Produced by Turgut Dincer, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
A number of typographical errors (punctuation, reversal and duplication
of letters on words, etc.) in the original have been corrected.
(etext-transcriber's note.)
“_SERVICE OUR MISSION._”
(_Graduating Class Motto_)
[Illustration: WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, Jr.,
As a hustling agent delivering his popular book, which (by making
the saddest person laugh, the jolliest person cry and the most
thoughtless person think), is selling itself like buckwheat cakes
and sausage steaming-hot some frosty morn or cool refreshing ice
cream when the sun is very warm.]
COLORED
GIRLS AND BOYS’
INSPIRING
UNITED STATES
HISTORY
AND A
HEART TO HEART TALK
ABOUT
WHITE FOLKS
BY
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, JR.
COPYRIGHT 1921
BY
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON. JR.
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
TO THOSE COLORED GIRLS AND BOYS
UPON WHOSE NOBLE EFFORTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
WILL REST THE FOUNDATIONS FOR
THE FUTURE SUCCESS OF
THE NEGRO RACE:
AND
TO ALL THOSE WHITE WOMEN AND MEN
WHOSE KIND ENCOURAGEMENT OF AND JUST
DEALINGS WITH ALL HUMANITY ARE BRINGING
ABOUT BETTER UNDERSTANDING AND GREATER
CO-OPERATIONS BETWEEN
WHITE AND COLORED PEOPLE.
COMPOSED--COMPILED--WRITTEN
ARRANGED--DESIGNED
AND
ORIGINAL DRAWINGS
MADE FROM ALONG
=THE FAMOUS PICTURESQUE LEHIGH VALLEY=
OF PENNSYLVANIA, U. S. A.
BY
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, JR.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Actors 233
Agriculture 96
Architects 186
Army Officers 57
Artists 184
Athletics 203
Bankers 118
Baseball 213
Basketball 218
Bishops 73
Boley, Okla. 40
Books 154
Business 114
Business Schools 113
Business People 122
Churches 65
City Officers 45
Civil War 26
Colleges, Colored 161
Colleges, White 160
Colonial War 17
Colored Women’s Clubs 86
Composers 200
Congressmen 42
Dentists 175
Diplomats 43
Elocutionists 239
Field Sports 205
Folklore Songs 36
Football 204
Fraternal Orders 128-252-253
Golfing 231
Higher Education 159
Hospitals 174
Industrial Education 106
Insurance 125
Inventions 176
Lawyers 130
Liberty Bonds 61
Magazines 148
Marcus Garvey 95
Medicine 170
Mexican War 21
Ministers 73
Music 188
N.A.A.C.P. 245
Newspapers 135
“Negro Servants” 10
Negro Business League 89
Nurses 174
Orators 157
Pan-African Congress 92
Pianists 198
Plantation Morals 30
Poets 180
Prize Fighters 220
Reconstruction Days 38
Real Estate 121
Revolutionary War 18
Rowing 227
Rural Schools 110
Science 164
Sculptors 187
Singers 192
Slaves 10
Skating 230
Spanish American War 47
State Legislators 45
Spingarn Medalists 94
Statisticians 157
Sunday Schools 78
Swimming 228
Tennis 230
Theaters 239
Underground R. R. 22
Urban League 248
Violinists 195
War of 1812 19
White Friends 242
World War 49
Y. M. C. A. 83
Y. W. C. A. 79
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
NOT TO BOAST BUT TO BOOST
Negroes should find great pride indeed
In Race progress herein they read;
But to such readers let me tell
This book means not our heads to swell;
For five of the greatest rich white men
Could buy the wealth of our Race: and then!
So this book is neither a brag nor boast
But just to inspire our younger host
To elevate their racial name
From poisoned stains of slavery shame,
By climbing to the highest heights
Thro aid of friends who are “real whites”.
Twenty-five years ago, when a lad fifteen years old attending the
public schools of Pennsylvania, in which State I was born and reared,
certain ideas and sentiments caused me to secretly resolve that some
day, when I had gotten together the necessary data, I would write just
such a book as is contained herein. At the time that resolution was
formed, I was attending the Darlington School in Middletown District,
Delaware County over which Prof. A. G. C. Smith was Superintendent.
And I remember with much gratefulness my first and last public school
teachers, Misses Carrie V. Hamilton and Rebecca R. Crumley and Prof.
Smith for their kind and frequent words to me as encouragement to
continue my education after graduating from the public schools.
My favorite study was the United States History, and even at the tender
age of fifteen years, I was greatly surprised and Race pridely hurt not
to find any history, except about slavery, in such books concerning
the American Negro. I had such childish confidence in my school books
and their authors that I felt sure if Negroes had fought and died in
the several American wars; had become great poets, orators, artists,
sculptors, etc., the histories I was studying would have mentioned
such. I thought in doing that they would have been preserving United
States valuable history more so than merely giving just credit to
the Colored people who had made such history. I did not know that
right then the attentions of many public school children in far
away Europe were often called to the histories of such distinguished
Colored Americans as Phyllis Wheatley, the poetess; Frederick
Douglas, the orator; Henry O. Tanner, the artist; Edmonia Lewis, the
sculptoress--all of them having won recognition and fame in Europe as
well as in America.
