political economy, has shown by the truthful and forceful logic of
history, that the elevation of all peoples to a higher moral and
intellectual plane, and to a fuller investiture of their civil rights,
has always steadily kept pace with the improvement in their physical
condition. Therefore we feel that resolutely and in unmistakable
language, yet in the dignity of moderation, we should strive to make
known to all men the justice of our claims to the same employments as
other's under the same conditions. We do not ask that anyone of our
people shall be put into a position because he is a colored person, but
we do most emphatically ask that he shall not be kept out of a position
because he is a colored person. "An open field and no favors" is all
that is requested. The time was when to put a colored girl or boy behind
a counter would have been to decrease custom; it would have been a tax
upon the employer, and a charity that we were too proud to accept; but
public sentiment has changed. I am satisfied that the employment of a
colored clerk or a colored saleswoman wouldn't even be a "nine days'
wonder." It is easy of accomplishment, and yet it is not. To thoughtless
and headstrong people who meet duty with impertinent dictation I do not
now address myself; but to those who wish the most gracious of all
blessings, a fuller enlightment as to their duty,--to those I beg to
say, think of what is suggested in this appeal.
AN APPEAL TO OUR BROTHER IN WHITE[31]
BY W. J. GAINES, D. D.
_Bishop of the A.M.E. Church in Georgia_
[Note 31: From "The Negro and the White Man," 1897.]
Providence, in wisdom, has decreed that the lot of the Negro should be
cast with the white people of America. Condemn as we may the means
through which we were brought here, recount as we may the suffering
through which, as a race, we passed in the years of slavery, yet the
fact remains that today our condition is far in advance of that of the
Negroes who have never left their native Africa. We are planted in the
midst of the highest civilization mankind has ever known, and are
rapidly advancing in knowledge, property, and moral enlightenment. We
might, with all reason, thank God even for slavery, if this were the
only means through which we could arrive at our present progress and
development.
We should indeed count ourselves blest if our white brethren would
always extend to us that kindness, justice, and sympathy which our
services to them in the past should inspire, and our dependence upon
them as the more enlightened and wealthy race should prompt them to
bestow.
Why should there be prejudice and dislike on the part of the white man
to his colored brother? Is it because he was once a slave, and a slave
must forever wear the marks of degradation? Is there no effacement for
the stigma of slavery--no erasement for this blot of shame? Will our
white brother not remember that it was his hand that forged the links of
that chain and that riveted them around the necks of the people who had
roved for thousands of years in the unrestrained liberty of the
boundless forests in far-away Africa? As well might the seducer blacken
the name and reputation of the fair and spotless maiden he has cruelly
and wantonly seduced. Go far enough back and it is more than probable
that you will find the taint of slavery in your line and its blot upon
your escutcheon. The proud Saxon became the slave to the Norman, and yet
to-day millions are proud to be called Anglo-Saxons.
Will our white brother refuse us his cordial fellowship because of our
ignorance? Ignorance is indeed a great evil and hindrance. The
enlightened and refined cannot find fellowship with the ignorant, the
benighted, the untutored. If this be the line of demarkation, we can and
will remove it. No people ever made more heroic efforts to rise from
ignorance to enlightenment. Forty-three per cent. of the Negro race can
read and write, and with time we can bring our race up to a high degree
of civilization. We are determined, by the help of Providence, and the
strength of our own right arms, to educate our people until the reproach
of ignorance can no longer be brought against us. When we do, will our
white brothers accord that respect which is the due of intelligence and
culture?
