Part 30
What of the race's mental condition at the time of its civic birth? There were scarcely any at that time who could either read or write with any degree of proficiency. Not because they were incapable of learning; not because of any mental inferiority; but because of the cruel and unjust law prohibiting their education and making it a criminal offense, not only for the Negro himself, but for any white man who should undertake to instruct him. Punishment was so severe along this line that the very sight of a book awed him into fear and fright. The very existence of such a law was, indeed, an admission of the educational possibilities of the race. In the year 1863 there were about twenty members of the race who had received collegiate training. Mathematically speaking, it took three hundred years to pull twenty Negroes through the colleges of the land, so great was the combination against our mental development.
What was our status in the business pursuits and gainful occupations at that time? The year 1863 is as far back as we desire to go for this enquiry, when the entire race, with but a few exceptions, were servants, restricted to menial employment and plantation occupations.
What was the moral status of the race at that period? Here there are two sides involved in any answer which might be given to this question. The evidences of unlawful miscegenation present themselves to every traveler throughout this country, and is in itself a pertinent answer to this query. Our women have had to fight against indescribable odds in order to preserve their womanhood from the attacks of moral lepers, who, very often, were their masters and overseers. Yet, in spite of these well-known facts, we have produced women among us of pure and good morals, with unimpeachable reputation for virtue and purity. Sometimes it is a little amusing to hear the white American expatiate on the immorality of Negro women. They certainly cannot forget their own record in their dealings with the helpless Negro women of this country. But here, we will let the curtain of secrecy fall upon such a scene, while we shall advance to a higher and nobler plane upon this day when nothing but good feeling must be allowed a place on the programme.
"Watchman, what of the night?" What tidings does the morning bring, if any? Has the future nothing in store for America's greatest factors in her industrial and commercial development?
Let us turn from the past; what of the present? In spite of the dehumanizing and other efforts to destroy the fecundity of the race, the twenty Africans of 1620, by the close of the Revolution, had increased to 650,000, and these 650,000, at the close of the Civil War, had reached the alarming number of four and one-half millions; and these four and a half millions, had, according to the last Federal Census, reached the astonishing number of ten millions or more of native-born citizens--entitled, though sometimes denied, to every right and privilege granted by the Constitution of the United States and by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments thereof; the making and sustaining of which our fathers contributed much of their blood and sacrifice, in peace, as well as in war.
For we have been present, not only as spectators, but as active participants in every trying crisis in the history of this nation. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, when labor troubles threatened the very life of the infant colony and continuing to the founding of the Republic--when white men were held in peonage or actual bondage for the uncanceled financial obligations due to the nobility of Great Britain--who furnished the labor which solved the vexed problem? Who furnished the brawn and muscle which cleared the forests, leveled the hills, tunneled the mountains, bridged the rivers, laid the tracks and cultivated the fields, until this broad land had become as beautiful as the lily of the valley and as fragrant as the rose of Sharon?
In 1776, when despotism was enthroned and liberty languished in the streets of Boston, was it not the blood of a Negro--Crispus Attucks--which animated the sinking spirit of the Goddess, who was almost ready to die under the oppression of King George and the despotism of Cornwallis?
In the Sixties--when Lincoln, despairing of the outcome of the Civil War, on account of the treachery in his own ranks and repeated reverses on the battle-field, called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the Rebellion in the South--who came to the rescue of the Union? In spite of the effort of McClellan and his company of 50,000 soldiers, who went to Richmond to prevent "niggers," as they were called, from enlisting, who came to the rescue of the Union? Whose blood helped to render the testament of liberty valid? Ask Port Hudson and Milligan's Bend, and Fort Wagner, and Fort Pillow, and Pittsburg Landing, how the nearly 200,000 Negro soldiers behaved themselves under the fire of the enemy on these memorable battlefields--rendered sacred by their patriotic blood.
Who saved the Rough Riders and Colonel Roosevelt in the late Spanish-American War, when San Juan was illuminated with the fire of Spanish cannonading? Hark! Methinks I hear the tramp of the black boys of the 24th and the 25th Cavalry, chanting to the strains of martial music,--"Glory Hallelujah, we are going to have a hot time in the old town to-night," as they dashed up the dangerous parapet to defend the honor of their country, and to keep "Old Glory" from trailing in the dust.
At the close of the Civil War we were without homes, lands, or money. To-day, according to the last census of the United States, we own 600,000 homes, 20,000,000 acres of farm land, covering an area equal to the political dominions of the kingdoms of Belgium and Holland. We have under cultivation 40,000,000 acres of farm lands, including those farms rented by our people and those owned in fee-simple, and worth $500,000,000. The gross incomes from the farms conducted by Negroes amount to $250,000,000 annually. We own 10,000 business establishments, 300 drug stores, and 57 banks.