My youthful ignorance, regarding the achievements of my race, is easily
explained when it is taken into consideration that I was a farmer
boy living far from libraries I had never seen and Negro histories
I had never heard about. And the United States histories then used
in the public schools had nothing in them to enlighten me on that
subject. They misled and kept me, along with thousands of other Colored
school children, in absolute ignorance relative to the progress and
attainments of the American Colored people. So whenever our history
classes went up to recite and my white classmates proudly went through
the lessons about General George Washington, Noah Webster, Benjamin
Franklin, Eli Whitney, Longfellow, etc., while I knew and could just as
easily recite such history, nevertheless, my feelings of crushed race
pride and mortification were beyond expression because not one thing
could I proudly recite from my lessons about great things my people had
accomplished in America.
It is the same with the United States histories used in our public
schools of today. They do not relate about Crispus Attucks, a Negro
soldier and the first Colonist martyr to give his life for America in
the Revolutionary War; nor about the Colored sailor, William Tillman,
who received six thousand dollars from the Federal Government for
recapturing a stolen schooner from the Rebels in the Civil War; nor
about the Colored Registrars of the United States Treasury, B. K.
Bruce, J. W. Lyons, W. T. Vernon and J. C. Napier, whose names, during
different administrations covering a period of more than thirty years,
appeared on all the United States paper money made and issued during
that period; nor about Matthew A. Henson, who was with Commodore
Peary when he (Peary) discovered the North Pole; nor about Booker T.
Washington, one of the greatest orators America has ever produced and
also builder of one of the most famous institutions of learning not
only in America but in the world.
As I said before, I knew nothing about such Negro history while I was
a farmer’s boy, but I could never quite rid myself of a feeling that
the Colored people in the United States did have a worthy history. I
studied the white man’s U. S. History from cover to cover and learned
all I could from it, but I got no more racial inspiration from it than
a white boy would get from studying only a Negro history in which
nothing was written about his own racial achievements. So I secretly
resolved to immediately begin to quietly and patiently research for
American Negro data in order to some day publish a book so that future
Colored school children would not be kept in ignorance about their own
race history. I felt it was perfectly right and necessary to study the
white man’s history at the school desks, but if Colored children were
not permitted to study the history of their own race at the same desks,
it was perfectly right and necessary that Colored children learn about
the achievements of their great men and women at their home firesides
within their family circles.
So for the benefit mostly of Colored youths, here are the crude results
of my boyhood resolutions and manhood efforts after twenty-five years
filled with trying discouragements, and bitter disappointments, but
also just as full of unswerving determinations, constant hopefulness,
upward climbs, ceaseless works and fervent prayers to God to succeed.
The author wishes to use this place and opportunity to express his
deepest thanks to the more than one hundred prominent Colored men
and women, living in as many large cities in all parts of the United
States, who so friendly sent to him up-to-date information regarding
the progress and success of Colored people in those cities.
For the unusual generosity and kindness in giving of their valuable
time to personally and helpfully send to him exceptionally fitting
and authentic Negro data, the writer most courteously acknowledges
and gratefully names the following distinguished Colored and white
contributors;
Mr. Cleveland G. Allen, New York City, N. Y., Associate Editor of
the New York Home News, and Lecturer on Negro Music in the Public
Schools of New York City.
Rev. G. W. Allen, D. D., Editor & Manager of Southern Christian
Recorder, Nashville, Tenn.
Attorney Violette N. Anderson, foremost woman lawyer in Chicago,
Ill., and one of the most prominent Colored women in her profession
in America.
Rev. F. P. Baker, prominent minister in Evansville, Ind.
Miss Eva D. Bowles, New York City, N. Y., Executive Secretary in
charge of Colored Work of the Young Women’s Christian Association.
Mr. Thomas F. Blue, Head of Colored Library, Louisville, Ky.
Miss Mabel S. Brady, Branch Y. W. C. A. Secretary, Kansas City, Mo.
Rev. Geo. F. Bragg, prominent minister and author of Baltimore, Md.
Mr. Chas. H. Brooks, Phila., Pa., Sec’y of Cherry Bldg. & Loan
Ass’n, and prominent in insurance business.
Captain Walter R. Brown, Assistant Commandant, Hampton Institute,
Va.
Rev. Russell S. Brown, prominent minister in Atlanta, Ga.
Mr. Walter A. Butler, San Francisco, Cal., Financier and President
of the Northern California Branch of the N. A. A. C. P.
Rev. H. W. Childs, D. D., LL. D., prominent minister in Pittsburgh,
Pa., and member of the Executive Board of New England Baptist
Convention.
Dr. J. B. Claytor, prominent physician in Roanoke, Va.
Mr. M. L. Collins, Editor of Shreveport Sun, Shreveport, La.
Prof. J. W. Cromwell, Historian, and instructor of higher education
in Washington, D.C.
Mr. A. G. Dill, New York City, Editor of The Brownies’ Book and
Business Manager of The Crisis Magazine.
Prof. Carl Diton, Phila., Pa., noted composer, organist and pianist.
Mr. James E. Gayle, New Orleans, La., Editor of The Vindicator, and
Manager of the Pythian two hundred thousand dollar Temple in that
city.
F. Grant Gilmore, Author, Playwright and Producer, Philadelphia, Pa.
Bishop Robert E. Jones, Editor of Southwestern Christian Advocate,
New Orleans, La., first and only Negro elected Presiding Bishop
over the Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas Diocese of the
Methodist Episcopal Church.
