Part 25
Our privileges have imposed a trust and we are the trustees. Let no man deceive himself. Whatever the opportunity of approval now for betrayal of trust bequeathed to us, the time will come for the court of public opinion to find whom to blame and whom to thank. What the founders demanded for Howard, we must still demand. What William Clark and Martha Spaulding by their gifts meant, must still be meant by Howard's activities. Being justified in the past, it must be maintained in the future. Then to-night let us re-baptize in Howard spirit and issue the mandate of loyalty and endeavor.
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Let no Howard man ever expatriate himself. Necessity driving him from Howard, let him consider himself domiciled elsewhere, but his scholastic citizenship intact in Howard.
We will sing the old song of Howard, though there be other songs greater. Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, and Leipsic may sing their songs, but, for me and my house, we will sing "Howard, I love old Howard."
Let us imitate the psalmist: "We will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings." We will exalt Howard and delight in her good work. Where she is weak we will endeavor to strengthen, and where she is strong we will direct to the uplift of the race. She may be lacking in equipment; that can be tolerated; but as to principle, she must not be weak at any point. From stem to stern she must carry the marks of her purpose, and at mast-head must float the pennant of her seals.
Neither time nor purpose can ever erase the fitness of "Equal rights and knowledge for all," "For God and the Republic,"--_the two seals_.
A SOLUTION OF THE RACE PROBLEM[44]
BY J. MILTON WALDRON, S. T. D.
J. MILTON WALDRON, D.D., _of Washington, D. C. Noted as having erected and operated the first Institutional Church among Negroes in America in Jacksonville, Florida, 1890-1907._
[Note 44: Delivered at Cooper Institute, New York, 1912.]
That fearless, able, and broad-minded author of "The Negro and the Sunny South"--a book, by the way, every American citizen should read--Samuel Creed Cross, a white man of West Virginia, takes up an entire chapter in giving with the briefest comments even a partial list of the crimes committed by the whites of the South against the Negroes during the author's recent residence of six months in the section. Last year eighty or ninety colored persons, some of them women and children, were murdered, lynched, or burned for "the nameless crime," for murder or suspected murder, for barn-burning, for insulting white women and "talking back" to white men, for striking an impudent white lad, for stealing a white boy's lunch and for no crime at all--unless it be a crime for a black man to ask Southern men to accord him the rights guaranteed him by the Constitution.
Within the last twelve months Georgia disfranchised her colored citizens by a constitutional subterfuge and Florida attempted the same crime. And within the same period almost every white secular newspaper, and many of the religious journals, of the South contained in every issue of their publications abusive and malicious articles concerning the Negro in which they inflamed the whites against the brother in black and sought to justify the South in robbing him of his labor, his self-respect, his franchise, his liberty, and life itself. Many of the officials of Southern States, including numerous judges and not a few Christian ministers, helped or sanctioned these Negro-hating editors and reporters in their despicable onslaught upon the Negro, while tens of thousands of white business men of the South fattened upon Negro convict labor and the proceeds of the "order system."
Not satisfied with the wrongs and outrages she has heaped upon the colored people in her own borders the South is industriously preaching her wicked doctrine of Negro inferiority, Negro suppression, and Negro oppression everywhere in the North, East, and West. And yet, in the face of this terrible record of crime against the liberty, manhood, and political rights and the life of the colored man which is being rewritten in the South every day, there are those in high places who have the temerity to tell us that "The Southern people are the Negro's best friends," and that the Negro problem is a Southern problem and the South should be allowed to solve it in her own way without any interference on the part of the North.
The North and the South together stole the black man from his home in Africa and enslaved him in this land, and this whole nation has reaped the benefits of his two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil, and this whole nation must see to it that the black man is fully emancipated, enfranchised, thoroughly educated in heart, head, and hand, and permitted to exercise his rights as a citizen and earn, wherever and however he can, an honest and sufficient living for himself, his wife, and children--this the South cannot do alone and unaided.
Nearly three millions of the ten million Negroes in this country live north of Mason and Dixon's line, and thousands of others are coming North and going West every month; over four hundred thousand of the three millions mentioned above live in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, St. Louis, and Chicago; if the Negro problem was ever a Southern problem, the colored brother has taken it with him into the North and the West and made it a national problem.
