its quota
of earnest women engaged in creating for themselves a higher sphere of
usefulness to the world--insisting upon the necessity of a higher
plane of integrity and worth--and thus the women of the Negro race
should be no exception in this land of our birth. Feeling thus, this
particular woman, previous to the question above presented, has
already in considerable numbers formed various associations tending to
the amelioration of existing conditions surrounding her race. The most
notable of them is "The National Association of Colored Women," for
several years presided over by Mrs. Mary Church Terrell of Washington,
D. C., but now under the guidance of Mrs. J. Salome Yates, a woman of
refinement, culture and education and an earnest worker in the cause
of the advancement of the race. It is with pride I point to this body
of women, as its scope is far-reaching, being composed of
organizations from every part of the country.
There is no woman, certainly no woman in the United States, who has
more reason to desire and more need to aspire for better opportunities
for her brothers and herself than the Negro woman in general and the
educated Negro woman in particular.
Avarice and egotism have done and is doing its work in retarding, but
not entirely subjugating, the advances that a respectable number of
the race are making.
The task that confronts the thoughtful woman as she surveys the field
in which she must labor is not a reassuring one. It will be through a
slow process that any good will be accomplished.
Much patient and earnest endeavor on the part of our women--a strong
missionary spirit needs to be exhibited before any appreciable results
may be reached. It will require the life work for many years to rescue
even a fractional part from the condition of to-day. Not only has the
Negro race to be uplifted but the white race need to stand on a
stronger platform than that of egotistical display of virtues which
are not wholly theirs.
As long as they deny to the Negro the fact of his brotherhood and his
consequent rights as a man, they are false to their God, and to the
nation. Happily for us there have been a considerable number of the
white race who are mindful of what is due to those of a race whose
tendencies are upward and onward.
It is with feelings of deep gratitude, love and respect when we
reflect upon the great work that was accomplished in the nineteenth
century for the Negro by the truly great and good men and women of the
white race. Now the twentieth century is confronted with the fact that
there is more work yet to do, and the Negro has his part to bear in
it. The progress of the race means much to the Negro woman, and as she
goes forth adding her best energies to the uplifting of her people the
work in itself will react upon her, and from a passive individual she
will be a more alert and useful factor in the regeneration of her race
and to the social system at large.
How to begin the work in a systematic manner for the further
advancement of a people struggling amidst so much that is
discouraging is puzzling to the would-be reformers within our own
ranks. We would have the Negro, now that the mantle of freedom is
thrown over him, and also as an acknowledged citizen, to fully
understand and appreciate the fact that now that his destiny is in his
own hands that he must make of himself a potential value.
In order to emphasize himself as a factor of value he must place
himself in touch with the highest and best thought of past and present
times.
Barring the barriers that avarice has placed in our way in the past or
the growing egotism of our brothers in white at this stage of our
progress, the women of the Negro race should put themselves in contact
with all the women of this land and espouse all worthy efforts for the
advancement of the human race.
The educated Negro woman will find that her greatest field for
effective work is in the home. The attributes that are necessary in
forming an upright character are each of them facts, the acceptance of
them making or marring the character as they are accepted or ignored.
In view of this thought I cannot see that any different role should be
adopted by us than by women in general in this land.
Industry, honesty and morality are the cardinal attributes to become
acquainted with in forming an irreproachable character, and each and
all of them must be dwelt upon in the home. Already the mothers all
over the country are uniting themselves in the one thought--_the
home_. No less should our women esteem it essential to place
themselves in line with the progressive mothers in our common country.
In advancing such a thought we are confronted with the fact that the
development of the homes of this land has not been a day's work, and
the improvement of the character of the homes will test the energies
of the women who preside over them. The home life of the Negro has
taken on a new significance during the past thirty or more years, and
the zeal required to show the parents to-day their duties in the
rearing of their children should be untiring. We have a few among us
that are interested workers for the maintenance of good government in
the home.
We would that in every city, town and village, where any number of the
race reside, they would form aid societies for the maintenance of
kindergartens and industrial schools, as well as to aid those already
established, and before the twentieth century has reached its quarter
century mark "The Colored Woman's Aid Societies" would have an
astonishing effect on the manners and morals of those who come under
its benefits.
It is a source of regret and deep concern to a number of our women
that there is so little attention paid to the labors of "The Woman's
Christian Temperance Union," when we reflect that through the medium
of rum, and, I may add, red beads, African homes were devastated. We
wonder at the apathy of our women in the matter of temperance. The
homes of the race can but be humble and poverty-stricken so long as
the men and women in them are intemperate. The educated women among us
need to set the pace in discountenancing the social glass in their
homes. In this transition stage toward a higher plane of civilization
we need every faculty pure and undefiled to do the work that will lift
us to a merited place in our land. Surely our women must see the
necessity of urgent endeavor against a traffic fraught with so much
that is inimical to the promotion of good citizenship and purer and
better homes.
From the word of God we receive decided instructions against strong
drink, as in the instance of the instructions concerning the character
of John--his work was to be such that all his energies were to be
called in action, and there was to be no weakening of them. "He was to
be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor
strong drink." We have a great work to perform in meeting the demands
of the hour, requiring all the energy possible of a brain
unclouded--pure and unsullied. The motto of the National Association
of Colored Women, "Lifting as we climb," is in itself an inspiration
to great activity in all moral reforms; and with a spirit of devotion
for the welfare of humanity we embrace the work of the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union in their motto, "For God and Home and
Native Land."
If the educated Negro woman will rally to the support of the
principles involved in the organizations already presented in this
paper, I think they will be amply repaid in the results accruing from
their labors.
SECOND PAPER.
WHAT ROLE IS THE EDUCATED NEGRO WOMAN TO PLAY IN THE UPLIFTING OF HER
RACE?
BY MRS. MARY CHURCH TERRELL,
PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COLORED WOMEN.
[Illustration: Mrs. Mary Church Terrell]
MRS. MARY CHURCH TERRELL.
In all matters affecting the interests of the women of her
race, Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, of Washington, D. C., is a
leading spirit. Three times in succession she was elected
President of the National Association of Colored Women by
most flattering majorities. When, according to the provision
of the constitution, which limits the term of officers, Mrs.
Terrell could not be re-elected president, she was made
Honorary President.
She has twice been invited to address the National Woman
Suffrage Association at its annual convention in Washington.
Her public utterances have always made a profound impression
on her hearers and no speakers associated with her have
received more applause from audiences or higher praise from
the public press than herself. Not many years ago when
Congress, by resolution granted power to the Commissioners
of the District of Columbia to appoint two women on the
Board of Education for the public schools, Mrs. Terrell was
one of the women appointed. She served in the board for five
years with great success and signal ability.
Mrs. Terrell is the only woman who has ever held the office
of President of the Bethel Literary and Historical
Association at Washington, the foremost and oldest Lyceum
established and controlled by colored people in America. Her
splendid work as presiding officer of this organization had
much to do with her other subsequent success in attaining
similar positions in other bodies of deliberation.
Mrs. Terrell's life has been an interesting one. She was
born in Memphis, Tenn., of well-to-do parents.
She graduated at Oberlin College in 1884 with the degree of
A. B. In 1888 she received the degree of A. M. from Oberlin.
She was for a while a teacher at Wilberforce University at
Xenia, Ohio. In 1887 she was appointed teacher of languages
in the Colored High School at Washington. She went abroad
for further study and travel in 1888 and remained in Europe
two years, spending the time in France, Switzerland, Germany
and Italy. She resumed her work in Washington in 1890. In
1891 she was offered the registrarship of Oberlin College,
being the first woman of her race to whom such a position
was ever tendered by an institution so widely known and of
such high standard. This place was declined because of her
approaching marriage. In 1891 she was married to Mr. Robert
H. Terrell, who is a graduate of Howard College and who was
recently appointed by President Roosevelt to a Federal
Judgeship in the District of Columbia, being one of the two
colored men first to receive this high distinction. Mrs.
Terrell has a daughter whom she has named Phyllis, in honor
of Phyllis Wheatley, the black woman whose verses received
the commendation of George Washington and many other
distinguished men of her time.
Mrs. Terrell is now engaged by a lecture bureau. She has
traveled extensively in the West, speaking before large
audiences and everywhere her talks have received the highest
praise. The Danville, Ill., "Daily News," speaking of her
address before the Chautauqua of that town, says:
"Mrs. Terrell's addresses are the pure gold with less dross
of nonsense than any lecturer that has come upon the stage
at this Chautauqua. From the first word to the last she has
something to say, and says it as a cultured lady in the best
of English, which has no tinge of the high falootin or the
sensational. Such speakers are rare. She should be paid to
travel as a model of good English and good manners."
Mrs. Terrell's eloquent utterances and chaste diction make a
deep impression, which must have influence in the final
shaping of the vexed problems that confront the Negro race
in this country. Her exceptional attainments and general
demeanor are a wonderful force in eradicating the prejudice
against colored women. She is making an opening for her
sisters as no one else is doing or has over done.
Should any one ask what special phase of the Negro's development makes
me most hopeful of his ultimate triumph over present obstacles, I
should answer unhesitatingly, it is the magnificent work the women are
doing to regenerate and uplift the race. Judge the future of colored
women by the past since their emancipation, and neither they nor their
friends have any cause for anxiety.
For years, either banding themselves into small companies or
struggling alone, colored women have worked with might and main to
improve the condition of their people. The necessity of systematizing
their efforts and working on a larger scale became apparent not many
years ago and they decided to unite their forces. Thus it happened
that in the summer of 1896 the National Association of Colored Women
was formed by the union of two large organizations, each of which has
done much to show our women the advantage of concerted action. So
tenderly has this daughter of the organized womanhood of the race been
nurtured and so wisely ministered unto, that it has grown to be a
child hale, hearty and strong, of which its fond mothers have every
reason to be proud. Handicapped though its members have been, because
they lacked both money and experience, their efforts have, for the
most part, been crowned with success in the twenty-six States where it
has been represented.
Kindergartens have been established by some of our organizations, from
which encouraging reports have come. A sanitarium with a training
school for nurses has been set on such a firm foundation by the
Phyllis Wheatley Club of New Orleans, Louisiana, and has proved itself
to be such a blessing to the entire community that the municipal
government has voted it an annual appropriation of several hundred
dollars. By the Tuskegee, Alabama, branch of the association the work
of bringing the light of knowledge and the gospel of cleanliness to
their poor benighted sisters on the plantations has been conducted
with signal success. Their efforts have thus far been confined to four
estates, comprising thousands of acres of land, on which live hundreds
of colored people, yet in the darkness of ignorance and the grip of
sin, miles away from churches and schools.
Plans for aiding the indigent, orphaned and aged have been projected
and in some instances have been carried into successful execution. One
club in Memphis, Tennessee, has purchased a large tract of land, on
which it intends to erect an old folk's home, part of the money for
which has already been raised. Splendid service has been rendered by
the Illinois Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, through whose
instrumentality schools have been visited, truant children looked
after, parents and teachers urged to co-operate with each other,
rescue and reform work engaged in, so as to reclaim unfortunate women
and tempted girls, public institutions investigated, garments cut,
made and distributed to the needy poor.
Questions affecting our legal status as a race are sometimes agitated
by our women. In Tennessee and Louisiana colored women have several
times petitioned the legislature of their respective States to repeal
the obnoxious Jim Crow car laws. In every way possible we are calling
attention to the barbarity of the convict lease system, of which
Negroes and especially the female prisoners are the principal victims,
with the hope that the conscience of the country may be touched and
this stain on its escutcheon be forever wiped away. Against the one
room cabin we have inaugurated a vigorous crusade. When families of
eight or ten men, women and children are all huddled promiscuously
together in a single apartment, a condition common among our poor all
over the land, there is little hope of inculcating morality and
modesty. And yet in spite of the fateful heritage of slavery, in spite
of the manifold pitfalls and peculiar temptations to which our girls
are subjected, and though the safeguards usually thrown around
maidenly youth and innocence are in some sections entirely withheld
from colored girls, statistics compiled by men not inclined to falsify
in favor of my race show that immorality among colored women is not so
great as among women in some foreign countries who are equally
ignorant, poor and oppressed.
Believing that it is only through the home that a people can become
really good and truly great the National Association has entered that
sacred domain. Homes, more homes, better homes, purer homes is the
text upon which sermons have been and will be preached. There has been
a determined effort to have heart to heart talks with our women that
we may strike at the root of evils, many of which lie at the
fireside. If the women of the dominant race, with all the centuries
of education, culture and refinement back of them, with all the wealth
of opportunity ever present with them, feel the need of a mother's
congress, that they may be enlightened upon the best methods of
rearing their children and conducting their homes, how much more do
our women, from whom shackles have but yesterday been stricken, need
information on the same vital subjects. And so the association is
working vigorously to establish mothers' congresses on a small scale,
wherever our women can be reached.
From this brief and meager account of the work which has been and is
still being accomplished by colored women through the medium of their
clubs, it is easy to observe how earnest and effective have been their
efforts to elevate their race. No people need ever despair whose women
are fully aroused to the duties which rest upon them and are willing
to shoulder responsibilities which they alone can successfully assume.
The scope of our endeavors is constantly widening. Into the various
channels of generosity and beneficence we are entering more and more
every day.
Some of our women are now urging their clubs to establish day
nurseries, a charity of which there is an imperative need. Thousands
of our wage-earning mothers with large families dependent almost
entirely upon them for support are obliged to leave their children all
day, entrusted to the care of small brothers and sisters, or some
good-natured neighbor who promises much, but who does little. Some of
these infants are locked alone in the room from the time the mother
leaves in the morning, until she returns at night. Not long ago I read
in a Southern newspaper that an infant thus locked alone in a room all
day, while its mother went out to wash, had cried itself to death.
When one reflects upon the slaughter of the innocents which is
occurring with pitiless persistency every day and thinks of the
multitudes who are maimed for life or are rendered imbecile because of
the treatment received during their helpless infancy, it is evident
that by establishing day nurseries colored women will render one of
the greatest services possible to humanity and to the race.
Nothing lies nearer the heart of colored women than the children. We
feel keenly the need of kindergartens and are putting forth earnest
efforts to honey-comb this country with them from one extremity to the
other. The more unfavorable the environments of children the more
necessary is it that steps be taken to counteract baleful influences
upon innocent victims. How imperative is it then that as colored
women we inculcate correct principles and set good examples for our
own youth whose little feet will have so many thorny paths of
temptation, injustice and prejudice to tread. So keenly alive is the
National Association to the necessity of rescuing our little ones
whose evil nature alone is encouraged to develop and whose noble
qualities are deadened and dwarfed by the very atmosphere which they
breathe, that its officers are trying to raise money with which to
send out a kindergarten organizer, whose duty it shall be to arouse
the conscience of our women and to establish kindergartens wherever
means therefor can be secured.
Through the children of to-day we believe we can build the foundation
of the next generation upon such a rock of morality, intelligence and
strength, that the floods of proscription, prejudice and persecution
may descend upon it in torrents and yet it will not be moved. We hear
a great deal about the race problem and how to solve it. The real
solution of the race problem lies in the children, both so far as we
who are oppressed and those who oppress us are concerned. Some of our
women who have consecrated their lives to the elevation of their race
feel that neither individuals nor organizations working toward this
end should be entirely satisfied with their efforts unless some of
their energy, money or brain is used in the name and for the sake of
the children.
The National Association has chosen as its motto: Lifting as We Climb.
In order to live strictly up to this sentiment, its members have
determined to come into the closest possible touch with the masses of
our women, through whom the womanhood of our people is always judged.
It is unfortunate, but it is true, that the dominant race in this
country insists upon gauging the Negro's worth by his most illiterate
and vicious representatives rather than by the more intelligent and
worthy classes. Colored women of education and culture know that they
cannot escape altogether the consequences of the acts of their most
depraved sisters. They see that even if they were wicked enough to
turn a deaf ear to the call of duty, both policy and self-preservation
demand that they go down among the lowly, the illiterate and even the
vicious, to whom they are bound by the ties of race and sex, and put
forth every possible effort to reclaim them. By coming into close
touch with the masses of our women it is possible to correct many of
the evils which militate so seriously against us and inaugurate the
reforms, without which, as a race, we cannot hope to succeed.
Through the clubs we are studying the labor question and are calling
the attention of our women to the alarming rapidity with which the
Negro is losing ground in the world of labor. If this movement to
withhold employment from him continues to grow, the race will soon be
confronted by a condition of things disastrous and serious, indeed. We
are preaching in season and out that it is the duty of every
wage-earning colored woman to become thoroughly proficient in whatever
work she engages, so that she may render the best service of which she
is capable, and thus do her part toward establishing a reputation for
excellent workmanship among colored women.
Our clubs all over the country are being urged to establish schools of
domestic science. It is believed that by founding schools in which
colored girls could be trained to be skilled domestics, we should do
more toward solving the labor question as it affects our women, than
by using any other means it is in our power to employ. We intend to
lay the Negro's side of the labor question clearly before our
large-hearted, broad-minded sisters of the dominant race and appeal to
them to throw their influence on the right side. We shall ask that
they train their children to be broad and just enough to judge men and
women by their intrinsic merit rather than by the adventitious
circumstances of race or color or creed. Colored women are asking the
white mothers of the land to teach their children that when they when
they grow to be men and women, if they deliberately prevent their
fellow creatures from earning an honest living by closing their doors
of trade against them, the Father of all men will hold them
responsible for the crimes which are the result of their injustice and
for the human wrecks which the ruthless crushing of hope and ambition
always makes.
Through our clubs colored women hope to improve the social atmosphere
by showing the enormity of the double standard of morals, which
teaches that we should turn the cold shoulder upon a fallen sister,
but greet her destroyer with open arms and a gracious smile. The duty
of setting a high moral standard and living up to it devolves upon
colored women in a peculiar way. False accusations and malicious
slanders are circulated against them constantly, both by the press and
by the direct descendants of those who in years past were responsible
for the moral degradation of their female slaves.
Carefully and conscientiously we shall study the questions which
affect the race most deeply and directly. Against the convict lease
system, the Jim Crow car laws, lynchings and all other barbarities
which degrade us, we shall protest with such force of logic and
intensity of soul that those who oppress us will either cease to
disavow the inalienability and equality of human rights, or be ashamed
to openly violate the very principles upon which this government was
founded. By discharging our obligation to the children, by coming into
the closest possible touch with the masses of our people, by studying
the labor question as it affects the race, by establishing schools of
domestic science, by setting a high moral standard and living up to
it, by purifying the home, colored women will render their race a
service whose value it is not in my power to estimate or express. The
National Association is being cherished with such loyalty and zeal by
our women that there is every reason to hope it will soon become the
power for good, the tower of strength and the source of inspiration to
which it is destined.
And so lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and
striving and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will
burst into glorious fruition ere long. With courage born of success
achieved in the past, with a keen sense of the responsibility which we
must continue to assume we look forward to the future, large with
promise and hope. Seeking no favors because of our color or patronage
because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice and ask for an
equal chance.
THIRD PAPER.
WHAT ROLE IS THE EDUCATED NEGRO WOMAN TO PLAY IN THE UPLIFTING OF HER
RACE?
BY MRS. ROSA D. BOWSER, OF RICHMOND, VIRGINIA.
[Illustration: Mrs. Rosa D. Bowser.]
MRS. ROSA D. BOWSER.
The writer of the subjoined article is a native of Virginia,
and belongs in the front rank of educators of her race in
this grand old commonwealth, which may justly boast of the
eminence to which its black as well as white citizens
attained before and since the war. The first president of
the black republic on the West Coast of Africa, Joseph
Jenkins Roberts, as well as the foremost Baptist leader,
Lott Carey, were Virginians.
Mrs. Rosa D. Bowser was born in Amelia County, and was
reared in the city of Richmond. She passed through the
grades of the public schools, and completed her school work
at the Normal School of that city under the instruction of
its founder, Mr. Ralza Morse Manly, of Vermont, a
distinguished educator in the North as well as the pioneer
educator in Virginia among the Negro race. Mrs. Bowser
received special training from Mr. Manly, having been
instructed by him in the higher mathematics and Latin. She
early developed a taste for drawing, painting and music, and
made commendable progress in the fine arts. Mrs. Bowser's
work as an educator has not been limited to the school room,
in which she has been so efficient for the last twenty-five
years, but she has been conspicuous in other and wider
fields of usefulness among her people within and without the
State.
This is evidenced by the following facts: She founded the
Woman's League, which rendered signal service in the
Lunenburg trials; she is President of the Richmond Mothers'
Club; she is a member of the Executive Board of the Southern
Federation of Colored Women; she is Chairman of the
Executive Board of the Women's Educational and Missionary
Association of Virginia; she is Chairman of the standing
Committee of Domestic Economy, for the Hampton Conference;
she is President of the Woman's Department of the Negro
Reformatory Association of Virginia; and is one of the most
conspicuous members of many benevolent organizations in
Richmond. She is an eloquent and fascinating orator,
bringing to that accomplishment, earnestness of manner,
grace of gesture, and a charming personality.
In all ages of the world woman has been the central figure around
which all joys and sorrows, all inspirations, all aspirations, and all
accomplishments have circled. In all conditions of life, in all
climes, in all Christian epochs, in all countries, she holds this
position indisputable among the nations of the earth. For without her
there would be no home circles, without the home circles there would
be no races nor nations. Her office, of divine institution for the
perpetuation of the human family, should not be lightly regarded by
any class of people. Woman's primary duty is the systematic and wise
ordering of the household. The infant looks into its mother's face and
there receives its first impressions. These impressions are stamped
upon the mind and heart of the child. The mother notices all the
little disorders and griefs of the child from its birth throughout its
life. The conscientious mother is ever ready to console, advise and
sympathize in all grievances and perplexities which may confront her
offspring. Hence there is great need for proper instruction to wives,
mothers, and, in fact, to all women in anticipation of the
responsibilities of a home, and the obligations of motherhood. It has
been well said that the training of children should begin with their
grandparents. The character of the homes of the land, the moral and
immoral bearing of every settlement, town, and city, in a large
measure depend upon the class of women--upon the idiosyncrasies of
wives, mothers, and women in general, who by nature mould the
sentiment of every department of human control. That society is ruled
by women cannot be questioned. The age of complete dependence of women
upon the stronger sex, has so far passed as to be foreign to the minds
of the present generation. Not that the gentler sex is averse to the
protection and tender solicitudes of the father, husband and brother,
but it is of such common occurrence that women are thrown upon their
own resources in the maintenance of the home, that they of necessity
rather than from choice assume a degree of independence in various
avenues of life.
Christianity is the medium by which woman has been exalted to her
legitimate sphere in the world. The best colleges that a few years
past closed their doors against her, have gradually put the latch
strings on the outside. The coeducation of the sexes and the attendant
results have displaced the old idea of the moral and intellectual
inferiority of women. The learned professions are subject to her
choice. She stands beside her brother as a partner, sharing equally
with him in the world's work for humanity. Of one flesh God made all
men. Hence they have the same general tendencies or inclinations, the
same likes and dislikes, the same sympathies and the same
indifferences, the same joys and the same sorrows manifested in a
greater or less degree as their sensibilities have been cultured and
developed. The Negro is no exception to this general rule. The
centuries of servitude when he dared not of his own volition pursue
courses for intellectual growth now place the Negro as an adolescent
race, yet one that has made wonderful strides in improving its
condition morally, intellectually and financially. The Negro is
grateful for much in past experiences, which experiences have been
rigid disciplinarians, urging him to _think_ and _act_ for himself.
Therefore his hopes and aspirations grow stronger for more glorious
results for the future. Compare the first thirty-six years _of_ the
independence of any civilized race with the progress made by the
Negroes since their emancipation; who can, in a spirit of justice, say
that the Negro has not made a very creditable record wherever the
opportunity to show himself a man has presented itself. The Negro is
grateful that there are many Southern as well as Northern friends in
the dominant race who publicly commend him, and give him due credit
for his energy and perseverance in making the best use of his time and
talents. The fact is generally known that whatever success has been
made was achieved through many difficulties. The best class of Negroes
is not discouraged by the ravings and unjust criticisms of certain
classes of people who do not know the Negro, having had little chance
of intercourse with him even in the years prior to and during the
Civil War. Yet he is far, very far from being contented with his
present condition. The harvest is great, and many sheaves are yet to
be gathered. He knows that the number whose eyes are opened to the
beauties and utilities of life, and whose souls can discern the grand
possibilities of the future, is a great contrast to the masses of the
race that must yet be induced to appreciate the light of day. More
teachers are needed to point out and supply this light. Who can better
perform this duty than the unselfish, humane, intelligent Negro woman?
Who can better feel the touch of sympathy and get out of self to help
by lifting as she climbs? Who can better see the need than one who is
interested in the lowly of her own household? Who but the educated
Negro woman will feel more keenly the stigma of the depravity of her
weak sister who has wearied of the struggle for a higher plane of
living? To whom is the call to this duty more urgent? Will she answer?
She must do so. Her advantages, intellectually and socially, demand
that she should take a front rank in the crusade against ignorance,
vice and crime. She is the lighthouse, giving warning of the hidden
shoals and guiding away from the rocks which are wrecking the lives of
many capable young men and women. These young people are anxious in
many cases to be led into paths of purer man and womanhood. They
incline toward leaders. But they will follow only good leaders in
whichever course they take, whether the straight and narrow path of
integrity and upright Christian character, or the broad road which
leads to shame, degradation and death. They must and will follow
leaders. But they require of leadership a reflection of their ideals.
In other words, they require them to be as leaders all that they would
admonish others to become--models of true, intelligent, morally pure
women and men. Not only must these upright Negro women take their role
as counselors and teachers, but it is highly essential that they be
WITH the element to be uplifted, yet, certainly NOT OF it. It is
impossible to help a fallen or weak sister to rise if the helper, like
the Levite, pass by on the other side, and merely call out, Arise and
stand in the beauty of pure womanhood--rather than like the Samaritan,
she goes to her and lifts her to her feet. The touch of the hand, in
proof of a heart full of sympathy, goes a long way in winning and
holding a living, lasting evidence of the regenerating influence of
charity to the recipient. The alarming death rate among the Negro
population is largely due to ignorance of the laws of health, and the
proper care of children. Such people need instruction in their homes,
for you will reach them nowhere else. They will not attend public
meetings nor church services; they feel out of place in them. Hence
there is no way to reach such people other than by going among them.
This act will not mar the reputation of a true leader, one whom they
can emulate, and in whom they have confidence. It rather increases her
influence; for they know she is NOT OF them, but WITH them in their
efforts to improve. The magnitude of the work may sometimes cause one
to shrink, when the progress seems slow. But all reforms require
deliberation, endurance, and perseverance. Occasionally we get an
encouraging comment which comes like a calm after storms of criticisms
and abuse. Two of the daily papers of Richmond, Virginia, made very
favorable statements in regard to the conduct of the colored people
during the week of the carnival--October 7th-12th, 1901. For
violations of the law there were about two hundred arrests, and not
one colored person of the number. The colored schools came in for a
liberal share of praise for their attendance during said week. All
colored groups of schools were way up in the nineties. Baker School
(colored), of six hundred and twenty-seven pupils, led the city
schools, with 98.9 per cent of attendance. We hailed the announcements
with delight, for they strengthened our belief that "Negro education"
may not always be considered "a failure." We are stimulated to more
earnest endeavor when we find persons of great minds and large hearts
voicing such helpful sentiments as expressed by Mr. Joel Chandler
Harris, in his article to the New York Journal, November 3, 1901, on
"Negro Education," from which I quote:
"What is called the Negro problem is simply the invention of men with
theories.
"The spectacle spread out before us is not in the nature of a problem.
"It is made up of the actual efforts and movements of a race slowly
and painfully feeling its way toward a higher destiny.
"The conditions and circumstances being without parallel or precedent
in the history of the world, it was inevitable that serious mistakes
should be made; that misunderstandings should arise, that philanthropy
should stretch out full hands in the wrong direction, that partisan
politicians should pour out the vials of wrath.
"But what of it?
"The real progress of the race has not been retarded a moment. Nothing
has been lost. And now, at last, the whole conservative and
intelligent element of the race is placing itself under the leadership
of men well qualified to lead it, and is making a new start.
"If the philanthropists and rich men of the country will hold up the
hands of such Negroes as Booker T. Washington they will be able to
forget in a few years that any serious mistakes have been made.
"More than that, they will be able to view leniently the mistakes that
are still to be made."
And, I add, if the hands of such women as Mrs. Booker T. Washington of
Tuskegee, and Miss Georgie Washington of Mt. Meigs, Alabama, be upheld
by friends of the North, South, East and West, many skeptics would, in
a comparatively short time, forget that they had at any time doubted
the ability of the Negro to make for himself a creditable place in
history. Such are the women needed to-day. Women who teach by doing.
Women who can take a basket of soap on the arm, and in a gentle,
winning way present it to homes that need it, while at the same time
extol its merits in a pleasant manner. Women are needed who can teach
the lesson of morality, cleanliness of soul and body, and the hygienic
and economic management of the humble home, by showing them how to
perform these acts, and furnish examples. Women who can arouse their
sense of propriety to such a degree that by frugal habits they may
abandon the one-room cabin in which a family of eight or ten eat,
cook, sleep, wash and iron, for the neat two, three, or four-room well
ventilated cottage. The laundry tub may be an excellent substitute
when no better can be provided, but they will be taught to see the
need of a genuine bath tub in every home. They will be taught that
honest labor is no disgrace; that, however much education one may
acquire, the deftness of the hands to execute the mandates of the mind
tends rather to elevate the possessor, and hastens the day of a full
developed man or woman with mind, heart, and hand trained to the best
service--thereby dignifying labor. Above all, the thought must be
impressed indelibly upon the hearts and consciences of the youth that
the men can be no better than the women. Men are what the women make
them. If a woman is refined, and exhibits a modest, dignified bearing,
men can not fail to appreciate her demeanor and conduct themselves
accordingly. While, on the other hand, boisterous, uncouth conduct
upon the part of women will encourage boldness toward them, disrespect
for them, and win the contempt of the men of a community for such
women. Hence, wherever uplifting influence is needed, the result of
the labor depends upon the compliant nature of the element, upon which
they are working, whose persuasive power is more efficacious in
directing the _upward_ and _downward_ trend of the masses. The women
who can best appreciate this fact have the very grave responsibility
of keeping the lesson constantly before the people--"Lest we forget,
lest we forget." The so-called Negro problem must be solved by the
Negro. The plane to which he must attain is limited by the energy and
persistency of the most competent and sympathetic leaders, in piloting
the followers in such a manner that they may realize that
"Life is real. Life is earnest,
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul."
FOURTH PAPER.
WHAT ROLE IS THE EDUCATED NEGRO WOMAN TO PLAY IN THE UPLIFTING OF HER
RACE?
BY MRS. C. C. PETTEY.
[Illustration: Mrs. Bishop C. C. Pettey]
MRS. SARAH DUDLEY PETTEY.
Mrs. Sarah Dudley Pettey, the brilliant and accomplished
wife of the late Bishop Charles Calvin Pettey, A. M., D. D.,
was born in the historic city of New Berne, North Carolina.
She is the daughter of Hon. E. R. and Caroline E. Dudley.
Her father is a gentleman of great prominence. He was a
member of the General Assembly of North Carolina during the
reconstruction period, and has held important local, state
and national positions, and his services are now in great
demand as a political orator and editor. Her mother, the
lamented Mrs. Caroline E. Dudley, was a lady of refinement
and of natural gifts.
From environments, contact and association at home, Mrs.
Bishop Pettey always had the instruction and advice of
intelligent parents. At the age of six she could read and
write. She entered the graded school of her native city, and
after finishing her course she entered the State Normal
School and remained three years; then she entered the famous
Scotia Seminary at Concord, N. C., from which institution
she graduated with distinction June, 1883.
In addition to her inherited gifts, Mrs. Pettey is a woman
of great acquired ability. She reads the classics well, has
a taste for the higher mathematics. She is a student of
current events and a close observer of human nature. Upon
graduating at Scotia Seminary she was, in October of the
same year, tendered the position as second assistant in the
New Berne graded school. Next year she was promoted to
vice-principal, which position she held with credit and
honor until she was married. For two successive summers she
taught in the Craven County Teachers' Institute.
As a teacher, she was able, brilliant and magnetic. Popular
with her associates, she was loved and honored by her
pupils. She ruled with kindness and love, and punished with
a flash of her eye. Well versed in the theory and practice
of teaching, she soon won the sobriquet "Model Teacher."
She is a gifted musician; and for several years was the
organist for one of the most prominent churches in her
native city. On the morning of September 19, 1889, she was
married to Bishop Charles Calvin Pettey, A. M., D. D.
Immediately after her marriage she became the private
secretary of her husband; and with him traveled extensively
in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Great Britain and
Continental Europe. She is an able writer and eloquent
speaker.
For several years she has been General Secretary of the
Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the A. M. E.
Zion Church. As wife, mother and Christian worker, Sarah
Dudley Pettey is a model woman, endeavoring to lead men and
women upward and Heaven-ward.
Woman's part in the consummation of any project which has to do with
the elevation of mankind is of paramount importance. With her
influence eliminated or her work minimized failure is inevitable. This
is true regardless of race or nationality. In the civilization and
enlightenment of the Negro race its educated women must be the potent
factors. The difficulties that the Negro must labor under, in his
effort to rise, are manifold and peculiar. The critics of the Negro
have assaulted him at the most vital point, viz., character. In their
onslaught they have assailed the morals of the entire race. To meet
this criticism the Negro must establish a character of high morals,
which will stand out so conspicuously that even his bitterest foe will
acknowledge its reality. In establishing this our women must lead. It
must be understood that their virtue is as sacred and as inviolate as
the laws of the eternal verities. They must not compromise even with
an apparent virtuous sentiment; it must be real. Nothing great is
accomplished without the shedding of blood. To convince the world of
the virtue of the Negro race, Negro blood must be shed freely. Our
young women must be taught that gorgeous dress and fine paraphernalia
don't make a woman. They should dress modestly, becomingly and
economically.
She is a true woman whose honor must not be insulted; who, though
poorly paid, pursues her honest labor for bread and would scorn the
obtaining of a livelihood any other way, regardless of the magnitude
of the inducement. The foundation for this high sentiment finds its
initiative in the home. Home life is the citadel and bulwark of every
race's moral life. The ruler of home is mother. A faithful, virtuous
and intelligent motherhood will elevate any people. The impress of
mother follows her children to the grave; when her form is changed and
her physical existence extinct the footprints of her noble and pious
life live long after her. Womanhood and manhood begin in the cradle
and around the fireside; mother's knee is truly the family altar. True
patriotism, obedience and respect for law, both divine and civil, the
love and yearning for the pure, the sublime and the good, all emanate
from mother's personality. If mother be good all the vices and
shortcomings of father will fail to lead the children astray; but if
mother is not what she should be all of the holy influences of angels
cannot save the children. I would urge then, as the first prerequisite
for our work, a pure, pious and devoted motherhood.
Secondly, a firm stand for right and truth in all things. Woman's
power is her love. This pure flame lights up all around her. Her
wishes and desires men love to satisfy. There are many things in
society, politics and religion that ambitious men would seek to obtain
by all hazards, but when woman takes her stand against these things
she invariably wins. Our first stand must be for intelligence. No
woman of to-day, who is thirty years of age, has the right to be
queen of a home, unless she is intelligent. In this advanced day, to
rear up a family by an illiterate woman might well be considered a
crime. As a race, if we would possess the intelligence desired, our
children must be kept in school, and not allowed to roam idly through
the streets when the schoolhouse is open. Since, in most of the
Southern states, countless numbers of our people have been
disfranchised, our educated women should institute a movement which
will bring about compulsory education and a general reform in the
educational system of the South. We need better schools and a higher
standard of education for the masses. In our homes wholesome
literature, periodicals, papers and books must be had. Mother must be
acquainted with these herself. She introduces the little ones to them
by the story form. This catchy method soon engrosses their attention,
and they become wrapped up in them. Great care must be exercised in
the selection of reading matter for our girls. Nothing is more hurtful
than obscene literature.
When our homes become intelligent, we shall have intelligent
statesmen, ministers and doctors; in fact, the whole regime that leads
will be intelligent. In public affairs woman has her share. She must
speak through husband, son, father, brother and lover. Men go from
home into the world to execute what woman has decreed. An educated
wife formulates the political opinion of husband and son and though
she may remain at home on election day, her views and opinions will
find expression in the ballots of the male members of her household.
The same thing is true in the church. I shall not dictate what woman
should do here or limit her sphere of activity, but this I know she
can with propriety--in her auxiliary work to the church she can become
a mighty power. Woman's Missionary Societies, Christian Endeavor
Societies, Sabbath School work, etc., afford a broad field of labor
for our educated women. Her activity in all things pertaining to
racial advancement will be the motive power in establishing firmly and
intelligently an enlightened racial existence. Thirdly: The educated
Negro woman must take her stand among the best and most enlightened
women of all races; and in so doing she must seek to be herself.
Imitate no one when the imitation destroys the personal identity. Not
only in dress are we imitative to the extreme, but in manners and
customs. When our boys and girls become redeemed from these evils a
great deal will have been accomplished in the elevation of our race.
There are some noble women among other races whom we may imitate in
virtue, morality and deportment. Those women come not from the giddy
and gay streets of London, Paris or New York; but such women as Queen
Victoria, Helen Gould, Frances Willard and others. These women have
elevated society, given tone and character to governments and other
institutions. They ornamented the church and blessed humanity. I can
say with pride just here that we have many noble women in our own race
whose lives and labors are worthy of emulation. Among them we find
Frances Watkins Harper, Sojourner Truth, Phillis Wheatley, Ida Wells
Barnett and others. Our educated women should organize councils,
federations, literary organizations, societies of social purity and
the like. These would serve as great mediums in reaching the masses.
I cannot refrain from mentioning public or street decorum here. Woman,
as she glides through the busy and crowded thoroughfares of our great
cities is eyed and watched by everyone. It is here that she impresses
the world of her real worth. She can by her own acts surround herself
with a wall of protection that the most vicious character would not
dare attempt to scale or she can make it appear otherwise.
Beware then, mothers; accompany your daughters as often as possible in
public.
In this advanced age, if the Negro would scale the delectable heights
already attained by more highly favored races, our women must unite in
their endeavors to uplift the masses. With concentration of thought
and unity of action, all things are possible; these can effect
victories when formidable armies and navies fail. The role that the
educated Negro woman must play in the elevation of her race is of
vital importance. There is no sphere into which your activities do not
go. Gather, then, your forces; elevate yourself to some lofty height
where you can behold the needs of your race; adorn yourself with the
habiliments of a successful warrior; raise your voice for God and
justice; leave no stone unturned in your endeavor to route the forces
of all opposition. There is no height so elevated but what your
influence can climb, no depth so low but what your virtuous touch can
purify. However dark and foreboding the cloud may be, the effulgent
rays from your faithful and consecrated personality will dispel; and
ere long Ethiopia's sons and daughters, led by pious, educated women,
will be elevated among the enlightened races of the world.
TOPIC XI.
HOW CAN THE NEGROES BE INDUCED TO RALLY MORE TO NEGRO ENTERPRISES AND
TO THEIR PROFESSIONAL MEN?
BY REV. H. T. JOHNSON, D. D., EDITOR CHRISTIAN RECORD.
[Illustration: H. T. Johnson, D. D.]
H. T. JOHNSON, PH. D., D. D.
H. T. Johnson, Ph. D., D. D., educator, minister, author,
journalist, scholar, was born in Georgetown, S. C., October
10, 1857. Early life was spent in the public schools of his
native town. Apprenticed to learn the printer's trade in his
fifteenth year; worked for three years on the "Georgetown
Planet" and "Charleston Independent." Gave up newspaper
service for school teaching, in which occupation he earned
sufficient means to enable him to enter the State Normal
School in the Capital of his native State and subsequently
the State University, at the same place continuing his
studies with credit until the Fall of 1876, when Colored
students were no longer allowed to enjoy such advantages by
the Democrats who gained control of the State. For a time
checkmated, young Johnson returned to the labors of the
school-room until the autumn of 1878, when, having been
licensed to preach a year earlier, he entered Howard
University as a divinity student, graduating in the Spring
of 1880.
While at Howard, Johnson took special studies in mathematics
and the classics in the college department of the
university. After preaching and teaching in his native State
for two years, he resumed his student life, this time at
Lincoln University, Chester County, Pa., graduating with
honors in the class of '83. While at Lincoln he engaged in
pastoral labors at Oxford, Kennett Square, Hosanah, Little
Wesley and Morris Brown, Philadelphia; was ordained elder by
Bishop Brown in Bethel Church, Philadelphia, June, 1883,
having won the highest encomium for creditable examination
passed in biblical, classical and metaphysical studies. The
same year, the subject of our sketch was transferred to the
New England Conference: was stationed at Chelsea,
matriculated in the Boston University, where he studied for
three years in the schools of Theology, Expression,
Elocution, Voice Culture and Metaphysics, until from failing
health he was compelled to change climate and sacrifice for
a season at least his ambition for learning.
Between ministerial and educational services our subject
applied his time in Tennessee until the winter of 1889, when
he transferred to Arkansas and was stationed at Visitor's
Chapel, Hot Springs, where he remained for two years. From
here he was assigned the presiding eldership of the then
leading district in the State, which position he held until
the General Conference of 1892, which elected him to the
editorship of the "Christian Recorder," the leading official
organ of the A. M. E. Church, and the oldest and most widely
known Colored newspaper in the world.
That the literary and moral worth of Dr. Johnson is
recognized locally and in general is indicated by the place
he holds in the confidence of the church. His two books,
"The Preacher" and "Divine Logos," have been adopted in the
ministerial course of studies of his church. He was the
first course lecturer at Payne Theological Seminary at
Wilberforce and is annual lecturer at Phelps Bible School at
Tuskegee Institute at this writing. Is President of the
National Association of Educators of Colored Youth,
Treasurer of Douglas Hospital, Philadelphia, and Trustee of
the New Jersey Industrial School at Bordentown, prior to its
incorporation by the State Board of Education.
At the General Conference of 1900, Dr. Johnson was a popular
candidate for the Episcopal honors of his church, and would
have been numbered among the chosen ones had it not been for
the triumph of foul methods rather than fair, as his votes
on the first and only ballot (other ballots being thwarted)
being in evidence.
As a man of liberal and progressive ideas and striking force
of character, Dr. Johnson has already exerted an abiding
influence in his race and generation.
Before an opinion uncomplimentary to the colored man's interest in the
professional and business ventures of his race-variety can be of
weight, there are several antecedent facts of primal value to be
considered. If devotion to either class is lacking, it must be
remembered, that shortcoming is traceable to causes which, however
marked may be their effects in the Negro's case, are equally marked
and striking in others of similar condition. Given centuries of
environments and discipline hostile to the development of racial pride
and co-operation, the result will not be unlike, whether the subject
be the Red Man of America, the Yellow Man of Asia, the White Man of
Europe or the Dark Descendants of Africa.
Time is an all-potential healer in the life of any progressive people
and it is only when races are viewed in the light of extensive
discipline and persistent struggles that achievements gratifying and
reassuring are to be seen. The Rothschilds, Carnegies, Vanderbilts,
and towering lights in the business and professional worlds at large
are but well-favored children of a long-drawn ancestry, men in whose
ancestral veins, the blood and iron of hope, pluck, anticipation and
realization found outlet through the ravines and across the hill-tops
of centuries bygone. However the claims of heredity may be made to
appear in other directions, they carry weight when applied to an
infant race and the traits which distinguish the more advanced
varieties of the human family.
As it is futile to attempt the solution of any problem by eliminating
any of its salient factors, so it would be well for us to admit the
factor of unfavorable environment while that of an unfriendly heredity
cuts so large a figure in the shortcomings and strivings of a race.
The curse of slavery has so marred the visage of this otherwise comely
and coming race that it will be the work of centuries to completely
eradicate the awful results of its deeply imbedded hoof-marks. The
lack of mutual confidence and inter-race alienation were among the
most cherished tendrils to which the hot-bed of slavery gave birth for
ages. That the sour grapes on which their ancestors fed should set on
edge the incisors of their descendants is no less a deduction of
common sense and history than the unavoidable finding of iron-clad
logic.
The far-reaching effect of the unwholesome environment and heredity
mentioned, is seen in the business and professional struggles of the
more resolute and enterprising members of the race on every hand.
While these endeavors are in many instances healthy and promising in
character, the greater multitude are skeleton-like in shape and
dwarfish in proportion, indicating to a pitiful degree the lack of
blood to supply and brain to conduct the enterprise, it matters little
whether it be of the professional or business type. The medical
practitioner and undertaker are striking exceptions to the
non-prosperous and unsuccessful class, although the good fortune of
both is due chiefly to giant causes which account for the business and
professional dearth of the race in other directions. While the
physicians and funeral directors of the dominant race will not refuse
service to colored applicants who seek them, the fee they charge,
together with the cruel usages of certain social institutions, almost
invariably drift or drive the trade in question in the direction of
the professionals mentioned.
To trace the non-support of these classes to the conditions outlined
exclusively will be to ignore other prime factors in the problem under
consideration and render hopeless the remedies which may be applied
toward an improvement of the case. However much in others or in
conditions beyond his control lies the secret of the Negro's
misfortune as a business or a professional venturer, the fact remains
that he is himself responsible for much of the shortcomings which
hamper his success and that in his hands resides the power to improve
upon the disadvantages cited. The success achieved by business
enterprises and professions conducted by men of the race in various
communities of the different sections, clearly demonstrates the
capacity of those who operate and establish their merit of the support
of their peoples beyond the question of a doubt. In Wilmington, Del.,
Boston and New Bedford, Mass., Albany and Brooklyn, N. Y., and other
places too numerous to mention, these enterprises and professions
derive support mainly from white patrons, which fact is sufficient to
dissipate every suspicion as to the demerit or inferiority of the
articles handled or the agents patronized. Why Negro dentists, lawyers
and doctors in the professions, merchants, farmers, butchers, smiths,
produce and real estate dealers in the business world can prosper and
succeed without the aid or patronage of their people, as is
demonstrated in numerous instances, is a potential query the answer to
which suggests a reply to the topical question under discussion.
On the list of sundry answers helpful to a successful investigation of
our inquiry the good offices of the race acknowledged leaders and
opinion moulders occupy a leading place. By constant precept and
continuous example these leaders have it in their power to overcome
the apathy of their followers or those within the range of their
ministrations or influence as is true of no other agents. Chief among
this class are the teachers and preachers of the race. In the contact
of the former with children in the schoolroom and with their parents
elsewhere the spirit of race-pride and race-patronage, if instilled
and stimulated, cannot fail to produce the most gratifying outcome in
the business endeavors of the race. Too much credit cannot be given
the religious guides of the race for the interest and support inspired
by them in this, as in all uplifting services toward their people, yet
to the continuation of this devotion and the removal of their zeal
must the eyes of the masses be directed until the royal harvest of a
more prolific race-loyalty be seen and gathered on every hand.
But on its face value, may not the inquiry be construed as an
impeachment of the loyalty or confidence of the race toward its
leaders? That the indictment is rather well-founded, "'tis true, 'tis
pity, and pity 'tis, 'tis true." However specious may be the reasons
assigned for this lack of support, the real and underlying cause is
the absence of integrity, intelligence and race-pride on the part of
the people themselves. The practice of constantly aiming to destroy
the credit of those professional and business creditors who refuse to
remain at the mercy of those who would serve only their own selfish
aims, is a notorious failing which, the sooner outgrown or uprooted,
the better.
In the attempt to solve the problem before us, the duty of business
and professional men of the race toward their customers, clients,
patients and the subjects with whom they severally deal, cannot be
overlooked in the hope of success in our investigations. The duty
which the former owe the latter can best be discharged by the
application of ethical rather than ethnological standards, and this
should be duly borne in mind, since it is the peculiar weakness of
both sides to expect lenience and indulgence where probity and common
sense require allowance for neither the one nor the other. If it be
exacted that promptness and integrity characterize the actions of one
let it be demanded that the same virtues be exercised by the other. If
the race in other words would be induced to more liberally patronize
its business and professional leaders, let the latter make it a point
to furnish the articles and render the service and exercise the
methods and manners which constitute the stock-in-trade of people who
furnish standards in the commercial and professional worlds.
It may be, however, that after exercising the prerogatives and
applying the principles defined, the results desired are not
forthcoming. In that case it is possible that tact and faith combined
with an enterprising genius may score the victory which surrenders
itself only to the most patient and determined search. If the people
are of mountainous proportions and are unyielding in their attitude of
stolidity or unconcernment in the affairs of their business leaders,
for the latter naught is left but to assume the role of Mohamet and go
to the people.
In various ways the suggestion can be followed, but in no more
feasible and effective way than by an appeal to their selfish and
individual interests. On the principle that a people's pocket can be
reached before their pride, it is suggested that those who would more
largely secure their trade and patronage, do so by holding out to them
the inducements common to co-operative business enterprises. The
business represented by huge department stores operated by such
merchant princes as John Wanamaker and Siegel & Cooper in their
returns to their employees, and the offering of bargain inducements to
their patrons in general, illustrate to a large degree what can be
done on a smaller scale by business men of the race, provided the
experiment be deemed worth the trial. The True Reformer's Organization
is a purely Negro enterprise, representing interests running up into
the millions, having as its mainspring of success the co-operative and
profit yielding principle indicated.
The foregoing illustrations, references and suggestions cannot fail,
at least in part, to answer the grave and momentous question on whose
right solution so much of the race's future welfare depends. SECOND
PAPER.
HOW CAN THE NEGROES BE INDUCED TO RALLY MORE TO NEGRO ENTERPRISES AND
TO THEIR PROFESSIONAL MEN?
BY PROF. J. W. GILBERT.
[Illustration: J. W. Gilbert, A. M.]
PROF. JOHN W. GILBERT, M. A.
Prof. John Wesley Gilbert, A. B., A. M., was born at
Hephzibah, Ga., July 6, 1864. Young Gilbert was left to the
care of his widowed mother and his uncle John, for whom he
had been named. He usually spent half the year on the farm
and the other half in the public schools of the city of
Augusta. After finishing the public grammar school course,
he spent twelve months, all told, in the Atlanta Baptist
College (then Seminary).
In January, 1884, Paine College opened in Augusta. He
attended this institution eighteen months and graduated from
it in June, 1886. In September of the same year he entered
the Junior Class of Brown University, Providence, R. I. He
graduated from this historic institution with honor in June,
1888. For excellence in Greek a scholarship in the American
College, Athens, Greece, was conferred upon him at the end
of his Senior year. In the spring of 1889, he married Miss
Osceola Pleasant of Augusta, Ga. He attended the American
College, Athens, Greece, during 1890-91. Under his
supervision the site of Ancient Eretria, now Nea Psara, on
the island of Enbola, was excavated and in collaboration
with Prof. John Pickard, the only extant map of this ancient
city was made by him. All the places of classic note in
Greece were visited and studied by him. His M. A. degree was
conferred upon him by Brown University upon the presentation
of his thesis, "The Demes of Attica." He also took one
semester of lectures in the University of Berlin, in 1891.
He is author of several archaeological productions and has
contributed articles on this subject to the _New York
Independent_ and other journals of like standing. He is at
present a member of the Philological Association of America,
and membership, which he accepts, in the Archaeological
Institute, has also been tendered him. Ever since the fall
of 1891, he has held the chair of Greek and German in Paine
College, Augusta, Ga. Besides, he is a preacher of the order
of Elder in the C. M. E. Church in America. As
representative of that church, he was a delegate to the
Ecumenical Conference, held in London, England, September,
1901. During the session he preached and lectured for a
number of the largest and most intelligent audiences in
England.
By proper education of the patrons, and merit on the part of Negro
business enterprises and professional men, is a summary answer to the
above question. It will be well for our present purposes to
investigate this answer in detail. The natural inference therefrom--an
inference whose justness is easily demonstrable--is that the education
of the Negro race, so far and in such manner as it has already
proceeded, is defective, when it comes to the question of training
Negroes to support their own business enterprises and professional
men. The very text books, not to mention the living teachers, in every
department of education, whether professional or otherwise, are
written by authors and for students other than Negroes. For every
public, and well nigh every private educational institution of the
land, the trustees of education have prescribed books which, besides
suppressing whatever praiseworthy associations the race has had with
the history and literature of our common country, never call the words
of a Negro wise; nor his deeds noble. It is neither a sufficient nor
true answer to the question, to say that Negroes have contributed
nothing of educational or civic value to the literature or history of
this country. Manifestly, then, our young people come out of school
without confidence in the ability of their race to do what members of
other races can do. This, I take it, is the reason why we find
educated Negroes, as a rule, bestowing their patronage upon business
enterprises and professional men of other races rather than upon their
own representatives in the same vocation. This lack of confidence and
race pride, characteristic of the educated as well as of the
uneducated Negro, is the most destructive heritage bequeathed by
slavery days to any once enslaved race in the history of the world.
Hence, as a race, we need a thorough revision of our system of
education which shall encourage the production of Negro authorship, on
the one hand, and the confidence-and-pride-inspiring study of the
worthfulness of the Negro's enviable record, on the other.
The schools are, however, only one of the agencies of education in the
broadest acceptation of that term. Equally potent with scholastic
training, if not more so, is the cultivation of social sentiment in
the community. Sentiment is higher than law, and the endeavor of all
honest legislation should be to make laws expressive of the mandates
of the highest and best sentiment. Any given community can almost
always be trusted to act upon the impulse of sentiment, whether this
comports with the law or not. Whether expressed or unexpressed, the
social sentiment among Negroes--and it is seemingly often innate--is
not favorable to the support of their own enterprises and professional
men. Were it otherwise, we should now have prosperous wholesale and
retail merchants, successful factories, large real estate agencies,
considerable banks, solid insurance companies, better institutions of
learning, well-paid lawyers, physicians, dentists, etc., and the
reaction on the whole race would have been to change our status in the
nation from that of mendicant denizens, as at present, to that of
influential well-to-do citizens. This mutual helping of each other is
expected of us, if we are to judge from the evidences given us from
time to time by our white fellow citizens. For example, the white
undertakers in Augusta, Georgia, have given up to the colored
undertakers all their Negro patronage. The best white physicians do
not seek Negro patients. Although greed for "the almighty dollar"
keeps most white business men seeking Negro patronage, they do not, as
a rule, try to prevent Negroes from patronizing Negroes except by
striving to make it to their pecuniary advantage to patronize white
men. In a word, it is natural, they allow, for birds of a feather to
flock together. And this is true of the Jew, the German, the Irishman,
of all except the Negro. As it is, the average Negro chooses rather to
be discourteously and carelessly treated by a white professional or
business man, often of inferior ability, than to be properly treated
by a man of superior ability of his own race. Hence, to induce Negro
patronage of Negro enterprises and professional men, there must be
cultivation of the social sentiment of the Negro community by all
possible means.
From every view-point the pulpit is the strongest factor in the
cultivation of social sentiment. Some few preachers occasionally
"_talk_ on this line," but unfortunately for the influence of their
admonitions, they themselves purchase their groceries and drugs,
employ their physician and undertaker from members of another race. "A
house divided against itself cannot stand," like many another passage
and teaching from the "Book of God and the god of books," might as
applicably be preached to a large number of Negro preachers as to
their congregations. It is no "unholy compromise" of the gospel of
saving grace to teach that the "Man of Galilee" came first unto his
"own," and that to "follow after him" and his apostles in their
doctrine of "first to the Jew," our religion should exemplify Christ
by our acting on the principle, "first to the Negro." I would have
this doctrine promulgated persistently, earnestly, constantly, from
every Negro pulpit as the only hope of the Negro race, as such, and,
therefore, of the perpetuity and progress of their churches. Nor
should the publishing of the doctrine find place only in the
congregations of the laity, but it should be proclaimed in the
clerical conferences, conventions, associations, synods, assemblies,
etc., for I recognize it as a case of "Physician, heal thyself."
This cultivation of sentiment in the purely religious bodies should be
supplemented by similar efforts in the "thousand-and-one" societies of
one sort and another among us. Let them incorporate it in their
constitutions as a requirement for membership. It would not be amiss
for our national race congresses and conventions to scatter broadcast
and thickly over the whole land literature to this effect. Let that
Negro individual or body be ostracized that does not subscribe to this
doctrine, or fails to live in accord therewith.
To summarize, this training in the school room, preaching in the
pulpit, proclaiming in social and civic organizations, promulgation
from the rostrum, and broadcast distribution of literature, all
tending toward the same end, it seems to me, would properly educate
the popular mind and be productive of that social sentiment without
which Negro enterprises and professional men are doomed either to
utter failure, or, at most, to the eking out of a miserable
death-in-life existence.
Now, as to those engaged in these enterprises and professions a few
words may be befittingly said. In order to inspire the confidence and
reasonably expect the patronage sought, there must be merit in the
claims of the seeker. The business enterprise must present no
appearance of hazard or mere adventure; for the mere matter of
sameness of race does not warrant one in taking risks as a partner or
patron in "wild-cat schemes." No man should expect or receive
patronage solely because he is black; for your patron, besides
generally being poor, is also black, and might as justly look for
favors of you upon that score as you of him. The business, let us say
of buying and selling, must show reason for its existence and
firmness in its project. Besides capital, a common sense application
of the economic laws of supply and demand, the principle of "low
prices, quick sales," the proper estimates of the actual and
prospective fluctuations of the market, these all must give evidences
of your _raison d'etre_, your firmness of business, and your claim
upon public patronage. It goes without saying that the quality of your
goods or services must be second to none at the same price. In the
professions Negro practitioners, if there is to be any difference in
point of ability between them and other professional men, must be
_exceedingly_ well prepared for their chosen fields. This is
imperative, because the presumption of the masses of Negroes, to say
nothing of others, is that, on the average, the Negro professional man
is not amply qualified for the pursuit of his profession. I would have
Negro professional men spend much time in the study of their
professions both before and after entrance thereupon. I should like to
know that the average Negro preacher, physician, lawyer, etc., is
better equipped for his work than the average professional man,
whether white or black, who is now receiving the patronage of Negroes.
Finally, the business or professional man must be of the people and
for the people, interested in their welfare of whatever sort, and
promotive of the same as far as he is able. He must not be "seeking
only what he may devour," but must give himself unreservedly to the
people for their uplift in every good cause. I do not mean that there
should be any "let-down" along moral lines, but I do mean to imply
that a great many failures are due to the exclusive separation of not
a few Negro professional men from the people unless when pecuniary
gain is the sole purpose.
These principles have made others successful. They are but natural
laws deducible from the philosophy of history. Therefore, if two and
two make four, why should not an application of these laws induce,
nay, compel Negroes to rally to the support of Negro enterprises and
their own professional men?
THIRD PAPER.
HOW CAN THE NEGROES BE INDUCED TO RALLY MORE TO NEGRO ENTERPRISES AND
TO THEIR PROFESSIONAL MEN?
BY J. R. PORTER, D. D. S.
[Illustration: Dr. J. R. Porter]
J. R. PORTER, D. D. S.
Dr. J. R. Porter was born and reared in Savannah, Ga., among
very pleasant home influences. He is the son of the late
Rev. James Porter, of that city, well remembered as educator
and musician, as one who loved his fellow man, and was eager
to serve his race in any capacity. The son has partaken of
these better qualities, and is earnestly following the
father's footsteps.
J. R. Porter received his primary education in the West
Broad Street Public School of his native city, and through
assiduous application while a pupil of the public school,
was enabled to enter Atlanta University on a two-year
scholarship won in competitive examination. He graduated in
1886 with the degree of A. B., and after a year entered the
Dental Department of Walden University, at that time Central
Tennessee College. He received the degree of D. D. S. in
1889, and the following year was Professor of Operative
Dentistry in his Alma Mater.
But this field was too narrow for his ambition. An active
practice was more to his liking, and he wanted to get in
touch with the people. With this in view he selected
Birmingham as his field of labor.
The Doctor soon built up an excellent practice, and became
indispensable both in public and religious affairs. He was
the founder of the Alabama Penny Savings Bank of Birmingham,
Ala., and the first Secretary of its Board of Directors.
Whatever is of public interest has always appealed to him,
and has had his hearty alliance.
But at that time Birmingham was a place of a few industries,
and their interdependence was so marked, that to tie up one
was to tie up all. In the strike of '92 and '93, the Magic
City slipped from under the influence of the magician's
wand, and was like any other broken and beaten town. The
strike had ruined it, and Dr. Porter, like others, sought a
better country. He chose Atlanta, Ga. He came here in the
spring of '93. By faithfully attending to business, he has
built up an excellent dental practice, and has become one of
our most popular leaders. He is genial, thoughtful and
reliable, and all classes feel very kindly toward him,
because of his deep interest in them and their affairs. He
is very much concerned in the young men and their future,
and is a prominent officer in the Y. M. C. A., established
by the colored men of Atlanta. He is conservative and just
on all public questions, and earnestly desires to give his
best to his people, because he has great faith in the
ultimate adjustment of the abnormal conditions that so
fetter them.
In discussing questions of race building it is but just that we
recognize the causes that have led up to the condition that may exist.
If we are to suggest methods by which we may correct our weak points,
we should first attempt to make plain what these are and then offer
our remedy.
We have enterprises innumerable, enterprises of all classes and kinds,
dignified and undignified, humble and pretentious, scattered all over
this broad land. But these do not take on the sturdy growth of
permanency and prosperity that usually attaches to the affairs of
others. On the contrary we are surprised if they exhibit undue
vitality and outgrow their long clothes.
Some of our businesses are lasting monuments to our commercial and
professional ability, and stand out proudly against a background of
restricted opportunities, while the unnumbered many fade into the
shadow of the horizon and are lost to sight.
The questions that come to us are: Why is it so, and how may it be
remedied? Are the causes for these economic conditions of commercial
origin or social? Are they extrinsic or intrinsic? Are they the
results of the unbusinesslike methods of our merchants, or the lack of
appreciation of our buyers?
We glory that we are a full-fledged race. It is a splendid thing to
glory over. But do we realize what we have missed in our sudden
growth? Imagine a man, who has had no babyhood, no childhood, no
youthhood; a man born into manhood, without the pleasures and
experiences of boyhood; who has never fallen into a pond, battled with
wasps, played truant, or done any of those innocent mischiefs that
develop the boy both in body and in mind, and fit him for the
strenuous duties of life. Imagine such a man and you have our race.
A nation in a day, is our record. We were born into cities,
governments, laws, comforts, pleasures and schools. Aladdin's lamp has
never accomplished anything so wonderful, and we rubbed our eyes and
were amazed because everything had been prepared for us. This very
munificence has hampered us. We have not had that development as
individuals and as a people that would best fit us to grapple with
each succeeding obstacle. Therefore we must patiently though painfully
start from the beginning and travel over the same road, that each race
has traveled, because individuals and races develop alike, and the
same conditions that attach to the growth of one race, attach to that
of all others.
A nation in a day is a splendid record. But a nation that came out of
the wilderness, constructed its own cities, builded its own roads,
made its own laws, established its own schools, devised its own
comforts and pleasures, and in the contest with nature and poverty,
wrestled until it won a new name, that nation with its scars, its
experiences, and its development has far more to be desired, and has
far more resources upon which to draw in its after contests than the
former.
We entered the lists with these natural handicaps, and other
conditions imposed upon us. We have made mistakes, and the wonder is
that we have not made more, and that we have shown such splendid
powers of adaptability. Shunted to the right and left, with our path
continually obstructed, and our ambition jeered at, we have kept
quietly and persistently on, until we can now show a very extensive
catalogue of enterprises, that have grown and grown, until they are
sufficiently important to call forth discussions of this character.
We have no definite figures of the exact amount invested in our
business ventures. Though it is small when compared with the vast
amounts invested by others, yet it is enormous when compared with our
actual resources. The Negro merchant and professional man, have ceased
to be novelties, and in many sections are making serious impressions
on the business of both city and country.
We may still regard our enterprises as pioneer. We can even see the
visible signs of our endeavors to learn a business while conducting
it. Yet it is quite gratifying to notice an improvement. Our ventures
are taking on more and more the general character of business, and
losing the less desirable ones of race peculiarities.
What are the causes of so many failures among our enterprises,
especially those that gave promise of great success? This question
like the historic ghost will not down, but walks at unseemly hours,
both by day and by night, calling for an adjustment of our commercial
and economic sins, that it may go to its rest.
Our men do not have that thorough grasp of business principles, that
comes with years of experience. One cause for our mistakes is that we
do not have the opportunity of apprenticeship. The white youth enters
an establishment, and step by step learns a business before he starts
in it for himself. He thereby places a large factor of success to his
credit.
The Negro goes into business without that intimate knowledge that is
so essential, and stumbles into success or into failure. But this
condition is gradually changing. We have been in active life long
enough to have somewhat of an apprentice class of our own. Here and
there we find men, who have, through this system gained a knowledge
that gives them a decided advantage. It is through these means that we
hope to improve the personnel of our merchant class, the character of
our enterprises, and increase our patronage because of the excellency
of the service.
One great need of our enterprises is the freedom of location.
Experience and capital are both seriously hampered by want of proper
place to house business. I have seen a prosperous merchant move across
a street and fail. I have seen a splendid business carried around a
corner and utterly destroyed.
If this is so with those who have choice of places, how much more must
it be so with us who must take what we can get, and what wonder is it
that we utterly fail, or that we imbibe the squalor and shiftlessness
of the miserable places we must occupy. All life is subject to the
same general physiological influences. Man and plant alike flourish in
the sunshine, and fade and weaken in the damp and dark. Our business
languishes as much from environment as from any other cause. Trade is
a sensitive thing and increases or decreases according to fixed laws,
and there must be more than goods to attract active patronage. Grant
us this freedom of location and our road to success through business
ventures would be much shortened.
I do not lay our failures to external causes alone. There are other
and as grave ones within. Certain economic exactions must be complied
with before success is ever assured. Some do not choose the pursuits
for which they are best fitted, but strike out boldly and confidently,
forgetful that adaptability is always an essential factor in success.
Some are unable to carry out their plans from lack of capital. This
has also kept many from getting the business training that is so
necessary, and we therefore have less merchants and more storekeepers.
We must know that business is progressive and demands an ideal. The
whole system of Southern commercial life has been revolutionized, but
the revolution is the product of a great evolution.
Under these conditions, have our business and professional men done
their best to attract and hold the patronage of our people, or have
they been content to drift along and catch whatever may come their
way? Have they realized that they have obligations as well as those to
whom they would sell? They have not done all of their duty, nor have
they been as progressive as they might have been. Yet when we think of
the severe handicaps they have had, we feel that they have done
remarkably well. Life is a continual comparison, to-day with
yesterday, this year with last. In the comparison we see better
merchants, better stores, and higher business ideals among us. These
appeal to us very sensibly, and we give more and more liberally of our
patronage.
We are apt to forget the terrible handicaps that faced us as a people
not so long ago, and the commercial ones that face our business men of
to-day. We grow impatient with their mistakes and twit them because
they are unable to display as large and as valuable a stock as some
one else, or because of their shabby establishments. We are too
exacting. We are not as generously inclined towards our enterprises as
we should be, and it is only when we put ourselves in places that
require patronage, that we can understand why so many fail. The power
to discriminate between the useful and useless is born of experience
and is of slow growth. The struggle between the right and wrong, the
necessary and unnecessary is the heritage that came to us with our
sudden birth of racehood. All fields of endeavor are new to us, and
even when there are no restrictions, our adjustment must be slow.
For us to rally to our enterprises simply because they are ours, would
bring temporary but not permanent success. The latter can only come by
normal means. Abnormal conditions are not lasting. They may hold for a
time and even prosper, yet they must ultimately fail, and then affairs
will follow their natural tendency, and seek the normal. The
restrictions that press us so, must in time yield to this law, and all
efforts to rally to our enterprises from pride, and not from reason,
must follow the same fate. There are a hundred cents in a dollar but
no sentiment. Lessen its purchasing value and you lessen the desire to
purchase.
We may rally to enterprises simply because Negroes are the projectors,
but we soon begin to cast about for reasons for our patronage, and if
we find none to outweigh self-interest we soon drop off. But if we
find good reason for our support, we soon lose the idea of race pride,
in the greater idea that our merchant is a splendid business man.
The best agents for securing active support for our enterprises are
the attractions that these enterprises hold within themselves. Our
intelligent and thrifty merchants, with their well appointed stores,
and enlarged stock are to settle this problem of patronage, because
they have within their keeping, the means to develop the normal
conditions of trade and to build up a demand for their wares.
TOPIC XII.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT MORTALITY AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE
CITIES OF THE SOUTH, AND HOW IS THAT MORTALITY TO BE LESSENED?
BY MRS. WARREN LOGAN.
[Illustration: Mrs. Warren Logan]
MRS. WARREN LOGAN.
Mrs. Warren Logan, whose maiden name was Adella Hunt, was
born in a Georgia village after the close of the Civil War.
When asked for this sketch, she said: "There is little to
tell, as my busy life has been without romantic event. I was
not born a slave, nor in a log cabin. To tell the truth, I
got my education by no greater hardship than hard work,
which I regard as exceedingly healthful."
It is known that she has an inheritance of blood, tradition
and history of which any American woman might be proud.
Her early education was of a private nature. In 1881 she was
graduated from Atlanta University as a bright member of one
of its brightest classes.
Two years of teaching in an American Missionary School in a
South Georgia town, where she was also a city missionary,
prepared her for more advanced work, which opened to her at
Tuskegee, Ala.
In 1883 Miss Hunt joined Mr. Washington, Olivia Davidson,
Warren Logan and the handful of teachers who were the
originators of the now famous Industrial School.
From the first she fitted into the activities and spirit of
the school and became Miss Davidson's right hand helper. She
succeeded to the position of Lady Principal when Miss
Davidson became Mrs. Booker T. Washington. In this position
Miss Hunt emphasized the academic side of the school and
also urged the physical development of the girls. Her own
line of teaching was the normal training of student
teachers. Her services were constantly in demand for Peabody
and other teachers' institutes in Georgia and Alabama.
In 1888 Miss Hunt was married to Warren Logan, treasurer of
the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Since that
time she has ordered her household, written a little, read
much, completed the Chautauqua Course, and kept abreast with
the times. While she has given her best thought to her
husband and children, she has kept in touch with the school
and has lent a hand to the Woman's Club.
In these days of specialists among physicians and of specialists among
students of social science it seems rather presumptuous for a teacher
to attempt any formal discussion of causes and remedies for the high
death rate among Negroes in the cities of the South. A few
suggestions, however, may serve to draw more attention to this vital
subject.
The sections of the cities inhabited by Negroes are generally the most
unsanitary. The house in which the average Negro family lives is
poorly built and too small. Frequently old houses are set aside as too
far gone for any except Negro tenants. In many instances these
dilapidated houses contain germs of disease which it is practically
impossible for the young and the feeble to withstand. The food, fuel,
clothing and general comforts of a family thus housed are
insufficient. Food plays too large a part in the havoc made by death
among Negroes. In many instances, there is great intemperance in both
eating and drinking. With another large class there is actual scarcity
of food and that, too, often of poor quality. Add to this,
irregularity of meals and poor cooking and one can not wonder at the
low state of health nor even at the excessive mortality.
One of the most serious phases of ignorance is criminal carelessness
in regard to nutrition. Cooking is that part of household work which
almost every woman undertakes and very few understand, and herein lies
the foundation of disease.
The long death-roll among Negroes contains an excessive number of
infants. Careful investigation shows that this slaughter of innocents
is due in large measure to improper feeding. Some mothers must be away
from their babies earning bread and shelter. Others leave their little
ones for less worthy and less honorable purposes. Others neglect their
offspring because they have a fancied or cultivated dislike of
children. It is a sad day for a people when happy motherhood
declines. Man has devised successful substitutes for natural food for
babies, but these should be used only when the best good of all
concerned can be subserved thereby. Nature's ways are wisest and best,
and parents must try to walk in those ways if they would have their
children have life and have it abundantly.
Far be it from us here to attempt a technical discussion of
tuberculosis, but in plain simple language, let us cite a few facts in
regard to lung diseases among Negroes.
The oft repeated statement that the Negro slave did not have
consumption, cannot be verified, for lack of authentic records on the
subject. The Negro free, however, is dying of consumption and kindred
diseases in appallingly large numbers.
Many theories in regard to consumption have been exploded, but it is
acknowledged by all, to be an infectious disease. As such, ignorant
people do not understand how to escape it; indeed, until anti-spitting
laws are more universal and more rigidly enforced, every one may be
exposed to these deadly germs. They respect neither race lines nor
intellectual grades. The Negro, however, seems to be peculiarly
susceptible to this class of ailments. 1. Because of comparatively
small lung capacity. 2. Because of general low nutrition. 3. Because
of lack of bath rooms and their proper use. 4. Immorality. 5. General
indifference to the incipient stages of the disease. Colds and coughs
are passed by as matters of course with little or nothing done to
prevent or cure them.
The physical life and death of man has a much more intimate connection
with his moral life than is at first thought apparent. Too many
children are robbed by Sin of a child's first right, viz.: the right
to be well born. If parents have lived lives of shame and thereby
weakened their bodies, the effects of this will be a sad legacy of
weakness in the persons of their children. Men and women given to
social impurity will hardly escape the notice of those about them.
Their characters are imitated and shame and weakness, physical as well
as moral, multiplied. "Sin conceived and brought forth Death."
Among people of low intellectual development and low moral standards,
family love is below normal. With this defective class, there is much
indifference to the life and death of their dependent relatives. The
young and the aged are shamefully neglected. It is sufficient to be
bereaved--better, the relieved, to say: "The Lord's Will be done."
Remedies for these sad and unfortunate conditions are much more easily
suggested than applied.
Better environment, greater comfort in the homes, come only as a
return for money. Money will come as a return for labor. Money will
come to those who earnestly desire it, because they will work for it.
They will do whatsoever their hands find to do, accepting the pay such
labor brings, but fitting and aspiring for something better. There is
usually plenty of work for all honest, industrious Negroes in Southern
cities.
Even money may not cause the old shanty to give place to a good house
nor raise the standard of general comfort very materially, except as
the demands of the family are enlarged as a result of education. No
one factor will have such weight in the decrease of suffering and the
reduction of the high death rate as enlightenment of mind.
The system of education in vogue in Southern cities will work slowly
because up to the beginning of the twentieth century, school
attendance has not been made compulsory. There are no truant schools,
no reform schools. Idleness tends to vice. Idleness and vice are in no
way conducive to health and longevity.
Many Negroes do not want education for themselves nor for their
children. These people swell the death lists in Southern cities'
health offices to such distressingly large numbers. They are often
cared for and buried by funds from the city treasury. Would it not pay
to try compulsory education? To try teaching them to help themselves,
to save themselves?
To say that the home life of the masses must be improved is but
another way of saying they must be educated.
Among the most potent forces in the uplift of a people are the school,
the press, the courts and the church.
Under a system of compulsory education, the Negro would much sooner
learn to observe the laws of health and thus to extend his life.
When newspapers in Southern cities are fairer in their attitude toward
the black citizen, he will become a better citizen. It will increase
his respect for others and greatly increase his self respect. He will
then make more effort to live and to live well, because his life will
seem more worth living.
Every state included under the "Land of the free and the home of the
brave" should strive to make its criminal laws reformative rather than
revengeful. A very considerable number of Southern Negroes come to
their life's end in the prisons, which in no Southern state are all
that prisons should be. From a health standpoint, most of them are all
that prisons should not be.
It pays the municipality better to educate and reform its citizens
than to convict and execute them.
A cultivated, spiritual ministry will emphasize the best teaching of
the schools.
An active church will sustain a fair press; will uphold law and order;
will supplement the work of the good doctor and in various ways try to
reduce the number of funerals among the Negro population in Southern
cities.
SECOND PAPER.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT MORTALITY AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE
CITIES OF THE SOUTH, AND HOW IS THAT MORTALITY TO BE LESSENED?
BY HON. H. A. RUCKER.
[Illustration: Hon. H. A. Rucker.]
MR. H. A. RUCKER.
Out of the Southland--that awful crucible of prejudice and
proscription,--like steel tempered by fire, and hardened for
the practical uses of mankind, has come numerous valiant
spirits, whose advent was so timely as to have seemed
divinely inspired. Price and Cain, Elliott and Bruce,
Cailloux, and others, who have joined the silent majority,
did noble work and lived to see the race's redemption, but
it has been left for newer and younger men to complete the
structure on the foundation that was furnished by the "Old
Guard." The modern age of politics and business in the sunny
South--the home of nine-tenths of the Negroes--offers no
brighter luminary than the Hon. Henry A. Rucker of Georgia.
Young as years go, but mature in all the attributes that
command success and popular esteem, the life of Henry A.
Rucker is a priceless text-book for the aspiring
Afro-American youth. Guided upward by nothing save the lofty
counsel of a good mother and the inherent qualities of a
true gentleman, he has scaled the heights, and for himself,
has solved the problem of "how the fittest" may survive, and
is giving to the whole race the key by which he wrought out
so clear a solution. No _legerdemain_ has worked his upward
flight. The ingredients that he has utilized are simple,
even if rare, and are within the reach of the least favored
of human beings--honesty of purpose, fidelity to every trust
and adherence to the golden rule. He has always been able to
secure what was justly his without encroaching upon the
sacred rights or legitimate possessions of another.
Harboring no malice in his own bosom he has softened the
wrath of his neighbor and demonstrated how clever diplomacy
and a manly appeal to the finer instincts of a possible
enemy yields richer returns than all the force and invective
that a century could bring to bear. If the battle is to be
fought out on lines of mental competition and personal worth
rather than by balls and bayonets, Mr. Rucker has grasped
the situation and the best evidence of the wisdom of his
policy of inter-racial coöperation is the results he has
individually achieved, and the commendation freely offered
by the white and colored people who greet him day by day in
the routine of duty. Atlanta owes much to the indefatigable
energy and inexhaustible public spirit of Henry A. Rucker.
He has been active in promoting all of her interests and
that his services have been valuable is cheerfully admitted
in the Board of Trade and industrial circles. He was
conspicuous in advancing the prospects of the famous
exposition of 1895, and is now striving to round out the
work of securing a commodious federal building for the
enterprising Georgian capital. He bore the brunt of the
fight against the "Hardwick bill" and was potent in
defeating both that infamous measure and the "Payne
resolution." He has been repeatedly elected a delegate to
the national conventions of the Republican party.
Since July 26, 1897, Mr. Rucker has been collector of
internal revenue for the District of Georgia with
headquarters in his own city, Atlanta. The receipts for the
last fiscal year were more than double those of preceding
years and exceeded in the same proportion the revenues
gathered in any single year since the organization of the
state. This marvelous showing is due partially to Mr.
Rucker's prompt, thorough and painstaking plan of operation
and of course in large measure to the national prosperity,
growing out of President McKinley's shrewd financial
policies. Brilliant as has been the past of this progressive
Afro-American, the future holds out the promise of grander
achievements. The race honors Mr. Rucker and holds him close
to its heart, because he has proven himself a leader that
can be trusted. When he commands "close ranks, steady,
march," the Georgia populace goes forward in one conquering
phalanx, determined, aggressive and undaunted, remembering
that enduring power comes not by "fits and starts," but by
clinching with mailed hand the rewards that have been won.
One who has never been taught to appreciate what health is and to
understand hygienic laws can not become a safe guardian of his or her
physical being. For when this being is attacked, as is constantly the
case, by its millions of enemies, if all of its portholes have not
been properly guarded it easily falls prey to disease and death.
As a race the Negro has had neither the time nor the opportunity to
inform himself on the principles of health saving or in those of
health getting--if there be such. Both prior to and since his
emancipation his time, except nominally, has been the property of
others from whom he has barely eked out an existence, and, from a
humanitarian standpoint, has had but little interest in caring for his
health.
During the years of his enslavement, his mortality, in proportion to
his numbers and his environments, was no less than it has been since
he became a free man--and the bald statement that his death-rate
during the past thirty-eight years has greatly increased, may not be
founded on facts. Fair play in discussing this phase of the subject
demands careful and patient inquiry into the past history of a
people concerning whom little or no minute data of a national
character was kept. However, this question may not properly enter into
the subject, the contention being that the mortality among the race is
excessive, which, if true, may be accounted for in part in the
existence of certain acknowledged conditions.
Wherever the Negro has been cared for either by himself or by others
he has enjoyed the same immunity from disease and death that those of
other races have. And whenever neglected or abused, whether the
failure or fault rests with himself or others, impaired health, decay
of mind and body and death have ensued.
Compared with the masses but few Negroes at any time within the
history of the life of the race in this country, have been properly
guarded against exposure--the few who in ante bellum days were
selected as house servants and to fill other kindred places, were
measurably protected. And now the same classes and that of the more
fortunate or business classes have limited protection from more than
ordinary exposure.
The masses have always done the drudgery. And that too without
knowledge or reference to health keeping. A common practice of
employed Negroes is to go or be sent on short quick errands, leaving
warm and, in this respect, comfortable places of employment without
hat or wrap to breast chilling winds or atmospheric conditions many
degrees removed from their places of services. In this practice is the
exposure from sudden changes of temperature without preparation. The
drayman, the cartman, the man in the ditch and others whose employment
is in the open air are exposed not alone by the character of the work
in which they are engaged but also by reason of the fact that six days
of the week, those in which they labor, of necessity, their clothing
is poor and shabby and their persons are ill kept. While the seventh
day finds them as a rule well clad and well shod. Then their
homes--no, their houses, partly because of circumstances beyond their
control and partly on account of their improvident natures, are little
more than shelters or huts.
These houses are built in what is known or accepted as Negro tenant
districts, and those acquainted with the localities need no evidence
to convince them that they are not sought as either health or pleasure
resorts. They are the city alley ways and the low malarial districts
where the noxious gases and foul vapors rise from emptying sewers.
More than two hundred years' application has made the Negroes
agriculturists; they have been accustomed to labor and to plenty of
nature's fresh, invigorating air; they have, because of conditions not
proper to treat here, drifted from the farms and fields into the
crowded cities, thence into the slums, to be infected with disease.
They have been thrust into prisons where they were provided with the
poorest of covering and meanest food for their bodies; where scurvy
and other loathsome diseases have made their impress upon them and
where incentive to cleanliness is as distant as the North and South
poles. Freed from prison life they have gone forth mingling with a
class of people infecting them with their scales and spreading disease
and death.
Then again the race is without proper places to care for its
unfortunate, aged and infirm; without orphanages, reformatories and
homes for its friendless. Institutions which are potent factors in the
efforts of a people to prevent neglect and cure criminal tendencies.
All of these conditions are breeders of ills and conductors of death
which must be and happily are being abated.
The remedy suggested is a knowledge coupled with an appreciation of
health. Both to embrace the science of health preserving and of health
getting; better homes and better habits, even to being "temperate in
all things."
Acquired, accepted and practiced the mortality of the race will be
materially lessened.
THIRD PAPER.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT MORTALITY AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE
CITIES OF THE SOUTH, AND HOW IS THAT MORTALITY TO BE LESSENED?
BY DR. JOHN R. FRANCIS.
[Illustration: Dr. John R. Francis]
DR. JOHN R. FRANCIS.
Dr. John R. Francis, physician and surgeon, was born in
Georgetown, D. C., in 1856. He attended the private and
public schools of Washington, D. C., until his sixteenth
year. His academic education was received at Wesleyan
Academy, Wilbraham, Mass. He began the study of medicine
under the tutorage of Dr. C. C. Cox, at that time dean of
the Board of Health, and one of the foremost men in the
profession of medicine in the District of Columbia.
His professional course was taken at the University of
Michigan, from which he graduated with high honor in the
class of 1878. Settling in the home of his boyhood, where he
was well and favorably known, and where his parents before
him were honored and respected, it is no wonder that he
succeeded and stands as the leading Colored physician of
Washington, D. C.
Dr. Francis was appointed in 1894 by the Secretary of the
Interior to the position of first assistant surgeon of the
Freedman's Hospital, with a salary of $1,800. He instituted
several needed reforms in the treatment of patients. He
installed the present training school for nurses, and,
indeed, was so active in his reformation of affairs in the
institution that those who know the facts admit that Dr.
Francis, more than any other man, is responsible for the
opening of the new era of the Freedman's Hospital, which led
to its present flourishing condition. He is now, and has
been for several years past, the obstetrician to the
hospital.
He is the sole owner and manager of a private sanitarium on
Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D. C. This institution has
proven to be a panacea to the best element of Colored
citizens.
It is a noteworthy fact that Dr. and Mrs. Francis have both
served as members of the Board of Education of the District
of Columbia.
In the study of the causes and remedy for the great mortality among
the colored people of Southern cities I shall not waste time and words
in an attempt to prove, by much statistical evidence, that which is
already too well known to us as an admitted fact, viz.: a mortality of
colored people in cities of the South, very largely in excess of that
of the white people of the same communities.
I am fully justified, in the face of our present enlightenment, in
entering, at once, into the discussion as to its causes.
If it be true that the animal organism is intended by nature to pass
through a cycle, and that natural death is not a disease, but a
completion of the process of life, it follows that the organism, with
exceptions, as to any particular class of people born in health, is
constructed to pass through this cycle and is not of itself,--that is
to say, by its own organism,--capable of giving origin to any of the
phenomena to which we apply the term disease. We must, therefore, seek
for origins of the phenomena in causes lying outside the body, and
affecting it in such manner as to either render the natural actions
and processes irregular, or to excite actions and processes that are
altogether new.
Writing out in correct lists all the groups of phenomena that make up
the term disease, we will find that they invariably come from without.
From my point of view all the groups of diseases are in truth
accidents; exposure to some influence or influences that pervert
function or create new motion. I must first refer to the cause to
which at various times has been ascribed the responsibility for this
excessive mortality, viz.: that innate vital weakness exists in the
colored population of this country as a result of amalgamation. On
this theory the black race when mixed with the Caucasian is the only
one which produces with the latter a progeny of weakened innate
vitality. I have never seen this statement supported by any
trustworthy knowledge or information. On the other hand it has always
been accompanied by the most absurd arguments which invariably tend to
expose the mind of the writer as being prejudiced to the intermingling
and the intermarriage between the two races. It is among the
possibilities that physiological peculiarities account for
dispositions to disease belonging to typical classes of the human
family. No one has as yet been able to determine what those
peculiarities are. Whether they are primitively impressed on a race,
or are acquired is a question that can be answered only when the exact
relationships of diseases to race are discovered. My own view is, that
acquired and transmitted qualities and specific existing social
peculiarities are sufficient agencies for the production of all the
known variations of vitality belonging to peculiar races.
I am now thoroughly convinced that the causes of this great mortality
of the colored people of the cities of the South are _poverty_,
_prejudice_, and _ignorance_. For obvious reasons I will submit them
in the following arrangement:
1. _POVERTY:_
a. Contagious Diseases (close contact).--Diphtheria, scarlet fever,
small-pox, tuberculosis, syphilis, etc.
b. Unsanitary Nuisances (11,705 abated in the District of Columbia for
year ending June 30, 1900).--Filthy alleys, cellars, bad drainage,
garbage, filthy gutters, hog pens, filthy houses, filthy lots,
stagnant water, filthy privies, leaky roofs, sewers, filthy yards,
filthy streets, wells, etc.
c. Unsanitary Homes.--Only those houses that are refused or abandoned
by the white people are offered to the colored people for dwellings.
d. Impure Food.--The large quantity annually condemned in the District
of Columbia is an indication of that to which the poor is subjected.
e. Impure Air.--Bad design and construction (small rooms) and
unhealthy location.
f. Impure Water.--Unhealthy sources, cheap, shallow and unhealthy
wells, etc.
g. Infantile Mortality.--Unusually large from _poverty_ alone.