Mr. Joseph L. Jones, Founder & President of the Central Regalia
Co., Cincinnati, Ohio.
Rev. D. J. Jenkins, D. D., Editor of Charleston Messenger, Founder
and President of The Orphan Aid Society, Charleston, S. C.
Hon. Jas. Weldon Johnson, New York City, N. Y., United States
ex-Consul to several foreign countries, Associate Editor of The New
York Age, Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People.
Mr. Tony Langston, Chicago, Ill., Advertising Manager of Chicago
Defender and eight theaters, President of Langston’s Slide and
Advertising Company.
Mr. Matt. N. Lewis, Editor of The Star, Newport News, Va.
Principal Isaac H. Miller, A. B., Cookman Institute, Jacksonville,
Fla.
Mr. J. E. Mitchell, Editor of The Argus, St. Louis, Mo.
Dr. J. E. Mooreland, New York City, N. Y., International Secretary
and Head of the Colored Department of the Young Men’s Christian
Association.
Mr. Daniel Murray, Assistant Librarian, Congressional Library,
Washington, D.C.
Dr. Harvey Murray, M. D., prominent physician, Wilmington, Del.
Mrs. Mary F. Parker, Chester, Pa., Undertaker and Embalmer, and
Fraternal worker.
The late Mr. Chris Perry, who until his death was Editor of
The Philadelphia Tribune and President of National Negro Press
Association.
Attorney T. Gillis Nutter, Charleston, W. Va., Representative in
the West Virginia Legislature.
Mr. Geo. W. Perry, Boley, Oka., Editor of Boley Progress and
prosperous farmer.
Mr. Jos. L. Ray, Bethlehem, Pa., Confidential Man of Mr. Charles M.
Schwab.
Mr. John H. Rives, Dayton, Ohio, Editor of The Dayton Forum.
Hon. F. M. Roberts, Sacramento, Cal., Assemblyman in the California
State Legislature.
Mr. C. K. Robinson, Editor of Independent Clarion, St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. R. H. Rutherford, President & Treasurer of The National Benefit
Life Insurance Co., Washington, D.C.
Miss Myrtilla J. Sherman, In Charge of Negro Record Department, The
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hampton, Va.
Mr. John A. Simms, Jacksonville, Fla., Editor of The Florida
Sentinel.
Attorney Harry C. Smith, Cleveland, Ohio, Editor of Cleveland
Gazette, ex-Member of the Ohio State Legislature where he
introduced as Bills and had enacted as Laws, The Ohio Anti-Lynching
Law and The Ohio Civil Rights Law.
Mr. C. C. Spaulding, Durham, N. C., Vice-President & Gen’l Manager
of The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company.
Mrs. Maggie L. Walker, Richmond, Va., R. W. G. Secretary &
Treasurer of the I. O. of St. Luke, and President of the St. Luke
Bank.
Miss H. Georgiana Whyte, Chicago, Ill., Editor of the Women’s
Department, The Favorite Magazine.
Mr. J. Finley Wilson, Washington, D.C., Editor of The Washington
Eagle, and President of The National Negro Press Association.
Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Washington, D.C., Editor of The Journal of
Negro History, and Director of Research for The Association For The
Study of Negro Life and History, Incorporated.
Mr. P. B. Young, Norfolk, Va., Capitalist and Editor of The Journal
and Guide.
But the full credit, due for most of the Negro data references
contained in this book, the author takes great pleasure in justly
acknowledging and gratefully extending, through the Negro Year Book,
to its Editor, Prof. Monroe N. Work, Director, Department of Records
and Research, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Ala.,
whose personal consent was obtained by the writer to take extracts from
the Negro Year Book.
_William Henry Harrison, Jr._
FIRST AFRICANS VISIT VIRGINIA
INVITED GUESTS DETAINED
White settlers came invitedless
And made this land their home so real;
So Negroes to, have right to feel
This is their home without appeal;
For they were brought invited guests
And told that they must always stay;
So this is why they are here today
Most loyal citizens every way.
--_Harrison._
Over three hundred years ago (1619) Africans were first brought as
“Negro Servants” (Ref. Prof. Monroe N. Work’s Negro Year Book; page
153, 1918-1919 edition) to the early colonies of the United States by
the captain of a Dutch ship who sold twenty Negroes to white plantation
owners at Jamestown, Virginia. As the results of those and many other
native Africans being later captured and forcibly brought to America,
real slavery was finally started and spread so rapidly that there were
about four million slaves in the United States by January 1, 1863.
At that time all the slaves in the Rebel states were set free by the
Emancipation Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, who was later
murdered for that Godly act by one of his own race. But today Abraham
Lincoln is remembered in all civilized countries as one of the greatest
among the greatest men the world has ever known; as the noblest
president who has ever governed the United States and as the truest and
most fair-minded white friend the Negro race has ever had. On December
18, 1865 the adoption of the 13th Amendment to The Constitution of the
United States gave freedom to the remaining slaves who lived in the
states that had not rebelled against the Union. Thus in these two legal
ways, that were made possible by the Northern States winning the Civil
War, were all the slaves in the United States of America set free.