The life, liberty, and happiness of the black man and of the white man of this country are so wrapped up together that it is impossible to oppress the one without eventually oppressing the other. The white man of the South was cursed by slavery as much almost as the black man whom he robbed of life, liberty, and virtue. In many parts of the South to-day the masses of poor white men are no better off in any sphere of life than the colored people, with the single exception that their faces are white. The rights and liberties of the common people of this entire country have grown less secure, and their ballots have steadily diminished in power, while the colored man has been robbed of his franchise by the South. The trusts and the favored classes of this country have seen the rights of millions of loyal black citizens taken from them by the South in open violation of the Federal Constitution, and that with the indirect approval of the highest courts of the land. And these trusts and interests have come to feel that constitutions and laws are not binding upon them, and that the common people--white and black--have no rights which they are bound to respect. The South alone cannot right these gigantic wrongs nor restore to the white people (not to mention the Negroes) within her own borders the liberties and privileges guaranteed them by the Constitution of the United States.
In discussing the South's attitude towards the colored man we seek only to hold up to scorn and contempt the spirit which pervades the majority of the people who live in that section; and we desire to condemn only the men of the South who hate their fellow men; we wish to bear testimony now and here to the truth that there is an undercurrent in the South which is making for righteousness, and that there are a few noble and heroic souls in every Southern State who believe that the Negro ought to be treated as a man and be given all the rights and privileges accorded any other man. This righteous spirit must, however, be encouraged and strengthened, and the number of noble and fair-minded men and women in the South must be greatly augmented, or the battle for human liberty and the manhood and political rights of both races in that section will never be won.
We beg to say that all the enemies of human rights in general, and of the rights of black men in particular, are not in the South; the wrongs complained of by the Negro in that section are, for the most part, the same as those bewailed by him in the North, with this difference: the Northern Negro's right to protest against the wrongs heaped upon him is less restricted, and, his means of protection and defense are more numerous in the North than in the South. Already in at least one State north of Mason and Dixon's line Herculean efforts are being put forth to disfranchise the colored man by constitutional enactment; the discrimination against a man on account of his color, and the lynching of Negroes and the burning of their houses by infuriated mobs of white men, are not unheard of things in the North and West. Most of the labor-unions of these sections are still closed to the brother in black, and most white working-men in the Northern and Western States are determined that the Negro shall not earn a living in any respectable calling if they can prevent it. Many of the newspapers North and West (and a few right here in New York City) often use their columns to misrepresent and slander the colored man, and it was only last week when one of the highest courts in the Empire State rendered a decision in which it justified discrimination against a man on the grounds of his color and his condition of servitude. Verily, the Negro problem is not a Southern, but a national problem!
* * * * *
Many solutions for the Negro problem have been proposed, but to our mind there is one and only one practical and effective answer to the question. In the first place we claim that the early friends of the Negro grasped the true solution, which is that his needs and possibilities are the same as those of the other members of the human family; that he must be educated not only for industrial efficiency and for private gain, but to share in the duties and responsibilities of a free democracy; that he must have equality of rights, for his own sake, for the sake of the human race, and for the perpetuity of free institutions. America will not have learned the full lesson of her system of human slavery until she realizes that a rigid caste system is inimical to the progress of the human race and to the perpetuity of democratic government.
In the second place, the Negro must make common cause with the working class which to-day is organizing and struggling for better social and economic conditions. The old slave oligarchy maintained its ascendency largely by fixing a gulf between the Negro slave and the white free laborer, and the jealousies and animosities of the slave period have survived to keep apart the Negro and the laboring white man. Powerful influences are at work even to-day to impress upon the Negro the fact that he must look to the business men of the South alone for protection and recognition of his rights, while at the same time these very same influences inflame the laboring white man against the black man with fears of social equality and race fusion. The Negro, being a laborer, must see that the cause of labor is his cause, that his elevation can be largely achieved by having the sympathy, support, and co-operation of that growing organization of working men the world over which is working out the larger problems of human freedom and economic opportunity.
In the third place, wherever in this country the Negro has the franchise, and where by complying with requirements he can regain it, let him exercise it faithfully and constantly, but let him do so as an independent and not as a partisan, for his political salvation in the future depends upon his voting for men and measures, rather than with any particular party.