Does our white brother look with disdain upon us because we are not
cleanly and neat? It is true that the masses of our race have not shown
that regard for personal cleanliness and nicety of dress, which a
wealthy and educated people have the means and the time for. Our people
by the exigencies of their lot, have had to toil and toil in menial
places, the places where drudgery was demanded and where contact with
dust and filth was necessary to the accomplishment of their work. But
even this can be remedied, and cleanliness and neatness can be made a
part of the Negro's education until he can present, as thousands of his
race are now doing, a creditable appearance. Will improvement along
these lines help us to gain the esteem and respectful consideration of
our white brothers? If so, the time is not far distant when this barrier
will be removed. Education will help solve this difficulty as it does
all others, and give to our race that touch of refinement which insures
physical as well as mental soundness.--_mens sana in corpore sano._
But is our moral condition the true reason of our ostracism? Are we
remanded to the back seats and ever held in social dishonor because we
are morally unclean? Would that we could reply by a denial of the
allegation and rightly claim that purity which would be at the
foundation of all respectable social life. But here we ask the
charitable judgment of our white brethren, and point them to the heroic
efforts we have made and are making for the moral elevation of our race.
Even a superficial glance at the social side of the Negro's life will
convince the unprejudiced that progress is being made among the better
classes of our people toward virtuous living. Chastity is being urged
everywhere in the school house, and the church, and the home, for our
women, and honesty and integrity for our men. We can and will lift the
shadow of immorality from the great masses of our race, and demonstrate
to the whole world what religion and education can do for a people. We
are doing it. Among the thoroughly cultured and rightly trained of our
women, virtue is as sacred as life, and among our men of similar
advantages, honor and integrity are prized as highly as among any people
on the globe.
Is our poverty the barrier that divides us from a closer fellowship with
our white brethren? Would wealth cure all the evils of our condition,
and give us the cordial recognition we ask from them? If so, we can
remove even this barrier. Our labor has already created much of the
wealth of the South, and it only needs intelligence to turn it into our
own coffers and make it the possession of our own people. Among the
whites money seems to be the _sesame_ that opens the doors to social
recognition, and converts the shoddy into a man of influence and rank.
Barney Barnato, a London Jew, who began life with a trained donkey,
became at length the "South African diamond king," and then all London
paid homage to this despised son of a hated race. Would money thus
convert our despised people into honorable citizens, give them kindly
recognition at the hands of our white neighbors, and take from them the
stigma which has so long marked them with dishonor and shame? If so, we
can hope to secure even this coveted prize, and claim like Barney
Barnato the respect of mankind.
But if it is none of these things that doom us to ostracism and
degradation, as a people, I ask finally is it our _color_? Alas, if it
be this, we can do nothing to remove the line of separation, unless it
be to wait the slow process of amalgamation which despite our efforts,
the white people of this country seem bound to consummate. If we knew of
any chemical preparation by which we could change the color of our skins
and straighten our hair we might hope to bring about the desired
consummation at once, but alas, there is no catholicon for this ill, no
mystic concoction in all the pharmacies of earth to work this miracle of
color. We must fold our hands in despair and submit to our fate with
heavy hearts.
To be serious, however, I would plead with our white brothers not to
despise us on account of our color. It is the inheritance we received
from God, and it could be no mark of shame or dishonor. "Can the leopard
change his spots or the Ethiopian his skin?" No disgrace can be attached
to physical characteristics which are the result of heredity, and cannot
be removed by any volition or effort. How cruel it is to visit upon the
colored man contempt and dishonor because of the hue of his skin, or the
curling peculiarity of his hair. Let him stand or fall upon his merit.
Let him be respected if he is worthy. Let him be despised if he is
unworthy.
We appeal to our white brothers to accord us simple justice. If we
deserve good treatment give it to us, and do not consider the question
of color any more than you would refuse kindness to a man because he is
blind.
All we ask is a fair show in the struggle of life. We have nothing but
the sentiment of kindness for our white brethren. Take us into your
confidence, trust us with responsibility, and above all, show us cordial
kindness. Thus will you link our people to you by the chains of love
which nothing can break, and we will march hand in hand up the steep
pathway of progress.
THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK FOR AFRICA[32]
BY EDWARD WILMOT BLYDEN
EDWARD WILMOT BLYDEN, _one of the greatest scholars of the race; native
of St. Thomas, West Indies. Secretary of State of the Republic of
Liberia; sent on diplomatic missions to the interior of Africa, and
reported proceedings before Royal Geographical Society; Minister
Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Liberia at the Court of St. James;
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; Ambassador to France from
Liberia; Fellow of the American Philological Association; Honorary
Member Athaneum Club. Presented with medal by the Sultan of Turkey in
recognition of his services as Mohammedan Commissioner of Education._
[Note 32: Extracts from a speech made at a banquet given in his
honor by native Africans at Holborn, England, August 15, 1903.]