2. _PREJUDICE:_
a. Idleness and Crime.--Late hours, broken rest, depraved association,
tobacco, alcohol, syphilis, other diseases, etc.
b. A Destitute Laboring Class.--Prejudiced employers, poor pay, excess
of work, deficient rest, worry combined with physical exhaustion,
unsanitary rooms, etc.
c. Defective Homes.--Small rooms, poor ventilation, either no water
supply, or a very bad one, neglect of sanitary measures by both
landlord and agent, all the nuisances enumerated above, etc.
3. _IGNORANCE:_
a. Diseases from bad hygiene (public, home, and personal).
b. Induced diseases from physical strain.
c. Diseases from combination of physical and mental strain.
d. Disease from the influence of the passions.
e. Disease from sloth and idleness.
f. Disease from late hours and broken rest.
g. Disease from food.
h. Disease from water.
i. Disease from alcohol.
j. Disease from tobacco.
k. Disease from errors of dress.
l. Children of parents diseased or weakened from various causes.
The space allowed for this article will not permit the discussion of
all the causes mentioned above. There are, however, a few that are
worthy of our special consideration. For the purpose of condensation,
I will attempt the elucidation of the importance of such causes as
demand our most serious attention by incorporating them in the
following discussion of the most important part of this article: "_How
is this great mortality to be lessened?_"
In my opinion the remedy for this alarming condition exists in
_education_ and _money_. In other words our remedy is the same as that
of other races. The only difference is that the barriers we must
surmount are so very peculiar and so very much greater than that of
other peoples we must do our best to, at once, recognize the fact and
begin the work. I believe the goal is ours and if we will only
struggle manfully and hopefully onward we will soon reach it. With
_EDUCATION AND MONEY_
as the remedy, the colored people must be taught that the first step
towards the reduction of disease is to begin at the beginning, to
provide for the health of the unborn. The error, commonly entertained,
that marriageable men and women have nothing to consider except money,
station, or social relationships demands correction.
The offspring of marriage, the most precious of all fortunes, deserves
surely as much forethought as is bestowed upon the offspring of the
lower animals.
It is well that we teach, in the school room and from the pulpit,
about the condition that exists in the parental line, maternal and
paternal. The necessity for such instruction is somewhat indicated, in
the effect upon the prenatal state, of such conditions as scrofula or
struma, of various forms of tuberculosis and syphilis, of epilepsy, of
rheumatism, and of insanity. These are only a few. We have to contend
even with hereditary proclivity to some forms of the acute
communicable diseases, such as diphtheria and scarlet fever and also
to immunity from the same.
We must furnish, by all available means and through every possible
channel of information, persistent and systematic instruction in
public, home and personal hygiene. We should utilize especially the
power of the pulpit and influence the public school authorities to
institute, in the colored schools throughout the South, special
instruction on these subjects. The importance of such instruction is
evident in the agitation which is now occurring among the educators in
the schools of the Eastern states. If it is needed there then the need
of it in the colored schools of the South must be urgent indeed.
We must give such education as will tend to a better general
knowledge, especially of the two diseases which, I believe, more than
any, should be the most dreaded as being the most prolific of injury
to mankind and especially to the colored people on account of their
ignorance of the communicability of disease combined with their
poverty. I refer to the contagious maladies tuberculosis and the one
called "specific" or syphilis, the moral as well as the physical blot
on all civilized life. The former is well known nowadays to be one, if
not the worst contagion to which the human family is subjected. In its
various forms it is responsible, probably, for more deaths among the
colored people than any one disease with a definite phenomenon. As
less is known about the latter disease, syphilis, I must mention it a
little more forcibly, however unpleasant and brief the utterance. The
poison of the malady once engrafted into the living body, and
producing its effect there, leaves, according to my professional
experience, and observation, organic evils which are never completely
removed. Various forms of disease of the skin; some forms of
consumption; some phases of struma or scrofula; many forms of
cachectic feebleness and impaired physical build--what are denominated
delicate states of constitution--these and other types of disease are
so directly or indirectly connected with the "specific" taint, it
becomes impossible to be too careful in tracing it out, or in
measuring the degree to which it extends in the field of morbid
phenomenon, in our efforts to improve the vitality of the colored
people and to enlighten them upon this class of diseases.
The widespread encouragement of thrift, industry and efforts among the
colored people to gain a livelihood or, to put it more boldly, to get
money and keep it, thereby obtaining the means with which to supply
themselves with the necessaries of life, and possibly, with some of
its comforts, will materially wipe out a large percentage of that
class of diseases and death that proceed from such causes as worry,
excess of work, physical and mental strain, late hours, broken rest,
etc.
Washington, D. C., is considered a very clean city. It is, therefore,
significant that the 11,705 nuisances, referred to in the foregoing,
are an indication as to the great risk, from this source throughout
the South. It is obvious at once that the colored people, who form the
bulk of the poor class, are the principal victims to that which
escapes official inspection.
Notwithstanding the fact that the colored population of the District
of Columbia is less than one-third of that of the whites, in the year
1899-1900, there died in the homes located in the back alleys of the
city 411 colored persons and eleven white persons, indicating to what
extent these unsanitary homes are occupied by the colored people.
Space will not permit the further elucidation of the foregoing causes
and remedies, which I have done nothing more than to touch upon.
However, I cannot close without giving further emphasis to my views by
offering in evidence the conditions, as to vitality, of the Jews. The
facts are that this race, from some cause or causes, presents an
endurance against disease that does not belong to any other portion of
the civilized communities amongst which its members dwell. We do not
have far to go to find many causes for this high vitality. The causes
are simply summed up in the term "soberness of life." The Jew drinks
less than the Christian; he takes, as a rule, better food; he marries
earlier; he rears the children he has brought into the world with
greater personal care; he tends the aged more thoughtfully; he takes
better care of the poor; he takes better care of himself; he does not
boast of to-morrow, but he provides for it; and he holds tenaciously
to all he gets. It may be true that he carries these virtues too far,
but I do most earnestly plead that if the colored people will only
emulate the Jew, they, like the Jew, will win, like him they will
become strong, and like him in scorning boisterous mirth and passion,
will become comparatively happy and healthy.
FOURTH PAPER.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT MORTALITY AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE
CITIES OF THE SOUTH, AND HOW IS THAT MORTALITY TO BE LESSENED?
BY JAMES RANDALL WILDER, M. D., PHAR. D.
[Illustration: Dr. J. R. Wilder]
JAMES RANDALL WILDER, M. D., PHAR. D.
James Randall Wilder was born at Columbia, S. C., and is the
son of Charles M. Wilder, who was postmaster at Columbia for
many years. His mother was Marla Coleman, also a native of
the Palmetto State.
Dr. Wilder is a man of spotless character, and enjoys a
striking appearance, a magnetic personality, and a brilliant
and versatile mind. His early training was received in the
public schools of his native city. He spent a season in the
classical department of Howard University, and from there he
went to Howard Medical College, from which he graduated in
the year 1888. Availing himself of the unrivalled
opportunities afforded by the Freedman's Hospital, he
rapidly acquired both theoretical and practical knowledge,
so that when he stepped into the world he possessed a
preparation seldom equaled by the young practitioner. He has
also the degree of Phar. D. from Howard.
He located in Washington, the capital of the nation, where
today he enjoys a large and lucrative practice. His modest,
sympathetic nature makes him an ideal man for the sick room.
His ability has won professional recognition not only for
himself but for others. He was for many years physician to
the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children,
and is today the examining surgeon for a number of
benevolent and charitable organizations. He has been
prominently connected with many of the business ventures of
the colored people in the District of Columbia for the past
ten years, and is ranked as a broad-minded, solid,
public-spirited citizen--a grand object lesson for what is
best and most progressive in the community. He has invested
his earnings judiciously, so that today he has a competency
seldom attained by a man of his years. The success gained,
the making the most of himself, renders him the best
advocate of truth, and a potent factor in the growth and
development of the race. This plain, honest, earnest young
man is a type of the generation since citizenship came--a
splendid example of worth since the selfhood of the race has
been partially recognized, and the members have been
permitted to add their quota to the sum of human advancement
and achievement. The hour calls for fact, not fancy--for
flesh-and-blood examples of what has been done by the young
manhood of the country. The interest here and now is due to
the fact that he has had somewhat to say on a subject of
vital moment, and has said it vigorously and eloquently.
Here he is the champion of truth, performing a service in a
dignified, scholarly manner, and so winning the praise and
gratitude of all lovers of truth. His article must call a
halt to those inconsiderate ones who persistently repeat
what through haste and insufficient data has been given to
the world as fact--as logical inference from scientific
investigation.
Dr. Wilder has collected a large library of professional and
literary works, and has never ceased to be a hard student.
His home shows the taste of the scholar and wide-awake
practitioner. He married Miss Sallie C. Pearson of Columbia,
S. C., and to them have been born two children--Charles
McDuffie and Susan Maceo.
Dr. Wilder belongs to that class of quiet, earnest souls who
pursue the "even tenor of their way" and are doing most to
establish truth, to refute error, content to let the "deeds,
though mute, speak loud the doer."
The American Negro finds himself, at the beginning of the twentieth
century, seriously embarrassed by the many false and damaging
accusations that have been made against him, not least of which is the
charge of physical inferiority. The charge has been wholesale that the
Negro differs from the white man physically, and that he is ethnically
and strongly predisposed to certain fatal and contagious diseases.
This stigma of disease has been placed upon him and repeatedly
emphasized, but despite the fact that the effort has been made for
years, by men learned in anthropology to find and prove the inherent
inferiority of the Negro, based upon anatomical, physiological and
biostatic peculiarity, to-day the bare statistical fact of his high
mortality alone supports the calumnious fabrication. It is true that
according to official statistics the Negro's death rate in this
country is relatively high, but the causes of disparity are
_extrinsic_ and _remedial_ and he was not stamped thus _ab initio_,
but by the fiat of the Creative-will.
The Negro, identified as he is with the great human family, is subject
to the same deteriorating influences that affect his fellow-man. Hence
impure air and water, polluted soil from defective sewerage,
adulterated food-stuffs, and the unhealthful conditions imposed during
the school-going period of life--which are questions of public hygiene
and general concern--contribute, in no small degree, to his mortality.
But aside from these influences, common to all people, he is subject
to others peculiar to himself, on account of the environments that
govern him. The proverbial unreliability of statistics justifies the
assumption that the Negro's death-rate is not as great as it is said
to be. The occupations of the Negro tend to keep him in the
back-ground and to encourage a neglect on the part of the census
enumerator to record accurately all of the Negroes in a certain
locality. But the Negro dies faster than the white man, and it is not
my purpose to deny it, but to recite a few of the real causes of the
disparity in the cities of the South, and to show how that mortality
is to be lessened.
(1) American slavery, with its unparalleled cruelty and bestiality has
injured the Negro, intellectually, physically and morally. It has been
claimed that the admixture of the Negro with the Caucasian has given
us a resulting mulatto, weaker physically than either of the parent
stock, but this statement is based upon hypothesis, and is not borne
out by the facts in the case. It is true, however, that a resulting
lowering of vitality has followed the admixture of "_kindred blood_,"
which was almost unavoidable during the days of slavery as the result
of certain well-known procreative practices that obtained on the part
of the master, and on account of the itineracy of the Negro incident
to his chattelism. In "those dark days" it was hard enough for the
Negro to recognize his near kin on his maternal side, and it was
infinitely impossible for him to trace the "family tree" from the
paternal side. The evil effects of this consequent admixture of
"similar" blood cannot be denied, and must bear a modicum of
responsibility for the excessive mortality of the Negro of to-day.
(2) The fact that the great majority of the Negro women in the cities
of the South are compelled to work steadily even while they are
_enceinte_, doubtless often interferes with the normal development of
the internal organs of their offspring, causing a lack of vitality
which is not apparent to the casual observer, but which must make them
an easy victim to disease.
(3) The same social and economic conditions that keep the expectant
mother busy with her daily labors, also abbreviate her
"lying-in-period," which not only weakens her physically, but deprives
her newly-born offspring of its natural food--thus consigning it to an
infant's grave, or so debilitating it that it succumbs to the first
disease with which it becomes affected. It is bad enough to be
bottle-fed, physiologists tell us, but it is infinitely worse to be
hand-fed. The majority of the Negroes in the Southland are hand-fed
from birth with food decidedly improper both as to quality and
quantity, thus making defective the very substructure of their being.
Is it any wonder that such a people die faster than another people,
who nurse their young or have it done, or who give them pure cow's
milk modified scientifically, or other artificial infant food prepared
skilfully amid the best sanitary environments?
(4) The early motherhood of the Negro has its evil effects. The proper
age for a woman to become a mother is at twenty-five years and usually
before that time development is not complete, and the whole organism
is in a transition state. It is equally true that the use of any organ
before it has attained its complete growth or development is damaging
to that organ and interferes with its normal function, and "we cannot
but believe that children developed in immature sexual organs must be
deficient in true vital force and energy. It is often noticeable that
a child apparently strong and vigorous, may have but little power to
resist disease, or may even be strongly predisposed to some
infirmity." The colored women in the section under discussion who
become mothers, are usually multiporæ long before the twenty-fifth
year.
(5) The element of overwork must come in for its increment of
responsibility in the excessive mortality of the Negro. While
deficiency in exercise favors a lack of nutrition conducive to wasting
in size, on the other hand too much work favors hypertrophy of vital
organs and tissue degeneration. The average healthy man should work
about eight hours per day and "should do work to the equivalent of 150
foot-tons daily." The American Negro's working hours, as a rule, are
regulated, if at all, by the exigencies of the work to be performed,
as it appears to an exacting employer.
(6) The kind of work performed by the Negroes in the Southern cities
includes all menial occupations, which conduce to accident and
exposure. The death-rate among the laboring class of any community,
irrespective and independent of its nationality, is necessarily
greater than that of the well-to-do leisure class.
(7) The manner of living of the majority of the colored people in the
cities of the South--which is sometimes the progeny of ignorance, but
oftener the result of necessity--is responsible, in a large measure,
for their high mortality. They are crowded together on back streets,
in lanes and ill-smelling bottoms, near ponds of stagnant water, on
the banks of rivers--wherever their scanty means consign them. The
ignorant among them, like the ignorant among any other people, ignore
the teachings of hygiene, because they are ignorant, and not because
they are black. They do not know the value of fresh air and sunlight
and cleanliness, and hence are ignorant of the fatality attached to
the unholy trinity--darkness, dampness and dirt, which is responsible
for the tuberculosis that is charged to their "inherent tendencies."
The pittance that is paid to the Negro in the name of wages forces him
to crowd together in narrow and ill-ventilated sleeping apartments,
which is decidedly unhealthful and favors the spread of contagious
diseases. Thus smallpox spreads rapidly in a Negro settlement, not
because they are Negroes, but because their manner of living brings
them into the most intimate contact with one another, so that whatever
disease attacks one, rapidly spreads to all of the others who are not
immune.
The lack of suitable clothing and proper food, as a result of poverty,
weakens the Negro physically. The neglect of the bath through lack of
time, is responsible for much of the heart, kidney and skin diseases
so prevalent among the laboring classes of the colored people. It
takes time to keep clean, and the laborer has no leisure. Ignorance of
the seriousness of certain diseases like syphilis, scrofula and
rheumatism, has played an important role in the drama of his
mortality.
(8) Another fruitful cause of his excessive mortality arises out of
his _struggle for existence_. The exigencies of life are such with him
that he does not heed the admonitions of nature made manifest in the
early symptoms of disease, so that unwittingly he becomes habituated
to discomfort and pain. When the common Negro laborer lays aside his
implements of labor on account of sickness, the disease with which he
is affected is well founded and passed beyond the abortive and often
the curative stage, and very frequently when medical advice is
obtained, it is of the dispensary or "physician to the poor" type,
which too often savors of unconcern, inexperience and incompetency.
(9) The prevalent habit among the colored people of taking patented
cure-all nostrums, which contain narcotics that insidiously benumb the
sensibilities and mask the symptoms of disease, would naturally
contribute to the mortality of any people.
(10) Not the least fruitful of all of the causes of the Negro's
excessive mortality, is a lack of _resistance_ to disease, engendered
by the social conditions that obtain in the Southland. There he is so
oppressed and persecuted that he finds himself not only an easy prey
to disease, but an early victim to death. He has little to live for,
and his religion promises him much after death, which, in a sense, he
welcomes as a relief from his trials and troubles. This statement will
not appear exaggerated when one considers the powerful influence that
the mind has over the body. A cheerful, hopeful, contented mind,
predisposes to a healthy body, and conversely, a discontented and
despairful mind, interferes with the vital functions and invites
disease and death.
(11) Lastly, in a consideration of the relatively high mortality of
the Negro in the cities of the South, considerable weight must be
given to the _contracted_ death-rate of the whites due to their
superior social and financial condition. Their environments are, as a
rule, as healthful as education can suggest and as money can obtain,
and when disease overtakes them, they combat it not only with the
skill of science, but with the power of will. The incentives of life,
so lacking for the colored people, are theirs in all of their
plenitude. The earth is theirs and the fullness thereof, and there is
no power therein that they may not covet. This feeling, this
knowledge, becomes _vis-a-mente_ that proves a potential factor in
their struggle with disease. Despite this powerful influence however,
and because of it, the _morbidity_ of the white man in this country is
great. I venture the assertion that his morbidity far exceeds that of
the Negro--not because he is more prone to disease, but because he is
enabled to live longer with disease on account of the influences to
which allusion has already been made. The plain fact is, the Negro
dies sooner and the white man lives longer with disease, which
presents the unique question: Is it not more advantageous to the
public good to die of a disease and be buried safely and deeply
beneath the soil than to live with it and thus increase the
opportunities of disseminating it?
(12) The remedies for the excessive mortality of the Negro in the
cities of the South are self-evident. He is a man and identical with
other men structurally, so that whatever is health-giving and
life-lengthening for other civilized peoples, is health-giving and
life-lengthening for him. To be specific, his greatest need is an
increase of knowledge along the line of hygiene, and a studious
application of that knowledge. He must not only be taught to run the
race of life intelligently, but he must not be hindered in the process
of his running. He must know the life to lead, and then lead it. In
this he must have the liberal co-operation of his employer, and his
brother-in-white generally. He must be paid in accordance with the
labor that he performs and must be allowed an equitable participation
in the every-day affairs of life. Actuated by the hopes and
aspirations that actuate other men, and given a man's chance in the
struggle of life, his industry and genius will soon improve his
condition and bring him material prosperity, upon which depends, in a
measure, the development of moral, intellectual and physical growth.
Leisure and opportunity, comfort and freedom from sordid cares and
anxieties regarding the immediate necessities of life, must be
secured, if a race is to find time for study and thought, and to
develop its best moral and physical life. May not the Negro justly
find some consolation in his excessive mortality of to-day? May he
not believe that "death is the philosophy of life?" May he not feel
that his race is being strengthened by the dying of the weak, just as
a tree is strengthened by losing its unsound branches? If so, then the
future Negro in this country will be the fittest of "the survival of
the fittest," and will represent the grandest type of physical manhood
that the world has ever known.
FIFTH PAPER.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT MORTALITY AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE
CITIES OF THE SOUTH, AND HOW IS THAT MORTALITY TO BE LESSENED?
BY DR. R. F. BOYD.
[Illustration: R. F. Boyd, A. M. M. D.]
R. F. BOYD, M. D., D. D. S.
Dr. R. F. Boyd has clearly demonstrated by energy, pluck,
ability and upright dealing with his fellowman, the
possibility of rising from poverty's hard estate to honor's
golden prize. Dr. R. F. Boyd was born and partly reared on a
farm in Giles County, Tennessee, where he learned to hoe, to
plow, to reap and to mow. When quite a boy he worked for the
famous surgeon, Dr. Paul F. Eve, in Nashville, and attended
as best he could night school in the old Fisk buildings on
Knowles street. He taught his first school at College Grove,
Tennessee. The Doctor would teach a school and at its close
re-enter Fisk University or Central Tennessee College. In
1882 he graduated from Meharry Medical College, with the
degree of M. D. He went to Mississippi and taught a high
school at New Albany and practiced his profession till the
fall of 1882, when he re-entered the Central Tennessee
College to complete his college course, receiving at the
same time an adjunct Professorship in Chemistry at Meharry
and made teacher of Physiology and Hygiene in Central
Tennessee by which he was able to pay his college expenses.
In 1883 he was made Professor of Physiology in Meharry,
which position, together with a position in the Literary
Department, he held till he graduated from the College
Department of Central Tennessee College, in 1886. In 1887 he
graduated from the Dental Department of Meharry, receiving
the degree of D. D. S., teaching in the school at the same
time. In June, 1887, he opened his office in Nashville,
where so many had tried and failed. In 1888 Dr. Boyd was
made Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in Meharry; in 1890
he attended the Post-graduate School of Medicine at Chicago,
from which he received a diploma. In 1890 he was made
Professor of Hygiene, Physiology and Clinical Medicine,
which position he held until 1893, when he was made
Professor of the Diseases of Women and Clinical Medicine,
which chair he still holds. In 1892 he took a special course
in the Post-graduate Medical School and Hospital of Chicago,
on the diseases of women and children, among whom the
greater portion of his practice is. One of the greatest
needs of the colored people in the South is well regulated
hospitals, where trained nurses can handle and care for the
sick under skilled physicians. Until Mercy Hospital was
instituted, there was no place of this kind in the South. It
was Dr. R. F. Boyd who established and instituted this the
largest and most complete hospital owned and controlled by
colored people. There surgeons of our race do all kinds of
operations and trained and graduate nurses of the race care
for the sick under their management.
It is in this institution where the graduates of Meharry in
the Medical and Nurse-Training Departments get their
practical work. It is the great center to which colored
physicians of the South may send cases to be operated upon
by skilled physicians and handled by trained nurses. The
death rate of this institution has been less than three per
cent from all causes.
Besides this work, Dr. Boyd has taken a great interest in
secret societies. As an Immaculate, he has gained a National
reputation and has filled nearly all of the offices in the
Supreme Lodge. As a Pythian he has served the Grand Lodge as
Grand Medical Register, and has been honored by the Supreme
Lodge as Supreme Medical Register, and is Surgeon General of
the Military or Uniform Rank of that Order. The Ancient
United Sons and Daughters of Africa is a creation of his own
brain and he is at present Supreme Secretary of that Order.
As a business man he ranks among the foremost of the race.
He owns some of the best realty of the city, among which is
the Boyd Building, 417-419-421-423 Cedar Street. This
building has four business fronts, a hotel and restaurant,
offices of various kinds and four large society halls, in
which about forty societies meet. The Mercy Hospital was
purchased by him solely, at a cash value of $6,000. Besides
this he is the owner of other valuable property of Nashville
and suburbs.
This is a question of vital importance to us as a race and to the
nation as well. Much thought has been given to it by the best thinkers
of both races and many articles have been written by friend and foes.
All kinds of solutions have been proposed and yet the great death-rate
goes on. In the larger cities of the South our people die from two to
three times as fast as the whites.
The number of premature deaths is on the increase; the infant
death-rate is appalling; and consumption, a hitherto unknown disease
among our people, is credited with one-fourth the victims of all ages.
All the powers of science and art are being taxed to the utmost to
afford a complete solution to this problem. Every large city in the
South is being awakened to the sense of the importance of this
subject. And well they may; for the ignorance, the vice, the poverty,
the habitation and the food that cause this alarming death-rate effect
the whole community.
A proper knowledge and observance of the laws of health will give
happiness to all.
Man is as subject to the organic laws as the inanimate bodies about
him are to mechanical and chemical laws, and we as little escape the
consequences of the neglect or violation of these natural laws, which
affect the organic life, through the air we breathe, the food we eat,
the water we drink, the clothes we wear, and the circumstances
surrounding our habitation, as the stone projected from the hand, or
the shot from the mouth of the cannon can escape the bounds of
gravitation.
What we need is the gospel of the physical health to be preached from
every pulpit, and in every school room and in every home. All strong
motives of religion and the eternal world are taught from the pulpit
and the Sunday school to enforce certain duties that are no more
important to the well-being of man than the laws of health, which are
so widely disregarded. These laws are God's laws as truly as any
inscribed by Him on the Table of Stones.
The boards of health of our cities prescribe rules and regulations to
insure the peace and happiness of the individual and the longevity of
life which must apply to all in order that they might live out the
expected term of life. What is the natural term of life? Physiologists
have fixed it at a hundred years. Florens at five times the time
required to perfectly develop the skeleton. David says: "The days of
man's life are three score years and ten; and if by reason of strength
they be four score years, yet indeed is his strength labor and
sorrow."
Under modern hygienic rules and regulations the days of man have been
increased in civilized countries. Carefully prepared statistics show
that while the maximum age has not increased in many centuries, the
number of persons who survive infancy and reap a ripe old age is
greatly increased.
According to the Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce of New York
City, civilization largely interferes with the laws of evolution, by
survivorship and by encouraging the waste which arises from it. We
know that a human being soundly constituted continues in good health
until he reaps a ripe old age, provided certain conditions are
observed and no injurious accident befall him.
We might learn a lesson from the early Jews, or the ancient Greeks or
Romans, if we had at our command statistics of their mortality.
Doubtless they had a small death-rate! For they were strong and
vigorous and observed the laws of hygiene. When these laws are
properly observed, they decrease mortality and bring about greater
health, comfort and happiness to the individual and to the country at
large. Those who would preserve health in themselves and in the
community in which they live, who would reap the greatest benefits of
earth, and live out the appointed time, must strictly conform to these
essentials:
1. A constant supply of pure air.
2. Cleanliness of person and surroundings.
3. Sufficient nourishing food properly prepared and properly taken.
4. Sufficient exercise of the various organs of the body.
5. The proper amount of rest and sleep.
6. Right temperature.
7. Proper clothing.
8. Sufficient, cheerful, innocent enjoyment.
9. Exemption from harassing cares.
Conform strictly to these rules and all avoidable disease will be
annihilated. On the other hand, where hygienic and sanitary science is
not enforced, filth, decay and putrifying matter is sure to
accumulate. In this we have suitable material for the propagation of
disease germs, which cause all communicable and contagious diseases.
These minute organisms exist in the atmosphere everywhere, and
multiply by their own peculiar method of procreation; such as filth,
heat and moisture.
A population under the influence of vice, poverty, filth, debauchery,
foul air, poorly prepared food and crowded dwellings, or in low, damp
localities, with no rule regulating their eating or sleeping, clothing
or exercise, is sure to have a great degree of mortality.
With our thorough knowledge of how to prevent epidemics, most of the
diseases that enter the body through the respiratory, digestive,
cutaneous, circulatory, nervous, and genito-urinary systems should be
less frequent. Taking the facts which I have here given into account
one may see that not only do health and longevity depend upon laws
which we can understand and successfully operate, but man has it in
his power to modify to a great extent the circumstances in which he
lives, with a view to the promotion of his well-being and
preservation.
We know that the draining of a marsh pond banishes malaria; a change
from the city to the country reinvigorates, and that those who live in
the high, well drained portions of our cities have the smallest degree
of mortality and that the greater comforts possessed by the affluent
secure for them longer life than the poor who are not so favored. To
diminish the mortality in the Southern cities will depend upon both
the individual and social efforts as well as upon the public measures
of the legally constituted authorities.
The dirty neglected portions of our city where refuse and rubbish,
animal and vegetable matters are deposited and allowed to rest and
send up their poisonous odors from house to house, must be looked
after. The dwellings of our people must be improved. The old,
dilapidated stables, in the narrow, filthy alleys; the low, damp
basements and dark cellars, often below the ground, with an
insufficiency of both light and air; the clusters of homes built in
the bottom and low places, closely pent up, back to back so as to
prevent ventilation with only one entrance to each, and a privy
between; the over-crowded conditions of these uninhabitable quarters
and the quality of the food taken by those who live in these
disgraceful dwellings must be looked after.
Habits of living must be corrected and a crusade against ignorance and
vice begun by society. I don't think I would miss it very far when I
say that one-third of the colored people in our cities live in just
such dwellings as I have described here; while most of the white
population live in well-built houses in the healthy portions of the
cities. Is there any surprise that there should be so great a
disproportion in the mortality of the races? Compare the statistics of
all the large cities and you will find that under similar conditions,
this same proportion in mortality exists in the Northern and foreign
cities, where the food and dwelling of the poor have the same
difference. But this same difference exists nowhere in the world as it
does in the South. It is almost impossible for a colored man to rent a
respectable house anywhere in the cities; but the dark, low, damp,
confined, ill-ventilated cellars and alley houses are rented for as
much as comfortable quarters ought to bring. I don't wonder that the
mortality of the Negro is so great; but I do wonder that it is not
greater. Any other race of people would have been exterminated in
twenty years.
The remedy for the high death-rate is the enactment, and enforcement
of laws against allowing the people to sleep in basements, cellars,
old stables, alley houses, in low malarial sections of the cities, and
making the penalty against the landlords so great, that they will not
rent such places for dwellings. Regulate the kind of tenement houses
and the number of persons who shall sleep in one room, the kind of
food and rules for its preparation; break up these late church
meetings in poorly ventilated houses, and the problem will be solved.
The infant mortality will be reduced one-half when our people learn
that the care of a good conscientious physician is necessary, from
generation to development, and through the entire stage of
adolescence; not so much to cure, as to prevent disease. Our whole
system of medicine is now turning upon prevention rather than cure.
When the public is educated up to the point of paying physicians to
prevent as well as cure diseases, then, there will be less sickness
and fewer epidemics.
Then sanitary science, under the strict observance of hygiene, will
reach perfection; the rude, gross habits of living will be corrected;
a system of perfect drainage and ventilation will be inaugurated; pure
air and fresh water supply will be furnished to every public and
private house; only pure, unadulterated foods will be on the markets;
every hotel, private and boarding-house will furnish properly prepared
diets, and universal cleanliness will be the law.
Last, but by no means least, I call your attention to another most
potent remedy for the diminishing of the great mortality of the race
in the South. Besides the city hospitals, the whites have many other
hospitals and infirmaries, supported by church and benevolent
organizations where those that pay are at the hospitals because they
can receive the constant attention of a physician and nurse. We need
and should have such hospitals. The benevolently disposed people, the
churches and societies of the cities could establish and well support
them. In them, there would be pay wards and charitable wards. Each
church and society supporting the hospitals could send their indigent
sick to the charity wards and those who can pay, to the private
apartments.
These hospitals would afford a much needed opportunity for young women
of the race to prepare for trained nurses and afford better facilities
for the physicians to practice surgery and study remedies.
We have established in the city of Nashville, the Mercy Hospital under
the care and management of the Board of Trustees, composed of some of
the best citizens and heads of our great universities. Among the
directors are, Hon. J. C. Napier, President; W. T. Hightower,
Treasurer; Dr. G. W. Hubbard, Dean of Meherry Medical College; Dr. P.
B. Guernsey, President of Roger Williams University; Prof. H. H.
Wright, Fisk University, and Dr. R. H. Boyd, President of the National
Baptist Publishing Board.
The hospital is located at 811 S. Sherry street, Nashville, Tenn., in
one of the most quiet, beautiful and healthful localities of the city.
The site is high and well drained; the building large and commodious
and up-to-date in all its apartments. There are two large wards; one
for male and one for female, and private rooms, to which good pay
patients are assigned where they will come in contact with no one but
their physician and the nurse.
In this hospital great care is given to surgical work of all kinds and
especially to abdominal surgery and gynecology. Colored physicians
all over the South may send or bring their surgical cases here and
get every advantage that can be provided by the best first-class
hospitals and infirmaries all over the country. We have the best
graduate-trained nurses in constant attendance and the resident
physicians are men of the race who have made marvelous progress for
two decades in all branches of their work.
Since the establishment of the hospital we have had a record of which
few similar institutions can boast. During the first year we have had
more than 140 surgical cases, including abdominal section and other
major operations and yet the death-rate was less than 3 per cent from
all causes.
Our operating room is well appointed, with an abundance of sunlight by
day and gas light at night. Many of the physicians of the South have
sent us cases for which we are very grateful. We have had cases from
Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, Kentucky, Missouri, Florida,
and Georgia. Until the other cities of the South are able to afford
the facilities and accommodations and the skill and experience of the
Mercy Hospital we feel that it is the duty and should be the great
pleasure of every colored physician to send his surgical cases to this
hospital. I consider this one of the great factors to solve this vexed
problem.
The causes of the great mortality among the Negroes of the large
cities of the South are due to ignorance; vice; debauchery; poor food,
illy prepared; unsanitary environments; their habitation in the
over-crowded tenement houses; in old stables; damp cellars; and low,
damp sections and in narrow, filthy alleys, where the foul air,
improper nourishment, poor ventilation and the want of personal
cleanliness, furnish the proper condition for the development of
disease and death. Correct these conditions and educate the people up
to a thorough knowledge of and a strict compliance of the laws of
health and the problem is solved. The death-rate among our people will
not only be lessened, but I believe the Negro will outlive any other
people on earth.
SIXTH PAPER.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT MORTALITY AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE
CITIES OF THE SOUTH, AND HOW IS THAT MORTALITY TO BE LESSENED?
BY HENRY R. BUTLER, A. M., M. D.
[Illustration: H. R. Butler, A. M., M. D.]
HENRY R. BUTLER, A. M., M. D.
Dr. Butler was born in Cumberland county, North Carolina,
April 11, 1862. His early life was spent on the farm, during
which time he received at odd times three months' free
school instruction.
In 1874 his parents moved to Wilmington; there he worked in
saw mills, lumber yards, with the cotton compresses and as a
stevedore. He spent his nights studying under Prof. E. E.
Green, now Dr. E. E. Green of Macon, Ga. January 3, through
the assistance of his instructor, he entered Lincoln
University, Pa., and was graduated June 18, 1887, receiving
the degree of A. B.; October, the same year, he matriculated
in Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tenn., graduating
with the degree of M. D. February 27, 1890. The same year
the degree of A. M. was conferred on him by Lincoln
University. While at Nashville he won the H. T. Noel gold
medal for proficiency in operative surgery and dissecting.
He arrived in Atlanta March, 1890, and began the practice of
medicine. He was one of the organizers of the first drug
store owned and operated by colored men in Georgia. It was
known as Butler, Slater & Co. He was organizer and first
president of the Empire State Medical Association of colored
physicians. He was appointed surgeon of the Second Georgia
Battalion, colored volunteers, in 1891, with rank of first
lieutenant, by the Honorable W. J. Northern, then governor.
May 5, 1893, he married Miss Salina May Sloan of Atlanta, a
graduate of Spellman Seminary, who has been a most faithful,
loving and helpful companion. He took a special course in
the diseases of children in 1894 at the Harvard School of
Medicine, Boston, Mass. In 1895, in the same school he took
a special course in surgery. November 1, 1900, H. R. Butler,
Jr. came, adding new blessings and happiness to his home and
life. Dr. Butler is the first and so far the only colored
man to be a regular contributor to the great Southern daily,
_The Atlanta Constitution_. He has held that position since
1895. He was three years president of the Y. M. C. A. of
colored men. He was four years physician and surgeon in
charge at Spellman Seminary, and is now holding a similar
position in Morris Brown College, and is organizing a nurse
training department to that institution. He owns some
valuable real-estate, besides a beautiful home on Auburn
avenue. He has a large and lucrative practice. He is Grand
Master of Masons of the Jurisdiction Georgia, is grand
Medical Register of the Knights of Pythias. His life is
truly full, every moment of his time is taken.
The causes of excessive mortality among the colored people in Southern
cities are _said_ to be _many_ and have been discussed from just as
many points of view by students of the social status of this people.
But after several years of professional service among these colored
people, which service gave me an opportunity to more closely study
them, their faults, habits, needs, methods of living and their
knowledge of hygiene and its laws, I have calmly reached the
conclusion that the want of money is the main cause of the excessive
mortality of this people. It is true that there are several minor
causes, _but all_ have their origin in the one mentioned.
Among the most prominent of these _minor_ causes may be mentioned
_Ignorance_ and _Poverty_. Let us briefly consider the first of these.
The colored people have made wonderful progress in the acquirement of
knowledge since emancipation, and this improvement has played no small
part in reducing their excessive death-rate. Yet from this height we
look down and see the great masses of these people still held in the
death-like grip of _ignorance_. To these, education has taken no
knowledge of clean homes, pure air, ventilation, soap and water and
other things conducive to good health. These are they who to-day are
falling so rapidly before the great reaper, _death_.
It is a truth known to the profession, health departments and students
of this subject that most of the deaths of the great human family
occur between birth and the ages of five years. The children of the
colored race are not an exception to the above statement.
If the children of the intelligent, good, better and best die fast, it
stands to reason that those of the ignorant, bad and poor would die
even faster, and this is just what I have found to be the case.
Ofttimes, among the lowly masses, ignorance is the first to take
charge of the babies at birth; it sticks a slice of fat meat in their
innocent little mouths immediately after birth; it rocks the cradle;
it fills their little stomachs with all kinds of decoctions, of teas
and whiskies to bring out the "hives;" yea, ignorance feeds these
little ones on all kinds of solid foods before they are able to digest
them, until it finally feeds the grave with the bodies of its little
victims.
Even when manhood and womanhood are reached, _ignorance_,
_ghost-like_, stands forbidding the ventilation and cleaning of homes;
it says: "It's too cold to bathe;" it sends men and women to bed in
wet and damp clothes and does many other acts that multiply the graves
in the old church-yard on the hill.
We come now to consider _poverty_. Oh, what an enemy it is, and has
been, to the human family! It makes its home mostly among the
ignorant, and especially among the masses. In the cities of the South
the great masses are colored people. Hence it is among these that
poverty sits enthroned--a sceptered king ruling amid disease and
death. It retards the masses of the race in their march to the city of
improvement; it prevents them from having larger and cleaner and
better homes; with its bony fingers it points them to the cheap
renting huts in alleys, dens, dives and basements of cities, and
commands them to enter and die; it follows them into the market places
and fills their baskets with cheap adulterated and semi-decayed
food-stuffs; aided by prejudice and man's inhumanity to man, it drives
the colored people from the healthy country districts into the
crowded, sickly settlements of the Southern cities, where they soon
sicken and die.
Poverty, supplemented by ignorance, and the want of the true Christian
spirit, stands in the doorways of the public hospitals, infirmaries
and libraries where aids to health are to be found and forbids these
people to enter either on account of their color or the "want of
space." Poverty keeps these people from building such institutions for
themselves.
Again, the colored people of Southern cities constitute the great
labor force, hence most of the diseases that result from exposure are
more prevalent among them than they are among the white race.
Those diseases that result from improper foods, poor sanitation, want
of pure air, need of better homes and want of public parks and baths,
together with those untimely deaths due to the want of proper medical
attention, good nursing and surgical operations at the right time are
more extensive among the colored masses because they are the ones
that suffer the privations mentioned to a greater extent than any
other people.
Along with the observations already mentioned on this subject, and
which observations have led me to reach the conclusion that "the want
of money" is at the base of this excessive mortality, is this
encouraging fact--that the colored people are not dying now as fast as
they were even a decade ago. The reason of this is not far to seek.
The truth of the matter is, these people are growing in wealth and
intelligence and in proportion as they have acquired these essential
qualities their mortality has decreased.
I have observed in my practice that those who live in good, clean,
well ventilated homes have no more sickness and deaths than white
citizens of equal intelligence and wealth. I now call to mind, here in
Atlanta twenty homes of colored citizens which are fitted and
furnished with all modern conveniences, including heating and baths.
The owners are well-educated and spend much time and money in keeping
their homes and yards clean and in good sanitary condition. What I
wish to say is this, in twelve years' time only two deaths have
occurred in that circle of twenty homes, and one of these was a baby
whose death was due to an accident, and the other was an aged person
whose death was the result of Bright's disease. Does not this speak
volumes to prove the truth of my position? What I have observed here
in Atlanta relative to the _real_ causes and prevention of this
excessive mortality is true in other Southern cities.
It is no doubt plain to the reader that I have not mentioned here a
single cause upon which this excessive mortality rests, but that which
money can remove. That being true, what is the conclusion of the whole
matter? It is simply _this_:
1st. Pay the masses sufficient wages to remove their ignorance and
poverty, to build better homes and to furnish and equip them with
baths and other things necessary and conducive to good health, to
purchase proper food-stuffs, fuel and comfortable clothing.
2d. The cities should enlarge their present hospital facilities, or
build others especially for these people, cities and towns that have
no such facilities should provide them at once, parks, public baths
and libraries should be opened by the cities for the poor.
It is simply a matter of money, before that mighty king, ignorance and
poverty, together with all their allies, take flight.
TOPIC XIII.
WHAT SHOULD BE THE NEGRO'S ATTITUDE IN POLITICS?
BY HON. GEORGE H. WHITE.
[Illustration: Hon. George H. White]
HON. GEORGE H. WHITE, LL. D.
Mr. White was born in a log cabin, located at the confluence
of "Richland Branch" and "Slap Swamp" in Bladen County,
North Carolina, near the line of Columbus County, remote
from cities and towns. His maternal grandmother was
half-Indian and his paternal grandmother was Irish,
full-blood. His other admixture is facetiously described as
"mostly Negro." His early boyhood was a struggle for bread
and a very little butter, his schooling being necessarily
neglected. He usually attended two or three months in the
year. Later, by dint of toil, and saving a few dollars, he
was able to secure training under Prof. D. P. Allen,
President of the Whitten Normal School at Lumberton, N. C.,
and afterwards entered Howard University at Washington,
graduating from the eclectic department in 1877. Believing
that he could best serve his race and himself as an advocate
of justice, he read law while taking the academic course,
completing his reading under Judge William J. Clarke, of
North Carolina, and was licensed to practice in all courts
of that State by the Supreme Court in 1879.
Although Mr. White has won marked success in several walks
of life, as lawyer, teacher and business man, it is his
political achievements that have won for him not only a
national reputation, but have evoked no small degree of
comment from the press and diplomats of many of the
countries of the old world. It is worthy of remark that up
to this time, at the age of forty-nine, he has never held an
appointive office, his commissions coming invariably from
the hands of the sovereign people direct. He was elected to
the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1880, and to
the State Senate in 1884; was elected solicitor and
prosecuting attorney for the second judicial district of
North Carolina for four years in 1886, and for a like term
in 1890; was nominated for Congress in 1894, but withdrew in
the interest of harmony in his party. He made the race for
Congress in 1896 and was triumphantly elected by a majority
of 4,000, reversing a normal democratic majority of over
5,000--a change of fully 9,000 votes, indicating in no
uncertain tone the confidence and esteem in which he was
held by his friends and neighbors. He was re-elected in
1898. His services as a legislator were conscientious and
valuable. At the close of his second term, he delivered a
valedictory to the country, which was universally praised as
the best, truest and most timely expression of the Negro's
plea for equality of citizenship that ever rang through the
halls of Congress. The speech was widely circulated, and was
favorably commented upon by the leading newspapers of the
nation.
Mr. White has accumulated quite a handsome fortune, his
wealth being estimated at from $20,000 to $30,000. His
personal popularity and the respect for his ability are
attested by the fact that several honorary degrees have been
conferred upon him by a number of the noted educational
institutions of the land.
Mr. White is a thirty-third degree Mason. For six years he
was Grand Master of Masons for the State of North Carolina,
having filled most of the subordinate offices in that body
before his elevation to the Grand Mastership.
Since his retirement from Congress, Mr. White has been
engaged in the practice of law in Washington, D. C., and so
favorably has he impressed his qualifications upon the bench
and bar of the national capital that one of the judges
publicly, and without precedent, complimented him in open
court and set his methods up as an example for other lawyers
who practice there. Eminent as are his abilities, Mr. White
is proverbially modest. Of strong character, well-balanced
mind and an unswerving sense of justice, liberal in views
upon all subjects, political, social or religious,
companionable in private life, unostentatious in manner of
living or in the bestowal of charity, ready to sacrifice
personal convenience to serve the worthy, Mr. White is
indeed a typical American. The Negro people, in slavery or
freedom, as serfs or citizens, offer no model more
inspiring, no picture more inviting.
In presenting this subject to the public, I shall endeavor to treat it
from a broad and liberal standpoint, eliminating all selfishness or
individual political bias, and viewing the situation from the
standpoint of an American citizen.
The first prerequisite to good government in a republic, is purity in
the ballot. No stream can be pure unless its source is pure; neither
can a republic hope for just and fair laws and the administration and
execution of them, unless there is purity and fairness in the sources
from whence these cardinal principles of government spring. Laws
should be enacted for the whole people and not for individuals, races
or sections--thereby securing the support and retaining the confidence
of all the parts of our heterogeneous compact, to the end that a
homogeneous whole may move in the same direction for the good of all
concerned.
The Negroes ask for--and as a part of this republic--have a right to
demand the perpetuation of these basic principles of our government.
While we are young in citizenship, and admit having made many
political mistakes, yet we are willing that the search-light of reason
be thrown upon our acts, and a fair and impartial verdict rendered as
to our conduct, when all the circumstances surrounding our variegated
political history are taken into consideration. Liberated,
enfranchised and turned loose among our former masters, who could not
take kindly to our new citizenship, we naturally sought friendship and
political alliance with those claiming to be our best friends--those
who had been instrumental in obtaining our freedom. These new friends
came largely from the Federal army, interspersed with many adventurers
who followed in the wake of that army, seeking strange fields in which
to ply their vocations. Many of these new-comers proved to be true
friends to the Negro of the South and led us on and taught us as a
faithful guardian would teach and care for his wards. But the great
majority of them were wholly unscrupulous and worked upon the
ignorance, inexperience and gullibility of the Negro, overtime, to
place themselves into positions where they had unlimited sway. The
result that followed was most natural--the use of public trust for
private gain, the looting of many of the Southern states, the
political degradation of the Negro, and the complete estrangement
between him and his former neighbors. When all these things were
accomplished, these human cormorants betook themselves to their
Northern homes to live in ease and splendor on the results of their
pillage, while the black man was left in the South to endure
disfranchisement, torture and murder on account of the malice and
hatred begotten from his first political experience.
Surrounded by such environments, the suppression of his right of
franchise, the open and notorious examples of fraud, ballot-box
stuffing and intimidation practiced in every Southern election for the
last thirty years, on the one hand, and the unfaithfulness,
"Jingoism," the free offering of bribes and the continued practice of
duplicity, on the part of those claiming to be his friends, on the
other hand, no fair-minded man would expect to find complete political
perfection among a people thus treated. Thus has the Negro been
obstructed, not only in politics, but his civil rights have been
denied him, and the doors of many industries are closed against him.
But let us turn our faces away from all the horrors of slavery,
reconstruction and all kindred wrongs which have been heaped upon us,
and stand up, measuring the full statue of an American citizen, upon
the threshold of the new century as a New Man. The slave who has grown
out of the ashes of thirty-five years ago, is inducted into the
political and social system, cast into the arena of manhood, where he
constitutes a new element and becomes a competitor for all its
emoluments. He is put upon trial, to test his ability to be accounted
worthy of freedom, worthy of the elective franchise. After all these
years of struggle against almost insurmountable odds, under conditions
but little removed from slavery itself, he asks a fair and just
judgment, not of those whose prejudice has endeavored to forestall--to
frustrate--his every forward movement; rather those who have lent a
helping hand that he might demonstrate the truth of "The fatherhood of
God and the brotherhood of man."
In a nation like ours, blessed with peace, plenty and full of
prosperity; filled with the spirit of "Expansion," sound money and a
protective tariff; when there is a disposition to forget all sectional
lines, and to know no North, no South, no East, no West, but having
all to stand out in bold relief as one reunited whole, when one
political party slaps the other upon the shoulder with a knowing look
and a smile indicating the fraternal feeling everywhere present, the
question naturally comes home to every colored American, "What should
be the Negro's attitude in politics?" Constituting as we do,
one-eighth of the entire population of this Nation, the Negro's
political attitude should be a firm stand for the right, the support
of honest men for office, the advocacy of strong, pure American
policies, an unceasing contention for fair elections, a pure ballot, a
complete repudiation of any party or man who seeks to bribe, or in any
way to hamper or degrade him politically. Should he become
self-effaced, politically? No, never! He should, at all times, contend
wisely, firmly for every right accorded to other American citizens
under the organic laws of the nation. He should identify himself with
that political party which proves to be the most friendly towards him.
There is very little in a name. Results should be sought, and the
Negro should never waver until they are obtained. This will
necessitate a division of the Negro vote. No fixed rule can be
established as a political guide for him, any more than it can be done
for any other people. The location, environment, men and measures
sought to be obtained, should guide him. The political pathway for the
future may seem dark and discouraging, but nothing daunted, we should
continue to press forward, contending for every inch of our rights--no
right which man enjoys aside from his own household should be guarded
more sacredly than his right of franchise--a right which makes each
one a sovereign in himself; a right which determines what laws shall
govern us, who shall construe them and execute them.
I am not unmindful of the fact that the views here expressed, may
sound rather Utopian. But in this age of rush and bustle for place,
preferment and national gain, by individuals and the nation; and in an
age when anarchists, lynchers and murderers set at defiance all law
and government; in an age when, in certain sections of the country,
the ballot-box ceases to stand as an exponent of the registered will
of the people, but stands rather as a political cesspool of reeking
rottenness, impregnating the national atmosphere with germs of discord
that may yet stagnate and throttle the Union; in such an age, it is
quite necessary that a halt should be called; a reckoning had, and
that these small, though dangerous political sores should be lanced
from the body politic before they develop into putrifying cancers that
will destroy the life of the republic.
From any view that may be taken of the present political situation, it
is apparent that the time is ripe for the colored American to think
and act for himself. If he reasons correctly, he will certainly reach
the conclusion that right must some day prevail; and in order that he
may enjoy the resultant blessings flowing from a pure ballot, the
colored man must set the pace, and thereby place himself in a position
to command respect and proper recognition. "He who would have equity
must first do equity."
The Negro's loyalty to his friends, his impressionable soul, his
devotion to church, his yearning for education and enlightenment, his
thrift, industry, devotion to country, fidelity to the flag shown upon
hundreds of battle-fields, must be admitted and command the admiration
of all fair-minded men. Let him add to all these attributes, purity in
all things; let him cultivate a love for justice and fair play, live
as an example for his neighbors, ally himself with the best men in the
community or state where he lives, and the day must certainly come
when his rights--political and civil--will be conceded to him.
Let us learn what is _right_ and then dare to do the _right_; ever
pressing forward to higher and nobler things; never lagging, but
remember, "That constant effort will remove the mountain, and that
continued dripping will wear away the stone."
SECOND PAPER.
WHAT SHOULD BE THE NEGRO'S ATTITUDE IN POLITICS?
BY T. T. FORTUNE
[Illustration: T. Thomas Fortune]
TIMOTHY THOMAS FORTUNE.
Timothy Thomas fortune, the subject of this sketch, is an
author, a journalist, an agitator and a lecturer.
Mr. Fortune's grandmother was a mulatto, and his grandfather
a Seminole Indian. Thomas was born of slave parents in
Florida in 1856. His father took an important and active
part in the reconstruction of Florida, being a delegate in
the Constitutional Convention that framed the present
constitution of Florida, and a member of the first five
sessions of the reconstituted Florida Legislature.
During the Ku Klux Klan period, which followed, the father
of Thomas had to stand for his life, which he manfully did
by preparing his house to receive the night marauders. The
father finally moved with his family to Jacksonville,
Florida. Here young Thomas soon found a position as a
printer's "devil," which was the first step to that high
position which he now occupies. He left his printer's "case"
for two years in order to attend school and to work in the
Jacksonville city postoffice.
In 1874 he was appointed mail route agent between
Jacksonville and Chattahoochee; but he was soon promoted to
the position of special inspector of customs for the first
district of Delaware. A year later, 1876, young Fortune
entered that school which has been an inspiration to so many
negro youths, Howard University. After two years' study in
this school he returned to the printer's trade. While in
Washington he married Miss Smiley of Florida.
In 1878 Mr. Fortune returned to Florida to try his hand at
school teaching. After a year's experience at this work, he
again returned to his first love, the printer's trade, but
this time he went to New York City. Of course the other
compositors objected to working with a "Nigger," but by the
manly stand of the publisher, Mr. John Dougall, the "Nigger"
remained, and after a short strike the white compositors
were glad to return.
Mr. Fortune's real career as a journalist began in 1880,
when, with two friends, he began the publication of the
_Rumor_, which, after two years, was changed to the _New
York Globe_. After four years the paper was forced to
suspend. Mr. Fortune immediately began the publication of
the _New York Freeman_. A year later, 1885, the name of the
paper was changed to the _New York Age_, of which Mr.
Fortune is still editor.
His writings are, however, not confined to the editing of
his paper. He is the author of several books, but "Black and
White" and "The Negro in Politics" are perhaps the most
noted.
Mr. Fortune was the first to suggest the Afro-American
League, an organization in the interest of the Negro race.
He was the president of the first convention of this league,
which met in Chicago in 1890. His address as president of
the convention was a scathing arraignment of the South.
Mr. Fortune was also elected chairman of the executive
committee of the National Afro-American Press Association
which met in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1890.
The National Negro Business League was the outcome of a
conversation between Booker T. Washington and Mr. Fortune.
Mr. Fortune was elected chairman of the executive committee
of the National Negro Business League which met in Boston in
1900, and also at its meeting in Chicago in 1901.
Mr. Fortune is, as might be suspected, a Republican in
politics. In the presidential election of 1900 he took an
active part in the political canvas of that year. He spoke
in Indiana and in Missouri, advocating the re-election of
President McKinley.
The whole energy of his life is devoted to the interests of
the Negro race in America. He wields a sharp rapier. He is
the complement of Booker T. Washington. Each is doing his
own work in his own way; the one supplements the other's
work.
There are some questions which, it seems to me, need no discussion,
because the truths in them are self-evident; and yet, so perverse is
the human understanding, that unanimity upon any subject of common
interest is rare in social ethics; and by social ethics I mean the
philosophy of organized government in all of its multifarious life.
How intricate and perplexing these questions are; even the uninitiated
intuitively understand, although they cannot explain them; while
ignorant and learned alike wrangle and often fight over the means to
reach ends upon which there is no disagreement. There is, therefore,
no phase of the Afro-American problem upon the proper solution of
which there is not a substantial agreement among members of the race.
The processes by which the solution shall be reached are the bases of
the disagreements and discussions, which often defeat the common wish
and aim.
"What should be the Afro-American's attitude in politics?" is a
sophomoric, rather than a practical, question. What he should do at a
given crisis is answered by what he has done ever since the right to
vote was conferred upon him by the adoption of the war amendments to
the Federal Constitution. Neither threats, fire, rope, nor bullet has
been powerful enough to swerve him from pursuing the course made
mandatory by his self interests. He may have pursued this course by
the intricate process of reasoning employed by educated men, or of
intuition employed by the unlettered. The fact remains that his
attitude has been one of sympathy and helpfulness towards those who
were unmistakably sympathetic and friendly towards him and as
unmistakably antagonistic and troublesome to those who were
antagonistic to him. With him, as with the rest of mankind,
"self-preservation is the first law of nature." What his attitude in
politics should be now will be what it has been--governed absolutely
by his self interests.
There will be nothing gained in the proper education and comprehension
of the subject under discussion by holding up holy hands of horror at
the statement that selfishness, pure and simple, has governed and will
govern the attitude of the Afro-American in politics. The purists, who
prate of the common interest and loyalty to the flag as the first and
highest duty of the citizen, are entitled to their view of the matter,
but the fact remains and is true of the people of every ancient and
modern government that self-interest will govern the actions of the
voter. One of the components which is discriminated against and
oppressed by legal enactment through popular clamor will invariably
produce substantial unanimity of thought and action on the part of the
pariah against the common interest, and, in the last analysis, against
the flag itself, as the emblem of governmental discrimination and
oppression. The Helots of Sparta and the Jews under the Pharaohs were
of this sort. The Jews in Russia and Germany and the Irish in Great
Britain are modern examples. The first concern of every man and of his
own race is his own concern. He will oppose those who oppose him,
whether as individual or state; he will look to his interests first
and to those of his neighbor afterwards. The Afro-American is just
like other people in this, as well as in all respects, despite the
puerile contention of some, even of his own household, that he is not
as other men. He will not love those who hate him nor pray for those
who despitefully use him, although enjoined to do so in thunderous
tones from every pulpit in Christendom. And, therefore, the
Afro-American's attitude in politics will be governed, as it has been,
by his selfish interests. And, why not? The banker's attitude in
politics is governed by the policy that serves his selfish interests
best; the manufacturer's attitude is the same. The same rule of
conduct governs all men in their social and civil relations to the
state.
In a republic, government by party is the fundamental basis of it.
There must be parties or there can be no government; this is equally
true of democracies and limited monarchies. The primary is the basis
of party government. His selfish interests, of whatever sort, make it
necessary for every citizen, who wishes to conserve those interests,
to belong to some one party. Unless he is permitted to enjoy the
rights and benefits of the primary, or party referendum, he cannot
hope to enjoy the rights and benefits of the party of his
choice--enjoy them to their fullest extent--for the right to vote,
which does not carry with it the right to be voted for, leaves the
citizen in a voiceless condition as to those specific interests in
which he is concerned, and which can only be secured from the state
through the action of his party. No man can speak for another as he
can speak for himself, hence, in every party, men and special
interests, such as railroad, bank, manufacturing and the like
interests, habitually seek to put in control persons who will
represent them, speak for them and vote for them upon any question of
legislation which arises. It is because of this that there is great
rejoicing among Afro-Americans when any man of theirs is put forward
for his party in any official capacity whatever, and it is because of
this that so few of them have been, and are put forward.
Wherever an Afro-American is found supporting, by his lung-power and
ballot, a party which denies him participation in its primary (basis
of party) government, then you have found a man who does not know what
his attitude in politics should be; and, whether he should be pitied
or despised, must remain a question for each individual to decide. The
democratic party is the only party in the United States which denies
to the Afro-American this basic right in party government. Logically
enough, it is the only party in the United States which has always
sought to prevent him from enjoying the rights of the elective
franchise, the right to vote and to be voted for, and which has
necessarily, to justify this policy, always sought in every
conceivable way to degrade his manhood to the brute standard. A
voteless citizen is always a social and political outcast; a voteless
race in a composite citizenship will always constitute a problem more
or less dangerous to the state--enemies, fostered in the bosom, as
Cleopatra's asp, only to wound to the death. It has been the way of
the world since the dawn of history.
It is creditable to the good sense and the manhood of the
Afro-American people that they have constantly recognized and acted
upon the theory I have here laid down, as the consistent one in
politics. Their attitude has been manly and consistent; they have
stood by their friends and defied their enemies, even when their
friends have been lukewarm, or brutally indifferent, and this has been
the attitude of their friends since 1870.
Through good and evil report they have refused to be seduced from
their allegiance to the party of freedom, and their enemies have
wreaked their vengeance, without hindrance, so that the attitude books
of every Southern state bristle with a code of laws as infamous and
oppressive as the slave code. But that does not affect the principle
in the least, and the principle is the thing; it is the essence of all
life. He who clings to it, though he may die, as the poor Indian has
done, deserves and receives the respect of mankind. When it has been
said of him that he was corrupt, purchasable, unreliable in politics
and that the franchise should be denied to him by fair or foul means,
because of this, by the kuklux klan terrorists, or red shirt
brutalists--sufficient answer to it all, in my mind, has been that if
he could have been seduced from his best interests, from his friends
in party politics, without violence towards him, none would have
molested him or made him afraid. That is a self-evident proposition in
partisan ethics.
We do not terrorize and shoot and defraud people who vote with us. No,
the Afro-American has instinctively distrusted his political enemies,
even when they came to him bearing grapes in their hands and honey on
their tongues. His attitude has been one of manly protest, wherever he
was allowed to vote, or made to sulk in silence and indignation. And
here has been and here is the rub. When you cannot coax a man against
his will, as Jonathan did David, or purchase his birthright as Jacob
did Esau, if you have the power you terrorize and shoot him into
compliance. That is what the political enemies of the Afro-American
have done and are doing, but patient as the ass and with the faith of
Job, which passes all understanding, he sticks to his principle of
self-interest and waits; and the good proverb says, "All things come
to him who waits." I believe it. And if every man of the race had the
alternative of being shot in his tracks for clinging to his principles
or life eternal for deserting them, the part of manhood and honor
would be to stand up and be shot. As a matter of fact, thousands upon
thousands of Afro-Americans have been shot to death by their political
enemies since 1868, and perhaps thousands more will be shot in the
future in the same way, and for the same reason and by the same
heartless enemies, before the nation reaches the conclusion that an
Afro-American citizen should have as much protection under the Federal
Constitution as any other citizen with a white skin, despite the fact
that the whole matter is largely one of state control and regulation.
When cancers get on the body politic like this of disfranchisement and
debasement of an entire element of the citizenship, they are usually
cut out, as that of slavery, and its exceeding horrors, were.
Steadfastness, therefore, in the faith that moves mountains and
patience which overcomes a world of wrong and injustice, will bring
the reward as it has so often done with the race in the past. The
reward is perfect equality under the laws of the Federal Government
and of the several states. But our attitude must be one of absolute
fidelity to the priceless sacred trust of citizenship, which comes to
us out of the agonies of the greatest war of modern times. If we be
true to ourselves, the great republic will be true to us "in God's way
and time."
THIRD PAPER.
WHAT SHOULD BE THE NEGRO'S ATTITUDE IN POLITICS?
BY HON. GEORGE W. MURRAY.
[Illustration: George Washington Murray.]
GEORGE WASHINGTON MURRAY.
George Washington Murray was born September 22, 1853, of
slave parents, near Rembert, Sumter County, S. C.
Emancipation found him a lad of eleven summers, bereft of
both parents. Without a friend upon whom to rely for either
aid or advice in an impoverishing section, he entered upon
the fierce combat then in progress for the indispensable
bread of life. Among the waifs of his neighborhood in 1866,
he learned the alphabet and acquired an imperfect
pronunciation of monosyllables. In efforts to improve his
meager stock of knowledge during the succeeding five years,
he so industriously applied himself that in January, 1871,
he entered a day school, while in session, for the first
time, but as teacher, not scholar.
He taught until the Fall of 1874, when he successfully
passed a competitive examination and secured a scholarship
as sub-freshman in the reconstructed University of South
Carolina. He was successfully employed as a teacher until
February, 1890, when he secured an appointment as inspector
of customs at the port of Charleston, S. C.
Entering the political arena in the contest for the
Republican nomination for Congress in 1892, he successfully
won the stake and was placed in the general election against
Gen. E. W. Moise, one of the most brilliant, wealthy and
popular Democrats in the State, whom he finally defeated and
was declared elected to the Fifty-third Congress.
He was again elected to the Fifty-fourth Congress, and
counted out, but contested and was finally seated. He was
again elected to the Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth Congresses,
and counted out, and failed to be seated after strong
contests.
Since his retirement from congressional contests, seeing the
primary and crying need of his race is a larger per cent of
the ownership of homes, and the impossibility of securing
them in the desired space of time, under the prevailing
circumstances, where the necessaries of life and rents
consume the entire resources year after year, he has applied
himself to the development of a scheme of buying large
estates and cutting them into small holdings, and giving
long periods of time in which to pay for homes, receiving
about the usual rents as payments.
He now has about 200 families located on about 9,000 acres
of land, and is adding from 2,000 to 3,000 acres to his
territory each year.
He has already secured twelve letters patent on a multiple
farming machine, that is destined to revolutionize farming
methods.
Without his request upon the demand of the President
himself, he was recently appointed Division Internal Revenue
Deputy Collector for the district of South Carolina.
To the casual observer the above query is easy of solution, but it is
at the same time engaging the profoundest attention and thought of the
wisest statesmen, and the greatest philanthropists and humanitarians.
It is especially difficult to the black victims of present political
environments.
With a proportionate share of all the elements of strength,
intelligence, wealth, business and character--the Negro's attitude
politically should, and would, be the same as that of the other
members of society.
The writer presume that in dealing with the question at issue, he is
territorially restricted to the ex-slaveholding portions of the United
States, as the Negro's political status in the rest of the territorial
limits of the country differs so little from that of other members of
society.
As we see it, the mistake of the nineteenth century was the attempt to
make the ex-slave a governor, before he had learned to be governed.
It seems that members of the race have not even yet learned that
governments have their origin and growth in the necessities
originating in the business and wealth of mankind, and have attained
their greatest perfection where there is most business and wealth.
The naked, wandering savage has the lowest order of governments,
because, in that state, he has need for no other, and could not
support any higher.
It twenty intelligent and progressive men settle down in the midst of
a hundred thousand such savages, they will immediately set about
establishing business, accumulating wealth, and will very naturally
organize in self-defense, and in time rule the ninety-nine thousand
nine hundred and eighty others.
When just emerging from the shambles of two and a half centuries of
slavery and inforced ignorance, penniless and without experience, it
was a serious blunder to have placed the Negroes in such a position as
to make them responsible for the government.
They were not only without the necessary intelligence and experience
for its successful operation, but all the resources essential to its
maintenance were in the hands of the minority class, and they were
without the ability to compel any contribution for its support.
Placed upon the wrong track in the primary stages of emancipation, the
race spent its energy in trying to control the kind of government that
other people's business and resources made necessary, instead of
trying to acquire the elements which would have made it welcome as
part owners and rulers of that government.
Such conditions as resulted from the plans and policies pursued in the
rehabilitation of civil government, after the War of the Rebellion,
very naturally created great friction between the former master-class,
possessing practically all the business, wealth and experience, though
in the minority in many localities, and the former slave-class,
without business, wealth and experience, on the other hand.
The master-class determined that in self defense it had to organize to
repossess itself of governmental control, which was then in the hands
of the slave-class, and withheld its support from the government,
which the latter class was helpless to compel without the strong
compelling arm of the Federal government, which the peaceful and
considerate judgment of mankind would no longer sustain in maintaining
such conditions.
Whereupon all over the South where the ex-slave class controlled
merely, by reason of numbers, its power and influence failed, until
to-day it finds itself absolutely shorn of power, even so much as is
necessary to protect its property, family and life.
While it may be both unjust and unwise for a class in the condition of
the former slave class to absolutely control a government made
necessary by the resources of others, yet it is a cruel wrong to
deprive it even of that influence that is absolutely necessary for the
protection of family, property and life.
The paramount issue of Southern Negroes should not be political
office, but the possession of such political influence as is necessary
for the protection of their property and lives.
While it is desirable that as many Negroes as possible be provided for
at the official pie-counter, the all important issue, in my humble
judgment, is the equality of civil and political rights, without which
we are in some measure worse off than slaves.
Deprived of that influence, which selfish interests always impel the
master-class to give in defense of his property rights, the
emancipated-class must possess a counter voting power somewhere within
its own personality, which an untrammelled ballot alone affords.
Wisdom dictates that the Negro should speedily assume the task of
producing such conditions as will give the needed influence.
This brings us to the question at issue, What should be the Negro's
attitude politically?
In short, whatever attitude would prove most beneficial to him the
Negro should adapt himself to it, until he shall have acquired
sufficient strength along all lines to occupy and maintain an
independent position, and shape the course of action to suit his fancy
and convenience.
The difference in the treatment of colored men North and South is not
half so much on account of a difference in the education and customs
of the white people in the respective sections, as from the
difference between the business, intellectual and political status of
the members of the colored race itself in the two sections, coupled
with the fact that the white man possessing practically all the
business, wealth, culture and experience in the North, is divided into
political camps, each controlling influence sufficient to protect each
constituent member, however weak, while in the South he is united in
one political party, which wholly destroys the colored man's influence
and partially his own.
In fact, in the North, the combined wealth, culture and influence of
the entire party with which he is allied overshadows and protects his
rights, both public and private, and this brings us to the question at
issue, What should be the Negro's attitude politically?
Upon this question there are as many opinions as there were colors in
Joseph's coat.
Some advise that we solidly vote the Republican ticket.
Others that we should all vote the Democratic ticket; still another
class advise us to divide our vote, and another class advise us not to
vote at all.
There may be a grain of truth in each one of the above theories, but
for all times and occasions each one is essentially false.
Under present environments it appears that we accomplish nothing by
voting the Republican ticket, and gain no more by voting the
Democratic ticket than we would by not voting at all.
To us the all important task is to find a way to make our ballot
effective.
Though, throughout the South, a cruel and savage spirit seems
triumphant, let the Negro take courage, for God is still ruling, and
the very machinery that has been set in motion for his political
destruction is hastening the day of his political regeneration.
The reduction of the Negro's vote to an insignificant fraction which
does away with the possibility of absolute Negro control, is not an
unmixed evil, as it entirely destroys the foundation of the scarecrow
of Negro supremacy, which has been used as a great welding hammer to
forge the white race, with so many divergent views and opinions, into
one political mass, while the standards of wealth and intelligence
raised as a bar to his progress are causing the Negro, as never
before, to bestir himself in efforts to reach them.
Thus it is seen that his would-be enemy destroys the welding hammer at
one fell blow; sets in motion irresistible currents that will
inevitably find outlets in the broad ocean of the political freedom
of both races, and arouse in the Negro, by the standards set up, the
very desirable incentive to make preparation for the enjoyment of the
destined freedom which the fates seem bent on bringing him.
Once more the wonderful hand of Providence is using man's malice and
prejudice as His own marvelous highway of hope to bring good results
from evil intentions.
Let the poor, desponding Negro, way down in the valley of degradation
and oppression, continue to be industrious, honest and frugal, and
pray, and God will again hitch His own all powerful steeds of hope to
his chariot of despondency and oppression, and, riding over the
mountains of man's folly, manifested in unjust rules and practices, in
defiance of His will, will draw him upon the broad eminence of joy,
gladness and hope.
TOPIC XIV.
IS THE NEGRO AS MORALLY DEPRAVED AS HE IS REPUTED TO BE?
BY PROF. B. H. PETERSON.
[Illustration: Prof. B. H. Peterson]
PROF. B. H. PETERSON.
Butler Harrison Peterson, the subject of this sketch, is a
native of the State of Florida. He was born of slave
parents, just in time to be spared the horrible experiences
of that slave system which swept over this country with such
direful results.
When the war clouds of the Civil War passed over, he was
sent to an ex-slave for private instruction. Shortly after
the public school system was introduced into the state of
Florida he entered as a regular attendant. Three very
profitable and successful sessions were spent in these
schools. Soon after entering upon the fourth term his mother
moved to another part of the state, leaving him in the care
of an aunt, who, loving money rather than education, took
him out of school and hired him to a law firm as office boy,
for $1.50 per month. This lasted for nearly two years. He
then took a position as porter in a dry goods store, and
then a clerkship in a small grocery store, owned and
controlled by a colored man, the Rev. William Bell.
During this time Mr. Peterson showed signs of a thirst for
knowledge. He had now become a member of the Baptist Church
and was actively engaged in Sunday-school work. Having
attracted the attention of a few friends, among them Mr.
John J. Montth, an opportunity soon presented itself, which
Mr. Peterson eagerly seized. This opportunity opened the
doors of Cookman Institute, Jacksonville, Fla. at which
place he remained two years. Mr. Peterson next found himself
for three years a student of the St. Augustine Normal and
Collegiate Institute, Raleigh, N. C. In 1883 Mr. Peterson
entered Lincoln University, Chester County. Pa., passing
successfully through the freshman, sophomore, junior and
senior years. He tarried yet three years longer at Lincoln,
taking the full theological course; and in 1889 returned
home to begin work. His first position was as principal of
the Oakland Graded School, Jacksonville, Fla. During the two
years spent here, he was offered the chair of "ancient
languages," Selma University, Selma, Ala., which he accepted
and held for two years to the satisfaction of the President,
Dr. C. L. Purse, D. D., and the Board of Trustees.
At this time matters over which he had no control so shaped
themselves that this very pleasant and profitable work had
to be given up. In 1893 Mr. Peterson became the first
assistant teacher in the Phelps Bell Bible Training School,
Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Ala.,
and in connection with this work he is instructor in the
Normal Department of Mental and Moral Science and Primary
Mathematics. He is still here at work.
He is also a pastor of one of the churches of the town of
Tuskegee and spends a part of his vacations at the Summer
Schools of the Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute and
the University of Chicago.
In this brief sketch no reference is made to ways or means,
but only the results are announced, the rosebush, however,
has thorns as well as roses.
The conclusion reached in this discussion will depend in part upon the
viewpoint of the observation, upon the character of the judges and
upon the logic employed. In considering any subject it is always best,
fair and proper, to admit freely and fully the well known facts in the
case. The book of books, which is an infallible code of morals, says
that "there is none good, no not one." But there is none as depraved
as he could be. In either direction, progression is possible.
Unfortunately, immorality is not a stranger to any people; and that it
is to be found among the Negroes, should not excite wonder and
amazement; for it grows out of their previous condition of servitude.
The horrible system of slavery, with its direful effects, is still
felt to a greater or less degree by the American Negro. And the
ex-slaveholders, from the very nature of the case, could not make
their escape from its awful consequences. The market still has fruit
from this system.
There can be little doubt that the arrangement which places one man or
any number of men at the entire disposal and control of another,
subject to his absolute and irresponsible will and power, is a system
of things not the most favorable to moral excellence, whether of the
master or the slave. The exercise of such authority must, from the
very nature of the case, tend to foster the spirit of pride and
arrogance, to make a man overbearing and haughty in temper, quick and
irascible, impatient of restraint and contradiction. The passions of
our nature, the animal propensities, ever ready to assume the mastery,
and requiring to be kept in check with a firm hand, finding now no
barriers to their indulgence but those which are self imposed, will be
likely to break over those feeble barriers, and acquire unrestrained
course and dominion. The tendency of the system to these results in
morals, so far as the master is concerned, is inevitable. There may be
some honorable exceptions, but the tendency is ever the same. It must
and will be so while human nature is what it is. The temptation to the
abuse of power over those who cannot or dare not resist to undue
severity of punishment, where the passions of the master are
aroused, and there is no one to say, What doest thou? to the
gratification of the baser appetites in their various forms, must be
too great for ordinary and unaided human virtue. The tendency of such
a system must ever be, not to progressive self refinement and moral
culture, but to barbarism. We should expect to find in connection with
such a civil polity, a state of society, of religion and morals
somewhat peculiar--acts of violence and barbarity not infrequent, the
street affray, the duel, the murderous assault, the unrestrained
indulgence of the animal appetites. It would be quite natural and
reasonable under such a state of affairs to expect this; and such,
unless all history and experience be false, we find the world over, to
be the general state and tendency of things wherever the system of
slavery prevails.
Nor is the effect on the morals of the slave more favorable; on the
contrary, it is even more disastrous. In proportion as the feeling of
self respect and self dependence is taken away, and a man is taught to
look upon himself as merely the tool in the hands of another, the
instrument of another's will and pleasure, without responsibility of
his own, just in that proportion the foundation of moral character is
undermined. Nothing can be more demoralizing in its effect upon the
character. Strip a man of all that constitutes manhood; of all self
reliance and self respect; of all the rights which nature has
conferred upon him, and all the faculties with which God has endowed
him; take away from him all control and disposal of himself, all
ownership of himself and all that can stimulate to activity, and
incite to noble attainment and excellence, is gone at once. He sinks
down to the level of the brute. What inducement is there for him to
hope or strive for anything further or better than his present lot,
and enjoyment which the moment may bring with it? He becomes as a
matter of course improvident and reckless, content with the
gratification, so far as may be, of his merely animal appetites;
indolent, for why should he be otherwise?
Deceptive and dishonest, for what motive has he to be honest? He is
governed only by fear of the lash, with little thought of anything
future, with little knowledge of that hereafter whence are derived the
most powerful motives to present virtue. His mind is shrouded in
ignorance, his moral nature almost wholly uncultivated, his condition
is little above that of the beast with whom he toils, and with whom he
perishes. As in the case of the master, so in the case of the slave;
some will rise above the influence that surround and drag them down,
and, in spite of all these depressing and demoralizing influences,
will maintain their integrity. But such is not the rule, such is not
the tendency of the system. No one who has either reflected on the
matter or observed the actual working of the system can honestly
suppose that it is. It is a notorious fact that, as a general rule,
wherever this system exists, the slave is indolent, deceptive,
dishonest, improvident, not to be trusted away from the eyes of honest
people.
Such a system having a growth of two hundred and fifty years, would it
be reasonable to expect that thirty-five years could eradicate
entirely the work done during the two hundred and fifty years? While
this is all true, can any one with so many facts and figures all about
him, entertain a doubt as to the Negro's progress along all lines of
human activity and toil? The Negro has either advanced, morally and
religiously, or the proud Anglo-Saxon's standard of morals and
religion is a hopeless failure. Considering the depths from which he
came, the fact that he has come at all, or any part of the way, shows
at least some progress.
A journey through this country, especially the South, the home of the
Negroes, and an inspection of the homes and surroundings, and coming
into near contact with them, will serve to change a great many
baseless and unfair criticisms found afloat among a certain class of
people, of whom Mr. Wm. Hannibal Thomas' book, entitled "The American
Negro," is the mouthpiece. One room log huts, dirty floor, the home of
the Negro, for large families during the period when slavery existed,
are giving away to neat little cottages, sometimes two-story
buildings, with rooms, furniture and surroundings sufficient to make
each member of the family comfortable, and secluded enough to avoid
the temptation to immoral conduct. And these homes, together with
lands attached, in great many cases are owned by the colored people
whose morals are called in question. Some of the most fashionable
weddings of the day are celebrated among the Negroes. Births out of
wedlock, the plurality of wives and divorced cases, have decreased
among the Negroes 65 per cent. Womanhood, virtue and honor are
defended at any cost, at the proper time and place.
The Negro got the idea imbedded in him during his servitude that
religion and morality, like the Jews and Samaritans, had no dealings
with each other. To-day this idea has lost its power and influence.
The professors of religion and leaders of the people stand first and
foremost with the people, and are expected to take the lead in all
matters of reform. The church property owned and controlled by the
Negro tells its own story. The Sermon on the Mount is taking a hold of
the Negro as never before. If I should offer an adverse criticism on
the Negro's religion, it would be that, as he understands it, he has a
surplus of religion. But he is surely grasping the idea that God is a
Spirit, and "they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in
truth." There are to be found among the Negroes those whose words are
as good as gold. The true significance of morality is being better
understood and practiced by the Negro. The newspaper gossip and
sophistical reasoning to the effect that some Negroes have been
apprehended for immoral conduct, and therefore all Negroes are
immoral, would astonish all creation if applied to the white race. Let
us be fair and try the Negro by the same logic that the white man is
tried by.
A very sure and hopeful sign is the fact that the Negro is ashamed of
any immoral conduct which he hears has been committed by any member of
his race. The mere desire of better things is indicative of a better
state of affairs. A straw often shows which way the wind is blowing.
It is a historical fact that any race which has been subdued and ruled
over by another race will imbibe, imitate and copy after the dominant
race, and especially is this true if the conquered race live in and
among the conquering race. It follows, then, that if the Negro is
wholly immoral, his white neighbor needs to move a pace in the moral
world.
Other causes might have been assigned accounting for the Negro's
previous immorality, but slavery comprehends them all. But for the
sake of emphasis and showing the contrast, let us note the following:
Granting that the Negro as a mass is ignorant. Is he as ignorant as he
was? If he is, then in what light shall we regard the philanthropists
of this country North and South who have done and are doing so much
for the Negro's elevation? The public school system, so well organized
and maintained throughout this country, and patronized so largely by
the Negro youth, either means the Negro's advancement morally or a
lack of wisdom on the part of those who administer the nation's
affairs. I realize that a people could advance intellectually without
advancing morally at the same time. But such is not possible in this
country where the Bible is made the basis of our education. A mere
reference to this topic is all that is needed.
The Negro is poverty stricken, this needs no demonstration. But is he
as poor as he has been? The banks, county records and business
enterprises of the country are living witnesses to the Negro's
advancement along this line. How could a man wholly depraved come into
such relationship with a moral man and get along so well? "How can two
walk together except they be abreed," asks the faithful prophet.
The time was when the Negro could not take out a policy in a life
insurance company, because he was regarded immoral, and would soon die
out and bring the company under obligations to his estate. To-day the
Negro can hold a policy in almost any insurance company of whatever
nature it may be. This is a case where the Negro's advancement in
morals is admitted and he himself not a judge in the case. Negro
lawyers consult with white lawyers, Negro doctors consult with white
doctors, Negro teachers consult with white teachers, Negro preachers
consult with white preachers, Negro workmen of whatever kind confer
with the whites of like occupation, and, sometimes, the process is
reversed, the white mechanics go to the Negro mechanics for counsel.
In all of this, the Negro's upward march is admitted. And there is no
advancement worthy of the name of advancement that does not include
moral strength, worth and improvement.
We hail with joy the rapidly approaching time, under the sunlight of
civilization and Christianity, when the color of the skin and the
texture of the hair will not be badges of reproach, humiliation,
degradation and contempt. True merit will yet be the worth of the man,
under the wise and just government of a beneficent God and Father, who
"of one blood made all nations for to dwell upon the face of all the
earth." The poet Burns labored under no misapprehension when he wrote
the following lines:
"Is there for honest poverty
Wha hangs his head, and a' that?
The coward slave! we pass him by;
We dare be poor for a' that--
For a' that, and a' that,
Our toils obscure, and a' that!
The rank is but the guinea's stamp--
The man's the gowd for a' that.
"What, though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hodden pray, and a' that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A man's a man for a' that--
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, and a' that;
The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.
"A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might--
Guid faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Their dignities and a' that;
The pith o' sense and pride o' worth
Are higher ranks than a' that.
"Then let us pray that come it may--
As come it will, for a' that--
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bend the gree, and a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
Its coming yet, for a' that--
When man to man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that!"
SECOND PAPER
IS THE NEGRO AS MORALLY DEPRAVED AS HE IS REPUTED TO BE?
BY PROF. A. U. FRIERSON.
[Illustration: Prof. A. U. Frierson]
AUGUSTUS ULYSSES FRIERSON, D. D.
Mr. A. U. Frierson was born in the State of South Carolina a
few years before the Civil War. His parents were slaves,
and, of course, were uneducated. After some preparation in
the public schools, he entered Biddle University, from which
he graduated with honor in 1885. The same year he entered
the theological department of the same university,
graduating therefrom in 1888.
The Summer of 1885 was spent as teacher and preacher to the
ex-slaves of the Choctaw Indians, Indian Territory. He
worked under the Freedman's Board of the Presbyterian
Church. For several years he acted as pastor of different
Presbyterian churches in North and South Carolina.
In 1891 he was called to the chair of Greek language and
literature at Biddle University, which position he holds at
this writing.
In 1893, his alma mater conferred upon him the degree of D.
D.
A question so pertinent, so comprehensive, so thoroughly charged with
what must give rank and standing to a people in the eyes of the world,
ought not to be superficially considered, nor lightly and rashly
answered. On the surface it would seem to involve a simple yes or no.
But slight reflection reveals the fact that the yes or no fails to
satisfy the conditions. That the answer to this question has long
since been removed from the realm of the simple negative and
affirmative, becomes very evident from what has been, and is still
being, said _pro_ and _con_.
The moral status of the Negro of the United States has long since
given rise to a debated question. This debate waxes hotter and hotter,
and the lines are more closely drawn as the years go by. For it is
impossible to think of the future of the Negro apart from his moral
status. His future will be bright, gloomy, or blighted, in proportion
as he is able or not able to set to his account true moral worth. I
speak of the Negro by limitations as I feel that only the American
Negro, and that, too, of the United States, can be contemplated by the
query under consideration; hence by the discussion.
That my answer will be in line of an _emphatic_ negative will appear
from what follows. I know full well the tremendous task I have set
myself by this position. In doing this, I must take up the defensive
as well as offensive alike against a large per cent of people, outside
of the Negro race, who set themselves up as an authority on all
questions affecting the Negro, and, mark you, from their decision
there is no appeal; as also against the _know-alls_ within the ranks
of the race. But I am not deterred by this, since I feel that I owe it
to the friends of the race; to those of the race who honestly strive
to do what is right, and to myself, to utter no uncertain sound in
responding to this important question.
For the encouragement of a weak and struggling people and their
friends, for the better enlightenment of mankind in general, touching
the moral status of the Negro, I place in evidence and offer in
support of my negative the following considerations:
First: As far as my knowledge goes, the sum total of the
considerations and discussions tending to show and set forth the moral
turpitude of the Negro, leave out, if they do not ignore wholly, a
most vital element. Any conclusion, therefore, reached, must eliminate
the same, and in the degree that this element is important, the
conclusion will be inconclusive and defective.
I contend, in the outset, that any just and charitable answer to this
question must take into account the fact that the Negro is not unlike
the other children of Adam, in that he is possessed of an inherent
immoral tendency. Yet how many, speaking to this subject, reckon from
this point? I think all sane people, at least, are agreed that since
the fall, conformity to the moral standard, as set up by our Creator,
is _relative_ and not _absolute_. I think it would be a very light
task to prove this assertion true, on the best authority known to
man--the Bible. A single instance will suffice to put to silence all
dissenters. David, "the man after God's own heart," gives us a life
whose complexity at once presents the elements of _passion_,
tenderness, generosity, and _fierceness_. From this life flowed a
character blackened by adultery and murder. Rather checkered, measured
by a perfect moral standard.
Grant that the Negro is a child of Adam, and I score one of the most
important points on the side of my negative. Weighed in the balance of
a perfect moral scale, "There is none good, but one, and that is God."
Second: When talking or writing on this subject, men seem to forget
also that this inherent or natural immoral tendency in the Negro has
had the impetus of the most debasing influences of a baser system of
slavery, covering a period of two and a half centuries. This is not a
defense, nor by any means an apology, for the shortcomings of the
Negro, which are too many by far, but it is a plea for fairness in
making up a verdict which is very far-reaching in its consequences.
In my humble opinion this thought is sufficient to temper, at least,
the criticisms of the most rabid and reckless assailants of Negro
morals. Let friends and foes alike think, if they can, what two
hundred and fifty years of training means in a system whose principal
tenet was that a Negro had no wish or will of his own--either morally
or otherwise--a mere thing, acting only as it is acted upon. Under
this system the next most natural thing would be and was the breaking
down and beating back of every bar to the baser passions, except when
its observance, perchance, contributed to the physical vigor and
resistance of the Negro, thus rendering him more valuable and
indispensable to his master. Add to this, if you please, the fact that
there were few, if any, formal marriages; the "shanty" system instead
of home; no responsibility in the training of boys and girls that
naturally came to the so-called homes; no safeguard thrown around the
morals of the tender years of boyhood and girlhood, but, on the other
hand, everything most favorable and conducive to the development of
bad morals. Out of this condition, unless the superior--the
master--had a very high moral sense, which was highly improbable, if
not impossible, under the existing circumstances, little could justly
be expected of the inferior--the Negro. Yet, in spite of all this, the
Negro gave the world a very few rapists of whom we hear so much
nowadays, and on whose account we are so often called upon to defend
him from the viewpoint of our question.
