Chapter 4

Ten years ago colored women were little heard of as useful members of society, except in the work of teaching, religious interests, and the domestic arts. Ten years ago the conscience of womankind among us was scarcely aroused to the opportunities presented for multiplying our activities in all the questions that concern social improvements. Ten years ago the interest of colored women in each other was personal or individual, and not racial or social. The great forces that are now shaping all things toward newer and better conditions, that teach new duties and suggest new opportunities for the exercise of all the virtues of heart and mind have begun to affect our women in a wonderful way. This year has witnessed a remarkable exhibition of the spirit of unity in colored women. They have effected a truly national organization of representative women. The organization is genuine in its representative capacity, sincere in purpose, and positive and practical in its proclamation of principles.

The National Colored Women's Association possibly means more to the social order and improvement of the colored race in this country than anything yet attempted outside of the churches. It has already succeeded in making important many things that have been too long neglected. It has succeeded in calling attention to the fact that the Negro race has a good deal more intelligence and virtue than it uses for its own advancement. The controlling spirit of this new association of colored women is first of all for self-improvement. It is the most distinct voice of self-admonition and self-examination yet uttered by a national body of Afro-Americans. In other words these women coming from all parts of our country and from various conditions of the people, seem burdened with an earnestness to make pure and strong and beautiful the home life and all the social relationships of the race. Perhaps it is not necessary thus to call attention to this association and its work after all that has been said and written about it. But it seems to me that it cannot be too strongly urged that the association needs for its success the enthusiasm and hearty support of all of our women. The special organ of the association and all of its other functions need the co-operation of colored women everywhere. The questions outlined in its resolutions and address to the public should be themes of wide and helpful discussion wherever our women meet together. The way to make a great national movement truly national, important, and effective is to talk about it and try to realize in each community the high and important purposes of that movement. That is the secret of the enormous success of such bodies as the W. C. T. U., the Federation of Women's Clubs, the National Council of Women, and others like them. Every community where earnest women dwell is made to feel the living and active presence of these organizations. Let our women everywhere give the National Association of Colored Women power and permanency by every available means of encouragement and support.

HAVE COURAGE.

If any race of people on this earth need to have courage, it is the Negro.

Have the courage to say "No" when you are tempted to drink.

Have the courage to wear the old suit of clothes, rather than go in debt for a new suit.

Have the courage to acknowledge your ignorance when asked about something of which you do not know.

Have the courage to pay a debt when you need the money for something else.

Have the courage to be polite, though your character may be assailed.

Have the courage to speak the truth, remembering the command: "Thou shalt not lie."

Have the courage to own that you are poor, and thus disarm poverty of its sharpest sting.

Have the courage to own that you are wrong, when convinced that such is the case.

Have the courage to be good and true, and you will always find work to do.

Have the courage to say your prayers, though you may be ridiculed by man.

Have the courage to tell a man why you will not lend him money instead of whipping the devil around the stump by telling him that you haven't a cent "in the world," calling one of your pockets "the world."

Have the courage of your convictions. "According to a man's faith, so be it unto him." This is true on every plane of life, from the lowest to the highest. A man's power in everything is measured by his convictions. The statesman who has the profoundest convictions is surest of bringing others to see as he sees on any question which he discusses before the public. The minister who can most completely identify himself with his people, if he has the courage of his convictions, is the one who is most likely to be successful. (Afro-American Encyclopedia.)

THE SOUTH GIVEN THE PREFERENCE

"It is a poor charity that closes its doors to honest labor on the one hand and opens its almshouses on the other." Such is the comment of a writer who recently compared the relations in the North and South, as regards their efforts to care for the poor, and especially the distresses of the needy among the colored people. While the North has an apparent balance in her favor in the matter of formal expenditures for charity among the colored people, yet the South has the advantage in true charity. It gives the helpless an opportunity to help themselves. Charity is wisest in her ministrations when the object of her beneficence is not deprived of the means of self-support and independence. In the North nearly all departments of labor are governed by trades unions, and the unfortunate Negroes, proscribed as they nearly always are, are forced to become paupers. The South does not bend the manacles of pauperism on his wrists, but instead opens to him many lines of industrial activity, such as other sections of our country do not afford. (American Baptist, Louisville, Ky.)

For seven successive years of almost continuous labor she was the leader of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, of Nashville, Tenn., who traveled extensively, both in America and Europe, giving popular entertainment of a species of singing which originated among the slaves of the South. She possesses a soprano voice of rare quality that is always pleasing and in demand.