...Now as to our political relations, the gift of the African does not
lie in the direction of political aggrandizement. His sphere is the
church, the school, the farm, the workshop. With us, the tools are the
proper instruments of the man. This is why our country has been
partitioned among the political agencies of the world--the Japhetic
powers, for they can best do the work to be done in the interest of the
temporal as a basis for the spiritual advancement of humanity. The
African and the Jew are the spiritual races, and to them political
ascendence among the nations of the earth is not promised. It was M.
Renan, the great French agnostic, who said: "The fate of the Jewish
people was not to form a separate nationality; it is a race which always
cherishes a dream of something that transcends nations."
This truth will stand, though we cannot help sympathizing with the
intense and glowing patriotism of Mr. Zangwill as described in the
_Daily News_ the other day. Then as Africans we must sympathize with and
assist the powers that be, as ordained by God, whom He will hold to a
strict account for their proceedings. We cannot alter this arrangement,
whatever our opinion as to the rudeness and ruggedness of the methods by
which the human instruments have arrived at it.
It is a fact. Let us then, to the best of our ability, assist those to
whom has been committed rule over our country. Their task is not an easy
one. They are giving direction to a state of things that must largely
influence the future. As conscientious men, they are often in
perplexity. The actual rulers of British West African Colonies are
to-day an exceptional class of men. And in keeping with the spirit of
the times, and in the critical circumstances in which they labor, they
are doing their best under the guidance of a chief in this country of
large sympathies and a comprehensive grasp of situations.
THE DUTY AND RESPONSIBILITY OF THE ANGLO-SAXON IDEA OF CITIZENSHIP[33]
BY W. JUSTIN CARTER
_of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania_
[Note 33: Extract from an Address delivered before the Eureka
Literary Society at Penbrooke, Pa., December 16, 1904.]
_Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:_
I am going to speak to you to-night of what your race has contributed
and is contributing to this great stream on whose bosom is borne the
freighted destiny of the human race, and whose currents wash every
shore.
More than two and one half centuries of progress and achievement, on
this continent alone, may well vaunt your pride and give you the
resolution which belongs to the children themselves of destiny.
Exult copiously, if you will, over the triumphal march of a great
material civilization, the marvelous expansion of your territory, your
wonderful development of hidden resources, your power and dignity at
home or abroad, but invite not, nor condone that spirit of listless
satiety, nor sink into that national egotism which lets the dagger steal
to the heart of the nation while your reveling conceals the presence of
the foe. For, remember, pomp and splendor, wealth, ease, and power's
pride and heraldry's boast once echoed
"Through haughty Rome's imperial street."
If American citizenship contains a hope and promise, a wealth, a
blessing, and a content, aye! and immortality and just renown, it lives
to-day in hearts, and not in stones; it lives in feelings and not in
lands; it resides in aspirations and not in coffers, it lives in ideals
and not in vaunt and splendor.
It is yours to fulfill its duties; to meet well its responsibilities; it
is what your fathers builded out of heart and soul, out of love,
compassion, and generous fellowship, and not out of blood and brawn; it
is humanity's own; yours be it to study and repeat, if need be, the
sacrifices of those who planted its first seeds with the sword,
nourished them with their blood and suffering, and with wisdom, blessed
by Heaven, consecrated by heroic sacrifices and sanctified by prayer,
left it to you and to all of us, more wisely fashioned, more glittering
in its prospect and more alluring to our fancy than anything political
wisdom ever offered to human hope.
But in order to know and feel what there is of universal interest which
we have to do, what there is for humanity's glory and weal we have to
preserve; what is the task set to us, as our work in forwarding the
current of human life and liberty, we must look to the past, and learn
what fundamental, essential truths have grown from its toil and
achievement. Many such the American idea of citizenship contains; but of
one let us speak.