As regards this particular crime, I digress here to say that my faith
is small. For this reason, there was a time when the commission of it
was more opportune and easy than now. For example, during the Civil
War, when it was scarcely, if ever, heard of. I have introduced this
subject here simply to say this, that human nature is one and the same
in mankind, and the argument that natural tendencies do not assert
themselves alike in a slave and a freeman under like favorable
conditions, is open to serious objections, if not in a degree
fallacious. The pertinence of this reference will also appear when
attention is drawn to the fact that the tendency of the rate to
criminality, hence, to moral worthlessness, is more largely
hypothecated upon this than upon any other single crime. By a similar
process of reasoning it would not be difficult to show that all the
races of the world are moral reprobates. For what escape would there
be for any measured by its criminal class? I, therefore, contend,
finally, that the standard by which the Negro is measured is seriously
at fault, if not wholly wrong. Coming out of the most untoward
circumstances, with less than a half century in which to outlive and
unlearn the deadly doings of two hundred and fifty years, who can lay
claim to more or to so much as the Negro? Measure him by the depths
from which he came as well as by the heights which you would have him
attain, when taking his moral pulse.
Third: I note the work of the press, which is largely in the hands of,
and controlled by, those least friendly to the Negro's progress.
Hence, a magnificent contribution is daily made from this quarter, to
his moral impeachment. I think it is never, perhaps, properly
considered, that the class generally held up by the press is one and
the same with that already noticed under the preceding head--the
criminal. Further, news gatherers are at great pains to ferret out and
dole out to the public daily whatever serves to excite, and especially
whatever shows the moral crookedness of the Negro, and that the years
of freedom already enjoyed by him have simply brought forth a
generation of vipers. Too often, from the lowest to the highest court,
the records are so manipulated as to show the moral obliquity of the
Negro. It is a potent fact that public opinion of the Negro is
largely, if not wholly, based upon press reports, whether it pertains
to religion, politics, morality, or otherwise. I hold, therefore, that
it is largely misinformation that brings the Negro into bad odor in
this regard, and earns for him the opinion that he is on the decline
or "moral lapse," if you please. Then, too, the dying testimony of
what is commonly called the worthless Negro, is given wider publicity
and greater credence than the precept and example of ten thousand
living, straightforward, upright Negroes. I say this because the
opinion obtains so widely that the Negro is growing worse.
Fourth: That the Negro is not as morally depraved as he is generally
reputed to be, and that those who are foremost to note and proclaim
it do not believe it themselves, I place in evidence the following:
1st. A considerable number of Southern states has passed laws
restrictive, if not prohibitive, of the removal of the Negro from his
holy (?) confines, and this, too, where most is seen and known of him.
What! Make it a misdemeanor to influence to emigrate or to deport a
people whose presence is a standing menace to the good morals of those
who enact measures and those who uphold them? Do not they make
themselves liable to mild criticism? Other countries and sections of
countries seek to rid themselves of all incubus of whatever kind. Of
this we have numerous examples in the scum from Europe and other parts
of the world unloaded upon our shores annually. 2d. Let the Negro with
all his moral depravity initiate any movement looking toward his
withdrawal even from one part of our country to another. The scene of
such activities attracts special attention, and unsought advice is
poured upon his "worthless" head; words of warning flow apace, and
direct steps are taken to defeat the end in view. In view of this
fact, the Negro is seldom allowed to organize, secretly, for mutual
protection and helpfulness, in some sections; and, when organized, he
is always looked upon with grave suspicions. That people should go so
far out of the way to circumvent the legitimate endeavors of the
undeserving, to my mind, is the most unnatural thing to be sure.
"Consistency, thou art a jewel!"
Fifth: What people regard as a most discouraging sign touching the
Negro of this country, I consider a most portentous and hopeful one. I
refer to it here, because it bears decidedly upon my answer, and is
strictly in line therewith. As shown by the census of 1890 and 1900,
the increase of the Negro has suffered a positive check, if not
back-set. In explanation of this, one theory and another has been
advanced. Some have seen that he, like the American Indian, is on the
road to a kindred fate--final and utter extinction. Others have
consigned him to this or that destiny, according as they have felt
kindly or unkindly towards him. True, he has increased less rapidly,
but more surely, because of his stricter observance and growing regard
for the proper and God-appointed channels to this end. His propagation
by marriage, in which case one man is the husband of one woman, and
one woman the wife of one man, would naturally lend to this.
I might record and add to what has already been said, a rich and
varied experience, growing out of actual contact with, and work for,
my people covering twenty-four years--a period in which no year has
passed without leaving something done or suffered. But time and space
will not permit.
Finally, out of the unfavorable moral conditions to which the Negro as
a child of Adam is heir; out of the most untoward circumstances,
surrounding him in the dark days of his enslavement; out of the
traductions to which he is exposed at the hands of a most cruel and
relentless foe--the printing press; out of the mock trials and false
convictions visited upon him by the courts, too often manned by his
oppressors; out of the barriers put in the way of his withdrawal from
the midst of those who pronounce him without moral worth; out of the
glaring inconsistency of all dissenters; out of the pure and spotless
lives of ten thousand women--the wives, mothers, sisters, and
lovers--of as high souled and moral men as the world ever saw or
produced, I here and now once again and forever record my most
unconditioned and emphatic _no_ to the query I have in some measure
tried to answer.
I have attempted no fine analysis of the case, but simply tried to
point out a few facts more or less familiar to all.
THIRD PAPER.
IS THE NEGRO AS MORALLY DEPRAVED AS HE IS REPUTED TO BE?
BY MRS. M. E. C. SMITH
[Illustration: Mrs. M. E. C. Smith.]
MRS. MARY E. C. SMITH.
Mrs. Mary E. C. Smith, daughter of Peter H. Day, was a
native of New York city. Her education was provided for by
her energetic widowed mother, to whom she ascribes the
secret of her success. From early childhood she showed
strong power of mind, and inherited from her mother that
force and determination of purpose which prefigure success
in whatever is undertaken. As a pupil, she was prompt and
energetic, and never failed to win one of the Ridgeway
prizes for good scholarship, which were given annually to
successful contestants. She was an excellent Bible student,
and when ten years old was elected a teacher in the
Sunday-school. At this age she was impressed with the idea
that it was her duty to go to the South to instruct her
people, who were just emerging from bondage.
By a strange coincidence she was led to Florida, when she
had finished her school course, the very place she had named
when in an outburst of childish enthusiasm, while preparing
a geography lesson, she had said: "O, mother, how I long to
go there and teach my people!" The "land of flowers" has
been the principal field of her labors as a teacher. Her
ability as a teacher was soon discovered, and in 1890 she
became principal of the Normal Department of the Edward
Waters College, under the presidency of Prof. B. W. Arnett,
Jr. Hundreds of students are better citizens because of her
faithful teaching and Christian influence. As a church and
Sunday-school worker she has few equals. The earnestness of
purpose with which she performs the slightest duty is an
example worthy of imitation.
This question is as grave as it is suggestive. There being a marked
difference between _character_ and _reputation_, its discussion
naturally leads to a consideration of the Negro as he really is, and
not as he is represented. The delineation of the Negro's true
character is one of the most effectual means of refuting the
columnious epithets so constantly hurled at him--a veritable blasphemy
against his higher and better nature.
Has the Negro a higher and better nature? We shall see.
To separate him from the rest of the human family would be to dispute
the great truth, that has been so long accepted, by all thoroughly
Christianized nations--the Fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of
man. "Of one blood God formed all nations, for to dwell upon the face
of the earth." Man, in his first estate, was supremely moral, being
created in the righteous image of his Maker; had man continued in
this condition, he would have been perfectly innocent and happy,
favored with the exalted privilege of direct communion with God,
inspired only by Him who is the Great Source, all light and
perfection, from whom emanates nothing dark, unholy or unclean.
But man fell, and was driven from Eden. Hence, he began to wander away
from God, in spirit and purpose; the tempter had been admitted and
man's heart grew very deceitful and desperately wicked. The command of
God, however, as written in Genesis, 1st chap., 28th verse, was
inviolable. The earth _must_ be peopled; thus man continued to wander,
and his heart became proud and defiant, even to the resistance of the
will and purpose or God. So far did the distance become between man
and his Maker and so greatly abounded his wickedness, that at last God
gave him over to his own evil imaginations.
The inhabitants of the antediluvian world, as a consequence of man's
first transgression, fell lower and lower in the scale of good morals.
They became so confirmed in wickedness, so totally depraved, that God
destroyed them all, save one man and his family, whom He accounted as
righteous, for the sake of his faithful obedience, and whose seed He
preserved for the repeopling of the earth. The races, whether Semitic,
Hamitic or Japhetic, as springing from the three sons of Noah, all
partook of some of the natural proclivities of their revered and
ancient grand-sire. What Canaan lacked in the line of perfection in
the moral ethics of his day, may be directly attributed to heredity.
The lineage of the Negro has been directly traced through Cush to Ham;
hence, to argue the total moral depravity of the sons of Ham is but to
concede the total moral depravity of the entire human race, as
emanated from Noah in the postdiluvian age.
To assert that the Negro has no defects, and is morally good, would be
to deny him as one of the legitimate heirs of the family of Noah, and
deprive him of his natural inheritance. On the contrary, the Negro is
joint-heir to _all_ the virtues and _all_ the infirmities of the other
members of the human family. He is just as good and equally as bad as
his fairer-complexioned brothers.
"Multiply and replenish the earth," was the eternal fiat. The
subsequent confusion of tongues, and the dispersion of the people even
to the remotest parts of the globe, were but links in the chain of
God's design. The entire globe must be peopled, not a portion of it;
hence the sons of man continued their migration until they were lost
to each other.
The history of civilization discloses to us the land of the Hamites,
as the cradle from whence sprang all learning, literature and arts,
but man's heart still being deceitful, proud and wicked, continued to
wander away from the true God; and, notwithstanding his acquired
knowledge, and the very high state of civilization to which he had
attained, he forgot God, and was allowed to drift into pagan darkness
and superstition. These people were scattered, and their land
despoiled, and they fled for refuge far into the wilderness where they
were left in thick darkness:
"Grouping in ignorance, dark as the night," with
"No blessed Bible to give them the light."
Had any other division of the human family been subjected to the
influences of the same depressing climate, for an equal length of
time, as were the Hamites, and surrounded by the same degrading
circumstances, having no light without the assistance of divine
counsel, their degeneration would have been equally as great as these
descendants of Ham, when first began their involuntary migration into
this country. The subsequent training which the Negro received in the
school of bondage, while, in some respects, may have been a very
potent lever in raising them from the pit of darkness and
superstition, was not that which would best serve in the development
of his higher moral nature.
Prior to the beginning of colonial slave traffic, the Negro, as found
in his original home, the dark continent, was innocent and simple in
his habits, possessed of a very high regard for truth and virtue. And,
though very ignorant and superstitious, the result of his paganistic
worship, vice and immorality was to him almost unknown. He was a lover
of the beautiful, and in disposition easily entreated; and, because of
these _very_ tractile elements in his character, he fell an easy prey
to the machinations of his more wily and crafty brother Japhet.
A study of the American Negro since his most remarkable advent into
this country, after being decoyed from his fatherland, portrays him as
a mild, impressionable and submissive being--extremely imitative and
very easily led or controlled. Those who speculated upon him, as human
chattel, very often took advantage of his traits of character in order
to further their own interests, and perpetuate the abominable
institution of slavery.
The Negro was so tractile in disposition and so easily trained for
good or bad that he was frequently developed in the practice of
deceit, hypocrisy, tattling and numerous other weaknesses, as the
result of the course of training which he received from those who were
directly responsible for his physical and moral well being. That
peculiar nature of his education in the school of bondage, which
taught him that his owner's will was supreme, divested him of his very
high regard for virtue; and, wherever resistance was presumed,
coercion soon forced him to yield, and he instinctively bowed to the
inevitable. Thus, the females drifted into the belief that their
bodies were the absolute property of their owners, and that they had
no sacred personal rights which he, their self-imposed master, was
bound to respect. But, like begets like. What wonder, then, that the
seed of unrighteousness, which was implanted in the modern American
Negro, before his birth, should spring up and bring forth abundantly
of the same kind? Whatever is immoral about the American Negro of
to-day was bequeathed to him by his unrighteous ancestors of fairer
hue.
A closer inspection of the Negro's home life reveals him as an
upright, religious character, and, even under the most adverse
circumstances of his unholy environments, he was in many instances so
tenacious of his preconceived standard of good morals that he defended
his principles even to the extent of yielding his life.
The Negro's native integrity and fidelity were so thoroughly relied
upon that during the Civil War, which arrayed in fratricidal strife
the two sections of our beloved country, the heroes of the South left
their homes and went forth to battle, feeling perfectly secure in
entrusting their wives, their daughters, and, in many instances, their
fortunes, in the hands of their faithful Negro servants, who remained
true to their trusts, caring for, and defending, their precious
charges, even at the risk of their own lives. To their credit, it may
be inscribed that, although they were aware that victory for the South
and the return of their masters meant the prolongation, if not the
perpetuation, of their unjust bondage, they swerved not from their
posts of duty, and took no advantage of the situation, thus proving
the high standard of their moral character.
In the darkest days of thralldom the dominant powers relied upon the
Negro's higher moral sense; to the nurse was entrusted almost the
entire care of their offspring, and numerous other duties of great
responsibility were frequently imposed upon their male and female
Negro servants, who invariably proved their high sense of honor,
based upon their highest conception of good morals.
Notwithstanding the efforts made to keep the Negro ignorant and
degraded, ever and anon, the scintillations from his superior nature
would flash out like a burning meteor and exhibit him as he was
designed by God his Father, who is no respector of persons. In this
connection, we cannot help referring to the beautiful character of
Phyllis Wheatley, whose life was absolutely pure, and who was so
remarkably inspired by the poetic muse that, even in the darkest days
of Negro bondage, she forced the recognition of mankind. Her genius
flashed forth as a beacon light to her benighted brethren as a token
of assurance to them of the fulfillment of the promise, "Ethiopia
shall again stretch forth her hand unto God." Benjamin Banneker, the
great mathematician and astronomer, was another instance, in those
remote days of darkness, that the Great Dispenser of all light, and
truth, imparted His gifts alike to all; and there were others, but for
our purpose, these names must forever stand as exponents of that
higher and better life that was pent up within the Negro's breast, as
a dimly-lighted torch, enshrouded under the mantle of slavery, which
needed only the removal of the garment to be clearly seen; and thus,
surrounded by the igniting influences of the atmosphere of liberty,
would burst forth into all the effulgency of a brilliant light.
As a rule, the modern Negro of America, since his liberation from the
shackles of his unjust bondage, has put forth strenuous efforts to
uplift himself. And he has succeeded beyond his own most sanguine
expectations; having had so many obstacles to overcome, he should not
be measured by the heights he has attained, but by the depths from
which he came. Out of the depths cried the Negro unto God; and He
heard him! A few have arisen far above the masses, and are by their
noble examples beckoning the others to come on. The general response
is, "We are coming," up out of the cesspool of darkness, ignorance and
immorality to the higher plane of virtue, knowledge, purity, and true
righteousness which exalteth nations.
That there are dark sides to the picture of the Negro's career since
his emergency from that dreary school of bondage, must be admitted,
but many of his defects are directly traceable to his imitative
propensity. To his own sorrow, he imitates the BAD, as well as the
good.
Like the Indian, the fire-water which he has learned to imbibe has
divested him of his manhood, and robbed him of his virtue, and it is
a sad truth that he is encouraged in this personal debasement of
himself by his brother in white, who is still, in many instances,
taking advantages of his weak traits, offering him every inducement to
continue in his course of self-degradation.
Thirty-six years of light and privilege have wrought wonders for the
Negro, but these are scarcely a day, when compared with the long night
of over two hundred years of bondage; it is impossible for him in this
short period to have totally eradicated the evils for which he was not
wholly responsible, but which were entailed upon him at his birth.
Those deflections in the Negro's practice of his code of good morals,
which are so often exhibited as an argument against the entire race,
are but the results of the development of his weaknesses, by the
methods of former years, which he now, finds it so hard to overcome.
But those who transgress the general rule of uplifting are the
exceptions. To God be the glory for the present Negro, measured, not
by the few, who have overlooked their most sacred rights and
privileges, but by the many who are daily demonstrating, by honest
toil and labor, that they have the highest regard for all that is
pure, ennobling, and virtuous.
The Negro's inspiration for poetry, music and the fine arts, proves
conclusively that there dwells within him a higher and better nature,
which needs only to be developed to its fullest capacity to convince
the world beyond the possibility of a successful contradiction that
his standard of good morals is as elevated as that of mankind in
general. As it is impossible for any fountain to pour forth pure and
impure water at the same time, so is it impossible for total depravity
to exist in the same mind where dwells that finer sense or
appreciation of the beautiful, which originates music, poetry and the
fine arts. Again, we refer the world to such beautiful examples as our
own dear Edmonia Lewis, B. T. Tanner, now abroad; Paul Lawrence
Dunbar, Frances W. Harper, Madam Salika, Flora Batsen Bergen, Nellie
Brown Mitchell, Virginia Adele Montgomery, Hallie Quinn Brown, and
scores of others; some, perhaps not quite so famous as those
mentioned, but who along the line of the higher inspiration of the
Negro, refute any argument that may be opposed. As an ensign of the
very high standard of Christian ethics attainable by the race, we
mention with heart-felt gratitude our dear Amanda Smith, the leader
among hundreds of other noble Christian women, who have given not only
their lives to God and their race, but feel themselves responsible for
the general uplifting of mankind wherever found, knowing that there
is no difference with Him, for whom they labor, "whether Greek or
Jew." There is no difference, whether high or low, rich or poor, bond
or free, white or black; all have a part in the common salvation of
Him who came to lift the world up to its original standard of morality
by sacrificing His own pure life, and who said, "And I, if I be lifted
up, will draw _all_ men unto me." The essential need of the human
family is charity. Our Saviour said of the Christian graces, "And now
abideth these three, Faith, Hope and Charity, but the greatest of
these is CHARITY." The time was when there was very little, if any,
faith in the Negro's ability to rise and equip himself as a man;
afterwards there came a faint glimmer of hope, which commingled with
the slowly but gradually increasing faith, proved a blessed and
powerful agent in the line of effectual assistance. The Negro began to
rise, and he has, with the omnipotent aid of God, his Father,
continued his rising until the present, with wonderfully good results,
as must be conceded by all minds unbiased by prejudice.
Still there is much land to be possessed, and one thing is yet lacking
in the attitude of those who scrutinize him daily for the purpose of
rendering an unfavorable judgment. "Charity suffereth long and is
kind." Suffer in this connection means to bear; those who claim to
have attained a higher standard of morality should bear patiently the
infirmities of the Negro, while he is rising, knowing full well that
his inherent weaknesses are not of his own begetting, and that it will
require some time to overcome the inertia of wrong instruction and
practice. But "thanks be unto God, who giveth the victory," to all who
obey Him, the Negro as well, God requires simply the earnest effort on
his part, and then accomplishes the work Himself.
The highest type of morality is that which generates a disposition on
the part of its possessor to have compassion for the lowly and extend
a helping hand toward the elevation, comfort and restoration of their
inferiors. It has been wisely asserted that "an idle brain is the
devil's work-shop." In view of this truism it is wisdom to keep the
hand and brain well employed. Booker T. Washington comprehended this
fully when he commenced the great work which he is now so successfully
prosecuting at Tuskegee. Like the sainted bishop, Daniel A. Payne's,
Booker T. Washington's standard of true morality was far above the
average of his race. The range of his vision being so extensive, he
saw clearly the situation of his people, and without hesitation
undertook, in his own way, the work of ameliorating the condition of
the masses with the hope of uplifting them to a higher plane of truth
and virtue. His motives being pure, his success has been thus far
commensurate with the scope of his prodigious undertaking.
Notwithstanding his being misunderstood and misinterpreted by many, he
has, with unswerving purpose, pursued the trend of his own honest
convictions, proved his fidelity to the race, and convinced the world
of his unshaken faith in the ultimate success of his enterprise. He is
still practically demonstrating his obedience to the Moral Law, as
summed up in the Divine command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself." Many noble women, also of the race, having outrun their
less-favored sisters and reached the highest standard, are now
extending their hands to assist others in making their ascent into the
more etherial atmosphere of that highest sense of good morals.
Thousands, with organization as their watchword, have banded
themselves into associations and federations under the significant
motto, "Lifting as we climb." The Negro race, under the combined
influence of its army of noble workers, both male and female, is fast
journeying the upward way of truth and virtue; new heights it is
gaining every day.
The little leaven of purity will be unceasingly applied until the
whole lump of Negro humanity is raised upon the lofty plane which will
force the recognition of his antagonistic brother and convince him
that the same high sense of morality governs the Negro as does the
Caucasian, or any other highly civilized race upon the globe.
God grant that the refining fires of truth may burn until all the
dross of prejudice shall be melted and consumed, when,
"Man to man united,
The whole world shall be lighted,
As Eden was of old."
TOPIC XV.
IS THE YOUNG NEGRO AN IMPROVEMENT, MORALLY, ON HIS FATHER?
BY EDWARD MACKNIGHT BRAWLEY, A. M., D. D.
[Illustration: E. M. Brawley, D. D.]
REV. EDWARD MacKNIGHT BRAWLEY, A. M., D. D.
Edward MacKnight Brawley was born at Charleston, S. C.,
March 18, 1851. His parents, James M. and Ann L. Brawley,
were both free. Before the Civil War, in order that he might
secure good educational advantages, he was sent to
Philadelphia, Pa., where he passed through the grammar
school; then he entered the Colored High School, of which
Prof. E. D. Bassett was principal, and there prepared for
college. In the fall of 1871 he entered Bucknell University,
where he was graduated Bachelor of Arts in the class of
1875. During his college course he also pursued theological
studies and was ordained for the ministry on the day after
his graduation, by a council composed largely of professors
of the university. He was the first colored student to
attend Bucknell, and in 1878 he secured from his college the
degree of Master of Arts. In 1885 the State University of
Louisville, Ky., conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of
Divinity, and Rev. E. M. Brawley has this distinction, that
he has held this degree for a longer time than any other
living colored Baptist minister. For eight years he was
State Missionary in South Carolina for the American Baptist
Publication Society.
In 1883 he was called to the presidency of Selma University,
Selma, Ala., and devoted several years to educational work.
He then became District Secretary for the South for the
American Baptist Publication Society, which work he resigned
in 1890 to accept the call to the pastorate of the First
Baptist Church of Petersburg, Va., the oldest colored
Baptist Church in the country, which he subsequently left to
go back to the work of the Society, at its earnest
solicitation. He has also served in the pastorate at
Greenville, S. C., Darien, Ga., and Palatka, Fla. He has
done considerable newspaper work, and has devoted much time
to religious writing, many pamphlets and books along race
and denominational lines having been written by him. He is
now Editorial Secretary of the National Baptist Publishing
Board, of Nashville, Tenn., under the auspices of the
National Baptist Convention. Dr. Brawley's qualifications
and experience well fit him for his present position, for he
has made a specialty of Sunday-school and denominational
literature.
A generation has come since the passing away of the period to which
the old Negro belonged, and this generation has lived in the period of
the new Negro. Is this new Negro an improvement morally on his father?
Zealous friends of the race stoutly maintain that he is; while enemies
assert that he is not as good. It is the purpose of this article to
present some facts which will prove that the young Negro, in spite of
his dreadful inheritance, has, by the aid of generous friends and the
grace of God, lifted himself to a higher moral plane than that upon
which his unfortunate father stood.
It is well, however, to note carefully at the very beginning, that we
are not dealing with exceptions in this discussion, but with the race
as a whole. At a river bank the water sometimes appears to run up
stream, while if one will but look in the middle, he will see the
river in full force gliding smoothly on to the ocean. So in all
matters belonging to the realm of morals we must discard the narrow
vision, and, taking the broad view of the Christian philosopher, sweep
the entire horizon.
Let us first, as an antecedent matter, consider some reasons why the
young Negro should be expected to be better than his father.
1. His father had no moral training. His very person was the victim of
a prodigious theft, and his labor was daily stolen. Could such a man
be effectively taught honesty? To have taught the slave the elements
of morals meant the quickening not only of his moral, but also of his
intellectual nature; and such a thing would ultimately have developed
resistance on the part of the slave. No true instruction in morals was
possible in a condition of slavery. Look over the entire moral code as
set forth in the Ten Commandments, and the impossibility of teaching
effectively those great truths to slaves--American slaves--becomes
apparent. The old enslaved Negro was destitute of true moral training;
and very much of what was offered to him as such was nothing more than
"sounding brass," and he knew it and could not profit by it.
2. And while the old Negro did not have true moral training, he did
have positive training in the opposite direction. For the very system
under which he lived was a training in evil. His ancestors had been
stolen; he himself was stolen; his civil liberty was stolen. Could he
form any adequate conception of property rights? And is it now a
matter of surprise to us that the old man sometimes did a little
stealing himself in order to relieve a hungry stomach? He was not
taught the sacredness of the married life. Indeed, he was not taught
to marry at all. He was, as a rule, simply told to live with a woman
whom he might _call_ his wife, and when the good pleasure or the
necessities of his master demanded that she should be sold away, to
take another woman and live with her and call her wife, also. He was
not allowed to develop the idea of fatherhood toward his children, for
they were not his, but rather mere chattel, to be sold at the pleasure
of his master. The two great vices charged against the Negro race are
theft and adultery. Whatever truth there is in this charge is due to
the long training slavery gave. Indeed, slavery was largely a training
in moral evil. Antecedently, therefore, we expect the old Negro to be
worse than his son.
But, now, what are the positive arguments to prove that the young
Negro is an improvement morally on his father?
1. Slavery has been abolished, and the young Negro has not felt it. He
has, therefore, missed its direct evil training. It is not denied that
he is damaged because he was trained by a father who was brought up in
slavery; but it is claimed that he has not received from his father,
and cannot receive, as much injury as his father received from the
system of slavery.
2. The young Negro now has the gospel. The many thousands who came to
Christ in the days of slavery, and are now at rest from their earthly
toils and sufferings, are not forgotten. That they were saved is due
to the fact that, owing to God's infinite goodness and mercy, a little
knowledge and a little faith can save a sinner; and God pitied our
fathers. But the young Negro now has the gospel in its fullness. He
gets it from the pulpit, from the Sunday-school, and daily in scores
of our highest literary institutions. The gospel is the power of God
unto salvation, and our youth, constantly learning it, have in large
numbers been made to feel its power. Their lives having thus been
purified and ennobled, beautiful and strong Christian characters have
resulted.
3. Many young Negroes have been thoroughly trained for the ministry,
who have led strictly upright lives and have taught others to do the
same; and many others, not ministers, have enjoyed systematic training
in ethics. Is it conceivable that the combined work of this class of
our young people has accomplished nothing in the moral uplifting of
the race? Such work must and does count powerfully on the right side,
or else the gospel is a failure. Just as heathen nations have been
redeemed and regenerated, having put away their savage life and
accepted civilization and Christ because the gospel was preached to
them, even so has our race been saved; and just as no other people
ever received the gospel without being immeasurably blessed and lifted
up, so also is that true of the Negro. And it is further true of all
men that the more gospel privileges they enjoy, the better will be
their condition. For the kingdom of evil is sure to be overthrown, and
the kingdom of Christ established on the earth. And thus the young
Negro cannot help being a better man morally than his father.
4. The young Negro is living in an age of higher morals and
necessarily partakes of its superior advantages. The age of brute
force is fast passing away. When after our great civil war the
adjustment of our troubles with England was arranged by arbitration
rather than settled by war, an immense stride in civilization, men
say, was made. Very true, but why not say that the men in control of
the two great nations involved were moved to act as they did because
of their strong ethical principles? And from that time until now the
moral advance of the world has been rapid and steady. The new Negro is
living in this higher and better age, and his moral constitution has
been built up and made strong because of it. The principles of
international comity are fast spreading among the nations. And just as
the economic principles of the trust are being applied to religious
organizations, even so the stronger ethical principles that are moving
the nations are inducing Christian white men to come nearer to their
brethren in black, and to treat them more as _men_, _brethren_, than
has ever been done before. And thus both external and internal forces
have combined to make the young Negro morally better than his father.
5. And, last of all, the young Negro is turning his social and
political disadvantages to his best interest by relying calmly upon
the justice and wisdom of God's moral government. Life is, indeed, but
a conflict of forces, but the intelligent young Christian Negro knows
that the universe does not operate by chance. He feels the full force
of what Charles Sumner said in his eulogy on Abraham Lincoln: "In the
providence of God there is no accident--from the fall of a sparrow,
to the fall of an empire or the sweep of a planet, all is controlled
by divine law." And thus he lives undisturbed by the wrathful elements
that are at play around him. His full confidence in God at this trying
hour, and his firm belief that the wrath of man will yet be turned to
his advantage, are but the evidence that he trusts intelligently; and
the fact that he does so, and does not become an anarchist, is the
proof of his higher moral life. If it be said that his father did not
become an anarchist, the answer may be that slavery had dispirited
him. But the young Negro is not dispirited. He knows enough and has
spirit enough to make this country tremble; but whatever knowledge and
spirit he has which could be used for evil, he has restrained and will
yet further restrain, because he has abiding confidence in God, and
knows that "giant right is more than might;" and this confidence has
aided in making him a better man than his father.
SECOND PAPER.
IS THE YOUNG NEGRO AN IMPROVEMENT, MORALLY, ON HIS FATHER?
BY REV. J. S. FLIPPER.
[Illustration: J. Simeon Flipper, D. D.]
REV. J. SIMEON FLIPPER, D. D.
The subject of this sketch was among the first to enter
Atlanta University the first day it opened, 1869, and there
remained until 1876. He taught school in Georgia for several
years. He was converted in 1877 and joined the A. M. E.
Church at Thomasville, Ga. He was licensed both to exhort
and to preach. In January, 1880, he joined the Georgia
Annual Conference. In 1882 was elected secretary of the
Georgia Conference, which position he held for five
consecutive years. In this same year he was ordained a
Deacon by Bishop W. F. Dickerson and sent to Darien, Ga.,
where he prepared for and took care of the session of the
Georgia Conference.
In 1884 he met the Georgia Conference at Valdosta, Ga., and
was ordained an Elder by Bishop W. F. Dickerson, and was
stationed at Quitman, Ga., remaining there two years. In
January, 1886, he was transferred by Bishop James A. Shorter
to the North Georgia Conference and stationed at Big Bethel
A. M. E. Church, Atlanta, Ga., the city in which he was
born. His mother had been a member of this church and its
old members knew him when a boy. There he remained four
years with great success, raising the largest amount of
dollar money that had up to that time been raised in the
State: by this he became one of the dollar money kings of
the connection for 1886 and was awarded a gold badge by the
Financial Department of the A. M. E. Church. Thus, in six
years after entering the ministry, he became pastor of the
largest church in the State at the age of twenty-seven
years. In 1889 he was assigned to Pierce's Chapel, Athens,
Ga., and served it three years. In 1892 he was made
Presiding Elder of the Athens District, which place he
filled for three years. In 1893 he preached the annual
sermon to the students of Allen University, Columbia, S. C.,
when the faculty and Trustee Board conferred on him the
title of Doctor of Divinity. In 1892 he was a delegate to
the General Conference of the A. M. E. Church, which met in
Philadelphia, and served as a member on the committee on
statistics.
In 1895 he was stationed a second time in Atlanta, at Allen
Temple, A. M. E. Church, remaining here four years with
great success and entertaining the session of the North
Georgia Conference in his last year. He was elected again to
the General Conference, which met at Wilmington, N. C., in
May, 1896, and served on the committee on revision of
discipline.
In 1899 he was elected not only a delegate but the leader of
his delegation to the General Conference, which met at
Columbus, Ohio, in May, 1900. Here he was elected without
opposition chairman of the Episcopal Committee, the most
important committee of the church; it is composed of all the
leaders of the delegations from all parts of the church, and
before this committee the Bishops appear for an examination
in their moral, religious and official character; it fixes
the boundaries of the districts and assigns the Bishops to
their fields of labor.
He is now a trustee of Morris Brown College, Secretary of
the Trustee and Executive Boards, Treasurer of the
Theological Fund, Chairman and treasurer of the dollar money
committee of the Atlanta, Ga., Conference, Book Steward,
Chairman of Committee on Fourth Year's Studies. He is a
prominent craftsman and for one year was Deputy Grand Master
of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge, A. F. and A. M. of
Georgia, Grand Representative of the Stringer Grand Lodge of
Mississippi to the Grand East of Georgia, with the rank of
Grand Senior Warden. He is now a Trustee of the W. E. Terry
Masonic Orphan and Widows' Home and Industrial School,
located at Americus, Ga., Associate Editor of the "Voice of
Missions," the missionary organ of the A. M. E. Church,
published in New York.
One of the greatest events of his life was the receiving of
Rev. Jas. M. D'wane of the Ethiopian Church from Pretoria,
Transvaal Republic, South Africa, into the A. M. E. Church,
and through him eighty preachers and two thousand eight
hundred members.
The difficulty of considering this question deepens as we consider the
young Negro from every phase of life. Universally it cannot be
answered in the affirmative, for the Negro is divided into classes as
well as are other races, and as no people are universally, morally
good, so such cannot be expected of the Negro.
The Negro possesses an upper class, a middle class, and a lower class,
and in a consideration of these classes we shall look for an answer to
the question. The upper class consists of those who have made
extraordinary progress, morally, religiously, mentally and materially;
who have outstripped their fellows in the race of life and attained a
standard of civilization commensurate with their opportunities and
proved to the civilized world that under favorable circumstances the
Negro is as capable of a high development in civilization as any other
race. This class is an improvement, morally, upon their fathers. For
their opportunities have been such as to render them more capable of a
higher conception of morality and of their duties to their fellowmen,
and in proportion as a man is enlightened on morality does he improve
in morality, other things being equal, and reaches a higher type of
manhood. Morality is always affected by one's religious views. The
moral binds us to our fellowmen, and the religious to our God; and a
man may in many respects be better than his fellowman but he can never
be better than his God. If a man has low and meagre ideas of God his
ideas of man will be low and meagre whatever may be his conceptions of
the law, government, and the character of his Creator will be his
ideas of duty to wife, children, neighbors and country.
The educational qualifications on moral and religious lines must
furnish some of the rules by which the standard can be gauged for the
man who has by liberal and extensive educational facilities gotten the
capacity to know his God and His moral government over His creatures
must rise in moral improvement and stand out as the towering mountain
above the plain that surrounds it. And on this line the upper class of
Negroes, by reason of religious and educational advantages, are an
improvement morally on their fathers, whose opportunities for moral
improvement were very meagre, indeed.
The middle class of Negroes are not equal to the upper class in
attainments. Their educational advantages have not been so great as
those of the upper class, and yet their moral development has been
correspondingly as great. The moral law of God has been heard as
distinctly by them as by the upper, but they have not that
discriminating judgment that enables them in every instance to
distinguish between the morally wrong and the morally right, and yet
there has been awakened in them a consciousness of certain things due
to their fellowman and to their God that has kept them in a way that
they could not be charged with wilful moral wrong, and their
conservatism has placed them in a manner nearer to the morally right
than to the morally wrong. And the young Negroes of this class are an
improvement morally on their fathers. Solomon hath said, "As a man
thinketh, so is he." Good character cannot arise out of low thoughts,
but it must emanate from pure, noble, God-fearing and elevating
thoughts and ideas. Correct ideas of life practically embodied in
conduct can lift man above the low, sensual, evil walks of life. Now
that there are many young Negroes with correct ideas of life cannot be
denied. Now the lower class of Negroes are those whose ideas are
distorted; who are conscience-seared, and who have no regard for God
nor man; and as the upper and middle classes have ascended in the
scale of moral civilization, so the bad class of Negroes have
descended in the scale, their finer sensibilities having become
blunted by vice and crime, so that education on moral and religious
lines has no charms for them. Sinai's majestic summit and moral law
are as chaff to them, and as freedom has given a greater and better
opportunity for the morally good to improve and rise, so it has given
the same for this class to descend and become more and more corrupt.
Indeed, they have gone lower than their fathers on this line. But the
character of a race is not to be judged by its degraded element, but
by the upper and middle classes, which form the major portion of any
race and give it a standing along the line of moral and religious
civilization. We conclude by saying that the young Negro is an
improvement morally upon his father.
First, because freedom has given to the young Negro aspirations for a
purer life, which his father did not have.
Second. The moral atmosphere of the young Negro's home life is better
than that of the old Negro.
Third. The young Negro's educational advantages give him higher
conceptions of life and duty than those had by his father.
Fourth. The young Negro has a more enlightened pulpit than his father
had to preach a broader and more comprehensive gospel to him, and to
thus give him more correct ideas of life.
Now these superior advantages, which the young Negro has, make it
possible for him to outstrip his father in moral accomplishments, and
the arguments of his enemies to the contrary notwithstanding, the
educated young Negro presents a striking contrast in point of morality
to the old Negro.
THIRD PAPER.
IS THE YOUNG NEGRO AN IMPROVEMENT, MORALLY, ON HIS FATHER?
BY REV. E. C. MORRIS, D. D.
[Illustration: E. C. Morris, D. D.]
REV. E. C. MORRIS, D. D.
On May 7, 1855, near Springplace on the Connesauga, in the
chestnut hills of North Georgia, of slave parentage, was
born E. C. Morris, now the President of the National Baptist
Convention, which is the largest deliberative body of
Negroes in the world, the editor-in-chief of the Sunday
School series issued by the National Baptist Publishing
Board, the President of the Arkansas Baptist State
Convention, and pastor of the Centennial Baptist Church of
Helena, Arkansas. His early education was through the common
school, but practically from nature and necessity. From
earliest childhood he was peculiarly interested in men and
things; hence, now possesses a large stock of knowledge
concerning human nature, is an advocate of prudence,
conservatism and manliness in all affairs bearing upon the
relation of the races in this country. He stands for
self-help and racial integrity and believes that when man
has acknowledged his inability and failure to ameliorate the
ill conditions in this country, God will settle the same and
cause the deserved recognition of all men, black and white.
He saw with his father the first train that passed through
North Georgia, though the spectacle was quite an amusing
draft on his youthful nerve, for, says he, "Had I been older
than five years, it is questionable that my father, by whose
hand I was led, could have detained me from the urgent
business I felt I had back home when that mysteriously
terrible locomotive came rushing down the track seemingly
intent upon spending its fury upon no one else but me."
When Elias was ten years old, his parents, James and Cora
Morris, moved into Alabama, settling at the little town of
Stevenson. But Elias had a short while before begun living
with the late Rev. Robert Caver, his brother-in-law, at
Stevenson, and so lived until he arrived at the age of
twenty-one. Mr. Caver taught the young man the shoemaker's
trade and the latter earned his bread upon the shoemaker's
bench until thirty and three years old. He felt a call to
the gospel ministry immediately upon his conversion at the
age of nineteen, which took place just at the time when he
had grown so inimical and impatient toward a revival that
had been going on for several days in the church at
Stevenson that he had plotted mischievous disturbance of the
meeting.
He grew in grace and general ability, and in 1879 accepted a
call to the pastorate of the Centennial Baptist Church of
Helena, Arkansas, which position he has held continuously to
the present time. His ability as an organizer is fully
recognized among his people. He established and for the
first two years edited the first religious paper published
by the Negroes in the State of Arkansas. In 1884, he
organized the Arkansas Baptist College and for sixteen years
has been Chairman of its Board of Trustees. For nineteen
consecutive years he has been annually elected President of
the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. In 1894 he was
elected President of the National Baptist Convention, whose
constituency numbers about a million and a half, and has
been elected every year since to the same position. Under
his leadership, this society has been firmly unified and has
enjoyed the greatest prosperity in its history. It was his
address before this Convention at Washington, in 1893, that
inspired an indomitable and uncompromising determination in
the minds of the colored Baptists to begin publishing
interests of their own. It was his active brain that
conceived the idea of the National Baptist Young People's
Union Board, which Board is located at Nashville. And so his
progressive acts have multiplied as he has advanced in age
and responsibility. Dr. Morris is an acknowledged adviser of
the colored people of his community, in all matters relating
to their general uplift. He is a friend to humanity and a
lover of his race. He is a possessor and advocate of
wholeheartedness and sincerity, being charitable to a
difference or a fault. His influence begins at home and
spreads abroad, and all distinctions that he bears are borne
with gentlemanly modesty, believing leadership to him a duty
rather than an honor.
The subject of this article is a very important and delicate one;
important because it forms the base from which all the advancement
made by the race for the last past thirty-six years must be measured,
and delicate because it makes comparison between father and son. If
there has been no improvement in the race, morally, since its
emancipation from slavery, then no real advancement has been made; and
to say that the Negro has made no advancement would be sufficient to
call forth universal derision.
It must be admitted in the beginning that to do full justice to the
subject, much study and space is required. In the absence of
comprehensive statistics on the subject and the time in which to
compile the same, several standpoints of reasoning must be assumed,
and these will be taken up in no regular order, one being important as
the others. I do not attempt to go upon or set up a system of
scientific theories either, but simply to state and connect obvious
facts. The past and present moral status of the race is involved, but
I shall not go beyond that period in which the race was emancipated,
and will include, as the fathers, such as were the heads of families
at that time and those who were born about that time, constituting
largely the heads of families now, as the respective parties to the
comparison.
What is here said in comparison of father and son is not intended as
unfavorable criticism even where the language may appear
uncomplimentary, but rather to make a truthful statement of the
virtues found in both. I wish also to be understood as placing myself
with those who have faith in the race, to the extent that I believe a
large majority of the freedmen and their descendants are moral, and
should be counted with the good and upright in heart. Such a decision
cannot be reached, however, from a surface examination or outward
appearances. For it is a notorious fact that in all the years of the
Negro's life in this country, he has been subjected to the most menial
occupations such as would, in a large measure, prejudice the
disinterested observer against any high opinion of his morals. The
subject is by no means a new one, but has been investigated and
discussed for a long time by great writers and thinkers. Opinions have
been expressed which are by no means favorable to the race--by no
means favorable because of the ignorance of the party expressing the
opinion. Many of these opinions have been formed and influenced by
what is seen of the Negro in the crowded streets of great cities, at
railroad depots, or at steamboat landings; or upon the great cotton,
rice and sugar plantations, where thousands of Negroes who are
employed only as day laborers, meet. But these do not represent the
majority of the Negroes. Nor should opinions be formed, of the moral
status of this people, out of what may be seen of them at such places
as above referred to, any more than the morals of a great city like
New York or Chicago should be judged by what is seen of the motley
crowds that gather about the wharfs and in the congested streets and
other places where the lowest element of society is to be seen in the
majority. The Negro fathers of forty years ago were as good as the
circumstances and conditions of that day required, and many of them
showed themselves to be superior to the requirement. It is to be
admitted that environment and teaching have much to do with moral
development, and that neither of these were, as a rule, favorable to
the fathers. The contraband life of the Negroes during the war was
perhaps the best that could be provided at that time. But it was far
from being conducive to good morals, and was not, in a moral sense, an
improvement upon the plantation life prior to the war, when almost all
the slaves were huddled by families in one room cabins of what was
known as "the quarters." It was fortunate for the race and the fathers
that the contraband life was of short duration, and the heads of
families among the Negroes, as fast as they could get their loved ones
together, began to settle in families all over the Southland. The
privilege of being a free man, to come and go at will, had its evil
effect upon the fathers for a few years, but they soon became
enveloped with the desire that their children become educated and
otherwise cultured, as were the children of their white neighbors.
The desire to educate and accumulate for the good of the children
became the restraining point in the lives of the fathers, and a very
appreciable change for better morals was noticeable in the latter
sixties and early seventies.
Immediately following the close of the war, a great many missionary
agencies set to work among the Negroes for the purpose of improving
them morally and intellectually. These agencies operated among the old
and young alike, but not with the same results; for it soon became
known that very little change could be wrought among the aged ones
whose superstitious notions of religious worship and peculiar ideas
about "white folks' religion" made it a difficult task to teach them.
Notwithstanding their superstition, the aged Negroes were singularly
kind and respectful to their white neighbors and permitted the white
teachers--for nearly all teachers were white at that time--to have
absolute control of their children both as to home and school life.
One of the attributes of morality is a happy conscience, or happiness,
for there can be no true happiness where there is no morality. Hence,
there existed an appreciable element of morality among the fathers,
for, as a rule, no happier or more contented people could be found
anywhere. I speak of the whole race. One may be a good servant, or a
good neighbor, and yet not a good man. Opportunities have much to do
with developing the attributes of the soul. Many of those noble
qualities which go to make a good man were latent in the fathers, for
there had been no opportunity for the development of these qualities.
The home is the foundation place of all that is good and grand in a
race or nation. Wisdom and virtue are inseparable from a good home.
Hence, to make the comparison which my subject calls for, we must
inquire into the home and religious life of the present generation.
The young men from eighteen to twenty-one years of age who are, so to
speak, in embryo with respect to questions affecting the progress of
the race, are not included in the summary we make and should not be
considered directly, in measuring the moral status of the race. As to
the homes of the fathers forty years ago, very little can be said. But
late statistics show that there are over three hundred thousand homes
and farms owned by the Negroes in the United States, which indicates
that nearly two millions of the nine million of our people live in
their own homes. The figures are very significant when it is
remembered that the race started forty years ago, four million and a
half in number of individuals, with practically no homes. The property
value of the homes now owned is conservatively put at one billion
dollars--not a bad showing for a people who commenced forty years ago
at zero in wealth. But the accumulation of wealth does not always mean
that the owner is moral, yet the accumulation and maintenance of good
homes present a better argument in favor of the good moral inclination
of the people accumulating and maintaining these homes than can be
produced in words. These mean more than the mere ownership of a house
and lot, or a sixty acre farm; a respect for the first institution set
up by the Creator is thereby shown and that in that institution (the
family) is one to love and honor; and that there an altar is to be
erected around which all are to kneel and worship God; they mean that
morality, the foundation of all true greatness, is to be enthroned
there. The establishment and maintenance of so many Christian homes
among our people has brought forward a demand which is a barometer of
the moral changes, and shows conclusively that the race is improving
morally. This demand is for the right kind of men as preachers and
teachers. The time was when a man who could read and write, no matter
what his character, could find a place to preach and teach among our
people. This does not obtain now so much as before, and the people are
demanding that their teachers and spiritual advisers be men and women
whose lives and characters are living epistles of virtue. If proof of
this point were necessary, one would need only to refer to the
continued upheavals in various communities, in the schools and
churches, where war has been made upon those persons whose lives have
been such as to arouse suspicion that they were unworthy the offices
held. The fact that these demands are being made for a pure ministry
and a competent and worthy corps of teachers is encouraging.
In passing judgment upon the moral status of the young Negro, or in
comparing this status with that of the father who has gone from the
stage, we will necessarily have to apply the multiplication process,
for it will require a life fully lived in all its details to
constitute the sum total of a well built character. Therefore, the
_whole_ truth about the morals of the present generation will be known
only to the next. The processes used in the moral development of the
race have been gradual and almost imperceptible in progress, but they
have been in progress, nevertheless, and promise great results. The
man who sowed his seeds yesterday does not expect to reap a harvest
to-morrow. Cultivation is to follow planting. The warm spring rains,
the hot rays of a summer sun are to come and moisten and warm the soil
around the roots, cause the blade to shoot forth and then harden the
stalk and the grain. These are to be followed by the cool winds and
frosts of autumn before harvest comes. The planting of moral
principles in the present generation of Negroes has been done; the
cultivating process is now going on by means of the buying of homes,
entering into business and agricultural pursuits, building churches
and schools and in educating the youth. These facts point to the moral
trend of the mind of the present generation, but perhaps none of them
in the same degree as the religious desire of the colored man.
A larger per cent of the Negroes in this country are members of the
Christian churches than of any other race of people. Notwithstanding
the criticism to the contrary, they are as practical in their
Christianity as any set of people. The matter of divorce has been a
great problem to many of the most thoughtful men of the race, and the
frequent resort to the courts to obtain divorces has been used as an
argument against the growth of the moral sentiment in the race. But
the very fact that such meets with opposition and is disapproved by
the good people is evidence in favor of the Negro's morals. Then
again, the class of Negroes who have but little respect for the
marriage vow are, as a rule, those who are indolent, worthless and
without a home and making no effort to obtain one. But, happily, this
class form but a small minority.
Another virtue in the Negro's character which comes only from a moral
sentiment is gratitude. He loves his benefactors and would gladly
repay them for all they have done for him, if he were able to do so.
If the mind was filled with sensuality, deception, hatred and like
vices, there would be no room for that noble characteristic,
gratitude, which is so prominent in the present generation. His
gratitude extends beyond the individual benefactor to the flag of his
country; overlooking present conditions and remembering past favors,
he is always ready to dare and die for his country's honor. We
conclude by saying that the fathers who came up out of slavery,
unlettered and untrained, did well. The present generation of fathers,
or heads of families, by reason of superior advantages, are doing far
better. The race as a whole for the last past thirty-six years has
made a history for itself which will form the apex of its glory when
it has passed through a century of training under its changed
condition from slavery to freedom.
FOURTH PAPER.
IS THE YOUNG NEGRO AN IMPROVEMENT, MORALLY, ON HIS FATHER?
BY MRS. ARIEL S. BOWEN.
[Illustration: Mrs. Ariel S. H. Bowen]
MRS. ARIEL SERENA HEDGES BOWEN.
Mrs. Ariel Serena Hedges Bowen, wife of Dr. J. W. E. Bowen
of Gammon Theological Seminary, Atlanta, Ga., was born in
Newark, N. J. Her father was a Presbyterian clergyman in
that city. He had graduated from Lincoln University, Pa.,
and had organized churches in New York State. Her mother
represents one of the oldest Presbyterian families of that
State. Her grandfather was a bugler in the Mexican war, and
was a Guard of Honor when Lafayette revisited the United
States. Her parents removed early to Pittsburg, Pa., where
she attended the Avery Institute. She completed the Academic
course of this school. Her parents then moved to Baltimore,
Md., where her father became pastor of Madison Avenue
Presbyterian Church, and finally of Grace Presbyterian
Church. She was sent to the High School of Springfield,
Mass., where she remained and graduated with honor in a
large class in 1885. She also took the Teachers' Course and
Examination and passed a creditable examination and was
favorably considered as teacher for one of the schools of
that city. She was then called to teach History and English
Language in the Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Ala., under
Prof. B. T. Washington.
In the year 1886 she was married to Dr. J. W. E. Bowen. She
became a Life Member of the Woman's Home Missionary Society
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. She removed to Atlanta
with her husband in 1893. She became Professor of Music in
Clark University in 1895. She is the State President of the
Georgia W. C. T. U., No. 2. She has written very largely,
among which may be mentioned, "Music in the Home," "The
Ethics of Reform," etc. She is an accomplished vocalist and
musician with the piano and pipe organ. She is busily
engaged in temperance and reform work, together with
training and fitting her family of one boy and three girls
for life. She is regarded as one of the foremost and best
cultured women of her race. She reads Greek, Latin and
German with facility, and is a superb housekeeper.
The most important and vital factors in the development of a race are
physical strength, intelligence and morality, these three, but the
greatest of these is morality.
The individual or the race possessed of either or both of the first
two, and that utterly ignores the third, can never attain to the full
status of man, nor reach the zenith of full racial development or the
pinnacle of civilization. To-day we hear much about the survival of
the fittest and the "superior race and the inferior races." The
earnest, thoughtful student of life and its affairs immediately raises
the question, To whom do such titles "fittest," "superior" and
"inferior" refer, and why? The history of a people shows the advance
and growth of that people. Their development can be traced from the
crude barbarous or semi-barbarous state in which physical prowess
predominated through the period of intellectual development where the
mind begins to grasp new ideas and where new ideals of higher and
nobler purposes are sought after. Then came the greater perfection,
the nobler aspiration, the purer, higher civilization, growing out of
the purer thought and purer life of a purified people. This is true of
all races, therefore the Negro race is no exception, and is entitled
to the same justice that is accorded to every race that has had its
rise and fall.
The writer takes it that the young "Negro" and his father are to
represent only the ante-bellum and the post-bellum Negro. To go beyond
that, to take him in his earlier state in the native wilds of his
fatherland, before the Anglo-Saxon missionary reached him and gave to
the world a true picture of his morality, would be to present to the
world some startling facts that would not only put to shame the "young
Negro," but also the hosts of men of all nations who glory in the
progress they have made in morals.
It can be proven by the best authorities that many of the heathen
Africans, though crude in ethics, were pure morally.
But the discussion resolves itself into two very important questions.
What was the moral condition of the Negro before the war, and what is
his moral condition to-day? Before the war, what a picture comes
before us at these words, what a panorama of deeds passes before our
mind's eye. Years of gross darkness, darkness that deepens into the
blackness of the pit, those days that seem like a hideous nightmare to
the hoary headed, and the story of which sounds to the youth like a
heart-rending and nauseating recital. Yet, it was not all dark, some
would say; perhaps not, but the bright spots only tended to intensify
the darkness.
What morals were chattels expected to have, and who gave to these
chattels their moral code? It was certainly not of their own making.
What could be the moral condition of a race to whom family rights were
forbidden and whose business, next to labor, was to propagate solely
for the master's gain? The words mother, father, were used only in the
language of the "big house."
Womanhood, the foundation stone of moral eminence, passed through a
crucial ordeal, and it is to be greatly wondered at that the Negro
woman emerged with even the crudest type of moral capacity.
Every line on every page of the history of those dark days teem and
reek with the abandon of licentiousness, nor could this be otherwise.
It was the natural sequence of a debasing system. It is no
disparagement upon the noble few whose garments were kept unspotted,
nor upon those who would have reached towards higher ideals, if they
had been masters of themselves, to say that the ante-bellum Negro did
not possess a great degree of morality. There can be no other
conclusion drawn from such demoralizing conditions.
The moral status of the Negro is to-day an all-absorbing theme, and is
discussed pro and con by friend and enemy in other races, and by the
optimist and pessimist of his own. Comparisons concerning his morals
and moral growth are made as all other comparisons are made concerning
him, not between his present and former condition, nor between his
condition and that of any other people at the same stage of
development, under the same conditions and environments. On the
contrary, inconsistency is ever present in the attempts to show the
world existing facts. Whenever an attack was made upon the system of
slavery, the defenders of the system immediately pointed to the poor
slaveholder and the dearth of Negro criminals as points in favor of a
time when the Negro enjoyed the blessings of a "mild and humane
system."
When the progress of the black race in America is placed in the
balance, the lowest and most degraded and careless of the masses who
have not come out of a state of inertia are brought into comparison
with the noblest types that have ascended the scale of life. What
wonder then that there is so much adverse criticism; what is needed is
a search for facts and an unprejudiced putting of all that appertains
to the Negro, and a just acknowledgment of the results attained.
That the American Negro has made an advance along all lines that make
for the higher development of a people cannot be denied. He has
improved morally in a corresponding way. The limit of this paper will
not permit a statistical comparison, but a few points may be noticed
in passing. His moral instinct is quickened and his moral nature
asserts itself in higher forms of life under the new conditions. He
has started at the fountainhead and the purity of his home and
hearthstone is a magnificent memorial to the purity of the black
woman.
Were it possible to give in numbers the correct estimate of these
beautiful homes and their characters, even the most bitter of his
enemies and the pessimists of his own race would look with doubt upon
the pernicious libels disseminated in the periodical literature of the
day. The dark picture of the Negro's shortcomings is thrown on the
canvas and so familiar has it become that not a few seldom think that
there is another picture which the Negro himself knows to be truer to
life and more prophetic of his real nature, taken from real life, and
one that ought to give inspiration and hope to all seekers after
facts.
The Negro ministry has made rapid and marked progress in moral
achievements for itself and also for the race in their wide influence
upon the same. There is a constant and ever-increasing demand coming
from the people for a higher and nobler service in the pulpit, and the
demand is being met in a comparative measure. Moreover there are
professional men whose lives prove the possessors' estimate of virtue
and are being spent in bringing others up to these lofty ideals.
The noble army of teachers, most of whom are women, are not to be
overlooked or underestimated. Next to the faithful mother, these noble
women have lived and worked for the race. They have proved themselves
ever against untoward conditions. Their work and worth should not be
reflected against because of the few whose lives are not up to the
standards of true womanhood. It is undeniably true that the virtues of
Solomon's virtuous women may be duplicated in multitudes of our women
teachers.
A word concerning the criminal record of the Negro might be worth
considering. It is here that the moral weakness of the race is said to
be most manifest. We are told that figures do not lie, and an appeal
from the records is not to be considered for a moment. Yet, he who
wants facts and is in search of the truth must appeal and must make
personal investigation.
As yet statistics, the press and history, have not given a truthful,
unbiased record of the Negro of to-day as he really is. One side has
been faithfully followed, and elaborately and painfully portrayed, but
of the other side only here and there an item, a reference and a
charitable surmise rewards the seeker after knowledge. A careful study
of the environments of the so-called criminal class, also the courts
of justice before which the criminals are arraigned, would develop
some interesting, not to say startling, facts; for example, "it has
been shown by Prof. Branson, of the Georgia State Normal School, that
while the illiterate Negro population of the state furnish three
convicts per thousand, the Negroes who have profited by the public
schools furnish only one convict per thousand." Many of the criminals
start from the court-room and are the victims of injustice.
Such untoward conditions serve rather to stamp out every vestige of
nobility rather than inspire to a reaching out after higher ideals.
The young or post-bellum Negro is steadily improving morally. In the
face of strong opposition, in his moral development, just as he does
in mental, financial and civil growth, against all the opposing forces
that would hinder his growth and relegate him to the lowest stratum of
mankind, he is forcing his way up the stream. His spiritual and moral
nature is beating under the animal nature which for so long a time
held him as a slave. He now does right for right's sake, and loves the
pure and good. He honors the women of his race and is raising her to
nobler plains in his thoughts and life.
The Negro woman is asserting herself also and is building for herself
a character that rests upon a foundation of personal purity. This she
is doing not only for herself, but for others. The building up of pure
homes is her chief concern and in them she reigns with womanly
queenliness.
Social reform receives her attention, and in these walks she may be
found teaching the young the single standard of purity for both sexes.
Her way is the roughest, her path most closely beset with snares, but
her works show for themselves.
If there had been no advancement along moral lines, the Negro's
material and intellectual attainments would count for very little in
the world of affairs, for he would degenerate to a mere mechanical
factor in human society and become a tool in every case in the hands
of a stronger race. But he has added to his material and intellectual
strength a greater and higher force, viz., that of moral worth, which
at once raises him to higher planes in the social and civil world, and
brings him into contact with his enemies and oppressors.
The Negro has met and overcome the great barriers to his progress one
by one. Despite the snares that are all about his path, and their
hidden evils that seek to hold him in thralldom, yet he bursts his
chains and marches forward with renewed purpose and greater zeal.
Yes, the young Negro is embodying nobler ideas in his nature and
reaching forward after higher ideals because of his superior
advantages. He is to face a future pregnant with struggles of a higher
order and of a more diverse character, than the struggles of an
earlier day. He enters into competition, not with one race only, but
with all the races of mankind. As the knowledge of the fierceness of
the battle comes to him, he raises himself from his lethargy and in
the strength of his manhood he goes forward.
He who doubts not the Negro's growth and development along
intellectual and financial lines cannot gainsay his steady and sturdy
growth in moral and social power.
TOPIC XVI.
THE NEGRO AS A WRITER.
BY REV. J. Q. JOHNSON, D. D.
[Illustration: J. Q. Johnson, D. D.]
REV. J. Q. JOHNSON, D. D.
Rev. J. Q. Johnson, D. D., was graduated from the Collegiate
Department, of Fisk University in 1890; from the Hartford
Theological Seminary in 1893. He taught mathematics at
Tuskegee for one year; the John P. Slater fund published his
report of the fifth Tuskegee Negro Conference in its series
of "Occasional Papers." He has been President of Allen
University, Columbia, S. C. His pastoral work has embraced
some of the strongest and most influential churches in the
A. M. E. connection. Associated with him was his brilliant
and cultured wife--Mrs. Halle Tanner Johnson--the first
woman who ever passed the State Medical Board of Examiners
of Alabama. Her recent death was a loss to the race.
Dr. Johnson is among the foremost men of his church. He is
among the best read men of the race. He is an able preacher
and a strong, forceful writer. One of his characteristic
points is his ability to say much in little. He goes right
to the point without wasting time with needless _words_. He
received Doctor's degree from Morris Brown College, Atlanta,
Ga. He studied two years as a post-graduate student at
Princeton University.
It would be extravagant to set up any claims of greatness in behalf of
Negro writers. The Negro has yet his contribution to make to the
literature of mankind. We fully believe that he has a message to
deliver. The making of a writer is a matter of centuries. England was
a long time producing a Shakespeare or a Milton, Italy a Dante, Russia
a Tolstoi, France a Hugo or a Dumas, Germany a Goethe and a Schiller.
America, active in invention and commerce, has not yet produced a name
worthy to stand by the side of those just mentioned. All really great
writers have not only a national or racial, but also a universal
quality in their productions. So far the greater part of our literary
effort has been of historical compilations. We have accumulated a
large mass of material for the future historians. Williams' "History
of the Negro Race" is an example of this kind. In this way we have
recorded the deeds of distinguished Negroes in every avenue of life.
Such works have kept alive the hope and kindled the aspirations of the
race. A most interesting work of this kind is that of Prof. E. H.
Crogman, "The White Side of a Black Subject." In this book we have the
serious and earnest efforts of the race recorded. Here we learn of
educators like Booker T. Washington and J. W. E. Bowen, lawyers like
T. McCants Stewart and S. A. McElwee, women physicians like Halle T.
Johnson and Georgia Washington. Books of this kind are in almost every
Negro home in the land.
The Negro as a writer of prose is nowhere seen to a better advantage
than in Dr. Blyden's "Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race." Here we
find the Negro in command of the best English style. Whatever may be
said of his opinions, his mastery of a forcible, spirited, nervous
expression reminds one of Macauly and Addison. Probably the best book
from the standpoint of scientific, historical investigation is the
work of Dr. DuBois on "The Suppression of the African Slave Trade."
Bishop B. T. Tanner, in his "Dispensations in the Church," has made a
real contribution to our race literature. In this he establishes
the Hamitic origin of the ancient Egyptians and shows that Ham is
not one whit behind Japheth and Shem in achievement. Dr. R. L. Perry's
work, "The Cushite," is a very excellent work along the same line. In
this department there is yet much work for the Negro scholar.
In Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the race has struck its highest note in song.
A high and worthy tribute has been paid this writer by William Dean
Howells. His lyrics have not only a genuine race flavor, but at the
same time they appeal to the universal heart. Dunbar's work is of the
first class. He has made a real contribution to the literature of the
country. His name must now appear in any Manual of American
Literature. The success of this writer is a matter of note. His poems
and stories are in most of the popular magazines and his books on all
news stands. It is clear from this that, whenever a Negro writes
anything worth reading, his productions will be in constant demand.
Mention must here be made of the commendable work of Chas. W.
Chestnutt, another popular writer of the race. The lamented Dr. A. A.
Whitman and Mrs. Frances W. Harper are two poets well-known to the
public. Some think that Whitman is a greater poet than Dunbar.
In a short sketch like this, it is impossible to do justice to the
literary achievements of the race. A whole volume might be written on
the great work done by the Negro press. Here we have many strong
writers--men of such mould as Fortune, Stewart, Mitchell and H. T.
Johnson. Then, too, there are noted names as magazine
writers--Scarborough, Kelly Miller, D. W. Culp and B. T. Washington
and H. T. Kealing.
The Negro has been a failure nowhere. In war, there stands Toussaint
L'Overture and Maceo; in education, B. T. Washington; in oratory,
Frederick Douglas; in art, H. O. Tanner; in letters, Phyllis Wheatley
and Paul Lawrence Dunbar. These and others like them are our prophets
of the future. Being thus judged by our best men, it doth not yet
appear what we shall be. The Greeks are great in a large measure
because they wrote of themselves. So the Anglo Saxon, and any race for
that matter. The Negro must do the same. His story will not be
adequately told till it is done by himself. The Negro poet, novelist
and historian have a vast wealth of material before them. Every
southern city and plantation are vocal with the past history of our
race. From the past and the present, from our achievements and our
suffering, the Negro writer, whether poet, novelist or historian, will
deliver our message to the world.
SECOND PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A WRITER.
BY WALTER I. LEWIS.
[Illustration: Prof. W. I. Lewis]
WALTER I. LEWIS.
Walter I. Lewis was born near Chester, S. C. No record
having been kept, it is not possible to determine the date
of his birth. Walter is the third of seven children that
were born to William Charles and Mollie Lewis who were
slaves to a man by the name of W. T. Gilmore.
He successfully passed from the common schools to the
preparatory department of Biddle University.
Walter I. Lewis graduated with the second honor of his class
of five from Biddle University, in Charlotte, N. C., and at
once began his life-work, public school teaching, at
Spartanburg, S. C.
After teaching in that city for three years, two of which he
succeeded in securing a sufficient donation from the Peabody
Fund to have the school term increased from five to nine
months, he accepted an appointment under the Freedmen's
Board of the Presbyterian Church, to take charge of their
parochial school in Columbia, Tenn.
Special inducements were offered him to take a position in
the newly organized graded schools of that city, and he
resigned the parochial school after serving one year, and
accepted work with the graded school. This he found
congenial and won special distinction in using the phonetic
method of teaching primary pupils, that system being newly
introduced there then.
Having a turn for political contests he vigorously entered
local political campaigns, generally on the winning side,
and won some distinction as a campaign orator.
Mr. Lewis came to Florida in 1890, as corresponding
secretary of the Afro-American Chautauqua Association, whose
president was the lamented Dr. J. C. Price.
The failure of that enterprise was a withering blow to Mr.
Lewis.
After remaining in Florida for nearly a year, at
Tallahassee, Mr. Lewis became field correspondent and agent
for the Florida Sentinel, then published in Gainesville.
In 1892, Mr. Lewis got a position as city editor on the
Labor Union Recorder of Savannah. For a time his activity
seemed to be equal to the task of redeeming that paper, but,
the entailments of indebtedness were too great. It went
under.
He was urged to go to Jacksonville to enter the office of
the Jacksonville "Advocate"; the inducements being
flattering he went. He served the "Advocate" until the
"Daily American" was established. He was on the "Daily
American" as its city editor, and was on deck when that
sheet went down.
In the winter of 1895-96, necessity demanded a better daily
news for the colored people of Jacksonville. This was
secured at the office of the "Metropolis," one of the most
successful afternoon papers that is published in the whole
South.
Mr. Lewis was put on as reporter for his race, on the staff
of the "Metropolis," and has held this place continuously
ever since.
He is a firm believer in the survival of the fittest in all
things, and declares this is the key to the solution of the
race problem.
On the stage, on the platform, in the pulpit and in conversation, the
Negro has demonstrated a power in the use of speech that has well won
him a merited distinction. This fluency and force of language, so
often found in striking disparity to his other attainments, has armed
critics and students of his racial peculiarities with the opinion that
talking is his peculiar forte.
Such an opinion does not obtain, however, in the face of noble
examples of this race who have the art of forcibly and correctly
writing great thoughts.
The great cause of the Christian religion has furnished the field for
more writers of this race than any other. This is noted, not as a
fault, but rather to confirm the fact that since the emancipation, the
training of the Negro, both at school and in his home, has been
largely religious, owing to his inborn susceptibility to religious
impressions, and his well known proneness to abide by the teachings of
his fathers; it is no marvel that the major portion of his written
thoughts should be deeply tinged with religious ideas.
Even in his occasional contributions to current literature, and when
he is making an attack or a defense, right often does the religious
effusion predominate.
Until about twenty years ago, rare were the instances where Negro
writers had produced books and other productions on other than
religious subjects. And even at the present the number of secular
writers is not large, considering the opportunities for writers of
this class and the profits available. There are certain advantages,
strange to relate, that the Negro has, that might be called natural.
The great realm of thought, through which fiction and mental analysis
holds undisputed sway, is not circumscribed by caste and other
invidious discriminations as are most other avenues, through which the
bravest souls essay to traverse, but are either crushed down or are
ejected. Perhaps this is why, in cases that have doubtless come under
the observation of all readers of the productions of Negro writers,
there is a tendency toward recklessness.
But it will be equitable and fair to take under consideration only
those Negro writers, who have won more or less distinction as such,
while discussing the Negro as a writer.
From Alexander Dumas to the latest celebrity among Negro writers, the
close observer of racial traits is furnished with vivid evidences of
methods of thought that are peculiar to this people. In imagery, there
is that floridity that goes dazzling to the sublime with a brilliancy
that is captivating. If sorrow is depicted, his course through its
horrible depths brings a shudder over the most listless reader. If
happiness is to be portrayed, the coziest nook in Elysium is laid
bare. If anger pleads for expression, no bolt from Vulcan's anvil has
ever fallen with so crushing a clang.
The Negro writer is prolific in detail. Situation follows situation in
rapid success, demanding close attention to keep clear of the meshes
of involvement. The writings of the Negro are full of soul. If, at
times, there is a lacking of aptness in conventional adjustments, the
hiatus is beautifully abridged with a freshness and wealth of
expression that fully atones.
The Negro writer has it largely in his power to demonstrate the higher
possibilities and capabilities of his race. As long as there is a
Charles W. Chestnut, or a Paul Lawrence Dunbar, a T. Thomas Fortune,
and others, whose writings are read by the thousands of literary
people of this country and England, so long will there be an
irrefutable argument for the intellectual worth of the Negro race.
It is within the power of the Negro writer to practically and
profitably demonstrate the oft repeated aphorism, "Genius is not the
plant of any particular soil."
It should be a matter of some congratulation to the Negro that the
great publishing houses of this country are not, and never will be,
located at the great centers of race prejudice. A manuscript of merit
can easily find publication. Within recent years it has been noticed
that the vein of seriousness that has run through the writings of
Negro authors is fading away, and a jollity that is his own is taking
its place. Most of the men and women of the race, who have written
enough to win public notice, are known to be persons of a cheerful and
jovial disposition. For such a person to live in the role of the
miserable is at least a misrepresentation.
The Negro's aptness in detecting the facetious, even in things that
are serious; his laughing soul that places a bouquet of joy and
sunshine where the somber draping of woe would so often be found, is
his God-given stock in trade upon which he can do business for
generations to come. This secret is being discovered by him. This
discovery will yet furnish the great world of letters with men and
women of this race, who will place millions under tribute to
graciously acknowledge the beneficence.
The way to favor and preferment for the Negro writer is to be made by
himself. The epic of his race awaits a writer. The drama of an
unwritten history covering about four centuries will welcome the
facile pen of some gifted son or daughter. The well nigh inexhaustible
field of folk-lore of his own people is ready to be told to the world,
whether in the crude dialect of the race, or in Americanized English,
it matters little. It will make no difference. The English speaking
people of both continents will read it if it is written by a master.
It is not at all taken for granted, admitted, or intimated, that the
Negro writer of the present century is oblivious to any of these
facts. Just as the "coon" melodies have captured the musical realms of
this country, and will remain in the saddle for some time yet; just as
Negro singers and actors are honorably invading the progressive end of
the American stage, so will Negro writers swarm in the great field of
writers, bringing with them a supply of freshness of genius, that will
rejuvenate and give fresh life to the literature of this country.
This is a domain that mocks at legislative restrictions, caste,
exclusionism and what not. Those who will enter and maintain their
ground will be few. All of the stars in the heavens are not fast
flying meteors. There never was such a thing as an army of sages.
Mindful of the fact that his antecedence is small in the world of
letters, the Negro writer is the more ardently inspired when he looks
beyond and catches sight of golden fields into which no swarthy hand
has thrust a sickle.
The world wants more joy; the world cries for more sunshine; the world
begs for a laugh. Mankind gloats over the depiction of deeds both
noble and ignoble. The world delights in that which is novel. The
Negro is a son of caloric. His presence is sunshine. He tells a story
leaving nothing out. He is himself a novelty, and it will not be too
far in the twentieth century before he will take pity on the world and
mankind and write them what they like.
THIRD PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A WRITER.
BY G. M. McClellan.
[Illustration: Prof. G. M. McClellan]
GEORGE MARION McCLELLAN.
The objection is often raised against schools of higher
education for the Negro race that these people need
instruction, not in Latin, history, geometry and moral
science, but in scientific farming and geometric bed making.
The leaven of truth in this assertion makes a plump denial
hard to return; while its leaven of error is a reminder of
the old antislavery assumption that till the end of time the
Negro must be a hewer of wood and drawer of water, with no
mental life to speak of. This error is best confuted by
proof of the race's actually wide range of intellectual
demands, imaginative sympathies, moral questionings; and for
this reason, if for no other, one thanks Mr. George Marion
McClellan for venturing on the publication of his verses.
This gentleman is a graduate of Fisk University, as he tells
us in the interesting and modest preface to his volume. Thus
he belongs to the first generation since the War. His
parents, he indicates, were slaves, and his early home was
upon the "Highland Rim" of Tennessee, amid the poverty of a
freedman father's little farm. These things well weighed,
the refined love of nature, the purity of sentiment, the
large philosophy, the delicacy of expression which his poems
display, are sufficiently marvelous. One must, perhaps, deny
him the title of "poet" in these days when verse writers are
many. His ear for rhythm is fatally defective, while, so far
as one may judge from the few dates appended to the poems,
the later productions seem not to be the best. Nevertheless,
his little volume stimulates to large reviews and fair
anticipations. It is a far cry from "Swing low, sweet
chariot"--an articulate stirring of poetic fancy, but hardly
more than that--to Mr. McClellan's "September Night, in
Mississippi":
"Begirt with cotton fields, Anguilla sits,
Half birdlike, dreaming on her summer nest
Amid her spreading figs and roses still
In bloom with all their spring and summer hues.
Pomegranates hang with dapple cheeks full ripe,
And over all the town a dreamy haze
Drops down. The great plantations stretching far
Away are plains of cotton, downy white.
Oh, glorious is this night of joyous sounds.
Too full for sleep Aromas wild and sweet
From muscadine, late-booming jessamine
And roses all the heavy air suffuse.
Faint bellows from the alligators come
From swamps afar where sluggish lagoons give
To them a peaceful home. The katydids
Make ceaseless cries. Ten thousand insects' wings
Stir in the moonlight haze, and joyous shouts
Of Negro song and mirth awake hard by
The cabin dance. Oh, glorious is the night!
The summer sweetness fills my heart with songs.
I cannot sing; with loves I cannot speak."
If many thoughts and feelings such as these lie folded in
Southern cabins, let us not deny, for their unfolding, the
genial influences of literature and history and the
sciences. The race that possesses such powers, even though
undeveloped in the great majority of its members, needs Fisk
and Atlanta educated pastors and teachers.
"The pen is mightier than the sword." It would have seemed idle to
have said this at the mouth of the mountain pass at Thermopylæ with
Leonidas and his immortal Spartan heroes all lying dead amid the wreck
made by the mighty host of Xerxes. A century afterward, at Cannæ, one
sixth of the whole population of Rome lay dead on the battlefield by
the sword thrust. Where was the might of the pen to compare with this?
The might of the sword at Thermopylæ, together with the concluding
events at Salamis, turned back the Persian hordes and thereby saved
the Greek civilization for Europe. Again, after the blood of Cannæ, at
Zama, Hannibal was utterly broken and Carthage, with her attending
civilization, was doomed to everlasting death, while Rome, her mighty
adversary, with her eagles and short sword, carried her dominion and
her splendid civilization from England to India. One more great
movement in the world illustrating the power of the sword is too
tempting to pass by in this connection. From the deserts of Arabia a
fanatical dreamer came forth claiming a new revelation from God and as
a chosen prophet to give the world a new religion. His pretentions at
first caused his expulsion from Mecca, together with a small and
insignificant band of followers. Yet because of these it was not long
until there came from out the desert the sound of the marching of a
mighty host, heralding the approach of the Arab, the despising and
despised. Before these barbarous hordes the principalities of the East
were doomed to crumble and yield up their accumulated treasures of the
ages, and so triumphant were these invaders from the desert they
decided to appropriate for themselves the whole world, and from this
they were not _dissuaded_ until Charles Martel sent them back from
Tours and out of Europe, together with their hateful civilization. So
it would seem from these and all other mighty movements of races and
tribes, men and nations, the sword has ever been the arbiter. Yet over
all the mighty sweep of events and the _stupendous_ results of the
sword-thrust throughout the ages, comes this insinuating claim, "The
pen is mightier than the sword." And when we consider the whole of
accumulated philosophy, the onward march of science and human thought,
and the consequent development of the human race, the comparative
might of the sword becomes insignificant before the less demonstrative
power of the conquering pen. And here comes the question, which in
some phase or other comes up in all great questions of America, "What
part has the Negro in the might of the pen?" Nobody doubts that the
great movements of the world at present, let their primary
manifestations be military or political, scientific or industrial,
have any other great lever than knowledge and sentiment brought into
notice and activity by writers.
The chief agencies for the dissemination of thought and discoveries
are the newspapers, magazines, literary journals and books of fiction.
The newspapers have the most immediate and controlling influence over
the action of men in the business and political world. To undertake to
estimate with anything like exactness the part the Negro has in
molding sentiment through the press and giving the consequent
direction to the action of men would be a task impossible in the very
nature of the case.
It shall be, then, the purpose of this article to discuss in a general
way the Negro as a writer in all lines in which he has essayed to
express thought. It would be easy to dispose of the question in two
ways. One would be to separate all that he has done as far as that
would be possible, and put it over against the production of the white
race and thus so minimize it by comparison that its power would likely
to be _underrated_. Another way would be to magnify all that has been
done as especially praiseworthy, because the production comes from the
Negro, thus overrating its significance, forgetting that whatever
power any writing can have can only be in proportion to its real merit
in the thought-world, regardless of all source from which it came.
Overrating the Negro as a writer is more likely to be done in passing
on his attempts in _literary_ art than in any other field. But in
literary lines the number who can command attention and be worthy of
notice is very small. One does not have to go far to see that the most
effective work, so far as creating sentiment is concerned, and thereby
_wielding_ power in the great moving forces of this age, the Negro as
a writer is best evinced by the Negro press. We have many newspapers,
and after thirty years we have not been able to produce one single
great newspaper, nor for many good reasons one single great editor who
is a power in the land. Indeed, the most of the many papers of ours
that come from the press have but little in them that can attract the
intelligent minds of the race. There is, however, among us too great a
tendency to ridicule the Negro press unreservedly, and though much of
the ridicule may be deserved it remains true that the accumulative
power of the Negro press is hardly appreciated as it deserves to be.
They who write for us and fight our battles are essentially our only
spokesmen, and as ignored as our articles and editorials would seem to
be by the white press, it is true nevertheless that the white
newspapers take close notice of what the Negro writers have to say.
They may not ordinarily deign to appear to take notice, but let any
publication be made in our most humble sheets that seems to them to be
dangerous or too presumptuous to let pass, and it will be seen then
that the white press takes notice and the power of the colored press
will become apparent. I have said that we have not yet produced one
single great paper, nor one great editor, as white papers and editors
are great, and to this I think there can be justly no exceptions
taken, for we are lacking in nearly all the accessories to make such
greatness possible, but we do have a few papers and editors of marked
power. The two most exceptional papers of power that have come under
my notice are the New York Age, edited by Mr. T. Thomas Fortune, and
the Richmond Planet, edited by Mr. Mitchell. These two papers and
their editors have been, and are yet, valiant warriors for the race
and of incalculable benefit to the race. As a terse, caustic and
biting editorial writer Mr. Fortune is hardly surpassed by any one,
and his paper for years has been uncompromising in fighting all
adverse issues in the race question. Almost the same thing can be said
of the Richmond Planet, and more than any other, perhaps, has this
paper been valiant in waging war against lynching. These two papers,
together with a host of others, have set forth the power of the pen
and have accomplished far more to offset the adverse sentiment created
by the white press than can ever be fully determined. There is another
class of Negro writers than those I have mentioned that gets an
occasional hearing in the white papers of the South and is of great
value to the race. Any one familiar with the strictures of the South,
knows that the Negroes themselves have essentially no chance to
discuss through the white newspapers the great questions which are
ever to the front concerning them, and their position in the South,
and also but very little more in the newspapers of the North, unless
in the South the Negroes write some articles to say amen, and highly
sanction the white man's dictums and positions on the Negro questions
that happen to be up. But there are a few who are able to write on
some questions in our defense without compromise, and yet so
skillfully as not to offend. In speaking of the attitude of the white
press, and its representations, it is not assumed that there is no
disposition of fairness on the part of the writers of the white press.
Many of the great editors mean to be fair from their standpoint. The
Southern white people are prejudiced and supersensitive on some points
beyond all reason, and in all questions between the Negro and the
white man, as man to man, the assumptions, without an exception, are
arrogant beyond all naming, so that it comes about at any point of
issue, where men differing, usually would permit the opponent his
views as fitting from his side of the question, what the Negro has to
say, if he is emphatic and decided, is called impudence. The writer
must be skillful, then, to write uncompromisingly and yet not be of
the "impudent." There are a few men among us who are able to write for
the Southern white papers with reserve, yet without compromise,
greatly to our advantage. Among those few, prominent are Prof. G. W.
Henderson, of Straight University, New Orleans, and President W. H.
Councill, of the College, Normal and Industrial School at Normal,
Alabama. Prof. Henderson is a graduate of Middlebury College, Vermont,
and Yale Theological Seminary, having taken the fellowship from that
institution and studied in Germany two years. His writings show his
scholarship and refinement. He has been persistent and valiant in all
race matters, especially in educational lines in Louisiana, and his
articles, though uncompromising, have from time to time found a
hearing and forced respect from the great dailies of New Orleans.
President Councill is the most widely accepted in the Southern white
press of all Negroes. On some points of disagreement between the
Negroes and the white people he concedes more to some of the white
man's claims than any other Negro who writes. Secondly, he is truly a
great man, and has gained his right to a hearing in intelligent
sources. As a writer, pure and simple, he is forcible; and while the
whole of his attitude may not be accepted generally by his own race,
there is no doubt about his uncompromising attitude and loyalty to his
own race first and last, and any one who has followed his articles in
newspapers and leading magazines have surely seen that the apparently
sometimes too generous bouquet throwing to the white brother is fully
offset by the terrible blows given that same white brother for his
sins against the Negro race. This is especially seen in his symposium
article in the April number of the Arena, 1899. It would be impossible
in the limitation of this article to mention the many Negro writers
who are acceptable in leading magazines, and to a greater extent in
the great weekly journals of this country. Only one or two can be
mentioned: Rev. H. H. Proctor, pastor of the First Congregational
Church at Atlanta, Ga., is a graduate of Fisk University and Yale
Theological Seminary, and he is a young man of exceptional ability as
a writer on timely questions, but as an article writer is often seen
in the Outlook, the New York Independent, and such papers. Above them
all is Bishop Tanner, of Philadelphia. For diction, fine style,
conciseness and logical conclusions, one must go far to find his
superior. In the way of history, text books on various subjects, and
scientific presentation, not much has yet been done among us. Mr. Geo.
W. Williams, the Negro historian, has done more in that field than any
other. Dr. D. W. Culp has written a treatise on consumption and other
medical subjects that have attracted attention and favorable
criticism.
It now remains to speak of the writers in literary art. In this field
there are many who have certainly made praiseworthy attempts, and of
the ladies who cannot be classed with those who have truly made a
place among successful literary artists, but whose writing has
attracted attention and in character is literary, most complimentary
things can be said of Mrs. Frances E. W. Harper, of Philadelphia; of
Mrs. Fanny Barrier Williams, of Chicago; of Miss Edna Matthews, of New
York, and of Mrs. Cooper, Washington, D. C. Mrs. Cooper's book, "A
Voice from the South," is a work in purpose and execution of decided
merit. In real literary art, perhaps there are only two in the whole
race who have reached a place of genuine high rank among the critics,
namely, Dunbar and Chestnut. There are four poets, however, who have
attracted much attention and favorable criticism, and of these I will
speak in turn. It is in order to speak of Mr. A. A. Whitman first,
because he appeared first of all and in one particular of excellency
he is first of all four. His "Rape of Florida" is truly poetry and as
a _sustained effort_, as an attempt _in great lines_, it surpasses in
true merit anything yet done by a Negro, and this assertion without
one qualifying word. He failed as a poet? Certainly. Mr. Whitman made
attempts in lines in which Shelley, Keats and Spenser triumphed, and
with such mediocrity only possible to him in such a highway, what else
could follow beyond a passing notice, though his "Rape of Florida" is
a production of much more than passing merit. Aside from the
mediocrity of the work attempted in Spenserian lines the man himself
in his lack of learning, in his expressible egotism, was derogatory
to his ultimate success, and his styling himself as the William Cullen
Bryant of the Negro race was sickening in the extreme. Mr. Whitman
died recently, but not before he had done all in literary excellence
that could be hoped from him. It remains true, however, that he was
worthy of a much better place than is accorded him as a Negro poet,
and it is to be regretted that his work is so little known among us.
Ten years after Mr. Whitman, Paul Dunbar came forth as a new singer,
and got the first real recognition as a poet. As a poet, pure and
simple, as a refined verse maker in all directions, Mr. Dunbar
surpasses Mr. Whitman by far in the truest significance in the term
poet, and he is justly assigned the first place among Negro poets. For
many reasons Mr. Dunbar is famous, and to enter into any extended
discussion of his work in this connection is needless. Mr. Dunbar is
the first Negro to attempt poetic art in Negro dialect. To speak the
truth, however, it must be said that there is no such thing as a Negro
dialect, but in the bad English called Negro dialect Mr. Dunbar has in
verse chosen to interpret the Negro in his general character, in his
philosophy of life, in his rich humor and good nature, and the world
knows how well he has succeeded. Robert Burns has shown how the
immortal life of all beautiful things can be handed down for all time
in dialect, but it can scarcely be believed by any one that great
poetry can ever be clothed in the garb known as Negro dialect. But for
some pathos and to put the Negro forward at his best in his humorous
and good natured characteristics the so-called dialect is the best
vehicle, and in these lines, and these lines only, is Mr. Dunbar by
far greater than all others. Out of those lines he is still the first
poet, Whitman not excepted, but he is first with nothing like the
difference in real merit and the fame he has above all others. But in
passing from him, here is Dunbar at his best, dialectic and otherwise:
"When de co'n pone's hot--
Dey is a time in life when nature
Seems to slip a cog an' go,
Jes' a-rattling down creation,
Lak an ocean's overflow;
When de worl' jes' stahts a-spinnin'
Lak a pickaninny's top,
An' you feel jes' lak a racah,
Dat is trainin' fu' to trot--
When yo' mammy says de blessin'
An' de co'n pone's hot.
"When you set down at de table,
Kin' o' weary lak an' sad,
An' you's jes' a little tiwhed
An' purhaps a little mad;
How yo' gloom tu'ns into gladness,
How yo' joy drives out de doubt,
When de oven do' is opened,
An' de smell comes po'in out;
Why, de 'lectric light o' Heaven
Seems to settle on de spot,
When yo' mammy says de blessin'
An' de co'n pone's hot.