For two hundred and fifty years the black man of America toiled in the South without pay and without thanks; he cleared her forests, tunneled her mountains, bridged her streams, built her cottages and palaces, enriched her fields with his sweat and blood, nursed her children, protected her women and guarded her homes from the midnight marauder, the devouring flames, and approaching disease and death. The colored American willingly and gladly enlisted and fought in every war waged by this country, from the first conflict with the Indians to the last battle in Cuba and the Philippines; when enfranchised he voted the rebellious States back into the Union, and from that day until this he has, as a race, never used his ballot, unless corrupted or intimidated by white men, to the detriment of any part of America. When in power in the South, though for the most part ignorant and just out of slavery and surrounded by vindictive ex-slave owners and mercenary, corrupted and corrupting "carpet baggers," he did what his former masters had failed for centuries to do--he established the free school system, erected asylums for the insane and indigent poor, purged the statute-books of disgraceful marriage laws and oppressive and inhuman labor regulations, revised and improved the penal code, and by many other worthy acts proved that the heart of the race was, and is, in the right place, and that whenever the American Negro has been trusted, he has proven himself trustworthy and manly. And when the colored man is educated, and is treated with fairness and justice, and is accorded the rights and privileges which are the birthright of every American citizen, he will show himself a man among men, and the race problem will vanish as the mist before the rising sun.
THE SOCIAL BEARINGS OF THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT
BY JAMES FRANCIS GREGORY, B. D.
_Vice Principal Manual Training and Industrial School, Bordentown, New Jersey_
"Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."
While obedience to parents is the primary significance of this command, its widening scope is seen in the comprehensive authority of the father of the old Hebrew family. He was the ruler and the protector of the family, and as human society enlarged and much of the original authority of the parent passed from him, the child was prepared to give honor to such authority and wisdom as he had recognized in the father. Thus generically the command may cover the wide range suggested by the Westminster Assembly: "The Fifth Commandment requireth the preserving the honor and performing the duties belonging to every one in their several places and relations as superiors, inferiors or equals." And this honor idea in the home not only spreads out, but it climbs, and we may say that as the Hebrew family contained the beginning of government, all other authorities of this world wind up and out of the home, ascending in spiral form until the little coil of the domestic circle eventuates.
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Last summer, while seated in a crowded train, my attention was attracted by a little family group. The heat-worn mother held a baby in one arm, and the other hand was steadying a toddling boy. She had repeatedly reproved her half-grown daughter and finally spoke sharply to her, when the child suddenly lifted the heavy umbrella in her hand and struck her mother!
These are the facts that impressed me: the unmasked powerlessness of the mother, the cool unconcern of the father, but above all the apathetic indifference of the passengers.
The modern family is without discipline, all of the elements in the home having a tendency to wander from the hearth center. There is the father whose absence, because of occupational absorption, is lengthened by many extraneous interests. The mother, too, is receding from the home center in her misguided enthusiasm for so-called equality in business, professional, and political life. And the children? As one sad-faced mother said to me the other day, "They get out of the home so early!"
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All the reverence for parents in the world's history, is hallowed by the lofty example of Jesus in his dutiful subjection to his earthly parents, and in the marvelous solicitude of his dying words, "Son, behold thy mother!"
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A great light is thrown on this economic relation of the commandment by the attitude of the Centurion pleading with the Master for his servant's life. Here was an employer whose stretched-out arm of authority could be transformed into a gesture of appeal, for his servant lying sick at home. Indeed only as the spirit of this commandment makes itself felt in our business life will the clenched hands of capital and labor relax from the hilts of their dripping blades and grasp each other with the warm pressure of brotherly sympathy.
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Then there are the mutual relations between the young and the aged. Oh, for a return in our youth to that ancient bowing deference to old age a beautiful instance of which Cicero preserves for us. Into the crowded amphitheatre at Athens, with the multitudes' expectant hush, there staggered an aged man, who made his tottering progress, beneath tier after tier of indifferent or averted faces, looking in vain for a place, until finally he came in front of the section occupied by the Lacaedemonians, who rose as one man and offered him a seat!
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Then there are the superiors and inferiors in wisdom. As we look back through the mists of years to our student years, there stand out sharply distinguished the kindly figures of our intellectual fathers. I recall at this moment that man of infinite reserve behind the desk at Yale, whose eye could flash with authority and yet kindle with concern at the sight of the necessity of one of his boys--in Browning's thought, "As sheathes a film the mother eagle's eye when her bruised eaglet breathes!"