At the close of the Civil War we were without schools, without men of letters, without men in the various professions and lucrative avocations of life. To-day, we have 200 universities, colleges, and schools of lower grade supported by the race. We have 3,000,000 Negro children attending these schools and the public schools of the land. We have written 2,000 books. We edit and conduct 200 periodicals and magazines. In forty years we have contributed, as levies for school purposes, $45,000,000. With a membership of 4,000,000 we have 35,000 churches, valued at $56,000,000, and contribute annually $7,500,000 to their support. We contribute annually $6,000,000 to secret and benevolent societies. We have about 40,000 teachers, 1,500 lawyers, 2,500 doctors, 20,000 preachers, and 80,000 business men--Marvellous!--Marvellous!
A race that can produce in fifty years, beginning with nothing, such a report as this, whose minutest detail is supported by official statistics, needs no pity, Mr. Chairman. A race that can produce a Douglass, a Langston, a Hood, a Scott, a Turner, a Harvey Johnson, a Bruce, a Payne, an Arnett, a Revells, a Price, an Elliott, a Montgomery, a Bowen, a Mason, a Dunbar, a Du Bois, and last but not least, a Booker T. Washington--the foremost genius of our vocational and industrial training--asks not for pity. It only asks for an equal opportunity in the race of life; it asks not for special legislation to accommodate any necessity; it simply asks for a just application of existing laws to all citizens alike, without any reference to race or color or previous condition of servitude. The representatives of this race, in this year of Our Lord, 1913, ask the American people to judge them upon the record of their great and useful men and women which the race has produced in less than a half century--and upon the average merit of the mass of the race since the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by the immortal Lincoln.
In concluding this brief summary--for at best it can only be regarded as a brief summary of the doings of the race--and standing on the threshold of a new era in politics, in commerce, in religion and in ethics--a new era in the feeling and temper of the white American towards the Afro-American, I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, what shall be our conduct in the future? Watchman, what shall be the forecast?
Mr. Chairman, the forecast is bright--brighter than it has ever been in any previous period of the race's history in this nation--and I make this statement in the fullest appreciation of the efforts which are being made all over this land, by adverse legislation, to weed us out of politics and other public preferments; to push us into a corner to ourselves, in both Church and State--a propaganda which has brought gloom to many of our leaders, producing a pessimism inimical to progress.
But why a pessimistic outlook, Mr. Chairman? Is it possible to deprive ten million native-born American citizens from the enjoyment of their rights and privileges, guaranteed alike to all by the Constitution of the United States? I think not. Such a condition, Mr. Chairman, would be like an established government with no diplomatic representative at court. No matter what methods are adopted, some of the representative men of our race, unexpectedly or otherwise, in the final analysis, will slip in; if not in the Congress of the United States, then in the legislatures and in the municipal governments of the State--such, for example, as Lawyer Bass in Philadelphia, Pa.; Councilman Cummings in Baltimore; Smith in the legislature of Ohio; Fitzgerald in New Jersey, and Jackson in Illinois. No arrangement, no matter how planned, can ultimately defeat this logical result which _patience_ alone will produce.
God and Time, ladies and gentlemen, are important factors in the solution of these questions. Fifty years are not sufficient to determine the possibilities of a race. No seer who knew the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons as Caesar knew them, would have foretold such a future as they now enjoy. This Anglo-Saxon race, whose ancestors worshipped the mistletoe, offered human sacrifices, and drank wine out of human skulls, have now become the conquerors and the dominant race on the earth. Their literature is the cream of the human intellect, and their tongue promises to become the official lingua of the earth. _God and Time_ have wrought these things for them, and what God and Time have wrought for one race, _God and Time_ can accomplish for another race--if that race remain true to itself and to God.
If you ask me for the ground of my optimism, I reply it is based upon two things, namely, the ability of the race itself to overcome difficulties and obstacles, and the over-ruling Providence of God, based upon His justice and His righteousness. It is hardly possible for this Negro race to experience any greater difficulties and obstacles in the future than it has already experienced in the past. It has overcome every obstacle with heroic courage--from slavery to the present period of its marvellous success. Without discounting the human efforts of the race, it has accomplished all of this by an heroic faith in God and in the justice and righteousness of His character as practised by our ancestors in the days of their bitterest afflictions--when weakness characterized the arm of flesh. Personally, I believe in God and in His justice and righteousness, and I have never lost faith in the benevolent brotherhood of mankind. I believe that "Right, like God is eternal and unchangeable; and since Right is Right and God is God, Right must ultimately prevail; though its final triumph may be retarded by the operation of wicked devices--nevertheless--it must prevail."
THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO CHURCH[51]
BY HON. JOHN C. DANCY, LL.D.
_Secretary Church Extension Society, A. M. E. Church_
[Note 51: Delivered at the Celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation, Philadelphia, September, 1913.]
There is only one safe way to judge the future of the Negro Church, and that is by its past. And the past of this Church, despite its shortcomings, is safe.
To the curious it would seem strange that the Negro Church as such should exist at all. But in the light of its history, covering almost the entire history of this Government, its existence has been proved a necessity, as its records abundantly testify.
Until we had the Negro Church we had nothing of which the race could boast. We early discovered that it was religious rights which first opened our eyes to all our rights, but until we were secure in the enjoyment of our religious liberty, we were not fully aroused to the importance and value of civil liberty. We had not learned that they were twin blessings often dearly bought, but of inestimable value.
The Negro Church, therefore, became the basis upon which would be reared the superstructure of all our subsequent achievements. The men who laid the foundation for the Negro Church, whether of Methodist, or Baptist, or Episcopalian, or Presbyterian, or of Congregational predilection, were wise in their day and generation, and paved the way for the best work of Negro development ever undertaken in this country. Until we had the Negro Church, we had not the Negro school, and the one was the natural forerunner and concomitant of the other, opening up avenues for the preacher, the teacher, the lawyer, the physician, the editor, the orator, and the spokesman of and for the race.
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The Negro Church has passed the experimental stage. It is no longer in a stage of incubation. It is an actuality,--an active, aggressive, and progressive reality. It has thoroughly established its rights to existence and its indispensability as a religious force and influence. Our religious fervor may at times appear to be unduly emotional and lacking in solemnity, but even this is pardonable, and we are reminded that this is an emotional age, and we must not forget that the great Penticostal awakening, in the early days of Christianity, provoked a similar criticism from the unaroused and unaffected unbelievers. The Negro Church of the future may be less emotional, but if the Church is to survive and throw off a cold formality which threatens to sap its very life-blood, it must not get away from its time-honored, deep spirituality, for without the Spirit the seemingly religious body is dead. Our Church of the future as well as our Church of the present will take care that no new dogmas of exotic growth will deprive it of those eternal verities which constitute the fundamentals of our Christian faith. These verities of our religion have their foundation in the teachings of our Great Redeemer himself, who is the very embodiment of all Truth.
The Negro Church of the future will address itself to the correction of present-day evils in both Church and State. It will emphasize the teaching that the highest form of virtue is the purest form of love. It will demand that men and women, and Christian professors especially, exemplify in their own lives and habits the religion they make bold to proclaim. It will insist upon the remedying of great wrongs from which countless numbers suffer,--whether these wrongs be unfair and unjust discriminations in public places, on the common thoroughfares, in the courts and halls of justice, in the Congress, the legislature or the municipal councils,--everywhere the Church will condemn and protest and fulminate against these injustices, until they melt away with the certainty of April snow. The Church of the future will more fully realize that where great principles are involved, concessions are dangerous and compromises disastrous.
The future will disclose a Negro Church with men in all its pulpits equal to the great task which the responsibilities thereof impose. They will be qualified men from every viewpoint--deeply spiritual, well trained, pious, influential, impressive, strong. They will lead their people, and be a part of their life, their indomitable spirit, their ambitions, their achievements. They will be absolutely trusted and trustworthy. They will be an inspiration to our youth, to our manhood and our womanhood. They will speak as one having authority and they will boldly assert their authority to speak. They will take up where the fathers left off, and they in their possession of so great an inheritance of religious fervor and unshrinking faith, will arouse Christianity from its lethargy, and start as a nation of believers, arousing, as it were, from its spell of years. They will be as bold as lions, wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. They will win their way because the things for which they stand and the gospel which they preach, will deserve to win. They will not seek so much to impress their own personality, but their cause, and they will lose themselves in the cause by magnifying the cause.
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The Negro Church of the future will take greater interest in the young people, will give greater attention to the Sunday-school work, to the young people's societies, to the Young Men's Christian Association, to the full development of all the departments of all the churches of whatever denomination, to the end that the churches will be thoroughly organized for work, and such work as will lead eventually to the thorough evangelization of the world. The redemption of Africa, one of the forward movements of the world to-day, must come largely through the efforts, the service, and the personal sacrifices of our own churches, our own ministers and teachers, our own men and women. Once fully aroused to the importance of the obligation we owe to the land of our forefathers, we will enter upon the task with all the zest and spirit of David Livingstone, whose one hundredth anniversary we are celebrating this year, as we are also celebrating the first half century of our emancipation from human slavery. Livingstone sacrificed himself in the heart of Africa in order to give life and light to the aborigines of the Dark Continent. Our Church of the future must take up the task so grandly undertaken by him, and cease not until the work he so nobly began finds its full fruitage in Africa's redemption from heathendom, superstition, and ignorance, that she may take her place among the civilized and enlightened people of the world.