"When de cabbage pot is steamin'
An' de bacon good an' fat,
When de chittlins is a-spuller'n'
So's to show you whah dey's at;
Tek away yo' sody biscut,
Tek away yo' cake an' pie,
Fu' de glory time is comin',
An' it's 'proachin' mighty nigh,
An' yo' want to jump an' hollah,
Dough you know you'd bettah not
When yo' mammy says de blessin',
An' de co'n pone's hot.
"I have hyeahd o' lots o' sermons,
An' I've hyeahd o' lots o' prayers,
An' I've listened to some singin'
Dat has tuck me up de stairs
Of de Glory-lan' an' set me
Jes' below de mahstah's th'one,
An' lef' my hea't a-singin'
In a happy aftah tone;
But dem wu'ds so sweetly murmured
Seemed to tech de softes' spot,
When my mammy says de blessin',
An' de co'n pone's hot."
This is not so great a poem as the "Cotter's Saturday Night" by Burns,
because the spiritual element and the whole scope of the tenderest
concerns of the family and of life in that poem are left out of this.
But in Dunbar's poem, where only the festival is pictured, the scene
is so intensified that one feels the warmth and sees the glow of the
evening fire and inhales the appetizing odors of the coming homely
cheer, and can see back of these the tender care and ineffable love of
the "Mammy," who puts the crowning touch upon her love with the
blessing. As far as it goes, "When the co'n pone's hot" is great
precisely in the same lines that the "Cotter's Saturday Night" is
great.
Mr. Dunbar has also written a number of novels and short stories. It
has not been my good fortune to see "The Stories from Dixie;" but the
novels I have bought and read. If there were no Charles Chestnut, Mr.
Dunbar's novels would have to be discussed in this connection, and he
would have to be put down as the very first Negro novel writer,
mainly, however, because there would be no other; but with Mr.
Chestnut in the field, no true admirer of Mr. Dunbar will ever discuss
the prolific diffusions of his, bearing the name novels, in any
connection with Dunbar, the poet. There is only enough space left in
this article for the poets, to barely mention the names of Mr. Daniel
Webster Davis, of Manchester, Virginia, and Mr. James D. Corrothers of
Red Bank, New Jersey, and to give a selection from each and let their
poems speak for them as writers. Both of them have received notice in
the best magazines and favorable criticism elsewhere. Both owe their
distinction mainly to their work in dialectic verse which, I fear, is
too much like the "ragtime" music, considered quite the proper
dressing for Negro distinction in the poetic art.
Here is to "De Biggis' Piece ub Pie," by Mr. Davis:
"When I was a little boy
I set me down to cry,
Bekase my little brudder
Had de biggis' piece ub pie.
But when I had become a man
I made my min' to try
An' hustle roun' to git myself
De biggis' piece ub pie.
"An' like in bygone chil'ish days,
De worl' is hustlin' roun'
To git darselbes de biggis' slice
Ub honor an' renown;
An' ef I fails to do my bes',
But stan' aroun' an' cry,
Dis ol' worl' will git away
Wid bof de plate an' pie.
"An' eben should I git a slice
I mus' not cease to try,
But keep a-movin' fas' es life
To hol' my piece ub pie.
Dis ruff ol' worl' has little use
Fur dem dat chance to fall,
An' while youze gittin' up ag'in
'Twill take de plate an' all."
The one more selection from Mr. Davis will show him as a poet outside
of dialect:
A ROSE.
"The rose of the garden is given to me,
And, to double its value, 'twas given by thee;
Its lovely bright tints to my eyesight is borne,
Like the kiss of a fairy or blush of morn.
"Too soon must this scent-laden flower decay,
Its bright leaves will wither, its bloom die away;
But in memory 'twill linger; the joy that it bore
Will live with me still, tho' the flower's no more."
Mr. James D. Corrothers writes:
"A THANKSGIVIN' TURKEY.
"Cindy, reach dah 'hine yo' back.
'N han' me dat ah Almanac;
W'y, land! t'morrer's Thanksgivin'!
Got to git out an' make hay--
Don't keer whut de preachah say--
We mus' eat Thanksgivin' day,
Uz sho' uz you's a-libbin.
"You know whah Mahs Hudson libs?
Dey's a turkey dah dat gibs
Me a heap o' trouble.
Some day Hudson g'ine to miss
Dat owdashus fowl o' his;
I's g'ine ober dah an' twis'
'At gobbler's nake plumb double.
"Goin' pas' dah t' othah day,
Turkey strutted up an' say,
'A-gobble, gobble, gobble,'
Much uz ef he mout remahk,
'Don' you wish 'at it wuz dahk?
Ain't I temptin'?' S' I, 'you hah'k,
Er else dey'll be a squabble.
"'Take an' wring yo' nake righ' quick,
Light on yo' lak a thousan' brick,
'N you won't know whut befell you.'
'N I went on. Yet evah day
When I goes by that a-way,
'At fowl has too much to say;
'N I'm tiahd uv it, I tell you.
"G'ine to go dis bressed night
An' put out dat turkey's light,
'N I'll nail him lak a cobblah.
Take keer, 'Cindy, lemme pass,
Ain't a-g'ine to take no sass
Off no man's turkey gobblah."
And now for the last and the greatest Roman of them all in literary
art--Mr. Charles W. Chestnut, of Cleveland, Ohio. I have never seen
him, and at present the only personal acquaintance I have with him, is
a brief letter of a dozen or more lines; but Mr. Chestnut, revealed by
his novels, I know well. The chief distinction one finds in reading
Mr. Chestnut from all other Negro story-writers, so far as there are
such, is that he is truly an artist and that his art is fine art.
Secondly, and this is of the greatest concern to Negroes in any
thought of the Negro as a writer, he is the best delineator of Negro
life and character, thought and feeling, of any who has attracted
notice by writing. It is not possible to give in this connection any
quotations from Mr. Chestnut's work that may speak for him, but it is
fitting in this article to speak of the character of some of Mr.
Chestnut's stories, and, as far as possible, suggest the ground and
purpose of his fiction. Perhaps, to mention the stories, "The Wife of
His Youth," "The Wheel of Progress," and "The House Behind the
Cedars," would serve best for this occasion. There are some situations
of the Negroes too full of ineffable pity for utterance. Who has not
sat at some time in a Negro church and heard read the pitiful inquiry
for a mother, or a child, or a father, husband or wife, all lost in
the sales and separations of slavery times--loved ones as completely
swallowed up in the past (yet in this life they still live) as if the
grave had received them. At such a reading, though it was given with
unconcern, one heard the faithful cry of faithful love coming out of
the dark on its sorrowful mission.
And in this realm Mr. Chestnut tells us of a mulatto boy who marries a
woman of Negro type, and who was old enough for the boy's mother, but
had, at that time, youth enough left to make the disparity of age at
the time of little objection, especially in the times and situation
where there was little objection to marriages of any sort. But the
youth escapes from slavery and in the far North receives education,
development and culture, and in time earns a competence that makes
life desirable and opens up vistas to new happiness, for the old life
is now only a memory of what the new man once was, and the new man is
on the borderland of new love and marriage befitting all his
advancements, while the mulatto slave boy, the slave girl, the black
slave-wife and the slave connections are left forever behind. But in
all these twenty-five years the black slave wife is still living,
still ignorant and yielding all the while to age until she is an old
woman. But there was one thing that did not yield to age and time, and
that was her love for her boy husband, and, what was more, her sublime
and unwavering faith in the constancy of her "Yaller Sam," after whom
she sends inquiry after inquiry, and year after year tramps from place
to place in her search, with faith and love divine ever leading her
on, until one day in a Northern city, to which place she had finally
traced him, she stopped at his very door to humbly inquire of the
strange gentleman she saw for her "Yaller Sam," never dreaming that it
was he to whom she spoke, though he knew her and had to face the
bitter tragedy of it all. But Mr. Chestnut's art enables him to take
care of so sorrowful a case satisfactorily.
"The Wheel of Progress" touches another phase of pathetic situations
arising out of the mixture of people and sentiments in the South. The
story tells of an ostracized Northern white teacher who, from young
womanhood, labors away her life for the Negroes, until her age and
health reach that degree of disadvantage that her position as teacher,
once her medium of charity, becomes her only means for a living. In
the meantime the Negroes whom she and others helped to uplift and
develop, and to whom, because of race distinction, most all avenues
outside of menial labor are closed, except preaching and teaching, had
become her competitors. In the conflict that arose over the
reappointment of the white missionary teacher and a young Negro to the
place the pitiful situation is again taken care of by Mr. Chestnut's
fine art. "The House Behind the Cedars," until his latest, "The Marrow
of Tradition," was his most ambitious attempt. In this book the story
of an Octoroon family is put forth in all the pathos and tragedy that
is the lot of so many Negroes who belong wholly to neither race.
Mr. Chestnut's latest book, "The Marrow of Tradition," is a strong and
vigorous presentation of the colored man's case against the South in
the form of a dramatic novel. This book especially deserves a wide
reading among the Negroes, who have none too many friends to plead
their cause. Mr. Chestnut, as one truly high-rank novelist among us,
ought to have such a hearing among the eight millions that would give
him all the advantages of a successful novelist from a financial
standpoint as a return for his labor, which is by no means for himself
alone.
In closing, it is but fair to say, while the artists of high rank
among us are few in number, in an article discussing the Negro as a
writer, in mentioning names at all, it must necessarily follow that
there are very many names not here mentioned that would deserve to be
if in such an article as this there were any intention or necessity to
mention the whole list of Negro writers who write well and with power
in every department of letters.
TOPIC XVII.
DID THE AMERICAN NEGRO PROVE, IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, THAT HE IS
INTELLECTUALLY EQUAL TO THE WHITE MAN?
BY M. W. GILBERT, D. D.
[Illustration: M. W. Gilbert, D. D.]
REV. M. W. GILBERT, D. D.
The subject of this sketch was born July 25, 1862, at
Mechanicsville, Sumter County, South Carolina. His parents
were slaves and his father, a Baptist minister, is still
alive. Mr. Gilbert began his early school life during the
reconstruction period, at Mechanicsville, and continued it
at Mannville, in an adjoining township, until 1879, when he
entered Benedict College (then Benedict Institute) at
Columbia, South Carolina. He remained in Benedict till the
spring of 1883, when he graduated from a classical course
specially designed to fit him for a Northern college. In the
fall of 1883, after a searching examination, he entered the
freshman class of Colgate University and remained in that
institution four years, until his graduation in 1887 with
the degree of A. B. During his college course Mr. Gilbert
particularly distinguished himself in the languages and
oratory. During his sophomore year he won in an oratorical
contest the First Kingsford Prize. Although the only colored
man in his class, yet he was so highly esteemed by his
classmates that he enjoyed the unique distinction of being
elected every three months for four years as Class Secretary
and Treasurer. In addition to this he was elected Class
Historian in his senior year. His alma mater conferred on
him the degree of A. M. in 1890. Immediately after his
graduation Mr. Gilbert was called to the pastorate of the
First Colored Baptist Church at Nashville, Tenn. He remained
in this position three years and a half and then he accepted
the call of the Bethel Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Fla.
He was not permitted by his denomination to remain long in
this pastorate; for after one year in it, on the nomination
of the American Baptist Home Mission Society of New York, he
was elected to lead in the educational work among the
colored Baptists of Florida. He presided one year over the
Florida Institute at Live Oak, and he led in 1892 in the
founding of the Florida Baptist Academy (now college) at
Jacksonville, Fla. The cares and anxiety involved in this
work threatened his health and in 1894 he resigned this
position to accept the pastorate of a young church
organization in Savannah, Ga., having in the meantime
declined an election to the presidency of State University
at Louisville, Ky. In 1894 he was elected Vice-President and
Professor of History, Political Science, and Modern
Languages, in the Colored State College at Orangeburg, S. C.
He served in this capacity two years and after re-election
for a third year he resigned to re-enter upon his life-work
in the gospel ministry. He served a few months after this in
the office of General Missionary and Corresponding Secretary
of the Baptist State Convention of South Carolina, but this
work militating against his health he gave up to enter upon
the pastorate of the Central Baptist Church at Charleston,
S. C., where he now is. Mr. Gilbert received three years ago
the degree of D. D. from Guadalupe College of Seguin, Tex.
In 1883 Dr. Gilbert was married in Columbia, S. C., to Miss
Agnes Boozer. Seven children have been born to them, five of
whom are still living. Dr. Gilbert is much in demand as a
public speaker on great occasions and his services are
frequently sought by some of the best churches of his
denomination.
The necessity for asserting and maintaining the affirmative of the
above question is due to the deep-seated prejudice against the Negro,
which prejudice is the unfortunate fruit of the Negro's past
enslavement. It is not surprising that those who for centuries held
the Negro as a chattel should regard him as a being essentially
inferior to themselves, and time is required, in the changed condition
of affairs, to completely eradicate this idea. Even now, despite the
remarkable development of the Negro since his emancipation,
occasionally some Rip Van Winkle, awaking from a long sleep, essays to
deny the complete humanity of the Negro race. A true believer in the
Scriptures must be equally a believer in the fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of all men. For the divine record declares that God "hath
made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of
the earth." Language, physiology and psychology confirm the
truthfulness of Scripture on this issue. The mission of Christianity
to preach the gospel over the inhabited world is based upon this great
idea. Science and Holy Writ assert the intellectual equality of all
men of whatever race or color, so far as real capacity and
possibilities are concerned.
The position and relative importance of a race or nation in the
world's history are determined more by its antecedents and
environments than by the original endowments of each individual that
constitutes it. Two different races, having the same antecedents and
subject to the same environments, will produce the same results. In
answering the question as to whether the Negro has demonstrated his
intellectual equality with the white man during the century just
closed, our inquiry must necessarily be confined to the closing third
of that century; for prior to the emancipation of the race the colored
people were generally in an enslaved condition. Opportunities for
education, citizenship, and the development of manhood, were few, and
at best could apply to but few of the race. Although our inquiry is
limited to only one-third of the century just closed, nevertheless we
can safely assert that in that short period the Negro has demonstrated
by actual results his intellectual equality with the white man.
1. The Negro has demonstrated in thirty-five years a capacity for
education equal to that of the white man. This remark does not apply
alone to his primary education, but also to the highest. He has
entered already every intellectual field that is open to him, and he
is achieving success in every one that he has entered. Within a third
of a century one hundred and fifty-six institutions for the higher
education of the Negroes have been founded, and from these and
Northern colleges there have been more than seventeen thousand
graduates. These colleges are located chiefly in the South, and their
courses of studies are as high as their neighboring white colleges; in
some instances they are higher. Some of these graduates have evinced
great ability and brilliancy in mastering the most difficult studies
included in the curriculum. The existence of Negro colleges and the
successful graduation of Negroes therefrom is a strong argument for
his intellectual equality. Nor has the Negro simply demonstrated his
ability to master the literary courses of the college, but also his
capacity to acquire the knowledge and training to fit him for life in
the various professions. Within a third of a century the race has
produced thirty thousand teachers, five hundred physicians, two
hundred and fifty lawyers, and a large number of others who have
entered the ministry, politics, and editorial life. If there is doubt
on the demonstration of the Negro's ability to acquire education in
his own colleges, we need only to mention the fact that his ambition
has led him to some of the leading Northern universities where he
studied at the side of white men, and even there he has demonstrated
his essential intellectual equality with the white man by winning, in
several well-known instances, some of their highest honors for
scholarship, proficiency and oratory.
2. The Negro has demonstrated his capacity for imparting an education
to others after he has himself received it. He is an essential and
established factor in the public school system of the South. It is he
that is intrusted with the primary education of his people, and it is
due largely to him that his people in thirty-five years have reduced
their illiteracy 45 per cent. During those thirty-five years he has
become professor of law, medicine, theology, mathematics, the
sciences, and languages. In the colleges devoted to the education of
the colored men, there are colored professors who have become eminent
in their departments and who would fill with credit similar chairs in
white institutions of learning. All of the colored state colleges of
the South are under the management of Negroes as presidents and
professors.
3. The Negro has also demonstrated his productivity in the field of
_authorship_. In this particular he has shown a white man's capacity.
In calling attention to the Negro's achievement in this particular, it
may be well to note the fact that the Negro's white neighbor, although
he lives in a clime similar to that which produced in Greece,
philosophers like Plato and Aristotle and poets like Homer, Euripides,
and Sophocles, and in Italy poets like Virgil and Horace, has not
produced a philosopher or a first-class poet, with all the leisure he
enjoyed while the Negro has been engaged in enforced labor for him. In
the highest field of thought as in philosophy and the works of
imagination the South presents a barren field. In the sphere of
authorship usually entered by white men the Negro has already worked
his way. He has already produced meritorious books on mathematics,
sociology, theology, history, poetry, travels, sermons, languages, and
biographies. There have been three hundred books written by Negroes.
4. Nor has the Negro's mind followed slavishly in the beaten path of
imitation. He has demonstrated that he possesses also a high order of
intellect by his inventive genius. The "lubricator" now being used on
nearly all the railroad engines in the United States was invented by a
colored man, Mr. E. McCoy, of Detroit, Michigan. Eugene Burkins, a
Negro, was inventor of the Burkins' Automatic Machine Gun, concerning
which Admiral Dewey said it was "by far the best machine gun ever
made." Many other useful inventions in the country are credited by the
Patent Office to the Negro.
5. The Negro has also demonstrated in thirty-five years his capacity
for organizing, controlling, and directing great and diversified
interests. Capacity to organize, maintain, and direct presupposes a
high order of mind. Executive ability requires accompanying
intellectual ability and not mere brilliancy. Unaided and alone the
Negro has set on foot great ecclesiastical organizations which he is
maintaining and developing with much credit to himself. In all these
organizations, leadership to the few has been cheerfully conceded by
the masses. As a church builder, with little means at his command, the
Negro stands without a peer. Within the last thirty-five years of the
nineteenth century the Negro has founded high schools, academies and
colleges, and he is successfully supporting and managing them. If it
is fair to estimate the ability and worth of men by real achievements,
then it must be conceded that the foremost man for real ability
throughout the entire South is a Negro, and we refer to the eminent
founder and developer of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. It is
unquestionable in our mind that the greatest enterprise conceived and
executed by any one mind, in the entire South, during the past forty
years, was that conceived in the brains of a single Negro, the child
of a slave mother, that resulted in the world-renowned Tuskegee
Institute. The results at Tuskegee will demonstrate that the highest
order of mind in the South, as well as the most famous, is in the
keeping of the Negro. The leading Presbyterian institution of learning
in the South for the education of colored men is now managed
successfully by Negro scholars. We refer here to Biddle University.
6. In business and politics the Negro, despite the odds arrayed
against him, is succeeding reasonably well. He is constantly
undertaking new business enterprises, and wherever the government or
state has intrusted him with official position the intelligent Negro
has discharged his public functions with credit to the government and
glory for himself. Whenever failure is recorded against the Negro it
is not due to his lacking the mental endowments equal to that of the
white man, but because he was denied the white man's favorable past,
and because a white man's opportunity is denied him. Equality of
opportunities and equality before the laws should be cheerfully
granted him. Criticism against him is savage and un-Christian, if
these doors are closed against him.
TOPIC XVIII.
WHAT PROGRESS DID THE AMERICAN WHITE MAN MAKE, IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY, ALONG THE LINE OF CONCEDING TO THE NEGRO HIS RELIGIOUS,
POLITICAL, AND CIVIL RIGHTS?
BY JOHN W. CROMWELL.
[Illustration: J. W. Cromwell]
JOHN WESLEY CROMWELL.
John Wesley Cromwell, the twelfth child and seventh son of
Willis H. and Elizabeth Carney Cromwell, was born at
Portsmouth, Va., September 5, 1846. In 1851 the family moved
to Philadelphia, where he entered the public schools and
subsequently the Institute for Colored Youth, graduating in
1864.
He taught at Columbia, Pa., after which he established a
private school in his native town. Under the auspices of
Northern charitable associations he taught at Spanish Neck
and Little Gunpowder in Maryland, Providence Church, Scott
Farm, Charlotte County and Wytheville, Va. On the
inauguration of the public school system he became principal
of the Dill's Bakery School in Richmond, Va., and in the
following summer taught near the scene of the Nat Turner
Insurrection in Southampton County in the same State.
Mr. Cromwell took an active part in the reconstruction of
Virginia, was delegate to the first State Republican
Convention, did jury service in the United States Court for
the term at which the case of Jefferson Davis was
calendared, and was a clerk in the reconstruction
Constitutional Convention. A shot, fired with deadly intent,
grazed his clothing while at Spanish Neck, Md., where the
church in which the school was taught was burned to the
ground, and he was twice forced to face the muzzles of
revolvers in Virginia, because of his work as an educator.
In 1871 he entered the law department of Howard University,
graduating therefrom in 1874. In 1872, after a competitive
examination, having distanced two hundred and forty
applicants, he received a $1,200 appointment in the Treasury
Department, in which he was twice promoted, by the same
method, within twenty months. In 1885, in the early days of
the Cleveland administration, he was removed as an offensive
partisan, having established and conducted since 1876 "The
People's Advocate," a weekly journal of more than local
influence. He then began the practice of law in connection
with his journalistic work. In 1889 he was tendered and he
accepted a principalship of one of the grammar schools of
Washington, D. C., the position he still holds.
In 1875 he was chosen at Richmond the president of the
Virginia Educational and Historical Association and was four
times re-elected. He has served two terms as the president
of the "Bethel Literary," with which he has been officially
connected for twenty years. He was one of the original
members of the American Negro Academy founded by Rev.
Alexander Crummell, and is its corresponding secretary.
In 1873 he was married to Miss Lucy A. McGuinn, of Richmond,
Va. Six children survive of that marriage, the eldest being
Miss Otelia Cromwell, the first Colored graduate (1900) of
Smith College, Mass. In 1892 he married Miss Annie E. Conn,
of Mechanicsburg, Pa.
In 1887 he became a member of the Metropolitan A. M. E.
Church under the pastorate of Rev., now Chaplain, T. G.
Steward.
Among his addresses and papers are "The Negro in Business,"
"The Colored Church in America," "Nat Turner, a Historical
Sketch," "Benjamin Banneker," "The Negro as a Journalist,"
and other historical and statistical studies. The first
named, published for a syndicate of metropolitan newspapers
in 1886, found its way in one form or other in nearly all
the representative papers of the land.
The status of the Negro at the close of the eighteenth and the opening
of the nineteenth centuries was substantially the same, North and
South. These well-defined geographical sections on both sides of Mason
and Dixon's line were not as extensive then as now. Ohio, Kentucky and
Tennessee were the only states west of the Alleghanies; Florida was a
foreign possession, Alabama and the region beyond were to be numbered
with the United States at a subsequent period.
The colored population in 1800 was 1,001,436, free and slave, or 18.88
per cent of the entire population; 893,041 were slaves, of whom there
were in round numbers 30,000 in the states of New Hampshire, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware; 20,000 were
in New York alone. In 1900 the total population is 76,303,387, with
8,840,789 persons of Negro descent, or 11.5 of the aggregate
population.
The year 1800 marks the beginning of an epoch of increasing hardship
for the Negro, both in church and state. It was also characterized by
fierce aggressiveness by the slave power, stimulated by the invention
of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney and the impetus which it gave to the
growth and importation of cotton. The acquisition of the Louisiana
Purchase from France added to the possible domain of slave territory
and affected the current of political action for more than half a
century.
During this period the Negro was a most important figure, both in
church and state, the occasion if not the cause of perplexing
problems. In the field of religion and politics, especially, has his
status attracted world-wide attention.
At a very early day the Methodist and Baptist churches had the largest
number of colored followers in both town and city; but these as yet
were not assembled in distinctive organizations. The right of the
Negro, not only to govern but to direct his religious instruction, was
bitterly contested, sometimes by force, at other times by law. The
high-handed manner in which the ordinary rights of worship were
denied the Negro led to the withdrawal of the majority of colored
Methodists in Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland and South Carolina, and
ultimately to the formation of the two denominations, the African
Methodist Episcopal and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches,
that became independent before the end of the first quarter of the
last century.
As to the recognition of the right of colored Baptists to church
fellowship, the white Baptists were more liberal, for we find an
association of white churches recognizing the existence of a colored
Baptist church at Williamsburg, in 1790.
The first colored Episcopal society was received into membership on
the express condition that no delegate was to be admitted in any of
the diocesan conventions.[1] As early as 1801 Rev. John Chavis, a
Negro of North Carolina, was licensed by the Hanover Presbytery of
Virginia as a missionary to his own people.[2] The incompatibility of
an ordained minister of the same denomination being a slave was
recognized in the manumission of Rev. John Gloucester, the slave of
Rev. Gideon Blackburn, of Tennessee, on the organization of the first
colored Presbyterian church of the country, at Philadelphia, in 1807,
and the subsequent settlement of Rev. Gloucester as its pastor.[3]
That the white Baptists really manifested greater liberality in this
period is obvious, because we also find Jacob Bishop, a Negro, the
pastor of the First Baptist church of Portsmouth, Virginia, for a few
years.[4] The church was a large and influential one, and the
predecessor of Bishop, Rev. Thomas Armistead, had served with
distinction as a commissioned officer in the Revolutionary War.
To-day at all the general conferences of the M. E. and M. E.
South--both white--and of the A. M. E., A. M. E. Zion, and C. M. E.
denominations--all colored--fraternal delegations are exchanged with
all the courtesies bestowed by the two former on the two latter that
should prevail among brethren. A further concession is seen in the
fact of the elections of colored ministers of recognized scholarship
and fitness to important secretaryships and an editorship by the
powerful M. E. Church. Another illustration is the organization about
thirty years ago by the M. E. Church South of its colored membership
into the C. M. E. denomination and the liberal provision made by the
former connection for secondary education in the Payne Institute, at
Augusta, Georgia.
The Protestant Episcopal Church that forbade St. Thomas, Philadelphia,
and St. Phillips, New York, to aspire to membership in diocesan
conventions repealed this resolution after the breaking out of the
Civil War and delegates from these and other colored parishes
throughout the North and West, at least, find free admission.
Sixty years ago the application of so promising and talented a young
man as Alexander Crummell to be matriculated as a student in any of
the Episcopal divinity schools created a great shock in church
circles, and his rejection is set forth at length in Bishop
Wilberforce's History of American Episcopalianism; yet both at the New
York and Philadelphia theological seminaries numerous colored
clergymen, Episcopalian and others, now graduate with honor and
distinction.
To-day in the House of Bishops there are two colored prelates of
African descent, Rt. Rev. S. D. Ferguson, the Bishop of Africa, and
the Rt. Rev. James Theodore Holly, the Bishop of Hayti; the former a
native of South Carolina, the latter of the District of Columbia.
Their welcome to the pulpits of many of the most exclusive Episcopal
Churches and to the homes of their parishioners is in marked contrast
to the greeting of the Negro by the same communion only two
generations previously.
In the general assemblies of the Presbyterian Church to-day the
presence of colored commissioners is no novelty, and the faculty of
Biddle University, composed of colored professors, by the will of the
Presbyterian Board of Education, shows what this conservative body has
done in the recognition of Negro scholarship.
The conventions and associations of the Baptist Church in the South,
where the bulk of the black race dwell, are still on the color line,
yet there is progress towards true fraternal feeling here. Some years
since "The Religious Herald," of Richmond, Virginia, the leading
journal of that denomination in the South, announced among its paid
contributors the name of a prominent colored divine.
It must be said, nevertheless, that during the first half of the
nineteenth century the record of the white church on the Negro shows
not only a temporizing, but a cowardly spirit. This was true in some
respects of the Congregational Church;[5] instead of leading, the
church followed the state. The anti-slavery sentiment which was
unmistaken in the later years of the eighteenth century became with
the growth of commercialism and national expansion, quiescent and
subservient to the slave power. The right to vote, which in colonial
days was generally exercised by colored freeholders, was subsequently
either restricted or wholly denied. North Carolina, Maryland and
Tennessee in the South, and Pennsylvania in the North, disfranchised
their colored suffragists. The wave of disfranchisement then, as on
the threshold of the twentieth century, dashed from one state to
another. In the North repeated efforts were made to concede to the
Negro his complete political and civil rights. Though the sentiment in
his behalf became stronger at every trial of strength, yet with a
single exception--Wisconsin--each result was decisive against the
concession of the franchise to the Negro. It was only after a bloody
civil war, in which thousands of lives were sacrificed and billions of
treasure were expended, that the nation conceded to the Negro, first,
his freedom, next his civil rights, finally his political franchise.
One hundred years ago there were but few colored schools, even in the
free states, and these only in the larger towns and cities.
Philadelphia was in the lead, with New York a second and Boston a
third.
Connecticut, in the third decade of the nineteenth century, would not
permit Prudence Crandall to maintain a school of colored girls. The
means employed to break it up stands a blot on the name of the
commonwealth. A resolution of the National Convention of Colored Men,
held at Philadelphia, to establish a college for the education of
colored youths, at New Haven occasioned both fierce excitement and
bitter hostility.
Negroes could ride only on the top of the stagecoach when traveling,
and Jim Crow cars prevailed on the introduction of railroads. Angry
mobs were frequent. Churches and schools were the common target of
attack. In the opening of the West to settlement public sentiment
there against the Negroes found emphatic expression in Black Laws
forbidding with heavy penalties their permanent abode in that section.
These laws have only been removed in the memory of men still living.
In many communities, however, these laws were a dead letter, just as
to-day there are isolated localities in Indiana and Illinois, as in
Georgia and Texas, where no Negro is permitted to permanently abide.
Through the Anti-Slavery and Abolition agitation, carried on by such
reformers as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Frederick
Douglass, John G. Whittier and Horace Greeley, the organizations of
the colored people themselves, and their appreciation of the meager
educational advantages afforded them prior to Appomattox, the
sentiment of the country yielded one by one the rights and privileges
of citizens, until colored members of state legislatures in more than
half a dozen Northern states, delegates to city councils, a judgeship
each in Massachusetts and Michigan, and state elective officers in
Kansas--in none of which communities was the colored voting population
of itself sufficiently numerous to elect--evidences the remarkable
revolution in public opinion towards the Negro throughout the North.
In the South, since 1867, there have been more than a score of
congressmen, including two senators, state legislators by the
hundreds, councilmen, police officers, city and county officials
without number; but nearly all of these were obtained by the numerical
preponderance of the Negro rather than any liberalizing of dominant
white sentiment.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America. Samuel
Wilberforce.
[2] History of Education in North Carolina.--United States Bureau of
Education.
[3] Semi-Centenary Discourses.--Rev. William T. Catto.
[4] Rise of the Baptists.--R. B. Semple.
[5] Slavery and Anti-Slavery.--Wm. Goodell.
SECOND PAPER.
WHAT PROGRESS DID THE AMERICAN WHITE MAN MAKE, IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY, ALONG THE LINE OF CONCEDING TO THE NEGRO HIS RELIGIOUS,
POLITICAL, AND CIVIL RIGHTS?
BY REV. J. M. COX, D. D.
[Illustration: J. M. Cox, D. D.]
JAMES MONROE COX.
James Monroe Cox was born in Chambers County, Alabama,
February 26, 1860. While he was yet a boy his parents moved
to Atlanta, Ga., and in the public schools of that city he
received his first educational training. Having a desire to
go to college and receive the best training possible for
life's work, he entered Clark University. He took high rank
in his studies, completing the classical course in 1884, and
graduated from Gammon Theological Seminary in 1886, being
the first student to receive the degree of B. D. from that
institution. The year following his graduation from Gammon
he was appointed teacher of ancient languages in Philander
Smith College, Little Rock, Ark. In the fall of 1887 he was
married to Miss Hattie W. Robinson, a young woman of culture
and refinement, who after graduating from Clark University
in 1885, taught two years in the public schools of Macon,
Ga. They have five interesting children, and their married
life has been singularly happy and helpful. After a
professorship of eleven years in Philander Smith College he
was appointed president of the institution. As president he
has served for five years, and under his administration the
school has had a strong, healthy growth, until now it
numbers almost five hundred students. A much-needed addition
to the main building has been completed at a cost of
fourteen thousand dollars, the faculty has been increased,
and through the efforts of the students he has raised some
money, which forms the nucleus of a fund for a trades
school. He is a member of the Little Rock conference of the
M. E. Church, and has twice represented his brethren as
delegate to the General Conference,--at Omaha, Neb., in 1892
and at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1896. His influence over the
young people committed to his care is great, and he is
striving to send out strong, well-rounded, Christian
characters, and thus erect monuments more enduring than
granite or marble. Last year Gammon honored him with the
degree of D. D.
The very language of our subject assumes that the Negro is entitled to
religious, political and civil rights, and limits our task to showing
the extent these rights have been conceded to him by the American
white man. In considering this, as well as other subjects that concern
the race, it is well to bear in mind the fact that men make conditions
and conditions also make men. The truth of this statement is
strikingly demonstrated in the reactionary influence which slavery had
upon the American white man. The chains that bound the Negro and made
him a chattel, also fettered the mind and soul of the white man and
caused him to become narrow and selfish. Lincoln's proclamation gave
freedom alike to slave and master, and now the progress made by each
along all lines of human development will depend upon the extent he
leaves behind slavery conditions and thinks on purer and higher
things. Living in the past, meditating upon the time when he was owner
of men and women, the white man must still be a slaveholder. If he can
not hold in subjugation human beings, he will arrogate unto himself
the rights of others and use them to further his own selfish ends. The
Negro also must get away from slavery conditions, if he hopes ever to
be a man in the truest sense of the word and have accorded him the
rights of a man. Time and growth are determining factors in what is
known as the Negro problem. The white man must grow out of, and above,
his prejudice, learn to measure men by their manly and Christian
virtues rather than by the color of their skin and the texture of
their hair. The Negro must devote himself to character-making,
wealth-getting, and to the faithful performance of all duties that
belong to him as a man and a citizen, for, he may only hope to receive
his rights to the extent that he impresses the white man that he is
worthy and deserving of them. We repeat, it will take time to
accomplish these things, but when they are accomplished, rights which
now the white man withholds, and which it seems he will never concede,
will, like Virgil's golden branch, follow of their own accord. Viewing
the subject in the light of the above stated facts, we believe that
much progress was made by the American white man in the nineteenth
century along the line of conceding to the Negro his religious,
political, and civil rights.
In fact, the progress made in this direction stands without a parallel
in the annals of history. It surpasses the most sanguine expectation
of the Negro's friends, and even of the Negro himself. Although the
white man is not entirely rid of his prejudice in religion and the
color line is written over the entrance to many of his temples of
worship, yet he recognizes the Negro as a man and a brother and
accords to him religious rights and privileges. The Negro worships God
according to the dictates of his own conscience, and the laws of the
land protect him in this worship. He is a potent factor in all
religious and reformatory movements and works side by side with his
brother in white for the overthrow of vice and sin and for the
hastening of the time when man and nations shall live and act in
harmony with the principles of the Christian religion. He sits in the
councils of the leading denominations of the country and assists in
making their laws and determining their polity. He is accorded a place
on the programs of the different young people's gatherings and is
listened to with the same attention which other speakers receive. He
bears fraternal greetings from his to white denominations, and is
courteously received and royally entertained. In international
assemblies and ecumenical conferences he enjoys every right and
receives the same attention that others enjoy and receive.
But this progress is further evidenced by the profound interest
manifested by the white man in the Negro's religious and moral
development and by the strong pleas on the part of the nation's best
and ablest men for the complete obliteration of the color line in
religion and for dealing with the Negro as with any other man.
Millions of dollars have been given for the building of churches and
schools and hundreds of noble men and women have toiled and suffered
that the Negro might be elevated. The bishops of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, representing two and a half million members, said in
their address to the General Conference, at Omaha, in 1892: "We have
always affirmed them (the Negroes) to be our brothers of the same
blood and stock of all the races which compose one common humanity. As
such, we have claimed for them the same rights and privileges which
belong to all other branches of the common family."
His political rights. He, who but yesterday was a slave, is now a
citizen, clothed with the elective franchise. This is marvelous, and
all the more so, because the ballot is a wonderful force. It is the
ground element of our American civilization. In its exercise the poor
man counts as much as the rich, the ignorant as much as the learned,
and the black as much as the white. Indeed, the free and untrammeled
use of the ballot makes its possessor a veritable sovereign and gives
him power over men and their possessions. Opinion is divided as to the
wisdom of giving the Negro citizenship at the time it was given him.
We think no mistake was made. It came at the time the Negro needed it
most. It was the weapon with which he defended himself when he had but
few friends. The Negro has not been a failure in politics. The very
leaders who urge our young men to let alone politics, will, on the
other hand, point out Bruce, Douglass, Pinchback and others as the
most worthy and conspicuous characters of the race. That a reaction
has set in, and the Negro is being deprived of the ballot, should
occasion no alarm and little surprise.
The grandfather clause in the different state constitutions will serve
as a check to the white man's progress along educational lines, but a
spur to urge us on. These seeming setbacks in the concession of
political rights I count as progress, and place it to the white man's
credit.
The decision of the Supreme Court at Washington against the
constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 has had its effect,
and to-day we find the Negro more discriminated against in his civil
than in any other class of rights. Then, too, the social bugbear has
had much to do with this discrimination. However, progress has been
made. It has been slow, of course, because of the channel (public
opinion) through which it has been compelled to come. In many sections
of the country the Negro enjoys the most of his civil rights. He is
admitted to the hotels, theaters, and other public places, and on
public conveyances he is furnished fair accommodations. We believe in
the ultimate triumph of right. Let us be patient. There is a
disposition on the part of the better class of white people to do the
fair and just thing by the Negro. This class will continue to
increase, and some day the Negro will enjoy all of his rights, and our
fair country will indeed be the land of the free, as well as the home
of the brave.
TOPIC XIX.
THE NEGRO AS A LABORER.
BY N. W. HARLLEE.
[Illustration: Prof. N. W. Harllee]
N. W. HARLLEE, A. M., A. B.
The subject of this sketch was born a slave in Robeson
county, near Lumberton, North Carolina, July 15th, 1852. His
father was a Methodist preacher who exhorted the plantation
slaves, and was noted as "a natural mathematician." His
mother was deeply religious.
Mr. Harllee is a self-made man, for he taught himself to
read and write after being taught to spell about a third
through Webster's blue-back spelling book, and with this
small beginning he laid the foundation for a collegiate
education and for the active work of life.
In 1881 he was elected register of deeds in Richmond county,
N. C., where he had taught school for a number of years, and
in 1882 was appointed United States postal clerk on the
Carolina Central Railway and transferred to Charlotte,
Columbia and Augusta Railway, which position he held till
1885. In 1879 he was graduated at the Biddle University,
Charlotte, N. C., with honors. In 1885 he went to Texas and
engaged in the profession of teaching, and served for a
number of years as principal of the Grammar School No. 2 of
Dallas, Texas. Afterward he was promoted to the
principalship of the Colored High School of the Dallas City
Public Schools, which position he now holds.
Professor Harllee has taken an active part in the
educational work of his state, and has served as president
and secretary of the Teachers' State Association of the
state of Texas; he has also held the position of
Superintendent of the Colored Department of the Texas State
Fair for eight years, and still holds that position. He is a
practical staff reporter on the Dallas Morning News, Dallas,
Tex.
Mr. Harllee was married to Miss Florence Belle Coleman of
Dallas, Tex., 1891, and has three children, Lucretia,
Chauncey Depew and Norman W., Jr.
He is author of "Harllee's Tree of History," a new and
graphic method of teaching history; also Harllee's
"Simplified Long Division," a new graphic method of teaching
long division; also Harllee's "Diagram System of Geography."
He has for a number of years advocated the establishment of
a State University for the youth of Texas, and is also
working with the Rev. W. Lomas and D. Rowens to establish an
industrial school for his people at Dallas.
He is also chairman of the Y. M. C. A. board of education of
Dallas, and along with Messrs. Rice, Darrell, Polk, Weems
and Anderson is conducting a successful Y. M. C. A. night
school for all ages and sexes.
For two hundred and fifty years the American Negro has been a drawer
of water and a hewer of wood. He felled the trees and turned the
forest into fields of cotton and corn; he drained the swamps and
turned them into fields of rice; he graded the highways and made them
possible for railroad transit and traffic. In summer he was to the
white man, his owner, an umbrella; in winter, to the same owner, he
was his winter wood, and always a ready servant with hand and brawn,
as bread and meat and shelter.
The question of labor is one of bread and meat. To the bread-winner it
means much; to the unemployed it often lends a charm for crime; for
after all, the unemployed needs food, clothing, medicine, a shelter
and employment alike for body and mind.
But the subject of labor is not a new one, and, indeed, it has been
made a question of many complex phases introduced by prejudice from
white trade unions. Also, climate makes an important factor, hence the
different sections of our country employ to a large extent different
kinds of labor, suited to the prevailing industries, thrift and
enterprises.
We may consider at once the two general classes of labor, the crude
and the skilled. For generations the black man, as a crude laborer,
raised "King Cotton" in the cottonfields of the South. He has had no
competition as a crude laborer; he still holds a trust on the fleecy
staple; his right there is none to dispute.
But to-day a new and brighter era opens before us. We are to
manufacture cotton as well as raise it. We are to advance and keep
pace with the mental training of our children and provide employment
for them in every avenue. As the Turk weaves his carpet and darns his
shawl and as the Chinese prepares his silk, so the black youth must be
trained to change cotton into cloth.
Trained hands and trained minds are inseparable companions. If we
educate our boys and girls, we create in them a desire, we thrust upon
them a stimulus which pushes them out into the active world, and, if
only with polished brain and soft hands, they wander from place to
place seeking the shady side of active, stern reality.
Since we, by educating our boys and girls, create new appetites, new
desires, new activities, we set in motion new forces; then we ought
the more to create new enterprises, open new avenues, establish new
business or improve the old so as to meet the new relations, the
awakened appetites, the growing activities and the employment of the
new forces in the culture of cotton and the establishment of cotton
mills.
We commit a crime by creating appetites and then failing to appease
them.
The education of our children should no longer be a mere theory, but a
matter of real practical nature, such as will benefit the
bread-winner, the home-seeker, the higher citizenship, the welfare of
the greatest number.
While I favor the higher education of the youth of the nation, I also
think the youth ought to learn trades, to wear the overalls at the
forge, at the work-bench, to adjust the machinery in the work-shop and
the factory. I would have the youth able to design and build a house
as well as to live in one, to raise potatoes as well as to eat them,
to produce as well as consume. For many years the great majority of
the youth must be common laborers, whatever their education, whatever
their social condition or station; then it follows as the day follows
the night that they should be educated with the trend of the mind and
in connection with environment.
In the days of slavery many of our young men and women were trained
along certain lines; the young men such as skilled carpenters,
blacksmiths, stone masons, bricklayers, and the like, and the young
women were trained in dressmaking and the like, and these boys and
girls grew up having a kind of monopoly in their respective lines,
although controlled by their owners. But for a quarter of a century
very little attention has been paid to trade learning in many sections
of the South.
This condition confronts us to-day; however, it is claimed that it is
no fault of the children that they do not learn trades, and it is
further urged by many parents that the blame does not lie at their
hands; but that it is the fault of the times, of conditions and
circumstances; and still others claim that the trade unions are the
main cause. Many claim that, if their children are trained along
certain lines, they will be debarred by the opposition of the trade
unions. But these excuses seem too trivial. The opposition of the
labor organizations should urge greater activity in superior trade
learning in every pursuit, so that when the white striker walks out of
the shops the black man, skilled, trusted and tried, should walk in
and demonstrate his ability to do better and more work than the
outgoing striker.
We are to take no steps backward in industrial and intellectual
progress in the opening days in the dawn of the new century. A
thinking people is a prosperous people. We are to be measured by what
we can accomplish, not by the color of the skin, the texture of the
hair, the color of the eye or the contour of the head. But we are to
be measured as skilled farmers, mechanics, printers, artists and
scholars.
This age demands substantial progress in every department of industry,
in the home, at the fireside, in the shop and on the farm. To labor
with skill, to facilitate and hasten its benign results with trained
hands and cultivated brain, must ever be the fiery incentive of our
people, in order that they may keep abreast of the times in all
practical operations as skilled laborers, and, as such, vindicate
their usefulness as citizens.
As laborers and citizens, the black face must stand for integrity in
the community, the emblem of sterling worth, the black diamond
intrinsic in value.
The time has come when one person ceases to employ another because he
is of color, but he employs the one who can give more than value
received. The race needs to bring the hand and the head nearer
together.
The boy who has completed a college education should, in the course of
time, raise more corn to the acre, if he be a farmer, than his
uneducated father; for his knowledge of geology should better fit him
to know the condition and nature of the soil; if a mechanic, his
knowledge of geometry and of physics should enable him to be an adept.
The question of labor during the last few years has become, in many
respects, intensely sectional. North of Mason and Dixon's line, the
color of the skin has to do with the employment of the colored man
along certain lines of skilled labor. While this is true in the South,
the prejudice is not so rank as in the North, except where the colored
laborer comes in contact with the Yankee or the foreigner.
SECOND PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A LABORER.
BY PROF. R. G. ROBINSON, B. L.
[Illustration: Prof. R. G. Robinson, B. L.]
PROF. R. G. ROBINSON.
Prof. R. G. Robinson, B. L., the subject of our sketch, was
born in Hamilton, Bermuda Islands, B. W. I., February 16,
1873. In pursuit of education he came to the United States
at the early age of eleven, going directly to New Hampshire.
In the fall of '85 he entered Dow Academy in Franconia, N.
H. By economy and thrift he maintained himself in this
institution for eight years, graduating in 1893, second in
his class. During this course he was several times elected
president of the Autonomation Literary Society. His conduct
and standing was very tersely stated by one of his
professors, when he said that "he was courteous and obliging
under all circumstances, clear and logical in his deductions
and conscientious as a Christian."
He immediately entered Dartmouth College in the class of
'97. During his college course he was prominent in
athletics, at the same time holding a good position in his
class. Despite the fact he was one of the two colored men in
a class of a hundred and twenty-eight, yet at the close of
Freshman year he was unanimously elected class auditor for
the ensuing year. He was a charter member of the Ruskin
Society, a society for the cultivation of the histrionic art
in Dartmouth College. In 1897 Dartmouth gave him the degree
of Bachelor of Letters. Says President Tucker of Dartmouth:
"He is a man of clear and earnest purpose, possessing tact
and good executive ability."
After graduation he was elected to the chair of English
language and literature in the Tuskegee Institute, but
resigned at the close of the year and was elected principal
of one of the city schools of Montgomery, Ala., which
position he held until elected by the Freedmen's Aid and
Southern Educational Society as principal of the La Grange
Academy, La Grange, Ga.
In 1899 he was married to Lily Belle, the daughter of Wm.
Hill, the wealthy truck gardener of Montgomery. Mrs.
Robinson is a graduate of the A. & M. College at Normal,
Alabama. They have a son, Mason Francis.
Prof. Robinson has a brother who is a member of the Boston
Bar. He graduated from Dow Academy in Franconia, N. H., in
1893; attended Oberlin College and received the degree of
LL. B. from Boston University. In 1898 he was a member of
the Boston Common Council.
So artful is nature that she does not permit man to break one of her
laws for his pleasure without a sacrifice on his part; that for every
action there is a corresponding reaction; and so the laws of
compensation hold good in the dealings of man with man, races with
races, and nations with nations. Slavery, as ignominious as it was,
had a dual effect. The master race, forming what might be termed a
landed aristocracy, looked upon manual labor as degrading; while it of
necessity became the natural sphere of the weaker. Thus the spirit of
work became engrafted into the very being of the Negro. This is the
path all races have trod.
The basis of the South's industrial system was Negro labor; and
although the Emancipation Proclamation changed the whole structure
from a base of slave labor to that of free labor, nevertheless the
Negro remained virtually in the same position, but with enlarged
opportunities. This was a legacy greater than the ballot, for it is
vastly more important to a man to be able to earn an honest living
than to be privileged to cast a ballot, and doubly so if the element
of doubt as to its being counted enters into the privilege. It was a
cruel change from that of an irresponsible creature to that of a man
clothed with the responsibility of self-support and of American
citizenship--a change that would have staggered any race, but the
Negro has acted nobly his part.
To say that the Negro is a valuable citizen, and a necessity in the
development of the South, is to put it mildly. It can best be
appreciated when we remember that since the war the Negro has earned
seventy-five billions of dollars, and out of this vast amount he has
saved the pitiful sum of five hundred millions; thus contributing to
the wealth of the South seventy-four billions and a half of dollars.
It is estimated that four-fifths of the labor done in the South is
done by the Negro. The theory advanced by those who claim themselves
to be immunes from that dreaded disease of Negrophobia is, that the
industrial education of the Negro will inevitably inspire a similar
movement for the industrial training of the poor whites, and the
resultant competition means a further complication of the race
problem, which will only be solved by the ultimate separation of the
races. This theory is as unique as it is original, and bids fair to
revolutionize the laws of economics. But to the contrary the laws of
trade and labor are as imperious as all the enactments of necessity.
The South is fast regaining her lost treasures and bids fair to become
not only an agricultural section, but with her wonderful oil and
mineral resources to be the rival of the North. Coupled with her
wonderful resources is the free Negro labor, which is the cheapest in
the world outside of Asia, and will not only be in demand but will
ultimately enter into all industries, driving all before it. It is a
certainty that capital will inevitably seek and secure the cheapest
labor. Besides cheapness, other qualifications have made, and will
continue to make, him indispensable to the South's development and
make him far superior to the foreign element for which a few seem to
clamor.
Coming out of slavery ignorant, irresponsible, no name, no home, no
"mule," there is no better way to measure the influence of Christian
education than by the increased ability to earn, to save and to wisely
invest money. The spirit of home-getting and the eagerness for
education are very hopeful signs. We proudly quote from a lengthy
editorial in a recent issue of the Atlanta Constitution: "The building
up of wealth follows a sharpening of intellect. If the untutored
colored man of the past quarter of a century could amass nearly a half
a billion of dollars, why may not the educated Negro, during the next
quarter of a century, quadruple the amount?"
As a skilled laborer it will take time for the race to make a mark,
because here he will meet with sharper competition. This is the
opportunity of the industrial school. The lack of sufficient numbers
of skilled colored mechanics and because of the existence of
prejudice, the employer shows timidity in attempting to supplant white
labor with Negro labor. This fear will decrease as the supply
increases. We indorse industrial training for the masses, but as
efficient as it is, it is not sufficient. The tendency of these
schools is to make the training of the hand of primary importance and
that of the brain secondary. This might suffice for a while, but in
this age of progress, of invention, when the genius of the age seems
to have directed all its power to the invention of labor-saving
machines, the demand for brainy mechanics is increasing so rapidly
that the industrial school of to-day will wake up to-morrow only to
find itself behind the times.
The Northern section of our country, with its large manufacturing
interests and the constant demand for skilled labor, has encouraged
the combining of labor into trades unions as a means of protection
against the encroachments of capital. Because of the social side of
these organizations the Negro has been debarred, with some exceptions.
The unions will operate against him just as long as the interests of
the unions are not in jeopardy and the supply of skilled colored
mechanics is insufficient. But in the South, where Negro labor is
plenty and agriculture is the chief occupation, the Negro will always
have a practical monopoly, and his opportunities in all the trades in
the North, as well as in the South, will increase in proportion as he
becomes an educated, thrifty, law-abiding land-owner. The time has
come when the Negro can no longer afford to play upon the sympathies
of his friends, but as a man among men he must be pre-eminently fitted
for his place; fitted in intellect, in the knowledge of his craft and
in sobriety.
As a common laborer the Negro in his ignorance has had to battle
against great odds. Too often his employer, who built the courts, run
them and owns them, but who made the Negro shoulder the expense,
feeling that he has the right of way and in his eagerness to get
something for nothing, has forced the Negro through necessity to do
the very thing for which he condemns him. Despite these great odds,
industry and uprightness in any man, be he white or black, makes him a
valuable member of any community.
THIRD PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A LABORER.
BY MISS LENA T. JACKSON.
[Illustration: Lena T. Jackson]
LENA TERRELL JACKSON, M. A.
Lena Terrell Jackson was born December 25, 1865, in
Gallatin, Sumner County, Tenn. Her father died in her early
childhood; hence the responsibility of her support and
education fell upon her mother.
This mother determined to give her daughter the advantage of
a good education. Accordingly at the age of seven years the
daughter was placed in a private school and remained there
until the autumn of 1876, when, having finished the course
of study in the private school, she was entered as a pupil
in the Belle View City School and remained there three
consecutive years.
She completed the course of study in the Nashville City
Schools in June, 1879. In September, 1879, she entered the
Middle Preparatory Class of Fisk University and remained at
Fisk six years, graduating from the Collegiate Department in
1885.
During the six years spent at Fisk she taught school during
the summer months in the rural districts and with the money
thus earned helped to support her mother and maintain
herself in school. She also assisted her mother in her
family work after school hours.
After graduation, in 1885, she was elected as a teacher in
the Nashville Public Schools, having resigned two similar
positions, the one at Birmingham, Ala., and the other at
Chattanooga, Tenn., to accept the Nashville appointment.
In 1894 she was assigned to the Junior Grade in the colored
High School and two years later to the Chair of Latin in the
High School, which position she is still filling.
Following out the principles of economy that are so
thoroughly inculcated in the minds of Fisk students, her
first thought after completing her course of study was
turned towards the acquisition of real estate and the
purchase of a home for her mother, who through so many
struggles and sacrifices had made it possible for her to
obtain a college education.
Her hopes in this direction have been realized to some
extent; and she has secured not only a home, but
considerable other real estate.
The wide scope of this subject, and the limited time given for
research, together with the absence of statistics, make it impossible
at this time to present more than a brief sketch. I propose to
continue my research and investigation and at some later date to
present the subject in a very much enlarged form, giving the condition
of the Negro as a laborer in all the leading cities of the United
States. In the present sketch mention will be made of only a few
cities.
The Southern cities, with their stately residences and business houses
that were constructed in ante-bellum days, bear emphatic testimony to
the skill of the Negro in the mechanic arts. All of the labor of the
South at that time was done almost exclusively by the Negro.
Plantation owners trained their own blacksmiths, wheelwrights,
painters and carpenters. The Negro was seen as a foreman on many
Southern plantations during ante-bellum days. Education has greatly
improved his ability to labor, and to-day in every vocation he is
found as a laborer, competing successfully with other laborers.
Notwithstanding the fact that prejudice and labor organizations are
arrayed against him, the character of his work is such, and his
disposition as a laborer such, that his services will always be in
great demand.
Negro laborers are given employment on large buildings alongside of
white laborers, and generally give entire satisfaction. In the city of
Nashville, Tenn., during the present year, in the construction of the
Polk Flats, two Negro laborers were employed with a number of white
laborers; a strong pressure was brought to bear upon the foreman to
displace the two Negro laborers and fill their places with white men.
The request was promptly denied. This is conclusive proof that had the
character of the Negroes' work not been eminently satisfactory the
reverse would have been the result.
The Negro is found in all the occupations that are characteristic of a
progressive people, namely, barbers, blacksmiths, brick and stone
masons, carpenters, coachmen, domestic servants, firemen, farm
laborers, mail carriers, merchants (grocers), millers, shoemakers and
repairers, waiters, nurses, seamstresses, housewives, washerwomen and
milliners.
_Trades and Industries._--As stone and brick masons the wages range
from $2 to $3 per day. Huntsville, Ala., has a brickyard that is owned
and controlled by Negroes. This firm secures the contract for a large
number of houses in Huntsville and the adjoining towns.
There is a town in the northern part of Virginia in which the entire
brickmaking business is in the hands of a colored man, a freedman, who
bought his own and his family's freedom, purchased his master's
estate, and eventually hired his master to work for him. He owns a
thousand acres or more of land and considerable town property. In his
brickyard he hires about fifteen hands, mostly boys from sixteen to
twenty years of age, and runs five or six months a year, making from
200,000 to 300,000 brick. Probably over one-half the brick houses of
the place are built of brick made in his establishment, and he has
repeatedly driven white competitors out of business.
As firemen the Negro has shown himself courageous and faithful to his
trust. During a great fire in Nashville, Tenn., a few years ago, it
was conceded by all that the progress of a disastrous fire was checked
and much valuable property saved by the heroic efforts of the colored
fire company. Unfortunately, however, the captain of the company and
two of his comrades were sacrificed. In all the large cities colored
fire companies are to be found, and in every case they are making a
good record.
In some sections of Texas and Mississippi Negro plantation owners are
often found.
Just after the close of the war the highest ambition of the Negro was
the ministry. But there has been a remarkable change in that direction
and Negroes are now found in all the professions. The Negro physician
has made an enviable record. One of the leading surgeons in the West
is a colored physician. He is the founder of a large hospital in a
western town, and is also surgeon-in-chief of one of the largest
hospitals in the country. The Negro has also gained some distinction
at the bar. A large number of Negroes are teachers, and an increasing
number of these are young women.
_Clerical Work._--Negroes are given employment as clerks in the
government service at Washington, D. C. There is a large number of
railway-mail clerks, with salaries ranging from one thousand to
fifteen hundred dollars a year. Nashville, Tenn., has three mail
clerks who have held their respective routes for more than ten years.
_Common Laborers._--This class includes porters, janitors, teamsters,
laborers in foundries and factories. The usual wages paid for this
class of work is $1 a day.
The barbering and restaurant businesses, toward which the Negro
naturally turned just after emancipation, for which their training as
home servants seemed especially to fit them, are not so largely
followed now owing to the fact that the best talent of the race have
entered the professions. Yet, however, in some places the Negro
restaurant keeper does a thriving business. In Chicago, Illinois,
there were two fine up to date restaurants which did a good business.
One of these employed white help exclusively.
The Negro blacksmiths and wheelwrights do a good business, sometimes
taking in from $5 to $8 a day.
As shoemakers and repairers, and furniture repairers and silversmiths,
the Negro is successful, and is kept busy. In painting there is a
colored contractor in Nashville who does business on a large scale. He
is proprietor of his own shop, employs a large number of men, and
secures the contract for a large number of fine dwellings. His
patronage is confined mostly to white people.
Nashville has a steam laundry owned and operated entirely by colored
men, and it has a large white patronage. In the rural districts most
of the Negroes devote themselves to farming, either working on the
farms of others or are themselves proprietors of farms.
_Domestic Service._--In this field of labor both men and women are
found. The average wages paid the men is $15 a month and board. The
women receive from $5 to $12 a month, according to age and work. In
addition to their wages they also receive lodging, cast-off clothes,
and are trained in matters of household economy and taste. At present
there is considerable dissatisfaction and discussion over the state of
domestic service. Many Negroes often look upon menial labor as
degrading and only enter it from utter necessity, and then as a
temporary make-shift. This state of affairs is annoying to employers
who find an increasing number of careless and impudent young people
who neglect their work, and in some cases show vicious tendencies.
The low schedule for such work is due to two causes: One is, that from
custom many Southern families hire help for which they cannot afford
to pay much; another reason is that they do not consider the service
rendered worth any more. This may not be the open conscious thought of
the better elements of such laborers, but it is the unconscious
tendency of the present situation, which makes one species of
honorable and necessary labor difficult to buy or sell without loss of
self-respect on one side or the other.
_Day Service._--A large number of single women and housewives work out
regularly in families, or take washing into their homes; and, like
house servants, are paid by the week, or if they work by the day from
30 to 50 cents a day. This absence of mothers from home not only
occasions a neglect of their household duties but also of their
children, especially of girls. Aside from house servants and
washerwomen, many of the women are seamstresses and readily find
employment in white families. Some do a remunerative business in their
own homes. The Negro woman is especially successful as a trained
nurse, and a considerable number of the brightest and most intelligent
among the young women are entering upon that calling.
_Conclusion._--The closing years of the nineteenth century indicate
remarkable advancement on the part of the Negro in all industrial
lines; but the twentieth century will doubtless furnish opportunities
which will enable him to carry these beginnings to their legitimate
fruition.
TOPIC XX.
THE NEGRO AS A CHRISTIAN.
BY REV. WILLIAM E. PARTEE, D. D.
[Illustration: W. E. Partee, D. D.]
WILLIAM E. PARTEE, D. D.
Rev. William E. Partee, D. D., was born at Concord, N. C.,
of Christian parents in the year 1860 and at an early age
placed in the common schools of his native town. He was left
an orphan at the age of ten, but by determination and the
help of friends he gained an education. When but sixteen
years of age he taught a country school. He was graduated
from the collegiate and theological departments of Biddle
University and was licensed to preach in 1883 and ordained
in 1884 by the Presbytery of Catawba and entered upon his
life work by serving as pastor of Westminster Presbyterian
Church at Concord, N. C., for more than three years, among
his early playmates and companions.
In the year 1887 he took charge of a mission church and
school at Gainesville, Fla., serving acceptably in that work
for more than four years and standing faithfully by his
people during that memorable epidemic of yellow fever in
1888. In 1892 he was called to the pastorate of Laura Street
Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, Fla., which position he
occupied for nearly seven years. During two years of that
time he was also principal of one of the city graded
schools. In 1896 he was sent as commissioner from the
Presbytery of East Florida to the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church at Saratoga.
In 1898 he resigned from his work in Jacksonville to take
charge of the First Presbyterian Church of Richmond, Va.
Thus he has been engaged for many years in the active work
of the ministry, always doing earnest and faithful work and
held in high esteem by the people of every community in
which he has labored.
He was married in 1886 to Miss Edith I. Smith, of Lynchburg,
Va., who proved a worthy and efficient helper in his work,
and uncomplainingly shared with him the trials and
vicissitudes which fall to the preacher's lot in life for
fourteen years. Then the Master called her to rest from her
labors.
To form a correct estimate of the Negro as a Christian we must take
into account the "depths from which he came."
Back of his forty years of freedom lie more than two hundred years of
bondage, in which he was forced to obey the will of another absolutely
and kept in ignorance. All real manhood was repressed and every
ambition curbed. Though under the control of the Christian Church and
people of the South, and living on the farms and in the homes and
families of their masters, mingling in their lives and their society,
and subject to their moulding influence, yet, as a rule, the moral
principles and qualities necessary to a religious life were not taught
him, neither was he encouraged to cultivate them.
There was no lawful marriage, no true home, but husband and wife were
the property of a master who used or abused either as he chose; their
children grew up under the same conditions and were encouraged or
forced into unchastity, lying, stealing and betraying of one another
under the teaching that there was no moral wrong to them since they
were the property of another who was responsible for their acts. There
could be no growth in morals, and there can be no true religion
without morals. To say the least they came out of bondage with a
dwarfed moral nature, and to this day suffer more or less from the
effects of it. The carnality of slavery has not yet ceased to bear
fruit, as we all know. Ever and anon it shows itself in those horrible
acts which the newspapers report in full.
It takes long and weary years to root out of a race or nation evils
that have become fixed in its nature. But while there is much to be
deplored as to laxity in morals among the masses there has been
constant and steady improvement in this regard. It is no doubt true
that any race, kept in bondage under similar conditions, and for the
same length of time as the Negro was, would come out of it in no
better condition, and would, perhaps, show no better record in forty
years than this race has shown, and especially so if that bondage were
preceded by heathenism.
Dr. Haygood has said, "The hope of the African race in this country is
largely in its pulpit. No people can rise above their religion; no
people's religion can rise above the doctrines preached and lived by
their ministry."
The Negro began almost unaided and alone in this particular. As to
their religion they were very largely left to themselves during
slavery. Their ministers were ignorant and unlettered. Many of them
were pious, but many were ungodly and unscrupulous. So theirs was a
religion largely without the Bible. It consisted of bits of Scripture
here and there, of glowing imaginations, of dreams and of
superstitions; yet it was the best they knew.
Then many years of freedom had passed by before fully equipped
ministers could be provided them. During those years faithful servants
of God, unlettered, did their best to be the true religious leaders of
the people (all honor to them), but they necessarily came short in
many respects and could not carry the people up to the higher plane of
religious life.
With these things before our minds we say that the race has shown a
remarkable growth in the essentials of true Christian manhood. Their
notions may, in some things, be crude; their conceptions of truth may
be realistic; they may be more emotional than ethical; they may show
many imperfections in their religious development; nevertheless is it
true that their religion is their most striking formative
characteristic. So susceptible are they that no other influence has
had so much to do in shaping their better character, and what they are
to become in their future development will be largely determined by
their religion.
While in their church and social life there are some elements of evil
and superstition, some of which are the inheritance of past ages in
the fatherland, while others have been developed in this country by
the conditions of life during the years of slavery, still any
fairminded person who takes the pains to correctly inform himself will
acknowledge that these are being gradually but surely eradicated.
As a Christian he commends himself in his faith and devotion. Though
his religion may sometimes be defective in its practical application
to the principles of right conduct and living, God, heaven, hell and
the judgment day are realities to him. He believes the truths of the
Bible to be real, and thus he is sound in the faith so far as he
understands it, and that is more than can be said of many who are
better informed than he. What a rare thing to find one an infidel!
Where can you find a people more susceptible to religious teaching?
The emotional nature is highly developed, and they are quick to
respond to whatever appeals to their sympathies and affections.
Emotion has its place in religion and is not to be ignored, but to be
properly used and controlled and directed. To move any one we must
first reach the feelings; if these can be aroused they may develop
into a conviction that the subject of them should adopt a given course
of action, and he accordingly does so. I am not sure after all that we
should seek to repress such to any great extent. It may be a point in
his favor, for since he is easily and powerfully impressed by strong
appeals, he is the more readily brought under the influence of the
wise teacher or leader. It is true in some cases that mere physical
excitement is mistaken for being "filled with the spirit," and thus
some swing to the extreme in this direction. It is noticeable,
however, that this is being rapidly outgrown and more self-control is
being practiced. After all it does seem that being easily moved and
swayed may furnish the lever by which the wise and prudent may begin
to lift them to the higher ground of religious life. No doubt in most
cases there is deep down beneath the easily overwrought feelings a
true religious disposition, with much spirituality and divine energy.
Benevolence is rightly regarded as an important matter in Christian
living. In proportion to his means the Negro excels in this. Hundreds
of churches, and many schools and colleges have been built out of
their poverty. To sum up and place on record their gifts for the
extension of Christ's kingdom would perhaps show to the world an
unequalled record of self-sacrifice and devotion to a cause. Show that
a cause is a worthy one and they are ready to give according to their
ability to help that cause. To give help to ministers of the gospel
and other Christian workers is not only regarded as a duty but as an
honor and a pleasure. On the whole they are kind at heart, generous to
the distressed, obliging and considerate. Love to friends and
forgiveness of enemies are marked characteristics.
The statement has been often made that loose notions as to morals are
held. To some extent this may be true. Let us bear in mind that the
large majority are poor and are common laborers, and more than half
the race are illiterate. Compare them with this class of any race in
this or any other country and I dare say they will suffer but little
by the comparison. Some have made much of the fact that in many
places whole families by necessity live in one or two-room cabins.
While this is unfortunate and to be regretted, it is nevertheless true
that you can find even in such conditions in the majority of instances
that purity and virtue are as much respected as among those who live
in roomy homes where every privacy is afforded. They are not any
worse, certainly, and, perhaps, are better in this respect than the
multitudes of other races who live in the cellars and attics of
crowded tenements in our great cities.
Let us not make the mistake of including all in one general class, and
_that_ the worst, but while acknowledging that there is great room for
improvement, let us recognize in the vast mass of multitude who, in
education, morals and religion, are the equals of any people.
The correspondence between the profession of the heart and the outward
life is often not what it should be, but is not that true also of many
Christians of any race? There are Christians of highest education who
enjoy abundant and varied opportunities of enlightenment and culture
who fail to show in all their outward life what they profess in their
heart to be. Some do fall into the error of trying to separate between
the religion of the heart and that of the life, but generally they are
learning the better way. Where so large a percentage of the people
cannot read and write, how can you expect of them the highest degree
of moral and religious life? Taking into account the disadvantages and
limitations under which they labor, you rather wonder that they have
reached so high as they have in Christian living. We must consider the
past history of the race, its present disadvantages, environment and
opportunity, if we would justly estimate its Christianity. We must
base our judgment upon the developed Negro if we would be fair.
Education helps us to be better Christians just as it helps others
and, and as we get more knowledge of Bible truths such as education
can give us we will be better Christians. Educated ministers are fast
displacing the uneducated, and those whose moral and Christian
character fall below the standard are being crowded out, and schools
and colleges are sending out every year hundreds of educated Christian
men and women who raise the standard of right living in any community
where their lot is cast.
The material prosperity of the Negro may be placed in evidence as to
his Christianity. With all the odds against them and starting up from
absolute poverty, the race now owns farms, homes, schools, churches,
bank accounts and personal property amounting to five hundred and
fifty million dollars. It is remarkable that this has been acquired
in forty years. God's word teaches that nations prosper in material
things as they get close to God.
Thus looking upon the brighter side we are led to commend in many
things the Christianity of the Negro race and to believe that as a
people higher ground is aimed at. Though yet a long way off from
perfection, yet ever onward and upward are they tending.
SECOND PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A CHRISTIAN.
BY REV. L. B. ELLERSON, A. B., A. M.
[Illustration: Rev. L. B. Ellerson]
REV. L. B. ELLERSON.
Rev. L. B. Ellerson, A. M., was born at Cheraw, S. C., in
1869. Mr. Ellerson's father having died when the son was but
an infant, Mr. Ellerson was left to be reared under the
fostering care of his mother alone. He spent his youthful
days in the public schools of his native town until he was
sixteen years old. At that time he was happily converted to
Christ and received the impressions that he was called to
the gospel ministry. At the same time he united with the
Presbyterian Church. In 1886, Mr. Ellerson entered Biddle
University at Charlotte, N. C., to pursue such a course as
would prepare him for the ministry. He remained at Biddle
University until 1893, when he graduated from the classical
course with honor, taking the Philosophical Oration. In '92
Mr. Ellerson was the successful contestant for the medal
given by the Alumni to the Junior Class. During his course
at Biddle, Mr. Ellerson spent his summer vacations, teaching
in the district schools of North and South Carolina. In
June, 1893, Mr. Ellerson was employed to do missionary work
near Asheville, N. C. He continued in this work until
September, 1893, at which time he entered the Theological
Seminary of the Presbyterian Church at Princeton, N. J., for
the purpose of completing his course for the ministry.
During the first two years of his course of Theology at
Princeton he continued to come South in summer and engage in
teaching during vacations. He graduated from Princeton
Theological Seminary in 1896. He and two others being the
only colored students in a class of sixty-nine young men.
Besides keeping up the studies of the last year, Mr.
Ellerson supplied the pulpit of Dwight's Chapel at
Englewood, New Jersey. Here he remained until September,
1896, when he came to South Carolina and was ordained to the
full work of the gospel ministry by the Fairfield
Presbytery, the same Presbytery having licensed him the
preceding year.
During Rev. Ellerson's course at Princeton he was at one
time engaged to supply the pulpit of Siloam Presbyterian
Church at Elizabeth, N. J. At another time he was employed
to assist the Rev. H. G. Miller, pastor of Mt. Taber
Presbyterian Church, in New York City, during the illness of
the pastor. Upon his ordination by Fairfield Presbytery in
1896, Rev. Ellerson was placed in charge of the church and
school work at Manning, S. C. Here he worked very
successfully preaching and teaching until November, 1898,
when he was called to the pastorate of Berean Presbyterian
Church at Beaufort, S. C. At the same time he was made
principal of Harbison Institute. Rev. Ellerson labored with
a marked degree of success on the Beaufort field from
November, 1898 to April, 1901, when he was urged to accept a
call from the Laura Street Presbyterian Church at
Jacksonville, Fla., where he is at present prosecuting the
work of his church with success. For a young man of his age,
Rev. Ellerson evidently stands high in the estimation of his
fellow Presbyters. This is evinced by the fact that he has
already filled some of the highest offices in the gift of
his brethren. In 1898 he was unanimously chosen moderator of
Fairfield Presbytery at Camden, S. C. In 1899 he was made
the choice of Atlantic Synod for moderator at Columbia, S.
C., and in 1900 he was unanimously elected to represent the
Presbytery of Atlantic in the General Assembly which met in
St. Louis, Mo.
He has filled each of these offices with credit and ability.
The degree of A. M. was conferred upon him by Biddle
University, his Alma Mater in 1900.
If it is true that man is naturally a religious being, then it is
pre-eminently true in the case of the Negro. If the Negro is anything
at all he is religious. It matters not in what walk of life you find
him or what may be his personal or individual character, it is a very
rare case indeed when you find a Negro who indulges in doubt as to the
existence of a supreme being or the existence of a future state of
rewards and punishments. With him these are fixed points of belief.
But as much as may be justly said regarding the Negro's natural piety,
it must be observed and admitted by all who know the Negro best that
his religion is very much defective in its practical application to
the principles of right conduct and living. And this, we perceive, is
the main point at issue, for when we discuss the Negro as a Christian
we must of necessity feel called upon to distinguish between his
native piety and his applied Christianity. We wish it understood, too,
that the general observations made here refer to the masses of Negroes
rather than to the individual.
We unhesitatingly affirm that individuals of our race have risen to as
true and as high a Christian status as has mankind anywhere. And
although we know and confess that the masses of our race have not yet
come up to the genuine standard of the New Testament
Christianity--even in apprehension--yet it must be observed that their
religion contains many features that are highly commendable. Chief
among these features are, first, his simple, child-like, unwavering
faith in God. Nor can this condition be wholly attributed to ignorance
or thoughtlessness, as some might hold; for, indeed, we have produced
some men of as rare ability as move among the human throng; yet it is
almost as difficult to find an atheist, an agnostic, or an infidel of
any sort among us as it is to find a "needle in a haystack." The Negro
believes in the God of the Bible.
Second. Because the Negro is naturally emotional he is usually earnest
and fervent in the exercise of his religious worship, as far as that
goes. He likes the strong, passionate appeal which for the time being,
at least, tickles him into laughter or moves him to tears and sweeps
him off his feet in its flight. The earnestness and fervency are all
right but too often these run to the extreme and so constitute by far
too large a portion of his Christianity.
Third. Again, the Negro's religion is characterized by benevolence. I
believe that history has no record of a people who, out of their want
and poverty, have given so much to benevolent causes as have the
Negroes in this country. Is it not wonderful to reckon the millions of
dollars that have been given by us for erecting and maintaining church
edifices, schools and other benevolent institutions since
emancipation? It is perfectly safe to affirm that no people have
exceeded us along this line. But with all of these good things that
can be justly said to the credit of our religion, the fair-minded must
still admit that when we come to the daily application of the
principles and practices of Bible Christianity we are lacking. If this
be true, there is a cause. What is it? We believe that the cause was
stated in part when we referred to the natural emotional element in
our makeup. That element too often causes us to run off with the
sentiment, having left the substance behind. Another cause, and,
perhaps the main one, is to be found doubtless in the same way in
which we find the causes of defects in our race along other lines, i.
e., from defective leadership and instruction along this particular
line. We would be understood. The crying need of our race to-day _is_
and has been a _competent_ ministry to lead and instruct the masses in
the application of the principles of right life and conduct from the
standpoint of Bible Christianity. To-day the church, especially in our
race, is the center of both our social and Christian life. Like
priests, like people. All honor to the pioneers who did their best in
their circumstances and who served well their day and generation. But
this is another age; this, a brighter day--one that demands
improvement along all lines, and especially in the pulpit of my race.
The pew is advancing, hence the pulpit had better push on. The key to
the situation, then, is nothing more nor less than a more
consecrated and intelligent Christian ministry for our race throughout
the length and breadth of this land. And we are hopeful; for the
"signs of the times" portend the coming of better things. Already
bright streaks of gray high up upon the eastern horizon herald the
dawn of a new and brighter day. Every branch of the Christian church
in our race is putting forth strenuous efforts to supply the pulpits
of the race with competent ministers. Let this glorious day be
hastened and soon Ethiopia will stretch out her hands to God.
THIRD PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A CHRISTIAN.
BY REV. WALTER H. BROOKS, D. D.
[Illustration: Rev. W. H. Brooks, D. D.]
REV. WALTER H. BROOKS, D. D.
Rev. Walter H. Brooks, D. D., has a very unusual and
interesting history. He was born a slave in Richmond, Va.,
August 30, 1851, his parents belonging to different masters.
In 1859 his mother's master died, and arrangements were made
to sell her and her six children, she being allowed to
select a purchaser if she could find one. Through a white
friend his father bought Dr. Brooks' mother, together with
two of the youngest children. Walter H. Brooks and an elder
brother were bought by a large tobacco manufacturing firm in
Richmond. In 1861 the breaking out of the war affected the
tobacco trade, and many of the tobacconists were obliged to
sell or hire out their slaves. Walter and his brother David
were hired by their mother, who, each quarter of the year,
managed to pay the amount agreed upon. For the next three
years both of the boys worked, thereby aiding their mother
in paying their hire. After the war Walter H. Brooks, for a
short time, attended a primary school in Richmond, taught by
a young lady from the North.
In October, 1866, he had received one year's instruction
when he went to Lincoln University, Chester County, Pa. He
remained there seven years, graduating in 1872, and then
entered a theological class for one year. During the second
year of his seminary life he was converted and became an
elder in the Presbyterian Church. He expected to become a
Presbyterian preacher, but in 1873 his ideas having made him
a subject to baptism, he joined the First African Baptist
Church of Richmond, Va.
For a short time he was a clerk in the postoffice at
Richmond, Va., but in 1874, having resigned his position, he
entered the service of the American Baptist Publication
Society in the State of Virginia. Having been ordained in
December, 1876, in April, 1877, he accepted the pastorship
of the Second Baptist Church of Richmond, Va., where he
succeeded in paying off the entire debt of the church. In
June, 1880, he was sent as a delegate for the Virginia
Baptist State Convention to the Baptist General Association
in session at Petersburg, and he was the first Colored
delegate received by that body. In September, 1880, he
resigned the charge of the church and went to New Orleans,
La., to commence work in the American Baptist Publication
Society's employ, but his wife's failing health caused him
to return to Virginia in 1882.
In November, 1882, he was called to the pastorship of the
Nineteenth Street Baptist Church of Washington, D. C., where
he has been ever since.
Roger Williams University, Nashville, Tenn., and State
University, Louisville, Ky., both honored him with the title
of Doctor of Divinity; while his alma mater, in June, 1883,
conferred upon him the degree of M. A.
Recently he was elected a trustee of the United Society of
Christian Endeavor, to represent the Colored Baptists of the
world.
Dr. Brooks has distinguished himself as a temperance
advocate, and for a number of years has been the Chaplain of
the Anti-Saloon League of the District of Columbia.
His article, printed some years since in the "National
Baptist" of Philadelphia, Pa., on "George Liele, the Black
Apostle," and his more recent paper on the "Beginnings of
Negro Churches in America," have won for him many praises.
For twenty-eight years Dr. Brooks has been in public life,
and his power as a speaker still gives him a commanding
influence in the pulpit and on the platform.
Dr. Brooks married Miss Eva Holmes, of the family of Rev.
James H. Holmes, of Richmond, Va., and this union resulted
in the birth of ten children--eight of whom are living, four
boys and four girls--the oldest born being 27 years of age,
the youngest four years.
The Christian religion is eminently adapted to the wants of humanity.
It has always had a charm for lowly and oppressed peoples. It was,
therefore, the one thing, above all others, which gave comfort and
hope to the American Negro during the night of his long bondage.
The story of the enslavement and marvelous deliverance of God's
ancient people; of Daniel, the prophet, and the Hebrew youths, whom
God protected and honored in the house of their bondage; the psalms of
David, the sweet singer of Israel; the inspired narratives of Jesus of
Nazareth, the Christ of God; the Biblical account of the faith,
sufferings and triumphs of the apostles; and the manifold promises of
God, made to all who served Him in truth, and patiently wait for their
fulfillment, could not fail in influencing the conduct and life of
America's Negro slaves. It was in circumstances like these the
Christian Negro, many years ago, sang out his hopes, his sorrows, and
his soul-yearnings in melodies peculiarly his own, whose plaintive
strains have been echoing around the globe for a generation and more.
The balm of Gilead was never so soothing to the wounds of an Israelite
as the Gospel of Jesus Christ was, in the dark days of slavery, to the
oppressed and sorrowing soul of the unfortunate Negro. It is not
surprising, therefore, that at least one-fourth of the entire Negro
population of the country was devout Christians forty years ago, while
the entire Negro population was nominally believers in the living and
true God, and in Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.
Whether the Negro Christian has lost some of his old-time love for
Christ, and his zeal for the sanctuary, is, in the minds of some, an
open question. We, however, believe that the Savior and the sanctuary
are dearer to the Negro than ever. Indeed, so far as the census, which
was taken by the United States in 1890, proves anything as to the
matter of religion, the Negro is the most religious citizen of the
country. Here is an extract from that report: "The Negro population of
the country, exclusive of Indian territory and Alaska, according to
the census of 1890, is 7,470,040. As the churches report 2,673,197
Negro communicants, exclusive of Indian territory and Alaska, it
follows that _one_ person in every 2.79 of the Negro population is a
communicant. Excluding Indian Territory and Alaska, the total
population is 62,622,250, and the total of communicants 20,568,679.
The proportion here is 1 communicant in every 3.04 of the population.
In other words, while all denominations have 328.46 communicants in
every 1,000 of the total population, the colored organizations
reported have 357.86 communicants in every 1,000 of the Negro
population." According to this showing, _more than a third_ of the
entire Negro population of the country was enrolled as active members
of the churches, ten years ago. At the same time, _less than a third_
of the white population was connected with the churches of the land.
It remains to be seen whether the census of the United States, which
is now in process of completion, will show any change in the relative
strength of the Negro and white churches of the country.
It is certain that the Negro Christian is displaying commendable zeal
in erecting spacious houses of worship; in acquiring school property;
in giving the Gospel to the heathen in Africa, and in other parts of
the world; in raising funds for the cause of education, and in
providing himself with a religious literature of his own making.
In the quality of his religion, we dare say, there is room for
improvement. But the changes mostly needed for his highest good are
intellectual, material, social, commercial and political in nature,
rather than religious.
The Negro Christian is as a rule as good as he knows how to be. He
often errs, _not knowing the Scriptures_. He sometimes plunges
headlong into the ditch of shame, because his spiritual adviser and
instructor is a "blind leader of the blind."
Christian schools, however, are giving us better leaders every
year, and the time is hastening when the Negro Christian of America
shall be respected and loved because of his intelligence, his
Christian piety, his zeal for God's cause, his manly bearing, his
general worth as a moral and material contributor to the well being,
both of the state and of the country which claim him as a citizen, and
because of his excellent spirit and gentlemanly deportment.
FOURTH PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A CHRISTIAN.
BY REV. H. H. PROCTOR.
[Illustration: Rev. Henry H. Proctor]
REV. HENRY H. PROCTOR, B. A.
Henry Hugh Proctor was born near Fayetteville, Tennessee,
December 8, 1868. After completing the public school course
of his native town he studied in Fisk University, Nashville,
Tenn., from which school he was graduated with the degree of
Bachelor of Arts, June, 1891. That fall he entered the
Divinity School of Yale University, graduating three years
later. He was assigned by the faculty to the post of honor
among the chosen orators of the class. He at once entered
upon the pastorate of the First Congregational Church of
Atlanta, Ga.
Mr. Proctor has lectured extensively in many parts of the
country, his best-known lecture being "The Black Man's
Burden." He has been active in preventing legislation in
Georgia adverse to the colored race, especially measures
designed to restrict the franchise and cut down public
school facilities of the Negro. He is correspondent for a
number of Northern periodicals, and extracts from his
sermons are published weekly in the "Atlanta Constitution,"
the leading daily of the South. At his recent seventh
anniversary as pastor many letters of congratulation came
from all parts of the country, one being from Principal
Booker T. Washington, whose esteem and friendship he enjoys.
In the historic development of Christianity race and religion have had
a reciprocal relation. Conversion has involved a mutual conquest. The
religion has modified the race, and the race has modified the
religion. Every race that has embraced Christianity has, by developing
that element of truth for which it has affinity, brought to the system
its own peculiar contribution.
In the Semitic race, the high priest of humanity, Christianity, was
born. "Salvation is of the Jews." Israel's code of ethics was the
highest known to antiquity. It was but natural that the Hebrew should
leave upon the new-born system the impress of his genius for ethics.
Hellenism may be regarded as the complement and contrast of Hebraism.
Hebraism revealed the transcendence of Jehovah. Hellenism declared the
divinity of man. The Greek, pre-eminent, in philosophy as a pagan,
became, as a Christian, pre-eminent in theology. He blended the
complemental conceptions of divinity and humanity. If the contribution
of the Hebrew was ethical, that of the Greek was theological.
The Latin mind, practical rather than speculative, political rather
than theological, established the _Civitas Dei_ where once stood the
_Civitas Roma._ This ecclesiastical masterpiece of human wisdom "may
still exist in undiminished vigor," says Macaulay, "when some traveler
from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his
stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St.
Paul's." Truly the Church of Rome has left upon Christianity an
ineffaceable political impress.
The Teutonic mind--fresh, vigorous, even childlike in its simplicity
and love of reality, accustomed to enjoy the freedom peculiar to lands
where the national will is the highest law--would not brook the
inflexible dogmatism of the Greek nor the iron ecclesiasticism of the
Roman. The Teuton loved liberty in religion as well as in other
things, and asserted his right to stand before his God for himself.
The free spirit revealed in Christianity through Luther can never die.
"Christianity as an authoritative letter is Roman; as a free spirit it
is Teutonic."
The Saxon, pre-eminent in capacity for developing ideas, has so
assimilated Christianity as to become its noblest representative.
Enterprise and energy, vigor and thrift, striking characteristics of
this great race, are becoming part and parcel of our Christianity.
This is the missionary age, and it is the enterprising Saxon,
unchecked and undaunted by sword, flame or flood, that is encircling
the globe with a girdle of divine light.
And yet our Christianity is not complete. Notwithstanding its moral
stamina, its philosophic basis and its organic solidarity, its free
spirit and its robust energy, do we not feel there is something
lacking still? Does not our Christianity lack in its gentler virtues?
To what nation shall we look for the _desideratum_? Shall it not be to
the vast unknown continent? If the Jew has modified our religion by
his ethics, the Greek by his philosophy, the Roman by his polity, the
Teuton by his love of liberty, and the Saxon by his enterprise, shall
not the African, by his characteristic qualities of heart, bring a new
and peculiar contribution to Christianity?
The Negro is nothing if not religious. His religion touches his heart
and moves him to action. The result of his peculiarly partial contact
with Christianity in America is but an earnest of what his full
contribution may be confidently expected to be. The African's mission
in the past has been that of service. "Servant of all" is his title.
He has hewn the wood and drawn the water of others with a fidelity
that is wonderful and a patience that is marvelous. As an example of
patient fidelity to humble duty he stands without a peer.
His conduct in the late war, which resulted in his freedom, was as
rare a bit of magnanimity as the world ever saw. The helpless ones of
his oppressor in his power, he nobly stayed his hand from vengeance.
And at last, when he held up his hands that his bonds might be
removed, his emancipator found them scarred with toil unrequited, but
free from the blood of man save that shed in open, honorable battle.
