"IS HE NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?"
The colored Methodists of Delafield, who called their church "Saint
Marks," had always been on good terms with their white co-religionists.
Mr. Drury and the pastor of Saint Marks found many occasions of helping
each other in their work. The single way in which these two showed
themselves conscious of the color line was that while the pastor of
First Church often "preached" in Saint Marks, when the pastor of Saint
Marks appeared in the pulpit of First Church, it was "to speak on some
aspect of his work."
J.W. knew Saint Marks of old. In his high-school days that church had
for its preacher one of a fast-vanishing race, a man mighty in
exhortation, even though narrowly circumscribed in scholastic equipment.
His preaching was redolent of the camp meeting, and he counted that
sermon lost which did not evoke a shout or two from the front benches.
A few of First Church's younger people often went to sing at Saint Marks
on special occasions, and went all the more cheerfully because of the
chance it afforded to hear Brother King Officer preach. Where he got
that name is not known, but he had no other.
Do not think the young people either went to scoff or remained to pray.
If at times they were amused at Brother Officer's peculiarities, so
were some members of his own flock, and Brother Officer was wise enough
to assume that no disrespect was intended. And if the white visitors
treated his fervent appeals to the unconverted and backsliders as part
of the program, but having no slightest application to them, this was
also the regular thing, and nobody was troubled thereat.
But while J.W. was away at college a new pastor had come to Saint Marks,
a college and seminary graduate. And he had come just in time. Brother
Officer was getting old, but the determining factor which made the
change necessary was that Delafield happened to be near one of the
general routes by which thousands of colored people were moving
northward. "Exoduses" have been before; Kansas still remembers the
exodus from Tennessee of forty years ago; but this latest exodus had no
one starting-point nor any single destination. It was a vast shifting of
Negro populations from below Mason and Dixon's line, and it swept
northward toward all the great industrial centers. Its cause and
consequences make a remarkable story, for which there is no room in this
chronicle.
Delafield thought it could not absorb many more Negroes, but before the
exodus movement subsided the stragglers who had turned aside at
Delafield had more than doubled the Negro population of the town.
A heavy burden of new responsibility was on the young pastor of Saint
Marks. The newcomers had no such alertness and resourcefulness as his
own people. They were helpless in the face of new experiences. Soon
they became a worry and an enigma to the town authorities; but
especially and inevitably they turned to the churches of their own
color, of which Delafield could boast but two, a Methodist and a
Baptist. So Saint Marks and its pastor found both new opportunity and
new troubles.
One day in the early spring Mr. Drury dropped in to the Farwell store
and asked J.W. if he would be busy that night. The road to Deep Creek
was at its spring worst, and J.W. had nothing special on. He said as
much, and answering his look of inquiry the pastor said, "There's a man
speaking at Saint Marks to-night who's a Yale graduate and a Negro. He's
also a Methodist. Does the combination interest you?"
"Why, yes," J.W. answered, "it might. You know I used to go with the
bunch to Saint Marks when Brother Officer was pastor, but I haven't been
since he left. I'd like to see what the new preacher is doing, and it
ought to be worth something to hear a Negro alumnus of Yale."
William Hightower, it seemed, was the speaker's name--a strong-voiced;
confident man in his thirties. As J.W., soon discovered, Hightower was a
distinctively modern Negro. Where King Officer had been almost cringing,
Hightower's thought, however diplomatically spoken, was that of an
up-standing mind; where Officer accepted as part of the social order the
colored man's dependence on the white, Hightower spoke of something he
called racial solidarity. It was plain that he meant his Negro hearers
to make much of the Negro's capacity for self-direction.
There was little bitterness and no radicalism in the speech, but to J.W.
it had a queer, new note. He said as much to Mr. Drury, on the way home.
"Why, that Hightower hardly ever mentioned the church, although he was
speaking at a church meeting. And how independent he was!"
"So you noticed that, did you?" the pastor responded. "To me it is one
of the signs of a new day."
"But do you think it is a good day, Mr. Drury?" queried J.W.
"Yes--perhaps; I don't know. Anyhow, it is new, and some of the blame
for it is on our shoulders. The way the Negro thinks and feels to-day is
a striking proof of the fact, often forgotten, that when you settle old
questions you raise new ones."
"Maybe," said J.W. doubtfully, "but I didn't know we had settled the
Negro question."
"Nor I," agreed Mr. Drury. "What we--I mean, we Methodists--settled when
we began to deal with the Negro right after emancipation was not the
race question. It was not even a missionary question, in the old sense,
but it was the question of the nature of the education we should give
the young colored people. For we set out deliberately to give them
schooling first, with evangelism as an accompaniment. The stress was on
education, and we decided at the outset on a certain sort of education."