THREE GREAT NEGROES.

BY JOHN E. BRUCE, WASHINGTON, D. C.

The three greatest Negroes that the race has produced are dead. No three living Negroes fill so much space in books or in men's thoughts as Toussaint L'Overture, Richard Allen, and Frederick Douglass, and it will be a long while before three Negroes of equal intelligence and ability for leadership and organization will be able to take their places. There are others, but these represent the real greatness of the Negro on two continents, and each man's work stands out conspicuously for itself. Hayti, the great African Methodist Church, and Negro citizenship in the United States are the magnificent results in part or in whole of the agitations begun by each of these men in his appointed time. The monument to L'Overture's greatness, generalship, courage, and organizing ability is the black republic which he founded and consecrated with his blood.

Richard Allen's monument is the great African Methodist Church, with its hundreds of thousands of worshipers, its schools of learning, and its progressive and educated ministers, some of whom can hold a good deal more book learning.

The monument to Frederick Douglass is the new citizen--the Negro citizen, if you please--whose cause he eloquently pleaded in the presence of the great and the powerful, in whose interests he made thousands of sympathetic friends because the Almighty had given him an eloquent tongue and a powerful voice. There are others, but these three stand at the head of the list, and are better known to the world at large than any other three Negroes on earth. What a triumvirate!

L'Overture, Allen, and Douglass--what a mighty combination! Courage, piety, and eloquence. A bronze medallion with the heads of these great Negroes worn near the heart of the young Negroes of this generation might tend to fill their souls with loftier and nobler thoughts and drive them nearer to the race which these men dignified. The immortality of infamy is ours if we fail to produce a Negro in the next generation who will not at least measure up to the standard to which any one of these three immortals not only attained, but kept unsullied and unspotted until the angel of death gathered them unto their fathers, that they might sleep the sleep of the just.

POINTED PARAGRAPHS FROM RACE NEWSPAPERS.

Many of our young people might profit immensely by the careful and proper employment of their time in the reading and consulting of good books. (Woman's Messenger, Memphis, Tenn.)

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Our girls and women can always render a great service to the race by their ladylike deportment upon the public highways. (The Light, Vicksburg, Miss.)

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No race can rise above the morals of its women, and for that reason the women of our race should be careful, and strive to do nothing that will retard our progress. (The Informer, Louisville, Ky.)

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We should endeavor to multiply the number of our white friends, in the South especially, because it is to them and to ourselves that we must look for our material advantage and practical welfare. (The Planet, Richmond, Va.)

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Our children should know the history of the race. It will instill a spirit of race pride. They should know that the foundations of this republic were made secure by the blood of our fathers as well as that of the Anglo-Saxon race. (Clipper, Athens, Ga.)

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The Negro is sadly in need of money. There can be no substitute for it. When a Negro man spends money and becomes important from a commercial point of view, the color of his skin and the fiber of his hair are all lost in the mad rush of the Caucasian to his pocket and its contents. (Texas Baptist Star.)

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While man can boast of great physical strength, skill, and bulldog courage, woman carries in her weak frame a moral courage very seldom found among men. If our race is to be a great race in this great nation of races, our women must be largely instrumental in making it so. (American Baptist.)

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There is a mistaken idea that "culture" means to paint a little, sing a little, dance a little, put on haughty airs, and to quote passages from popular books. It means nothing of the kind. Culture means politeness, charity, fairness, good temper, and good conduct. Culture is not a thing to make a display of; it is something to use so moderately that people do not discover all at once that you have it. (Colored American, Washington, D. C.)

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One of the surest ways to make the average Anglo-Saxon respect you is to have him know that your check will be cashed at the bank or that your name is written in the tax book of the county wherein you have your habitation. He has learned that money talks, so to speak, and he is always ready to give it an audience. The records of the Southern States show up wonderfully well in favor of the Afro-American, and yet not as well as they might. There are arguments and arguments in favor of recognition, and the money argument is one of them. (Southern Age, Atlanta, Ga.)

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The Columbian Exposition did not give the Negro a chance to demonstrate to the nations what he could do, but at the Cotton States Exposition he was given a trial, and so well did he succeed that he comes in for another showing at the Tennessee Exposition. Let the Negroes feel that it is important and necessary to make a fine display, and, imbued with this hope, let them press forward to eclipse all former efforts. (The Enterprise, Omaha, Neb.)