His religious songs are indicative of his real character. These songs
embodied and expressed the only public utterance of a people who had
suffered two and a half centuries of unatoned insult, yet in them all
there has not been found a trace of ill will. History presents no
parallel to this. David, oppressed by his foes, called down fire,
smoke and burning wind to consume his enemies from the face of the
earth. But no such malediction as that ever fell from the lips of the
typical American slave; oppressed, like the Man of Sorrows, he opened
not his mouth.
Truth is stranger than fiction. Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom"
was more than a character of fiction. He was a real representative of
the Christian slave. Recall that scene between Cassy and Uncle Tom.
Unsuccessful in her attempts to urge him to kill their inhuman master,
Cassy determines to do it herself. With flashing eyes, her blood
boiling with indignation long suppressed, the much-abused Creole woman
exclaims: "His time's come. I'll have his heart's blood!" "No, no,
no," says Uncle Tom; "No, ye poor lost soul, that ye must not do! Our
Lord never shed no blood but his own, and that he poured out for us
when we was his enemies. The good Lord help us to follow his steps and
love our enemies." Uncle Tom's words are not unworthy of immortality.
"Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good;
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood."
Humility, fidelity, patience, large-heartedness, love--this is
Africa's contribution to Christianity. If the contribution of the
Saxon is Pauline, that of the African is Johanine. Paul, with his
consuming energy, carrying the Gospel to the uttermost parts, stands
for the white man; John, the man of love, leaning on his Master's
bosom, is typical of the black. The white man and the black are
contrasts, not contraries; complementary opposites, not irreconcilable
opponents.
The Jew has given us ethics; the Greek, philosophy; the Roman, law;
the Teuton, liberty. These the Saxon combines. But the
African--"latest called of nations, called to the crown of thorns, the
scourge, the bloody sweat, the cross of agony"--the African, I say,
has the deep, gushing wealth of love which is yet to move the great
heart of humanity.
FIFTH PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A CHRISTIAN.
BY REV. S. KERR.
[Illustration: Rev. S. Kerr]
REV. S. KERR.
To give anything like a true sketch of Mr. Kerr's life and
labors both in and out of the ministry would fill a
good-sized volume rather than a page of this book, as his
life has been replete with thrilling, romantic incidents.
The Rev. Mr. Kerr graduated with honors, having received the
degree of A. B. from Rawden College, Leeds, England. He
returned at once to the West Indies, where he labored three
years.
In 1859 he did extensive missionary work in the Turks and
Caicos Islands, where, in 1860, he accepted the appointment
of Registrar of Births and Deaths. In 1863 he accepted the
appointment of Assistant Master of the Government Schools at
Grand Turk, and was afterwards appointed Head Master. In
1864 he filled the dual role of Inspector of Schools and
missionary, and he passed unscathed through the great
hurricane of 1866 which devastated the whole colony,
destroyed all the schools and public buildings, as well as
2,500 dwelling houses, including Mr. Kerr's personal
property. In 1867 he was sent as missionary to Hayti, where,
as everywhere, he did good work. In 1873 he was appointed
professor in the National Lyceum College for boys and young
ladies, where he did effective and extensive missionary work
in Cape Hatien, Grande Riviere and Dondon, and maintained
considerable influence with the Haytien officials and
authorities.
In 1880 he was advanced to the Priesthood of the Episcopal
Church of America, by the Rt. Rev. J. Th. Holly, D. D., LL.
D., Bishop of Hayti. In 1882 he was delegated to represent
the Episcopal Church in the United States, and to collect
funds for the building of the same in Hayti. On landing in
New York, his reception by Bishop Horatio Potter was cordial
in the extreme--the same by Bishops Littlejohn, of Long
Island; T. A. Starkey, of Northern New Jersey; T. M. Clark,
of Warwick, R. I.; M. A. De Wolf Howe, Central Pennsylvania;
William C. Doane, Albany; Alfred Lee, Primate, Delaware; W.
B. Stevens, Pennsylvania; H. A. Neely, of Maine; A. C. Coxe,
Western New York. He occupied the pulpits of the leading
Episcopal Churches in New York--Old Trinity, Grace Church,
St. Chrysostom's, St. Paul's, St. Philip's and others. The
leading churches in Brooklyn, Yonkers, Newport, R. I.,
Newark, N. J., Orange, N. J., Syracuse, Saratoga Springs,
Utica, Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, Newburg, Poughkeepsie,
Sing Sing, Barrytown, Tarrytown, Philadelphia, Germantown,
Ashebourne, Reading, Cheltenham and many others.
In 1883 be was sent to Jamaica, W. I., and the following
year he was appointed by the Provincial Synod (under the
auspices of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel--London. Eng.) Rector of the Panama Railroad Church
and Arch-deacon of the Church of England Mission, and
Chaplain to the Panama Canal Company. In 1889 he made an
extensive missionary tour through Central America, where he
performed religious services at the opening of the Nicaragua
Canal, coming in touch with several Indian tribes, and
gaining considerable knowledge of their manners and customs
in their crude condition.
In 1890 he returned to the West Indies and was transferred
to the Diocese of Florida and made Rector of St. Peter's
Episcopal Church in Key West, where he has a large parish
and congregation and where he is highly esteemed by all
classes, white and colored.
My purpose in writing upon this subject is to investigate God's
disciplinary and retributive economy in races and nations, with a hope
of arriving at some clear conclusion concerning the Negro as a
Christian.
First, it may be just and proper to view the races of mankind in
respect to growth and mastery. The principles of growth and mastery in
a race, a nation, or a people, are the same all over the globe. The
same great agencies needed for one quarter of the globe, and in one
period of time, are needed for all quarters of the globe, for all
people and for all time, and consequently needed for this American
nation.
The children of Africa in America are in no way different from any
other people in respect to Christianity. Many of the differences of
races are accidental and oftentimes become obliterated by
circumstances, position and religion.
Go back to a period in the history of England, when its rude
inhabitants lived in caves and huts, when they fed on bark and roots,
when their dress was the skins of animals. Then look at the eminent
Englishman of the present day--cultivated, graceful, refined,
Christianized. When we remember that his distant ancestors were wild
and bloody savages, and that it took centuries to change his
forefathers from rudeness and brutality into enlightened, civilized
Christians, there is no room to doubt the susceptibility of the Negro
to Christianity.
The same great general laws of growth continue unchangeable. The
Almighty neither alters nor diminishes these laws for the convenience
of a people, of whatever race they may be. The Negro race is equally
susceptible of growth in Christianity as in civilization.
At once the question arises--Is the Negro race doomed to destruction?
Or, does it possess those qualities which will enable it to reach a
high degree of moral and Christian civilization? To the first of these
questions I reply that the Negro race is by no means doomed to
destruction. It is now over five hundred years since the breath of the
civilized world touched powerfully, for the first time, the mighty
masses of the pagan world in America, in Africa and the isles of the
sea, and we see everywhere that the weak heathen tribes of the earth
have gone down before the civilized world; tribe and nation have
dispersed before its presence. The Iroquois, the Pequods, the brave
Mohawks, the once refined Aztecs and others have gone, nevermore to be
ranked among the tribes of men. In the scattered islands of the
Pacific seas, like the stars of the heavens, the sad fact remains that
from many of them their populations have departed like the morning
cloud. They did not retain God in their knowledge. Just the reverse
with the Negro. Destructive elements, wave after wave, have swept over
his head, yet he has stood unimpaired.
Even this falls short of the full reality of the Negro as a Christian,
for civilization at numerous places has displaced ancestral
heathenism, and the standard of the cross, uplifted on the banks of
its great river, showing that the heralds of the cross have begun the
glorious conquests of their glorious King. Vital Christian power has
become the property of the Negro. Does God despise the weak? No, the
Providence of God intervenes for the training and preservation of such
people.
But has the Negro race any of those qualities which emanate from
Christianity? Let us see. The flexibility of the Negro character is
universally admitted. The race is possessed of a nature more easily
moulded than that of any other class of men. Unlike the Indian, the
Negro yields to circumstances and flows with the current of events,
hence afflictions, however terrible, have failed to crush him; his
facile nature wards them off, or else through the inspiration of hope
their influence is neutralized. These peculiarities of the Negro
character render him susceptible to imitation. Burke tells us that
"imitation is the second passion belonging to society, and this
passion arises from much the same cause as sympathy." This is one of
the strongest links of society. It forms our manners, our opinions,
our lives. Indeed, civilization is carried down from generation to
generation, or handed over from a superior to an inferior, by means of
imitation. A people devoid of imitation is incapable of progress or
advancement, and must retrograde. If it remains stagnant, it must of
necessity bring its own decay. The quality of imitation has been the
grand preservative of the Negro in all lands. Indeed, the Negro is a
superior man to-day to what he was three centuries ago.
I feel fortified in the principles I have advanced by the opinions of
great, scrutinizing thinkers. In his treatise on Emancipation, written
in 1880, Dr. Channing says: "The Negro is one of the best races of the
human family; he is among the mildest and gentlest of men; he is
singularly susceptible to improvement." Kinmont declares in his
"Lecture on Man" that "The sweet graces of the Christian religion
appears almost too tropical and tender plants to grow in the soil of
the Caucasian mind; they require a character of the human nature of
which you can see the rude lineaments in the Ethiopian, to be
implanted in and grow naturally and beautifully withal." Adamson, the
traveler who visited Senegal in 1754, said: "The Negroes are sociable,
humane, obliging and hospitable, and they have generally preserved an
estimable simplicity of domestic manners. They are distinguished by
their tenderness for their parents, and great respect for the aged--a
patriarchal virtue which, in our day, is too little known." Dr.
Raleigh, also, at a great meeting in London, said: "There is in these
people a hitherto undiscovered mine of love, the development of which
will be for the amazing welfare of the world. * * * Greece gave us
beauty; Rome gave us power; the Anglo-Saxon unites and mingles these,
but in the African people there is the great gushing wealth of love,
which will develop wonders for the world."
I feel that the Almighty, who is interested in all the great problems
of civilization, is interested in the Negro problem. He has carried
the Negro through the wilderness of disasters, and at last put him in
a large open place of liberty. There is not the shadow of a doubt that
this work which God has begun, and is carrying on, is for the mental
and spiritual elevation of the Negro.
TOPIC XXI.
DOES THE NORTH AFFORD TO THE NEGRO BETTER OPPORTUNITIES OF MAKING A
LIVING THAN THE SOUTH?
BY REV. J. H. ANDERSON.
[Illustration: Rev. J. H. Anderson.]
REV. J. H. ANDERSON, D. D.
Rev. J. H. Anderson was born June 30, 1848, in Frederick,
Md. Dr. Anderson is what is called a self-made man, he
having attended school only six months in his life and
studied a short time under a private tutor. By hard,
persistent efforts and close application to books, Dr.
Anderson has risen to a point in scholarship and prominence
that only a few college Negroes have reached. He is noted as
a pulpit orator and platform speaker. He has attained to
some prominence as a writer and takes front rank as a
preacher in his denomination. For his scholarly attainments
and usefulness as a minister of the gospel, Livingstone
College conferred upon him, in 1896, the degree of doctor of
divinity. Dr. Anderson was one of those heroic
liberty-loving souls who went to the battlefield in the
Civil War to fight for their and their race's freedom.
Colonization is a condition of cosmopolitan society as it is of races.
As "birds of a feather flock together," so the different races in the
American civilization form settlements or colonies, as far as
possible. The truthfulness of this statement is seen in the
thickly-settled German, Irish, Jewish and Italian communities in the
North. Their race affinities produce natural and social relations
promotive of their varied interests. The Negro's civil and social
privileges are more restricted in the South than in the North, owing
to which fact the Negroes of the South are more united than the
Negroes of the North. In the North a few individuals may rise to
intellectual, professional, business and mechanical distinctions, but
from general employment in the skilled industries, business
enterprises and political preferment he is debarred, and, being
cheaply and conveniently accommodated in almost every respect by the
whites, he is not under the same necessity as the Southern Negro to
establish and operate business enterprises. It is rather inconvenient
to establish and maintain Negro business enterprises and schools in
the North, for the reason that there are no thickly settled
communities. A Negro lawyer, doctor, dressmaker, music teacher, hair
dresser and mechanic do well in some instances, because they receive
patronage from the whites. It is not so much the prejudice of the
whites nor the indifference of the Negro as it is the peculiar
conditions of the North that prevent the Negro from enjoying the
business enterprises and founding race institutions. The few new
institutions and even churches in the North are largely sustained by
donations from the whites. Renting houses and purchasing property and
living in the North are commensurate with the large scale and
competition along all lines of industry, and social life is so active
that the most rigid economy and business tact are essential to success
in any kind of business in the North.
The Negro who embarks in business in the North has not only to compete
with his own people, but with the shrewd Yankee, who seeks to
monopolize all interests that have money in them. The Negro of the
North for the most part appears to be content with his superior civil
and social privileges. He breathes the air with more perfect liberty,
enjoys life free from violence, is vindicated and redressed at law and
recognized in his citizen rights, and, like the Pharisee, thanks God
that he is not like the ex-slave of the South, and this is the height
of his ambition. Three-fourths of the freeholding and tax-paying
Negroes in the North are from the South, and Southern Negro labor is
preferred in the North as in the South. Waiters, domestic servants,
janitors, teamsters, laundry men and coachmen from the South can find
employment in the North. Any industrious Southern Negro can find
common labor to do in the North.
Before the formation of labor unions and federations in the North, the
Negro skilled laborer found employment, but after deciding to exclude
the Negro from membership these unions became an effective dictating
power to employ when Negroes applied to them for work.
The tax-payers in many Northern sections favor mixed schools because
it is less expensive to have them. They would not be justified in
maintaining separate schools for the few Negro pupils. Of course, race
favoritism, competition and prejudice, combine to exclude Negro
teachers, and yet a few Negro teachers are employed to teach in the
mixed schools. That Negro children, procuring their education by Negro
teachers in the Negro schools, can better appreciate race efficiency
and dignity there can be no question. The Northern Negro is ill fitted
for living in the South, it being difficult for him to adapt himself
to the conditions of the South, yet it is quite easy for the Southern
Negro to adapt himself to the North where full and free expression is
equally accorded to all, and where no legal discriminations are made
and where the social question is left for adjustment by the parties
nearest concerned. In the North the Negro has the opportunity of
advocating the interests of his Southern brother in a way that would
not be tolerated in the South, and thus the Northern Negro can assist
in the formation of a proper sentiment in his favor. The Northern
Negro is, therefore, a necessity to the Southern Negroes, and vice
versa. The Negro's destiny is to be worked out in the South because he
has greater numerical strength and superior advantages in the South,
notwithstanding the civil, social and legal restrictions upon him. The
lesson of self-dependence and self-effort is forced upon the Southern
Negro as not upon the Northern Negro.
When the Southern Negro was emancipated, his first thought was
education, and, adhering steadfastly to this idea, he has made a
progressive education since his emancipation that has astounded the
civilized world. No school-loving race can be kept down or back.
Brought here a heathen, the Negro soon exchanged fetichism for
Christianity, and, having been trained in the school of servile labor
for centuries, he learned how to labor so that when his emancipation
came he was prepared to strike out on lines of self development, and
he has made in thirty-six years a progress in the acquisition of
wealth that is without a parallel in history.
The prejudices of the whites against the Negro have rather helped him,
in that they have stimulated him to make greater efforts to reach the
independence of the white man.
Having lived in both sections of our country, I am prepared to say
that the Negro can do better towards working out his destiny in the
South than in the North.
SECOND PAPER.
DOES THE NORTH AFFORD TO THE NEGRO BETTER OPPORTUNITIES OF MAKING A
LIVING THAN THE SOUTH?
BY PROF. W. H. COUNCILL.
[Illustration: Prof. W. H. Councill]
PROF. W. H. COUNCILL, PH. D.
W. H. Councill was born in Fayetteville, N. C., in 1848, and
was carried to Alabama by the traders in 1857, through the
famous Richmond Slave Pen. In Alabama he worked in the
fields with the other slaves. He is a self-made man, having
had only few school advantages. He attended one of the first
schools opened by kind Northern friends at Stevenson, Ala.,
in 1865. Here he remained about three years, and this is the
basis of his education. He has been a close and earnest
student ever since, often spending much of the night in
study. He has accumulated quite an excellent library, and
the best books of the best masters are his constant
companions, as well as a large supply of the best current
literature. By private instruction and almost incessant
study, he gained a fair knowledge of some of the languages,
higher mathematics, and the sciences. He was Enrolling Clerk
of the Alabama House of Representatives in 1872-4. He was
appointed by President Grant Receiver of the Land Office for
the Northern District of Alabama in 1875. He was founder and
editor of the "Huntsville Herald" from 1877 to 1884. He
founded the great educational institution, Normal, of which
he is president, and has been for a quarter of a century. He
read law and was admitted to the Supreme Court of Alabama in
1883. But he has never left the profession of teaching,
although flattering political positions have been held out
to him. He has occupied high positions in church and other
religious, temperance, and charitable organizations, and has
no mean standing as a public speaker.
Prof. Councill has traveled quite extensively in Europe, and
was warmly received and entertained by the Hon. W. E.
Gladstone and His Majesty, King Leopold, of Belgium.
And thus by earnest toil, self-denial, hard study, he has
made himself, built up one of the largest institutions in
the South, and educated scores of young people _at his own
expense_.
Prof. Councill is proud to be known as a friend to Africa.
He is co-operating with Bishop Turner in the redemption and
civilization of that continent. Normal, under Prof.
Councill, is educating native Africans for this purpose. He
has received the degree of Ph. D. from Morris Brown College.
Prof. Councill is author of "The Lamp of Wisdom." He writes
extensively for the leading magazines and newspapers of the
country.
A comparison of the opportunities which different sections hold out to
any class of our fellow citizens should not be regarded as hostile
criticism. No man, no country suffers by the truth.
We cannot answer this question by yes or no. The North affords the
better opportunities in some things, while in others the South gives
the Negro the better opportunity for making a living. If we are
correct in putting a broad and educated mind as the foundation for
every useful superstructure, we are forced to admit that the
opportunity for laying this foundation is better in the North, where a
century of thought on popular education has developed the finest
public school system in the world. While this brings the Northern
Negro in contact with the great Anglo-Saxon mind, and fits him for
making a living and for business in that atmosphere, he has to undergo
a kind of mental acclimatization before he can effectively and
usefully enter into work in the South, where the atmosphere at every
turn is different from that in the North. For twenty-five years I
have been brought in direct contact with Negroes reared or educated in
the North, and I do not recall one who did not have to un-Northernize
himself in many respects before he could harmonize to usefulness in
the South. It is to the credit of our Northern brethren that they are
thus willing to sacrifice a part of their individualism in order to
serve their race in the South. In my long experience I have not met a
quarter dozen who have not cheerfully put aside their selfishness for
the common good of their associates and their work. Indeed, I have
found my Northern brethren more willing and helpful in this regard,
perhaps, than Southern Negroes, who are more self-assertive and
persistent in their make-up, a spirit imbibed from the general
character of independence and domineering found in the South. But the
Southern Negro, reared in harmony with Southern institutions, having
assimilated prejudices and counter-prejudices, can use to greater
advantage his small amount of education and training.
In a country where competition is sharp, as in this country, and where
any kind of excitement is resorted to in order to give advantage to
the competitors, the minority race, especially in inferior
circumstances, must suffer along lines of battle for bread in which,
the masses engage. Thus it is, while the Northern Negro enjoys high
privileges of an intellectual character among the classes, he is
bumped, shunned, and pushed to the rear among the quarreling,
scrambling masses.
There are scattered far and wide a few Negroes in the North who are
doing well in business. They get the patronage of their white
neighbors. There are few communities in the North where the Negro
population is strong enough to support a Negro in business, if the
race lines were drawn in business. I think the voluntary collections
of like tribes and races of men, as Italians, Jews, Chinese, Poles,
Norwegians, Swedes, and the like, in settlements in our large cities
and some country districts, show clearly the gregarious disposition of
like peoples; and from time out of mind each tribe, clan or race, has
depended upon itself for patronage and support. In order for the Negro
to succeed in any considerable degree in business in the North, it
would be necessary to increase the Negro population in that section.
As I have intimated above, there are few fields for operation in the
North for Negroes, regardless of their ability to succeed, for there
are few cases where Negro patronage is not limited to the Negro
population. While occasionally a few Negroes may get patronage from
the other clans and tribes it is nevertheless true that as a general
rule the aim is to keep the trade in the family, as it were. Every
whip of tribal differentiation and prejudice is applied to enforce a
rigid observance of this general rule. I think that we may logically
conclude that the opportunity for that training and education which
could make the Northern Negro immediately useful to the mass of the
race, and the opportunity to gather material wealth, are not ideal in
the North.
Ninety-two per cent of the Negro population reside in the South, where
slavery left them. Under normal conditions there should be ninety-two
per cent of Negro wealth, thrift and energy in the South. The
opportunity to accumulate wealth and the accumulation are different.
The Southern Negro is a wealth producer. He does four-fifths of the
agricultural labor of the South and thereby adds four-fifths to the
wealth of the South derived from agriculture, the leading Southern
industry. If the whole of the billion dollars to the credit of the
Negro race were placed to the credit of the Southern Negro alone, it
would be less than half of what he should have saved since the war.
The Negroes of the South handle more money than New England did one
hundred years ago, and yet New England would be glad to place her
barrels of gold and silver at nominal interest--so rich has she grown,
although in the chilly winds of the Northeast.
The opportunities for the Southern Negro are as good for material gain
as are enjoyed by any other people in this country. The census of 1890
shows two hundred and twenty-four occupations followed by the
wage-earners of the United States. The Negroes are represented in
every one of these occupations--grouped under five heads:
Professional, Agriculture, trade and transportation, manufactures and
personal service. The Southern Negro, while not in all of them,
occupies in the South the vantage ground in those that bring the most
independence in living. We must not forget that agriculture is what we
might call the staple industry of the South.
I am indebted to Hon. Judson W. Lyons, register of the United States
Treasury, for the following statistics, showing the wonderful
influence of Negro labor in the commercial industries of the world:
More cotton is exported from the United States than any other article.
In the last ten years, 30,000,000,000 pounds of cotton, valued at
$225,000,000 have been exported. The United States produces more
cotton than all the balance of the world. The cotton manufactories of
Great Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, and Italy depend upon our
cotton exports. Ten years ago, $354,000,000 were invested in cotton
manufactories, employing 221,585 operatives, who received for wages
$67,489,000 per annum. The South produced from 1880 to 1890,
620,000,000 bushels of corn, 78,000,000 bushels of wheat, and
97,000,000 bushels of oats. The Negro performed four-fifths of the
labor of the South, as we have seen. Therefore, his share in the
average annual production in the last ten years would be 6,988,000
bales of cotton, valued at $209,640,000. In the last ten years the
Negro's part of the production of corn, wheat, oats and cotton was
$431,320,000 per annum. The entire cotton acreage of the South would
form an area of 40,000 square miles. Negro labor cultivates 32,000
square miles of this space.
Fifty-seven per cent of the Negro race are engaged in agricultural
pursuits, and 31 per cent are engaged in personal service. Therefore,
88 per cent of the wage-earners of the race in the South are engaged
in these two pursuits, or, in other words, 88 per cent of the
wage-earners of the race have opportunity for profitable employment.
Where the masses of the Negroes are found and can get paying work, as
they can in the South, there we must expect the greatest prosperity
among Negroes. Our expectation is highly gratified in this case in the
South. No doubt if the ninety-two per cent Negro population were to
exchange places with the eight per cent, the opportunities now held
out in the South would be transferred to the North. Our opportunities
over those enjoyed by our Northern brethren are the creatures of
accidents rather than of our meritorious invention.
The opportunities to win character and wealth afforded the Negroes of
the South by agriculture and domestic service are probably better than
are enjoyed by any other class of people in the world. The field is
broad and ripe and the Negro must now see and seize these
opportunities or they will pass from the race forever. No peasant
population ever had more favorable environments. The Negro does not
only do four-fifths of the agricultural labor of the South, but he has
the opportunity to own four-fifths of the land he cultivates. This
opportunity is not enjoyed by any other peasant class in the world. As
I see it, the greatest success for the Negro race in America lies in
the farm. There he meets the least resistance and obtains the greatest
sustenance. There color prejudice is almost unknown, while everywhere
in the mechanic arts, prejudice is bitter, competition is sharp, and
the chances for success are small. This is a matter which the Negro
must seriously consider now, or weep over his procrastination. The
drift to the cities to exchange the free, honest, healthful, plenteous
conditions of farm life for the miserable slums, sin, and squalor of
city life must be checked. Our boys and girls must be educated for the
farm.
It would be hard to find a people better suited for domestic and
personal service than the Negro. In all the elements which are
necessary for personal and domestic service, the Negro cannot be
excelled. He is not treacherous. He forms no plots and schemes to
entrap his master. He resorts to no violent incendiary measures of
avenging himself against his master, but he humbly and tamely submits
to the conditions, ever looking for betterment through superhuman
agencies. If the South would only look this matter squarely in the
face, it would admit that it has the best service on earth, and would
vote liberal appropriations for the development of Negro education of
every character.
It may seem to persons not informed incredible, but it is no less a
fact that where racial prejudice runs highest in the South and the
demarcation between the races is most distinct along social lines,
there the Negro is most prosperous, and, strange to say, advances most
rapidly in material wealth. Self-help, self-dependence, faith in self,
seem to spur to success as nothing else does. The drug store is the
creature of Anglo-Saxon prejudice in denying Negroes accommodations at
the soda-water fountains run by white men. In a score of channels the
Negro is pushed on to success by Anglo-Saxon discrimination. What
seems a curse is in reality a blessing to the race. Anglo-Saxon
prejudice forces the Negro to take advantage of his great opportunity
to get rich.
TOPIC XXII.
WHAT IS THE NEGRO TEACHER DOING IN THE MATTER OF UPLIFTING HIS RACE?
BY PROF. A. ST. GEORGE RICHARDSON.
[Illustration: Prof. Arthur Richardson.]
PROF. ARTHUR ST. GEORGE RICHARDSON.
Far out in mid-Atlantic ocean about 700 miles east of New
York lies the group of sunny isles known as the Bermudas. On
one of these beautiful coral formations called St. Georges
was born, July 5, 1863, the subject of this writing. Arthur
was sent to Canada in 1878 to attend the public schools of
St. Johns, N. B. Being an apt pupil he soon finished the
curriculum of studies of the grammar schools and in 1880
entered the high school from which in three years' time he
was graduated.
Not considering his education complete at this point, Arthur
matriculated at the University of New Brunswick at
Fredericton, in the fall of the same year, being the first
and only colored young man to enter this institution of
higher learning. As in the high school so now in college
young Arthur distinguished himself among his classmates by
winning a scholarship and at times leading his class in
Greek. He was graduated from the university with honors in
classics, June, 1886.
He was then elected principal of the Wilberforce Collegiate
Institute at Chatham, Ont., where he served one year,
increasing the attendance, and greatly improving the work of
the school. The following year, 1887, he returned to his
native home and visited his parents from whom he had been
separated nine years. The next year after his return to
Canada he was invited by Bishop W. J. Gaines to come to
Georgia and assume the principalship of Morris Brown College
in Atlanta. After much hesitancy, Mr. Richardson accepted
the invitation and took charge of Morris Brown College when
it was a school of small proportions and modest pretensions.
Here Professor Richardson served ten successive years, each
year adding something to the fame and increasing popularity
of the school.
In 1898 he was offered the Presidency of Edward Waters
College in Jacksonville, Fla., by Bishop W. J. Gaines, who
felt that the educational work in Florida then needed just
such a person as Professor Richardson had proven himself to
be in Georgia. Resigning his position in Atlanta he came to
Florida and at once set to work to restore Edward Waters
College to the confidence of the people. In a year's time
the school was again assuming the flourishing condition that
it once had.
The great fire of Jacksonville, May 3, 1901, caused him to
lose all his possessions in the destruction of the college
buildings, nevertheless he has held on unflinchingly to the
work and at great sacrifice and loss has kept the school
together, and is now serving his fourth year at the head of
this institution.
An examination into the earliest records of history will reveal a fact
that is not observant to the casual reader--that man, as an
individual, has ever been groping in darkness, seeking hither and
thither to find a ray of light that would safely guide him and lead
him through the mystic vale of doubt and uncertainty--be a "light to
his pathway, a lantern to his feet."
To this end he has lent all his energies and directed all his forces.
Long and tedious have been the ways and the journeys, yet onward and
upward has he continued to travel, through storm and tempest, amid
trials and vexations, until finally, after many centuries of
progressive endeavor and honorable achievements, he has reached the
loftiest pinnacle of fame, and there, on its rugged summit, has
inscribed in letters of gold the result of his many conquests in
literature, science and art, in religion, philosophy and commerce.
We use the generic term man as embracing all the various descendants
of the sons of Noah. For each race-variety has in its turn played its
part in producing the high degree of civilization that it is now our
heritage and privilege to enjoy. Each has been an important factor in
the development of some element that is essentially its own.
In thus reviewing the early history of the world we also find that the
peoples who sat in darkness were brought to the light only through the
agency of the teachers of the times in which they lived. Who made
Egypt renowned? Were they not her great teachers, whose pupils came
from far and near to learn, as it were, the foundation steps of our
great civilization? Who in China is better known to the world than the
great teacher Confucius? Who gave to Greece her renown for philosophy
and art? Was it not Aristotle and Plato? Mention Rome, and the names
of Quintilian and Cicero are recalled to our minds as the foremost
educators. The Israelites had their prophets to instruct them, until
the Great Teacher came to earth to enlighten all mankind. What was
best and noblest in the systems of the famous teachers before the
advent of Christ was crystallized into the method adopted by the Son
of Man. He came to elevate the whole man, to shed light into his whole
being--his mind, his body, and his soul.
Many and various have been the devices of mortal man to imitate the
plan of the Master; and yet, after centuries of earnest endeavor, we
have but recently begun to recognize the fact that complete success in
the education of man lies in the secret of training the whole
man--mind, body and soul.
Passing over the long period of scholastic apathy in European history,
we come to a more recent epoch of intellectual awakening in the
founding of great universities and stately colleges. These several
institutions, through the instructions given by their most eminent
teachers, have of themselves made the respective places of their
establishment famous in both hemispheres.
Between the periods of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars in America,
educational interests seemed to be centered mainly in the cultivation
of the intellect as the only part of man that required special
training.
The abolition of slavery and the consequent endeavor to enlighten the
freedmen gave rise to a new phase of educational activity. This new
ideal was the training of the body and the soul along with that of the
mind. This system naturally reduced the length of time usually devoted
to mind culture in proportion as time was required for the training of
the hand and the cultivation of the moral side of man.
Foremost among the early teachers to inaugurate this system were Mrs.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mrs. Sarah J. Early, and Bishop John M.
Brown. As a result of their efforts in this direction we have
Wilberforce University, the first school by Negro teachers to follow
the plan of the Great Teacher. Since the establishment of Wilberforce
in the North, many similar institutions have been founded in order to
give the "brother in black" an opportunity to show to the world what
the Negro teacher is doing and can do towards uplifting his race.
It is a difficult matter to estimate the good that a true teacher can
do, be he of whatever race-variety. But to calculate on the noble work
of the majority of the self-sacrificing and virtuous Negro teachers is
a task beyond the ability of man. Bishop Daniel A. Payne, the apostle
of an educated ministry, is known throughout the country for the noble
work he did in teaching the people at large as well as his immediate
pupils both how to live and how to die. Almost every educated Negro
preacher has at some period of his scholastic career served in the
capacity of a teacher, and therefore, after his advent to the gospel,
ministry has continued to instruct the people under the same
principles of teaching.
To be a teacher in the strict sense of the word requires the
possession of certain qualities of mind and soul, and the power to
exercise these qualities in such a manner as to awaken in the mind of
another thoughts similar to those of the person assuming to teach, and
thereby causing the mental activity on the part of the learner to
become knowledge and power. We, therefore, hold that the Negro teacher
has acted along the method here described, and has thus been the means
of enlightening the masses of the colored people that lay claim to any
degree of education whatever. What the Negro teacher has accomplished
has been done not from a selfish motive or a mercenary point of view,
but primarily because he has endeavored to do his part toward
elevating the race with which he is identified. If it is true that the
salvation of the Negro lies in his being educated, then to the Negro
teacher must be attributed the greater portion of his salvation.
Again, the majority of the Negro teachers are Christian men and women
of high moral character, and as such are shining lights in the
community in which they may be engaged in teaching. The good they thus
do is not confined to the school or class-room, but permeates every
sphere of society, ennobling and enriching the thoughts and minds of
all with whom they may have dealings, both by their chaste
conversation and by their upright and godly lives. The Negro teacher,
therefore, wields an influence for good, not only by precept, but what
is considered far better, also by example. Furthermore, the Negro
teacher in the day school invariably becomes a teacher in the
Sunday-school of the town where he happens to be living. And here
again he exerts a power for good, confirming and strengthening the
teachings of the past week.
Aside from his professional duties, the Negro teacher is often called
upon to decide on matters of grave importance. In many cases he is the
attorney for individuals who are unable to secure the services of a
competent lawyer. In this capacity he often acts as justice of the
peace, as well as a peacemaker, thereby allaying strife and
contention. From early morn till late at night the Negro teacher is
besieged by questions of every sort and kind, which he must
satisfactorily answer to the benefit of the inquirer, be he farmer or
blacksmith, preacher or vagrant. In fact, the Negro teacher in the
rural districts answers the purposes of a bureau of information.
Such is the lot of the average Negro teacher. That there are
exceptions need not here be stated. From what he has done on a small
scale may be inferred what is being done on a larger basis of
operation by the best and most renowned of the Negro teachers.
In nearly every Southern state of the Union may be found some one or
two famous educators and teachers of Negro descent. Prof. Jno. R.
Hawkins of North Carolina, Commissioner of Education of the A. M. E.
Church, has established Kittrell College. Prof. J. C. Price gave us
Livingston College in North Carolina. Prof. E. A. Johnson of Virginia
has written a worthy history of the Negro race, now in use as a
text-book in many public schools. In South Carolina we find results of
the great work in science by Prof. J. W. Hoffman. Georgia is proud of
Prof. R. R. Wright, President of the State Industrial College at
Savannah, orator and historian; also Prof. W. H. Crogman, scholar and
author. In Florida the names of Prof. T. de S. Tucker, Prof. T. V.
Gibbs, and Prof. T. W. Talley stand high as eminent scholars and
professional teachers. Alabama is rich in having the foremost men of
the race as her great teachers--Prof. B. T. Washington, founder and
principal of Tuskegee Institute, and Prof. W. H. Councill, President
of the State Normal and Industrial College at Normal. And thus we
might mention each state and her eminent Negro teachers; but it is not
necessary; the above suffices our purpose. And yet we would not
conclude without referring to the noble work of Prof. W. S.
Scarborough, of Wilberforce, Ohio. He has gone a step beyond the
ordinary and given us a Greek text-book that has been adopted in many
schools. Moreover, his contributions to the leading magazines and
periodicals are eagerly sought and read by the best scholars of the
day, without reference to race.
With this accumulated force of intelligence, radiating its numerous
beams of light in every section of the land, one need not seek far to
find an answer to the query: "What is the Negro teacher doing in the
matter of uplifting his race?"
As we endeavored to show in the beginning that it was through the
instrumentality of their teachers that many countries acquired fame
and gave to posterity a name honorable and glorious, so now the Negro
teacher in his weak strength is laying the foundation for successive
generations to build upon--a foundation more durable than stone or
granite, more valuable than rubies or diamonds--the cultivation of
the morals, the training of the hand, and the enlightenment of the
mind. With an informed mind, a skillful hand, and an upright conduct,
there is no reason why the Negro should not take his place upon the
stage of action; play well his part in the drama of life, and
meritoriously receive the plaudits of the gazing nations of the world.
SECOND PAPER.
WHAT IS THE NEGRO TEACHER DOING IN THE MATTER OF UPLIFTING HIS RACE?
BY PROF. E. L. BLACKSHEAR.
[Illustration: Prof. E. L. Blackshear.]
PROF. E. L. BLACKSHEAR.
Prof. E. L. Blackshear was born in Montgomery. Ala., in
1862. He was educated in the negro public schools of
Montgomery. So rapid had been his progress that he graduated
from Tabor College at the age of eighteen.
Prof. Blackshear is now principal of Prairie View State
Normal School and Industrial College of Texas.
The following is the testimony of Prof. Blackshear
concerning his grandmother. These words give us a glimpse of
the bright side of slave life, and of the ideal "mammy" of
the ante-bellum Southern plantation home.
"My grandmother was a remarkable woman. She idolized my
mother, the only child that slavery had allowed her to keep.
When grandma was sold from Georgia to Alabama, the humanity
of her Georgia owners caused them to sell mother and child
to the same people.
"My grandmother, although ignorant, had a profound belief in
education. But if she knew absolutely nothing of the world
of letters, she had something as good, perhaps better--a
warm, honest, loving heart and Christian principles. She had
genuine hatred for dirt and disorder, a regard, amounting to
a fearful reverence, for white people of 'quality,' and a
great and ill-disguised contempt for common, shiftless,
'darkies,' and low-bred whites. She was the best type of the
faithful and efficient slave. But it was as a cook that
'Grandma's' reputation was known in two States. To my
youthful imagination she was a magician; things she cooked
for the white folks seemed so good to me. I think now of the
batter-cakes, the light rolls, the syllabub, the sally-lunn,
the ship-ships and the wafers grandma made. The light-bread
she made is made no more. It is a lost art, an art that died
with grandma."
When the Negroes were set free the first aim of thousands was to learn
to read and write. Gray-haired veterans of the plantations sat side by
side in the day schools as well as in the night schools with the
smallest pickaninnies. And all seemed eager to learn the mysterious
arts of the schoolroom. The school-book, in the eyes of the unlettered
slave, was a sort of fetich to which he attributed the power of the
white man. The young slave could follow his master to the door of the
schoolhouse, but thus far and no farther. The mysterious rites and
ceremonies which went on within were forbidden him. Human nature has
ever been curious to know that the knowledge of which is prohibited,
and so the slave had a great curiosity to master the printed page and
to be admitted to the privileges of the schoolroom. It was not
surprising that the whole race tried to go to school, and it need not
surprise us if, in the enthusiasm for book-learning, from which the
race had been so strictly debarred, too much stress may have been
placed on mere book learning and too much confidence placed in the
formal processes of the schoolroom. But, better even this exaggerated
enthusiasm than indifference to all education of the schoolroom. The
race would soon learn that the blue-back Webster's Speller was not the
magic wand that would turn all troubles and difficulties into success
and prosperity; that the ability to spell B-a-Ba, k-e-r-ker, baker,
would buy no bread of the baker; while the power to read, "Do we go up
by it!" with painful praiseworthy effort, would help the ex-slave but
little as he strove to "go up by" the dangers ahead of him.
But they went to school, all of them at first, or all that could
possibly do so, either by day or by night. It is not recorded that
the chickens of that time had rest, but it must be that they did, for
verily, in the first mad rush of letters, even chickens must have been
forgotten by a race whose predilection for them has furnished the
point for many a joke, as well as the occasion for painful if not
indignant regret on the part of those whose fowls may have been
abstracted. And it is a hopeful sign for the future of the Negro that
while his first wild enthusiasm for the school-house has been
moderated, his real desire for educational improvement continues
strong and steady. He will go to school--the public school--when he
can, and the higher institutions for his race are all filled to their
capacity and are expanding. Will not this thirst for knowledge on the
part of a so lately savage race bear good fruit both for the Negro and
for humanity?
But who were to teach these black fanatics, seeking initiation for the
first time, in the long and gloomy history of their race, into the
mysteries, elusinian, of a modern, and, to them, totally foreign cult?
A faithful band of Christian missionary white women gave answer by
coming in the face of an inevitable social ostracism to light the
torch of thought in a region hitherto unblessed by a single ray of
education's light. The first Negro schools were taught by these white
ladies at Charleston, at Atlanta, at Montgomery, at New Orleans, at
Austin, and at the other great centers of the South's Negro
population. The success of the first labors of this devoted band led
to the foundation of permanent institutions for the elementary and
later for the normal and collegiate instruction of the Negro youth. At
Nashville, at Atlanta, at Raleigh, at Memphis, and at New Orleans
institutions were founded which have become great schools and have
contributed beyond measure to the process of civilizing the Negro as a
mass--a process confessedly still far from completion. Complicated and
annoying as the race problem assuredly is and will be for years to
come at the South, it would be far worse--much farther away from even
a hopeful degree of solution--but for the work done by the missionary
colleges.
The missionary schools, of which Fisk, Atlanta, Straight, Roger
Williams and Central Tennessee may be taken as types, furnished the
first Negro school teachers and the Negro owes to these schools,
founded and maintained in the spirit of the purest Christian
philanthropy, a debt he can never repay in either kind or equivalence.
The nearest like payment he can make is to imitate the beautiful,
pure, devoted, lives of the missionary teachers. Too much cannot be
said in praise of their labors. Perhaps if only the missionary
Christian teachers had come and the political missionaries had
remained at home, all might have been better.
But the missionary schools could reach but few. How was the great mass
of the colored population to be educated? This was the question, and
it was a most serious one. But the answer came not from the federal
government, as some expected--that source from which so many had
looked to get the mythical "mule" and the legendary "forty acres"--it
came from the South, from the wasted resources of the former master.
History furnishes no precedent as it affords no parallel to the action
of the ex-slaveholders--a dominant race--in entering at once--before
any opportunity had been afforded for recuperation from the losses of
the Civil War--on the expensive work of giving a public school system
to their former slaves--now technically, at least, their political
equals. And nothing can be gained by the Negro in refusing gratitude
to the South for this most magnanimous act and policy. An instance of
this unselfish policy of the South in its attitude toward Negro
education is seen in the history of Texas, the most liberal as well as
the most progressive of the Southern commonwealths. The Constitutional
Convention of 1876, which of course was Democratic, framed the present
state constitution of Texas, and in it absolutely equal provision is
made for both the elementary and the higher education of the Negro
youth of Texas. And it is to the credit of Texas as an enlightened
state as well as fortunate for her Negro population, that in the
distribution of the magnificent school fund of the state, no
discrimination is made between the races.
The Negro public schools are doing a great work for the elevation of
the colored people. In a silent, unobtrusive way, these schools are
leavening the thought and life of the race. The status and progress of
the Negro are too commonly gauged by the deeds of the loafing and
criminal element. The honest, law-abiding Negro who has a home, is
getting a little property, has a small bank account, and is educating
his children to useful citizenship, attracts little or no attention.
But a race that has in a generation since chattel slavery gotten
property worth by reliable estimate upward of $400,000,000 has been
doing something. All of such a race are not either lazy, vicious, or
immoral. The public school is doing effective work for the Negroes of
the South in awakening in them a desire for better ways of living and
higher ideals of conduct. Much remains to be done but that already
accomplished is an earnest of better work yet to be done.
The Negro public school teacher has been more than a mere
schoolkeeper. No class of educators in any race has done more, all
things considered. The colored teacher has been a herald of
civilization to the youth of his people. His superior culture and
character have acted as a powerful stimulus to the easily roused
imagination of the colored youth, and the black boy feels, in the
presence of the black "professah," to him the embodiment of learning,
that he too can become "something." At first he does not know what
that something is, but he determines to be "somebody" and to make a
place and a standing for himself in the world. In this way the colored
school teacher is leading his race "up from slavery;" that is from the
slavery of ignorance and superstition, of intellectual and moral
inertia, of aimlessness and shiftlessness, into the freedom of
intelligence, of energy, ambition and industry. Lincoln removed the
formal yoke of a legal bondage, but the colored teacher is helping his
race to get free a second time from a bondage just as galling--the
bondage of intellectual and moral blindness and of industrial
independence. Booker T. Washington is such a teacher--a teacher,
indeed, and the leader of a race. And what Mr. Washington, himself a
product of the missionary schools, is doing in a large way as the
teacher and leader of the entire Negro race in America, hundreds, yea,
thousands, of colored teachers in city and village, in the malarial
river bottoms and among the pine-clad hills, are doing in a local but
no less effective, though less comprehensive way. These colored men
and women, many of whom are people of genuine culture and character,
are giving their lives to the upbuilding of a race. And it is for them
a labor of love.
These teachers teach by example as well as by precept. Their homes are
models in neatness and refinement that are readily imitated by the
other colored people of the community. It is to the credit of the
colored teacher that he is, with rare exceptions, a model in his moral
conduct and home life, and sets a high standard for his race, which
they invariably--some of them--seek to follow. The colored teacher,
too, has always been conservative and has been the wise adviser of his
people. Himself dependent on the sentiment of the best white people of
the community, he has usually won the confidence and respect of the
white people, and they in turn have given him their moral support in
the work of improving the minds, morals, and habits of the Negro youth
of the community. In this way it is throughout the entire South--the
best white people of the community by maintaining public schools for
the Negro youth and by co-operation with the colored teacher, and
often by personal interest in the work of both teacher and pupil, are
actually aiding most effectively if not really directing the
educational development of the colored race.
It is also greatly to the credit of the colored teacher in the South
that he has not gotten above his race or tried to leave them, but has
remained at his post and in his place doing the duty Providence has
assigned and content to leave results to God and the future.
THIRD PAPER.
WHAT IS THE NEGRO TEACHER DOING IN THE MATTER OF UPLIFTING HIS RACE?
BY T. W. TALLEY.
[Illustration: Prof. T. W. Talley]
PROF. THOMAS WASHINGTON TALLEY.
Thomas Washington Talley is a native of Bedford County,
Tenn. His boyhood was spent upon his father's farm where he
imbibed a love for nature. Some of the experiments made by
him, as a child, with some of the lower animals, have proven
most valuable aids in answering scientific problems
encountered in later years.
In 1883 he entered the preparatory department of Fisk
University, and after three years of study was admitted to
college.
He began teaching in the public schools of his native state
at the age of twelve. By teaching during his summer
vacations, and by obtaining state scholarships through
competitive examinations, he secured the larger portion of
the means necessary for his support in college. He graduated
from the classical course of Fisk University in 1890,
receiving the degree of A. B. From 1890 to 1891 he was a
member of the Fisk University Jubilee Singers, who raised
funds for the building of the Fisk Theological Seminary. In
this company it was his duty aside from singing, to present
the needs of the school. This he did with much eloquence and
his appeals were always answered by liberal contributions.
In 1892 he received the degree A. M. from his alma mater for
special work done in Natural Philosophy, Latin and German.
On October 1, 1896, he matriculated in the Graduate
Department of Central Tennessee College (now Walden
University), having spent the two preceding summers in
resident work along the lines indicated by his courses of
study in the institution. He selected courses leading to the
degree of Doctor of Science.
He has been chiefly engaged in educational work and has held
the following positions: Instructor in Mathematics and
Music, Alcorn A. & M. College, Westside, Miss., two years;
Professor of Natural Sciences, five years, and
Vice-President two years in the State N. & I. College,
Tallahassee, Fla. He at present occupies the chair of
Natural Philosophy and General, Analytical and Industrial
Chemistry in the Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Ala.
He is a member of the American Ornithologists Union, the
Michigan Ornithological Club, a Vice-president of the
Florida Audubon Society, and a Fellow of the American Negro
Academy. He is considered an authority in Biology and
Chemistry.
As soon as the clouds of the Civil War had cleared from our country
and the Negro had become a free man, the question immediately
presented itself as to how he could be made worthy of citizenship and
capable of exercising the rights and privileges of free government.
Free government exists through intelligence and integrity in citizens.
The whole system of slavery in which the Negro had been schooled was
such as to leave him without either intelligence or integrity. It
rather taught him that deception was a better way to recognition than
decency; and that whatever supplied his wants, regardless of its
nature, was the means to be used. As the Negro stepped forth from the
darkness of bondage into the light of freedom, the eye of his mind
accustomed to the blackest and lowest was not ready to exercise the
function thus suddenly thrust upon it. It was blinded and needed
treatment that it might be so reconstructed as to guide and lead
aright in this new atmosphere to which it had suddenly gained
admission. The Negro came from slavery in want of training, and
training is requisite to citizenship.
A man, to be trained symmetrically, must be trained mentally, morally
and physically. Although this symmetrical training is much a result of
personal effort, the effort must be directed by an intelligent,
interested teaching. It is to such teaching that the Negro school
teacher has directed and is directing his efforts.
The first schools established distinctively for Negroes in our country
were supported and taught by philanthropic white people of the North.
At the date of the founding of these schools there were practically no
Negro teachers, but in these institutions, fostered by consecrated
white men and women, Negro boys and girls began to receive training
through which they developed into the first teachers of the race.
These schools, begun by philanthropy (although at first they did
primary work) have developed into the Negro colleges, normal schools
and industrial schools of the South. These schools of higher learning
are still manned largely by white men and women. Thus the work of the
Negro teacher is almost entirely limited to a few state colleges and
to the public schools of the Southern cities and of the country
districts. The especial point of excellence which characterizes the
work of the Negro teacher is its interestedness. Whatever may be the
sentiment in other sections, in the South--the real home of the
Negro--every Negro's standing is gauged by the standing of the whole
race in case of those who are most kindly disposed to him, while those
who are illy disposed judge all by the lowest of the race. There is
little or no recognition of individual merit except in so far as it
meets the approval of his Southern white neighbor. Such being the
case, the Negro teacher, realizing that their own elevation comes only
through and in so far as the whole race is elevated, have a double
stimulus for zealously doing their best work; first their love for the
race which naturally springs up between those of the same blood and of
the same descent, and second a selfish reason--their personal
elevation, which only comes through the elevation of the whole race.
Such interested teaching is not without its effect. Illiteracy is
disappearing from day to day. A consultation of the latest census
reports, and a contrasting of them with those previously taken, will
show that the Negro has wiped out some of his illiteracy and is
increasing in wealth, intelligence, etc.--yes, in all that which will
finally force his recognition as a full-fledged American citizen
without any "ifs," except that he be as any other man in possessions,
in mind, and in character.
The Negro teachers are more and more studying the needs of their race
and are shaping their work to meet the demands of the times. The Negro
race formerly sang, and still sings, with much fervor of spirit: "You
may have all this world; Give me Jesus." In the days of its ignorance,
the Negro race observed this beautiful song in letter, but not in
spirit. The Negro teachers have caught the spirit and are beginning
to spread it among the ignorant masses. These teachers go into the
Sunday schools and there teach the race to keep the spirit, "You may
have all this world; Give me Jesus." They teach them that Christ is
far above and is to be preferred to the whole world, but they also
teach them that which is equally good, and that is, getting a hold on
a portion of the goods of this world is a splendid preparation for
getting a hold upon the things which lead up to heaven. In other
words, the Negro teachers have become the great preachers of wealth
getting, not because they would have the race carnally-minded, but
because they know that no race of paupers can ever amount to anything
or enjoy the full rights of citizens.
To the end of replenishing the empty treasury of the race the Negro
teachers are encouraging their fellows to gain a skillful use of the
hand. Many of them are enthusiastic to the extent that they would see
every Negro school in the land teaching skill in the trades and in the
tilling of soil. In this movement for the education of the hand the
Negro teacher is meeting with encouragement on all sides. Such an
education cannot fail to work great benefit for the race, and help to
give it standing. Given an intelligent Negro mass, masters of the
trades and of science of agriculture, there need be no fear for the
Negro's future. The only mistake which it seems that the Negro
teachers may possibly make at this time is, that having pictured in
their minds the benefit of having a mass skilled in industry, and
noting the present popularity of industrial training, they may lose
sight of the fact that the skilled hand must be backed by and rest
upon a mind trained to logical thinking. Industrial training does much
indeed toward mental training, but by no means does it, nor can it, do
all. There is quite a tendency at present aside from industrial
training to limit the mental training of the race to the "3 r's,"
viz., reading, writing and arithmetic. The highest industrial
attainment is not possible with such a limitation. The making, the
repairing and the manipulation of machinery calls for a knowledge of
natural philosophy and higher mathematics. The masterly tilling of the
soil demands one learned in chemistry and botany--botany, which we
know is not even a stranger to Latin. So we might go through every
industry and point out that its perfection is conditioned on the
highest mental training. Let the Negro teacher, while loving
industrial training for his race, not learn to despise that which
appears on the surface to be merely a mental gymnastic, but which,
when examined more carefully, proves to be that only which furnishes
a condition for the best and the highest even in that which he may
most love.
Since social conditions in the South are such as to necessitate a
system of separate schools for whites and Negroes, and since this
necessitates the establishment of a large number of extra schools, it
inevitably results in the shortening of school terms and the cutting
down of the salaries of teachers. I have found some Negro country
schools in Alabama paying the teachers from twelve to fifteen dollars
per month, and the length of the school term was only four months. In
these cases I did not find the teachers worrying over the small
salary, but they were working to have the Negro patrons, from their
own scanty purses, lengthen the school term. In not a few cases the
Negro teachers observed were thus lengthening out the school term from
one to two months every year.
The Negro teacher is also here and there founding institutions of
higher learning. He is getting a hold on the churches, the state,
benevolent societies, and individuals, and is causing them to
contribute money and goods to educational centers which are to prove
most potent levers in lifting the race to a higher level.
The fact that at present a large number of the states of the Union are
basing suffrage upon an educational qualification enhances the value
of the literary work to be done by the Negro teacher. In some states
in the South the educational qualification is avowedly adopted by the
whites to eliminate the Negro from the body politic. The Negro
teachers are not sleeping over the interests of their race in this
matter. They are working quietly, but earnestly. Most of them have the
resolution which I heard expressed during the past summer by a Negro
country school teacher, viz.: "I intend that all my pupils shall learn
to read, write, and have the qualifications for voting if nothing
more."
This, then, is what the Negro teacher is doing in the matter of
uplifting his race: he is giving to it literary training, teaching it
to skillfully use the hand, and encouraging it to accumulate property.
He is lengthening school terms and founding institutions of learning.
He is entering into the inner life of his people; and is implanting
ideas and ideals there which will make them strong and respected by
all the races of mankind.
FOURTH PAPER.
WHAT IS THE NEGRO TEACHER DOING IN THE MATTER OF UPLIFTING HIS RACE?
BY PROF. H. L. WALKER.
[Illustration: Prof. H. L. Walker]
PROF. H. L. WALKER, A. B.
Prof. H. L. Walker was born near the city of Augusta, Ga.,
in the year of 1859. His parents, Wesley and Adline Walker,
were the property of slave owners to whom they rendered
allegiance until 1864 and 1865, when Sherman took his
triumphal march through Georgia and the Carolinas. At the
fall of the Confederacy young Henry went with his parents to
Wilmington, N. C., where they spent about a year, during
which time young Henry for the first time saw the inside of
a school, taught by those pioneering teachers from the
North. At the close of this year the family left Wilmington
and went to Augusta, Ga., which city has been the scene of
our subject's boyhood and the basis of his literary career.
The public schools of Augusta were completed by 1874 and
upon the recommendation of all of his teachers young
"Henry," as he was familiarly called, was matriculated at
the Atlanta University, one of the most noted of Negro
colleges in the South. In this institution he studied for
eight years, coming out in 1882 with the class honor and the
degree of A. B. His parents died during his early boyhood,
even before he had entered the Atlanta University, so that
in his efforts to complete his collegiate career he had to
rely largely upon his own resources, and the very kind
assistance of his foster parents, and other friends whose
protege he was.
Prepared for his life work, he left school in June, 1882,
and was immediately elected principal of the Mitchell Street
Graded School, Atlanta, Ga., his examination papers being
the best offered for this position. In the following
month--July--he was also elected President of the Georgia
State Teachers' Association for Colored Teachers, of which
body more will be said later. As a student at College our
subject was studious, popular with professors and students,
and acquired that assiduity and strict adherence to business
that has since characterized all his subsequent life. In the
profession of teaching he continued to rise higher and
higher each year, holding positions of trust and honor under
each of the State's superintendents of education down to the
present incumbent. For eighteen years he has held sway in
the public school of the city of Augusta, during which time
Mr. Walker has officered the Second Ward Grammar School, the
famous Ware High School and at present the First Ward High
School, which position he still fills with dignity and
credit to himself and race. As Peabody expert, Mr. Walker,
by appointment of the successive State superintendents of
education, has occupied the lecture platform in all parts of
the State, with the best lecturers, white and Colored, that
money could command, and they have all cheerfully conceded
his ripe ability to master and handle successfully such
subjects as have been assigned him from year to year. As a
practical school man and well-informed scholar, Mr. Walker
is always at home. As a Peabody lecturer he has often been
pronounced one of the best in the State. Every Summer his
services are in demand in various parts of the State. For
ten years Mr. Walker was the honored President of the
Georgia State Teachers' Association, Colored, and no man has
since filled that honored chair whose administration has in
any way rivaled the success of Mr. Walker. During his ten
years the association was built up as it has never been
since. The intelligence of the State--white and
Colored--came together in these annual meetings and made
this gathering of educators and leaders the most
representative body in the State.
Mr. Walker is easy of address and modest in all things,
never contending for honors. Several years ago, at its
annual exercises, his alma mater conferred upon him the
degree of A. M. as a deserved tribute and recognition of the
literary work he has accomplished. As a polished orator Mr.
Walker has been heard with profit and delight in all parts
of the State. Some of his addresses before the State
Teachers' Association are considered real gems of
literature.
After a lapse of some thirty-eight years, or a little better than a
generation, we are asking the question, "What is the Negro Teacher
doing in the matter of uplifting his race?" In so brief a period of
years it would seem to savor of arrogance to ask a question so
seemingly fraught with significance, so inopportune and, too, about a
people so recently freed from bondage that they have not yet had the
time to grow a generation of teachers. It took England more than a
generation to grow an Arnold at Rugby. It took France more than
several generations to produce a Guizot, and Pestalozzi, whose
reputation as a teacher widens with the universe, is the product of
years of experimental accumulations of Swiss ingenuity. And yet it may
be pardonable arrogance on our part to say that at this first
milestone in our educational career we pause here long enough to take
an inventory of what the Negro teacher has done and is still doing in
the matter of uplifting his people. In the pioneering or experimental
period of Negro education there were no Negro teachers, but it is safe
to say that as early as 1875 a few Negroes, daring to rush in where
angels would fear to tread, began the profession of school teaching.
It is from this date that we may safely begin to reckon the services
of the Negro teachers as a class. I make bold to lay down the
proposition that wherever God has ordained intellect that intellect is
capable of the highest development; for mental ability is a divine
endowment. The intellect may be the possession of an Indian, a
Mongolian, an Arab, a Negro, a Hindoo or a Caucasian. Textures may
differ, but all mental organisms are the same in color, fiber, and
mode of operation and development. It must then follow that the proper
training of the intellect must produce the same results upon all races
when properly applied. That training which has made the Mongolian, or
the German, or the Caucasian race great and powerful will of
necessity, under similar conditions, produce like results in the Negro
race. Let us now see what the facts show. It is largely through the
instrumentality of our schools that Negroes have been taught to place
a higher and a proper valuation upon their citizenship, and the
importance of the ballot when it is wielded for the maintenance and
perpetuation of good government. As a class of citizens Negroes are
peaceable and law-abiding, and must not be reckoned with the migratory
hordes of anarchists, nihilists, and the wreckers of law and order
that infest our Eastern and Western shores. In our schools, too,
Negroes have learned that it is theirs to petition respectfully for
the enjoyment of their rights, and the redress of grievances so often
unjustly imposed upon them. In the last two decades the influence of
the schools, colleges and industrial institutions and seminaries of
all kinds has wrought wonderful changes in the home life of the Negro
race. Purer homes now abound; intemperance is giving way to sobriety
and economy; love and order have driven out hate and confusion; the
golden rule and the Bible are taken as the measurement of conduct;
and, where-ever Negro communities are found, cozy little cottages, and
often palatial homes with thoughtful and convenient appointments, have
taken the place of the very many little one-room huts in which all the
whole range of domestic life was wont to be performed. In these new
homes a better and more intelligent class of children is being reared
to fit in the scheme of our advancing civilization. These are very
hopeful signs of a better generation and a brighter day for the
American Negro.
Our Negro teachers and leaders have instilled into the race a desire
for the accumulation of property and wealth, and the keeping of bank
accounts. "Put money in thy purse," "Put money in thy purse." This
advice from Shakespeare is ripening in the minds of all thoughtful
Negroes, and the results are being universally manifested. In the
United States the valuation of Negro property runs far into the
millions. In the state of Georgia alone Negroes are paying taxes on
$15,629,811 worth of property; of this amount $1,000,000 represents
the increase of a single year--1900 to 1901.
In the domain of literature and the varied professions the education
of the Negro has furnished us as lawyers, Hon. D. Augustus Straker,
Detroit, Michigan; Hon. R. B. Elliott, late of Columbia, South
Carolina; Hon. Jno. R. Lynch, Washington, D. C., paymaster United
States Army; Hon. J. W. Lyons, Augusta, Georgia, register Treasury,
Washington, D. C.; Hon. H. M. Porter, Augusta, Georgia, lawyer at the
bar.
As statesmen Negro education has produced Hon. Frederick Douglass,
"The old man eloquent," late of Washington, D. C.; Hon. B. C. Bruce,
ex-registrar Treasury, late of Washington, D. C.; Hon. Geo. W. Murray,
ex-member Congress, Columbia, D. C.; Hon. Geo. H. White, ex-member
Congress, North Carolina.
As poets, Mrs. Frances E. N. Harper and Paul Lawrence Dunbar are
samples of a splendid class.
As musicians it might suffice to say that Blind Tom, Black Patti and
Madam Selika are only samples of a large class.
Negro education has furnished us pulpits better filled with
intelligent men, devout and pious; and with modern churches that are
in harmony with the Christian demands of the age. In the Ecumenical
Conference recently held in London, the Negro clergy represented there
were from all parts of the civilized world, and the high tribute paid
to their ability and ecclesiastical character was the comment of all
the English papers. Our bishops and eminent pulpit divines are largely
young men, the product of our Negro schools. Dr. C. T. Walker, now of
the Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, New York, and the foremost pulpit
orator in all the Baptist ranks, perhaps, is a native of Georgia soil,
and a product of our Georgia schools. But I must not prolong this
account with a long list of bishops, D. D's., LL. D's., M. D's.,
diplomats, artists, painters, mechanics, inventors, and successful
business men, who are the product of Negro education, but before
closing this humble effort it is but proper that we should make
mention of some of the men who are universally regarded as masters in
the profession of teaching, and who in themselves are great
benefactors of the Negro race. The following educators have wrought
much in the matter of elevating their race in all the essentials of
right-living. The most conspicuous figure just now in the firmament of
Negro educators is President Booker T. Washington, who has at his
command both the hand and the heart of the American people. The
far-reaching influences of his work at Tuskegee, Alabama, where,
perhaps, more than 1,300 Negro youths are taught all the useful and
honorable methods of labor, are too well understood to merit further
comment here. President J. H. Lewis, president of Wilberforce
University, Ohio, has and is still doing a work that will tell on ages
and tell for God in the matter of developing Negro ability along the
lines of higher intellectual manhood. Prof. R. R. Wright, president of
the State Industrial College, Savannah, Georgia, is a pioneer in the
work of uplifting the Negro youth, and his excellent work recently
begun at the state college is already teeming with fruit. Miss Lucy C.
Laney is a woman of rare and well-developed intellectual attainments.
The Haines Normal and Industrial School, with all of its influence for
good, will ever be an imperishable monument to her memory. Her
reputation as a woman of ability and culture is universal. Prof. W.
H. Council, of Alabama, is hardly second to President B. T. Washington
in his noble work in Alabama of uplifting Negro youth.
In professors, W. S. Scarborough, who holds the chair of Latin and
Greek in Wilberforce University, Ohio; Prof. W. H. Crogman, chair of
Latin and Greek, Clark University, Atlanta, Georgia; Prof. Kelly
Miller, chair of mathematics, Howard University, Washington, D. C.;
Prof. J. W. Gilbert, chair of Latin and Greek, Paine College, Augusta,
Georgia; and Prof. W. E. B. DuBois, chair of science and economics,
Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia, we have the ripest examples of
high-class scholarship. These men, steeped in the love and sciences of
all ages and people, have won respect and recognition in all the
institutions, and among all educators of world-wide reputation, both
European and American. They are only samples of a large class of
educated Negroes who have given a very high literary tone to Negro
intelligence. In an account like this, which necessarily must be
brief, it must not be expected that we could elaborate into details
about any one of the features above mentioned. In mentioning them thus
briefly it is only our purpose to call attention to the great work now
being accomplished by the Negro teachers.
In closing these brief lines it might be well to consider several
charges made against the educated Negro. It is charged that education
teaches Negroes how to commit crime, etc. Because some educated
Negroes commit crime and do wrong that is no more of an argument
against the education of the Negro race than it would be an argument
against the education of the Caucasian race, because some educated
white men commit crime and do wrong. If a man has indigestion from
eating the wrong kind of food that ought not to be taken as an
argument against eating. Educated Negroes as a class are among our
best American citizens.
Again, there are still some "back numbers" belonging to the old school
of thought who still charge a lack of ability on the part of Negro
scholars to absorb and assimilate the same amount of intelligence that
the Caucasian race does.
In our humble school career in the state of Georgia we have sat on the
same seat with the boys and girls of the Caucasian race, and, often,
in the recitation room, under the same professor in the higher
classics and sciences, we have shared the same book with them, and yet
at the time of reckoning term standing we have seen those white
professors give the members of these mixed classes their class rating
in their various subjects, and the average percentage of Caucasian and
Negro pupils in all these subjects would be a matter of significant
comment.
In many instances like these, both in the North and South, the ability
of our Negro scholars is so forcibly demonstrated; and what the Negro
teachers may yet do for their race and for civilization will be left
as a rich inheritance for the enjoyment of an advancing civilization.
Of all teachers it may be said that he who shapes a soul and fits it
for an eternal habitation in the blissful Beyond has erected for
himself a monument that eclipses in grandeur and architectural beauty
all the conceptions of a Solomon, though Solomon was the wisest of
men.
TOPIC XXIII.
IS THE NEGRO NEWSPAPER AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE ELEVATION OF THE
NEGRO?
BY DR. D. W. ONLEY.
[Illustration: Dr. D. W. Onley]
DR. D. WATSON ONLEY.
Dr. D. Watson Onley, the eldest child of John E. and Mary J.
R. Onley (nee Wheele), was born in Newark, N. J. When but
two years old his parents moved to Brooklyn, N. Y. He was
early taught to read and write by his mother, afterward he
was sent to the Raymond Street public school, Prof. Chas. A.
Dorsey, principal. Here he showed a capable mind, by his
easy mastery of all the subjects assigned him, and by his
standing among his fellows.
At the age of thirteen, by force of circumstances, his
progress in school was checked, his parents having changed
residence, going to Florida, transferred him to entirely new
scenes, environments and conditions. After attending school
in Jacksonville, Fla., for three years, he entered the
college preparatory course of Atlanta University.
In 1876, returning North, he entered and took a collegiate
course in Lincoln University, after which he took two years'
technical course in Boston, Mass.
In 1880 he married an accomplished young lady of one of the
first families of Charleston, S. C., Miss Ella L. Drayton.
Two charming and accomplished daughters of this happy union
are Charlotte E. and Mary M., the elder one a graduate of
the Normal school at Washington, D. C., and a teacher in its
public school. The younger daughter is at present a pupil in
Normal School.
In 1885 he returned to Jacksonville, Fla., began business as
architect and builder. After three years of prosperous
business, he launched upon the world the first steam saw and
planing mill, owned and operated entirely by colored men to
manufacture lumber in all its forms for house building. The
plant grew rapidly, increasing in facilities and continued
prosperous until by the hand of an incendiary it was swept
by fire. The State Normal and Industrial College of the
State needing a practical and efficient man to take charge
of their technical department, solicited his services, where
he taught all branches of architectural and mechanical
drawing, manual training, uses and care of wood-working
machinery and steam engine.
Not being thoroughly satisfied with his surrounding
conditions, he struck out for a new line of work, that of
dentistry, which, after three years of hard study, struggle
and sacrifice, with the cares and responsibilities of a
family upon him all the while, he finished at Howard
University, dental department, and immediately opened an
office in Washington, D. C. where he enjoys a lucrative
practice. His life has been a busy one, and his success only
represents what many have accomplished who have on hand a
good stock of push.
In answer to this question I would say that the press next to the
school has done more for the intellectual advancement, hence,
elevation, of the Negro, than anything else. When I say press, I mean
specifically the Negro press, which is an integral part of the
American press of the country. It is his positive mouthpiece,
effective when other audiences are denied him. Before Negro
newspapers, the Negro had nothing to set forth his claims and true
status. The race consequently speaks through the press to plead its
cause.
Reviewing the history and growth of the Negro press of this country
since it was launched by John B. Russwurm in New York City, March 30,
1827, to the present, comparing style of form, character of matter,
increase of circulation, widespread and universal interest, the great
host of contemporaries that have joined in making a vast throng of
channels through which we can advocate our cause without fear of
having it misrepresented or smoothed over, but bringing forth our
opinions to truly enlighten the world. The general support given
speaks volumes for the good it has done in elevating the Negro.
In conducting the Negro newspaper of to-day as compared with fifteen
years ago there is a marked change. The success then in maintaining
and increasing the circulation depended largely in appealing to the
vanities of the subscribers in parading their name in print, calling
attention to many things of no consequence to the public, less to
themselves; but to-day in a very large degree that is changed; it has
become distasteful, which is a very healthful sign along the lines of
improvement of taste.
While it is true the majority of Negroes care little but for local
news, doings of their own race, care but little for the news of the
great wide world, it must be conceded a step far in the right
direction if they can be interested at all. The Negro press, like all
others, had to begin at the bottom and grow, not patterned
particularly after any other paper, but fashioned to suit the tastes,
conditions and interests of its customers. It is the privilege of the
editor, not only to shape public opinion, pointing out the policy that
alone will conserve to our best and lasting interest, but to develop
the tastes, and so elevate the race which he serves. Through the press
the editor sees that the interests, as far as our freedom and rights
are concerned, are in no wise abridged, circumscribed or destroyed. In
a large measure this has been one of the great benefits to the race;
through the medium of the press we have been awakened to our
condition, and our rights, and we jealously guard and clamor for their
enjoyment and recognition. Although dark clouds of prejudice and
lawlessness obscure our pathway, yet we are surely though slowly
moving on in the pathway already blazed before us.
In the hands of the Negro, the press has been an educator to the
whites as well as to the Negro, reflecting his manhood and capacity;
this, too, has elevated the Negro's appreciation of manhood and
appreciable standing among men.
Before Negro newspapers we were unknown in history, art and science.
Like the Negro exhibits at all the great fairs, they have served to
open the eyes of the blind, and to remove an ignorant prejudice which
was against us.
To-day we find the leading journals of this country clipping and
editorially commenting upon topics discussed and articles appearing
originally in Negro newspapers, and more than this, find the Negro
newspapers for sale on the principal stands where newspapers are to be
had, indicating the demand. In this city it would be hard not to find
the "Colored American" and "Washington Bee" at the newsdealer's. "Yes,
we keep them," I have heard to the query about the above papers; "they
are good sellers." Now what is true in this city is no doubt true in
other places where the local papers have secured recognition from
their standing and worth.
The Negro newspaper has taken such a stand that its columns are read
by white patrons, many of whom take pride and interest in noting the
advancement of their brother in black.
Many newspapers published by whites have taken advantage of this
condition, and the Negro's interest in the press, and have set aside
columns devoted to his individual interest; have procured competent
Negro reporters to gather all facts and doings of the race of special
interest to it, and are published daily.
This has increased the circulation by thousands of new subscribers who
eagerly seek to know just what is going on among them. The causes of
non-support of the Negro press is no argument that the press has not
been elevating, nor any argument against its possibilities. This is
largely a condition due to poverty, illiteracy and inferiority of
paper, but time will bring about a change. In the hands of the Negro
the press has been a success. Failure in management and poor financial
profit have been to one and all engaged in the pursuit, yet the net
result shows success, not failure; and its success demonstrates the
possibilities of the race, notwithstanding the lack of encouragement.
SECOND PAPER.
IS THE NEGRO NEWSPAPER AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE ELEVATION OF THE
NEGRO?
BY WALTER N. WALLACE.
[Illustration: Walter N. Wallace.]
WALTER N. WALLACE.
Walter N. Wallace, the organizer of the Colored Co-operative
Publishing Company, of Boston, Mass., publishers of the
"Colored American Magazine" and many other race
publications, was born at Boydton, Mecklenburg County, Va.,
in 1874.
His mother was Nannie J. Ellerson, who has the distinction
of being one of the first graduates of the Hampton Normal
School. Mr. Wallace is the oldest grandchild of that
institution. His father Merritt Wallace was also a student
of Hampton, and after leaving that school he settled in
Boydton, in educational work, where he became one of the
most prominent and energetic citizens of his community. He
was at one time Deputy Treasurer and Commissioner of Revenue
for the county.
At nine years of age Mr. W. Wallace was sent to school in
Richmond, where he completed the grammar course, then
spending two years preliminary training at the High, before
entering the State College (Virginia Normal and Collegiate
Institution, at Petersburg), where he spent another two
years. While at this college he was prominent in athletics
and a member of the institute band.
Later, determining upon the study of medicine, he entered
the Leonard Medical College, where he spent two years in
theory, then turning his face northwards he came to Boston
in 1896, where he secured a position as prescription clerk
in a prominent drug store, there becoming more practically
acquainted with medicines.
In May, 1901, he launched his pet scheme, the "Colored
American Magazine," and under his editorial care there is
now no question of its future, as it has passed far beyond
the experimental stage, and is now an assurity.
The confidence which has been displayed by him and his
associates in the belief "that a man is what he makes
himself," is wonderful, for they have, through strenuous
effort, brought the magazine up to an actual circulation of
over twenty thousand copies per month, with a steady
increase each month, besides publishing many Race books,
which are the equal of any in merit and mechanical makeup.
Personally, Mr. Wallace is of a kind and modest disposition
and hardly realizes that he has accomplished within such a
short while a thorough new departure in Negro journalism. If
ever persuaded to forget for a moment, and be drawn from his
business cares, you will find him a pleasant entertainer,
both in music and conversation, for beneath his seeming
austere countenance there lies an urbane streak of humor,
piquant with wit and pleasant cynicisms, much to be enjoyed.
In its entirety, yes. The power of the press is indisputable. To the
Negro youth of the land it should be put, as a beneficent educator,
next to our schools. In its pages they should be able to read the good
being accomplished by our prominent race-men in this glorious fight
now on; this will cultivate a desire to emulate them. They will read
of the bad being daily done and will learn to abhor such dastardly
actions. With such a mission to perform our newspapers should contain
the essence of truth and good and sensible instructions; for its power
of assimilating bad influences is equal to the good which would
accrue.
The Negro journal is an important factor, because it is a source
through which the younger generation should and must become acquainted
with the good accomplished by members of the race, with the possible
exception of a favored few whom the ordinary press seems to think is
all that is worth speaking of. Important because the rank and file is
utterly ignored and positively unnoticed by the American white press
(except as an example of the demonstrative inability to be an
intelligent and thrifty citizen), and from which they pick from day to
day the lowest as a type of Negro capabilities.
In order to fully explain the position taken in this matter we will be
compelled to deviate from the main question.
To rightly diagnose the cause, for the seemingly apathetic manner in
which the race appreciates its journals we must place the blame upon
the right parties.
A few hundred dollars, a set of type and a press do not make a
newspaper. A man with an education does not always make an editor.
Many of our editors grow discouraged over their failure to arouse a
support to their journals, blaming the race for non-appreciation, when
the fault lies with themselves. Do they give their readers news? If a
local sheet, they deal in stale generalities. If a general sheet, they
confine themselves to locals of no general interest.
Let our journals arise, procure competent help, give the news,
regardless of class, as the newspaper is for the masses. Make a
business of the paper, run it on strict business plan, have good
printing, be careful with proofs, avoid all mistakes as nearly as
possible; study their patrons' tastes and cater to them, for it is not
dealing fairly to require the masses to purchase for race pride when
they should receive the worth of their money.
Petty animosities should not fill their pages with vituperation, which
is shocking to refined sensibilities; neither should the reading
public be forced to search for original matter with a microscope. He
should ever be on the alert to champion the Negro's cause and never
wholly sink his originality within the narrow confines of party
bounds. Stand up for truth, and censure wherein, in his wide judgment,
he feels it necessary so to do. Never let his paper travel in a rut,
plenty of room for expenditure of gray matter.
We have many Negro journals which should be a source of pride to the
race at large, others, we are sorry to say, do not deserve support and
should make room for those which do.
A press association should be formed and the happenings sent from one
to the other and used in brief by out-of-town journals and be fully
detailed by local journals. More unity is needed and is a thing to be
encouraged and maintained. Our journals depend too much upon chance
MSS. than upon active reporters for their news.
Much could be said of the many sacrifices and labors of many of our
editors, but we believe that the most good can be accomplished by
fewer and better newspapers, than with "quantity without quality."
In our article we place great stress upon truth; we believe the goal
for which all the Negro journals are laboring is to find "the means
for the best good of the race," and way waste energy in useless
toil?
THIRD PAPER.
IS THE NEGRO NEWSPAPER AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE ELEVATION OF THE
NEGRO?
BY RICHARD W. THOMPSON.
[Illustration: Richard W. Thompson]
RICHARD W. THOMPSON.
Richard W. Thompson stands in the front rank of those who
are making history for the Negro race in this century. A
native of Kentucky, he has spent most of his life in Indiana
and was educated in the common and high schools of
Indianapolis. His career of thirty-five years is quite an
interesting one, abounding in well-directed efforts that
have done much to give character and dignity to the
Afro-American youth of the land. At an early age he evinced
a remarkable aptitude for public affairs, and at school
showed proficiency of the highest order in such studies as
political economy, civil government, history, literature. He
was especially happy in the art of English composition, his
papers on current problems attracting wide attention in his
home community. Losing his father when very young, he was
largely dependent upon his own exertions for a livelihood
and throughout his school days worked at a variety of
pursuits.
In 1879 he became associated with Messrs Bagby & Co., in the
publication of _The Indianapolis Leader_, the first
journalistic venture launched in the Hoosier State, and
later on mastered the trade of printing. Taking as naturally
to newspaper work as "a duck to water," he made himself an
indispensable quantity on the _Leader_ staff and at
seventeen, was city editor. At the same time in connection
with his school duties, he kept books for Dr. F. M. Ferree,
secretary of the Marion County Board of Health. When _The
Indianapolis World_ was launched in 1883, Mr. Thompson took
charge of the city department and at different times during
the palmy days of that sheet, held nearly every position on
it from work at the case to foreman of the mechanical
department and managing editor. He was the first managing
editor of _The Indianapolis Freeman_, in which position he
was a marked success. Later, as editor of the _Washington
Colored American_, he won national fame as an accomplished
journalist, a graceful, versatile and forcible writer and a
clear and courageous thinker upon all questions that affect
the Negro's social, political and industrial development. He
leads rather than follows popular sentiment, and at no time
while the editorial tripod was in his hands did he take a
stand upon any issue that failed to meet the hearty
endorsement of the race and which was not accepted as the
expression of the best thought and principle of our people.
In argument his style is logical and conservative. As a
spicy paragrapher, originator of attractive news features,
and as a keen observer of popular tastes, he has few equals
and no superiors in the army of Afro-American journalists.
He has done special work for prominent papers of both races,
and furnished much "copy" for private individuals, always
giving complete satisfaction.
Mr. Thompson has been fortunate in the matter of official
recognition. At the age of fifteen he served as page in the
Indiana Legislature, being the first colored boy so
appointed. After attaining his majority he became a clerk in
the Marion County Auditor's office, and in 1888 he led a
class of seventy-five in a civil service examination,
earning an appointment as letter carrier. He came to
Washington in 1894 and was appointed clerk in the counting
division of the Government Printing Office, enjoying the
distinction of being the first colored man to be assigned to
a clerical position in that department. Mr. Thompson is now
connected with the United States Census Bureau and is
regarded as a faithful and efficient assistant.
Busy as Mr. Thompson must necessarily be, he has time to aid
in promoting race movements and organizations, being an
active spirit in the National Afro-American Council, the Pen
and Pencil Club, and St. Luke's P. E. Church. He is now
serving his third term as President of the Second Baptist
Lyceum, a cosmopolitan debating forum that has won a
national reputation.
The question is both pertinent and timely. In the past two decades the
necessity for the preacher, the teacher, the lawyer, and the doctor
has not been open to dispute. Every father and mother, no matter what
their social standing or their worldly means, have striven honestly,
faithfully and persistently to enroll their favorite boy in the ranks
of one or the other of these callings, as if they were the only open
highways toward distinction, or the goal denominated "success."
In contemplating the professions which make for racial grandeur,
racial opportunities, and protection from assault, many of us forget
the importance of the Negro _press_ as a factor in the elevation of
the masses. It is not too much to say, in this connection, that of the
primary levers to which the race must look for support, none
contribute more toward endurance, permanency, and virility than the
press. We have the pulpit, the schoolhouse, the field of politics, and
the arena of business. Each has its bearing in the development of a
larger life and a more perfect manhood for the Afro-American; but,
conceding all due respect to the noble men and women who stand in the
vanguard of each of these missions, no one of them is more potent or
far reaching in its effect than the press. From the pulpit comes the
precepts that direct moral and religious thought; the schoolhouse
stands for a broader intellectual culture; the field of politics gives
us our practical experience in the science of government, affording us
an opportunity for actual participation in the shaping of legislation
and in giving vitality to public policies. The press, however,
occupies a most unique position with reference to all of them. It is
the fulcrum upon which all these activities must depend for useful
service. The press is the concentrated voice of the masses; the
mouthpiece of the age; the universal censor--directed by popular
opinion--from whose verdict there is no appeal. The press is the
medium through which the great work of the church is disseminated over
land and sea, and gives to the world the sweetening influence that the
spoken word offers only to a single parish. It magnifies the labors of
educational leaders and is itself an indispensable adjunct to the
growth of intelligence. In the political field the press has long been
recognized as an institution more powerful than any individual, and
from the post of messenger or handmaiden of the people--a mere
purveyor of current happenings--it has come to be the master mind in
the economy of nations. To the business world it is a "guide,
counselor and friend," and correctly analyzes the ingredients that
bring material prosperity to the civic organization, of which all of
us are a part. That distinguished autocrat of autocrats, Napoleon,
once exclaimed, with a bitterness born of impending destruction:
"Hostile newspapers are more to be feared than bayonets." And why not?
It holds in its grasp the power of life and death, success and
failure, happiness and misery.
These facts amply justify the assertion that the Negro newspaper is an
all-important factor in the elevation of the race. Caucasian journals,
while general in their news features, too often lack breadth in their
opinion department, when the race question is a burning issue, just as
religious denominations, the trades and political parties require
"class" papers for the exploitation of their particular lines of
thought, the Negro has found that only through his own "class organ"
can he obtain a sturdy defense of his character, the record of his
laudable achievements, and the advocacy of his rights as a man and a
citizen. So the Negro journal came, and it is here to stay. The Negro
journal had its origin in the direst necessity, and that necessity was
never more apparent than at the opening of the twentieth century when
the Declaration of Independence seems not broad enough to include the
colored American, when the Constitution of the United States is
perverted from the sacred intent of its framers and the spirit of
disfranchisement is rampant throughout the land.
This demand for a Negro journal was first met between 1827 and 1834 by
unpretentious sheets in and about New York City. But it was not until
1847 that race journalism became a positive factor, when that intrepid
spirit, Frederick Douglass, launched "The North Star." This great man
built up a circulation upon two continents and wielded an influence
not exceeded by any subsequent race venture. That paper blazed a wide
path, and in its path followed enterprise after enterprise, developing
the sentiment for liberty and keeping in touch with the newer
requirements of the hour. No reliable census of the many race journals
has been kept. They have sprung from every state and section, but
their span of life in most cases has been so brief and sporadic that
only rough estimates have been attempted. To-day, perhaps, three
hundred are in existence, a few taking high rank in literary
quality--others struggling desperately for maintenance. The majority
are printed at a positive loss, as regards dollars and cents. It is
doubtful if any of the survivors are supported exclusively from
revenues derived from subscriptions and advertising. It is a stinging
indictment of our much-lauded "race pride" that the greater proportion
of our Negro journalists are compelled to depend for a living upon
teaching, preaching, law, medicine, office-holding, or upon some
outside business investment. In character and make-up, these papers
are as widely varied as the localities and environments from which
they spring. Many are crude specimens of the "art preservative,"
dealing heavily in "boiler plate"--to use a professional term--and
very lightly in original matter. A few have taken steps out of the
beaten path and are giving striking evidence of what the resourceful
and energetic Negro journalist could do under circumstances more
encouraging. Our editors are, for the most part, men of strong
personality, with standing and influence in their respective
"bailiwicks." Without notable exception they speak for manhood, for
race elevation, and for material development in every avenue of
industry.
How many of us have paused and candidly considered just what Negro
journalism is doing for the uplift of the masses? Notwithstanding the
hard fact that the editorial work of many writers is done late at
night, after protracted hours of labor in other fields; and
notwithstanding that where a journalist is able to give his entire
time to the business, he is often sole solicitor, clerk, compositor,
pressman, collector, office boy, and editorial staff combined--despite
all these disadvantages, the beneficent effect of the Negro press is
felt all over the land. The dozens of able men and women who are
engaged in this noble work, most of them doing so at a tremendous
sacrifice, are true patriots, bearing burdens from which the timid
shrink, leading cheerily where none but the brave dare follow,
contending with malicious opposers, every inch of ground, this sturdy
band struggles on year after year, hoping patiently for the "joy that
cometh in the morning." Through their efforts Negro writers have been
given a fair hearing, and, while the Caucasian journal is giving space
to the police court episodes of our lower orders, the alert Negro
sentinel finds in the church, the schoolroom, the inventor's studio,
the author's desk, and in honorable political or social station, a
most fertile field for his operations. Negro newspapers have aroused
in us the commercial and industrial spirit, and are giving employment
to hundreds of young colored men and women as bookkeepers,
stenographers and canvassers. They are lending practical aid in
solving the race's labor problem by yearly instructing and providing
employment to printers, book-binders, pressmen and other artisans.
They are building up a market for Negro labor, and neutralizing to a
great extent the baleful influence of the trades unions' hostility.
The Negro editor has increased the self-respect of the race by
collating and publishing the creditable achievements of our people,
furnishing a periodical compendium of history and placing the Negro in
his most favorable light before the critics of the world. The truly
representative Negro journal reflects the sober judgment of the race
upon topics of general interest. It largely fixes our status as
thinkers and philosophers of the times. The rights of no people can be
ruthlessly invaded whose press is fearless, pure, upright, and
patriotic. No people can forever be denounced as ignorant, vicious,
and shiftless who support a press that is intelligent, moral, and
thrifty.
Let it be remembered here, however, that the picture has its somber
tints. Negro journalism, speaking generally, is not a paying
investment. The fault does not lie wholly with either the public or
the publisher. As a mass we are not a reading people and the bulk of
us neither know nor appreciate the value of the work that the race
paper is doing. Some of us take and pay for Caucasian journals for
their news features--which is eminently fitting and proper--but the
Negro journal should not be made to suffer in the unequal competition,
for the latter fills a want which the former cannot or does not reach.