"I should think," ventured J.W., "that any old sort of education would
serve; the first teachers had to begin at the bottom, didn't they?"
"Yes, and lower than any beginnings you know anything about," the pastor
replied. "Our first workers began without equipment, without
encouragement, and without everything else except a great pity for the
freedman. Did you notice, by the way, that the speaker to-night never
said 'freedman' or mentioned slavery? It is a new day, I tell you."
"I wish you'd explain just what you mean by that, Mr. Drury," J.W. said.
"I don't seem to get it."
"I mean," said Mr. Drury, "that as soon as our church had decided to do
something for the emancipated slaves, it began to work out a scheme of
Negro education. That was before Tuskegee, and even before Hampton
Institute. Maybe we never thought of the Booker Washington idea, or
purely industrial education, but at any rate we went on the theory that
the Negro deserved and in time could take as good an education as any
other American. So we started academies and colleges and even
universities for him, and a medical school and a theological seminary."
"I can see myself that there's a difference between that and the
industrial idea," said J.W.
"Decidedly, there is," answered the minister; "all the difference which
has helped to bring this new day I'm talking about, and to produce such
Negro leaders as William Hightower. You see, J.W., it's this way: Booker
Washington believed that after the Negro had been taught to read and
write and cipher, his next and greatest educational need was to learn
to make a living."
"Well, what's the matter with that?" retorted J.W. "Seems to me it's
common sense."
"Possibly," Mr. Drury answered, dryly. "But what would you say was the
first thing needed in the fight against the almost total illiteracy of
the freedmen?"
"Why, teachers, I suppose," said J.W. "And it would sure take a lot of
teachers, even to make a start."
Mr. Drury said, "That's exactly the fact. It has called for so many that
to this day there isn't anything like enough teachers, although some of
our schools and those of other churches have been at work for fifty
years. And, remember, that practically all of these teachers, except in
a few advanced schools, must be black teachers, themselves brought up
out of ignorance."
"Well," said J.W., "that's my point. The quicker we could teach the
teachers, the sooner they would be ready to teach others."
"That is to say," Mr. Drury interpreted, "the less we taught them, the
better? Seems to me I heard something of a small revolt in your time at
Cartwright because it seemed necessary that a young tutor should be
temporarily assigned to the class in sophomore English."
J.W. chuckled. "It was my class. Why, that fellow was never more than
two jumps ahead of the daily work. We knew he had to study his own
lesson assignments before he could hear a recitation. We weren't
getting anything out of it except the bare text. So some of the boys
made things lively for a few days, and he asked to be relieved."
"Quite so. Your class had every imaginable advantage over the colored
boys and girls in our schools--just one teacher below par. And yet you
think it would be all right to have all colored teachers no more than
two jumps ahead of their pupils."
"Well, yes, I see," J.W. said, with a touch of thoughtfulness. "I
suppose a good teacher needs more than the minimum text-book knowledge.
Is that the Methodist theory?"
"Now you're talking like yourself," Mr. Drury told him. "Yes, that's the
Methodist theory. For the fifty years of the old Freedmen's Aid
Society--now the Board of Education for Negroes--it has run these
schools, eighteen of them now, with five thousand seven hundred and two
earnest students enrolled, on a double theory. The first part of the
theory is that every child--black, white, red or yellow--ought to have
all the education he can use. Anything less than that would be as good
as saying that America cares to develop its human resources only just so
far, and not to the limit. The other part of the theory is that the last
person in the world to be put off with half an education is a preacher
or a teacher. The best is just good enough for all teachers, whether
they teach from a desk or from a pulpit."
"I guess that's so too," said J.W. "You're getting me interested. Now go
on and tell me some more."
"The new pastor of Saint Marks told me," said Mr. Drury, irrelevantly,
"that they would be wanting some new roofing for the barn they're
turning into a community house. I shouldn't be surprised if you sold the
church a nice little bill of goods. And while you are at it, you might
talk to the pastor--Driver's his name--about this thing from his side of
the road. He knows more than I do."
J.W. said he would. And, though he would have meant it in any case, the
hint about roofing made certain that "Elder" Driver would have a call in
the morning from a rising young hardware salesman.
By this time they were at the Farwell gate, and J.W. said goodnight. Mr.
Drury walked home, but before he got ready for his beloved last hour of
the day, with its easy chair and its cherished book, he called up his
colored colleague, and they had a brief talk over the 'phone.
