Part 6

But a certain good white sentiment (that usually turns up sooner or later, and in some cases more later (than sooner) after great sufferings have been caused) gently but firmly reminded America that there were millions of Colored people who were able and willing to fill those places. They were the people who had made and spent their money here to enrich and build up America as well as at all times and under all conditions had proved themselves most loyal and trustworthy citizens. That reminder although known to be wholly true was still laughed and sneered at by many until they were suddenly and painfully brought to realize that they must either employ Colored people in those positions or let the country go in starvation and ruin for want of sufficient and proper productions. Colored men and women were then at first reluctantly given employment in all parts of the country in almost all kinds of work. Thus for the first time since their forefathers and mothers had arrived in America nearly three hundred years before, Colored people were nationally allowed to use and enjoy many of the opportunities and privileges that had been stingingly withheld from them merely because they were Negroes and freely given to (many times forced upon) alien enemies just because they were Caucasians.

Leaving home in the morning long before dawn and returning late after twilight, Colored men faithfully dug coal in the mines of Alabama, Iowa, West Virginia and elsewhere in order that various kinds of industrial plants might continue to run in full blast and that transportation carriers might quicken their speeds to stations and sea ports. “A. J. Webster, a coal miner of Buxton, Iowa, is reported to have broken the record by earning $214.06 in 14 working days, during the last half of July, 1918. The wage was based on the amount of coal mined.”

In the shipyards along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, where the long swift-keeled ocean grey hounds and the heavy big-bodied sea-pacing mastiffs were rapidly born into life, thousands of Colored men were busily helping to assemble the durable steel ribs into place and rivet the armorplate hides of those ferocious watch dogs that prowled back and forth sleeplessly guarding the front doors of their master and mistress--“Uncle Samuel” and “Aunt Liberty”. And among those Colored ship builders, it was Charles Knight and his crew of seven men, who on July 16, 1918, at the Bethlehem Steel Company’s Sparrow Point, Md., plant, drove 4,875 rivets in a 9 hour day. The highest previous record of 4,442 rivets for the same time had been made in Scotland. Knight and his men, therefore, were the first Americans (Colored or white) to break and bring that record to the United States. His regular services for the day earned him $102; he received a bonus of $50.00 for bringing the record to America, and twenty-five pounds sterling ($125.00) offered through the London Daily Mail by Mr. McLeod, the head of a London Shipbuilding Company, to the one who broke the record. Thus Knight received for his one day’s labor $277.00, besides having the honor of being the first American to break the European riveting record.

Many people have heard the time-worn expression “make bricks fly”, but it has been left for Alonzo Harshaw, a Colored artisan, to break a record by making bricks fly in laying them at the rate of sixty thousand paving bricks per day. It is said that Harshaw, who works for the Southern Paving & Con. Co., lays bricks with such rapidity and exactness that he has been photographed while at work by several moving picture firms.

In the rolling mills, steel and iron foundries, Colored men were there in thousands sweating away their strength and burning up their vitality before blistering metals in order that the best possible steel and iron might be made strong and durable enough to withstand the bursting shells and the snake gliding torpedoes from the submarines of the scientific Germans.

Pushing pens and pencils on top of desks, tapping keys of clicking typewriters, bending over buzzing sewing machines, plying needles over tailors’ benches, before the humming looms, by the dangerous railroad crossings, in the car-filled train yards, between the handles of loaded wheelbarrows, through the crops of farmerette fields, among the death-dealing explosives in munition and arsenal plants and in many other places, thousands of brave and willing Colored women were to be found either in yeowomen’s suits or overalls and blouses steadfastly working with cheery dispositions and hopeful smiles.

In December, 1918, two distinguished Colored Americans were sent to Europe on special missions as follows; Dr. Robert R. Moton, who was sent by the President of the United States and the Secretary of War to investigate the conditions of and talk to the Colored soldiers, and Dr. W. E. B. DuBois who went to Europe as the representative of the N. A. A. C. P. and The Crisis to collect historical data pertaining to the American Colored fighters in the World War and to call and form a Pan-African Congress.

At Home Buying Liberty Bonds

“The Biennial meeting of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs was held in Denver, Colorado in July, 1918. Among the important subjects considered at this meeting were: Temperance, Suffrage, Lynchings, Religious Work, Negro Women’s Problems, Food Conservation and what the Negro Women Were Contributing to War Work Service. It was pointed out that the Association had representation on the Women’s Committee of the Council of National Defense, that in the Third Liberty Loan, 7,000 Negro Women were at work and raised $5,000,000. It was also stated that, judging from the number of buttons sold through the colored women’s clubs, that about $300,000 had been contributed in Red Cross Drives.”