One dollar to the race paper is often worth as much as ten to the
wealthy corporation behind our great metropolitan dailies. It is not
alone our illiterates who fail to support our journals. The educated
classes are not as loyal to the cause as their means, learning,
political interest and race pride suggest that they should be. True,
it frequently happens that our papers fall into the hands of
characterless adventurers who are "anything for a dollar," and it is
felt that the best method of rebuking their self-constituted and
erratic leadership is to treat them with silent contempt. To this no
thinker can offer a reasonable objection. A journal that does not
represent the highest impulses of a community does not deserve
support. The personal organ, the scandalmonging sheet, the political
and social blackmailer, the confidence-destroying campaign dodger, and
the subsidized traitor to racial manhood are all under a ban, and
should have no place in the homes of self-respecting Negroes. In this
category should also be classed the colorless journal, that smirks in
the recesses of cowardice. We should be faithful, however, to those
that are honest and straightforward. We should strengthen their arms
by our moral and financial resources. Booker T. Washington aptly
points out how difficult it is for a needy man to resist the
temptation of the bribe-giver, and tells pathetically of the uphill
work of making a Christian out of a hungry mortal. Support the right
kind of editors and the result will be a press that is progressive,
healthful, and fearless--an institution of which all may justly be
proud.
Is the ideal race journal attainable? I say, YES--when the two
elements necessary to the transaction--the public and the
publisher--are able to meet on a common ground, in the spirit of
co-operation and fair dealing. The chasm between the journalist and
his rightful constituency must be bridged by mutual confidence and
mutual sympathy, or neither can reap the great benefits that lie in
concentration of forces.
The ideal journal is that one which places racial weal above private
gain--which exalts patriotism above pelf. It is controlled by men big
enough and broad enough to eschew petty personalities and to avoid
cheap sensationalism. It is piloted by men who breathe the atmosphere
of freedom, whose inspiration is not drawn from the committee rooms of
political parties, and whose course is not dictated by scheming
politicians. It is the antithesis of sycophancy. The ideal journal is
backed up by men who are far-sighted enough to perceive that success
through trickery is short lived, and that character is the only
foundation upon which an enduring structure can be built. It is
conducted by men who know by experience that genuine worth will
ultimately be appreciated, and that refined taste, sound judgment, and
a saving sense of proportion will produce a newspaper that may stand
as a model to posterity.
Journals of this type, sincere, earnest, and consistent--and in the
future their names will be legion--are without question the key-stone
in the arch of those forces which make for the permanent elevation of
the Negro people. Such journals are prime factors in the race
problem.
TOPIC XXIV.
ARE OTHER THAN BAPTIST AND METHODIST CHURCHES ADAPTED TO THE PRESENT
NEGRO?
BY REV. GEORGE F. BRAGG, JR.,
[Illustration: Rev. Geo. F. Bragg, Jr.]
REV. GEORGE F. BRAGG, JR.
George Freeman Bragg, Junior, Priest and Rector, was born in
Warrenton, N. C., January 25, 1863. Shortly after his birth
his parents, George F. and Mary Bragg, removed to
Petersburg, Va. It was in this latter place that their son
was reared and educated; remaining there until ordained to
the Episcopal Ministry, he left to take charge of his first
work in Norfolk, Va. Mr. Bragg was educated, first, in the
Episcopal Parochial School, then in the St. Stephen's Normal
School, and in the Bishop Payne Divinity School, all of
Petersburg, Va. His education, however, was supplemented by
private tuition by a master in languages, under whom he
studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew and philosophy. In 1881 he was
appointed a page in the Virginia Legislature, and a little
later, by the Speaker, promoted as the postmaster of that
body. In 1882, though not of age, he founded and edited the
"Virginia Lancet," the first Colored weekly published in the
"Black Belt" of Virginia. This newspaper he conducted for
some four or five years, and on January 12, 1887, in St.
Stephen's Church, Petersburg, Va., he was ordained Deacon by
Bishop Whittle of Virginia. He immediately left for Norfolk,
Va., where he began his ministry at the head of the little
Episcopal Mission of that city. He remained in Norfolk for
nearly five years, and during that time formally organized
Grace Church, secured the lot, built a new church and
rectory and improved the old school building. A very large
day Industrial School was carried on by Mr. Bragg in
connection with his work. While here, in June, 1887,
Governor Fitzhugh Lee, of Virginia, appointed him one of the
State's Trustees of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural
Institute, where he served for four years, resigning only
because of leaving the State.
In December, 1888, he was advanced to the priesthood by
Bishop Whittle in St. Luke's Church, Norfolk, Va. In the
Fall of 1891 he accepted an invitation to become the Rector
of St. James' Church, Baltimore, Md. The church, although
one of the oldest of the connection, had been very much run
down. During a ministry there of ten years, he has wrought
remarkable improvement. He has increased the communicant
list from sixty-three to nearly two hundred, and advanced
the church well-nigh to complete self-support. The old
church, which was in a Jewish neighborhood, has been sold
during the present year, and a handsome brick structure
erected in another section of the city. Mr. Bragg, during
his residence in Baltimore, has founded a splendid
charitable institution, the Maryland Home for Friendless
Colored Children, and two young men have been sent into the
ministry of the church directly through his efforts. For
many years the Rev. Mr. Bragg was Secretary of the Annual
Conference of Episcopal Church Workers among the Colored
people. And in addition to his many other arduous labors he
has found time to edit the "Afro-American Ledger," a weekly
of this city, the "Church Advocate," and the "Maryland
Home," monthly publications.
Mr. Bragg is a well known figure in all public movements for
race amelioration, and is a veteran newspaper man, having
been Secretary of the National Press Convention for four
years, beginning with the presidency of the late Rev. Dr. W.
J. Simmons.
At first the asking of this question is a most natural one, seeing
that the great body of Negroes are attached to either one of the above
churches, and it would seem at a first glance that these religious
organizations are pre-eminently suited to the Negro race. But, we hope
to show that not only are other churches adapted to the "present
Negro," but one of these other churches meets the Negro's need better
than either one of those above mentioned. Of course it is hardly
necessary for me to state that our showing is conceived in the very
best spirit, and with the fullness of Christian love towards our
Baptist and Methodist brethren. Did I not believe that the church of
which I am a member is best suited for the Negro, I would at once
renounce attachment thereto and embrace most lovingly the one which I
thought more efficiently equipped to minister to the complexed and
diversified needs of my race. On account of a multitude of reasons,
not necessary to state here, Negroes naturally drifted into that form
of Christianity presented by the Baptist and Methodist churches. With
the innate feeling and strong tendency to warmth, fervor, animation
and excitement, it is not at all surprising that people so strongly
emotional should gravitate in that direction. Whatever may be my own
criticisms with respect to the defects in these two systems, which
render them inferior to the church of which I am a member, and
therefore less suitable to the needs of the race, I much prefer
stating my side of the question and leaving my readers free to draw
their own conclusions. That portion of the Universal Church, known in
this country as the Episcopal Church, to my mind, is better suited and
equipped for the amelioration of the condition of the Negro than any
other.
The Negro is specially fond of "regularity" in religious as well as
political affairs. In this respect the Episcopal Church comes to him
not as something new but as the living exponent of the old-time
religion and the old church which has actually descended to him,
through all the ages past from the very hands of Christ down to
this present time. It has historic continuity and claims none less
than the Blessed Master as its founder. She is not founded upon the
Bible, for she gave to the world this blessed book. Her sons inspired
of God wrote it. And the claim of historic continuity can be
established and proven in the ordinary way that we attest other
historical facts. The church, then, that Jesus Christ founded and
concerning which He said the "Gates of hell should not prevail against
it," must of necessity be "adapted to the present Negro."
The Negro needs the faith once delivered to the saints, not in shreds
or left to pick it out for himself, but the whole faith. This the
Episcopal Church offers him. A complete faith, naturally, is to be
found in a comprehensive church. The Episcopal Church is most
comprehensive. She believes more in turning in than in turning out.
Men are not brought into the fold to be "turned out" for every little
thing, but they are brought in to be built up, established and rooted
and grounded in Him. The church, then, is adapted to the present Negro
because she gives him not opinions and theories, but the living faith
of the ages and a living Christ as potential to-day as when He trod
this earth clothed in flesh. And this church is most comprehensive,
taking in all sorts and conditions of men, and by grace dispensed
through sacraments, ordained by Christ Himself, seeks to bring to the
fullness of stature as realized in Jesus Christ.
The Episcopal Church is pre-eminently adapted to the present Negro,
for the present Negro is most eager to learn, and, above all other
religious bodies, she is a _teaching church_. More Scripture is read
at one Episcopal service than is ofttimes read in a month in the
services of other churches. She has a liturgy which is the sum total
of all that is good and grand in the ages past, and the constant and
almost imperceptible influence of her most excellent system of public
worship, as indicated in the Book of Common Prayer, silently but
effectively issues, in moulding and mellowing good Christian
character. She teaches not only through the prayer book, but by the
yearly round of feast, festival and fast, of which, like a great
panorama the acts and incidents in the life of her Lord are constantly
set forth before those who have ears to hear and eyes to see. More
than that, she teaches through symbolism. Many persons, and a
considerable number of Negroes are here included, are endowed with but
little brain. But they have eyes, and what they take in with their
eyes help to rivet and fasten in their memories what they seize upon
with what brain they possess. Our children begin to take in the
surrounding objects with their eyes long before their minds are
sufficiently developed to act, and the same is true in the present
matter. The Episcopal Church, therefore, is especially adapted to the
present Negro because she is adequately and sufficiently equipped to
touch him at that portion of his being which will respond in unison
with what she has to offer for his improvement. Her service addresses
itself to his natural senses, as well as to his mental powers, however
strong or weak they may be.
The Episcopal Church is adapted to the Negro because her worship is
hearty, beautiful, uplifting and inspiring, though simple and easy,
furnishing the greatest opportunity for active participation therein
by the ignorant as well as the learned. The worship of the Episcopal
Church harmonizes most beautifully with the strong religious fervor of
the Negro, and as a vehicle for offering up those intense longings and
aspirations of his heart, is without an equal.
The Episcopal Church is adapted to the Negro because she believes so
persistently and thoroughly in "a change of heart." Of all religious
bodies not one lays such emphasis on the absolute necessity of "a
change of heart" as does the Episcopal Church. Stamped upon every page
of her divine liturgy, and permeating the beautiful prayers of her
offices, and inwrought in her hymnology, is this deep and firm
recognition and teaching with respect to a change of heart. All her
sacraments, disciplinary offices, instructions and the like, are with
the design of helping her children, through the aid of the Divine
Spirit, in proving the genuineness of their change of heart by a
conspicuous, powerful and beautiful change of life.
The Episcopal Church is adapted to the Negro because she offers a
government that is congenial and pleasant to his sunshiny nature, and
which, while it amply protects him in the enjoyment of all the blessed
privileges of religious culture, saves him the disaster and confusion
of a democracy, which, when realized, is but another name for anarchy
and confusion.
The government of the Episcopal Church is jointly shared by her
clergymen and laymen, and the stability and security of its government
is firmly attested by the past ages of experience and notable
achievements.
In conclusion the Episcopal Church is the church for the Negro,
because she is both willing and able to supply his every need, and
under her loving nurture and constant training in the end will
graduate him into a well-rounded Christian man of symmetrical
character and beauty.
SECOND PAPER.
ARE OTHER THAN BAPTIST AND METHODIST CHURCHES ADAPTED TO THE PRESENT
NEGRO?
BY REV. JOHN W. WHITTAKER.
[Illustration: Rev. John W. Whittaker]
REV. JOHN W. WHITTAKER.
Rev. John W. Whittaker, A. M., a prominent Congregational
pastor, was a poor boy who made his way up through many
hardships. He was born at Atlanta, Ga., December 23, 1860.
Of his father he knows very little. His mother was a devoted
Christian whose life greatly influenced his character. When
old enough, he was put to work to help support the family.
While an office boy at Atlanta he met a young man, Lewis G.
Watts, a thorough Christian and fond of reading, who
cultivated Mr. Whittaker's friendship and took a great
interest in him. Whenever with Mr. Whittaker he questioned
him in arithmetic, grammar and the news of the day.
In this way a desire for an education was awakened in Mr.
Whittaker. He decided to go to school. He began his
education in the summer of 1876 in a country school in a
suburb of Atlanta. From here he went to the Starr's Grammar
School. His examination revealed the fact that he had
considerable general information, but it was so unsystematic
that it was very difficult to tell to what grade he
belonged. He was, however, classified as a senior with
conditions and was graduated with honor at the close of the
school year. Then he matriculated in Atlanta University,
where he studied seven years, completing the college course
in 1884. He studied theology at the Hartford Seminary,
graduating in 1887.
During these years of study Mr. Whittaker partly supported
himself by teaching in the summer and working out of school
hours, which was an immense drain upon his strength, and
once he broke down under it. Through the kindness of friends
he was enabled to spend two summers in the North farming.
This change, he feels, was the saving of his life. June 1,
1887, at Springfield, Mass., where he held his first charge,
he was ordained. In 1888 he was married to Miss Anna J.
Connover, of Hartford, Conn.
Mr. Whittaker educated himself to labor for his people in
the South. He was not content to remain in the North. After
a very successful year at Springfield, he resigned to accept
a call to the Knowles Street Congregational Church of
Nashville, Tenn. For three years he was chaplain of the
Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. For seven years
and four months he was pastor of the First Congregational
Church of New Orleans, La., and three years he had charge of
the First Congregational Church of Savannah, Ga. Recently he
has been recalled to Tuskegee to be the Financial Secretary
of the Tuskegee Institute.
Mr. Whittaker is a preacher of force and power. In every
place he pastored he was remarkably successful. He has often
been honored by his church with positions of trust and
responsibility. He was one of the Louisiana Commissioners of
the Negro Department for the Atlanta and Cotton States
Exposition.
It would seem from the immense following of these churches that this
question would require a negative answer, but it is only in appearance
and can be accounted for.
In the days of slavery the Methodist and Baptist churches predominated
in the South. The great mass of the slaves attended these churches
with their masters and there they were converted and became members.
They were thoroughly indoctrinated in the teachings of these churches.
At the same time, there were other denominations existing among the
slaves: Catholic, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian. In some portions of
the United States, where these denominations were in the lead, they
have a very large Negro following, whose attachment to these religious
sects is so strong that they could be satisfied in no other. They
belong to these denominations by birth and training. All that is
sacred and dear to them is wrapped up in the history of these bodies.
At the present time, it is a fact that the Negro is found in every
religious denomination known among men. So it can not be said with
truth that no other than Baptist and Methodist churches are adapted to
the Negro. The needs of the Negro, from a religious point of view,
demand all sects.
How does it come about then that the Baptist and Methodist so largely
predominate to-day? These denominations, just after the War of the
Rebellion, required no educational qualification for the ministry; and
missions were opened by them everywhere an opening was to be found,
and every man, learned or ignorant, who felt himself called to preach,
was licensed and sent forth to preach in his way and to build up
churches. These men were for the most part ignorant and superstitious,
with very vague ideas of religion. Their chief object was to draw the
people and every other consideration was sacrificed to that end. They
pandered to the ignorant and superstitious notions of the Negro,
ridiculed intelligence, and prejudiced their followers against it.
They had no thought of progress, but taught the people to be satisfied
with what their fathers before them did and had; not to believe in
this Bible religion which has sprung up since the war; to prefer the
old-time preacher who, without any learning, gets up and opens his
mouth and lets God fill it with words to utter.
Back of all this there was one ever present motive--the pastor's
support, the running expenses of the church, and the keeping up of a
house of worship. All this had to be collected from the congregation.
Hence the preacher's position hung upon his getting and holding a
congregation. In the Methodist Church, a clergyman's advancement
depends chiefly upon his ability to increase his membership and to
raise money. Therefore, every Baptist and Methodist pastor felt the
very great necessity there was upon him of getting as great a crowd as
possible and gathering all the finance he could from it. This many
did, regardless of the method employed.
Thus it was that these two denominations got hold of the masses and
preoccupied the field.
The other denominations went to work in an entirely different way.
They did not seek in the first place the spread of their sects, but
the _elevation_ of the Negro. They realized that the Negro needed to
be developed into strong, self-reliant, and independent characters;
that the masses were not moved by duty and did not appreciate the
obligation of duty. They are a prey to their feelings, which sway them
to the right hand and to the left. They live on their feelings. So
engrossed are they in their feelings that they neglect duties and
ignore obligations. That is why the religion of so many is such sad
rubbish. God gave man reason to rule over his actions. But it was
plain that, in the great mass of the Negro, reason is yet a child,
ruled over by its playmates--the feelings, passions, and appetites.
This is not the kind of foundation upon which to build a true
religious life.
Therefore, these denominations went to work to educate the Negro. They
put the emphasis on education. Schools instead of churches were
established. Their theory was that men should not only be converted,
but they also should be educated and made intelligent Christians. They
did not discount brains, did not consider ignorance in itself a mark
of virtue, nor that learning disqualified a disciple of God for the
best service of his Lord and Master. In their polity, the school and
the church stood side by side. In their view, an example of higher and
better things must be set. Men of intelligence, power, thought, and
strong characters, filled with the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ,
must be raised up from among the people to lead them and to teach
them.
They were slow in establishing churches. Whatever churches they set up
were pastored by men of learning and character. They were unwilling to
stoop to the people, but sought to bring the people up to them.
Everything was done according to the custom of the most intelligent
and cultured. The preaching was of a high order, yet adapted to the
needs of the people. The music was the very best. Thus a model church
was set up, suited to the needs of its communicants. As fast as men
were trained and prepared for the work of the gospel ministry, they
were sent forth to take charge of newly-organized fields. This work
went on with considerable opposition, but the influence that went out
from these churches and schools was felt in the whole community. They
were centers of light and wholesome Christian instruction. They were
Mt. Sinais from which the laws of liberty, education, and progress
were sent out to the people far and near.
These churches were, in intelligence, far removed from the masses.
There was very little effort put forth to reach them. That was not the
object now. That work was to come on later. The members of, and the
attendance upon, these churches were mainly those who had been
sufficiently taught to appreciate them.
The ignorant and prejudiced dubbed these churches high-tone. They
said: "Only the educated and well-dressed can go there. The people in
that church have no religion. They have only book religion. You must
know how to read to go there. Why, you can't shout or say amen. I
don't want anything to do with that church. It's too cold for me."
Thus there grew up in the minds of the masses generally a prejudice
against these denominations. And the fact that these churches were for
a long time in the hands of white pastors was used to stir up
opposition to them. The clergymen of the Methodists and Baptists made
much of it to tear them down and to build up themselves.
Then, again, the members of these educated churches did a great deal
to widen the breach by such remarks as this: "We do not want any head
handkerchief people in our churches." They often spoke in a way which
gave the impression that they felt themselves better than the
commonality of their brethren; and whenever visitors came to these
churches, the members did not extend them that cordial welcome which
makes one feel at home and want to come again. This was often done
unconsciously. These members had been apt students, who faithfully
copied their instructors. The very atmosphere of these churches was
New England, which was cold and formal as compared with our Southern
ways. Thus our untrained brethren did not feel at home in their midst.
As time goes on and education becomes more general, these hindrances
and difficulties to the progress of the other denominations begin to
pass away. The prejudice against them wanes. The Baptist and Methodist
are forced to change their tactics; their people begin to clamor for a
more intelligent ministry. The churches of the other denominations
fell into the hands of young colored men who had been educated and
trained to take these places.
The passing of these churches into the hands of the native pastors was
the beginning of a new era in our Southern church history. The North
had set the standard and carried out its purpose to raise up educated
men and women to take up the work. The labor of these churches
heretofore was one of education and preparation. Now it becomes one of
development and expansion. Up to this time, they cared for the few.
Now they are to reach out for the masses. Previously these churches
had been in great measure supported by Northern aid, but now they have
to deal with all the problems connected with running a church, such as
gathering and holding a congregation, securing pastor's support, and
all the expense of keeping up and maintaining a house of worship.
Hence the necessity is upon them to reach the masses if they expect to
exist, not only to save souls, but also that their forces may be
strengthened and made more efficient; and they stand to-day as good a
chance in this race as do the Methodists or Baptists. Their past work
in an educational line in behalf of the Negro in general has given
them a lasting hold upon the hearts of the people, who feel that they
owe these denominations a debt of gratitude which can never be paid.
Most of the Methodist and Baptist leaders of to-day were trained in
the schools of these denominations. So they enjoy the best wishes of
the communities in which they exist, with very few exceptions. The way
is open to them to grow if they will only seize it and use it for all
it is worth.
[_Note by the Editor._--We assume that the membership of neither the
Baptist nor the Methodist churches would claim for a moment that
theirs is the only church suitable to the Negro race. But we think it
would be unfair to leave the discussion of this topic without
correcting an erroneous impression given by the Rev. J. W. Whitaker in
the paper above. Perhaps not more than one other church has done more
for the education of its Negro ministers and membership than has the
Methodist Episcopal Church through its Freedmen's Aid Society and by
other methods. This education commenced immediately after the war. We
have reason to believe that the Baptist is a close second to the
Methodist Church in this matter of educating the Negro. It is possible
that some of the Negro Baptist and Methodist Churches that are
entirely separated from the white churches of the same denomination
may come under the category of especially ignorant ministry and
membership; but even these exclusively Negro churches began the work
of education soon after emancipation. We suspect that the two churches
under criticism as given above preferred not to wait until the
freedmen became cultured before attempting to save them.]
THIRD PAPER.
ARE OTHER THAN BAPTIST AND METHODIST CHURCHES ADAPTED TO THE PRESENT
NEGRO?
BY REV. O. M. WALLER.
[Illustration: Rev. O. M. Waller]
REV. OWEN M. WALLER.
Rev. Owen Meredith Waller, rector of St. Luke's P. E.
Church, Washington, D. C.; Associate of Arts of Oxford
University, England; Graduate of the General Theological
Seminary, New York, was born in Eastville, Va., in 1868.
When but five years old his parents settled in Baltimore,
where he was sent at an early age to the St. Mary's Academy.
In 1881 he went to Oxford, England, where he entered St.
John's Classical School, pursuing studies there until 1889,
when he returned to New York city. He graduated from the
General Episcopal Theological Seminary in 1892, and was
ordained to the Deaconate by Bishop Potter, after which he
accepted a call as assistant rector to St. Phillip's Church,
New York.
He declined the principalship of Hoffman Hall of Fisk
University, Nashville, Tenn., to accept a call to St.
Thomas' Church, Philadelphia. Having passed all examinations
before reaching the required age to enter the priesthood, it
was only after his election to St. Thomas' that he became
eligible for advancement.
Bishop Potter arranged for the ordination to take place in
the Colonial Church of St. John, Washington, D. C. Here in
the presence of the Chief Justice, Cabinet Officers,
Senators and other men of national note, Mr. Waller was
formally elevated to the priesthood. After a rectorship of
three years' successful work in this historic parish, during
which its centennial was celebrated, Mr. Waller was elected
rector of St. Luke's Church, Washington, D. C., in
succession to the Rev. Dr. Crumwell.
In size he is above the medium and of athletic build. He is
a perfect type of the physical manhood of his race, graceful
in manner and address and is clear and eloquent in his style
of oratory.
Success has crowned his work from the beginning. Mr. Waller
combines all the essentials necessary of a leader of men
along religious lines. He understands humanity. His methods
inspire the confidence of men, and they reverence his
gospel. He appeals to the intelligence and reason, never to
passion and prejudice. He has the faculty of saying much in
little, and saying it with directness and force.
Mr. Waller was married in 1893 to Miss Lillian M. Ray, of
Brooklyn, N. Y. Three bright boys have blessed this union by
their advent into the home.
I have no hesitancy in saying that not only are there other churches
adapted to the training of the Negro than the Methodist and Baptist
churches, but, in my opinion, some are better suited to the present
needs of the Negro, and chief, if not indeed the first, among these is
that branch of the Apostolic Catholic Church known as the Protestant
Episcopal Church. I advance the following arguments to sustain this
statement:
First, the Negro is under a spell of religiosity; a conception of
religion that freely recognizes and imbibes its sentiment, but just as
frankly rejects its stern practical duties and obligations. The
Negro's religion is a poem--a sentiment--indeed, a velvet-lined yoke.
He, therefore, stands sadly in need of an influence that will regulate
his super-emotional nature, and not one that adds fuel to an existing
conflagration that threatens to forever consume the only power in the
human being that can ultimately work out his salvation, viz., the
human will.
His religiosity needs to be directed to the deep channels of true
religion, and there harnessed as a mighty Niagara to produce
practical righteousness in daily living. No church is better adapted
to this end than the Protestant Episcopal. (a) She seeks after the
example of her Master's method to develop the permanent power of the
will, rather than the unstable prop of emotionalism. This is evidenced
in her majestic liturgies and dignified but helpful services. (b) In
doctrine, discipline and worship the Protestant Episcopal Church is
the school of mental, moral and spiritual training, that a people but
now coming to the light from the darkness and degradation of bondage
so terribly need. (c) Again, her ministry, bishops, priests and
deacons are her people's leaders; secure in the tenure of their office
from factional machinations, they are fearless in the advocacy of
righteousness; not with their ears to the ground, but with eyes
looking upward, their pulpits speak plainly "Things pertaining to the
Kingdom of God." Nothing at this stage does the Negro stand in greater
need of than fearless and positive guidance in the "ways of
righteousness."
Second: The present Negro needs opportunity and latitude for
self-development in a church where he must measure himself with the
highest standard of Anglo-evolution. As long as the Negro is content
to compare himself, in Negro associations, with himself, he must be
satisfied to know only that things equal to the same thing are equal
to one another. But, both in the lay membership and in the ministry of
the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Negro coming into contact with
the best results of modern forces, not only rises up to higher
standards, but is saved from the insidious evils of conceitedness by
ever seeing the vistas beyond him. Withal, the doors are open to the
Negro, here more truly so than in any church of like prestige and
heritage. Two Negroes are on the bench of the Protestant Episcopal
Church. Nearly a hundred have been elevated to the diaconate and
priesthood, meeting all requirements and thereby teaching the same
level as other men. Such a showing cannot be made by any church of
like history.
Third: We have been told of late to teach the Negro history, and I add
that no lesson will be so potent as identification with a historic
church that has come down the centuries to us, in unbroken integrity,
from the hands of Christ through the spiritual loins of the Apostles.
I advance the following argument to show that the Protestant Episcopal
Church will meet this need of the Negro: At Acts 11:42, we read as
follows: "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and
fellowship and in the breaking of bread and in prayers."
It may be readily seen from these words, drawn as they are directly
from the scholarly Greek of St. Luke, that the Apostolic Church was
distinctly marked by four observances or characteristics:
(a) Their steadfastness in the Apostles' doctrine.
(b) Their steadfastness in the Apostles' fellowship, dealings, doings,
ministry or form of government.
(c) Their steadfastness in the breaking of the bread, or the Holy
Communion; Holy Baptism being included in the Apostolic doctrine.
(d) Their steadfastness in the Apostles' manner of praying or in the
set forms of prayer, at first, for twenty-five years in the Temple and
the synagogues of the Jews.
These being the four marks of the church at that time, is there now in
existence any church having these selfsame marks? Without any doubt,
Christ was the founder of that visible body of Christians, the church
in Acts II. Does that church exist to-day? It must, because Christ
said: "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it."--Matt. 16:18.
THEN WHICH IS IT, AND WHERE IS IT?
The church is certainly a visible body of Christians, not founded by a
man or men, but by Jesus Christ. Having a divine founder it is then a
divine society, seeking men to save them from the degrading power of
sin and everlasting punishment in hell. It is not then, as is so
commonly and popularly thought, a human society founded by Luther,
1530; Calvin, 1541; Knox, 1560; Robert Brown, 1582; Roger Williams,
1639; John Wesley, 1739; or Swedenborg, 1783. In brief, the church
founded by Jesus Christ is the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, as Christ
so often described it (Matthew 13:47, 5:19, 13:44); endowed with power
from on high transmitted through her unbroken line of the Apostolic
ministry, but obedient to her Divine Founder, who is at the right hand
of God in heaven.
This church of four distinct marks in the Acts existed before the
completion of the New Testament at least some sixty years, and it was
the church that by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit pronounced the
New Testament inspired, and rejected other books claiming to set forth
the life of Christ, three hundred years after it was founded. The Old
Testament is the document of the Jewish Church, that church having
been in existence for a thousand years before its document was
completed. Therefore, this church of the Acts cannot be set aside for
one claimed to be founded upon the Bible.
For three hundred years then, this Apostolic Church existed with
Apostolic doctrine, ministry, sacraments, and prayers before she gave
the New Testament to the world with her certificate that it was the
Inspired Word of God.
The Protestant Episcopal Church of America as the daughter of the
Church of England, has ever possessed, and does now possess and hold
more sacred, these four marks that identify her unmistakably with the
primitive and Apostolic Church, as a true branch of the same.
First, as to doctrine this church holds and defends the pure teaching
of the early church, without taking from or adding to the same. There
are few, indeed, who would question this.
The Holy Trinity (John 14:16, 26; Acts 2:33; Gal. 4:6).
The Incarnation of God's Son (Luke 1:35; John 1:14; Matt. 1:23).
The Redemption of Man by Christ Jesus (Matt. 1:21, 20:28; Gal. 1:4).
Regeneration and Holy Baptism (Titus 3:5; Rom. 6:4; Gal. 3:27).
The Holy Communion (Matt. 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22:19-20).
Confirmation (Acts 8; Heb. 6:2).
The Resurrection of the Dead (Luke 14:14; John 11:23).
The Judgment (Acts 17:31; Heb. 9:27).
Belief in these statements and other fundamental teaching of Holy
Scripture is in accord with the mind of the Apostolic Church.
Secondly, as to the unbroken line of bishops, priests and deacons, who
have succeeded for more than eighteen centuries other ministers
Apostolically ordained, that has been most jealously guarded and
maintained by the Episcopal Church.
There may be some who have never given any study to the Apostolic
succession of ministers in the church founded by Christ. No one could
well doubt the fact or deny the doctrine who had patiently
investigated the matter. The New Testament is itself witness to the
fact that the Apostles appointed others to do Apostolic work and to be
their successors; at least thirty Apostles are mentioned in the New
Testament. Among them were Paul, Matthew, Barnabas, Andronicus, Silas,
Luke, Titus, whom St. Paul appointed Bishop of Crete, and Timothy,
whom he appointed Bishop of Ephesus. There were also at least ten
others whose names are recorded, space does not permit us to mention.
Now, if the original twelve could have eighteen successors, certainly
they could, and have had a continual line of successors down the
centuries. The titles of the three orders of the ministry may, at
first, mislead the unlearned.
(1) In the New Testament the highest order was Apostles. The second,
"ordained in every city," were Presbyters (Presters or Priests), also
called Bishops and the lowest order Deacons.
As the Apostles began to die off, the title "Apostle" was limited to
them and to their successors who had probably seen Christ, at the same
time the title "Bishop" was set apart to denote the highest order
which succeeded the original Apostles. This is stated by Clement of
Alexandria in the second, and Jerome in the fourth century. While
Theodoret, writing in 440, says: "The same persons were in ancient
times called either presbyters or bishops, at which time, those who
are now called bishops were called Apostles. In process of time, the
name of Apostles was left to those who were sent directly by Christ,
and the name of Bishop was confined to those who were anciently called
'Apostles.'" From Palestine the church spread to Asia Minor, Greece,
Rome, Gaul, Spain and England, carrying with her the Apostles'
doctrine, ministry, sacraments and prayer.
In 597, when Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome, sent Augustine to
England, he found there the church with the four marks. After awhile
the Bishop of Rome, by political methods, gained great influence over
the English Church in so much that he was receiving from England
greater revenues than the king. When the tremendous revolt against the
papacy came about in Europe in the sixteenth century the English
people simply ejected the pope's emissaries and with them, Italian
influence and corruption from England and the English Church, the
church remained essentially the same she had been for centuries.
The word "Reformation" signifies the footing of something into a new
shape. It is therefore not the destruction of the old and the
substituting of the new, but rather the reshaping, cleansing and
revivifying of the old. The melting down of the family silver and the
reshaping it on new models is not to acquire new silver. Perhaps it
was so distorted by abuse that it required new shaping. This was very
much the case with the Church of England.
The reformation in England was effected on very different lines from
that on the continent of Europe. Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, and
others were individuals attracting to themselves multitudes of other
individuals and together they establish societies of Christians. The
Apostolical churches on the continent did not, as such, participate in
the reformation movement. In England the reformation, i. e., the
reshaping, restoring and cleansing, was more wisely conducted. The
church there had existed since the days of the Apostles. For six
hundred years it remained independent of the Roman world power, and it
was only after the Norman Conquest that the papal authority became
well established in England. When a reformation seemed necessary, it
was conducted, not by individuals leaving the national church, but by
the whole Church of England. In A. D. 1532 the quarrel of Henry the
Eighth with the pope led to the overthrow of the Roman power in
England. Henry is not to be credited as a reformer, much less as the
founder of any church. He never made any attempt to found a church.
When he was born, in 1491, he found the church existing in England,
and when he died, in 1547, he left the same church, but cleansed and
independent. The ancient church was not changed, and the old religion
did not give place to the new. The papacy was opposed to the
independence of the national churches for which the Church of England
had always contended.
Accordingly, when the power of the pope was broken and thrust out of
England, the church was at liberty to restore Apostolic purity and
freedom to the nation and the individual.
Parliament prohibited the payment of money to the pope and appealing
from English to papal courts. In 1539 the Bible was given to the
people to read in their native tongue. The services were read in
English instead of Latin. The chalice was given to the laity. The
worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary was abolished and praying to
departed saints forbidden. These reforms were conducted by the
archbishops, bishops, priests, and deacons and laity, i. e., by the
whole church. The pope was not without his adherents during this
period, who opposed these changes most vehemently. But these traitors
to the Church of England found they could not stem the tide for an
open Bible and pure religion. In 1569 Pope Pius Fifth created the
great sin of schism by commanding all in favor of papal power in
England to withdraw from the English Church and form an Italian
party. In 1685 the Italian Church supplied this party with a bishop.
To-day the Italian mission in England is doing all in its power to
make headway against the Church of England, but in vain.
We can now come briefly to the Episcopal Church in America. She was
established in the American Colonies under the oversight of the Bishop
of London. In 1609 the Church of England planted her first church on
American shores at Jamestown, Virginia. After the Revolution, the
church in this country became the American Episcopal Church, receiving
the Apostolic ministry from the ancient Apostolic Church of England.
Samuel Seabury of Connecticut, was consecrated at Aberdeen in 1784 and
William White of Philadelphia, and Samuel Provoost of New York were
consecrated at Lambeth Palace in 1787. These were the first three
bishops with jurisdiction, and thus was the Apostolic Succession
maintained in the Episcopal Church in unbroken line from the days of
the Apostles.
In conclusion, the Protestant Episcopal Church has ever continued
steadfast in the sacraments of prayers, and by these four undeniable
and unmistakable marks shows that she is a true branch of the same
church described in Acts 2.
The question for the Negro now becomes, not which church do I like or
prefer, not to which church did my parents belong, but which church
did Christ found for me to be trained in.
TOPIC XXV.
THE NEGRO AS A BUSINESS MAN.
An Address Before the National Negro Business League.
BY T. W. JONES.
[Illustration: T. W. Jones.]
HON. THEODORE W. JONES.
The Hon. Theodore W. Jones was born during the temporary
residence of his parents in the beautiful city of Hamilton,
Ontario, September 19, 1853. His parents soon returned to
New York, their native State, and there remained until he
was twelve years old. In 1865 this family decided to make
Illinois their home and settled in Chicago.
Mr. Jones was one of a very large family; his parents were
poor and unable to give him even a common school education.
Compelled to support himself, at the age of fifteen years he
was driving an express wagon. He was an industrious boy,
full of pluck and energy. Without money and by his own
unaided efforts, step by step, he pressed on and soon built
up a most successful express and moving business.
Discouraged by no difficulty, the ambitious young expressman
turned his attention toward acquiring an education. He was a
diligent student. Through the aid of private tutors and the
"midnight oil," he was able, when twenty-five years of age,
to enter Wheaton College, Wheaton, Ill., where he remained
three years. Leaving college, he returned to his business in
Chicago and has been exceedingly prosperous.
Mr. Jones is the owner of a large brick storage warehouse,
Twenty-ninth Street and Shields Avenue, and other valuable
property in this city. In his employ are three lady clerks
and about fifty men, all colored.
In 1894, Theodore W. Jones was elected on the Republican
ticket to the responsible position of County Commissioner of
Cook County, Ill. He ably and well performed the duties of
this office.
That he labored earnestly and unselfishly to advance the
interests of the colored people we need relate only the
following fact: During Mr. Jones' term of office the colored
people of Cook County drew $50,000 yearly salary. This was
about seven times the amount paid into the county treasury
by our race.
He is a valued member of the National Negro Business League.
He was present in Boston at the organisation and has
organised a branch league in Chicago, known as the Business
Men's League of Cook County. This league entertained the
National League in Chicago, August 21, 22, 23, 1901.
There has been so much controversy concerning the Negro, so much said
and written about his alleged inferiority, such an attempt made to
establish relationship between him and the monkey, that even in this
new century there exists, in some quarters, grave doubts as to his
origin, and a general misapprehension as to his nature, capabilities
and purposes. But research into the primeval history of man evinces
the fact, beyond the possibility of skepticism, that mankind had only
one common origin. We are taught that in the beginning God created man
in His own image, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
and that man became a living soul. The closest and most thorough
analysis of the blood of different races fails to detect the slightest
difference in the color, size, shape or quality of its corpuscles. The
fact that one people are white, another yellow, another red, another
brown, and yet another black has its cause in the workings of a law of
nature which we do not fully understand. Sacred history plainly
teaches that the Negro is a man like other men and that of one blood
God created all nations; hence there can be no racial barrier to a
successful business career, in the general constitution of a black
man.
What was the business of the Negro in the land of his nativity, or at
the time of his emancipation in this country, does not so much
interest us now, except as it may help us to appreciate his capacity
for business at present.
Life for our forefathers in Africa was very plain and very simple. The
multitude was engaged with problems little more difficult than the
acquirement of food and drink and rest, raiment not being a necessity;
hence their only business, aside from frequent wars with kindred
tribes, was to explore a way to the fruit tree, the water brook and
the shade, and so their years were principally filled up with the
business of merely satisfying those three physical wants--hunger,
thirst, and rest.
When human slavery was established in the colonies, those of our race,
either fortunate or unfortunate enough to be brought to these shores
were instructed mainly in the care of cotton, tobacco and rice crops;
and from these few Southern industries we could not turn aside.
Slavery deprived the Negro of the little responsibility devolving upon
him in his savage state--that of providing food and drink and finding
rest. No responsibility was allowed to devolve upon him, other than to
perform allotted work, not even the selection of his wife; and when
children were born to him, he was not confronted with the problem of
how he should provide food and shelter for them, nor wherewith they
should be clothed. He and his issue being the property of his master,
like swine or cattle, their issue were alike stalled and fed by the
owner. With but few exceptions, this was the condition of the Negro
when the Proclamation of Emancipation was issued, thirty-eight years
ago.
From that eventful day onward, the mighty aspiration of the ex-slave
for education and material development has written a new page in the
history of the world's progress. Let us now examine the record made,
and call to our assistance the statistics of the Government that we
may truthfully answer the question, can the Negro succeed as a
business man? We are indebted to ex-Congressman George H. White for
the information that since the dawn of our freedom the race has
reduced its illiteracy at least 45 per cent; that we have written and
published nearly 500 books; have edited fully 300 newspapers; have
2,000 lawyers at the bar, a corresponding number of practicing
physicians, and 32,000 school teachers. We own 140,000 homes and have
real and personal property valued at $920,000,000. The census of 1890
shows that 20,020 persons of African descent were engaged in business,
and there were more than 17,000 barbers not included in those figures;
and be it remembered that this showing was made more than ten years
ago.
It is true that we have produced no skilled master mechanics or great
speculators; no commercial princes or merchant kings. These are beyond
our immediate reach and reserved for later growth. But we have today,
on the floor of this convention, colored men who represent nearly
every business enumerated in the census reports--wagon-makers,
watch-makers, grocers, druggists, bankers, brokers, bakers, barbers,
hotel keepers, caterers, undertakers, builders, contractors, printers,
publishers, decorators, manufacturers, tailors, insurance agents, coal
dealers, real estate agents, collectors, the proprietor of a brick
yard, the owners of a cotton factory, and the president of a coal
mine. The number engaged, and the capital invested, may not reach very
pretentious figures, but the beginning has been made. Aside from the
above, we have produced soldiers whose valor has reached world-wide
reputation, poets, artists, teachers and professional men and women of
recognized ability. There are hordes of others pursuing the humbler
walks of life eager to acquire by education a higher ideal of
manliness and womanliness, and to learn the ways of advanced
civilization and approved citizenship. These achievements have been
wrought by us under the most adverse conditions. We have wearily
toiled by day and by night; have made bricks without straw; helped
ourselves and taken advantage of small opportunities; though these are
days of increasing combinations of capital, growing corporations and
gigantic trusts, which greatly lessen the possibilities of individual
success. Surely there is in the black man the same capacity for
business, the self-same spirit, purpose and aspiration that there is
to be found in the white man, and he is as much entitled to the
blessings of life, and to share its honors and rewards, as the
descendants of other races, notwithstanding Senator Tillman's recent
plea for lynching Negroes, and the plaudits and acclaim of a Wisconsin
audience.
Despite the fact that the door of nearly every large factory, shop and
department store is closed against us, despite the fact that prejudice
stalks our business streets with unblushing tread and dominates in all
the commercial centers of our common country--yet we are not here
today pleading for special legislation in our behalf; we are not here
whining to be given a chance; we are not here, even to complain of our
hard lot, or to find fault with conditions which we cannot change.
This, we conceive, would be a very poor programme to attract the
attention of the business world, but we are here, representing
hundreds of thousands of dollars, thus demonstrating that we have
achieved, at least in a small measure, one of the things which, by
common consent, is taken as evidence of progress, ability and worth.
We have made money, have saved money, and are succeeding in many
profitable business enterprises which require the possession of skill
and executive ability to direct and control.
The Jew traces the industrial strides of his people from the first
footsore peddler to their present position of affluence in the
financial world, and so without reciting further the early struggles
and hindrances experienced by our pioneers in business, sufficient is
it to say that we have men who should be placed in the class with
Nelson Morris, A. M. Rothschild and Mandel Bros. Not that they can
compare with these men in the sum total of their wealth; no one
expects this. But that they began life without a dollar, have
accumulated property and acquired influence, and are today men of
public affairs, able to stand, persevere and prevail in the fierce
struggles and competitions of business life. These mercantile strides
the members of our race are taking in the face of proscription and
oppression, in the face of the administration of unjust laws and in
the face of disfranchisement and barbarous lynchings, such as no other
men ever had to face. In fact we are prospering under conditions which
would not only fill other business men with hopelessness and despair,
but would surely drive them into bankruptcy.
It is not true that the business patronage of the Negro is confined to
his own race, nor is it true that he is a cringer, and solicits
patronage among the whites because of the fact that he is a colored
man. We have long since learned that we are entitled to no more
consideration because we are black than other men are who chance to
have red hair, big mouths, or mis-shapen feet. If you will pardon
personal mention, I would say that in my business as a furniture
mover, few customers, indeed, have I among my own people; nor do I ask
to remove any man's goods because of the color of my complexion or the
texture of my hair; but because I have put brains into my humble
calling and made the business of moving furniture a science. What is
true in this instance is true in all others, where progress is made.
We are grasping opportunities and compelling adverse circumstances and
forces to work together for our profit. Under the wise leadership of
Booker T. Washington, we are finding our bearings and casting anchor
in the dark and muddy waters of industrial conditions in which we were
sent adrift without rudder, compass or means of existence less than
thirty-eight years ago.
It is not strange that, as business men, we have made some failures.
It is a long way from the depth of the valley to the summit of the
mountain; from a barbarian to a master mechanic; from the jungles of
Africa to a successful business career, and from the slave cabin to
the professor's chair. We have not all outgrown the feeling of
dependence instilled in us by more than 250 years of chattel bondage;
many of us yet shrink from responsibility, and lack the requisite
amount of ambition. We recognize our shortcomings, our peculiar
environments and the limitations of our experience and powers. We are
beginning to learn that if the Negro is to become more and more a
factor in the business world he must take a more active part in all of
the trades, competitions, industries and occupations of life. Again,
he is learning, slowly perhaps, but surely, that he must outgrow the
weakness and confusion resulting from distracted purposes; that he
must have one aim, and be one thing all the time. He must stop doing
things in a slipshod and half-way manner and become more thorough. He
must put the force of a strong character and a determined will power
into whatever he undertakes, and he must stop stumbling and falling
over impediments, especially of his own placing.
The Negro is, however, affected by nothing now which education and
personal endeavor will not in time remove. For example, we take the
liberty to refer to our honored President, Booker T. Washington, who
about forty-two years ago was born a slave in Virginia. At an early
age he began the battle for himself untutored and untrained in all the
ways of life. What he has since accomplished is a sufficient answer to
those who claim that the Negro is void of any capacity for doing
business, and that his offspring has no chance to rise in the world.
For twenty years Booker T. Washington has not only been president of a
great industrial institution, but has had very largely the
acquisition, management, investment and expenditure of its finances.
In recent years there has scarcely been a month in which he has not
been offered positions in important and influential business
enterprises, as well as in the affairs of government. His career is
evidence that there is plenty of room at the top for Negro boys who
have sense enough to rise to the level of their opportunities. The
lack is not so much of opportunities as of men. It is a fact which
cannot be gainsaid that success still is, and most likely always will
be, a question determined very largely by the individual. For the man
or woman who has made thorough preparation and is willing to do hard
work a place will always be waiting, irrespective of race or color.
The tone of this convention clearly indicates that the Negro will
succeed as a business man in proportion as he learns that manhood and
womanhood are qualities of his own making, and that no external force
can either give or take them away. It demonstrates that intelligence,
punctuality, industry and integrity are the conquering forces in the
business and commercial world, as well as in all the affairs of human
life. Permit me, in closing, to quote the language of President
McKinley addressed to the students at the Tuskegee Institute,
"Integrity and industry," he said, "are the best possessions which
any man can have, and every man can have them. No man who has them
ever gets into the police court or before the grand jury or in the
work-house or the chain gang. They are indispensable to success. The
merchant requires the clerk whom he employs to have them; the railroad
corporation inquires whether the man seeking employment possesses
them. Every avenue of human endeavor welcomes them. They are the only
keys to open with certainty the door of opportunity to struggling
manhood. If you do not already have them, get them."
For our encouragement, reference has been made to a portion of the
history of the distinguished President of this convention, and also,
for the same purpose, quotation has been made from a speech of the
honored President of his country. We thus have before us the example
of the former and the precept of the latter--each a leader in his own
sphere, the one black and the other white. By following the example of
the one and the advice of the other, the Negro will not only succeed
as a business man, but the early dawn of the present century will yet
witness the best achievements and the loftiest conceptions of a once
enslaved race.
SECOND PAPER
THE NEGRO AS A BUSINESS MAN.
BY ANDREW F. HILYER.
[Illustration: Andrew F. Hilyer]
ANDREW FRANKLIN HILYER.
The subject of this sketch was born in slavery near Monroe,
Walton county, Georgia, August 14, 1858. In the early
fifties his maternal grandfather, Overton Johnson, was set
free, given some money and sent North. He went to Cincinnati
and began a free man's life as a cook and steward in a
hotel. In a short time, by strict economy, he had saved some
money from his earnings. This, with the money brought from
the South, enabled him to open "The Dumas House," well known
to the older residents of Cincinnati. In 1862 he sold this
business, moved to St. Louis and opened a hotel in that
city, where he was at the close of the war. In 1866 he sent
for the remainder of his family in the South, consisting of
his youngest son and a daughter and her four children, the
eldest of whom was Andrew Franklin Hilyer.
About the time of their arrival in St. Louis business
reverses threw the now enlarged family upon their own
resources, and young Andrew, though but eight years old, was
"hired out." He early developed a burning desire for an
education, and took advantage of every opportunity that he
could find to study and to learn. He soon learned to read.
With this key he opened up to his enquiring mind a wide
vista of knowledge and saw through many things which before
had seemed dark. The family remained in St. Louis two years,
but in very poor circumstances. During this period Andrew
was able to attend school but little, yet he was so anxious
to learn several persons gladly gave him instruction. It was
during these struggles that he formed his purposes in life.
He solemnly resolved to make a man of himself and to
graduate from college.
In 1868 the entire family moved to Omaha, Neb., where their
circumstances gradually improved and Andrew was enabled to
attend school a part of each year. His mother died in 1871,
and the next year he went to Minneapolis, Minn. Here was
located the State University, and his opportunity to go to
college had now come. To make this possible he learned the
trade of a barber and pursued his studies, graduating from
the Minneapolis High School in 1878 and from the University
of Minnesota in 1882.
He soon came to Washington, entered the service of the
Government and took up the study of law and in 1885
graduated from the Howard Law School.
Mr. Hilyer takes an active interest in the progress of his
race along all lines, but he has especially urged upon their
attention skilled labor and business as very important
factors in the progress of the race.
In 1886 he married Miss Mamie E. Nichols, a descendant of
one of the older Washington families, who graces a happy
home. They have been blessed with two boys, whom they are
trying to rear and educate to become good men.
The resistance of the white people to the progress of the colored
people is least along the line of business. The colored people
themselves have only to develop a larger spirit of race help in
business and a magnificent future is just ahead for them.
In addition to little capital and much inexperience the colored
merchant has to contend against a hostile public opinion, which seems
to resent his efforts to improve his own condition and that of his own
race, when he assumes to tear himself away from the mass of his fellow
laborers and attempts to keep store like a white man.
Strange enough this hostile feeling is shared in, more by the colored
than by the white people, especially along certain lines of business
not of a semi-social nature. It is a matter of common complaint by
colored business men in those classes of business in which they must
compete with white merchants that they do not get their share of the
trade of their own race and that their patronage comes very largely
from the white race. At present the pathway of the colored man to
success in business is very much handicapped by this unfriendly public
opinion. His problem is to win the confidence of the public in his
ability and purpose to serve them as well as or better than his
competitors.
Individuals, here and there, have won this public confidence to a
surprising degree and are demonstrating day by day the ability of men
and women to do business according to approved business methods. The
hostility of the whites is but another manifestation of the general
feeling of race prejudice; but the hostility of the masses of their
own race can only be attributed to envy and ignorance. For every
colored man, woman and child should rejoice in the success or upward
step of any colored person, because it is an inspiration and a hope to
thousands of others to follow his example. Only the strongest and most
progressive few of any race can be successful pioneers. The masses of
all races are LED to attempt only what they see persons of their own
kind doing. Every community of colored people needs, as a powerful
uplifting force, a few captains of industry who will lead his people
along the pathway of home-getting and the undertaking of business
enterprises. For business will develop their sense of independence and
personal responsibility and give strength and symmetry to character.
No better service can be performed for the race at this time than to
turn the light upon those successful business men and women of the
colored race in every community, so that our youth may see them, know
them, and take inspiration and courage from their example.
The real leaders of the race are those who lead in doing. It has been
said that ninety per cent of all business enterprises among the highly
favored white race finally fail in the lifetime of their promoters.
The conditions of success in business for the white race are so
exacting, uncertain, changeable and inscrutable that only ten per cent
retire from the contest victorious. When we recall the fact that the
colored people have come so recently from savagery, through the
barbarism and debasing effects of American slavery, into the light of
the present-day civilization, we should expect them to be slow in
getting a footing in the shifting and ever-changing sands of the
business world, while in slavery they were deprived of every
opportunity to learn anything about the art of business or even to
drink in its spirit. It was one of the essential conditions of the
slave system that they should be taught to distrust each other; and
they learned this lesson well. We must expect that it will take some
time to unlearn it. Along with this blighting feeling of distrust the
seeds of envy and jealousy were carefully sown. These seeds must have
fallen in good soil, for they sprang up and increased wonderfully, and
now constitute the thorns and weeds in the pathway of the colored
man's success in business.
In view of their economic, educational and political history, we
should naturally expect the colored race to make in the first
generation of their freedom more progress in education and general
culture, more progress in the building of churches and in the
acquisition of homes and lands than in the exacting arena of business.
At any rate such has been the fact. The entire race is passing through
a hard and severe economic struggle. The whole nation is in the throes
of a great social distress, on account of the presence of this colored
race with physical aspects so different from the main body of the
people. The colored people are being put to a severe test. They are
being tried as it were by fire. They are face to face and in
competition with the most efficient, the most exacting people the
world has ever seen. The dross is being driven off. The race is being
purified and strengthened for the contests which are to follow. The
colored man or woman who would succeed in business must meet not only
the competition of his white neighbor with his superior capital and
training, but also the blight of distrust and the jealousy and envy of
many of his own race. His course is by no means plain sailing. He has
foes within his race as well as foes without; enemies in front and
enemies in the rear. And yet, in spite of all these adverse conditions
a very creditable beginning has already been made in the business
world--a beginning that promises well for the future. The business
movement among the colored people has not as yet attained great
volume, but its foundations have been laid broad and deep. The number
of persons engaged in business is quite large, and the classes already
invaded by individuals of the colored race cover almost every class of
business in which persons of the white race are engaged.
THE CAPITAL OWNED BY NEGROES.
The colored people are rapidly acquiring property. This is a matter of
common, every-day observation. The value of property owned by them is
no less than five hundred millions of dollars. In Georgia alone, where
separate records are kept, their assessed valuation exceeds fifteen
millions, one million of which was added in the past year. The
assessed valuation is only about forty per cent of the actual value.
From all over the country equally encouraging reports are sent out of
the steady progress of this people in the acquisition of landed
property. Although tens of thousands are shiftless, thousands are
saving money. It is being stored up slowly but surely for future use.
Much of it is already invested in business. A larger part of this
property and money will be turned into business channels as fast as
the race, by its patronage and support, evidences its desire to
advance this business movement.
THE EXTENT OF THE BUSINESS MOVEMENT AMONG THE NEGROES.
In order to obtain reliable data for a study of the progress of the
colored people in the skilled trades, in business, in getting homes
and in building churches and other institutions, the United States
Commission to the Paris Exposition of 1900 sent out the writer in
February of that year as an expert agent to visit the chief industrial
centers of the South and secure the data for the purpose of making the
facts collected, a feature of the Negro exhibit. In every city or town
visited the colored people took great pride in showing their
successful business establishments; and they all had some to show. In
every place a beginning had been made. The writer personally visited,
inspected and collected data from one hundred and forty-three business
establishments of considerable importance owned and conducted by
colored men and women. They range from a grocery store, with stock and
fixtures of the value of five hundred dollars, to a bank, which, on
the day of my visit, had a cash balance in its vault of $82,000. Only
the best business places were visited. There were hundreds of small
shops in the cities and towns visited, all of which evidenced the
breadth of the business movement of the people.
THE ATLANTA UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE.
The results of this hurried trip corroborates in a remarkable degree
the report of the Atlanta University Conference. "The Report of the
Negro in Business" was made in 1899. In that year the conference made
an investigation of this subject under the direction of Prof. W. E. B.
DuBois, professor of sociology in that university. This report is a
most valuable contribution to the study of the race problem. Prof.
DuBois has shown commendable zeal in studying the race problem, while
so many others are content to discuss it. The data for his study were
collected principally by the alumni of Atlanta University and are thus
entitled to a high degree of credibility.
Reports were received from one thousand nine hundred and six colored
men and women in business, showing the kind of business, time in
business, and the amount of capital invested. Almost every kind of
business carried on by white people was represented, thus evidencing a
desire and a reaching out on the part of the Negro that will produce
great results in years to come. Only establishments of considerable
importance were solicited and reported.
Time in business: Four-fifths had been established five years or more;
one-fifth more than twenty years. Sixty-seven more than thirty years.
This shows a remarkable longevity in business that is highly
gratifying.
Capital invested: Complete returns were not received from all; only
1,736 establishments reported capital. Their aggregate capital was
$5,631,137. Prof. DuBois estimated that the total amount invested by
American Negroes in business managed by themselves in 1899 was
$8,784,000. Compared with the immense sum of money invested in
business in the United States, this seems meager enough; but when we
consider the poverty of the colored people at the beginning of their
freedom, the saving and investment of nearly $9,000,000 in business
enterprises conducted by themselves in one generation is a most
creditable showing.
By far the larger part of the capital of the colored people is as yet
invested in enterprises conducted by white persons. In the city of
Washington, where the idea of the advantage to the race in having a
number of successful business enterprises has been very much agitated,
only about one-fifth of its wealthy colored people have any
investments in enterprises conducted by colored men, as shown in the
report of the Hampton Conference for 1898. A like proportion will
doubtless be found in other cities.
THE CENSUS OF 1890 ON NEGRO BUSINESS.
According to the census of 1890 (the returns from the census of 1900
on this subject not being available at this writing), taken
twenty-five years after the war, the colored people had
representatives engaged in every business listed in the census
schedules. It is true that the number of persons engaged and the
capital engaged in some branches of business were not imposing, yet an
effort had been made--a start, a beginning had been made in every
branch of business carried on in this country. The census of 1890 does
not in all cases make a distinction between "proprietor" and
occupation. Hence, it is not always easy to pick out the
"proprietors." The tables have been gone over very carefully. Only
those occupations have been selected about which there can be no doubt
that the persons listed are "proprietors." The total number of persons
of Negro descent engaged in business in 1890 was 20,020.
It is obvious to any one who has paid even a little attention to it
that there has been a considerable increase since 1890, in the number
of such business ventures and in the capital employed.
THE NATIONAL NEGRO BUSINESS LEAGUE.
As an evidence that the race is rapidly advancing along business
lines, a conference or convention of colored business men was called
by Mr. Booker T. Washington to meet in Boston August 23-24, 1900, for
the purpose of making a showing of the progress of the race in
business and to give encouragement and impetus to the business
movement. The success of this convention was a pleasant surprise to
many persons. Over two hundred delegates reported in person, and
nearly two hundred additional reported by letter. The tone of the
reports they brought from their several localities was uniformly
hopeful. Most of the delegates present lived outside of New England,
some coming from as far south as Florida and Texas, and as far west as
Nebraska. A permanent organization was formed, called The National
Negro Business League, the purpose of which is to keep its members in
touch with one another. Their "Proceedings" were published by Mr. J.
R. Hamm of No. 46 Howard street, Boston, in a handsome volume of two
hundred and eighty pages, and constitutes one of the most valuable
contributions to the study of the progress of the colored people.
This business league held its second annual convention in Chicago in
August, 1901. This meeting also was a great success in every way, and
received, if possible, more attention and space from the public press
than the previous meeting in Boston.
A recent study of the colored business enterprises of Washington,
published by the writer, shows that there are in the National capital
1,302 colored "proprietors" in all kinds of business and professions.
Their capital exceeds seven hundred thousand dollars, and they
transact more than two million dollars worth of business annually,
affording employment to 3,030 persons.
Among the more conspicuous examples of successful enterprises
conducted by colored men in the United States may be mentioned the
following: Thirteen building and loan associations, seven banks, about
one hundred life insurance and benefit companies, several mining
companies, one street railway company, one iron foundry, one cotton
mill, one silk mill, three book and tract publication houses, one of
them having a plant valued at $45,000; over two hundred newspapers and
three magazines. One of these newspapers has 5,000 subscribers and a
plant costing $10,000. One firm of truck gardeners, near Charleston,
South Carolina, over 500 acres under cultivation, has been in the
business over 30 years and ships several carloads of garden truck to
Northern markets every week. The railroad company considers its trade
of such importance that it has built a siding to their farm and the
cars are loaded directly from their warehouses. This is probably the
most extensive individual or partnership business carried on by
colored men anywhere in the United States. Noisette Bros. is the name
of the firm. Near Kansas City, Kansas, there is a colored man, Mr. J.
K. Graves, who owns and cultivates over 400 acres of land. He has been
engaged principally in raising potatoes. His crop last year was over
75,000 bushels, which, with the other things raised and sold, was
worth about $25,000. Within a radius of thirty-five miles of his farm,
he says that there are 312 Negro farmers, horticulturists, gardeners,
truckers, potato growers and dealers, most of whom are up to date and
have all modern appliances necessary to carry on their business.
Mr. C. C. Leslie, a dealer in fish in Charleston, South Carolina, has
$30,000 invested in the business, in nets, boats, ice-houses, real
estate, etc., and ships to Northern markets from three to five
carloads of fish per week during the busy season.
In Charleston the most prosperous butchers are colored men. In
Columbus, Mississippi, there is a colored butcher who owns his
abattoir and supplies the best trade of his town with meat. Some of
the most prosperous fish, produce and poultry dealers in the markets
of Washington are colored men. One firm has been in business
continuously over thirty years, the sons succeeding the father in the
business. Several have maintained their stands over twenty years.
A pawnbroker in Augusta, Georgia, has $5,000 capital. The largest and
best equipped drug store in Anniston, Alabama, is owned by a colored
physician. He has a considerable wholesale trade in patent medicines
and druggists' sundries.
One of the best equipped ready-made clothing stores in Columbia, South
Carolina, is owned by a colored man. He carries a stock of ten
thousand dollars.
A stock breeder in Knoxville, Tennessee, is worth $100,000, and has
$50,000 invested in blooded horses.
A photographer in St. Paul, Minnesota, does a business of $20,000 a
year. Another in New Bedford, Massachusetts, began as an errand boy,
learned the photographic art thoroughly, saved his money, bought out
the white proprietor, and now conducts the leading studio in that old
and aristocratic city.
The caterers of Philadelphia and Baltimore have long been noted for
their success in business, although they have lost some ground from
white competition during the last few years. There are yet several
with capital above $5,000.
The caterer at the great naval banquet at Newport in honor of Admiral
Sampson and our navy upon its return from the victories in the war
with Spain, where the very unusual task was accomplished of serving
one thousand men in a very satisfactory manner, was a colored man.
The foregoing are only a few of the many examples of success that
individuals of the colored people have achieved in business. They are
cited by way of "a bill of specifications." They show conclusively
that, in spite of many adverse conditions, it is possible for a
colored person, by perseverance and honesty, to succeed in
business.
THIRD PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A BUSINESS MAN.
BY REV. J. H. MORGAN.
[Illustration: Rev. J. H. Morgan.]
REV. J. H. MORGAN.
Rev. J. H. Morgan was born in Philadelphia, Pa., November
15, 1843. His father was Rev. John R. V. Morgan. His
mother's maiden name was Mary Ann Harmon. At his mother's
death, which occurred when he was fourteen years old, he was
adopted into the family of James T. Robinson of
Philadelphia. Becoming dissatisfied at some fancied slight,
he left without authority, determined to provide for
himself, and be his own man. He soon found that the job was
not so easily done, as thought about, nevertheless he was
determined to win out, so he kept at it, and being of a
jovial disposition he soon made friends, and had the happy
faculty of keeping them. He started in the business of
selling home-made pies and cakes along the wharves. After a
short time he gave up this business for that of cabin boy on
a passenger boat plying between Philadelphia and Bristol,
Pa., making Bristol his home. At the breaking out of the
Civil War he was very anxious to enlist as a soldier, but
they informed him at Trenton, that it was a white man's war
and they were not taking colored men, as their ankles set so
near the middle of their feet, that when they said forward
march, they would be as likely to go backward as forward, so
he hired as a cook in an officers' mess and went to the
front with Company C First Regiment N. J. V. six months'
men. He was not down there long before he lost all his
desire to become a soldier, when the opportunity came for
him to enlist. While in Alexandria, Va., he started in to
learn the barber trade, and on his return home worked as a
journeyman at his trade until he set up in business for
himself.
In 1876 he organized a mission at Poughkeepsie, N. Y., and
being young and enthusiastic, he requested at the next
conference to be sent to the mission to build it up. Bishop
Payne demurred, but after his persistence in the matter, he
consented, saying, "Well I will let you make your own
appointment this time, but will be expecting to hear from
you before the year is out, asking for a change." So after
ordaining him an Elder in Sullivan Street Church, May 12,
1878, he was stationed at Poughkeepsie. There he had some
misunderstanding with the people, which caused them to
promise to "cut his bread and butter short," which promise
he says was the only one that they made, that they
faithfully carried out. One day they fed his family on wind
pudding, air sauce and balloon trimmings, and right here
Bishop D. A. Payne became a prophet, because he heard from
him, and his time was short, as in a few days after he
received an appointment to Albany, N. Y., and was returned
the following year on account of effective service done. At
the following conference he was elected as delegate to the
General Conference at St. Louis with Rev. W. F. Dickerson,
John F. Thomas and C. T. Shaffer. On his return from the
conference he was transferred to N. J. Conference and
stationed at Princeton, N. J., and with the exception of
four years spent in the N. E. Conference, one in the N. Y.
Conference, he has remained in the N. J. Conference. Rev.
Morgan is the recognized historian of the conference, and
was its secretary for a number of years, and was the
Vice-President of the first Board of Church Extension. The
Reverend is known in his conference under the cognomen of
"The Only Morgan"--his description of things and events
gaining for him this title. He was made Presiding Elder by
Bishop H. M. Turner, and he thus describes his return from
the Presiding Eldership to one of the weakest appointments
in another conference: "Milton, or some one, says that the
devil was nine days falling from heaven to hell; I made the
trip in less than twenty minutes." Bishop H. M. Turner's
second wife and the subject of this sketch were converted in
and became members of the same church at Bristol, Pa. He was
considered an exceptionally good superintendent of the
Sabbath school before he was a member of the church. It was
during the time that he was a local preacher at this church
that he learned the lesson of his life. "I had a fair
smattering of an education and, being in business, I was
always consulted in the affairs of the church."
It becomes more and more evident every day of our existence, as
individuals, and as a race, that a grave mistake has been made by
those who have heretofore, or may be now, making claim to leadership
of making higher education the main and only route to the full
development of the race. The higher education is in the order of
specials. It is true that we need the artistic structure, but we need
first a foundation upon which to rest it. We seem to have started with
the idea that the structure has already been laid, which is true as
concerns the other man. But we have not laid one foot ourselves, but
are endeavoring to build upon another's, and as often as we build and
finish the structure, the other man, by virtue of owning the
foundation and that upon which it rests, claims and takes all (under
the fixed rule that the people who own the land will rule it), and the
last state is worse than the first, unless this happens at a time of
life when the experience will become a lesson, well learned, and time
allotted for a new start along the proper lines. It is, therefore,
very evident that the essential thing in the line of individual and
race development, is business. Business, we discover, when properly
defined, leads in its various ramifications to all roads to success.
Business defined.--"The state of being anxious; anxiety; care. The act
of engaging industriously in certain occupations. The act of forming
mercantile or financial bargains, more generally an abundance of such
acts done by separate individuals."
Crabb thus distinguishes between business, occupation, employment,
engagement, and avocation: "Business occupies all of a person's
thoughts, as well as his time and powers; occupation and employment
occupy only his time and strength; the first is most regular--it is
the object of his choice; the second is causal--it depends on the will
of another. Engagement is a partial employment; avocation a particular
engagement; an engagement prevents us from doing anything else; an
avocation calls off or prevents us from doing what we wish. A person
who is busy has much to attend to, and attends to it closely; a person
who is occupied has a full share of business without any pressure; he
is opposed to one who is idle; a person who is employed has the
present moment filled up; he is not in a state of inaction; the
person who is engaged is not at liberty to be otherwise employed--his
time is not his own--he is opposed to one at leisure."
Business, trade, profession, and art are thus discriminated: "The
words are synonymous in the sense of a calling, for the purpose of a
livelihood; business is general; business, trade and profession are
particular; all trade is business, but all business is not trade.
Buying and selling of merchandise is inseparable from trade; but the
exercise of one's knowledge and experience, for the purpose of gain,
constitutes a business; when particular skill is required, it is a
profession; and when there is a particular exercise of art, it is an
art; every shopkeeper and retail dealer carries on a trade; brokers,
manufacturers, bankers, and others, carry on a business; clergymen,
medical or military men follow a profession; musicians and painters
follow an art."
The distinction between business, office, and duty: "Business is what
one prescribes to one's self; office is prescribed by another; duty is
prescribed or enjoined by a fixed rule of propriety; mercantile
concerns are the business which a man takes upon himself; the
management of parish concerns is an office imposed upon him, often
much against his inclination; the maintenance of his family is a duty
which his conscience enjoins upon him to perform. Business and duty
are public or private; office is mostly of a public nature; a minister
of state, by virtue of office, has always public business to perform;
but men in general have only private business to transact; a minister
of religion has always public duties to perform in his ministerial
capacity; every other man has personal or relative duties which he is
called upon to discharge according to his station."--Crabb: Eng.
Synon.
There has been a vast number of theories advanced as regards the
solving of the Negro problem. But the idea of business seems to have
only a minor place, which, to our mind, should be one of the leading
factors. It seems that the race has been educated away from itself. It
is not an uncommon thing to see young men who have splendid
educational abilities, versed in the languages, with check aprons on,
scrubbing marble steps, and doing other menial labor. Their plea is,
when questioned along this line, "I cannot get anything else to do."
To what advantage then, has the hard earned money of their parents and
friends been expended to educate them? Their fathers did as well as,
if not better, than they without it, and cannot this man, with the
advantage of education, "turn up something"? There is something
radically wrong with the plan of education. The old man could plod
over the farm in his antiquated way, and earn money enough to keep
things going, and educate his son, but when that son's education has
been completed, he has not the ability, or business tact, with modern
improvements, to build upon the foundation laid by his less cultured
father. Let this cultured boy get down to business. For him, here is
the route laid down.
Secretary of Agriculture, Hon. Mr. Wilson, in discussing the
productive possibilities of the South and the problem of Negro labor,
makes the following observations: "The pressing question is, what is
the laborer down South who has been growing cotton, and is not getting
enough for his product, to do in the future to enable him to live
comfortably, not to speak of the improvement of his condition,
education, and all that?"
The cotton crop leaves very little that is valuable for domestic
animals after the picking is done, thus differing from the corn crop
of the Northwestern states. There is a by-product, the cotton seed,
that is exceedingly valuable, and much good work is being done by
scientists at experiment stations to show how valuable cotton seed is
for feeding purposes.
The nitrogen element in cotton-seed is greater than that of any of the
grains; it is richer in nitrogenous matter than peas or beans; richer
than gluten, meat or oil cake. The Northern feeder and the European
feeder have been using this by-product of the cottonfields with great
advantage, while the loss of its fertilizing qualities to the South
has been very great.
The South has more marked advantages over the North with regard to
production. It has heat and moisture, the two great factors of
production, and if the cotton grower is to diversify his crops, he
must use those natural advantages. The dairy cow and mutton sheep
would succeed admirably in the South, but something for them to eat
must be provided first. The winters in the South are mild, grasses,
grains, legumen can be sown in the fall and grow abundantly in the
winter, upon which the dairy cow and mutton sheep may thrive and
prosper. From one-fifth to one-fourth of all the fat of the milk on
the farms of the United States is lost because people do not
thoroughly understand when to churn cream. The churning process is an
art, having much science underlying it. But the cotton grower of the
South only needs to learn the way, while the man who teaches him can
understand the science. Much yet remains to be discovered in the art
of breeding animals, but enough is known to indicate to the instructor
of the colored cotton grower of the South, who is to be diverted into
work of this kind, to enable him to breed his herd intelligently. The
South can prepare the spring lamb much earlier than the North can. The
Southern land owner understands horse raising. There is always a
greater demand for saddle horses than is supplied. The world wants
carriage and draft horses, and good roadsters. Early spring
chickens--the broilers--can be produced down there because of the
milder winters, and milder springs than we have, and the Northern
market can be supplied. Should the market be over supplied we can send
this product abroad in the refrigerating compartments of steamships.
The colored man is learning the trades at Tuskegee; he is mining coal,
and working the manufacture of iron at Birmingham. We quote this
gentleman, who is without doubt authority on this special line, and
therefore worthy of serious and careful consideration, to support the
point we make, that this problem must be worked out along lines,
especially along business lines.
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES.
Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the Philippines are absolutely ours. The
Philippines are said to be as large as the New England States,
including New York and New Jersey; Hawaii about the size of New
England; Porto Rico the size of Connecticut. Hawaii, with a population
of 109,000; Porto Rico, 900,000; Philippines, 8,000,000, and very few
whites; a climate in which the Anglo Saxon, it is said, cannot stay
for any great length of time. And it is rich in all those thing which
are desirable by the white man. These acquisitions must be developed
by American genius and capital, and as the white American cannot stay
there the year round to develop the same, what better agent to do this
work than the Afro-American who has been schooled in American ideas
and customs and usages. Is not this an opportunity given by Providence
to commence business building? The race should cease pleading to be
"The Wards of the Nation;" cease waiting for something to turn up, or
have somebody to do something for them, but should unite their forces
and turn up something for themselves. The people who own the country,
if intelligent and thrifty, will rule and run it. What Coleman has
done in North Carolina in a business way, could be done in a majority
of the states to a greater or less extent. Small factories could be
arranged for, where our people could be employed in producing the
commodities of life. Some time ago it was said that a large tract of
land had been arranged for, backed by a number of Tammany Hall
capitalists; factories were to be built to give employment to the
settlers, deeds for lots were to be given at a nominal cost. The
project was opposed by some of our so-called leaders, because it was
backed by Tammany; but it is the very thing needed, no matter who
backs it up; it is the business men who run the country; it is they
who put the millions to work and keep the mighty dollar in
circulation; we must enter the business world and by pluck, tact and
thrift, live while we are living, and die when we cannot do otherwise.
The man who thanks Almighty God when the news of disaster comes from
land or sea that no loss comes to him is not so wise in the sight of
God, or man, as he who can thank God that the interest on accrued
stock had advanced an hundred fold before the crash came.
TOPIC XXVI.
THE NEGRO AS A FARMER
BY PROF. GEORGE W. CARVER.
[Illustration: Prof. Geo. W. Carver, M. Ag.]
PROF. GEORGE W. CARVER, M. AG.
A few years ago there was graduated at the Iowa Agricultural
College a young colored man of unusual promise. His name was
G. W. Carver, and his specialty the care and production of
plants. Not long after graduation he was engaged by Booker
T. Washington as a teacher and assistant in his famous
industrial school, and to-day the young man is Mr.
Washington's most trusted adviser, while his reputation has
gone abroad as a scientist and an original investigator of
no mean order.
Born during the period of the Civil War, he was separated
from his parents when but six weeks old, they having been
sold to some distant slaveholders. The infant was puny and
ailing, and his master regarded him as worthless. A family
named Carver took the babe and his brother, a little older.
It was with them the child had a home for nine years. About
that time the little black boy developed a remarkable love
for plants, and so much knowledge of their structure and
life, that he was given the name of "the plant doctor." Mr.
and Mrs. Carver were proud of the boy's talents and made
much of him, and it was their evident satisfaction in him
that aroused the jealousy of their own children, who at last
drove the two colored boys away from home. Northward they
turned their faces, to the land where white and black have
equal chances in life, as they fondly believed. The little
"plant doctor," who had picked up the elements of an
education, wanted, above all else, to enter some good
school. The boys were driven from pillar to post, but, being
devotedly attached to each other they held together, until
in Kansas they thought best to separate.
During these years, young Carver had tried many kinds of
work. At length he found himself at Winterset, Iowa. It was
there the wife of a physician encouraged him to go to
Indianola where she thought he could enter college and earn
his way by doing laundry work. He went there, but didn't get
the work, and it was while there that a young lady, a well
known Iowa artist, became interested in him. Under the
pretext of securing his help in correcting some drawings,
she went to the mean quarters he occupied and found him
starving to death. There was no work for him, no money. For
weeks, he had subsisted upon corn bread and tallow. She then
arranged for him to go to the Iowa Agricultural College,
where she had influential friends and where she believed he
would have a chance.
But, even at the Agricultural College of Iowa the color line
was sharply drawn by the students. Persecution and
ill-treatment were resorted to. But young Carver said, "I
will bear it. I must get an education. Here I can get work
and I will suffer anything rather than give up the one
chance of my life to obtain a schooling." His old and
intimate knowledge of plants stood him in hand, and he was
given charge of the greenhouses. True, he was shunned by
many, his place at table was with the servants, but he had
warm friends and he was, by force of character, winning the
good will of all. One day an Indianola lady, who had come to
know him before he left that place, went to visit him at his
college. Dressed in her best, she accompanied him, though
against his protestation, to dinner, taking a seat at the
servants' table.
The next time this lady visited the college the colored
student sat at the table with the faculty. In the military
drill he had taken the highest honors. When he was graduated
it was with distinction. He wrote the class poem. He had
succeeded in winning and holding friends.
Some time ago he spent several weeks in Washington, D. C.,
and there the most kindly attention was extended to him by
Secretary Wilson, who never fails to recognize merit
wherever he may find it.
The name of G. W. Carver is now enrolled on the fellowship
list of more than one scientific Institution.
The above subject is by no means an easy one to discuss, as reliable
data are fragmentary and widely scattered; yet I am sure that I have
been able to collect some interesting and valuable facts and figures
bearing upon this important question. There is no doubt that the Negro
as a tenant farmer is a failure; this we are forced to admit, but we
do so with a justly proud feeling that it is not an inherent race
characteristic, but the result of conditions over which we had little
or no control. Failure is inevitably and indelibly stamped in the
foreheads of any class of average tenant farmers, regardless of race
or color.
In American agriculture the Negro has always held, and is yet holding,
an important place; in fact, far more, as a rule, than has been
accredited to him. Lest our judgment be too harsh in this particular,
I have thought it wise to briefly scan the beginning and development
of agriculture in the United States. In 1492 the first settlers found
the Indians carrying on agriculture in a crude and limited way, by the
women; their farm machinery consisting of their fingers, a pointed
stick for planting, and the bones of animals and the shell of the clam
for a hoe; with nothing more than a squatter's right as a voucher for
the ownership of their farms. Prof. McMaster's History of the People
of the United States, George K. Holmes, assistant statistician of the
United States Department of Agriculture, in his "Progress of
Agriculture in the United States," and other high authorities, tell us
that the white man came, poor in the materials of wealth, a stranger
in a strange land with a strange climate. His tools were but little,
if any, improvement on those of the Indians, and agriculture as we
know it to-day was an idealistic dream. The plow was an exceedingly
crude thing and but little used, the hoe forming the principal
implement of industry. After a piece of land had been continuously
"cropped" until worn out, it was abandoned, or the cows turned upon it
for a while. It is further said that the poor whites, who had formerly
been indentured servants, were the most lazy, the most idle, the most
shiftless and the most worthless of men. Their huts were scarcely
better than Negro cabins, the chimneys were of logs, the chinks being
filled with clay. The walls had no plaster, the windows had no glass,
and the furniture was such as they themselves made.
The grain was threshed by driving horses over it in the open field.
When they ground it they used a rude pestle and mortar, or placed it
in the hollow of one stone and beat it with another. Beef or pork,
generally salted, salt fish, dried apples, bread made of rye or Indian
meal, milk, and a very limited variety of vegetables, constituted the
food throughout the year. When night came on his light was derived
from a few candles of home manufacture. The farmer and his family wore
homespun. If linen was wanted, the flax was sown and weeded, pulled
and retted, then broken and swingled, for all of which processes
nearly a year was required before the flax was ready for the spinners,
bleaching on the grass, and making and wearing. If woolens were
wanted, sheep were sheared and the wool was dyed and spun and woven at
home.
It was almost invariably true of all the settlers that the use and
value of manures was little regarded. The barn was sometimes removed
to get it out of the way of heaps of manure, because the owner would
not go to the expense of removing the accumulations and putting them
upon his fields. Such were the dreary conditions of the farmer's life
in colonial days, living all the time very closely upon the margin of
subsistence. Those conditions continued for some time after the
Republic had been established, and were not measurably ameliorated
until the present century had well advanced, until an improved
intelligence--the dissemination of information, and the work of the
inventor, had begun to take effect.
From the above we see how strikingly similar were the life, methods of
agriculture, and the results obtained from the sturdy New Englander,
who represented the best blood, bone and sinew of the old world, with
its almost prehistoric civilization, to that of the American Negro,
whose intellectual star is just beginning to rise above the horizon.
Over two centuries and a half ago the Negro found his way as a slave
to America, in a little Dutch trading vessel, cheap labor being the
chief motive which prompted such a gigantic scheme. The experiment
flourished and grew, and at about the close of the eighteenth century
six million slaves had been brought to this country. The major part of
all the cotton, corn, cane, potatoes, tobacco, and other agricultural
products, were planted, cultivated, harvested and prepared for, and,
not infrequently, marketed by, the slaves. In fact, they were the
agricultural backbone of the South. Since cotton forms the largest,
and has been the most important agricultural product in the South, I
think a hundred and nine years of its production will prove
interesting and valuable: In 1791, 8,889 bales were produced, and the
second cotton mill built at Providence, Rhode Island! the first one
being built at Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1787. From this time on the
acreage planted, the output and the number of cotton mills and
spindles increased. The estimated area planted in cotton alone in
1852, 6,300,000 acres, and the census report of 1860 showed 1,262
cotton mills and 5,235,727 spindles in the United States, with an
output of 4,861,292 bales. Despite the depressing effect of the four
years of civil strife, it took only five years to almost completely
regain the highest point reached in previous years. In 1889 and 1890
we find in the United States 19,569,000 acres planted, giving an
output of 7,311,322 bales, with 905 cotton mills operating 14,088,103
spindles. In 1898-99 the acreage increases to nearly 25,000,000, with
an output of 11,189,205 bales, representing a money value of
$305,467,041. Such is the history, production and growth of the cotton
industry in the United States, and were we to trace the other staple
products we would find them none the less interesting, since they were
produced largely by Negroes as slaves before the war, and as freedmen
after the war. This applies especially to Southern products.
Whatever of truth there is in Mr. Van de Graff's grave apprehensions
for the Negro, he with us must admit that the ills of the black tenant
farmer are simply the ills of the Southern farmer in a more or less
aggravated form. It is also true that the curse of such a system falls
the heaviest on the smallest and most ignorant tenant farmer, who is
the least capable of self-defense. For years we have been content to
let the preachers preach, the lawyers argue, the philosophers predict,
the teachers and the doctors practice with scarcely a question as to
our priority of right. We have, in the face of the many oppositions
which come to every race similarly situated, labored with endurance,
patience and forbearance, until the birth of the twentieth century
dawns upon us, steadily marching on, with something over $263,000,000
worth of unencumbered property to our credit. Now as to the number
owning farms and following agricultural pursuits as a livelihood, we
are pleased to submit some figures from the last census report, from
Crogman, in his "Progress of a Race," and from other authorities.
Beginning with the little District of Columbia, with an aggregate
area of 8,489 acres and 269 farms, there are seventeen Negro farmers,
five of which own their land in whole or in part. Their farms contain
29 acres, of which 25 are improved. The total value of the land is
$23,300, and the appurtenant buildings are worth $390; live stock to
the value of $489; and farm incomes for 1899 amounting to $4,244. Ten
farms, aggregating 258 acres, are operated by Negroes as cash tenants.
The reported values are, land, $114,600; buildings, $9,200; implements
and machinery, $1,200; and live stock, $1,383. The total incomes for
these farms in 1899 were $10,300. Two farms, together consisting of 21
acres, valued at $149,630, are operated by Negroes as salaried
managers. Of the 17 farms operated by Negroes, only 1 contains less
than three acres; 7 contain from 3 to 9 acres; 5 from 10 to 19 acres;
2 from 20 to 49 acres; and 2 from 50 to 99 acres, giving an average
size for all of 18.1 acres.
In the state of Delaware the farms constitute 85 per cent of the total
land surface of the state, which is divided up into 9,687 farms, of
which 8,869, or 91.6 per cent, are operated by whites, and 818, or 8.4
per cent, by Negroes. Of the latter class 297 are operated by owners,
and 35 by part owners. The value of their farms, including implements,
machinery and live stock, together with the value of implements,
machinery and live stock on the farms which other Negroes operate as
tenants, is $495,187.
In Arizona we find that three Negro farmers operate their farms as
salaried managers. Twelve own farms containing 1,511 acres, with farm
property valued at $60,422; one leases a 39-acre farm for cash, and
has implements and live stock worth $130. The total investment by
Negroes in agriculture, exclusive of farms owned by them and leased to
others, is, therefore, $60,552, which is a rather encouraging showing
for Arizona.
Messrs. Walker and Fitch, graduates of Hampton Institute, in 1896,
made a careful canvass of one congressional district in Virginia, and
found as follows: Out of a total acreage of 1,944,359 acres, one
fifteenth, or 125,597 acres, is owned by the Colored people, roughly
estimated at $1,000,000. These figures mean farm owning chiefly, as
$79,611 represent the total city property. They also report that in
Gloucester county, 25 years from the above date, the Colored people
owned less than 100 acres of land. To-day they own 13,000 acres of
land free from any encumbrance. Mr. Fitch further adds that he has
traveled quite thoroughly through more than ten counties of Virginia,
with horse and buggy, during the present year (1896), and that in no
county through which he traveled did the Colored people own less than
5,000 acres of land. He found also that much of the improved farming
was being done by Colored men, and that the strong public sentiment
against moving to cities was having the desired effect.
Again, the statistician reports, in 1890, 12,690,152 homes and farms
in the United States, and of this number the Negroes own 234,747 free
from all encumbrance, and 29,541 mortgaged; giving the percentage of
mortgaged property owned by Negroes as 10.71, while the whole
percentage of mortgaged property for the whole country is 38.97. It is
further stated that of all the property held by Negroes, 88.58 per
cent is owned without encumbrance. Since so much has been accomplished
in the Negro's pioneer days of freedom, may we not predict with a
considerable degree of assurance that the next decade and a half will
far exceed our most sanguine hope? The virgin fertility of our soils,
and the vast amount of cheap and unskilled labor, have been a curse
rather than a blessing to agriculture. This exhaustive system of
cultivation, the destruction of forests, the rapid and almost constant
decomposition of organic matter, together with the great multiplicity
of insect and fungus diseases that appear every year, make the
Southern agricultural problem one requiring more brains than that of
the North, East or West. The advance of civilization has brought, and
is constantly bringing, about a more healthy form of competition. The
markets are becoming more fastidious, and he who puts such a product
upon the market as it demands, controls that market, regardless of
color. It is simply a survival of the fittest.
We are also aware that the demands upon agriculture were never so
exacting as they are now. All other trades and professions are holding
out their inducements to the young men and women who are ready and
willing to grapple with life's responsibilities. One says, "Come and I
will make you a Gould." Another, a Rockefeller; still another, an
Astor--with all the luxuries their names suggest. Too many of our own
farmers illy prepare their land, cultivate, harvest and market the
scanty and inferior crop, selling the same for less than it cost to
produce it. I need not tell you that the above conditions imperatively
suggest the proverbial mule, implements more or less primitive, with
frequently a vast territory of barren and furrowed hillsides and
wasted valleys. Instead of the veritable Klondyke, of which their
dreams are made sweet, another mortgage has been added as an
unpleasant reminder of the year's hard labor. With this inevitable
doom staring them in the face, is it any wonder that so many of the
youth of our land flock to the cities with the hope of seeking some
occupation other than farming? The above conditions, together with the
seemingly higher civilization of the city folk, I claim, are largely
responsible for this. But be this as it may, in the light of what has
been accomplished, I see for us a very bright star of hope in the
education of two-thirds of the brightest and best of our youth in
scientific agriculture.