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We cannot go to Africa and succeed with all our ignorance and poverty. Let our big men set out to break down immorality among Negroes. Get Negroes to have more refinement and race pride, use Negro books and papers, hang Negro pictures on their walls, get up Negro industries, and give deserving colored men and women employment; break down superstition and mistrust. Get Negroes to act decently, both publicly and privately. (Clipper, Athens, Ga.)

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Every colored family should point with pride to the deeds of our great men. The walls of our homes should be adorned with the pictures of those of our own race who have proven that we are not deficient in men of noble and towering deeds. The tables should bear books of history and biography which would make our boys and girls acquainted with what has been wrought for and by the race. If we do not look out for these points, the next generation will not be what it should be. (Christian Clipper.)

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The colored people of the United States pay taxes on $330,000,000 real property, $50,000,000 personal property, and have about $60,000,000 on deposit in savings banks. These figures are from carefully prepared statistics, and are a wonderful showing for a people the majority of whom have been out of bondage less than half a century. In Alameda County, of this state, colored people are on the assessment roll for upward of $1,000,000. Who says that the race is retrograding? If only one-tenth of this money could be put into manufacturing and commercial enterprises, what a commotion the colored man would make in the country! Talk about the Jew and the Chinaman; why, they would be at a discount! Let us all undertake to infuse a little of our business enterprise into the veins of the race. What do you say? (Elevator, San Francisco, Cal.)

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The world is full of young men who want to succeed, but who are too lazy to put forth an effort in the right direction. He is truly an unlucky mortal to whom an opportunity never comes; and remember, the humblest employment is better than none. The man at work is infinitely more likely to get something better than the idler is to fall into an easy "snap." Do not growl at fate, but bear in mind that every one is the architect of his own fortune. (The Bulletin, Balfour, N. C.)

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Mrs. Annie E. Walker, a graduate of the New York Art School, who went to Paris to further perfect herself in the art of painting, has returned to her home in this city after a most successful course in one of the highest art schools in all Europe. After Mrs. Walker had studied in Paris only four months she painted a picture from life which was accepted by the French Salon, where it was put on exhibition. When it is remembered that an art student is considered fortunate and proficient if she can get a pastel into the Salon after she has studied for years, it is most remarkable that an American lady, and that, too, identified with the depraved race, should have gone to France and broken all previous records. The painting which was readily accepted by the Salon is now at the residence of Mrs. Walker, in this city, and fortunate is the lady or gentleman who shall have an opportunity to see it, for it indeed has life in it, and evinces the fact that the artist is a genius of the highest order. (Colored American, Washington, D. C.)

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If we are to have a literature peculiar to our necessities, then our men and women are to produce it. If they are to produce it, then our leaders are to encourage it. Kind words may go a long way, a little assistance in the amassing of data will prove invaluable, and helping to make a market for the literature will act as a stimulus. Let us encourage our men and women to write, and in a few years we shall have a literature of which we need not be ashamed. (Christian Index, Jackson, Tenn.)

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When contemplating the race as a mass it is usual to judge its members by its worst representatives, a method both unjust and untrue. The colored people of the South, as a class, should not be judged by the criminals among them who become conspicuous in the newspapers from evil deeds that are often visited with swift and terrible justice. They should rather be judged from the honest, hard-working men and women who, beginning with nothing, have in the course of one generation accumulated an amount of property that forms no inconspicuous portion even of our magnificent national wealth. (St. Louis Christian Advocate.)

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When we have a task to perform we should go about it with a cheerful heart, with an eye single to doing our best. Then duty becomes a pleasure. Let us aim to be first in the pursuit of our life's work. We cannot reach the topmost round at once, and if we get there at all there must be something in us worthy of the upper rounds. Can we ask Him to be our guide who noticed the falling of a sparrow to the ground? Do so; then we will not choose the wrong path, we will not stumble in our darkest hours. We will not think solely of our slavery, of our closing hour, or how we will spend the evening, but will put our mind on our duties and resolve that they shall have the best that is in us; and by and by we shall enjoy the reward which is laid up for the finally faithful. (Woman's World, Rome, Ga.)

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Every law-abiding, self-respecting, hard-working colored citizen of the United States should denounce in unmeasured terms those young men of the race who do not work, but loaf; who do nothing to elevate, but everything to degrade, the race; who choose the sunny side of the street corners in winter and the shady side in summer; who use all kinds of vulgar and indecent language, insulting ladies as they pass. It is this loafing, nomadic young class that drifts to crime, caused by idleness, evil associations, and the fact that this class does not know the value of a dollar or the enormity of a crime. These young men are millstones welded by chains around the necks of those of us who are trying to be something and do something in the world. There are no palliating circumstances, no mitigating conditions--nothing on God's green earth--that will even to the slightest degree excuse this worthless class. (The Herald, Leavenworth, Kans.)