When the few broad-minded white people in the early colonies stopped
to realize that the first African people who arrived were not used
to America’s new foods, unusual hard work, cold changeable climates
and were without a knowledge of the white man’s language, habits and
religion; it is no great wonder why that small portion of justice
thinking white people so readily saw unusual good qualities and latent
talents in a group of supposed brainless heathens who so quickly,
peacefully and profitably stepped from the narrow paths of African
savagery into the broad avenues of American civilization. But the large
numbers of narrow-minded people, who then (as now) tried so hard to
make themselves and others believe that Negroes were inferior human
beings to themselves, put forth the explanation that the remarkable
and rapid adjustments of the slaves to American surroundings were due
to their childlike dispositions to imitate actions, to humbly obey
orders and their great physical strength to do all kinds of hard work
at all times under all conditions. Such people were entirely wrong in
such ideas, just as all ill-meaning prejudiced ideas keep their owners
wrong, mean and in the lowest stages of human society. When men and
women allow their minds to become poisoned with hateful, envious and
jealous prejudice toward other people and refuse to have anything to do
with them because they are Colored, they have and show just about as
much greatness in good taste and good common-sense as if they were to
refuse to puff on their favorite brand of Havana cigars or to nibble
on one of Mr. Huyler’s famed chocolate bon-bons just because the cigar
and bon-bon are of rich brown colors. Such narrow-minded actions do not
make people great except in their own home-town little social circles.
And when they leave home and go out into the world to mingle among
well-cultured, highly educated and broad-minded people, prejudiced men
and women soon find that their supposed greatness along side of, for
instance, an Abraham Lincoln or a Harriet Beecher Stowe[A] is as large
as a grain of sand is along side of a mountain. If President Lincoln
had not preserved the Union and signed the Emancipation Proclamation,
or if Mrs. Stowe had not written Uncle Tom’s Cabin,[A] but instead,
both had turned up their noses in disdain, tossed their heads in
haughty proudness and snobbishly spurned well-behaved, well-dressed and
intelligent people just because of their colors; the names of Lincoln
and Stowe (in stead of now being enshrined in the Hall Of Fame and
written in the world’s history ever to be remembered and beloved by all
nations) would have been buried and forgotten a few years after their
owners had died as is the case with the names of all race prejudiced
people. But this point regarding the utter foolishness and ignorance of
people showing race prejudice was much more ably and vividly brought
out in one of Mr. McKay’s bull’s-eye-shot and soul-stirring pictures
that appear in the Sunday issues of the New York American--one among
several such big white journals from which the writer derives new
inspiration and increased knowledge every Sunday. This picture and
editorial in question, that described the “Namaqua” savage tribe of
Negroes living in the African jungles, were printed in the March 6,
1921 issue of the New York American, and the following is an extract
from that article titled “Shooting At The Storm.”
“The savages of Africa had first of all to fight and conquer the
burning sun, hence the black skin that keeps off the deadly “actinic
rays” that would quickly destroy any white race in their climate, and
the thick woolly hair, saturated with grease, protecting the skull from
the heat and the deadly effect of those same rays.
“As we think of different kinds of human beings, let us judge them by
the conditions under which they live, whether they be Eskimos near the
North Pole or men like these Namaquas at the Equator.
“Self-satisfied ignorance is horrified at the Eskimo eating enormous
quantities of rank, fat whale blubber. Any race transferred to the
Arctic Circle would do that or die. Ignorance despises the black skin
and woolly hair of the African. Any white race transferred to the
African tropics would develop such skin and hair, or it would die.
“UNDERSTAND what you are discussing, as far as possible, before
discussing it. An eagle cannot understand a turtle, or a turtle an
eagle. And a cow, mildly grazing, cannot understand either. Every human
being that despises another, no matter what the other may be, simply
represents the animal expression of prejudice based on ignorance.”
Now the real truth, as to how those strange and friendless slaves
were able to so readily adapt themselves to this country and so aptly
adopt the methods and customs of the colonists, is that from mere
force of habits they put into their everyday lives their inherited
qualities of open-friendliness, big-heartedness, broad-mindedness,
trustworthiness, constant-loyalty, quick-alertness, unbounded-patience,
everready-forgivefulness and undying hopefulness. These qualities
(in which all civilized countries of today stand badly in need of a
much broader growth and a higher culture) had been handed down to the
American slaves by their African forefathers who had for centuries
dwelt in the darkest and wildest torrid jungles without a knowledge
of the white man’s civilization. And those black ancestors had passed
to their suffering offsprings such full portions of the above named
manhood and brotherhood principles that the slaves were able, as they
pitifully and tearfully went back and forth to their body-torturing and
spirit-crushing tasks, to shame, by their unspiteful and unrevengeful
actions under such cruel treatments, just a little measure of their
inherited virtues into the so-called civilized, educated and Christian
white people who held them in bondage. It must be granted that their
owners did teach the slaves (whose foreparents had lived in a very
hot country where little clothing was needed and food was plentiful
without working for it) how to properly dress and how to regularly
work. And although those enslaved people were taught those good habits
only as means for their selfish and greedy owners to enable themselves
to get richer, nevertheless, the Colored people of to-day are glad
and thankful that they are now able to turn to their own personal
and racial advantages the industrial habits learned by their people
in slavery. On the other hand, Colored people will always be sorry
and unthankful to those brute overseers and raping slave owners who
so sinfully and beastfully forced upon and taught numerous and most
harmful immoral vices to their slaves. And those soul-damning and
life-sapping vices are still clinging to and leaving their marks on
the rapidly advancing Colored people, just as the poison ivy clings to
and mars the health and beauty of the young and tender acorn sprouts
as they struggle upward to become future majestic oaks in the densely
foliaged forests.