The many excellent schools, colleges, nature study leaflets, farmers'
bulletins and reading courses, conferences, convocations, congresses,
fairs, and the like, are all powerful educational factors designed to
lead the race into higher agricultural activities. The agricultural
schools, and higher institutions of that character, are wisely laying
much stress upon stock raising, dairying, horticulture, landscape
gardening, poultry raising, and every manipulation incident to the
successful operation of this great industry. These subjects have been
taught almost wholly to young men, but recent experience has taught,
not only in this, but in other countries, that many of these studies
seem especially suited to women; and many are taking the advantages
offered by schools in the matter of learning the technique of poultry
raising, dairying, horticulture, landscape gardening, and the related
sciences, along with their academy or college work, and as a reward
are finding pleasant, profitable and healthful employment. Nature
study, with the first principles of agriculture, is compulsory in many
of the primary schools, and ere another decade is indelibly placed
upon the historical records of the greatest events of the greatest
century, it will find us wonderfully in advance in this particular.
Every year we see a perceptible increase in the funds for public
education, and magnificent schools and colleges, with better paid
professors, springing up here and there, stand out as beacon lights to
this new and wonderful epoch. The wisdom of spending these
ever-increasing millions upon the youth of our land becomes from year
to year a matter of less concern as we seek to give our boys and girls
a broader education than that of a pure scientist. It is very
encouraging to note the course taken by our young men and women who
have gone out from those institutions--the way they have acquired
land, built homes, and are devoting their entire time and talent in
that direction. I have no fears but what we, in the course of time,
will do our part both nobly and well in the matter of feeding a hungry
world.
SECOND PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A FARMER.
BY H. A. HUNT.
[Illustration: Prof. H. A. Hunt]
PROF. HENRY A. HUNT.
Henry A. Hunt was born in Hancock County, Ga., in 1866. He
attended the public schools of Sparta, the county seat,
until 1882, when he entered Atlanta University and was
graduated from the college course in 1890. He also completed
the course of instruction given in the Industrial Department
of that university. He kept up his expenses, in a measure,
by working as a carpenter during his vacations and during
his spare hours while in school. He was considered a most
promising young man and a thorough scholar by his professors
and schoolmates. He became a professing Christian while
pursuing his college course. In all of the athletic sports
of the university he took an active part and served as
captain of the base ball team for several years. He
graduated with the highest honors of his class. Through a
most flattering recommendation from the Superintendent of
the Public Schools of Atlanta, Ga., he was called, in 1891,
to the principalship of the Charlotte Graded School, which
position he filled acceptably, until he resigned, during the
same year, to accept the superintendency of the Industrial
Department of Biddle University, Charlotte. N. C. In 1896 he
was given, in addition to his industrial work, the
superintendency of the Boarding Department of Biddle
University. These two positions he is now filling in a most
acceptable manner. Mr. Hunt's work and close touch with the
young men of the university have been most gratifying. He
encourages and takes part with them in all of their sports,
being the leading spirit in their athletic association. He
is a noble example of the manly man and his influence over
the students for straightforward and manly endeavor has been
truly helpful. The respect and esteem in which he is held by
the graduates and undergraduates are most noteworthy. In
August, 1900, Mr. Hunt called together the farmers of
Mecklenburg and surrounding counties for the purpose of
holding a farmers' conference. A permanent organization was
effected, of which he was made president. The influence of
these annual conferences is far-reaching and will no doubt
result in great good to the farming class of western North
Carolina. He was for several years the president of the
Queen City Real Estate Company of Charlotte, N. C., an
organization designed to help those wishing to obtain homes.
He was forced to relinquish this work because of other
duties. Mr. Hunt is a strong and courageous young man, he is
firm in his convictions and believes the royal road to
success is attained through the faithful performance of each
day's duties. His sympathies are near to the interests of
the working classes. As a college-bred man he urges his
people to become skilled artisans and to build up reliable
business enterprises and thus become independent. His
kindness of heart and plain honest dealing with his
fellow-man, along with his intellectual attainment, have won
for him a host of friends and made him a popular man with
all the people.
While attending Atlanta University, Mr. Hunt met the
girl--Miss Florence S. Johnson, of Raleigh, N. C.--who in
the year 1893 became his wife and to whom much of whatever
success he has attained is attributable. To them there have
been three bright and beautiful children born--two girls and
a boy.
In a chapter on this subject it may not be out of place to give some
little attention to the early history of the Negro as a farmer in
America.
Without stopping to discuss the motives of the sea captain who brought
over the first load of Negroes to America, or why the Northern
colonists discontinued, at a comparatively early date, the use of
slave labor, let us note a few things about the Negro in the South.
The fact that they could easily endure the summer sun of the cotton
belt; that they learned quickly the simple methods of farming used in
the cultivation of cotton, rice, sugar-cane, and tobacco; that they
required but little in the way of food, clothing, housing and medical
attention, and the further fact that they possessed a peculiarly happy
and light-hearted disposition, all tended to make them especially
valuable to the Southern planters.
It seems that slave labor was looked upon, at a comparatively early
date, as being not only desirable, but absolutely necessary to the
growth and development of the Southern colonies.
For several years after the settlement of Georgia no slaves were
allowed to be used in that colony, but, finding that the colony seemed
to be doomed to failure, the "trustees" permitted the introduction of
slaves and the colony began immediately to prosper.
The following lines attributed to George Whitefield--the famous
minister--in referring to his plantations in Georgia and South
Carolina, give a fair idea of the feelings of the Southern colonists
on the subject of slave labor at that time. He speaks thus about his
Georgia plantation: "Upward of five thousand pounds have been expended
in the undertaking, and yet very little proficiency made in the
cultivation of my tract of land, and that entirely owing to the
necessity I lay under of making use of white hands. Had a Negro
been allowed I should now have had a sufficiency to support a great
many orphans, without expending above half the sum which has been laid
out." How different are his expressions concerning his South Carolina
plantation, where slavery existed: "Blessed be God! This plantation
has succeeded; and, though at present I have only eight working hands,
yet, in all probability, there will be more raised in one year, and
without a quarter of the expense, than had been produced at Bethesda
for several years past. This confirms me in the opinion I have
entertained for a long time that Georgia never can or will be a
flourishing province without Negroes are allowed."
With the invention of the cotton gin slave labor became still more
valuable, the South more prosperous, and the planters verily believed
that cotton was king and South Carolina the hub of the universe.
But, while it is true that the Negro became an indispensable factor in
the material prosperity of the South by his work on the plantations,
yet he did not at that time occupy a position that could be dignified
with the name of farmer. During the days of slavery the Negro occupied
a position more closely akin to that of a farm animal than that of a
farmer. Of course there were exceptions but we are speaking now of the
masses.
The Negro having been looked upon by his master and schooled to look
upon himself and his fellow bondmen as possessing none of the
intelligence and virtues essential to success in life, there is little
wonder that a comparatively small number of freedmen took advantage of
the opportunities offered immediately after the close of the Civil War
to become land owners. Indeed, when we take into account the fact that
there was a sort of caste feeling among the slaves, with the "field
hands" as the "mud sill," and all glad of any opportunity offered to
rise above the despised position, the great wonder is that so many
were willing to continue an occupation considered so degrading. The
fact is, that it was to a very great extent simply a matter of
accepting cheerfully the inevitable that held so many of the freedmen
to the farms and to farm life.
Among the positive forces that operated in taking the Negro from the
farm there was, perhaps, none stronger than the desire to have his
children educated--the opportunity for which being very poor in the
country districts--many of the very best and most thrifty among them
left the farms for the towns and cities.
But whether on the farm or in the city, only a few years of freedom
and its attendant responsibilities were necessary to enable the more
intelligent ones of the ex-slaves to see the importance of not only
knowing something, but owning something as well, if they were to
entertain any hopes or aspirations above those of the "field hand,"
and it was from this class of Negro farm hands that the real Negro
farmer came into existence. While there were many who showed decided
intelligence, sound judgment and shrewd business sense by the manner
in which they managed their affairs, still the great masses had
arisen, if at all, only from the position of the master's farm animal
in slavery to that of his less cared for farm hand in freedom.
The condition just described represents the state of affairs during
the first few years after the war, as indeed it does present
conditions, except that the number of those who may be called farmers
is constantly increasing and the number of mere farm hands is growing
proportionately smaller. We should keep constantly in mind the
distinction between the man who tills his own land and the one who
works the land of another, the former is the farmer, the latter the
farm hand.
The distinction just noted would seem to be entirely justifiable as
ownership of the land is the first requisite for the proper interest
in, and love for the work being done, to entitle a man to the name of
farmer.
In order to properly appreciate the opportunities and advantages of
farm life to himself and his children, there must be that love for the
farm itself, its rocks, its woods, its hills, its shady rills and its
meadows that can come in no other way than through the proud sense of
ownership. There must be the feeling of kinship for the very soil
itself; the birds, the bees, the flowers must all be held dear to the
heart of him who would know nature's choicest secrets and reap rich
harvests from her beautiful storehouse.
In no field are the prospects brighter for the negro than in that of
agriculture. There are thousands of acres of land in the South and
Southwest that may be purchased upon terms so favorable that the land
being purchased, may, by proper management, be made to yield
sufficient income to meet the payments.
In the combination of a mild climate, cheap land, with easy payments,
ready markets and previous training of the Negro, God seems to be
offering special inducements for him to come out from the condition of
a landless tenant--that may grow into a serfdom worse than slavery--to
that of worthy, independent and self-respecting land owners.
There is no field in which he meets so little of the unreasoning and
unreasonable prejudice as in farming.
The products of the farm are the necessaries of life and people do not
stop to question too closely as to whence they come or by whom
produced.
Owing to the growth of manufacturing in the South, especially of
cotton goods and the consequent removal of large numbers of the poor
whites into the cities and towns, just now would seem to be the high
tide of the Negroes' opportunity to become an independent class of
citizens; and we should be careful to seize it at its flood, or all
the rest of our life's voyage may be bound in shallows and miseries
more distressing than those already passed.
The opportunity for buying land, becoming independent and even
wealthy, are, indeed, grand, but the fact must ever be kept in mind
that the present favorable conditions will not obtain indefinitely.
Let the tide of European immigration once turn southward and
competition immediately becomes sharper, and the further progress of
the Negro decidedly more difficult.
If the Negro would put himself in position to successfully withstand
this competition that will inevitably come, let him begin now by
purchasing his stronghold--the farm--and fortify himself, or he may
awake, when it is too late, to find himself without a home or the
means with which to secure it.
Let us note just here one of the most solemn obligations resting upon
those who stand as leaders of the Negroes, viz.: The duty of
impressing upon the masses the absolute necessity for purchasing land
and the great need, yes, the absolute necessity of doing so _now_.
It is not the purpose of the writer to create the impression that the
leaders of our people are neglecting their duty, or that the masses
are letting their opportunities for material betterment pass
unimproved, but rather to arouse both leaders and followers to the
necessity for greater activity in their work. Indeed when all things,
favorable and unfavorable, are taken into account, there is much to be
thankful for and hopeful over in the present condition of the Negro
farmers.
In almost every community in the South there are to be found Negro
farmers who are not only making a decent living, but buying land and
improving it, building comfortable dwellings, improving the grades of
their farm animals, giving liberal support to their schools and
churches and bringing up their children in a manner that is
altogether creditable and calculated to make of them good citizens.
It is encouraging to note the increased interest on the part of many
young men on the subject of farming, as evidenced by the increasing
popularity of the agricultural and mechanical colleges, and the lively
interest taken by them in the farmers' conferences held in various
parts of the South. The number of Negro farmers who read agricultural
journals and make intelligent use of the bulletins issued by the
agricultural departments of the various states and the United States,
is constantly increasing.
Lest there be some doubt as to the truthfulness of the favorable
conditions just mentioned, let the figures speak. Since last year the
Negroes of the single state of Georgia have purchased 66,000 acres of
land and added $380,000 to the value of farm lands. (Prof. W. E. B.
DuBois in The Independent, Nov. 21, 1901.)
Indeed it seems that if in one particular line of work more than any
other the Negro has won for himself a place in the history of this
country's progress that work has been upon the farm. If one section of
the country has profited more than another by his toil, that section
is the South, whose forests he has felled, whose roads he has built,
whose soil he has tilled, whose wealth he has created, and whose
prosperity he has made possible. Then let us not be discouraged, but
turn our faces to the sunlight of heaven and put forth our very best
endeavors, confidently expecting to reap the full rewards for our
labors and attain the full measure of manhood as a race in this "the
land of the free and the home of the brave."
TOPIC XXVII.
THE NEGRO AS AN INVENTOR.
BY H. E. BAKER.
[Illustration: H. E. Baker]
HENRY E. BAKER.
Henry E. Baker is one of the most useful men in Washington.
His life stands out in strong contrast to that of so many of
our educated colored men who have come to Washington,
obtained positions in the government service, and shriveled
up so far as public usefulness is concerned. He is an active
member of the Berean Baptist Church, being its treasurer, an
office he has held for several years. For ten years he has
been secretary, the executive officer of the Industrial
Building and Savings Company, and a director of the Capital
Savings Bank. His most notable characteristic is his public
spirit, having been connected with almost every
well-directed movement in this city for the last fifteen
years, looking to the betterment of the condition of his
race, especially in the matter of opening up business
opportunities for them. The estimation in which he is held
by those who know him best is attested by the fact that he
is almost invariably called to the position of treasurer in
every organization of which he is a member. Born just before
the War in Columbus, Miss., he attended the public school of
his home and also the Columbus Union Academy. He passed the
entrance examination at Annapolis, and was admitted into the
Naval Academy as cadet midshipman in 1875, where he remained
nearly two years. In 1877, he was appointed "copyist" in the
United States Patent Office, where he is at present
employed, and where he was promoted, through the several
intervening grades, to the position of Second Assistant
Examiner at $1,600 per annum. He attended the Ben-Hyde
Benton School of Technology in this city from 1877 to 1879;
entered the law department of Howard University in 1879,
graduating in 1881, at the head of his class, and from the
post-graduate course in 1883.
He was married in May, 1893, at Lexington, Ky., to Miss
Violetta K. Clark, of Detroit, Mich., who graces a cozy home
at 2348 Sixth Street, N. W.
It is quite within the mark to say that no class of men of modern
times has made so distinct a contribution to what is popularly called
"modern civilization" as have the inventors of the world, and it is
equally within bounds to say that the American inventor has led all
the rest in the practical utility as well as in the scientific
perfection of his inventive skill. Within the century just past the
inventors of America have done more than was done in all the preceding
centuries to multiply the comforts and minimize the burdens of
domestic life. What Washington and Grant, Sherman and Sheridan did for
the glory of America was done, and more, by Whitney, Morse, Thompson,
Howe, Ericsson, Colt, Bell, Corliss, Edison, McCormick, and a host of
other Americans, native and naturalized, to promote the progress of
American inventive skill, and thus firmly to establish this country in
the front rank of the enlightened nations of the world.
The true measure of a nation's worth in the great family of nations is
proportionate to that nation's contribution to the welfare and
happiness of the whole; and similarly, an individual is measured by
the contribution he makes to the well being of the community in which
he lives. If inventions therefore have played the important part here
assigned to them in the gradual development of our complex national
life, it becomes important to know what contribution the American
Negro has made to the inventive skill of this country.
Unfortunately for the seeker after this particular information the
public records of the United States government offer practically no
assistance, since the public records distinguish only as to nations
and not as to races. The Englishman and the American may instantly
find out how each stands in the list of patentees, but the Irishman
and the Negro are kept in the dark--especially the latter.
The official records of the United States Patent Office, with a single
exception, give no hint whatever that of the thousands of mechanical
inventions for which patents are granted annually by the government,
any patent has ever been granted to a Negro. The single exception was
the name of Henry Blair of Maryland, to whom the public records refer
as "a colored man," stating that he was granted a patent for a corn
harvester in 1834 and another patent for a similar invention in 1836.
It is altogether safe to assume that this Henry Blair was a "free
person of color," as the language of those days would have phrased it;
for the government seemed committed to the theory that "a slave could
not take out a patent for his invention." And this dictum gave rise to
some rather embarrassing situations on more occasions than one. For
instance, in 1857, a Negro slave, living with his master in the state
of Mississippi, perfected a valuable invention which his master sought
to have protected by a patent. Now, in law, a patent is a contract
between the government and the inventor or his assignees. The slave,
although the inventor, could not under the law be a party to a
contract, and therefore could not secure the patent himself. His
master applied for the patent, but was refused on the ground that
inasmuch as he was not the inventor and could not be the assignee of a
slave, he could not properly make the required oath. The master was
not satisfied with this interpretation of the law by the Commissioner
of Patents, and at once appealed from the latter's decision to the
Secretary of the Interior, who, in 1858, referred the case to the
Attorney-General of the United States. This latter official, who was
Hon. Jeremiah S. Black, of Pennsylvania, confirmed the decision of the
Commissioner of Patent, and neither master nor slave was ever able to
get a patent for the slave's invention. This case reported on page 171
of volume 9, of "Opinions of Attorneys-General, United States."
Another instance of a similar character occurred a few years later, in
1862, when a slave belonging to Jefferson Davis, President of the
Confederacy, invented a propeller for vessels. He constructed an
excellent model of his invention, displaying remarkable mechanical
skill in wood and metal working. He was not able to get his invention
patented, but the merits of his invention were commented upon
approvingly by a number of influential Southern newspapers, and his
propeller was finally put in use by the Confederate navy. With the
barrier of slavery cast aside, a new opportunity was opened to the
Negro inventor, and the purpose of this article is to show what use he
has made of that opportunity.
It must still be borne in mind that the records of the United States
Patent Office do not show whether a patentee is a Negro or a
Caucasian, and that to ascertain what the Negro has accomplished in
the field of invention other sources of information had to be
utilized; and finally, that the very omission from the public records
of all data calculated to identify a given invention with the Negro
race completely destroys the possibility of arriving at any definite
conclusion as to the exact number and character of negro inventions.
Judging from what has been duly authenticated as Negro inventions
patented by the United States, it is entirely reasonable to assume
that many hundreds of valuable inventions have been patented by Negro
inventors for which the race will never receive due credit. This is
the more unfortunate since the race now, perhaps, more than ever
before, needs the help of every fact in its favor to offset as far as
possible the many discreditable things that the daily papers are all
too eager to publish against it.
It appears that no systematic effort was ever made by the government
to collect information as to the number of inventions by Negroes until
January, 1900, when the then Commissioner of Patents, Hon. Charles H.
Duell, undertook the task. Previous to that time the United States
Patent Office had received numerous requests from all parts of the
country for information on that point, and the uniform reply was that
the official records of the Patent Office did not show whether an
inventor was colored or white, and that the office had no way of
obtaining such information.
Notwithstanding this fact, however, an employee of the Patent Office
had undertaken to collect a list of such patents, and this list was
used in selecting a small exhibit of Negro inventions. First, for the
Cotton Centennial at New Orleans, in 1884; again for the World's Fair
at Chicago, in 1893; and, lastly, for the Southern Exposition at
Atlanta in 1895. But it was reserved for the United States Commission
to the Paris Exposition of 1900 to make the first definite effort to
obtain this information, and at its request the following letter by
the Commissioner of Patents was addressed to hundreds of patent
lawyers throughout the country, to large manufacturing establishments,
to the various newspapers edited by colored men, and to prominent men
of the race:
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,
United States Patent Office.
Washington, D. C., Jan. 26, 1900.
Dear Sir:
This Office is endeavoring to obtain information concerning
patents issued to colored inventors, in accordance with a
request from the United States Commission to the Paris
Exposition of 1900, to be used in preparing the "Negro
Exhibit."
To aid in this work, you are requested to send to this
Office, in the enclosed envelope, which will not require a
postage stamp, the names of any colored inventors you can
furnish, together with the date of grant, title of
invention, and patent number, so that a list without errors
can be prepared.
You will confer a special favor by aiding in the preparation
of this list by filling in the blank form below, and sending
in any replies as promptly as possible. Should you be unable
to furnish any data, will you kindly inform us of that fact?
Very respectfully,
C. H. Duell,
_Commissioner of Patents._
========================================================================
NAME. | NUMBER. | DATE. | INVENTION.
---------------+------------------+----------------+--------------------
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
---------------+------------------+----------------+--------------------
The replies to this letter showed that the correspondents personally
knew of and could identify by name, date and number more than four
hundred patents granted by the United States to colored inventors. The
letters also showed that nearly as many more colored inventors had
completed their inventions, and had applied to patent lawyers
throughout the country for assistance in obtaining patents for their
inventions, but finally abandoned the effort through lack of means to
prosecute their applications. The list of the patented inventions as
furnished mainly by the letters above named is printed below, and
shows that, beginning first with agricultural implements and culinary
utensils, which circumscribed the character of his earlier employment,
the Negro inventor gradually widened the field of his inventive effort
until he had well nigh covered the whole range of patentable subjects.
A study of the list will disclose the fact that the Negro inventor has
very often, like his white brother, caught the spirit of invention,
and not being contented with a single success, has frequently been led
to exert his energies along many different lines of inventions.
Elijah McCoy, of Detroit, Mich., heads the list with twenty-eight
patents, relating particularly to lubricating appliances for engines
both stationary and locomotive, but covering also a large variety of
other subjects. The next is Granville T. Woods, of Cincinnati, whose
inventions are confined almost exclusively to electricity, and cover a
very wide range of devices for the utilitarian application of this
wonderful force. Mr. W. B. Purvis, of Philadelphia, comes next with
sixteen patents relating especially to paper bag machinery, but
including a few other subjects as well. Mr. F. J. Ferrell, of New
York, has ten patents on valves adapted for a variety of uses. Then
comes ex-Congressman Geo. W. Murray of South Carolina, with eight
patents on agricultural implements. Mr. Henry Creamer has seven
patents on steam traps, and more than a dozen among the number have
patented as many as five different inventions.
Time and space will not admit of any extended notice of many
individual patentees, but mention should be made of a few of them.
Granville T. Woods is called the "Black Edison" because of his
persistent and successful investigations into the mystery of
electricity. Among his inventions may be found valuable improvements
in telegraphy, important telephone instruments, a system for
telegraphing from moving trains, an electric railway, a phonograph,
and an automatic cut-off for an electric circuit. One of his telephone
inventions was sold to the American Bell Telephone Company, who is
said to have paid Mr. Woods handsomely for his patent. Mr. Ferrell's
inventions of valves laid the foundation for a large and highly
successful manufacturing and commercial enterprise which he now
conducts in the city of New York.
Mr. Elijah McCoy succeeded in placing his lubricators on many of the
steam car and steamboat engines in the northwest and also on some of
the ocean steamers, and from these he receives a valuable annual
royalty.
Mr. Matzeliger, of Massachusetts, is credited with being the pioneer
in the art of attaching soles to shoes by machinery; and Mr. Joseph
Lee, of Boston, is said to have placed his kneading machine in many of
the first-class bakeries and hotels in Boston and New York, from which
he receives a substantial royalty.
So far as is known to the writer Miss Miriam E. Benjamin, of
Massachusetts, is the only colored woman who has received a patent for
an invention, and the principle of her invention, that of a gong
signal, has just been adopted in the United States House of
Representatives in signalling for the pages to attend upon members who
want them for errands. Formerly the pages were signalled by members
clapping their hands, and the noise incident to this method was
frequently a great disturbance of the House proceedings. The new
system just adopted involves merely the pressing of a button on the
member's chair, and this rings a small gong while displaying a signal
on the back of the chair.
Another invention by a young colored man which has attracted
considerable attention is the rapid-fire gun by Mr. Eugene Burkins, of
Chicago. This gun has been examined by officers of the War and Navy
Departments, and has been pronounced a valuable contribution to the
scientific equipments for military and naval warfare.
The following description of Mr. Burkins' gun appeared in Howard's
American Magazine some months ago:
"A brief description of the gun is not exactly out of place,
although the Scientific American and other technical
journals have long since given it to the world. It is an
improvement upon all that has yet been done in the way of
ordnance, and the principles involved in its construction
can be applied to any size of gun, from a one-inch barker to
a thirty-six-inch thunderer. The model as it now stands
weighs 475 pounds, measures four inches at breech, and is
constructed of the finest of gun brass at a cost of $3,500.
There is a magazine at the breech in which a large number of
heavy shells can be held in reserve, and in the action of
the gun these slip down to their places and are fired at the
rate of fourteen a minute, an improvement on the Maxim gun
of four shots. The gun is elevated upon a revolving turret
with electrical connections, enabling the gunner to direct
the action of the machine with a touch of his finger.
Firing, reloading and ejection of shells are all effected by
electricity, and a child could conduct the work of manning
the gun as easily as anyone."
These inventions show how completely in error are those who constantly
assert that the Negro has made no lasting contribution to the
civilization of the age, and they prove conclusively that under
favorable environment he is capable of performing his whole duty in
the work of mankind whether it be tilling the earth with his hoe or
advancing the world by his thought.
LIST OF COLORED INVENTORS IN THE UNITED STATES AS FURNISHED FOR THE
PARIS EXPOSITION, 1900.
Inventor. Invention. Date. Number.
Abrams, W. B. Hame Attachment Apr, 14, 1891. 450,550
Allen, C. W. Self-Leveling Table Nov. 1, 1898. 613,436
Allen, J. B. Clothes Line Support Dec. 10, 1895. 551,105
Ashbourne, A. P. Process for Preparing Cocoanut
for Domestic Use June 1, 1875. 163,962
Ashbourne, A. P. Biscuit Cutter Nov. 30, 1875. 170,460
Ashbourne, A. P. Refining Cocoanut Oil July 27, 1880. 230,518
Ashbourne, A. P. Process of Treating Cocoanut Aug. 21, 1877. 194,287
Blair, H. Corn Planter Oct. 14, 1834.
Bailey, L. C. Combined Truss and Bandage Sept. 25, 1883. 285,545
Blair, Henry Cotton Planter Aug. 31, 1836.
Bailey, L. C. Folding Bed July 18, 1899. 629,286
Bailes, Wm. Ladder Scaffold Support Aug. 5, 1879. 218,154
Bailiff, C. O. Shampoo Headrest Oct. 11, 1898. 612,008
Ballow, W. J. Combined Hatrack and Table Mar. 29, 1898. 601,422
Barnes, G. A. E. Design for Sign Aug. 19, 1898. 29,193
Beard, A. J. Rotary Engine July 5, 1892. 478,271
Beard, A. J. Car-coupler Nov. 23, 1897. 594,059
Becket, G. E. Letter Box Oct. 4, 1892. 483,525
Bell, L. Locomotive Smoke Stack May 23, 1871. 115,153
Bell, L. Dough Kneader Dec. 10, 1872. 133,823
Benjamin, L. W. Broom Moisteners and Bridles May 16, 1893. 497,747
Benjamin, Gong and Signal Chairs
Miss M. E. for Hotels July 17, 1888. 386,286
Blackburn, A. B. Railway Signal Jan. 10, 1888. 376,362
Blackburn. A. B. Spring Seat for Chairs Apr. 3, 1888. 380,420
Blackburn, A. B. Cash Carrier Oct. 23, 1888. 391,577
Blue, L. Hand Corn Shelling Device May 20, 1884. 298,937
Binga, M. W. Street Sprinkling Apparatus July 22, 1879. 217,843
Booker, L. F. Design Rubber Scraping Knife Mar. 28, 1899. 30,404
Boone, Sarah Ironing Board Apr. 26, 1892. 473,653
Bowman, H. A. Making Flags Feb. 23, 1892. 469,395
Brooks, C. B. Punch Oct. 31, 1893. 507,672
Brooks, C. B. Street-Sweepers Mar. 17, 1896. 556,711
Brooks, C. B Street-Sweepers May 12, 1896. 560,154
Brooks, Hallstead
and Page Street-Sweepers Apr. 21, 1896. 558,719
Brown, Henry Receptacle for Storing and
Preserving Papers Nov. 2, 1886. 352,036
Brown, L. F. Bridle Bit Oct. 25, 1892. 484,994
Brown, O. E. Horseshoe Aug. 23, 1892. 481,371
Brown & Latimer Water Closets for Railway Cars Feb. 10, 1874. 147,363
Burr, J. A. Lawn Mower May 9, 1899. 624,749
Burr, W. F. Switching Device for Railways Oct. 31, 1899. 636,197
Burwell, W. Boot or Shoe Nov. 28, 1899. 638,143
Butler, R. A. Train Alarm June 15, 1897. 584,540
Butts, J. W. Luggage Carrier Oct. 10, 1899. 634,611
Byrd, T. J. Improvement in Holders for
Reins for Horses Feb. 6, 1872. 123,328
Byrd. T. J. Apparatus for Detaching Horses
from Carriages Mar. 19, 1872. 124,790
Byrd, T. J. Improvement in Neck Yokes for
Wagons Apr. 30, 1872. 126,181
Byrd, T. J. Improvement in Car-Couplings Dec. 1, 1874. 157,370
Burkins, Eugene Rapid-Fire Gun 649,433
Campbell, W. S. Self-Setting Animal Trap Aug. 30, 1881. 246,369
Cargill, B. F. Invalid Cot July 25, 1899. 629,658
Carrington, T. A Range July 25, 1876. 180,323
Carter, W. C. Umbrella Stand Aug. 4, 1885. 323,397
Certain, J. M. Parcel Carrier for Bicycles Dec. 26, 1899. 639,708
Cherry, M. A. Velocipede May 8, 1888. 382,351
Church, T. S. Carpet Beating Machine July 29, 1884. 302,237
Cherry, M. A. Street Car Fender Jan. 1, 1895. 531,908
Clare, O. B. Trestle Oct. 9, 1888. 390,753
Coates, R. Overboot for Horses Apr. 19, 1892. 473,295
Cook, G. Automatic Fishing Device May 30, 1899. 625,829
Coolidge, J. S. Harness Attachment Nov. 13, 1888. 392,908
Cooper, A. R. Shoemaker's Jack Aug. 22, 1899. 631,519
Cooper, J. Shutter and Fastening May 1, 1883. 276,563
Cooper, J. Elevator Device Apr. 2, 1895. 536,605
Cooper, J. Elevator Device Sept. 21, 1897. 590,257
Cornwell, P. W. Draft Regulator Oct. 2, 1888. 390,284
Cornwell, P. W. Draft Regulator Feb. 7, 1893. 491,082
Cralle, A. L. Ice-Cream Mold Feb. 2, 1897. 576,395
Creamer, H. Steam Feed Water Trap Mar. 17, 1885. 313,854
Creamer, H. Steam Traps Mar. 8, 1887. 358,964
Creamer, H. Steam Traps Jan. 17, 1888. 376,586
Creamer, H. Steam Trap Feeder Dec. 11, 1888. 394,463
Creamer, H. Steam Trap May 28, 1889. 404,174
Creamer, H. Steam Trap Aug. 18, 1891. 457,983
Creamer, H. Steam Trap Nov. 21, 1893. 509,202
Cosgrove, W. F. Automatic Stop Plug for Gas
Oil Pipes Mar. 17, 1885. 313,993
Darkins, J. T. Ventilation Feb. 19, 1895. 534,322
Davis, I. D. Tonic Nov. 2, 1886. 351,829
Davis, W. D. Riding Saddles Oct. 6, 1896. 568,939
Davis, W. R., Jr. Library Table Sept. 24, 1878. 208,378
Deitz, W. A. Shoe Apr. 30, 1867. 64,205
Dorticus, C. J. Device for Applying Coloring
Liquids to Sides of Soles
or Heels of Shoes Mar. 19, 1895. 535,820
Dickinson, J. H. Pianola Detroit, Mich., 1899.
Dorticus, C. J. Machine for Embossing Photo Apr. 16, 1895. 537,422
Dorticus, C. J. Photographic Print Wash Apr. 23, 1895. 537,968
Dorticus, C. J. Hose Leak Stop July 18, 1899. 629,315
Downing, P. B. Electric Switch for Railroad June 17, 1890. 430,118
Downing, P. B. Letter Box Oct. 27, 1891. 462,093
Downing, P. B. Street Letter Box Oct. 27, 1891. 462,096
Dunnington, J. H. Horse Detachers Mar. 18, 1897. 578,979
Dorsey, O. Door-Holding Device Dec. 10, 1878. 210,764
Edmonds, T. H. Separating Screens July 20, 1897. 586,724
Elkins, T. Dining, Ironing Table and
Quilting Frame Combined Feb. 22, 1870. 100,020
Elkins, T. Chamber Commode Jan. 9, 1872. 122,518
Elkins, T. Refrigerating Apparatus Nov. 4, 1879. 221,222
Evans, J. H. Convertible Settees Oct. 5, 1897. 591,095
Faulkner, H. Ventilated Shoe Apr. 20, 1890. 426,495
Ferrell, F. J. Steam Trap Feb. 11, 1890. 420,993
Ferrell, F. J. Apparatus for Melting Snow May 27, 1890. 428,670
Ferrell, F. J. Valve May 27, 1890. 428,671
Ferrell, F. J. Valve Apr. 14, 1891. 450,451
Ferrell, F. J. Valve Nov. 10, 1891. 462,762
Ferrell, F. J. Valve Jan. 26, 1892. 467,796
Ferrell, F. J. Valve Feb. 2, 1892. 468,242
Ferrell, F. J. Valve Feb. 9, 1892. 468,334
Ferrell, F. J. Valve Jan. 17, 1893. 490,227
Ferrell, F. J. Valve July 18, 1893. 501,497
Fisher, D. A. Joiners' Clamp Apr. 20, 1875. 162,281
Fisher, D. A. Furniture Castor Mar. 14, 1876. 174,794
Flemming,
R. F., Jr. Guitar Mar. 3, 1886. 338,727
Goode, Sarah E. Folding Cabinet Bed July 14, 1885. 322,177
Grant, G. F. Golf-Tee Dec. 12, 1899. 638,920
Grant, W. S. Curtain Rod Support Aug. 28, 1894. 525,203
Gregory, J. Motor Apr. 26, 1887. 361,937
Gray, R. H. Cistern Cleaners Apr. 9, 1895. 537,151
Grenon, H. Razor Stropping Device Feb. 18, 1896. 554,867
Griffin, F. W. Pool Table Attachment June 13, 1899. 626,902
Gunn, S. W. Boot or Shoe Jan. 16, 1900. 641,642
Haines, J. H. Portable Basin Sept. 28, 1897. 590,833
Hammonds, J. F. Apparatus for Holding Yarn
Skeins Dec. 15, 1896. 572,985
Harding, F. H. Extension Banquet Table Nov. 22, 1898. 614,468
Hawkins, J. Gridiron Mar. 26, 1845. 3,973
Hawkins, R. Harness Attachment Oct. 4, 1887. 370,943
Headen, M. Foot Power Hammer Oct. 5, 1886. 350,363
Hearness, R. Sealing Attachment for Bottles Feb. 15, 1898. 598,929
Hearness, R. Detachable Car Fender July 4, 1899. 628,003
Hilyer, A. F. Water Evaporator Attachment
for Hot Air Registers Aug. 26, 1890. 435,095
Hilyer, A. F. Registers Oct. 14, 1890. 438,159
Holmes, E. H. Gage Nov. 12, 1895. 549,513
Hunter, J. H. Portable Weighing Scales Nov. 3, 1896. 570,553
Hyde, R. N. Composition for Cleaning and
Preserving Carpets Nov. 6, 1888. 392,205
Jackson, B. F. Heating Apparatus Mar. 1, 1898. 599,985
Jackson, B. F. Matrix Drying Apparatus May 10, 1898. 603,879
Jackson. B. F. Gas Burner Apr. 4, 1899. 622,482
Jackson, H. A. Kitchen Table Oct. 6, 1896. 569,135
Jackson, W. H. Railway Switch Mar. 9, 1897. 578,641
Jackson, W. H. Railway Switch Mar. 16, 1897. 593,665
Jackson. W. H. Automatic Locking Switch Aug. 23, 1898. 609,436
Johnson, D. Rotary Dining Table Jan. 15, 1888. 396,089
Johnson, D. Lawn Mower Attachment Sept. 10, 1889. 410,836
Johnson, D. Grass Receivers for Lawn
Mowers June 10, 1890. 429,629
Johnson, I. R. Bicycle Frame Oct. 10, 1899. 634,823
Johnson, P. Swinging Chairs Nov. 15, 1881. 249,530
Johnson, P. Eye Protector Nov. 2, 1880. 234,039
Johnson, W. Velocipede June 20, 1899. 627,335
Johnson, W. A. Paint Vehicle Dec. 4, 1888. 393,763
Johnson, W. H. Overcoming Dead Centers Feb. 4, 1896. 554,223
Johnson, W. H. Overcoming Dead Centers Oct. 11, 1898. 612,345
Johnson. W. Egg Beater Feb. 5, 1884. 292,821
Jones & Long Caps for Bottles Sept. 13, 1898. 610,715
Joyce, J. A. Ore Bucket Apr. 26, 1898. 603,143
Latimer, L. H. Manufacturing Carbons June 17, 1882. 252,386
Latimer, L. H. Apparatus for Cooling and
Disinfecting Jan. 12, 1886. 334,078
Latimer, L. H. Locking Racks for Hats, Coats
and Umbrellas Mar. 24, 1896. 557,076
Lavalette, W. A. Printing Press Sept. 17, 1878. 208,208
Lee, H. Animal Trap Feb. 12, 1867. 61,941
Lee, J. Kneading Machine Aug. 7, 1894. 524,042
Lee, J. Bread Crumbing Machine June 4, 1895. 540,553
Leslie, F. W. Envelope Seal Sept. 21, 1897. 590,325
Lewis, A. L. Window Cleaner Sept. 27, 1892. 483,359
Lewis, E. R. Spring Gun May 3, 1887. 362,096
Linden, H. Piano Truck Sept. 8, 1891. 459,365
Little, E. Bridle-Bit Mar. 7, 1882. 254,666
Loudin, F. J. Sash Fastener Dec. 12, 1892. 510,432
Loudin, F. J. Key Fastener Jan. 9, 1894. 512,308
Love, J. L. Plasterers' Hawk July 9, 1895. 542,419
Love, J. L. Pencil Sharpener Nov. 23, 1897. 594,114
Marshall, W. Grain Binder May 11, 1886. 341,589
Marshall, T. J. Fire Extinguisher May 26, 1872. 125,063
Martin, W. A. Lock July 23, 1889. 407,738
Martin, W. A. Lock Dec. 30, 1890. 443,945
Matzeliger, J. E. Mechanism for Distributing
Tacks Nov. 26, 1899. 415,726
Matzeliger, J. E. Nailing Machine Feb. 25, 1896. 421,954
Matzeliger, J. E. Tack Separating Mechanism Mar. 25, 1890. 423,937
Matzeliger, J. E. Lasting Machine Sept. 22, 1891. 459,899
McCoy, E. Lubricator for Steam Engines July 2, 1872. 129,843
McCoy, E. Lubricator for Steam Engines Aug. 6, 1872. 130,305
McCoy, E. Lubricator May 27, 1873. 139,407
McCoy, E. Steam Lubricator Jan. 20, 1874. 146,697
McCoy, E. Ironing Table May 12, 1874. 150,876
McCoy, E. Steam Cylinder Lubricator Feb. 1, 1876. 173,032
McCoy, E. Steam Cylinder Lubricator July 4, 1876. 179,585
McCoy, E. Lubricator Mar. 28, 1882. 255,443
McCoy, E. Lubricator July 18, 1882. 261,166
McCoy, E. Lubricator Jan. 9, 1883. 270,238
McCoy, E. Lawn Sprinkler Design Sept. 26, 1899. 631,549
McCoy, E. Steam Dome June 16, 1885. 320,354
McCoy, E. Lubricator June 16, 1885. 320,379
McCoy, E. Lubricator Feb. 8, 1887. 357,491
McCoy, E. Lubricator Attachment Apr. 19, 1887. 361,435
McCoy, E. Lubricator for Safety Valves May 24, 1887. 363,529
McCoy, E. Lubricator May 29, 1888. 383,745
McCoy, E. Lubricator May 29, 1888. 383,746
McCoy & Hodges Lubricator Dec. 24, 1889. 418,139
McCoy, E. Dope Cup Sept. 29, 1891. 460,215
McCoy, E. Lubricator Dec. 29, 1891. 465,875
McCoy, E. Lubricator Mar. 1, 1892. 470,163
McCoy, E. Lubricator Apr. 5, 1892. 472,066
McCoy, E. Lubricator June 6, 1893. 498,809
McCoy, E. Lubricator Sept. 13, 1898. 610,634
McCoy, E. Lubricator Oct. 4, 1898. 611,759
McCoy, E. Lubricator Nov. 15, 1898. 614,307
McCoy, E. Lubricator June 27, 1899. 627,623
McCree, D. Portable Fire Escape Nov. 11, 1890. 440,322
Mendenhall, A. Holder for Driving Reins Nov. 28, 1899. 637,811
Miles, A. Elevator Oct. 11, 1887. 371,207
Mitchell, C. L. Phoneterisin Jan. 1, 1884. 291,071
Mitchell, J. M. Cheek Row Corn Planter Jan. 16, 1900. 641,462
Moody, W. U. Game Board Design May 11, 1897. 27,046
Morehead, K. Reel Carrier Oct. 6, 1896. 568,916
Murray, G. W. Combined Furrow Opener and
Stalk-knocker Apr. 10, 1894. 517,960
Murray, G. W. Cultivator and Marker Apr. 10, 1894. 517,961
Murray, G. W. Planter June 5, 1894. 520,887
Murray, G. W. Cotton Chopper June 5, 1894. 520,888
Murray, G. W. Fertilizer Distributer June 5, 1894. 520,889
Murray, G. W. Planter June 5, 1894. 520,890
Murray, G. W. Combined Cotton Seed June 5, 1894. 520,891
Murray, G. W. Planter and Fertilizer
Distributer Reaper June 5, 1894. 520,892
Murray, W. Attachment for Bicycles Jan. 27, 1891. 445,452
Nance, L. Game Apparatus Dec. 1, 1891. 464,035
Nash, H. H. Life Preserving Stool Oct. 5, 1875. 168,519
Newman, Miss L.D. Brush Nov. 15, 1898. 614,335
Newson, S. Oil Heater or Cooker May 22, 1894. 520,188
Nichols & Latimer Electric Lamp Sept. 13, 1881. 247,097
Nickerson, W. J. Mandolin and Guitar
Attachment for Pianos June 27, 1899. 627,739
O'Conner & Turner Alarm for Boilers Aug. 25, 1896. 566,612
O'Conner & Turner Steam Gage Aug. 25, 1896. 566,613
O'Conner & Turner Alarm for Coasts Containing
Vessels Feb. 8, 1898. 598,572
Outlaw, J. W. Horseshoes Nov. 15, 1898. 614,273
Perryman, F. R. Caterers' Tray Table Feb. 2, 1892. 468,038
Peterson, H. Attachment for Lawn Mowers Apr. 30, 1889. 402,189
Phelps, W. H. Apparatus for Washing Vehicles Mar. 23, 1897. 579,242
Pickering, J. F. Air Ship Feb. 20, 1900. 643,975
Pickett, H. Scaffold June 30, 1874. 152,511
Pinn, T. B. File Holder Aug. 17, 1880. 231,355
Polk, A. J. Bicycle Support Apr. 14, 1896. 558,103
Pugsley, A. Blind Stop July 29, 1890. 433,306
Purdy & Sadgwar Folding Chair June 11, 1889. 405,117
Purdy, W. Device for Sharpening Edged
Tools Oct. 27, 1896. 570,337
Purdy, W. Device for Sharpening Edged
Tools Aug. 16, 1898. 609,367
Purdy, W. Device for Sharpening Edged
Tools Aug. 1, 1899. 630,106
Purdy & Peters Design for Spoons Apr. 23, 1895. 24,228
Purvis, W. B. Bag Fastener Apr, 25, 1882. 256,856
Purvis, W. B. Hand Stamp Feb. 27, 1883. 273,149
Purvis, W. B. Paper Bag Machine Feb. 12, 1884. 293,353
Purvis, W. B. Fountain Pen Jan. 7, 1890. 419,065
Purvis, W. B. Paper Bag Machine Jan. 28, 1890. 420,099
Purvis, W. B. Paper Bag Machine June 24, 1890. 430,684
Purvis, W. B. Paper Bag Machine Aug. 19, 1890. 434,461
Purvis, W. B. Paper Bag Machine Sept. 2, 1890. 435,524
Purvis, W. B. Paper Bag Machine Sept. 22, 1891. 460,093
Purvis, W. B. Electric Railway May 1, 1894. 519,291
Purvis, W. B. Paper Bag Machine May 8, 1894. 519,348
Purvis, W. B. Paper Bag Machine May 8, 1894. 519,349
Purvis, W. B. Paper Bag Machine Dec. 11, 1894. 530,650
Purvis, W. B. Magnetic Car Balancing Device May 21, 1895. 539,542
Purvis, W. B. Paper Bag Machine Mar. 9, 1897. 578,361
Purvis, W. B. Electric Railway Switch Aug. 17, 1897. 588,176
Queen, W. Guard for Companion Ways and
Hatches Aug. 18, 1891. 458,131
Ray, E. P. Chair Supporting Device Feb. 21, 1899. 620,078
Ray, L. P. Dust Pan Aug. 3, 1897. 587,607
Reed, J. W Dough Kneader and Roller Sept. 23, 1884. 305,474
Reynolds, R. R. Non-Refillable Bottle May 2, 1899. 624,092
Reynolds, H. H. Window Ventilator for R. R.
Cars Apr. 3, 1883. 275,271
Reynolds, H. H. Safety Gate for Bridges Oct. 7, 1890. 437,937
Rhodes, J. B. Water Closets Dec. 19. 1899. 639,290
Richardson, A. C. Hame Fastener Mar. 14, 1882. 255,022
Richardson, A. C. Churn Feb. 17, 1891. 446,470
Richardson, A. C. Casket Lowering device Nov. 13, 1894. 529,311
Richardson, A. C. Insect Destroyer Feb. 28, 1899. 620,362
Richardson, A. C. Bottle Dec. 12, 1899. 638,811
Richardson, W. H. Cotton Chopper June 1, 1886. 343,140
Richardson, W. H. Child's Carriage June 18, 1889. 405,599
Richardson, W. H. Child's Carriage June 18, 1889. 405,600
Richey, C. V. Car Coupling June 15, 1897. 584,650
Richey, C. V. Railroad Switch Aug. 3, 1897. 587,657
Richey, C. V. Railroad Switch Oct. 26, 1897. 592,448
Richey, C. V. Fire Escape Bracket Dec. 28, 1897. 596,427
Richey, C. V. Combined Hammock and Stretcher Dec. 13, 1898. 615,907
Rickman, A. L. Overshoe Feb. 8, 1898. 598,816
Ricks, J. Horseshoe Mar. 30, 1886. 338,781
Ricks, J. Overshoe for Horses June 6, 1899. 626,245
Robinson, E. R. Electric Railway Trolley Sept. 19, 1893. 505,370
Robinson, E. R. Casting Composite Nov. 23, 1897. 594,286
Robinson, J. H. Life Saving Guards for
Locomotives Mar. 14, 1899. 621,143
Robinson, J. H. Life Saving Guards for
Street Cars Apr. 25, 1899. 623,929
Robinson, J. Dinner Pail Feb. 1, 1887. 356,852
Romain, A. Passenger Register Apr. 23, 1889. 402,035
Roster, D. N. Feather Curler Mar. 10, 1896. 556,166
Ross, A. L. Runner for Stops Aug. 4, 1896. 565,301
Ross, A. L. Bag Closure June 7, 1898. 605,343
Ross, J. Bailing Press Sept. 5, 1899. 632,539
Ross, A. L. Trousers Support Nov. 28, 1899. 638,068
Ruffin, S. Vessels for Liquids and Manner
of Sealing Nov. 20, 1899. 737,603
Russell, L. A. Guard Attachment for Beds Aug. 13, 1895. 544,381
Sampson, G. T. Sled Propeller Feb. 17, 1885. 312,388
Sampson, G. T. Clothes Drier June 7, 1892. 476,416
Scottron, S. R. Adjustable Window Cornice Feb. 17, 1880. 224,732
Scottron, S. R. Cornice Jan. 16, 1883. 270,851
Scottron, S. R. Pole Tip Sept. 21, 1886. 349,525
Scottron, S. R. Curtain Rod Aug. 30, 1892. 481,720
Scottron, S. R. Supporting Bracket Sept. 12, 1893. 505,008
Shorter, D. W. Feed Rack May 17, 1887. 363,089
Shanks, S. C. Sleeping Car Berth Register July 21, 1897. 587,165
Smith, J. W. Improvement in Games Apr. 17, 1900. 647,887
Smith, J. W. Lawn Sprinkler May 4, 1897. 581,785
Smith, J. W. Lawn Sprinkler Mar. 22, 1898. 601,065
Smith, P. D. Potato Digger Jan. 21, 1891. 445,206
Smith, P. D. Grain Binder Feb. 23, 1892. 469,279
Snow & Johns Liniment Oct. 7, 1890. 437,728
Standard, J. Oil Stove Oct. 29, 1889. 413,689
Standard, J. Refrigerator July 14, 1891. 455,891
Stewart, T. W. Mop June 13, 1893. 499,402
Stewart, T. W. Station Indicator June 20, 1893. 499,895
Stewart & Johnson Metal Bending Machine Dec. 27, 1887. 375,512
Stewart, E. W. Punching Machine May 3, 1887. 362,190
Stewart, E. W. Machine for Forming Vehicle
Seat Bars Mar. 22, 1887. 373,698
Spears, H. Portable Shield for Infantry Dec. 27, 1870. 110,599
Sutton, E. H. Cotton Cultivator Apr. 7, 1874. 149,543
Sweeting, J. A. Device for Rolling Cigarettes Nov. 30, 1897. 594,501
Sweeting, J. A. Combined Knife and Scoop June 7, 1898. 605,209
Shewcraft, Frank Letter Box Detroit, Mich.
Taylor, B. H. Rotary Engine Apr. 23, 1878. 202,888
Taylor, B. H. Slide Valve July 6, 1897. 585,798
Thomas, S. E. Waste Trap Oct. 18, 1883. 286,746
Thomas, S. E. Waste Trap for Basins,
Closets, etc. Oct. 4, 1887. 371,107
Thomas, S. E. Casting July 31, 1888. 386,941
Thomas, S. E. Pipe Connection Oct. 9, 1888. 390,821
Toliver, George Propeller for Vessels Apr. 28, 1891. 451,086
Tregoning &
Latimer Globe Supporter for Electric
Lamps Mar. 21, 1882. 255,212
Walker, Peter Machine for Cleaning Seed
Cotton Feb. 16, 1897. 577,153
Walker, Peter Bait Holder Mar. 8, 1898. 600,241
Waller, J. N. Shoemaker's Cabinet or Bench Feb. 3, 1880. 224,253
Washington, Wade Corn Husking Machine Aug. 14, 1883. 283,173
Watkins, Isaac Scrubbing Frame Oct. 7, 1890. 437,849
Watts, J. R. Bracket for Miners' Lamp Mar. 7, 1893. 493,137
West, E. H. Weather Shield Sept. 5, 1899. 632,385
West, J. W. Wagon Oct. 18, 1870. 108,419
White, D. L. Extension Steps for Cars Jan. 12, 1897. 574,969
White, J. T. Lemon Squeezer Dec. 8, 1896. 572,849
Williams, Carter Canopy Frame Feb. 2, 1892. 468,280
Williams, J. P. Pillow Sham Holder Oct. 10, 1899. 634,784
Winn, Frank Direct Acting Steam Engine Dec. 4, 1888. 394,047
Winters, J. R. Fire Escape Ladder May 7, 1878. 203,517
Winters, J. R. Fire Escape Ladder Apr. 8, 1879. 214,224
Woods, G. T. Steam Boiler Furnace June 3, 1884. 299,894
Woods, G. T. Telephone Transmitter Dec. 2, 1884. 308,817
Woods, G. T. Apparatus for Transmission of
Messages by Electricity Apr. 7, 1885. 315,368
Woods, G. T. Relay Instrument June 7, 1887. 364,619
Woods, G. T. Polarized Relay July 5, 1887. 366,192
Woods, G. T. Electro Mechanical Brake Aug. 16, 1887. 368,265
Woods, G. T. Telephone System and
Apparatus Oct. 11, 1887. 371,241
Woods, G. T. Electro-Magnetic Brake
Apparatus Oct. 18, 1887. 371,655
Woods, G. T. Railway Telegraphy Nov. 15, 1887. 373,383
Woods, G. T. Induction Telegraph System Nov. 29, 1887. 373,915
Woods, G. T. Overhead Conducting System for
Electric Railway May 29, 1888. 383,844
Woods, G. T. Electro-Motive Railway System June 26, 1888. 385,034
Woods, G. T. Tunnel Construction for
Electric Railway July 17, 1888. 386,282
Woods, G. T. Galvanic Battery Aug. 14, 1888. 387,839
Woods, G. T. Railway Telegraphy Aug. 28, 1888. 388,803
Woods, G. T. Automatic Safety Cut-out for
Electric Circuits Jan. 1, 1889. 395,533
Woods, G. T. Automatic Safety Cut-out for
Electric Circuit Oct. 14, 1889. 438,590
Woods, G. T. Electric Railway System Nov. 10, 1891. 463,020
Woods, G. T. Electric Railway Supply
System Oct. 31, 1893. 507,606
Woods, G. T. Electric Railway Conduit Nov. 21, 1893. 509,065
Woods, G. T. System of Electrical
Distribution Oct. 13, 1896. 569,443
Woods, G. T Amusement Apparatus Dec. 19, 1899. 639,692
Wormley, James Life Saving Apparatus May 24, 1881. 242,091
Williams, P. B. Electro-Magnetic Electrical
Railway Track Switch Apr. 24, 1900. 648,092
Williams, P. B. Electrically Controlled and
Operated Railway Switch Jan. 15, 1901. 666,080
TOPIC XXVIII.
WHAT THE OMEN?
BY PROF. W. S. SCARBOROUGH.
[Illustration: Prof. W. S. Scarborough.]
PROF. WILLIAM S. SCARBOROUGH, A. M., LL. D.
William S. Scarborough, now Vice-President of Wilberforce
University, Wilberforce, Ohio, and Professor of Greek and
Latin in the same institution, was born in Macon, Ga.,
February 18, 1852. He received his early education in his
native city before and during the Civil War. In 1869 he
entered Atlanta University where he remained two years in
preparation for Yale University, but, instead, entered
Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, in 1871, and was graduated
from the Department of Philosophy and the Arts with the
degree of A. B. in 1875. He spent a part of the following
year in Oberlin Theological Seminary in special study of the
Semitic languages and Hellenistic Greek.
In 1877 Professor Scarborough was elected as head of the
Classical Department in Wilberforce University. In 1881 he
published through A. S. Barnes & Co. (New York) a Greek text
book---"First Lessons in Greek"--the first and only Greek
book ever written by a Negro. This book was widely used by
both the white and colored schools of the country,
especially in the North. Professor Scarborough has also
written a treatise entitled "The Birds of Aristophanes--a
Theory of Interpretation"--aside from numerous tracts and
pamphlets, covering a variety of subjects--classical,
archaeological, sociological and racial. He has written many
papers for various societies to which he belongs. In 1891 he
was transferred to the chair of Hellenistic Greek, Payne
Theological Seminary. In 1897 he was again re-elected as
Professor of Latin and Greek in the University and
Vice-President of the same.
He has contributed largely to the press of the country,
including the leading magazines. He is one of the editors of
the A. M. E. Sunday-school publications, having filled that
position for a number of years. He is a member of a number
of associations: American Philological, American Dialect,
American Social Science, Archaeological Institute of
America, American Spelling Reform, American Folk-Lore,
American Modern Language, American Political and Social
Science, the Egyptian Exploration Fund Association and the
American Negro Academy, of which he is First Vice-President.
He has several times been one of the orators at the Lincoln
League banquet of the State of Ohio. At a conference held by
the leaders of the race in the city of Columbus, Ohio, he
was elected President of the Afro-American State League
designed to further the interests of the Negro throughout
the country. Professor Scarborough has traveled extensively
in Europe. He was a delegate to the Ecumenical Methodist
Conference held in London in 1901, representing the African
Methodist Episcopal Church.
We take the following from the "New York Age" of July 18:
"While in Boston Prof. W. S. Scarborough of Wilberforce
University was delightfully entertained by the colored
graduates of Harvard University and Amherst College at
a reception given in his honor at the home of Mr. G. W.
Forbes, a graduate of Amherst. Speeches were made by
Messrs. Forbes, Morgan, Trotter, Lewis, Williams and
others eulogistic of the life and services of the
professor in behalf of his race. The professor replied,
thanking them for the honor conferred upon him. Next
year it will be twenty-five years since Professor
Scarborough first became connected with Wilberforce
University as its classical professor and he intends to
mark the event by publishing a volume of his
philological papers. These papers have all been read
before the American Philological Association at its
various annual sessions. Twenty years ago Professor
Scarborough was first elected to membership in this
body at Harvard University. This year the association
again met at this venerable seat of learning and by way
of commemorating the event Professor Scarborough read a
paper on Thucydides. It is some of these papers that
the professor intends to put into more tangible form
for future use."
The all-absorbing question now before the American people seems to be
the race question. Our magazines and papers generally--dailies and
weeklies as well as monthlies--are deluged as it were with articles on
the Negro people--the Negro as a citizen--his status, his future, the
sort of education best adapted to his needs as a man and a citizen,
and kindred subjects. In fact no phase of the Negro's life fails of
discussion at the hands of the most flippant penny-a-liner as well as
the gravest thinker. All have theories of some sort and they do not
hesitate to express them--whether they are visionary or practical.
If theories alone could have solved this problem, long ere this would
race friction have been removed; it would have been a question of the
past, but unfortunately for the race, unfortunately for the people at
large, many of those who knew least about the subject and who had no
remedy for the troubles complained of--have had most to say and they
have generally said it in the most reckless way, regardless of facts.
Only now and then do we have a calm view of the situation with
reasonable suggestions as to the best course to follow.
As we enter upon the twentieth century, it will be well for black and
white to get together and understand one another and ascertain as far
as possible what is best to do in the light of facts before us.
One thing is certain--the white man does not yet know the Negro.
Strange as it may seem, the Northern white man does not know him after
many years of close observation, neither does the Southern white man,
for all the years gone by in which the Negro has lived in his midst.
The observations of both in fact only leave the Negro largely an
unknown quantity to either. I have claimed heretofore that there is a
life that the white man knows nothing of. It is found in the hovel as
well as in the cultured home, in the school and the church. It is a
life in the bud-time of race pride and another race prejudice; and it
is swelling to the blossoming. _What will be the fruit?_
To know the race one must do more than occasionally to visit it
here and there, must see more than even a close examination of
schools and churches, instructed, aided and supported by white
philanthropy, will disclose. The toadying, the servile representatives
of the race, the politicians, the dependent ones--all must be passed
by and the people found. _To know the Negro one must be with him and
become a part of his life--see what he is doing, and above all, to
know what he is thinking._
Go into the schools and churches where there is not a shadow of white
influence to check freedom of speech or tinge thought and what do we
see and hear? In every case we find those from the oldest to the
youngest with some ideas upon the race question and ready to express
them. Not so with white children. They are not thinking about the
color of their skin or the texture of their hair or their rights and
privileges or the deprivation of these rights, the contempt and
ostracism following them everywhere; but the Negro child, on the other
hand, of every shade of color has these almost constantly in mind, for
they are thrust upon him. _He can think of little else._
In such schools, in such communities, the field work, the social
gathering, the literary society, the routine of school or church or
community life, the platform--all are tinctured deeply with these
ideas and these are expressed in some form on every possible occasion.
All these questions are in a large degree to the race, as far as
interest is concerned, at least, the momentous, the ever-present,
ever-burning topic.
No youth of the white race feels the weight of any subject agitating
the mind of the public as these colored youth feel this one. What is
the omen, when boys and girls alike make it a common question, in some
form or other for all their daily work? It has been said that the two
races are growing apart, that there is as much race prejudice in the
one as in the other. In many respects this is true, though the
prejudice on the part of the Negro is a thing of natural growth from
certain causes, not an inherent quality. The fact that the Negro is
rising without anything like adequate recognition--at least other than
a patronizing one--is one of these causes. As here and there the Negro
comes, to the white man's higher level, among the best he is
confronted with that "Ah-you-are-here." Ah, which means more than
words can express and he straightway feels his pulses stirred to the
defensive counter spirit of
"I-am-and-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it?" The result is the two
mutually draw back from each other.
Among the middle classes where the level of the whites intellectually
and financially is more readily and more rapidly being reached by the
greater number of Negroes there is still more prejudice to be found.
It is here where the Negro has his fiercest battle ground; it is here
where he finds his greatest opposition. It is only following out the
idea of the French writer who said, "Mediocrity alone is jealous." The
constant desire of this class of white people to rise to the highest
level aggravates them upon seeing a Negro reaching out for or
obtaining in any way that which they may have or may be seeking, and
they "take it out" by greater assumption of superiority especially
over those of the race who have reached their own plane of living, and
here again is a creation of a counter prejudice.
Growing refinement brings with it to the Negro all that sensitiveness
which is accorded to refined people wherever found, and naturally he
recoils from rebuffs, insults, and contumely, and holds himself aloof
more and more only as business demands contact. He has no growing
reason to revere the whites as a mass, and if nations are proverbially
ungrateful, what more can be expected of individuals, no matter how
much fine theorizing there may be upon the subject of what the Negro
owes to the white man.
With this increasing prejudice, for reasons named, there is a growing
race pride. This is taking firm root among the young people of the
Negro race who are being taught to respect those of their own number
who have obtained honor and distinction through merit. The school-boy
and school-girl are studying the history of their own race with
eagerness. They are finding out that it is not an altogether degraded
people from which they have sprung, and with the gathering evidences
about them of education, refinement, even wealth, and high character,
they see no good reason why they should be despised for mere color or
the possession of some imperceptible drops of Negro blood, as in many
cases. This is a laudable pride based upon both the past and present
and, as we have said, they are more alive to all that pertains to race
matters than any other set of young people whom we are able to
mention.
What is the omen? Think you that the growing generation will tamely
submit to the endless continuance of present and past grievances?
Think you that this thoughtfulness of the Negro youth will be without
some sort of fruit? Will these not have as much influence upon their
ignorant brother masses as have the whites over the ignorant masses of
their own color? I repeat, the white man does not thoroughly know the
Negro. He does not begin to see all that boils and seethes and
ferments in the brains of this growing class. It is well for the
nation to learn wisdom from the mouths of babes and sucklings. And
when these prattle of race issues it is an omen not to be unheeded.
TOPIC XXIX.
WHY THE NEGRO RACE SURVIVES.
BY PROF. T. DE S. TUCKER.
[Illustration: Prof. T de S. Tucker.]
THOMAS de S. TUCKER.
Thomas de S. Tucker first saw the light of day at Victoria,
in Sherbro, Sierra Leone, West Coast of Africa, on the 21st
day of July, 1844. His mother was the youngest daughter of
James Tucker, hereditary chief of Sherbro. The founder of
the family, about two hundred years previous, was an
Englishman, from whom the surname is derived.
On the paternal side, Tucker comes of an ancient noble
family in the east of France, the de Salieres, of
Marseilles. His father, Joseph, although descended from this
noble lineage, was an ardent admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte,
whose checkered fortunes he followed to the disastrous field
of Waterloo.
In accordance with the custom of the country, the wife being
deemed of higher social standing than the husband, the son
took the maternal surname. Tucker was sent, at a tender age,
to a school located in the family territory. Such was his
rapid progress that in a few years he had acquired English
sufficiently enough to read and write it about as well as
the average child of his age in this country.
In the summer of 1856 he came to the United States to
complete his education. Having just completed the English
course in the public schools of Oberlin, Ohio, he entered
college and completed the course in 1865. He then crossed
over into Kentucky and opened day and night schools for the
education of the newly freed race.
From Kentucky he removed to Louisiana, where the climate was
more congenial to his tropical constitution. During his
residence of many years in that State he was employed most
of the time in the customs service with chances of
preferment to higher and more lucrative posts, which he
never sought nor cared for. His tastes have always inclined
him to the more quiet and private walks of life, where he
can promote the welfare of his fellow men, without show and
the applause of the giddy crowd.
President Grant once advised him that he intended to offer
him the Liberian Mission, but Tucker was so indifferent in
the honor that he made no effort to be commissioned.
Anxious to pass away from official duties, he studied law
and entered on practice in New Orleans. This profession was
so fully in keeping with his tastes he hoped to pursue it
the rest of his days. Finding that his legal training
practically restricted him only to Louisiana, he removed to
Florida and located at Pensacola. He was admitted to
practice, and with it he rose rapidly both in knowledge of
the common law and in securing a paying clientage. He stood
high with the bar, from judge and attorneys to officials. He
saw every prospect of realizing the fond dream of his
ambition when once again a call of duty to serve God's
humble children came in stentorious tones. The State in 1887
had founded a Normal and Industrial School for the training
of Colored teachers. A telegram unexpectedly announced that
Tucker had been elected by the State Board of Education to
take the management of it. He demurred, he objected; but
leading Colored men and the Chief Executive importuned and
requested his acceptance of the place. By patient
perseverance and tact he succeeded in enlisting the hearty
good will of all classes to the maintenance of the
institution. The history of his work is a part of the
educational records. Many men and women of worth and saving
influence in their respective communities in Florida owe
their training to the devoted consecration to duty of this
native of the "Dark Continent." The school itself will ever
remain a lasting monument to his tireless, efficient
devotion to the welfare of his race.
He retired from the field of his labors at the close of the
fourteenth year, carrying with him universal regret for his
departure, and the esteem and respect of the whole State and
the acclamations of good will, especially of the people of
the capital in which the Normal School is located.
It requires no stretch of thought to understand our constant and
earnest interest in everything which concerns our environments. Every
question and issue of national significance have for us a vital
consideration for weal or woe. We scan with greedy eagerness the
expressed policy of the statesman, we hang with bated breath on the
eloquence of the sentiment moulder, we probe with tremulous care the
feelings of the community to find out if we have been pushed to the
rear or given a fair chance in the race to a higher life--our final
place in American life.
While we are not, and should never be, unmindful of all interests
which appertain to others in this vast country of which we form such a
necessary part, it is natural and right that our first thought should
be of our own welfare.
The position we are to definitely assume and maintain in the
distinctive American civilization now in process of formation, is yet
concealed in the womb of futurity; we can neither anticipate nor force
it against the period of its advent. While we are passing through this
slow process of development, it is well at times to take a reckoning
of our race powers by way of encouragement to such as may become faint
and weary in the combat. All are not strong, all are not determined,
all are not forceful. The fiercest courage will now and then lose its
force when battling against steady odds. Moreover, our shortcomings,
like the shirt of Nessus, are not only with us ever, but they are on
constant exhibition to shame, mortify and humiliate us. While it is
not sensible to shut our eyes to these painful reminders of the
obstacles to our progress, while it is even best to invite a searching
scrutiny of them to the end that they may be torn off by heroic
methods, if need be, after all an occasional study of our strong parts
is a help in the struggle.
DISCARD SELF GRATULATION.
In the attempt to reflect on the staying powers of the race, I have
not the remotest idea of pandering to conceit or vanity, to the
contrary, I decry any disposition to extol and magnify whatever we
are subjectively, and whatever we have achieved. The fierce conflicts
we have undergone and the terrible crucible through which the cruel
hand of fate promises to pass us, dispel the idea of self gratulation.
Life for us in the conflict ahead is all stern and serious. Wounds and
scars will for generations yet to come be the decorations for our
leaders in thought and action; there is no niche in the edifice
consecrated to our present and coming heroes for fulsome, windy
flatteries airing their importance to the galleries. Hearts true and
stout charged with big emotions to raise and elevate their suffering
kind to a higher plane, should be the only thinkers to claim our
considerate attention and command our homage.
THEME UNDER CONSIDERATION.
In the theme I have chosen for this paper, I shall endeavor to show
that the latent and active attributes of the negro eminently adapt him
to be classed among the survivals of the fittest in the family of
races. Before proceeding, however, to a formal discussion of the
subject, it might not be amiss for a minute or two, to take a running
retrospect of the race since its advent into its present civil life.
The three decades which mark the close of our Civil War have perhaps
not only written history more broadly in the behalf of humanity in
general as interpreted by Christian civilization, than any other
similar period, but they have been the most momentous in shaping the
national life by moulding and settling policies of a lasting nature.
The admission of millions, of what is termed an alien race into the
solution of an untried problem of government by the people, rendered
that problem still more difficult, hence, wild and extravagant
speculations bearing on the future of the Negro and the questionable
influence of his changed relations on American life, became the
current literature of the country for two decades. Friends spoke in
fulsome praise or doubtful measure, according to conviction, while
enemies protested in exultant tone that a generation or two hence
would suffice to write the Negro's epitaph. But even in that early
period of his infancy, had the nation been disposed to study him with
other than preconceived, erroneous views, it might have perceived
traits which justified the wisdom implied in his changed condition.
Thus far, if he has not risen to the dizzy heights to which the hopes
of ardent enthusiasts invited him, he has at least, not only belied
the gloomy fate of inglorious extinction, but he is going forward with
steady strides to realize an honorable destiny in common with the many
other people of the Republic.
ORIGIN OF A STRONG RACE.
A strong race, like marked personality, is the product of varied and
opposing agencies. As in nature when conflicting elements struggle for
the mastery and bear the impress of the strongest, so in the evolution
of a forceful people, its character takes on the form of the means
that has been most efficacious in moulding it. There is no instance in
the authentic annals of the human family where a masterly people has
emerged into greatness from the tame school of gentle methods. Trials
keen and severe, have first slashed, cut and tortured the entire being
in mind and soul to fit it for the new life it is to enjoy in
accordance with its destined end. What has ever been thus will always
be so.
QUALITIES INDICATING THE NEGRO'S SURVIVAL.
In this law of nature, in the formation of dominant powers, the Negro
has no favor to expect. He must pass through the fiery furnace and be
shorn of dross to leave the solid matter which is to constitute the
framework of his strength. First among the many qualities of survival
which distinguish him as an enduring race, is patient endurance and
fortitude under affliction. The elastic temperament of the race in the
ability to adapt itself to varying conditions, in swaying with the
force of the tempest until the fury of it is spent, in seizing with
instinct on circumstances that tend to save, is something not only
amazing, but marvelous. No oppression however heavy, no ebullition of
wrath however fiery, can swerve him from the road he has chosen to
attain his purpose as a part of the pulsating life of this nation.
From a dogged determination to butt aside forces which contained the
elements of his salvation, the Indian has passed into a retreat closed
to contact with the active life of the dominant power of the land. On
the other hand, the future of the parent race of the American Negro in
the dark continent is bright with hope from its ready assimilation of
the civilizing agencies of European civilization. In obedience to this
self-evident law of survival, Japan has entered on a new existence,
while its neighbor, China, the home of a kindred race, bids fair to
become the easy prey of Western greed.
STRENGTH, NOT WEAKNESS.
Now this easy swaying to conditions, when his welfare is in hazard,
and for which the superficial thinker twits the negro with lack of
manliness, is one of the strongest elements of his being. Were he less
malleable than he is, less ready to concede where contention can only
work him woe, were he wont to resent in wild and reckless fury, real
or fancied wrongs, were he too obtuse to perceive and profit by the
passing advantage, were he to remove his cause from the bar of reason,
and the verdict of a calm judgment he would neither be imbibing the
civilization of his native land, nor would he have achieved a tithe of
the wonderful progress which is to-day the vindication of his freedom,
and at the same time the shame and confusion of those who foretold his
ignominious passing away. Patience pure and simple, coupled with, and
gracing a quiet heroism, has enabled him to bridge over the earlier
days of his trials, and confirm his status in the body politic to the
general acceptance of the American people.
THE NEGRO'S WARFARE, MORAL AND MENTAL.
The honor which waits on material contest counts for little to the
Negro's advantage. Indeed, if the strife with which he is confronted
were to be waged on such an issue, the result could be foretold in
advance. His warfare is moral and mental, and by the arts of peace he
is to be left a cipher or rise in triumph to honorable destiny.
Physical courage which the negro shows largely in common with other
races has its trophies blazoned in marble and brass only to crumble
beneath the corroding tooth of time. The warfare of mind and heart
which ever calls in evidence only the highest courage of man's nature
leaves its achievement to immortal fame to grow with the ages till
time surrenders it to Eternity.
WHAT HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED.
By the exercise of this gentle but potent virtue of learning to labor
and to wait, we have mined our way into the heart of educational
authorities to grant such of our sons and daughters as are competent
the privilege of becoming preceptors to the youth of the race. By the
nurture of the same virtue, our slender means have tickled the greed
of capital to call us away from obscure streets and narrow lanes that
we may enjoy a wider range of selection of homes befitting higher
tastes and growing ambition. Go, if you will, into the Southern
section of our country where the bulk of our race resides, and there
you will find by this same sturdy persistence to wait on time for a
reward that schools, colleges, churches and business enterprises are
being built and maintained. Prejudices which retard our progress are
crumbling to pieces.
THE OPTIMISTIC TEMPERAMENT.
The cheerful sunny temperament of the Negro is another of the many
sturdy qualities which declare his fitness to withstand the blows of
adverse fortune. His long training in the school of mental and moral
darkness wherein he had need to cultivate a sanguine temperament to
buoy him up, stands proof against dark forebodings and pessimism. The
grotesque and the ludicrous find in him a joyous patron. Where others
count and bewail their woes, he sees only sunshine. Gloom and sorrow
melt away at his approach, while his features are ever radiant with
mirth and joy. His head is up and erect with every sense attuned to
the bright, and dead to the doleful. He thanks God that the lot
apportioned him is fashioned by infallible wisdom, while he munches
with contentment the humble crust that honest toil has brought him.
Malevolence towards his fellow men is at the most a passing emotion.
Wealth and the happiness attendant on it, he neither envies nor mars.
He asks a chance to live, no matter how sumptuously others may fare
beyond his condition. Such a being is forever beyond the pale of
anarchy, and other tendencies which work to the detriment of society.
In this portraiture I have drawn no ideal, but the average Negro as he
is known of all men.
In peace and in war such a being is an invaluable factor in a nation's
well being. As he does not envy the class which fortune has blest with
good things of this world, he therefore breeds no feeling of ill will
by which he might seek to level conditions, while he is equally ready
to assume his share of the dangers consequent on the maintenance of
the existing order of affairs.
PATRIOTISM OF THE RACE.
Another marked characteristic of race strength is love of country. The
only race in this country which has more than a shadow of excuse to be
indifferent to the nation's welfare is the Negro. Not unlike the dog
in the fable whose devotion to his master's interest was recognized
only after the sacrifice of life in that master's service, the Negro's
love for his country in the civil service, on the tented field, and
wherever sincere devotion should command the highest commendation, is
commonly rewarded with cold indifference, or at least with damnable
praise, and yet when driven, as it were, with brutal kicks and cuffs
from the service and defense of his country's honor, he hangs on to
the outer folds of its flag with a grim determination to maintain its
glory as though that duty had been specially entrusted him by heaven.
And herein again he shows the instinct of self-preservation, as people
who would seek to become an appreciable power in the public affairs of
their country, must be alive to every vital interest pertaining to it.
To become rooted it must maintain an unyielding grasp. That the Negro
is to-day only a passive member in the affairs of government, does not
argue that his unflagging patriotism will not finally gain its reward.
That he is quietly working now at long range to prepare himself for
citizenship, means that he will in due time enter into that rich
inheritance. The foaming stream is not the water carrying most matter
into the ocean; the deep current which gives no evidence on its
surface is the hydraulic force which forms the Delta. And so it is
with the latent influence of Negro patriotism. In every essential
matter pertaining to national welfare, however keen his grievance,
fancied or real, his regard for the honor of the government and the
maintenance of its power, induces him to throw his head-gear in air,
out-yell the lustiest lung in the crowd and attest his enthusiasm by
demoniac courage on the field of battle.
The chief magistrate of the nation is stricken down in the vigor of
manhood and in the fullness of power. In the exercise of his great
office morally and otherwise, without going out of his way, he might
have benefited the race. But although he had no special claim to the
Negro's regard, yet his untimely taking off has been lamented by none
more sincerely than by our race. In country, in town, in state, in
every section, the Negro is broadly American. Nothing that concerns
this country is foreign to him, but with all there is to discourage
him, what is the outcome of such steady, magnificent devotion to duty?
Geologists affirm that the wondrous chasm of Niagara is the creation
of trickling drops of water during myriads of ages. In like manner,
the fervent, unflagging patriotism of the Negro is slowly but surely
crumbling away the granite of American prejudice to give him a
permanent place in the national life of this country. A nation, the
bulb of which comes of a race whose love of fair play is proverbial
and goes with them into every land and clime, will be constrained in
the end to recognize and confirm the merit the race is developing as a
strong pillar in the edifice of state.
In the heat of that terrific contest at Waterloo where charge after
charge of the imperial guard seemed likely to consign the fate of
Europe to the absolute sway of the little Corsican, Wellington
exclaimed, to such of his staff as still remained around him, "Hot
pounding this, gentlemen." But the day was at last won, and the
endangered constitutional liberty of Europe leaped forth from the sea
of blood, to inspire man with new hope and aspiration. As a race, we
are struggling for life. Our hopes and fears are trembling in the
balance against might, power, and moss-covered prejudices. A
continuous pounding, directed by the impulse of a will to do, dare and
succeed, will bring us victory.
But, says the carping critic, if the Negro were less patient,
forbearing and more combative, if he risked less for country, and
gloried more in deeds of heroism for his personal defense, he would
lie truer to his self-preservation. Other races placed in condition
quite similar to the Negroes have tried the experiment, and failed.
They opposed simple brute force to intelligence, and they went down in
the contest either to extinction or to servitude. The Britons gave way
to Saxon numbers and tougher sinews, the latter bent the neck to
Norman intelligence, bided their time and brought the victor down to
an equality of rights and privileges. If the Negro should attempt
another way, he would soon be undone.
ADAPTABILITY TO ENVIRONMENTS.
Again the adaptability of the race to environments constitutes one of
the means of his endurance. In servitude as in freedom, no conditions
have yet been so vigorous that the negro has not been able to adjust
himself with ease. Indeed, it is not a figure of speech to assert that
wherever he has suffered the most, there he has given the best proof
of his vitality. His acquisition of wealth, his possession of material
means in general, has been most rapid in parts where he has most
obstacles to confront and encounter. He not only laughs at his
misfortunes, but turns them to account. When he is ground down beyond
the point of greatest resistance, he leaves for new and untried
regions, with a radiant hope for a better fate. He goes to the
semi-arctic lands of the West, readily becomes domesticated, and so
insinuates himself into the hard, prosaic customs of the country that
he at once becomes, in so far as he is not debarred from the rules of
labor organizations, a sharp competitor with the wage-earner in the
strife for bread. His blood has no lazy microbes to dam the current of
its movement. Assure him of reasonable compensation, and his brawny
arm is bared to the pick and the mattox. His ax and hoe and plow drag
out wealth from mine and soil.
ACTIVE EVERYWHERE.
Wherever his lot is cast, there he enters with zest into the live
sentiment of the community. No thought born of enterprise within the
scope of his comprehension, no undertaking to enhance the common
wealth fail to enlist his good will. He will at least talk for it and
praise it, even if he has not a cent to invest. However limited by
industrial conditions to few and humble ways of acquiring a
livelihood, his scanty earnings are on the market to give healthy
circulation to the arteries of trade. Merchants welcome him to open
doors, and small dealers meet him with graceful smiles knowing he has
come to apply the move-on ordinance to the jingling coin in his
pocket. In church and school, in the pulpit and on the rostrum, his
desire to fall in with the prevailing spirit to promote the betterment
of the community, is equally pronounced.
Take as a sample the spirit of the race to absorb elevating influence
from the dominant class. The African Methodist Episcopal Church is a
race organization which justly challenges the admiration of every one
of us no matter of what creed or sect. A race which in about one
generation from a condition of base servitude can be so lively to a
sense of its spiritual wants and the public weal as to advance enough
to create such an organization is no mean factor in any age or
country. In the show of this receptive capacity, it declares its
eternal fitness to live and thrive under the blaze of the most
searching civilization in the history of the world.
Take moreover, the many worthy bodies founded in the last quarter of a
century for moral, mental and social elevation. All these have been
inspired by the thought that if the race would hold its own, it must
emulate the spirit of the country and age in which it lives.
Truly, if our coming to this land was involuntary, the genius of our
being has built a home which can only be abandoned at our own will.
THE END.
I am admonished that this paper must come to a close. I am compelled
to omit even by mere mention many of the exemplary virtues of the
race. I have, however, touched on just enough to furnish the enquiring
mind with deductions. Even the pessimist is constrained to admit that,
under the circumstances, as a whole, the race has made a remarkable
record, and that chiefly, because of the qualities with which he is
endowed. Many historic races who have dominated mankind, made less
rapid progress than we, at the point we have reached. This remarkable
advancement may be ascribed in the main to the superior attributes
which give us a flexible and well balanced temperament.
The hardships the race undergoes in this period of development
constitute the necessary training school and the virtues which spring
thence are intended as much for the betterment of the other race as
for our own. We are to soften their stern qualities, while our life is
to take on some of the iron of their soul.
That our nature will be largely modified by the necessities of our
growth must be an accepted fact, but our merit, worth and fitness in
American life will substantially be the product of our qualities as
they are to-day. The past gives us assurance of glorious possibilities
to come. Just how far and to what extent we are to realize the
fruition of our cherished dreams of rising to the full height of
honorable manhood vests chiefly with us. God has endowed us with the
capacity to suffer and undergo the trials incident to race
development. If we can recognize the need for this training, severe
though it be, if we do not chafe and fume and fret and get angry
because our deliverance has not come, we may well be comforted in the
meanwhile that any device of man to deny us a share in the government
of a common heritage in this land consecrated by heaven to suffering
humanity, will prove a complete failure.
TOPIC XXX.
THE SIGNS OF A BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO.
BY REV. F. J. GRIMKE, D. D.
[Illustration: Rev. F. J. Grimke, D. D.]
FRANCIS J. GRIMKE, D. D.
Francis J. Grimke, clergyman, was born near Charleston, S.
C., November 4, 1850. Son of Henry and Nancy (Weston)
Grimke; attended school in Charleston; entered Lincoln
University, Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1866, and
graduated in 1870 (A. M., D. D.); graduated from Princeton
Theological Seminary in 1878. Ordained pastor of the
Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church the same year. Remained
until 1885. Took charge of Lama Street Presbyterian Church
1885-1889. Returned to Fifteenth Street Church, Washington,
D. C., in 1889, where he is still. Has published articles in
the New York Independent and New York Evangelist. Wrote
monographs on "The Negro: His Rights and Wrongs; The Forces
For and Against Him." In 1898, "The Lynching of Negroes in
the South: Its Causes and Remedy;" "Some Lessons from the
Assassination of President William McKinley," 1901; "The
Roosevelt-Washington Episode; or, Race Prejudice," 1901.
Address, 1526 L Street, Washington, D. C.
Extracts from his sermon on the race problem.
"Some of these days all the skies will be brighter,
Some of these days all the burdens be lighter,
Hearts will be happier, souls will be whiter,
Some of these days.
"Some of these days, in the deserts uprising,
Fountains shall flash while the joybells are ringing,
And the world, with its sweetest of birds, shall go singing,
Some of these days.
"Some of these days: Let us bear with our sorrow,
Faith in the future--its light we may borrow,
There will be joy in the golden to-morrow--
Some of these days."
That is my faith; I am no pessimist on this Negro problem. Terrible as
the facts are, cruel and bitter as is this race prejudice, and
insurmountable, almost, as are the obstacles which it sets up in our
pathway, I see a light ahead, I am hopeful, I look forward to better
times. And I want to tell you this morning what the ground of this
hope is.
(2.) I am hopeful, because of the progress which the Negro is making
in intelligence and in wealth. Think of what our condition was at the
close of the war, and of what it is to-day, in these respects. That we
are progressing, there can be no doubt; indeed, in view of all the
circumstances, our progress has been marvelous.
Take the matter of wealth. Since freedom, hundreds and thousands of
our people have become property owners in the South. Many of them are
prosperous and successful farmers; thousands and hundreds of thousands
of acres of land have come into their possession, hundreds and
thousands of them in the cities own their own homes, and are engaged
in small but lucrative business enterprises of one kind or another.
They are now paying taxes on some three hundred million dollars' worth
of property. That is not a very large sum, I admit, considered as the
aggregate wealth of a whole race, numbering some seven or eight
millions; but whether much or little, it indicates progress, and very
considerable progress, and that is the point to which I am directing
attention. The acquisitive faculty in the Negro is being developed;
his eyes are being opened more and more to the importance of getting
wealth; and slowly, but surely, he is getting it.
Educationally, the same is true. Thirty years ago there were but few
educational institutions among us, but few professional men--doctors,
lawyers, ministers--ministers of intelligence--teachers; but few men
and women of education. Now, there are thousands of well-equipped men
and women in all the professions, and thousands upon thousands of men
and women of education in every part of the country. Not only are
there institutions, founded especially for our benefit, crowded with
students, but all the great institutions of the land are now open to
us, and in all of them, with scarcely an exception, are to be found
representatives of our race; and the number in such institutions is
steadily increasing. The last report of the Commissioner of Education
shows that in the common schools of the sixteen former slave States
and the District of Columbia, there are enrolled 1,429,713 pupils, and
that in these schools, some twenty-five thousand teachers are
employed. It also shows that there are 178 schools for secondary and
higher education, with an enrollment of over forty thousand pupils.
There are, of course, thousands of our people who are still very
ignorant, but that there is vastly more intelligence in the race now
than at the close of the war, no one will pretend to deny. The
colleges and universities, the high and normal schools, are turning
out hundreds of graduates every year. The educational outlook for the
race is certainly very encouraging.
In view of these two factors--the growing desire on the part of the
Negro for material possessions, the fact that he is actually acquiring
property, and his growing intelligence--I see signs of a brighter
future for him. These are elements of power that will make themselves
felt. You may deprive a poor and ignorant people of their rights, and
succeed in keeping them deprived of them, but you can't hope to do
that when these conditions are changed; and the point to which I am
directing attention here, is that this change is taking place. All
that has been done, and is being done to stimulate in the Negro this
principle of acquisitiveness, and to increase his thirst for
knowledge, is a harbinger of a better day. Every dollar saved, or
properly invested; every atom of brain power that is developed, is a
John the Baptist in the wilderness, crying, Make straight the pathway
of the Negro. In proportion as the race rises in intelligence and
wealth, the valleys will be filled and the mountains will be leveled,
that now stand in the way of his progress, in the way of the complete
recognition of all of his rights. Ignatius Donnelly, in that
remarkable book of his, "Doctor Huguet," which some of you, doubtless,
have read, would seem to teach the opposite of this. He attempts to
show that never mind what the intellectual attainments of the Negro
may be--he may be a Doctor Huguet, learned with all the learning of
the schools, and cultured with all the culture of the ages--still
there is no chance for him, there is no hope of his being recognized.