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It is the "Item's" opinion that industrial schools for colored youths are, in a great measure, useless institutions. They can never become serviceable until there is a spirit among colored men to establish, own, and operate great industrial enterprises, and in that case youths can be given a practical training in the work, which is better than he could ever get in a school. Put forward the same amount of energy to build a factory of some kind that is put in endeavors to get industrial schools in working order, and more young men can learn trades and draw mechanics' salaries immediately after serving an apprenticeship; the owners will be making a profit and the commercial importance of the city, county, and state will be enhanced. We never hear of an industrial school for whites, and yet their youths are becoming artisans all the while. In the slavery days Negroes carried on all the skilled labor of the South, and no industrial schools existed; they applied themselves to the work, and were first-class workmen in every branch. (The Item, Fort Worth, Tex.)

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The Bible upon which Maj. McKinley took his oath of office as President of the United States on March 4, 1897, was donated to him for this purpose by the A. M. E. Church. It was printed in Cincinnati, O., by the Methodist Book Concern. It was bound and lined, front and back, with silk, with a suitable dedicatory inscription upon the inside. On the outside was a gold plate in the form of a shield, on which the name of the President, the date, the name of the donor, etc., were engraved. The Bible was inclosed in a box made of native Ohio wood and gold mounted. It cost eighty-six dollars. The honor of presentation was conferred upon Bishop Benjamin W. Arnett, of Wilberforce, O. (Christian Recorder, Philadelphia, Pa.)

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MADAM SISSIRETTA JONES.

The Black Patti of the Race.

The subject of this sketch was born in Providence, R. I. When quite a wee child she proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, her fitness for the stage as a race representative, and has, among other things, maintained her ground, never weakening and giving down, but nourishing a faith fit only for the righteous, which has led her gently into the pleasant and peaceful paths of success.

Some say that greatness is sometimes thrust upon us; others, more liberal, say it is inborn; others argue that it is acquired. We say that this is an instance where classical musical ability reigned uppermost, controlling and directing the possessor as the mainspring of all her infantile life; but on becoming cognizant of this state of affairs, she was advised by good Northern friends to turn her whole attention to the pursuit for which her heart and mind thirsted. Hence, after a few weeks with the classic masters, the whole Negro race was applauded for the advent of one among us, and sufficiently black to claim our identity, that was destined to move the world to tears. Year after year our subject has won new conquests, and now she is termed the "Black Patti." Is this an instance of acquired greatness, thrust greatness, or inborn greatness? We are loath to say inborn or thrust. For every achievement made by our race that seems to attract the attention of the world we are caused to feel grateful to God. When Negroes are smart, as a rule, a characteristic spirit seems to predominate in them when very small. Her career, while brief, is nevertheless full of bright successes. (Dr. M. A. Majors.)

Mme. Sissiretta Jones sang at the residence of Judge Andrews, on Fifth Avenue, New York, before a party of thirty ladies, among whom were Mrs. Lord, Mrs. Fields, Mrs. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Stephens, and Mrs. Astor. The Chief Justice of India, who was present, presented the singer with a valentine, which, when opened, contained a check for one thousand dollars. She also received a solid silver basket filled with choice flowers.

MISS HALLIE Q. BROWN.

BY F. S. DELANY.

Hallie Quinn Brown is a native of Pittsburg, Pa. When quite small her parents moved to a farm near Chatham, West Ontario, Canada. At an early age, in the year 1868, she was sent to Wilberforce College, Ohio, to obtain an education the country schools of Canada could not give, and where her parents subsequently moved, and now reside at Homewood Cottage. She completed the classical scientific course in 1873, with the degree of B.S. in a class of six. One of her classmates is the wife of Rev. B. F. Lee, D.D., ex-President of Wilberforce. Realizing that a great field of labor lay in the South, Miss Brown, with true missionary spirit, left her pleasant home and friends to devote herself to the noble work she had chosen.

Her first school was on a plantation in South Carolina, where she endured the rough life as best she could, and taught a large number of children from neighboring plantations. She also taught a class of aged people, and by this means gave to many the blessed privilege of reading the Bible. She next took charge of a school on Sonora Plantation, in Mississippi, where she found the effort to elevate the minds of the people much hindered by the use of tobacco and whisky--twin vices.