However, all of the white people in America at that time did not
approve of or own slaves (just as all of the white people in the United
States today do not approve of nor take part in discriminating against
respectable Colored people) because they knew it was not right. They
had the kind of Christianity that was real and pure enough to make
their minds fully understand and their hearts to tenderly feel that
slavery in its kindest manner is the worse sin against God and the
greatest crime against humanity. And it was this class of God-serving
and fellowman-loving white men and women who secretly and in great
danger of being caught and punished (for the laws of the country
forbid the educating of slaves) taught the otherwise friendless people
in bondage their first knowledge of God and Jesus Christ. When it is
remembered that those African people were just a few years out of a
land where the practices of their tribes for centuries had been to
worship in a different religion; it is easily seen that the slaves were
an unusual reasoning, sensible and broad-minded group of uncivilized
people to have so quickly found the mistake in and so suddenly thrown
aside their old and false religion and so readily accepted in its place
the new and true Faith.
Answered Prayers
During the two hundred and forty-four years of their bitter servitude
those shackled people had learned to place so much faith and trust in
their newly found religion that they felt sure God in his own wisdom,
time and manner would hear and answer their usually silent and always
heart-rending prayers for deliverance from slavery.
So as Southern heats washed briny sweat into their sun-dazed eyes, or
Northern colds checked frozen blood from flowing through their veins;
the hopeful prayers of the slaves, that they and their children might
some day become free, were constantly offered up from the tobacco
plantations of Virginia; from the cotton belts of Alabama, Georgia and
Mississippi; from the corn fields of Tennessee and Texas; from the rice
swamps of South Carolina; from the orange groves of Florida; from the
stone quarries of Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania; from the
truck farms of Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey; from the turpentine
forests of North Carolina; from the blue grass meadows of Kentucky;
from the fishing banks of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island
and from the cane-brakes of Louisiana.
Likewise, the Colored people of today, as they patiently and gradually
draw themselves up and away from the slum and slime of slavery, are
constantly sending up to Heaven from the east, the west, the north and
the south points of this country their hopeful and earnest prayers that
God in His mysterious way will convert and bring back to Christianity
those prejudiced, heathenish and uncivilized members of the Caucasian
race who persecute and discriminate against all darker races just on
account of their progress. As living witnesses and proofs that such
prayers are already being duly heard and daily answered by God, the
author will tell on the following pages of this book (mainly for the
inspiration of Colored boys and girls so that they will not lose
confidence in themselves, trust in mankind and faith in God) just a
little of the remarkable progress and success made by the American
Colored people during their fifty-eight years of freedom.
But the Negro youths who read these following pages should ever bear in
mind that the members of their race who have climbed and mounted these
rounds of success have only been able to do so through the guidance
and care of God; through the unswerving determinations and ceaseless
struggles on the part of themselves and through the hearty good-will
and brotherhood helpfulness of the thousands of American white people
who are today true and loyal friends of the American Colored people.
[Illustration]
THE COLORED RACE IN THE WARS OF THE U. S.
In the Colonial, French and Indian Wars
(1704-1759)
Even farther back than 1704 Colored freemen and slaves showed their
braveness and fighting abilities by taking active parts in helping
the white plantation owners to protect and preserve their homes from
the justly aggrieved Indians. Around the above date and the period
between the years 1708 and 1718 a series of Colonial and Indian wars
took place. These conflicts stretched from little but dignified Rhode
Island (Queen Anne’s War) through the Tuscarora Indian War down to the
Yamassee Indian War that for a time threatened to wipe away the rice
and indago colony of South Carolina. Included among these military
operations were the French and Indian Wars in which many Negroes gave
good accounts of themselves, foremost among them being Sam Jenkins and
Israel Titus who showed unusual braveness under the commands of General
Washington and Braddock.
IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR
(1775-1783)
Crispus Attucks
His statue stands in Boston park
To tell the sacred battle mark
Where first his life met death’s decree
So freedom to these States could be.
--_Harrison_
Although such records cannot be found on the pages of the United States
histories used in the American public schools, a trip to cultured
Boston will enable one to read on the monuments in public squares and
in the public libraries the name and facts about the glorious deeds
of that pioneer Negro patriot, Crispus Attucks who fell as the first
American martyr in the Boston Massacre of 1770. It is also in the
Puritan records of New England where one may learn about Peter Salem,
the Colored soldier who avenged the death of the first seven American
martyrs at Lexington and Concord by slaying Major Pitcairn, the British
officer who in company with his men charged against the Colonists at
Bunker Hill. Among the hundreds of other men of color who took parts in
those fierce skirmishes were Salem Poor, reported at the Commander’s
office for extraordinary bravery at Bunker Hill, and “Black Prince”
cited for unexcelled gallantry at Newport. It is understood that among
those who received pensions at the close of the war were Cato Howe, A.
Ames and T. Coburn.
