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