“David H. Rains, a wealthy Negro farmer, living near Shreveport, Louisiana, walked into the Liberty Loan Headquarters in that city and purchased $100,000 worth of the Fourth Liberty Loan Bonds and said that: ‘If they fell short of the quota he would make up the deficiency.’ (Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, pages 48-49). According to an article on page 273 in the April 1921 issue of The Crisis, ‘Mr. Rains, who is reputed to be worth $1,500,000, owns 2,000 acres of land on which there are 40 producing oil wells; he pays a clerk $100 a day to check up his royalties.’”

“A report from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was that the Negro school children subscribed for $27,000 worth of Third Liberty Loan Bonds. Through a Negro bank in that city, over $400,000 worth of Bonds were bought, and it was stated that the total amount of Third Liberty Loan Bonds purchased by the Negroes of Philadelphia was more than $1,000,000.”

“At the close of the Third Liberty Loan Drive, the United States Treasury Department awarded first place among all the banks of the country to a Negro bank, the Mutual Savings, Portsmouth, Virginia. This bank was given a quota of $5,700 to raise. A total of over $100,000, almost twenty times the stipulated quota was raised. This bank was assigned $12,500 as its quota of the Fourth Liberty Loan. Its total subscription for this loan was reported to have been $115,000.”

“The Negroes of Jacksonville, Florida, were awarded the first honor flag given to Negroes for exceeding their quota in the Third Liberty Loan Drive. They were asked to raise $50,000; they raised $250,000. In the Fourth Liberty Loan Drive, they were assigned a quota of $500,000 and raised over $100,000 more than this amount. The following are additional examples of subscriptions of Negroes to the Fourth Liberty Loan: Mobile, Alabama, $250,000; Norfolk, Virginia, $250,000; Kansas City, Missouri, $500,000; Savannah, Georgia, $500,000; Memphis, Tennessee, $700,000; Chicago, Illinois, $1,000,000; Birmingham, Alabama, $1,155,000; Maryland, $2,000,000.”

“When Secretary McAdoo visited Little Rock, Arkansas, in the interest of the First Liberty Loan, he was presented with a certified check for $60,000 as the Mosaic Templars’ bit toward financing the war. This society’s subscriptions were added to for subsequent loans until a total of $135,000 was invested in Liberty Bonds.”

Not only rich Colored people gave freely of their wealth, but poor Colored people sacrificed to extents that are not imaginable in giving their last few dollars to help end that world strife, as soon as possible.

“Mary Smith, a colored cook in Memphis, Tennessee, was asked by her mistress if she would not undertake to buy a $100 Bond. Mary said: “No. I don’t want no little $100 Bond. I want a $1000 and I am going to pay cash for it.” She gave her lifetime’s savings to help the United States carry on the war.”

“The Chicago Illinois Post, in an editorial headed: “The Widow’s Mite,” among other things said: “We should like to tell the story of an old Negro woman, who, with seamed face and knotted hands, lives on the South Side and works for $7 a week. ‘Out of these meager wages,’ says the Favorite Magazine, ‘this daughter of a race that has traveled the road of trials and tribulations, has purchased three Liberty Bonds and $25 worth of War Savings Stamps. She contributes $5 a month to her church--before the war it was $10--belongs to the N. A. A. C. P. and a Court of Calanthe, subscribed to three Negro periodicals and contributes a dollar a month to the Home for the Aged. She does not knit, but she sits sometimes in the sunset, dreaming of the two stalwart sons that she has given the nation to fight its battles across the sea’.””

“Warner Brown, of Brenham, Texas, an ex-slave, seventy-five years old, had accumulated $50 by chopping wood and doing other jobs. He invested this in a Liberty Bond.” “Gilbert Denman, an eighty-seven year old Negro of Greenville, Alabama after listening to an appeal of speakers from a war relic train, tendered his entire worldly wealth, fifteen cents, to the cause of the United States Government.”

Since a large percentage of the loyalty and patriotism of American citizens was weighed on the Roosevelt standard testing machine of 100 per cent Americanism with weights of paper, silver and gold money; then surely the two hundred twenty-five million dollars and more in cash that was dumped into the American scales of Liberty Loan Campaigns, Thrift Stamps, Red Cross Drives and other War Work activities, by the Colored people in the United States, pushed high above the level the opposite scales that contained Negro one hundred per cent Americanism.

Thus did the Colored people at home give their over-flowing measure and extra weight of money toward the putting down of a threatened world autocracy and the establishment of a hopeful universal democracy. And justly may those Colored people, who stayed at home in America during the World War and so unselfishly gave of their strength and money, truthfully and consolingly repeat that beautiful, fifty-fifty and “square deal” law of King David’s found in First Samuel, thirtieth chapter, twenty-fourth verse: “But as his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff; they shall part alike.”