Few know that it was a Colored man, Jordan Freeman, who timely and
mortally received on his ready spear point the British officer, Major
Montgomery as he daringly leaped, followed by his soldiers, over the
walls of Griswold, an American fort. Later on in that same battle
of 1781 the Colonists were over powered and compelled to surrender,
whereupon the American leader, Ledyard, courteously handed his sword
to the British officer in command. That unfair Englishman upon
receiving the sword immediately thrust it up to the hilt through the
body of Ledyard. A Colored soldier, Lambo Latham, who was standing
near and saw the dastardly act, made one mighty pantherlike leap and
loyally avenged the death of his American commander by plunging his
bayonet clear through the body of that ungallant Britisher. For that
act of fidelity and patriotism, Lambo Latham received over thirty
bayonet stabs from the enemy before he stopped fighting and gave his
last breath for America and its white people who at that moment were
denying their Colored slaves the same sweet freedom for which they were
fighting to get from England.
Not only did “John Bull’s” subjects have to face human lions in the
forms of fighting Colored men, but they also had to feel the pains
and fear the death dealing blows of human tigeresses in the forms of
Colored women fighters. And all Americans who are truely proud of
their country and its real history should read and remember about
one Molly Pitcher, who after her husband had been killed in the
battle of Monmouth, bravely took his place at a cannon and nervely
upheld America’s cause during the remainder of that fierce and bloody
conflict. Then there was the undaunted and resourceful Deborah Gannet,
who by assuming the name of “Bob Shurtliff” entered the American army
and went through more than one year of actual battlefield fighting and
camp life exposure. And during her entire service she successfully kept
her moral purity by cleverly hiding from the officials and the soldiers
the knowledge of her sex. This in other words read her war record on a
pension certificate granted to her after her honorable discharge from
the army. And there were doubtless many other unrecognized but noble
Negro women who entered numerous conflicts and gave their last drop
of blood and lives in order that the white colonists might enjoy the
freedom that their Colored brothers and sisters then saw no signs of
ever receiving.
In the War of 1812
(1812)
There are few people who know that one of the main causes of The War
of 1812 was on account of the British forcibly taking and compelling
three Americans (two Negroes and one Caucasian) to sail under the
English flag. It was in that same war that a Colored soldier, Jefferys,
on seeing a body of American troops retreating under heavy fires from
the enemy, dashed to their front, rallied them together, led their
steps back and repelled the British soldiers who were about to break
through a very important but weak point in General Jackson’s defense
at Mobile. That general not only noted that leadership rally but gave
full credit and praise where it was due. He also expressed gratefulness
to the soldier of color whose ideas first suggested the successful use
of bales of cotton for breastworks in fortifications. In the battles
around New Orleans he looked with soldierly pride upon the splendid
fighting of his black troops.
When American school children learn from their United States histories
that clean-cut and famous naval battle report, “We have met the enemy
and they are ours” ..., such histories do not also inform their
readers that the personal pronouns “we” and “ours” so prominent in
Commodore Perry’s above message includes the heroic deeds of Colored
sailors as well as white. So when in reciting these stirring words
their iron-charged bloods suddenly gallop through their veins; their
chests expand wide with national pride; their heads jerk erect with
proud fighting spirits and their eyes sparkle bright with slumbering
fires, such patriotic emotions have been unknowingly and involuntarily
aroused in true American youths because of the loss of Colored blood
and lives as well as of white in those lake battles. And among those
weather-beaten bronze “salts” were Jack Johnson (not our present
ex-champion heavyweight prize fighter of the world) and John Davis
who were both especially mentioned for distinguished service on the
schooner, “George Thompson.” That world known message of 1812 also
included many other Negro sailors who pitted their bravery and brawn
against the British “tars” in order to help Commodore Oliver Hazard
Perry to break the backbone of the War of 1812 by opening up a clear
passage on the Great Lakes. It was through that same newly made water
path that General William Henry Harrison (the hero of Tippicanoe, Log
Cabin and Hard Cider) and his seasoned famed Indian fighters were
conveyed in order to enter Canada where they completely defeated the
artful Proctor and slew the cunning Tecumseh in that savagely fought
battle of The Thames. Thus Colored fighters helped to end the foxy and
wolfish Proctor-Tecumseh partnership that had annoyed and tormented for
so long the American settlers on the Northern frontiers.
In the Mexican War
(1845-1847)
If it were possible for General Santa Anna to bodily slip back to
earth, personally mingle amid and chat with those of his soldier
friends who are still living; it is more than likely that among the
many things talked over they would seriously mention the fact of having
caught many hasty glances of dark fighting faces under command of the
American Generals Taylor and Scott who kept the Mexicans on a constant
hop-step-and-a-jump around Vera Cruz, Buena Vista and other places in
that section.
On account of Negroes at that period being greatly removed from the
United States Army and State Militias, because of racial questions,
it is not likely that many Colored fighters had a chance to get busy
in that one and a half year backyard quarrel and fight. There was
published in a Western paper a few years ago an account of a Mexican
War Colored veteran known as Captain Jackson who died in Chicago, Ill.,
in 1894. And in order to have received that military title, officially
or unofficially he surely must have used some brain power as well as
much brawn force in helping to establish America’s boundary line on the
Southern frontier.