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I need scarcely suggest the obvious pertinence of this command to the relations of the pastor and his congregation. We cling very jealously to the term, "Father," as it has been applied to the men of God in the history of the Church. The picture is beautiful of the Roman Catholic priest, conscious of the reluctance of her neighbors to bear to the poor widow the evil news of the sudden death of her only son, walking quietly up the gravel path, and covering with his healthy hands the two withered ones as he met her at the doorway, answering her searching inquiry, "Father?" with an unmistakable inflection of the words, "My child!" That also of the American Protestant Episcopal bishop, leaving his little birthday gathering already interrupted for three successive years, and foregoing a breath of country air, after weary months of toil in the hot city, to comfort a simple family hovering piteously about a little white casket:--these are attitudes far more impressive than the ceremonious exercise of their loftiest ecclesiastical functions.
* * * * *
Many lines of evidence from the side of reason converge on the Biblical teaching that civil government is a divine institution. Perhaps one of the most striking features of our later American growth is the colossal selfishness of our people. The habit of freedom from restraint is fast hardening into a lawlessness of character.
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Listen to some of the palliating expressions with which our legal atmosphere is permeated: "indiscreet and untactful," "the unwritten law," "swift justice," "murder a fine art," and remember that these are the terms that play around that triangle of corrupt judge, dallying lawyer, and bribed and illiterate jury--all conspiring to "shove by justice" with technicalities. And what are those sinister figures, flitting and stalking through the land--the law-maker with his spoils, the rioter with his rock, the anarchist with his bomb, the assassin thrusting out his black hand, the lyncher with his battering ram, his rope and his rifle; these are some of the outside lawless who conspire with the inside lawless to make a scarecrow of American law, making it the perch and not the terror of the birds of prey. And who knows how soon all of these lawless ones may stand up together and, with a monarch's voice cry, Havoc in the confines of this Republic!
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But we must be conscious of our Heavenly Father behind the earthly type. This unmistakably is the significance of the Biblical words: "To obey your parents in the Lord"; "To be obedient unto your masters as unto Christ"; "To fear God in honoring the face of the old man"; "To be subject unto rulers as the ministers of God." And this leads us to the great levelling truth, that we are all equally accountable to our Heavenly Father, that we are nations and individuals, in the high thought of Lincoln, "Under God."
* * * * *
This command carries with it the promise of a reward restated by Paul, "Honor thy father and thy mother that it may be well with thee and that thou mayest live long on the earth." In fact this is the logic of life. This retributive justice is bound up in the laws of nature. Plants that array themselves against these laws wither and die. And higher up in the animal kingdom, Kipling's verse tells us that this inexorable sequence prevails:
"And these are the laws of the Jungle, And many and mighty are they; But the head and the hoof of the law is, And the haunch and the hump is--obey."
And it is true that obedience in a human being conduces to a long and prosperous life. The beautiful truth is gradually emerging in science and theology that religion is healthful. As one of my discerning fathers was often wont to say, "The whole Bible is a text-book of Advanced Biology, telling men how they may gain the fuller life."
* * * * *
Here and there the obedient die early, you say.--Yes; and this fact sounds the deeper spiritual import of this promise, for they, sooner than we, enter upon that eternal life, and pass over into that greener Canaan, to that inheritance incorruptible and undefiled.
Standing one afternoon in the Gallery of the Louvre in Paris, a vision of the perfect adjustment of our seemingly conflicting relations to Caesar and to God shone forth to me, in the divine gesture of the Master in Da Vinci's wonderful painting of the Last Supper, where the hand turned downward lays hold of the things of earth, and the hand turned upward grips the things which are eternal, both of which obligations are glorified in those later words of the Saviour spoken out of the agony of the Cross: "Son, behold thy mother! Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."
LIFE'S MORN[45]
BY WILLIAM C. JASON, D. D.
_Principal State College for Colored Students, Dover, Delaware_
[Note 45: An address delivered before the Wilmington District Epworth League Convention.]
"Nature," says one, "is like a woman; in the morning she is fresh from her bath, at noon she has on her working-dress, and at night she wears her jewels."
Nature is most charming in the morning. The following extract from "A Picture of Dawn" is a tribute Edward Everett pays to the morning.
"As we proceeded, the timid approach of the twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of the night dissolved into the glories of the dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy teardrops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds, the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began his state."
Nothing but the morning itself is more beautiful than this sublime description.