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The Church of the future will have to do with the life of its membership. It will take heed to its health, and will teach hygiene and the laws which safeguard one's health in the home, in the Church, in the public schools and public places, in the open air and where not. It will impress the lesson of a sound mind in a sound body, and the great need of a sound body in order to have a sound mind. It will not fear to declare in favor of pure athletics as a means of developing the physical system, which is so essential to sound health and a strong manhood. The boys and young men will be urged to identify themselves with Young Men's Christian Associations so as to have advantage of the reading-rooms, the swimming-pools, the gymnasiums, and other young men's society, thus eschewing the dens of vice and haunts of infamy which might otherwise attract them and blight their precious young lives for all time, it may be. It will take knowledge of human life and its means of existence everywhere. It will seek to know what the man and woman in the alley as well as those on the broad thoroughfare are doing,--whether they are oppressed or distressed in body or in mind, and to go to their relief. It will discover that man _is_ his brother's keeper, and is largely responsible for him and must seek to take care of him. The Church, yea, will come to itself and be shorn of a great part of its pride, when it fully realizes that its real growth and prosperity are dependent upon the attention it pays to God's poor and God's neglected. Our churches will re-echo with the sentiment of that song, "God Will Take Care of You," but there must be a refreshing application of it, knowing that caretaking reaches further than ourselves and extends to our neglected brother, whom we, so oftentimes, have forgotten. If the Church is no stronger than it is to-day it is due chiefly to the neglect of the unfortunate _many_ who have been unreached and need to be reached.
The Church of the future must humble its pride, buckle on its armor, and cease not in its labors until this great army of unreached is reached and helped, and impressed and convinced and saved. "Go ye into all the world and preach my Gospel," does not mean to distant people merely, but to people at home as well, many of whom know as little of the Gospel as many others in distant Africa. There must be, there will be, a religious awakening along this line, so that if the people do not go to the Church, then the Church must go to the people, and there will be thousands, in the next few years in answer to the question, "Who will go?" who will answer in language which cannot be misunderstood, "Here am I, send me."
The Church of the future will have to do with the greater problems of every day life. It will have to aid in teaching the people life and duty and how best to meet and battle with these. It will have to impress the importance of home-getting,--whether in city or on farm,--and the possessing of these in fee simple, by actual purchase, and we will become more valuable as citizens as we acquire more in our individual right in real and personal property.
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The Church of the future will urge the starting of savings accounts with the youth, and the organization of savings banks among our people in all sections, and the opening, incidentally, of opportunities for our boys and girls to get in close touch with business life and business habits. We will thus make the Church an influence, as it has been in the past, in paving the way for the future financial and substantial importance of the race. The Negro Church of the future will be less fettered by denominational lines and possessed of a broader Christian spirit, recognizing denominational names of course, but laying greater stress on Christianity, than on any church allegiance. Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, and Congregationalists, and Episcopalians will interchange pulpits and preach one Gospel in the name of our common Lord, Who is in all, and through all and over all. There will be inter-denominational Sunday-school unions, Church conventions and conferences, and the ministers and congregations will be in closer union, praying for the same spiritual power, the same common blessings, and the removal of the same great evils. Judah will not vex Ephraim, and Ephraim will not vex Judah. Under the mighty influence of this commingling and oneness of heart and purpose
"Error will decay and Truth grow strong And right shall rule supreme and conquer wrong."
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To Thee! God of our fathers, we render praise and thanksgiving for such abundant evidence of Thy guiding presence during these fifty years of freedom and civil liberty. We predict for the future on the basis of our achievement during the past; and since the Negro Church has been a great factor in lifting us up and enabling us to see the new light, in spite of many obstacles, we are confident that by following the same Omnipotent Hand, that never errs and never fails, we will, in the coming years, prove that no sacrifice, either in war or in peace, made in our behalf has been made in vain, and no service rendered us has been without its subsequent reward. We rejoice, and are glad in our gladness and rich in our wealth. In the midst of it all, the Negro Church survives and is steadily moving on.
THE NEGRO LAWYER; HIS OPPORTUNITY, HIS DUTY[52]
BY W. ASHBIE HAWKINS
_Of the Baltimore Bar_