THROUGH THE “UNDERGROUND RAILROAD”
EVERY LOCAL WAS A SPECIAL
No thundering trains on iron laid tracks:
No steel made cars with cushioned backs:
No tickets punched by uniformed crews:
Yet a railroad it was: I’ll soon show you.
Fleet-footed horses on soft dirt roads
Stole by in nights with slavery loads
To stations anew further on the way
Where all were hid throughout the day.
Engineers, Conductors and Agents most
Were of Quaker stock--that Godly host,
Who through their silent night-dark roads
Transported blacks from slavery goads.
--_Harrison._
Many years before the Civil War there was organized among the Northern
white and Christian people, mostly Quakers, a secret society to help
runaway slaves to escape from the South into the free states and
Canada. This society, on account of its hidden, winding and rapid ways
of carrying its fleeing and hunted passengers into places of freedom
and safety, was known as the “Underground Railroad”.
“As early as 1786, there are evidences of an underground road. A letter
of George Washington, written in that year, speaks of a slave escaping
from Virginia to Philadelphia, and being there aided by a society of
Quakers formed for the purpose of assisting in liberating slaves. It
was not, however, until after the War of 1812, that escaped slaves
began to find their way by the underground roads in considerable
numbers to Canada.”
“From Maine to Kansas, all the northern States were dotted with the
underground stations and covered with a network of the underground
roads. It is estimated that between 1830 and 1860 over 9,000 slaves
were aided to escape by way of Philadelphia. During this same period
in Ohio, 40,000 fugitives are said to have escaped by way of the
underground railroad.”
Reference (Work’s Negro Year Book; page 167, 1918-1919 edition).
Without doubt, among the greatest workers in that society and truest
white friends to the freedom seeking slaves were; Calvin Fairbanks who
was arrested and kept for over fifteen years in Southern jails where
he was daily whipped until blood flowed from his back, just because
he helped human beings to get their freedom; Thomas Garrett who was
jailed and had to sell all his personal property and real estate to pay
the fines imposed upon him by the Southerners for doing the works of
Jesus Christ by aiding the weak and comforting the suffering. And when
penniless Thomas Garrett got out of jail he continued to help runaway
slaves to find their freedom; Samuel May whose Christianity helped
thousands of Colored people to enjoy the freedom due all human beings
instead of suffering yokes and chains belonging to dumb beasts of
burden; and Levi Coffin, who was recognized as the central electrical
force that so powerfully and silently drove on, and the chief
consulting engineer who so watchfully kept in motion the ever welloiled
and frictionless machinery of the underground railroad systems.
* * * * *
The following names are those of some of the leading free Colored
people who in every way possible were foremost in helping to liberate
from slavery their less fortunate race brothers and sisters in the
South:
“Brown, William Wells.--Anti-slavery agitator. Agent of the
underground railroad. Born a slave in St. Louis, Mo., 1816.”
“Douglass, Frederick.--Noted American anti-slavery agitator and
journalist. Born a slave at Tuckahoe, near Easton, Maryland,
February.., 1817. Died February 2, 1895.”
“Whipper, William.--Successful business man, anti-slavery agitator,
editor of The National Reformer.”
“Forten, James.--Negro abolitionist. Born in Philadelphia,
September 6, 1776; died March 4, 1842. Forten was a sail-maker by
trade.”
“Harper, Mrs. Frances E. Watkins.--Distinguished anti-slavery
lecturer, writer and poet. Born of free parents, 1825, Baltimore,
Maryland; died February 22, 1911.”
“Hayden, Lewis.--Born 1815, died 1889. Runaway slave from Kentucky
to Boston, Abolitionist.”
“Ray, Charles B.--Anti-slavery Agitator. Agent Underground
Railroad. Born Falmouth, Mass., December 25, 1807; died New York
City, August 15, 1886. Congregational minister and editor of the
Colored American from 1839 to 1842.”
“Nell, William C.--Anti-slavery agitator and author of Boston. In
1840 was a leader in the agitation for public schools to be thrown
open to Negro children.”
“Lane, Lunsford.--Born a slave at Raleigh, N. C. He is placed in
Prof. Bassett’s “History of the Anti-Slavery Leaders of North
Carolina” among the four prominent abolitionists of that State.”
“Purvis, Robert.--Anti-slavery agitator; chairman of the
Philadelphia Vigilance Committee of the Underground Railroad, and
member of the first Anti-slavery Convention in 1833.”
“Redmond, Charles Lenox.--Born at Salem, Massachusetts, 1810, died
1873. First Negro to take lecture platform as an anti-slavery
speaker.”
“Russwurm, John Brown.--Born in Jamaica, 1799; died in Liberia,
1851. Editor of the first Negro newspaper published in the United
States, the “Freedmen’s Journal,” published in New York City, 1827.”
“Tubman, Harriet.--Fugitive slave and one of the most famous of the
underground railroad operators, died March 10, 1913.”
“Truth, Sojourner.--A noted anti-slavery speaker, born about 1775,
in Africa. Brought when a child, to America, she was sold as a
slave in the State of New York.”
“Still, William.--Secretary of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee
of the Underground Railroad. Born October 7, 1821, in Burlington
County, New Jersey.”
“Walker, David.--First Negro to attack slavery through the press.
Born free at Wilmington, North Carolina, 1785.”
“Gibbs, Miffin Wistar.--Lawyer and anti-slavery agitator; born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April, 1823. He died in Little Rock,
Ark., July 11, 1915.”