The American idea of citizenship and its ideal, its aims, possibilities,
and destiny, had its origin and enshrinement in that Anglo-Saxon spirit
of freedom which has been the peculiar characteristic of a race whose
civil and judicial development in the remotest and darkest days of its
history distanced all rival clans and, from Alfred to William III, from
tribe to Empire, has cherished and sustained a system of civil and
religious liberty, which, intolerant of every form of oppression, has
made the English language the vernacular of liberty.
In the earliest periods of these peoples' history we find the germinal
elements of those great charters of liberty which are to become the
chief corner-stone of free government and mighty guarantees of personal
liberty.
A philosophical review of the evolution of these early ideas of personal
liberty to their full growth into a free constitutional government would
make an instructive and interesting study; but I lack the learning and
the ability for such disquisitions. I must therefore content myself for
the purpose of unfolding the duties and destinies of American
citizenship, to review but historically, how from simple communities
seeking to free themselves from the rule of individuals or classes, to
govern themselves by law, and make that law supreme in every exigency,
great charters were established and the reign of law instead of the rule
of princes permanently established.
Even in the establishing of their free system of public administration,
the Anglo-Saxon aim and purpose was to secure the most absolute
guarantees of personal security. The liberty of the individual unit of
society secured in the exercise of the largest liberty consistent with
the public welfare, and that liberty protected by the just and
righteous administration of public laws, was the ideal of the
Anglo-Saxon state.
In their religion, philosophy, poetry, oratory, and literature they have
always confessed that oppression was venal and wrong. If selfishness,
greed, or pride have allured them for a while from that royal path of
national rectitude and honor, they have in the final test returned
conquering to their true and higher selves. Their inborn hate of
oppression, their magnanimous and tolerant spirit of freedom gloriously
in the ascendant.
Thus it is that the free institutions of Great Britain and America have
grown and towered in strength, and in their onward march startled the
world by their progress, and appalled the very lips of prophecy by their
bold and daring sweep. They will not stop, for liberty is fearless and
the current of freedom is irresistible.
But in the early Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth, the rights, liberties, and
privileges of the citizen were not as broad and full as we find them
to-day. The spirit of liberty was weak at first, but her demands grew
apace with her strength. Neither by the generosity of princes, nor by
the wisdom of legislation, were the ordinary English rights of free
citizenship enlarged and established. Nor are the first and elemental
principles of free government which we find springing up on English soil
after the conquests, and whose history in the re-establishment of
political liberty we shall trace through countless struggles and
repressions, the original of that divine idea of freedom which it has
been the mission of the Anglo-Saxon race to give to the world.
It is but a part of that great race spirit which the Conqueror could not
conquer; the lingering spirit of freedom which the iron heel of despotic
usurpation could not stamp out, the memory of a lost freedom ranking in
the hearts of men determined to restore in their island home those
ancient rights which no man dared to question in the days of the Saxon,
Edward the Confessor.
The condition of the early Saxon as it was raised by the wisdom and
benevolence of good King Alfred, and as it remained until the end of the
reign of the unfortunate Harold, was that of a freeman, a freeman not
merely in the sense of being his own master, but "he was a living unit
in the State." He held his lands in his own right. He attended the
courts, and entered in their deliberations. He bore arms and, by
authority of law, could use them in his own defense. The animating
principle of Anglo-Saxon government was local sovereignty. Matters from
the smallest to the greatest were vested in the local power.
* * * * *
The establishment, after the granting of the Magna Charta, thus firmly
of the liberties of England has been accomplished by bitter and fierce
struggles; the obstructive forces were strong, but yielded in the end to
the onward sweep of liberty directed by the aggressive spirit of
intelligence, manhood, and humanity. At the end of the sixteenth century
this much had been gained for freedom. The principles of liberty, which
had been constantly acknowledged in written documents or had been
established by precedents and examples (some of which were the remains
of their ancient liberties) had been embodied as a part of the
fundamental law of the land; those local institutions, which a while ago
we found among the free Saxons, and even now pregnant with the seeds of
liberty,--the jury, the right of holding public meetings, of bearing
arms, and finally the Parliament itself had become a part of the common
law of England.