(All quotations, facts and figures contained in this chapter titled “In The World War At Home”, unless otherwise stated herein, are extracts taken from Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, pages 14-45-46-47-48-49-50.)

IN THE CHURCHES

FRESH AIR RELIGION

The preachers of to-day now seek Fresh air within God’s House to keep; And not hot rooms with germ-filled airs In sermons and their church affairs. --_Harrison._

Even during the Revolutionary War, George Leile, a Baptist slave who had been freed by his owner, preached to slaves in Savannah, Ga. From that time on up the Negro pulpit has been wielding among the masses of Colored people in America an influence for good that is the first of all influences that has the greatest hold upon the Race.

Some of the other early preachers who helped to lay the rock foundation of this ruling influence were Lemuel Haynes of Connecticut, a wonderful orator and honored veteran of the Revolutionary War; Richard Allen and Absolem Jones of Pennsylvania, Allen having founded the famous old Bethel Church in Philadelphia and was ordained in 1816 the first bishop of the A. M. E. Church; Amanda Smith of Maryland, who won thousands of Colored and white converts over to God as a result of her powerful sermons and temperance lectures in England, Scotland, Africa and India as well as in America; John Chavis of North Carolina, who on account of his superior education won fame and recognition as a school teacher of rich white Southern boys and girls and also as a powerful pulpit preacher to enslaved men and women of his own race; and John Gloucester of Tennessee and Pennsylvania, who was the first Colored minister of a Presbyterian church in the United States. Thus were the ways those early God-Fearing men and women of days before and right after the Civil War blazed the plain guiding marks in the forests of ministry, in order that the clear-sighted and sure-footed gospel leaders who have since followed them might have no trouble in choosing the right paths through which to lead their trusting and loyal congregations.

The following is an article quoted from the August 6, 1921, issue of the _Chicago Defender_:

“_C. T. Walker, Noted Pastor, Dies in South._”--“Augusta, Ga., Aug. 5--The Rev. Charles T. Walker, often referred to as the greatest preacher of his time, died Friday July 29, at his home here.

“Dr. Walker was vice-president of the National Baptist convention of the United States and pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist church here for the past forty years, excepting five years when he was pastor of the Mount Olivet Baptist church, New York City.

“He founded the Y.M.C.A. in New York City for our people, traveled extensively in Europe and the Holy Land, and was the author of a number of books of travel as well as sermons.

“As an evangelist, he was widely known, and no other minister ever drew larger crowds when he spoke. His church in this city was often visited by Northern winter tourists, among them former President Taft and John D. Rockefeller. It was the latter who paid an artist to paint pictures of the Christ Child on the walls of Rev. Walker’s church.”

“To Pastor A Large White Church”

“Toronto, Can.--To fill the pulpit of one of the largest Presbyterian churches (white) in Toronto for five weeks with one of our ministers is the interesting departure from the general rule of supply for the summer months that Knox church is making this year. For last week and all of August, Rev. Joseph J. Hill of Roawohe Baptist Church, Hot Springs, Ark., will occupy Knox church pulpit. Dr. Hill has been a professor of science in a southern university, and is a graduate of the Academy of Music. He is a quiet, appealing and persuasive preacher with a message all his own, which he delivers with great eloquence. During the summer holidays, last year, he preached in the Moose Jaw Methodist church, with a seating capacity of 1,000 which was crowded at all services.”

The above is extracted from the Cleveland Gazette issued August 6, 1921.

As soon as Sunday School children of the Race have grown old and large enough to understand and bear more weighty religious burdens, they are at once invited to join the present four million Colored church members, who are only too anxious to take in new members under the Divine leadership and protection of the fourty-three thousand churches owned by people of the Race in the United States. When it is proved by facts and figures that about one-third of the Colored people in this country are members in churches and that they have put over eighty-five million dollars of their hard earned money into these present church properties they own; it is plainly seen that people of the Negro race still have perfect faith and trust in and are continuing to work for and with the God, Who inspired the immortal Abraham Lincoln to free their slave working and hopeful praying foreparents.

(Ref.: Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, pgs. 1-234-5-6-7).

Colored ministers of today, on account of their all-around advancements have been able to bring about a better understanding and knowledge of the true teachings of the Bible. For instance, they are teaching their congregations that the timely, proper and equal uses of emotional and practical religion are necessary. Thus the masses of people attending Colored churches are fast learning from their pulpits that there is just as much needs for Christianity in practical business and social dealings with each other on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, as there is for Christianity in their church emotional ceremonies conducted among themselves before the altars on Sunday. Also ministers of today have long since come to differ from most of those “old school” ministers (God blessed them for doing the best they knew how) who taught their people to live, think and say, to other races, “Give us Jesus and you can take the dollar.” So the “new school” and more businesslike ministers of these times are patiently teaching, fast convincing and gradually converting their congregations in the belief and truth that it is just as much Christianity in the honest earning, the frugal saving, the fair investment, the wise spending and the merciful sharing of a dollar with the poor and needy, as there is need for Christianity in the saving of their souls and the spreading of the gospel.