“Knights of Liberty.--In 1846 Moses Dickson and eleven other free
Negroes organized at St. Louis, The Knights of Liberty for the
purpose of overthrowing slavery. Ten years was to be spent working
slowly and secretly making their preparations and extending the
society.”
Reference: (Work’s Negro Year Book; pages 168-69-70-71, 1918-1919
edition)
To the Colored boys and girls who desire to learn more about such
mysterious underground railroad trains, that with their nervy and
plucky passengers holding on with all their might, were constantly
diving into and running under rivers as well as climbing upon and
rolling down mountain sides without ever being wrecked or seldom losing
a passenger, the writer begs to offer the following suggestion:
Any evening when such boys and girls suddenly get a burning thirst
to visit the “movies” and drink in the red-blooded and heroic screen
capers of a Wm. S. Hart, a Pearl White or a Douglass Fairbanks; let
those boys and girls go to the nearest library instead, secure a
copy of William Still’s “Underground Railroad Records”, and return
home with it. In its stories they will find just as hair-raising
adventures and exciting escapes as are to be found in any of Doyle’s
Sherlock Holmes detective cases; between its leaves they will find the
same kind of serious wit and humor that smile up from a Walt Mason
newspaper article; from cover to cover they will find the same kind of
heart-rending and flesh-suffering word pictures that Longfellow and
other authors have so vividly painted in telling of the expulsions and
wanderings of the doomed Arcadians; but, last and most important of all
they will find every one of its pages to contain as true and valuable
American history as ever appeared in the writings of a Bancroft, a
Fiske, a Higginson, a Prescott or a Ridpath.
[Illustration]
IN THE CIVIL WAR
(1861-1865)
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
On American pages of history space,
The world gives Lincoln the highest place,
For the triple service his life did give
So all men in freedom here could live.
When he signed his immortal name that day,
It meant that together the States must stay;
It lead the slaves to their freedom goals;
It washed one sin from the Rebels’ souls.
--_Harrison_
If Colored men and women in the previous wars could become such
wonderful fighters and loyal Americans with no knowledge and little
hope of ever receiving freedom from their unnumbered slave sufferings
and sacrifices; then, how much braver and more patriotic would they
be when fighting with a new hope and full knowledge that their future
freedom depended upon the success of the side on which they were
fighting? It is needless to say that out of the more than one hundred
forty thousand Colored people who took active parts in the Civil War,
there were countless numbers of gallant and self-sacrificing deeds
performed by them that were only seen and noted by God. And those acts
of valor and heroism that were witnessed and recorded here on earth
by mankind are so numerous that space herein will not allow but the
mention of a very few.
* * * * *
Captain Andre Cailloux was one of the bravest soldiers to fall in the
Union charge on Fort Hudson. It is said that his Company charged that
fort six times looking point-blank into the red-flaming, fire-spitting,
bullet-biting and smoke-breathing mouths of the enemy’s cannons, with
a heavy loss among his men in each charge. Feeling sure he was going
to his certain death, yet never flynching, a Colored soldier, Anselmas
Plancianocis, who was a color sergeant, uttered the following words to
his commander before departing to his post of duty within gun range
and full view to the enemy; “Colonel, I will bring back these colors
in honor, or report to God the reason why.” He never brought back the
colors. At another time during the noted battle at Fort Wagner, it
was William Carney who upon seeing the colors about to trail on the
ground as they slipped from the relaxing grasp of a dying comrade,
quickly leaped to his side grabbed the flag staff and planted it on the
breastworks. When he in turn was severely wounded and carried to the
rear, he had just strength and breath enough to whisper, “Boys, the Old
flag never touched the ground.” Both artists and poets have often come
forth to paint and sing of the fierce fighting and brave stand made
by that famous 54th Massachusetts Colored Regiment and its fearless
and beloved white commander, Col. Robert Gould Shaw. He fell in the
thickest of the battle surrounded by hundreds of his wounded and dying
Colored troops whom he had watched over as a loving father and always
led as a fighting officer. Although Col. Shaw and his men were greatly
outnumbered by the enemy who repulsed their attack at Fort Wagner, the
Colored soldiers, who had marched continually a day and a night without
stopping and then pitched right into fighting without rest or food,
proved to both the North and South that they were among the bravest of
brave soldiers.
Civil War veterans now living, and when meeting each other usually
become so excited when tongue fighting their battles over again that
they forget for the time being all about their rheumatics and, throw
away their canes as they hop about trying to imitate their former
military actions in battles. Those who were there take delight in
telling how Gen. Fitzhugh Lee and his prancing Old Dominion well
trained white soldiers met their “Waterloo” in Fort Powhatan at the
hands of the belittled and untrained slave troops. It was at Fort
Harrison in Virginia that the Southerners on seeing Negro troops
charging on the fort, taunted them with, “Come on darkies, we want your
muskets.” Eye witnesses say that the so-called “darkies” being so used
to obeying orders really did take the guns to the fort, but several
hours afterwards when the smoke had cleared away it was seen that those
Rebels who had remained to accept the muskets had received the bayonet
ends through their bodies instead of the trigger ends into their hands.
Gen. B. F. Butler’s records show that his ten regiments of ex-slave
soldiers brought victory and fame all along their fighting lines.