The story as told by him is, at first, quite staggering and terribly
depressing. But when we remember that, according to the story, there
was but one Doctor Huguet with a black skin, and that he was poor, and
that all the rest of his race were poor and ignorant, light breaks in
upon the darkness, the awful pall which it casts upon us, is at once
lifted. How will it be when instead of one Doctor Huguet there are
hundreds and thousands of them, scholarly men and women, cultivated
men and women, men and women of wealth, of large resources? It will be
very different. If the Negro was indifferent to education; if he was
actually getting poorer, then we might lose heart; but, thank God, the
very opposite is true. His face is in the right direction. He may not
be pressing on as rapidly as he might towards the goal, as rapidly as
some of us might wish to see him, but it is a matter for
congratulation, that he is not retrograding, nor even standing still,
but is moving on. Poor? Yes, but he isn't always going to be poor.
Ignorant? Yes, but he isn't always going to be ignorant. The progress
that he has already made in these directions shows clearly what the
future is to be. Knowledge is power; wealth is power, and that power
the Negro is getting. He is not always going to be a mere hewer of
wood and a drawer of water; he is not always going to be crude,
ignorant. American prejudice is strong, I know; it is full of infernal
hate, I know, but in the long run it will be found to be no match for
the power which comes from wealth and intelligence.
(3.) I am hopeful because I have faith in the ultimate triumph of
right. You remember what Lowell says in his "Elegy on the Death of Dr.
Channing:"
"Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deep
Of everlasting Soul her strength abides,
From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap,
Through Nature's veins her strength, undying tides.
* * * * *
"I watch the circle of the eternal years,
And read forever in the storied page
One lengthened roll of blood, and wrong, and tears--
One onward step of Truth from age to age.
"The poor are crushed; the tyrants link their chain;
The poet sings through narrow dungeon-grates;
Man's hope lies quenched;--and, lo! with steadfast gain
Freedom doth forge her mail of adverse fates.
"Men slay the prophets; fagot, rack, and cross
Make up the groaning records of the past;
But Evil's triumphs are her endless loss,
And sovereign Beauty wins the soul at last."
* * * * *
"From off the starry mountain-peak of song,
The spirit shows me, in the coming time,
An earth unwithered by the foot of wrong,
A race revering its own soul sublime."
And in the "Ode to France," from which I quoted on last Sabbath, the
same glorious thought is expressed:--
"And surely never did thine altars glance
With purer fires than now in France;
While, in their bright white flashes,
Wrong's shadow, backward cast,
Waves cowering o'er the ashes
Of the dead, blaspheming past,
O'er the shapes of fallen giants,
His own unburied brood,
Whose dead hands clench defiance
At the overpowering good:
And down the happy future runs a flood
Of prophesying light;
It shows an Earth no longer stained with blood,
Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud
Of Brotherhood and Right."
That is my faith. The wrong may triumph for the moment, but in its
very triumph is its death-knell; it cannot always prevail. God has so
constituted the moral universe, has so planted in the human heart the
sense of right, that ultimately justice is sure to be done. "Ever the
Right comes uppermost," is no mere poetic fancy, but one of God's
great laws. In the light of that law, I am hopeful. I know that things
cannot go on as they are going on now, that the outrageous manner in
which we are at present treated cannot always continue. It is bound to
end sooner or later.
(4.) I am hopeful, because I have faith in the power of the religion
of the Lord Jesus Christ to conquer all prejudices, to break down all
walls of separation, and to weld together men of all races in one
great brotherhood. It is a religion that teaches the fatherhood of God
and the brotherhood of man, a religion in which there is neither Greek
nor Jew, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free. And this religion is in
this land. There are, according to the statistics of the churches for
1898, excluding Christian Scientists, Jews and Latter Day Saints,
135,667 ministers in the United States, 187,075 churches, and
26,100,884 communicants in these churches. This would seem to be a
guarantee that every right belonging to the Negro would be secured to
him; that in the struggle which he is making in this country for
simple justice and fair play, for manhood recognition, for such
treatment as his humanity and citizenship entitle him, back of him
would be found these 135,667 ministers, 187,075 churches and
26,100,884 church members. But, alas, such is not the case. These
professed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ who came to seek and to
save the lost, who was the friend of publicans and sinners, whose
gospel was a gospel of love, and who was all the time reaching down
and seeking to befriend the lowly, those who were despised and who
were being trampled upon by others;--the Christ of whom it is written,
"And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove
after the hearing of his ears; but with righteousness shall he judge
the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth;" and who,
in speaking of himself, said, "The spirit of the Lord God is upon me;
because he hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim
liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that
are bound; to comfort all that mourn; to give them a garland for
ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the
spirit of heaviness;"--these professed followers of this wonderfully
glorious Christ, instead of standing back of the poor Negro in the
earnest, desperate struggle which he is making against this damnable
race-prejudice, which curses him because he is down, branding him with
vile epithets, calling him low, degraded, ignorant, besotted; and yet
putting its heel upon his neck so as to prevent him from rising;
despising him because he is down, and hating him when he manifests any
disposition to throw off his ignorance and degradation and show
himself a man;--in this struggle, I say, against this damnable
race-prejudice, these professing Christians are often his worst
enemies, his most malignant haters and traducers.
In saying that the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ is in this land,
I do not therefore, base my assertion upon the fact, that there are
135,667 ministers in it, and 187,075 churches, and 26,100,884
professing Christians. No. The American Church as such is only an
apology for a church. It is an apostate church, utterly unworthy of
the name which it bears. Its spirit is a mean and cowardly and
despicable spirit. "One shall chase a thousand," we are told in the
good Book--and "two shall put ten thousand to flight." And yet with
135,667 preachers, and more than 2,000,000 church members in this
land, this awful, black record of murder and lawlessness against a
weak and defenseless race, still goes on. In the presence of this
appalling fact, I can well understand the spirit which moved Theodore
Parker--that pulpit Jupiter of his day--when in his great sermon on
"The True Idea of a Christian Church," he said, "In the midst of all
these wrongs and sins--the crimes of men, society and the state--amid
popular ignorance, pauperism, crime and war, and slavery, too--is the
church, to say nothing, do nothing; nothing for the good of such as
feel the wrong, nothing to save them who do the wrong? Men tell us so,
in word and deed; that way alone is safe! If I thought so, I would
never enter the church but once again, and then to bow my shoulders to
their manliest work, to heave down its strong pillars, arch and dome,
and roof, and wall, steeple and tower, though like Samson I buried
myself under the ruins of that temple which profaned the worship of
the God most high, of God most loved. I would do this in the name of
men; in the name of Christ I would do it; yes, in the dear and blessed
name of God." And I would do it, too.
But, in spite of the shallowness and emptiness and glaring hypocrisy
of this thing which calls itself the church; this thing which is so
timid, so cowardly that it dares not touch any sin that is unpopular,
I still believe that Christianity is in this land. To-day it is like a
little grain of mustard seed, but it has entered the soil, has
germinated, and is springing up. It is like the little lump of leaven
which the woman hid in three measures of meal; but it has begun to
work, and will go on working, diffusing itself, until the whole is
leavened. God has promised to give to his Son the heathen for his
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession;
and in that promise this land is included. Christianity shall one day
have sway even in Negro-hating America; the spirit which it
inculcates, and which it is capable of producing, is sure, sooner or
later, to prevail. I have, myself, here and there, seen its mighty
transforming power. I have seen white men and women under its
regenerating influence lose entirely the caste feeling, to whom the
brother in black was as truly a brother as the brother in white. If
Christianity were a mere world influence, I should have no such hope;
but it is something more than a mere world influence; it is from
above; back of it is the mighty power of God. The record is, "To as
many as received him to them gave he power to become children of God,
even to them that believed on his name, which were born, not of blood,
nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." It can
do what no mere human power can do. Jesus Christ is yet to reign in
this land. I will not see it, you will not see it, but it is coming
all the same. In the growth of Christianity, true, real, genuine
Christianity in this land, I see the promise of better things for us
as a race.
TOPIC XXXI.
NEGRO CRIMINALITY.
BY JOHN HENRY SMYTH.
[Illustration: Prof. John H. Smyth]
JOHN HENRY SMYTH, LL. D.
John Henry Smyth, LL. D., ex-U. S. Minister Resident and
Consul-General to Liberia, was born in the city of Richmond.
His parents were Sully Smyth of Lynchburg, Campbell County,
Va., and Ann Eliza, formerly Goode of Chesterfield County,
Va. He received his first instruction from a lady of his own
race, at a time when the laws of Virginia made it a penal
offense to teach Negroes any other thing than manual labor.
At the age of seven years he was sent to Philadelphia to be
educated. He attended the public schools of that city four
years and two private schools under the control and
direction of friends or Quakers. He graduated from the
Institute for Colored Youth, May 4, 1862. He displayed a
decided taste and aptitude for the fine arts early in life,
and at the age of sixteen years he became a student of art,
and was admitted a member of the Life School of the Academy
of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, a year before graduation. In
1870 he graduated from the Law School of Howard University.
The same year he married the daughter of Rev. John Shippen,
of Washington, D. C., Miss Fannie Ellen, a lady whom he had
the pleasure of instructing in the first elocution class of
Howard University.
For eighteen years he was in the service of the United
States, beginning as a first-class clerk and ending as
United States Minister and Consul-General. For seven years
he taught in the public schools of Pennsylvania, practiced
law in the District of Columbia, North and South Carolina.
On retiring from the diplomatic service in Liberia, two
distinctions were conferred upon Mr. Smyth, by Liberia
College, the honorary degree of LL. D., and by the President
of Liberia, the Honorable Hilery Richard Wright Johnson, the
order of Knight Commander of the Humane Order of African
Redemption. There were only two Americans so honored by the
Black Republic. At present Mr. Smyth is at the head of the
Negro Reformatory Association of Virginia, a corporation
resident in Virginia, with authority to establish reform
schools for delinquent Negro minors of both sexes in
Virginia.
The first school of the association is the Virginia Manual
Labor School, Hanover, Va., with 1,800 acres of land, 800 of
which is under cultivation. The good people of Mr. Smyth's
native city, Richmond, and friends in Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York have made possible
the purchase of the plantation known as Broad Neck, Hanover.
The principal benefactor was Mr. Collis P. Huntington of New
York, who was pleased to make a contribution of $12,000
toward this worthy and necessary charity.
We have need to felicitate ourselves as members of a great though
oppressed race, that an Armstrong, the founder and promoter of this
institution of practical learning, was given to us and to the nation,
and that through his influence and example, Tuskegee and other similar
institutions have grown into vigorous youth. Two of these seats of
industrial education, through a system of race conferences, have given
to us who are deprived of a popular press an opportunity to be heard
in our own behalf upon subjects, the public discussion of which,
through literary mediums, has been monopolized by members of the other
race. Our moral delinquencies have been discussed recently at the
North and in the South--at times in a sensible and at other times in a
nonsensical way; arguments have been made to the world by orators and
writers seemingly more interested and concerned in making the worse
appear the better reason than in philosophically looking into facts or
honestly seeking to discover truth. From much that has been said, it
would appear to one unacquainted with the American branch of the Negro
race that within thirty-five years it has become criminal, although
for nearly three centuries it has been a stranger to wrongdoing, law
abiding and not law breaking. Such radical change, if change there has
been, in individuals or classes of people, is rare, abnormal, and must
be accounted for in some other way than by the wholesale charge of
inherited savagery and innate moral obliquity. Crime from an
hereditary standpoint may not justly be chargeable to one race of men
to the exclusion of another, to the black race more than to the white,
to the yellow races more than to the white or black.
The first crime was in the first family. The sacred writings teach
that God gave, mid the thunderings of the heavens, the smoking of the
mountain, and the consternation of the people, the criminal code in
the ten commandments, which may be found in the traditions of heathen
peoples, somewhat modified, just as in the written laws of all
Christian nations. Had crime not existed prior to this heavenly edict,
there would have been little apparent reason for this ancient
pronouncement through a Hebrew medium. The conclusion seems then to be
irresistible--that mankind coveted, stole, lied, were disobedient to
parents, were adulterers and murderers from the earliest times, and
only ceased to be so, measurably, in proportion as the sanctions of
law were strong or weak. The Christian religion and civilizations
other than Christian, with their religions, growth, and development
under the influence of good, wise, and godly men, have contributed
more than all else, to the decrease of crime and among all classes and
conditions of men. "Thou shalt not" stays the course of crime.
The history of the black or African race, since the decadence and
destruction of the cities of North Africa and the Nile Delta and the
loss of prestige of the peoples who held sway in them, has been
shrouded and obscured, and hence gratuitous arguments are made in
regard to the savagery and bestiality (which it is claimed we inherit)
of the progenitors of Negro Americans that are wholly unsupported by
reliable data. The acts of the Puritan fathers of New England and of
the cavaliers and Huguenots of the South, toward Indian and Negro
heathen in the New World--men of whom it has been facetiously said
that, "they fell first upon their knees and then upon the
aborigines,"--these acts, together with the horrors of the middle
passage and the unrequited toil of centuries, of which the blacks were
victims, must be taken into account in considering the matter of crime
in connection with this race, and go far to explain a condition which
otherwise would be abnormal. The baleful influences of a dead and
buried past account for crime among the old and the young Negro
Americans, the responsibility for which rests upon the United States
rather than the Southern states, upon this nation rather than any part
of it.
In Virginia and Maryland there were indentured white slaves. When the
system was abolished the same conditions plagued the colonists that
annoy us now. Mr. Doyle, in his work entitled _English Colonies in
America_, says, "The liberated servant (white) became an idler,
socially corrupt and often politically dangerous." The whites became
an irresponsible, shiftless, and criminal class, just as the Negroes
have become to an alarming extent since freedom. There are to-day in
certain sections of the South whole neighborhoods of whites almost
without moral sense and near to barbarism. It will not be pretended,
however, that there has not been and is not now, criminality among the
Negro race just as there was during the years of its oppression; but
a condition upheld and approved by the constitution, laws, and public
sentiment of the nation cannot do other than plead guilty to having
contributed to this result which has so greatly affected the
estimation in which good men, equally with bad men, the innocent as
well as the guilty of our race, are held by the whites. I am not
clanking my chains as a Negro in remembering the past, and only do so
in accounting for what the unreasoning and unsympathetic are disposed
to regard as abnormal criminality in the American Negro.
Negro parents under the old regime were parents physically only. The
government of their children was in the hands of others. Obedience to
parents enjoined by the decalogue was not rendered by children, was
not encouraged by others, nor could it have been enforced by parental
authority. Filial affection in the slave-child existed to an
appreciable degree notwithstanding these disadvantages. Parents and
children came into the possession of freedom not sufficiently
understanding nor appreciating the relation of each to the other.
While I am clearly of opinion that it may not be successfully shown
that Negro children are more criminal in inclination than other
children, their home-training, or, rather, their lack of
home-training, is greatly responsible for what of criminality there is
among them. Negro parents, as a rule, seem disposed not only to give
larger liberty to their children than they ought, but they give
absolute license in too many instances. In illustration of this fact,
in cities particularly, children are allowed to go from their homes in
the night-time and wander the streets amid their baleful associations
until nine, ten, eleven o'clock and longer. And when they return home
they do so unattended. The accounts given by them as to where they
have been cannot be relied upon. Further, children are not required to
be respectful to their elders of either sex. This condition does not
obtain alone among children of ignorant and poor parentage, but
absence of good manners is also often found among children and youths
who have had fair common and high school advantages. This license has
led directly and unerringly to the formation and cultivation of habits
more likely to debase than elevate them. To venture criticism of
parental laches or of the conduct of the young, to admonish or advise
different manners and conduct from that which the inclination of the
young seems to suggest, would be to run the risk of being regarded as
officious or meddling, and thereby of inviting insult. Parents whose
children are known to be of the class pictured are themselves timid
and indisposed to insist upon obedience from them, for fear of
offending them and causing them to go away from home. The inexperience
and ignorance of childhood and youth, coupled with the grant of too
great liberty, are responsible for the too general tendency to wrong
doing.
Negro parents who were themselves victims of oppression as well as
those who were born under the benign influences of freedom, have crude
and unwise notions about the duty of requiring their children to do
some kind of work. Too many Negro children are guarded from soiling
their hands and developing their muscles with necessary and useful
toil. The struggling, industrious widow as well as the
well-conditioned housewife whose husband has a good home and makes a
good living, seeks to relieve her children of work. This encouragement
of laziness can have but one outcome--the living in the sweat of
others' faces than their own. Under conditions such as these, parents
possessed of radically ignorant and wrong notions about rearing their
children, unconsciously cultivate tendencies which lead to
criminality. To the extent that a child's mind becomes familiar with
higher conditions and mind-work, to that degree does physical exertion
in the way of mere muscle-work become distasteful, and as a result the
child becomes less efficient as a mere bread-winner by the sweat of
his brow. Education is chargeable with producing a condition for which
parents and not school teachers are responsible. Complete and entire
reform in our system of home-training of our boys and girls will go
far to relieve youthful Negroes of just censure for ill-breeding. How
far all these reflections are applicable to the rearing and training
of white children is for white parents to consider.
Mr. Philip Alexander Bruce, in a recent publication in the
_Contemporary Review_,[6] accounts for moral delinquencies in the
young of the race by the very natural and normal disposition of
Negroes, where numerically strong, to segregate themselves from the
whites. In London one finds a French settlement. In nearly every large
city in the United States, Germans live together. Italians, Swedes,
and Norwegians settle among their congeners. It is not contended that
they are less law-abiding and loyal citizens as a consequence of
their nearness of living and association. Mr. Bruce enlarges upon the
thought thus: "The worst impression made by that society (a Negro
community) is seen in the temper of the children. Whatever may be said
in condemnation of the old system, it at least not only compelled the
parents to restrain, and if needful to punish their offspring for bad
conduct, but it also created an atmosphere of order and sobriety in
the plantations which had a more or less beneficial influence on the
character of the young. As the case now stands the only discipline to
which the little Negro is subject is that exercised by parents too
untrained themselves to understand how to govern him properly, and in
most instances too ignorant to have any just idea as to the difference
between right and wrong in the ordinary affairs of life. What is the
result? The child grows up without any lessons in self-control and
self-improvement, or any intelligent appreciation of the cardinal
principles of morality. If the child is a boy, he leaves his parents
almost as soon as he can earn his own support and only too often leads
for years the life of a vagabond. All the worst impulses of his nature
are further encouraged by this wandering and irresponsible existence.
Is it strange that, under the operation of this influence alone, the
number of black criminals in the Southern states is increased to an
alarming degree?"
What good effect could result from restraint exercised or punishment
inflicted by parents whose judgment and will were dormant? It is only
when a parent governs and controls, ignorant though he may be, that
the best results can be expected to follow. Judgment, affection, and
concern for the child must enter into the method of his training if
the rearing is to be beneficial and helpful.
To my mind but one merit can be claimed for the old system of
enslavement--a discipline as to labor which produced the best results
to the master class and made the slave orderly and systematic in the
performance of his tasks. Though smarting, even now, under the
resultant influences of a destroyed system, we can afford to do
justice to the good men and women of the white race who constituted a
part of the system. Slavery as it has been known in the outside world,
is not slavery as it was in the genteel and pious homes and households
of the South. Here the "people" were treated almost as members of the
family, "uncles" and "aunts" and "mammies" and playmates. They were
necessary supplements, sharers of all great occasions of joy or
sorrow, of feasts and sufferings. And the tenderest and most watchful
care was bestowed on them. Consideration for the servants was the test
of the "quality." Mutual influences went to make as pure, high and
beautiful a civilization as the system was capable of. And no
philanthropist on earth has ever had a deeper horror for the evils
that have been represented as slavery in the South than many of the
"quality." Nor anywhere was the wise abolition of slavery more
earnestly studied and desired than by the good people of the Southern
states.
In the discussion of the criminality of the Negro, too much importance
is attached to mere statistics. In any discussion of an ethical
character mere statistics may not be relied upon. I shall present a
few which are entirely authentic but which prove little, in my
opinion, prejudicial to the Negroes of to-day as compared with the
Negroes of the past, and could not unless figures could be adduced,
alike authentic, showing the criminality of the Negroes as bondmen;
neither can comparison between the criminality of the blacks and
whites be cited to the Negroes' prejudice in the light of the
disparity between the races in every essential element of race growth.
The foregoing facts greatly detract from any comparative criminal
exhibit in which Negroes of to-day are made to figure.
The last United States census furnishes some figures which seem to be
more in the Negro's favor than against him. Persons of all races in
the penitentiaries of the United States in 1890 were 45,233, of which
number 14,687 were colored. Prisoners in county jails, 19,538, of
which number 5,577 were colored. Inmates in juvenile reformatories,
14,846, of which 1,943 were colored. Of a total of 73,045 almshouse
paupers, only 6,467 were Negroes. Of murderers there were 2,739
Negroes out of a total of 4,425. In 1850 there was one criminal to
3,500 of population; in 1890 one criminal to 645 of population;
whites, one to every 1,000, and blacks, one to every 284. Take the
ignorance of the Negro as to secular matters, the moral torpor in
which he necessarily exists, his poverty, the presumption of guilt
when charged with crime, his inability to defend himself, his being
forced to plead to an information or indictment _in forma pauperis_;
could crime charged and established against him be less than it is?
Ought not the record to be worse rather than better? Of the 14,846
juvenile delinquents given an opportunity to re-enter society and walk
in the straight path through reformatories, only 1,943 were Negroes.
With the doors of almshouses swung wide to 73,046 paupers, racial
pride prevented poor Negroes entering these homes of mercy, and only
6,467 allowed themselves to become objects of public charity. With a
larger percentage of unskilled than skilled Negro laborers in 1890,
only 2,253 of 6,546 convicts whose employments were known were in the
penitentiaries of the land. Of 45,233 criminals but 253 were persons
who had enjoyed higher educational advantages, and not a single
educated Negro figures in the enumeration.
What are the remedies for existing criminality, and how may its
increase be checked? Popular secular education for whites and blacks,
compulsory, if possible, erected on a broad basis of Christianity, is
the only safe, enduring, moral, and economic remedy. Mere secular
education may not be relied upon to restrain crime, and we must
honestly own that our only hope is in the diffusion of true religion.
The church should take the initiative in this matter, the state, aye,
the nation should come to the assistance of the church, and of those
states in which the burden is too great for them to bear it
successfully. If the Holy Scriptures be not the basis of all worthy
knowledge our civilization is a fraud. Individual philanthropy has
done much towards aiding in the matter of education, particularly
so-called higher education. May not individual wealth help to minimize
ignorance, dissipate poverty, help the feeble in mind and morals of
the race to robust Christian manhood? "For many men of great
possessions, the voice of conscience is effective, as the contemplated
grasp of the tax-gatherer could never be. Around them they see
ignorance to be banished, talent missing its career, misery appealing
for relief. They know that the forces of the times have brought them
their large fortunes, only through co-operation and the protection of
the whole community; so with justice in their hearts, as well as
generosity, they found the benefactions which are doing so much to
foster the best impulses of American life; and in this response to
public duty they find conferred upon riches a new power and
fascination."
The reform schools for juveniles throughout the North and West, and
those in Virginia, represent Christian agencies for the reduction and
destruction of crime in its germinal state, and are a display of wise
and humane statesmanship on the part of legislators. The white people
of Virginia, ever responsive to appeals in behalf of human need, made
possible the Virginia Manual Labor School at Broad Neck Farm, Hanover,
Virginia. It was this sentiment in behalf of moral reform among Negro
children and youths that brought to the aid of this institution the
interested concern of a man of wealth and national influence, whose
sympathy for the poor and ignorant of his countrymen, white and black,
is as broad and far-reaching as ignorance and human suffering.[7] This
reformatory, opened September 12, 1899, and aided by the state
February 5, 1900, began with a nucleus of five Negro boys, and has now
under its guardianship fifty-two children. It has thus early
demonstrated conclusively that saving and redemptive elements of
character exist in Negro children no less than in those of other
races; also that for tractableness and responsiveness to kindly
influences, delinquent Negro children show themselves of legitimate
kinship to that race among whom, as the classic writer tells us, "the
gods delighted to disport themselves--the gentle Ethiopians."
I know how disposed as a race we are to wilt, to lose heart, and
complain, in the glare of new exhibitions of prejudice, such as harass
us in our native Virginia, and our brethren in other parts of the
country. To such, I put the question: "By courage can we not lessen
misfortune? Yes! A thousand times yes! Courage turns ignoble agony
into beautiful martyrdom. Its alchemy is universal. Is the stake a
misfortune to the martyr? It is his dearest fortune. Is oppression,
prejudice, or ignorance, a misfortune to the reformer? It is the very
condition of his reform. Is misunderstanding, injustice, suspicion, or
contempt a misfortune to the earnest man or woman anywhere who is
trying to guide his life by a more celestial trigonometry than petty
minds can conceive? In one sense these things are to be deplored but
in another and deeper sense nothing is to be dreaded that can be faced
and known by an unfrighted human spirit. A misfortune bravely met is a
fortune, and the world is full of people happy because bravely
unhappy."
FOOTNOTES:
[6] _The American Negro of To-day._ Contemporary Review, February,
1900.
[7] The late Mr. C. P. Huntington of New York.
TOPIC XXXII.
THE AMERICAN NEGRO'S OPPORTUNITIES IN AFRICA.
BY WILLIAM H. HEARD.
[Illustration: W. H. Heard, D. D.]
DR. WILLIAM H. HEARD.
Dr. William H. Heard, ex-Minister Resident and Consul
General to Liberia, was born in Elbert County, Georgia, of
slave parents and therefore was a slave himself until Lee
surrendered to Grant in April, 1865. He was only fifteen
years of age at this period. He began his education at this
age, attended South Carolina University, Clark University
and Atlanta University at Atlanta, Georgia; taught school
twelve years, was elected to South Carolina Legislature from
Abbeville County in 1876, appointed railway postal clerk in
1880, but resigned this position in 1883 and entered the
ministry at Macon, Georgia. He pastored churches in Athens
and Atlanta, Georgia; Aiken and Charleston, South Carolina;
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Wilmington, Delaware;
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and was appointed Minister
Resident and Consul General to Liberia by President Grover
Cleveland February, 1895. He served this position with honor
to his race and to himself. He is one of the most successful
ministers in his denomination, and has served the best
appointments, both as pastor and as presiding elder. He is
now the pastor of Allen Temple, Atlanta, Georgia; has
written a book called the "Bright Side of African Life,"
which has a large circulation. He is now President of the
Colored National Emigration Association.
The Liberian government takes charge of all persons landing as
emigrants and looks after their comfort preparatory to their settling;
but if one prefers he may secure board in the best of families at a
cheap rate until settled. As the government gives each settler from
fifteen to twenty-five acres of land, and allows him to choose his own
plot, it takes a little time to settle. He must locate and survey his
land and build his hut. All new-comers build the hut, as it is cheap
and quickly built. From fifteen to fifty dollars will put up a good
thatch hut which will answer all purposes for at least three years.
The land cleared, coffee, ginger, sugar-cane, edoes, cassada, oranges,
limes, plums, bread-fruit, pawpaws, can be planted. It takes three
years for coffee to yield; five to six for oranges, limes,
bread-fruit, etc. Edoes, cassadas and such bread-stuffs yield in three
or four months, and ginger and sugar-cane once a year. From these two
commodities an income at once is had. All of the above fruits and
products are obtainable from neighbors while yours are maturing. This
is the condition of the farmer. But should you go out as a
professional or business man you have a wide field and little
competition. Any educated person will find ready employment by
individuals or the government and a remuneration in keeping with the
vocation. Citizenship is the result of a deed to your land and this is
obtained at your option; and citizenship means an election to any
office save that of President and Vice-President. It requires a
residence of five years to be elected to one of these offices.
Attorney Wright, Professor Stevens, Rev. Frazier and others filled
national positions before they had been citizens five years. The
government needs strong men to assist in running the Republic, and
such, if loyal, are always welcomed. The merchant of Liberia receives
the greatest profit of any merchant on the face of the globe--not less
than one hundred per cent on the purchasing price--and a hundred and
fifty per cent on the selling price. Rent is cheap, taxes low, and
duties moderate, so that everything is in favor of the merchant.
The scientist finds the widest field imaginable--silver, gold,
precious stones, herbs, coal, iron and such articles are as plentiful
as the leaves on the trees--they never fall. All that is needed is a
scientific eye to see these things.
The zoologist could make a fortune in one year catching insects and
shipping them to colleges in America, England, Germany and France.
Why so many of our young people, educated and refined, will don white
aprons and stand behind chairs and watch other people eat is a
problem, if there is one, that needs to be solved. Many of our
educated girls, when they can work on people's heads and feet, and
present a card with some big word on it, as "chiropodist," which means
foot-cleaner, are perfectly satisfied. All of this must be done, but
it does not require a knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, German, and
all the sciences to do this successfully; yet it is the highest
ambition of many of our young people, while Africa invites them to
higher walks.
In America cotton is the staple in many of the Southern states. The
farmer plants and grows this staple to obtain clothing and the
necessaries of life, and, if possible, lay by a dollar for a rainy
day. In Liberia coffee holds the same relation to the farmer as cotton
in America; yet it is planted like the peach tree or apple tree. It
takes about five years to yield, but when it begins to yield it
increases yearly, costing about five cents a pound to clean, hull and
ship to market, giving a clear profit of from two to five cents on the
pound, while there is no real profit in cotton growing. Liberia would
yield cotton as prolifically as Arkansas or Mississippi, if
cultivated. The Englishmen are turning their attention to cotton
growing in West Africa.
Cassadas takes the place of the American sweet potato, but is much
easier produced, as the greatest cost is the labor of planting. It
produces without cultivation, and, as there is no frost in West
Africa, once planted it will produce for twenty years. It is a root as
is the sweet potato.
The upland rice of West Africa grows anywhere and everywhere it
chances to fall upon the ground. Very little attention is given to
cultivation, yet it could be made an export which would yield the
farmer a most valuable income. Corn grows as prolifically in Africa as
in the bottoms of Georgia and Alabama. Planting is the hardest task.
The palm tree grows as the pine in Georgia or North Carolina, and the
nut which it produces is as large as, or larger than, a horse
chestnut. These nuts contain an oil that answers all the purposes of
bacon, lard and butter in America. The greatest task is to have a boy
climb the tree and cut them down. This oil fries your fish, seasons
your greens, shortens your bread and answers all the purposes of lard
or butter.
There are hogs, cows, sheep and goats in West Africa, but no meat can
be cured, therefore all bacon is shipped from abroad.
Rubber farms are much more profitable than turpentine farms, for the
reason that it costs so much less to produce rubber and the profit is
so much greater. Rubber is produced at from fifteen to twenty cents
per pound and sold at from seventy-five cents to one dollar per pound.
While all of these products are used on the ground, with a few
exceptions, yet all of them are profitable commodities for export.
We have presented this array of facts to sustain our position that the
Negro will be benefited by returning home to Africa as fast as he is
self-reliant and independent. But he must be a man; boys cannot stand
the hardships of pioneer life.
TOPIC XXXIII.
THE NEGRO AND EDUCATION.
BY MRS. LENA MASON.
[Illustration: Mrs. Lena Mason.]
MRS. LENA MASON.
Mrs. Lena Mason, the Evangelist, was born in Quincy, Ill.,
May 8th, 1864. Her parents, Relda and Vaughn Doolin, were
devout Christians, and they brought up their daughter Lena,
as far as they knew how, in the nurture and admonition of
the Lord, so that Lena became a Christian at a very early
age. She attended the Douglass High School of Hannibal, Mo.
She also attended Professor Knott's School in Chicago. She
married March 9th, 1883, to George Mason. Of this union six
children were the result--four boys and two girls; of these
only one, Bertha May, survives.
At the age of 23 Mrs. Mason entered the ministry, preaching
for the first three years to white people exclusively, and
later preaching to mixed congregations. She now belongs to
the Colored Conference. Mrs. Mason has preached in nearly
every state in the Union, and the preachers are few who can
excel her in preaching. She has, since she has been
preaching, been instrumental in the conversion of 1,617
souls. Her five months' work in colored and white churches
in Minneapolis will never be forgotten by those who were
greatly benefited by her services. Mrs. Mason possesses
considerable ability as a poet, and has written several
poems and songs that do not suffer by comparison with poems
by the best poets. Mrs. Mason is powerful in argument and
picture painting. Rev. C. L. Leonard, pastor of the Central
German M. E. Church, in speaking of Mrs. Mason, says: "I
desire to express my highest appreciation of Mrs. Mason's
church and effective evangelical work in my church and in
many others. Mrs. Mason is now making a tour of the South,
and by her lectures and sermons is doing a work among the
colored people that will bear good fruit in the future. One
only needs to hear Mrs. Mason lecture and preach to
understand how it is that one never tires listening to her."
1. Said once a noble ruler,
Thomas Jefferson by name,
"All men are created equal.
All men are born the same."
God made the Negro equal
To any race above the grave,
Although once made a captive
And sold to man a slave.
2. Of all the crimes recorded
Our histories do not tell
Of a single crime more brutal,
Or e'en a parallel.
It was said by men of wisdom (?)
"No knowledge shall they have,
For if you educate a Negro
You unfit him for a slave."
3. Fred Douglass' young mistress,
Moved by a power divine,
Determined she would let the rays
Of knowledge on him shine,
But her husband said, "'Twill never do,
'Twill his way to freedom pave,
For if you educate a Negro
You unfit him for a slave."
4. But there is no mortal being
Who can the wheels of progress stay;
An all-wise God intended
He should see the light of day.
God drew back the sable curtains
That shut out wisdom's rays,
He did give unto him knowledge
And unfit him for a slave.
5. But God's works were not completed,
For he had made decree,
Since all men are born equal,
Then all men shall be free.
He removed the yoke of bondage,
And unto him freedom gave;
He did educate the Negro
And unfit him for a slave.
6. When the Negro gained his freedom
Of body and of soul,
He caught the wheels of progress,
Gave them another roll.
He was held near three long centuries
In slavery's dismal cave,
But now he is educated
And unfitted for a slave.
7. He's able to fill any place
On this terrestrial ball,
All the way from country teacher
To the legislative hall.
He has proved himself a hero,
A soldier true and brave,
And now he's educated
And unfit to be a slave.
8. We have lawyers and we've doctors,
Teachers and preachers brave,
And a host of noble women,
Who have safely crossed the wave.
We are pressing on and upward,
And for education crave,
For it's written now in history,
We shall never more be slaves.
TOPIC XXXIV.
A NEGRO IN IT.
BY MRS. LENA MASON.
1. In the last civil war,
The white folks, they began it,
But before it could close,
The Negro had to be in it.
2. At the battle of San Juan hill,
The rough-riders they began it;
But before victory could be won
The Negro had to be in it.
3. The Negro shot the Spaniard from the tree,
And never did regret it;
The rough-riders would have been dead to-day
Had the Negro not been in it.
4. To Buffalo, McKinley went,
To welcome people in it;
The prayer was prayed, the speech made,
The Negro, he was in it.
5. September sixth, in Music Hall,
With thousands, thousands in it,
McKinley fell, from the assassin's ball,
And the Negro, he got in it.
6. He knocked the murderer to the floor,
He struck his nose, the blood did flow;
He held him fast, all nearby saw,
When for the right, the Negro in it.
7. J. B. Parker is his name,
He from the state of Georgia came;
He worked in Buffalo, for his bread,
And there he saw McKinley dead.
8. They bought his clothes for souvenirs,
And may they ever tell it,
That when the President was shot
A brave Negro was in it.
9. He saved him from the third ball,
That would have taken life with it;
He held the foreigner fast and tight,
The Negro sure was in it.
10. McKinley now in heaven rests,
Where he will ne'er regret it;
And well he knows, that in all his joys
There was a Negro in it.
11. White man, stop lynching and burning
This black race, trying to thin it,
For if you go to heaven or hell
You will find some Negroes in it.
12. Parker knocked the assassin down,
And to beat him, he began it;
In order to save the President's life,
Yes, the Negro truly was in it.
13. You may try to shut the Negro out,
The courts, they have begun it;
But when we meet at the judgment bar
God will tell you the Negro is in it.
14. Pay them to swear a lie in court,
Both whites and blacks will do it;
Truth will shine, to the end of time,
And you will find the Negro in it.
TOPIC XXXV.
THE NEGRO'S ADVERSITIES HELP HIM.
BY PROF. JOSEPH D. BIBB, A. M.
[Illustration: Joseph D. Bibb, A. M.]
PROF. JOSEPH D. BIBB, A. M.
Prof. Joseph D. Bibb comes from the city of Montgomery,
Ala., of excellent parents. His early life was spent among
pleasant surroundings and he received his primary education
at the Swain Public School of that city. While quite young
he entered Fisk University, where he was prominent because
of his splendid scholarship and original ideas. Being
impressed with the idea that Negroes were the natural and
best teachers for the Negro youth, he left that institution
and entered Livingstone College at Salisbury, N. C., at the
head of which was the justly celebrated Dr. J. C. Price.
Here he received the degree of A. B. in 1886.
He was not contented with his academic attainment, but
completed the courses of law and theology, and has
constantly applied himself to the fulfillment of his high
ideal.
After graduating he spent his first year as instructor in
the State Normal at Montgomery, ten years as principal of
the public school, in which he received his training, and
two years as professor of Hebrew and Bible history at Morris
Brown College, Atlanta, Ga. Neither of these nor the minor
fields of usefulness satisfied his ideal, and it was not
until he entered the active ministry that he felt that
satisfaction that comes with fitness. He is now laboring
acceptably as a minister in the A. M. E. Church and is
recognized as one of its most scholarly divines.
The world needs men who will use all of their cultivated
powers to bless and to lift up their fellowmen, who will
dedicate themselves to their fullest energies and their
energies to their people. Such a man is the subject of our
sketch.
In this hour when the sun is just beginning to climb the horizon of a
new day in the life of the Negro race, there is an imperative need for
close observation and serious, earnest thought. We cannot content
ourselves with appearances. We cannot trust the decision reached
mainly through our emotional nature. We must bring the whole personal
conscious man into our meditation in order that we may see and
comprehend that hand of God laid in love upon the Negro of this
country.
All problems in a nation's life must be unraveled and solved by that
nation. It may take advantage of foreign influences and examples,
incorporate and utilize them, but the real work must be done by the
nation itself. The same principle obtains in problems affecting
individual life or the life of a race. To adjust the Negro in
harmonious relationship to American civilization is a question that
depends for solution not so much upon the nation as upon the thought
and life of the race itself. The Negro seen through the refractory
medium of fear and prejudice is regarded as an unhealthy member, yet
it is evident that he is a vital member and cannot be removed by the
surgeon's scalpel. It is necessary, therefore, that this unhealthy
member should be toned up to harmony with the great organism of which
he is a part.
"No cross, no crown," is a trite saying, yet it has lost nothing of
the beauty of strength of originality, but, rather, it has grown to be
the sustaining, inspiring motto of all men as they plod up the hill of
life. Great souls do not whine and fret in adversity. The men and
women who lay the foundation of great institutions that bless mankind,
that fling rainbows on the black bosom of the tempest, do not tremble
and falter because of the clouds and mountain peaks, but onward and
upward they go until the victory is won. The church came up by the way
of the cross. If you would know the path of civilization, look for the
great battlefields in the world's history. The greatest battles of
reform in church and state have been fought, and the right has
conquered. The Negro to-day reaches his hand out and plucks the best
fruitage of the highest and grandest age known to man. Even liberty, a
plant that grows luxuriantly only when watered with human blood, and
rooted in the hearts and affections of a free people, is within the
very grasp of the American Negro.
The history of the free American Negro is one continuous and unbroken
chain of success. I shall lay the proof of the statement before you as
we advance. Did you ever consider the agencies at work for the
amelioration of the condition of the Negro in this country? Here and
there counter-forces may appear to hinder the too rapid advance of the
Negro, but such is the inevitable law of growth. Life is conditioned
upon its ability to absorb and assimilate the good and reject and
expel the bad. What are these counter-forces, these hostile external
relations? Do they tend to destroy the equilibrium of the race, or,
rather, do they conduce to its stability and strength? The answer is
obvious. The Negro is being sharpened and fashioned here under
Providence into a better and nobler manhood. He is suffering no more
than all infant races suffered. Slavery and oppression is the school
in which races are trained for the enjoyment of the fullest life. God
has a purpose in thus dealing with the Negro. The power of his
individuality, his highly developed religious nature, his disposition
to linger in peace in whatever condition he finds himself; his
preserving a truly magnanimous spirit in the very face of an
unwarranted and violent opposition, foretell his future history. He is
contributing his part toward the industrial development of the South
and the religious elevation of the nation. Many of his redeeming
qualities are often regarded as evidences of puerility and barbarism.
Character cannot be built in a day, neither in an individual nor in a
race, but the Negro is old enough now to be an American citizen. He
has reached the years of maturity; his character is formed, and what
is good for the most advanced citizen is good for him. He demands
equal and exact justice; he will content himself with nothing less.
There are divine purposes in each life, in each race and nation. How
well these purposes are subserved is left with the individual, the
race or the nation.
Afflictions are a wholesome discipline, and the people who would
survive the wreck of nations must fight their way up under the
inexorable law of God, through trials, through tribulations, through
persecution and through blood. I do not wish in any way to condemn the
agitation of the hour in the name of justice, and civil political
liberty, but rather to urge it in a reasonable way. Agitation, says
Wendell Phillips, is the method that puts the school by the side of
the ballot box. Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace and
secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are
the weapons of animals. "Agitation is the atmosphere of brains." Sir
Robert Peel defines it as the marshaling of the conscience of a nation
to mold its law. Injustice cannot stand before exposure and argument
and the force of public opinion. No sharper weapon of defense will be
required against the wrongs which afflict the South." No race can rise
higher than its ideal. To teach the Negro that the evils of his
environments will crush him forever, that a servant is and must be
servile in disposition and in general habit of mind; that hair and
skin and the shape of the head stamp him an inferior, is a doctrine of
creation without God in it.
No, let him know and feel that he is a man with the great
ever-expanding capacity of a man, and that a step beyond him is Deity.
Let him see himself mirrored in Hamlet's sublime outbursts of
admiration: "What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in reform, how express and admirable; in action
how like an angel in apprehension how like a god." Let him know that
he has and will yet realize in his racial life the loftiest ideal of
civilization. The Negro has profited immeasurably by the lessons,
stern and severe--taught him in this country.
Yet these adverse forces are but ministers of Heaven, awakening his
sleeping energies and accelerating his motion towards racial unity and
organization. They are stern, at times, inhuman teachers, but so long
as the Negro considers himself inferior, so long as a barber
discriminates against his father and brother, so long as a waiter
feels himself disgraced if he waits upon one of his own race, and the
washer-woman if she washes for her sisters, so long as we loathe to
serve only our own kith and kin these rough and severe teachers are
absolutely indispensable.
The power that permanently lifts a people is within that people, so
also the forces that degrade them. You cannot change public opinion by
drifting with its current. You cannot present yourself in a slavish
attitude and then demand a free man's portion. In that attitude you
are neither feared nor loved, but tolerated. You are regarded an
excrescent growth on the body of civil society. But it cannot always
be thus.
How can this race fail? In this day a million new homes, comfortable
homes of cultured black men, are built above the ruins of the slave's
log cabin of yesterday. Wilberforce and Morris Brown, Tuskegee,
Biddle and Livingstone, each gallantly manned by black men, and
thousands of schools dotting the South--all immortalizing Christian
philanthropy--are sending forth annually torch-bearers of truth to
light the paths the race must pursue in the great civilization of
to-day. How well these advantages will subserve his progress, his
interest--depend upon the confidence and faith which they will inspire
in him toward himself. Responsibility alone educates. Skill comes by
constant practice. Any reason alleged that the Negro is not yet
prepared for the leadership of his people, whether in the church or
institutions of learning or in politics, or whether in any of the
various avenues of business or of life, weakens the character of the
race, and augments and quickens the prejudice of the enemy both within
and without the race.
Our rightful leaders may be comparatively inexperienced, but
experience is not acquired by inactivity. It took the Civil War to
make Grant. The Northern missionary at the time when it tried the
souls of men following in the wake of battle came to break the long
night of ignorance that had settled down upon the Negro; but they have
done their duty and gone to their reward. God bless them. The Negro is
now prepared to take care of himself. Let the child crawl, he will
learn to walk. Lift up the men and women of your own race. Let some
great, towering example of Negro manhood and thrift and virtue and
wisdom point the youth to the pole star of redemption. Trust the Negro
now, and the future will take care of itself.
I repeat, if this and coming generations are taught to believe the
crushing and slanderous dictum of natural inferiority, what hope is
there for the salvation of the race, for a man can rise no higher than
his ideal? These great, honest, sincere souls in the race, who show
their love as do fathers to their children, rebuke because they love.
Moses, the great leader of and lawgiver to the Israelites--a people
who gave to the world its noblest song, its widest proverbs, its
sweetest music--throws down the Table of the Ten Commandments in
righteous indignation when he found them worshiping idols, but the
next day his heart, gushing forth love for his people, he found his
way in prayer to God, seeking forgiveness for his idolatrous people.
This was but an expression of his burning zeal for the safety and
progress of his people. So do I regard the scathing criticism given
within the race by its own men. All other criticisms are questionable.
But grant that the negro likes the idea, worships the idea of white
supremacy, with its institutions and customs, vitalized apparently
with the energy of violent opposition to his moral and industrial
development; I cannot believe that he will always be thus.
Necessity is not merely the mother of invention, but the soul of the
law of progress--the genius of civilization. It is here in the closing
period of the Nineteenth Century effulgent with the light of all the
historic past and marvelous achievements that the Negro must stand or
fall. Here in the wilderness where peaks of cultivated mountain-tops
in the near distance invite him onward and upward; here under the full
ordered sun of the brightest day the world has seen he must work out
his salvation with fear and trembling.
TOPIC XXXVI.
THE AMERICAN NEGRO AND HIS POSSIBILITIES.
BY GEO. L. KNOX.
[Illustration: George L. Knox]
GEORGE L. KNOX.
The subject of this sketch, George L. Knox, was born in
Wilson County, Tenn., September 16, 1841. He was a slave,
spending his early life on the farm and in following the
vocation of shoemaker, which he learned while serving a
master.
In 1862 he joined the Union forces in the Civil War; after
the termination of that terrible crisis he went to
Indianapolis, where he learned the tonsorial art. He did not
stay any great while in that city, but went to Greenfield,
Ind., not many miles away, where he concluded to make his
home. He established himself in business in a small way, and
by dint of persistency, thrift and integrity, such as has
marked his course ever since, he, in a few years, succeeded
in gaining a competence. He took an active part in politics
as a Republican, of which party he has been an unswerving
member up to this time. He won great respect for himself and
family among the whites, and the older Greenfieldians never
visit Indianapolis without dropping in to see George, as
they so familiarly call him.
In 1895 he moved to Indianapolis and finally became the sole
proprietor of the Bates House barber shop, said to be the
most elegant shop in the country. He is a member of the M.
E. Church, which has greatly honored him by sending him as a
delegate-at-large to the general conference in New York in
1888, and to Omaha, Neb., in 1892. He has filled numerous
offices in the local church.
He has been very active and prominent in Republican councils
in his new home. Has served as delegate-at-large to the
National Convention that met in Minneapolis, Minn., 1892,
where Benjamin Harrison was nominated for the Presidency. He
was selected as an Alternate Delegate-at-large to St. Louis,
Mo., in 1896, when President McKinley was nominated. His
voice has been heard all over the state in advocacy of the
principles of his party.
In 1892 he look charge of the Freeman and since that time he
has given the publication considerable attention, the
results of which are shown by its very large and very wide
circulation. The active management of this well-known paper
is in charge of his son, Elwood C., who is rapidly
developing as a man of business and affairs.
History has, since time begun, shown the rise, decline and fall of
empires, nations, races and individuals. It is but fair to say that
the fate of the Negro has been cast along these lines that were as
fixed as the stars in their courses. There have been exceptions to the
laws of civil and political change. We have read with joy the triumph
of the black man of ancient times, his power in battle, his eminence
in letters, his skill in science, his genius as an agriculturist, his
patience as a herdsman. In the great cycles of changes, it stands to
reason that the wheel of civil and political fortune will again
revolve in the Negro's favor.
The history of the black man's past in no wise serves to usurp the
functions of present duties. Notwithstanding the fact that there are
lowering clouds and muttering thunders, yet there is every indication
of a day, to express it boldly, that is coming that will outshine the
glittering sun.
'Tis not much that the American Negro asks in this racial warfare; his
aid has always been scant and rare; he has been thrown on his own
resources, buffeted about until he has become hidebound, as it were,
to those circumstances which have been so hurtful to the progress of
other nations.
Slavery, while a curse, has been a redeeming institution to the
American Negro.
It was that purgatorial step between African slavery and American
wealth. It was a necessary evil to prepare us for this most advanced
civilization of the world. Since that refining period, the Negro has
proven that he has the elements that make him a fit part of this great
country. There are those among us who have reached fame in nearly all
of the avenues of life. I take this as an index to the total
possibilities of the race. The masses, however, are to be reached. The
abilities of the few will not answer for the sins of the many. Crispus
Attucks, whose blood stained Boston Commons, the black soldiers of the
wars of our country down to that memorable engagement at El Caney,
will stand for Negro patriotism. Professors Washington, Councill and
thousands of others who are holding up the torch of learning will
stand for Negro intellect and citizenship, but behind all of these
stand the Negro masses that are not sufficiently quickened. These must
be prodded up, that they reach the front ranks of the procession. It
is but justice to the Negroes, however, to say that the doors of
opportunity do not swing wide for them. It ought to be otherwise, and
I believe it will be otherwise when a better understanding exists
between the races as to their aims and objects. The white man is quick
to judge the Negroes by those he meets in his every-day life.
Unfortunately, these are too much in evidence, giving color to the
charge that all Negroes look alike. The better Negro is not, as a
rule, seen; his works, as a rule, are not known; his refinement, his
morals and industry are not advertised--hence a wrong notion as to the
bent and intent of the race is noised abroad. Prejudice is not
confined to one side alone; both races show it to a hurtful extent.
Hon. Robert Allen, one of the most noted criminal lawyers of Texas,
said to a jury: "While it is true that we all have some trace of race
prejudice against the Negro, which makes it hard for us to do him
justice, I can not see why it is so; I know it should not be so. If
the Negro owes us something, we also owe the Negro something. It is a
mutual debt of gratitude that we owe each other. We as a race are
inclined to think that the white man is against us naturally. It is
true to a great extent, but we have reasons for thinking that the
white man thinks more of the law-abiding, intelligent, taxpaying
Negroes than he does of that set that turn up on election day, looking
for something. It may be that the white man is jealous of the Negro's
success, but I rather think that it is a mistaken notion. It is not
toward the better class that he hurls his hatred, but against that
class that the Negro himself is learning to fear. Until the colored
man changes his position and conditions it will be useless for him to
look for that consideration and respect that is accorded his more
fortunate brother and fellow-citizen. The Negro must not conceive the
idea that he has no friends among those now in supremacy; neither must
he entertain the belief that fortune will come to him without effort
on his part, or that citizenship will receive the proper recognition
without improvement in his morals and political attitude. These are
the days of newer and greater things in every conceivable direction.
The Negroes are taking but a small part in their creation, glory and
profit. If there are men among us who can be the means of bringing
better conditions to the great Negro masses, and who can weed out the
slow, dull, plodding process of evolution, they should not be denied
the opportunity. The masses seem to be hedged about by a wall of
indifference. Negroes have such little respect for their own kind that
the thing is becoming proverbial. Now they pretend otherwise in
self-defense.
You think of some little device for testing race love; try it--it will
do the rest. The white people have found that nothing is to be feared
of colored people when it comes to helping racial cause. The
individual who is loudest in defense of his race generally gets the
most generous cursing from Negroes. Newspapers are often held in
abomination by Negroes. A Negro editor would be mobbed if he told the
truth about Negroes; they say, let the white people do it. Negroes who
engage in business of any kind are usually criticised most severely by
Negroes who are incapable of engaging in any kind of business for
themselves. They are always full of suggestions as to how Mr. "A" and
Mr. "B" should conduct or run their business; still they have nothing
substantial to offer. Criticisms coming from such a source simply
amount to nothing. It is about time for all of us to stop going out of
our way, and making occasion, where none exists, to blackguard the
Negro, and instead encourage him to industry and correct living and
increase our efforts to make him a steadier laborer and better
citizen. It is hardly fair to place the whole race under a common
condemnation because of the slothfulness and lawlessness of some of
its members; it would hardly be fair even if this percentage were
larger than it is, and it is hardly worthy of a people to continue
nagging at, and seeking to arouse further prejudice against its own
race. No man can reach the elevated plane of good character and worth
who drags behind him a great load of little and mean dislikes for his
fellowman. The possibilities of higher professional standing of
colored men and women depend upon the unity and determination of the
colored people to push their professional and business men to the
front. I appeal to you as a race to cultivate race pride, not race
prejudice. Stand up like men and women and cultivate unity and protect
and defend each other's interest. Let the elevation of one be the joy
of the other, instead of pulling down those who are trying to elevate
themselves and the race. The possibilities of colored professional men
will be great to the extent that the colored people will allow their
greatness. Their destiny is with the colored race. This world is not
a place of peace and unmixed happiness. There has always been a
struggle of individuals and races for existence and mastery.
It is beginning to dawn on the Negroes generally, that if they would
be saved, they must save themselves. The idea that they were to enter
at once into all the walks of American life without violent protest
has been dissipated through the actual occurrences of the last four
decades. It would be too long a story to rehearse the reasons for the
seeming undiminished prejudices.
In the interest of truth, the exact truth, we feel free to say,
however, that the reasons are not to be charged altogether to one
race. There is much that can yet be done on the Negro's side that
would tend to put a better face on the matter. There has been
undergoing a gradual change in the minds of the thoughtful of both
races concerning education and politics as it concerns the Negroes,
which has, indeed, upset the first calculations of many, but which,
after all, has a tendency to broaden the foundation on which racial
progress must rest. The Booker T. Washington theory of education has
come to stay; not because he advocates it; not because rich men are
sustaining his school, but because he has an institution that meets
the requirements, the demands of the day. It is a pity, but true, that
the race as a rule has entertained inflated notions about the matter
of education. It rather looked forward to an education that vied with
the whites, with their centuries of leisure and their myriad routes
for employment. Education that unfits the individual to grapple with
his surroundings, his environments, is a misfit. The masses of any
race do not hope to be educated as its classes do. Those who oppose
Mr. Washington's theory advance the argument, but those intimately
acquainted with the race must admit that the Negro parent slaves
himself to make a fine lady or gentleman out of the daughter or son,
whereas the poor white parents hope and endeavor to turn out
breadwinners, notwithstanding they have no color conditions to
overcome. The lady and gentleman idea, doubtless, was born of the
slavery period, when the so-called "great" received flattering
attention from master and slave. The desire to be the recipient of
such attention, or to have it bestowed on their kind, was the result
of association and infantile minds, which have not as yet left the
will free to have the children taught to feel that the conditions must
determine the education. Happily, we may say that the notion of
turning out ladies and gentlemen instead of women and man is on the
wane. The trades, the fields, the shops are, as they should now be,
given greater consideration. Mr. Washington eternally dwells on the
theory of doing something, producing something, and especially do we
recommend the field, with its thousand-avenued opportunities.
Competition in the products of the field is fair. The school prepares
the farmer as well as it does the classic. A company of Negroes,
equipped to make a wagon throughout, will at least make living wages,
even should the article be sold for a few dollars less in order to
make it go. Material is always the smaller item of expense. The public
will not question the nationality of the makers. Reputation for good
work is always understood to be a condition.
Other enterprises, with a small output of capital, would insure wages
if no more. Do Negroes receive fair wages generally? If the Negroes
have dreamed that they were to move unscathed in the industrial
procession as they found it existing when they obtained their freedom,
they have long ere this been rudely awakened. It is not always
prejudice with shop owners and proprietors that prevent them from
employing Negroes; it is that general mass prejudice that puts an
emphatic veto on any such intentions. It resolves itself into a
business proposition with him. The store owner allows no philanthropy
in his business. He is dictated to by that course which insures him
the greatest prosperity. He may not be wholly free from prejudices,
but it is not that which determines his actions, it is the prejudice
of the masses. He will not sacrifice his existence by opposing it. It
is a mistake to wail at the class who is at the mercy of the masses.
It is more than probable that they would do different if free to do
so.
The question is often asked, can the Negroes work out their own
salvation? Will they do it? The answer is: they have it to do or reap
the very bitter consequences. The wardship idea is not the part of the
American institution as it concerns them. Competition, deadly
competition, is the pass word. The white man gives no quarter nor
takes any; nothing but sheer force, absorption, extinction,
annihilation, or what not in the commercial, industrial competitive
sense. Nothing is longer conceded; no special place for the white man,
for the black man, but for the man with the greatest pull. White
barbers, white waiters, white coachmen, are no longer "curios;" they
are persistent in their efforts to establish themselves, having no
regard for peculiar races with peculiar occupations. It means that the
Negroes must hustle and rustle, create avenues, open new vistas,
announce new projects, and thus avoid alms-seeking and poor houses in
the end.
Politics has played an undue part in perpetuating prejudices. It has
contributed much in the way of wealth to many of the race. It has
honored thousands by places of trust, honor and profit; it has been
the means of developing the latent abilities of the village Hampdens,
Pitts, Gladstones, Websters, Clays and Calhouns. It has been the means
of demonstrating fealty to party, and to country. For this a glorious
apostrophe is due those who have proven no cravens at any stage of the
race's career. If there were but that picture on which to look, the
occasion of this very lecture would not be necessary. The triumphs in
political, civil, church, scholastic, and army life have been attested
by such men as Douglass, Bruce, Washington, Langston, Revels, Walters,
Turner, Derrick, Grant, Pinchback, Councill, Lyons, Cheatham, White
and Dancy, not to speak of a host of younger men of journalistic
careers, that, according to opportunity, compare favorably with those
of greater reputations. But beyond all of this stands that grim
complement in the way of civil depression, political stagnation, if
not utter palsy. The courts have rendered their functions to the mobs
in some localities, and all but anarchy sits enthroned. The white man
has been held to blame altogether for the reversed picture. It is not
quite the case. Slavery left a legacy of hate when it gave away to
freedom. The older Negro, better groomed in the art of preserving
peace, did not forget the depth from which he sprang. He was ever
pouring oil on the troubled water, trying to bring peace out of
confusion; as a consequence that period immediately subsequent to the
war period was eventful, as it concerned the prospective peace of the
races and general prosperity. It is the new Negro, the latter day
product, who knows nothing but freedom, freedom modified by native
propensities, idleness and a groveling disposition, that is causing
the trouble. He does not understand the philosophy of the situation,
and cares less--like the Andalusian, his mule, his guitar, and it ends
right there. This strenuous American life demands work of every
individual in some form; it revolts at the idler.
Disfranchisements owe their rise as much to the indolence and vice of
too large a class of Negroes as they do to prejudice on the part of
the whites. No respectable class of men, white or black, is going to
be governed by a hoodlum element whose bellies are the main objects of
their existence. The Indianapolis _Journal_, one of the most
influential northern dailies, is right when it says that Booker T.
Washington will not be disfranchised; it means further that his class
will not be disturbed.
It will concern us but little as to what this country may do to the
whites to spur them up to their duties, providing that is their
object. The whites are not on trial; it is the Negroes. If the
disfranchisements are the means of creating better Negroes they will
have builded better than they knew. If they reduce hoodlumism,
creating Washingtons, we will not be concerned about the hoodlums of
other races. The decline and fall of disfranchisement are the two last
acts of the great political drama. The Negroes have it in their power
to hasten or prolong the day. What will they do with it? Our lives are
measured by that which we are and that which we do. The two elements
most essential to a successful life, are character and achievement.
Character is the excellence of spirit. It consists not in external
deeds, but in the thought, feeling and purpose enshrined in our
character. In the sight of God and in the eyes of our own spirit it
depends not so much upon the words we speak or the things we do, but
the thoughts we think and the feelings we cherish are the purity,
power and integrity of our spiritual nature. The first and best object
of life is character; what we do may command the admiration of
mankind, but to be is better than to do. The measure of our spiritual
excellency lies within us. It is in the heart rather than the deed.
Beauty, purity and generosity may appear in the external act, while
the motive prompting it may be mean, ignoble and selfish. Sweet truth,
purity and noble traits of character may be enshrined within the soul
and the life be so modest that they may not manifest themselves to the
public gaze.
When asked why Antipater was not dressed in purple, Alexander,
replying, said: "These men wear their purple on the outside, while
Antipater is royal within." It is the soul throbbing with a generous
feeling and a noble impulse. The soul is loyal to the claims of truth
and virtue. So you can see it is better to be loyal from within than
to make a display from the outside. If our race expects to meet the
possibilities we must learn what it takes to make true characters. It
is not the exhibit from the outside, it is what we are, as we are
judged from our actions, by the fruits we bring forth.
Character is the cultivated power; shun the examples of the world. How
many persons ever made a careful analysis of their own character or
labored to develop the good and suppress the evil? The first object of
life is character, but an object no less important is achievement.
Character is power, but power is of no use only when it is applied. A
cistern of water may contain a latent force enough to do the work of a
thousand men or overturn mountains, but only when its latent powers
are developed into the form of steam and applied to the arm of iron
for the accomplishment of a purpose is it of any good to the world. A
man of moral force must apply his power to become a blessing to
mankind. Character must go forth into the deed if it accomplishes that
whereunto it was sent. Public sentiment is beginning to measure a man,
not so much by his culture as what he can do with his culture. It
demands efficiency as well as scholastic acquirement. We must
understand that the demands are different now from what they were in
times gone by. A man must accomplish something if he expects to meet
the possibilities that await him and his race. I do not object to
education; I rather love education; but how must a man be educated?
His feet, his eyes, his hands, his head, must all be educated; and
when he is thus educated he is prepared to meet the emergencies that
await his race. As a race, thus educated, we can not be hindered from
taking position in life as American citizens. We often say that
everything is against us, and it seems so; but while this seems the
case we must be doing something individually and as a race. The
conditions of successful achievements are a correct idea of
intelligence, persistence and courageous labor. First we must have
purpose in life or, in other words, an object in view. A life that is
aimless is a sad spectacle, not so bad perhaps as a ruined life, but
not much more admirable. The Hindoos believe that the destiny of
mankind was lost in the personality by absorption in the Brahma, and
most persons are so aimless in life and so devoid of any higher or
nobler purpose that they lose their individuality in the great Brahma
of society. A man is an individual, not a mere unit in a mass; a
personality, not a mere member of a body politic. Did you ever think
what a fearful lack of that which is noble in humanity is contained in
the world? It ignores that which is highest and best in human
nature--man's freedom and power of self-organization and
self-determining influence in the masses of men. We are too apt to
fall in the same line or take on the same personalities of those
around us for the emancipation from bondage of social errors, evils,
spiritual freedom and individual aims. To float with the current is
easy; a chip can do that, but a man ought to be able to stem the tide
when necessary. Put manhood, womanhood into the world as a spiritual
force to mold, purify and elevate. Go forth into an active life with a
noble purpose, and attaining it achievement will be of the highest
success. The greater issue of the day and the demands of the hour have
not been made fundamental in our homes; the duties of the home have
not been pressed on the youth until they stand out erect in the
possession of a sterling womanhood and manhood, respecting and
respected in whatever sphere they find their vocation.
Character--character, resting upon the foundation of integrity, has
not been as it ought the burning theme of every day's instruction,
until it becomes the very soul of every boy and girl. Without
character a man had better be as dumb as a fish and as ignorant as a
snail. Intelligence, skill, industry, economy, endurance, courage and
power will be so many elements of destruction unless character shall
dominate the life and be expressed in the actions. My hands and yours
have a work to do; my head and yours have a duty to perform. Here is
the only solution for the Negro problem. It may not be out of place
for me to here emphasize the need of our working in harmony with our
environments. Our destiny is American in place and American in spirit.
It is nonsense to talk of emigration of the masses. We endured slavery
243 years and stayed here, and we shall still be here when lynch law
shall have spent its force, and with us shall be our white brother.
It is the dictate of wisdom to develop friendship, to teach unity, to
rivet the ties of fraternal love. It is the policy of annihilation to
deepen the chasm between the races. God forbid the day when the white
educators of the land shall no longer be willing to spend and be spent
for the moral and intellectual uplift of our masses. Let us be done
with sowing the seed of bitterness; we can only reap the whirlwind of
destruction. Because an inflamed sentiment drove black miners from
Pana, Illinois, every community is not repellent. Because a man rose
in the Christian Endeavor meetings in Detroit and tried to cast bad
reflections on our race, every Christian Endeavorer is not our enemy.
We shall be wise when we find our friends of whatever locality, of
whatever faith, of whatever rank, or of whatever race, and pour into
their open bosoms the full measure of our confidence. So shall we
hasten the day of our final disenthrallment There is one thing the
Negro must be proud of before he can reach the height and
possibilities that await him, he must learn to be proud of his race
and color. No race can be successful until it does these things. I
would not change my color, because I am proud of it. If there is any
one thing that will clog the wheels of our material progress, it is
the fact that some of us try to overreach ourselves. We should not
become dazzled at the splendor and magnificence of those who have had
hundreds of years to make this country what it is to-day. No man is a
success who has not a fixed sign post, an aim in life to attain unto.
A man should get that amount of education that will best fit him for
the performance and attainment of his object in life. Too much Greek
will do you no good with a white apron on. I do not say that you
should not study Greek if you intend to fill a chair in some
institution of learning. I do not say that you should not read
medicine if you intend to become a physician, or law if you desire to
follow the profession. If we watch our chances, and take timely
advantage of the opportunities offered us, our race will greatly
improve and we will be wage workers, skilled artisans, and eventually
land owners and a wealthy class of citizens of this country. I advise
you to learn trades; learn to become mechanics. We have the ability
and capacity to reach the highest point, and even to go further in the
march of progress than has been made by any people.
TOPIC XXXVII.
IMPORTANT LESSONS FROM THE AWFUL TRAGEDY.
BY E. E. COOPER.
[Illustration: E. E. Cooper.]
EDWARD E. COOPER.
For twenty-five years following Emancipation and the new
opportunities which that great event brought, many of the
brightest minds the colored race has produced had been
endeavoring to solve the perplexing and important problem of
how to make a newspaper, published in the interest of the
colored people, a profitable business enterprise. The number
of such newspaper ventures whose managers failed to solve
the problem mounts well up into the hundreds.
In the early spring of 1893, Mr. Edward E. Cooper, fresh
from conquests in race journalism in Indianapolis, came to
Washington and established "The Colored American," a weekly
newspaper whose circulation last year was put down at 12,000
copies per week, and numbers among its readers residents in
every clime where our flag floats. Mr. Cooper interpreted
the "want" for such a newspaper.
His first venture in journalism was "The Colored World,"
published at Indianapolis. This was quite a success, but he
gave it up to accept a position in the Railway Mail Service.
On leaving the Mail Service be again embarked in journalism
and established "The Indianapolis Freeman," an illustrated
weekly. This was a new feature. "The Freeman" quickly jumped
into great popularity and soon gained national fame. Having
made "The Freeman" a success, he decided to go to Washington
for a larger field of endeavor. Mr. Cooper is undoubtedly
the best all-around newspaper man the colored race has yet
produced.
Edward E. Cooper was born near the little town of Smyrna,
Tenn., and attended the old barracks school for colored
children on Knowles Street, Nashville, south of the
Nashville and Chattanooga depot; which school afterwards
became the nucleus of Fisk University. He began life selling
papers, etc., on trains; then worked on a farm two years. He
next went to Indianapolis, attended the public schools and
graduated from the high school. In 1883, he married Miss
Tenie Jones, one of the most cultivated young ladies of
Paris, Ky.
Mr. Cooper freely acknowledges that his wife has been the
balance-wheel in his life that has brought him what success
he has gained.
We stand in the shadow of a national sorrow.
In an hour of national pride and jubilation, with the eyes of the
world upon the greatest republic since the eagles of Rome overspread
the earth, in the fullness of his powers and the prime of his
usefulness, the Chief Magistrate of the Republic was stricken down by
the hand of an assassin. It is meet here that I should refer in the
opening of my address to this third assassination in the history of
our country, for the purpose of illustrating the short story that I
have to tell you and to point a moral and adorn a tale which may not
be without value to us. For it is true that
"Lives of great men all remind us
We may make our lives sublime,
And departing leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time."
William McKinley was the incarnation, not only of the possibilities of
the humblest American boy who, by diligence, integrity and devotion to
the best interests of the country, rose by steady strides to the
highest dignities in the gift of the people, but he was also the
embodiment of that grand sweep of American business genius which has
spread over the world, and promises to predominate it. If this man who
now rests from his labors with his honors full upon him represented
anything, it was the logic of business development in its largest and
best sense, for, as Governor of Ohio and member in Congress and
President of the United States, his name is indissolubly associated
with the commercial promotion, protection and expansion of American
trade.
He was not only a great executive and a great legislator, but, when
yet a youth, when the great Republic was in the agony of possible
dissolution, he heroically shouldered a musket and went to the front
as a private to preserve the union of the states bequeathed to us by
the noble fathers and the heroism of the American revolutionary
soldier in that memorable struggle, the first victim of which was
Crispus Attucks, the lineaments of whose personality have been
chiseled in marble and will stand a monument upon Boston Common, to
show a "Man's a man for a' that and a' that," and that the rank is but
the guinea's stamp.
Ah, well, we faithful hearts and true, who were never false to a
friend, who have always loved the flag, even when the flag waved not
over us, who fought with Washington at Valley Forge and with Perry at
Lake Erie, with Jackson at New Orleans, with Shaw at Fort Wagner, and
with Butler at New Market Heights, who went up San Juan Hill with
Theodore Roosevelt and the immortal Rough Riders and followed little
Joe Wheeler in Luzon, who, although a Southern brigadier, as a
reconstructed unionist in a reunited country showed in Cuba and Manila
that he had the same regard for a black soldier as for a white one
when he was loyal to the flag and faithful to his country, are here to
mourn our loss. This great heart that loved his country and gave his
life to it and for it is stilled in death!
The assassin! What of him? It is a matter of notorious fact that he
was so obscure in the life that he had led and had contributed so
little to the public weal in the place where his hands found labor
that he was utterly unknown and went down to the quicklime that
consumed his miserable remains, to the chaos from which we all spring,
stigmatized with at least two cognomens and with the reputation of
having contributed nothing to the wealth of the Republic or the
happiness of mankind. There are millions of him in Europe and America
who keep in perpetual jeopardy the splendid civilization evolved out
of the tumult of Egypt and Rome and the Dark Ages. And the very genius
of logical business development sprung out of the bosom of Moroe on
the Nile and of Tyre where ancient Afro-Phoenicians ruled the blue
waters of the adjacent seas and of the lordly Egyptians, who were
African in their fiber, historians to the contrary notwithstanding,
were the founders of the commercial spirit that dominates the world
to-day. More than that, they laid the basis of our literature and of
our philosophy. As Lord Byron hath beautifully said:
"Ye have the Pyrrick dances yet--
Where has the Pyrrick phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
Ye have the letters Cadmus gave;
Think ye he meant them for a slave?"
Now, Cadmus was a black African slave captured in war; so was Aesop,
the world's greatest fabulist; so was Terence, among the grandest of
Rome's lyric poets; so was Pushkin, the national poet to-day of
Russia; so was Alexander Dumas the first, the greatest, not only of
French novelists, but of novelists of all times and the infinite
storehouse from which all novelists draw, Honore De Balzac and Charles
Dickens to the contrary notwithstanding.
But of this vile assassin, Leon Czolgosz, why do I make this exordium
here upon the violent taking off of the President beloved by all the
people, and my animadversion upon the character of the man who lifted
his hand against the supreme representative of the greatest Republic
upon earth and the most prosperous nation? It is an incident in the
life of government that the supreme head of it shall be subject to the
vicissitudes of its maniacal, fanatical and criminal classes, those
who live by their wits or those who dream of a condition of society
unattainable, as human nature is constructed, such as Edward Bellamy
has pictured in "Looking Backward." I wish it distinctly understood
that I refer to this matter simply to draw attention to the fact that
Czolgosz, the obscure assassin of the highest representative of the
logic of business development in this country, is inseparably linked
as the Siamese twins to the mobocrat, and that any effort made to root
out the anarchist in this country will fail, and should fail, unless
the mobocrat is rooted out at the same time.
It is written in the stars. God has said, "Righteousness exalteth a
nation, but sin is a reproach to any people."
And what business development can we have when the dark shadow of
anarchism and mobism overshadows the land like the dark cloud that
covered the children of Israel in their confusion, when in their
perversion they had turned their faces from the God of their destiny?
No, there can be no business development in this country while our
laws are so lax as to allow irresponsible individuals or organizations
to clog the wheels of industry or to waste unnecessarily the red blood
that gives life to a virile human form. I say, with our grand
President, throttle the anarchist that would shoot a President or a
successor to a President. Yes, but if you leave the Southern mobocrat
to shoot John Jones, an unknown entity, the element of anarchism
remains pregnant in the body politic and is liable at any time to show
its venomous head.
Who could have told when the whole nation was hopeful that a John
Wilkes Booth lurked reluctant in the body politic to cut down the
wisest and the most humane and the most lovable of all the Presidents?
Ah, my friends, you can't protect the President of the United States
from the assassin, and leave unprotected in any corner of the republic
its meanest citizen, because, as Alexander Pope has wisely said, "We
are all but links of one stupendous chain. Break a link of that chain
and the power of that chain is destroyed."
TOPIC XXXVIII.
HOW TO HELP THE NEGRO TO HELP HIMSELF.
BY W. R. PETTIFORD.
[Illustration: W. R. Pettiford, D. D.]
REV. WILLIAM R. PETTIFORD, D. D.
It is difficult to present a life's record so as to furnish
a correct estimate of the man in question. Particularly is
this true if we attempt to give upon a page the account of a
long life of active and useful service.
Among the leaders in Christian work in the state of Alabama,
Dr. W. R. Pettiford ranks very high, having but few, if any,
superiors. As a business man he is unexcelled. Twelve years
of unremitting toil and unbroken success in the banking
business demonstrate the truth of this assertion.
In presenting this sketch we could not do better than quote
from the Cyclopedia of the Colored Baptist of Alabama, by
Rev. C. O. Boothe, D. D.:
Rev. W. R. Pettiford, D. D., son of William and Matilda
Pettiford, was born in Granville county, North Carolina,
January 20th, 1849. He was, when a boy, of an industrious
turn of mind, working faithfully at whatever his hands found
to do. At one time he was with the tanner, and at another
time he was running his father's farm.
At the age of 21 years he united with the Baptist Church of
Rocksboro, Person county, North Carolina, and was immersed
by the Rev. Ezekiel Horton of Salisbury. While he was
serving this church as clerk he told his mother the secret,
which he greatly desired that she would not reveal, that he
felt called to the gospel ministry. Brother Horton often put
up at their home, hence soon got possession of the secret.
Dr. Pettiford now says: "When I was called into an examining
council and learned that my secret was out, I was very much
frightened, but the advice given upon this day has ever been
helpful to me."
At the commencement of Selma University, 1877-78, he joined
Brother Woodsmall, becoming a member of the pioneer faculty
of the school. It was here that he was seen as the patient,
studious, industrious man--loved by tender youth and trusted
by those of riper years.
He was called to ordination by the Berean Baptist Church,
Marion, Ala., and dedicating hands were laid upon his head
in Marion, Ala., in the midst of the Conventional Session
held there in November, 1880. After this he severed his
connection with Selma University to enter the pastorate in
Union Springs.
As teacher and financial agent he made such a record that
unprecedented prestige was given to his work at Union
Springs, where for two years, by his labor of love and
sacrifice, he laid the foundation for permanent Christian
work that shall stand throughout all time.
For a brief period Dr. Pettiford worked under joint
appointment of the American Baptist Home Mission Society and
the Home Mission Board of the Alabama Baptist State
Convention as lecturer for ministers. In this capacity he
accomplished a great work. Many ministers to-day look back
to those days when they sat in institutes conducted by him
as the times of their greatest inspiration for mental and
spiritual development.
As president of the Alabama Penny Savings Bank he has a
reputation as extensive as the country of which he is a
citizen. There is no city of importance where this bank has
not done business. It has gained the reputation of being a
safe business, having survived several panics to which many
other similar institutions have succumbed.
Dr. Pettiford has managed to find some time to write. He is
the author of the following treatises: "Divinity in
Wedlock," "God's Revenue System" and "The Centenary," all of
which do him honor and his fellow man service. But this
sketch would be incomplete if it were closed without stating
this truth: That much of the Doctor's success is rightly
attributed to the sympathy and help of his life companion,
formerly Miss Della Boyd, to whom he was joined in bonds of
wedlock November 22, 1880. Three children have graced their
home, being systematically trained for usefulness in life.
Since the emancipation of the Negro in this country philanthropists
have contributed largely to the establishment of schools and colleges
for his education. Some of these institutions have been the means of
affording the Negro literary instruction, and others have given him
more practical benefits in industrial training. These methods of
helping a race that was necessarily groping in the darkness of
illiteracy are not only commendable from the viewpoint of
humanitarianism and sound philanthropy, but it must be conceded that
some such help was indispensable to any real advancement of the Negro
in the matter of education. For all such assistance it can be said
that the Negro is truly appreciative and, for the most part, has
earnestly striven to demonstrate his profound gratitude by eagerly
taking hold of the opportunities thus afforded for his enlightenment.
The industrial schools, Hampton, Tuskegee, and others, have done much
in a practical way for the Negro in giving him a knowledge of
trades--a class of training that must prove of inestimable value to
him in his endeavor to earn a living honestly and honorably. That
person who has been taught how to do something well, who has been so
equipped as to be able to do with skill what the world is willing to
pay a desirable price for, has been done an incalculable service, and
one for which society as well as the individual himself has occasion
to feel grateful.
So generously have the Negro's friends contributed toward his
education and so marked are their continued efforts in this direction
that it would appear somewhat bold for anyone to offer a suggestion at
this time looking to any additional contributions from this source for
the purpose of materially advancing the masses of that race along
other lines. On the other hand, when it is remembered with what
avidity the beneficiaries of these funds have seized the opportunities
offered, and the splendid results so far realized; and when the
further facts are borne in mind that the improvement of one class of
the population never fails to inure to the benefit of the entire
community, it may not, after all, require unusual temerity in one
to venture upon the suggestions which are to follow in this article.
When it is noted, too, with what care, discrimination and rare
judgment such contributions have been directed in the effort to lift
the Negro out of his unfortunate condition, and with what earnestness,
consistency and sincerity of purpose such aid has been given, the
conclusion is irresistible that any other needed help will come if the
method suggested is shown to be practicable and gives promise of
beneficial results.
While the school has wrought wonders for the Negro, as it has for all
civilized races, it cannot be hoped or expected that all desirable
improvements in the development of a people can be accomplished
through this agency. All the virtues may be taught in the school-room,
but the student gets only a theoretical idea of what is intended to be
conveyed to his mind, and necessarily so. He has not yet learned to be
practical and cannot, until he is brought in contact with the actual
and serious responsibilities of life, see the real, practical phase of
things as they actually exist. He needs to learn the practical value
of economy and thrift, of constant industry and frugality. If he would
build on a certain and safe foundation, he must do so by honestly
earning every dollar he can and wisely saving as much of it as his
actual necessities will permit. Nothing so strongly encourages this
spirit in the Negro as a savings bank operated in his community by
persons of his own race. The powerful influence exerted in this
direction by such institutions may be shown by some impressive figures
which have been secured from reliable sources: Atlanta, with no such
institution to stimulate its colored population to save, has only
1,000 colored depositors in the associated banks of that city out of a
total colored population of 30,000; or one out of every thirty.
Richmond, with a thriving institution of this character, has 5,000
colored depositors out of a total colored population of 45,000; or one
out of every nine. Birmingham boasts of 5,000 colored depositors
(4,000 of whom deposit with the bank with which the writer is
connected) out of a total colored population of 20,000; or one out of
every four. These three thriving Southern cities, blessed with equal
prosperity and promise, furnish convincing proofs of the great power
for good exerted by such institutions. If Atlanta, which in other
respects equals either of these two cities, were favored with the
presence of a bank of the kind mentioned, a much larger percentage of
its colored population would be filled with the spirit of economy and
the desire to save.
If such institutions are materially helpful to the Negro, if they tend
to inculcate right principles and encourage habits of industry and
frugality; and if it be true that the uplifting of one class benefits
the entire community, is it not within the bounds of legitimate
reasoning and fairly good common sense to suggest that it would be
well to have these beneficial agencies established, as far as
possible, in cities containing a large Negro population; taking care,
however, that none is established until it becomes apparent in each
instance that such an institution can be wisely, safely and
successfully conducted in the proposed community?
The writer has had a great many inquiries in the last few years for
information and advice looking to the organization of savings banks by
colored men; but it has been noted that in nearly every case the
element of doubt, fear and backwardness developed when the promoters
were brought face to face with the problem of how to begin such a
business and conduct it successfully. They found the problem a
difficult one, just as all problems are difficult until they are
understood. Here then is where the wealthy friends of the Negro, the
Northern and Southern philanthropist, can be of invaluable help. It
would be well if a few such friends would become interested in the
work of assisting in the establishment of such banks, to be conducted
by competent colored men in such cities as offer favorable conditions
for institutions of the character mentioned. They could form
themselves into a board for the general supervision of the work, and
then engage the services of an experienced and thoroughly competent
man to give personal attention to it. This man should comprehend every
detail of the banking business, and he should be willing to meet and
advise with those who are to have in hand the conduct of the
institution and instruct them in all the details of its proper
management before the doors are thrown open to the public. He should
then give daily attention to the operation of the bank for two or
three months, or until the officers are able to proceed safely without
him. By this time a similar work should await him in another locality.
He should, however, keep in constant communication with the president
of the newly established bank and so arrange his engagements as to be
able to return to it from time to time, as the work elsewhere will
permit, in order that he may oversee the management and give such
helpful counsel as the situation may demand. With the right kind of
men at the helm, educated, popular with their people and possessing
unquestioned integrity, it would not be unsafe at this stage to trust
the management to their hands for a few days at a time, after it has
been ascertained that all departments of the business are being
conducted intelligently and without friction.
So that instead of having only three or four communities in the
country reaping the good results of such forceful agencies for the
moral and material elevation of their citizens, we will have at least
a few more to assist in spreading the gospel of economy and thrift.
The expense attached to such an undertaking would be represented in
the salary paid the organiser, and perhaps a stenographer, and the
traveling and other necessary expenses of both. Their services would
not be required for a longer period than five years, at most, and the
real good accomplished would be incalculable.
The plan is not impracticable. The few savings banks now being
operated by colored men had no such help. They overcame the
difficulties under which they necessarily began, and they have
succeeded admirably. Cannot others succeed as well, especially after
such difficulties are effectually removed? New Orleans, Memphis,
Nashville, Louisville, Montgomery, Atlanta, Charleston and other
cities offer fruitful fields for this work. But let it be understood
that such assistance as is here suggested should in no case be
attempted until the citizens of a given community have first evinced a
proper interest in the enterprise, such interest, indeed, as would
leave no doubt of their earnestness in the matter. The only real
danger, in any instance, or, perhaps, it may be better to say the
chief danger, lies in an unwise selection of a locality for the
establishment of this kind of business. But this question might be
safely determined, after proper investigation, by those who furnish
the funds.
Lest there be persons in the North, who, not being altogether familiar
with conditions as they exist between the races in the South, should
doubt the wisdom of the undertaking because of a fear that the idea
might meet with disfavor on the part of the dominant race, it may be
well to suggest that the writer's personal experience in connection
with the conduct of a similar institution for nearly twelve years in
an extreme Southern community, has justified the opinion that the very
reverse is true. The bank referred to has enjoyed ever since its
establishment the moral support and cordial good wishes of the white
people of that section. And the reason for this is apparent. Perhaps
the true reason is nowhere more aptly and succinctly given than by the
editor of the Charleston _News and Courier_, who, in commenting on an
address delivered by Mr. Booker T. Washington, said: "The Negro with a
bank account, with houses and lands, with education in the practical
things of life, is a far better citizen and a safer and more desirable
neighbor than the Negro who is steeped in ignorance and who has really
no part in the life of his country." The wise, progressive, far-seeing
citizens of the white race recognize and admit the influence for good
exerted upon the colored population by banking institutions operated
by members of that race, and they welcome and encourage the
establishment of them in any community.
It is hoped that some little grain of merit may be found in these
suggestions. There has been no desire in the preparation of this
article to aspire to any literary effort. That would not be possible
in one who makes no pretensions in that direction. It is submitted
with the hope that the ideas here sought to be expressed may find
favor with those who practice the doctrines of true philanthropy--that
class of Americans who find genuine happiness in doing good wherever
good can be done, and who believe that no harm can come of helping the
Negro to help himself.
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Notes:
The transcriber made the following changes to the text:
1. before p. 51, add quote at end of paragraph starting
"Bishop Haygood of the M. E. Church"
2. p. 53, remove extra quote in paragraph beginning
"Anciently the whole land," after text
"from the ancient Canaanites."
3. p. 55, add quote at end of paragraph beginning
"Rollin, in speaking of the fact," after text
"descended from the common stock."
4. p. 72, "educacation" changed to "education"
5. p. 80, add quote at end of paragraph beginning
"This is an Anglo-Saxon country." after text
"shadow does the substance."
6. before p. 83, "were" changed to "where"
7. p. 120, "massage" changed to "message"
8. p. 121, "vestly" changed to "vastly"
9. p. 161, "aborigne" changed to "aborigine"
10. before p. 163, "wth" changed to "with"
11. p. 191, "form" changed to "from"
12. p. 274, "swathy" changed to "swarthy"
13. p. 277, "many" changed to "may"
14. p. 278, "many" changed to "may"
15. p. 279, "Chestnut" left as it appears in text
16. p. 297, add quote at end of paragraph beginning
"But this progress is further" after text
"branches of the common family."
17. before p. 349, "Walter W. Wallace" changed to "Walter N. Wallace"
18. p. 349, "By Walter W. Wallace" changed to "By Walter N. Wallace"
19. p. 396, "nego" changed to "negro"
20. p. 426, "heighth" changed to "height"
The following paragraphs have mismatched quotes that the transcriber
did not correct:
1. p. 53, paragraph starting
"Anciently the whole land, including Tyre and Sidon,"
2. p. 455, paragraph starting
"Hon. Robert Allen, one of the most noted criminal
lawyers of Texas,"
End of Transcriber's Notes]
End of Project Gutenberg's Twentieth Century Negro Literature, by Various
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