Along other practical lines these gospel leaders are having remarkable success, especially in large cities where many Colored people live. It is wonderful to see how these practical ministers have taught their congregations that they are showing as much reverence to God when they pass out of their churches after services and go quietly and orderly to their homes (instead of great numbers of them stopping right in front of their church doors with loud talk and laughter and blocking the whole pavement, against people who wish to go by, for fifteen and twenty minutes) as they do when sitting quietly and dignified in their church pews listening to the sermons. Such gospel leaders in every instance finally win their members over to their sides in such matters by pleasantly and plainly pointing out that people of other races seldom attend Colored churches of today and see the polished and refined ways people of the Race deport themselves. But if just two or three dozen members of a church come out after services and thoughtlessly block the side walks, go along the streets or ride in the trolley cars roughly laughing and loudly talking their church and private affairs to each other from one end of the car to the other; they are seen and heard by other races who class not only the church but the whole Negro race with those few loud-mouthed, absent-minded and sometimes vain Colored people who often use such shameful public manners to attract attention to themselves and their clothes; just like the same class of uncouth white people do.

Of course, when white men and women appear in public places acting and talking in noisy, unrefined and vulgar ways, the Colored man or woman (no matter how little learning he or she may have) who sees and hears such actions, never judges and stamps the intelligent, refined and well-behaved portion of the Caucasian race as a whole group of people also to be ignored and discriminated against. But when a person of color sees and hears such vulgar actions on the part of a white person, that Colored person merely comments to himself; “There is a human being who is a sample of the worse element among the white people and is far from being a fair and pure sample of the best people in the white race.” Then that broad-minded Colored person will at once throw the incident off his mind. He will then turn his back on the uncouth white person with disgust and in facing about will the very next moment give the fullest consideration, the most humane treatment, the most polite manners and the deepest respect to the white lady or gentleman whose Christian speech and civilized actions warrant and deserve such courtesies. And this is only one of the countless (big) little instances in which the American Colored people are daily showing their practical use of the Golden Rule; (cornerstone in the foundation and keystone in the archway of the white man’s Christianity).

Thus the brotherhood actions and manners of the masses of Negroes, (from the hod-carrier to the president of a university and from the scrub woman to the president of a national organization) in being broad-minded and big-hearted enough to fair-mindedly apply the Golden Rule to the Caucasian race, so as to mentally separate and treat accordingly the good white people from the bad, are certainly proving that the Colored people as a whole are daily putting into practical usages the Lord’s Golden Rule in much more Christlike ways than the white race is itself. Of course, there are exceptions in both races, but considering both from the standpoint of masses the above assertion cannot be truthfully denied.

A present day exception on the white side may be cited as follows:--During the summer of 1920 when Southern white savages turned Paris, Texas into a human slaughter house by lynching, torturing and burning alive of human beings, Rev. R. P. Shuler, (white) a prominent Methodist minister living in that community fearlessly denounced the mob at the time of its heathenish actions and at the risk of his own life. Later, when speaking of a former statement he had made regarding the lynching, according to an article in the July 24, 1920 issue of the Chicago Defender, he said:

“The above statement, I make in the face of the advice that has come to me from many friends that such a policy is and will be at present unsafe for me. I am informed that my life has been numerously threatened if I make such a statement. I am told that the mob used my name repeatedly in such a manner as to very much concern my friends. I can truthfully say that the attitude of this mob toward me does not in the least concern me. Better men than myself have died when far less was at stake. I am only concerned in doing my God-appointed duty in this situation. Therefore, without apology or plea for quarter, I unhesitatingly condemn the burning of these men in our city as an act of lawlessness, which if carried to its legitimate ends, would destroy our government and damn our civilization. And in making this statement I ask for neither the protection of my friends nor the mercy of my enemies.”

If all other white ministers were to take such fearless and open stands against such savage doings, that are heaping as much shame and stain on the United States as such crimes in Europe ever heaped on Turkey, they could in a few years make these United States a truly Christian land. And in taking such stands such ministers (if they showed the same kind of faith in God as Rev. Shuler did who is still living and preaching) they would also be delivered from a threatening mob. But where within the recent past or the present have there stepped out from the white ministry two Rev. Shulers? Among all the nationally famed white evangelists, which one or three of recent times have in preaching in all parts of the United States proved himself a second Henry Ward Beecher, an Elijah P. Lovejoy or a C. T. Torry, who fearlessly and fruitfully preached against all national as well as local sins, crimes and lawlessness that came under their notice?