Then came the Reformation and its demand for religious freedom. Against
the claim of a divinely ordained kingly power, the Cavalier was found
ready to revolt. The Puritans writhed under their religious restraint.
The Puritan and the Cavalier joined their cause; political liberty
invoked the aid of Faith, and Faith hallowed and strengthened the
crusade of human liberty. The struggle increased against absolute power,
spiritual and political, now concentrated in kingly hands. Giants they
were who took up the quarrel of liberty in those dark days of civil
strife. Men they were who inherited the blood of the saintly Langton and
of his lordly Barons. Five centuries of heroic strife against oppression
had sanctified the name of Liberty. They were mad with the hatred of
tyranny, and centuries of bitter, heart-rending experience had made them
wise and valorous for the fray. Liberty is now about to win on Saxon
soil, but not there alone, for those of her yeomanry, who were hardiest
for the fight and cherished the broadest liberty, transplanted
themselves now upon this new soil of America and laid the foundation of
a new Empire, which then and forever should be untrammeled by the
conservation of princes and unabashed by the sneers of monarchs. They
rejected primogeniture and the other institutions of the Middle Ages,
and adopted the anti-feudal custom of equal inheritance. They brought
with them the Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights; they threw around
themselves the safeguard of Anglo-Saxon liberty purified and burned by
those years of oppression. They transplanted Saxon England freed from
the dross of Norman rule and feudal aristocracy. Liberty and law are
henceforth to work out the destinies of men. And who contemplating the
manner of men and whence they derived their faith, their hopes and
fears, can quibble about the aims and purposes of the founders of this
Republic? The fathers did not borrow their political ideals from the
juriscounsuls of Rome; not from the free democracy of Greece; nor did
they fuse into their system the feudal aristocratic imperialism of
Europe.
To govern themselves by law, and secure therewith the largest liberty
with the greatest security of individual rights and property, was their
ideal of statecraft, and this idea, inseparable from the principles they
laid down, must endure while the fabric lasts.
I have told you that the government the fathers planted was Anglo-Saxon
in law; but it was Anglo-Saxon too in religion and spirit. Nothing has
been so conquering in its influence as the Anglo-Saxon spirit; it has
assimilated wherever it has gone, and like the leaven that leaveneth the
whole, homogeneity has followed in its fierce wake of progress with not
a whit lost of its great and fearless impulse of law and freedom.
No race has been so domineering, none stronger and with a more exclusive
spirit of caste, none with a more contemptuous dislike of inferiority,
none more violent in prejudice once formed, or dislikes once engendered;
yet doth the spirit and impulse of freedom move majestic "in the
chambers of their soul," raising them finally above those hated
obliquities, conquering their repugnance, enfeebling and vanishing their
hates. Thus one by one grave wrongs inflicted upon weaker races by the
cold, calculating hand of greed have been arrested and blotted out in
the holy names of right. Thus it is, and has been, that nations, sects,
and creeds coming to these shores lose, in the fascination of free
institutions and the august majesty of liberty, the distinctive
qualities of their old allegiance, and thus it is that over a broad land
composed of all nations, sects, and creeds there reigns one grand
homogeneity and a single patriotic impulse of faith and destiny. Few
there are of Americans who can to-day trace even the faintest spark of
their lineage to an English or even a Norman source. Yet the spirit of
the Anglo-Saxon is the presiding genius of our destiny. Its spirit is
the spirit of our law, and its religion is the evangel of our political
faith.
Inheritors of this great circumstance of power and rule, need I remind
you that, though you sacrifice your labor and toil, though you may have
brought forth this jewel of liberty regulated by law, you cannot keep it
unless you share it with the world. The evils which in days past men had
to wipe out in tears and blood will arise again and precipitate
convulsions in which liberty may expire.