Now, Walter Drury had taken no one into his confidence about the
Experiment, nor did he intend to; he had the best of reasons for keeping
his own counsel, through the years. So Elder Driver could not know the
true inwardness of this telephone call; indeed, it was so casual that he
did not even think to mention it to J.W. when that alert roofing
specialist turned up next morning.
"I heard you were going to put new roofing on that barn you are fixing
up, Mr. Driver, and I thought I might get your order for the job. Maybe
you know that we do a good deal of that sort of work, and we can give
you expert service; the right roofing put on to stay, and to stay put."
Yes, they were thinking of that roof; had to, because it leaked like a
market basket, and they needed the place right now, what with the many
colored Methodists who had come to town and had no home--only rooms in
the little houses of the colored settlement that had been too small for
comfort even before the exodus. But the place would be worth a lot to
their work when they got it.
"About how much do you think of spending, Mr. Driver?" J.W. asked.
Knowing the limited means of Saint Marks, he expected to supply the
cheapest roofing the Farwell Hardware Company had in stock, but Pastor
Driver had a surprise for him.
"Why," he said, "we want the best there is. That building was a barn,
I'll admit, but it is strongly built, and we expect to fix it pretty
thoroughly. We have a gift from the Board of Home Missions and Church
Extension, and we match that with as much again of our own money, enough
in all to swing the building around off the alley, put it on a new
foundation next to the church, and remodel it for our needs."
"That's news to me," said J.W., "though of course I'm glad to hear it.
But I didn't know that the Board put money into such work as this.
Somehow I supposed you were under the Board of Education for Negroes."
"No, not for this sort of church work," the colored pastor answered. "I
was 'under' the Board of Education for Negroes, as you put it, for a
long time myself, in the days when it was called the Freedmen's Aid
Society. And so was my wife. But now we're doing missionary work, and
that's the other Board's job."
"Oh, yes," J.W. assented. "I might have known that. And you mean that
you were under the Freedmen's Aid Society when you were going to
school--is that it?"
"That's it," said Pastor Driver, with a gleaming smile. "I was in two of
the schools. Philander Smith College, at Little Rock, Arkansas, and
Clark University, at Atlanta, Georgia. Then I got my theological course
at Gammon, on the same campus as Clark."
"You say your wife was in school too?"
"Yes"--with an even brighter smile--"she was at Clark when I met her.
Like me, she attended two schools on that campus. The other was Thayer
Home, a girls' dormitory, supported by the Woman's Home Missionary
Society."
"A home? Then how could it be a school?" J.W. asked.
"That's just it, Mr. Farwell," the minister explained. "It was a school
of home life, not only cooking and sewing and scrubbing, and what all
you think of as domestic science, but a school of the home spirit--just
the thing my people need. Thayer was, and is, a place where the girl
students of Clark University learn how to make real homes. And in the
college classes they learn what you might suppose any college student
would learn. That's why I said Mrs. Driver went to two schools."
J.W. recalled the Hightower speech of the night before, and the
discussion with Mr. Drury on the way home. He wanted to go into it all
with this pastor, who wasn't much past his own age, and evidently had
some ideas. For the first time he wondered too how it happened that in
that draft of the Everyday Doctrines of Delafield they had altogether
ignored the Negro. Was that a symptom of something? Then he remembered
his errand, and the work which was waiting up at the store.
So he said: "Excuse me, Mr. Driver, for being so inquisitive. I've never
thought much about our church's colored work, but what I heard at last
night's meeting started me. Rather curious that I should be here talking
about it with you the very next morning, isn't it? But about that
roofing, now. Of course you'll look around and get other estimates, but
anyway I'd be glad to take the measurements and give you our figures. I
promise you they'll be worth considering."
"I'm sure of that, Mr. Farwell," said the other, heartily, "and if I
have any influence with the committee--and I think I have--you needn't
lose any sleep over any other figures we might get. As for being
inquisitive about our work here, I wish more of this town's white
Methodists would get inquisitive. And that reminds me: there's to be an
Epworth League convention here week after next, and I've been told to
invite one of the League leaders in your church to make a short address
on the opening night. You're a League leader, I know, and the first one
I've thought about. So I'm asking you, right now. Will you come over and
speak for us?"
Now, though J.W. always said he was no speaker, he had never hesitated
to accept invitations to take part in League conventions. But this was
different. He made no answer for a minute. And in the pause his mind was
busy with all he knew, and all he had acquired at second hand, about the
relations of colored Christians and white, and particularly about what
might be thought and said if it should be announced that he was to speak
at a Negro Epworth League convention. And then he had the grace to
blush, realizing that this colored pastor, waiting so quietly for his
answer, must infallibly have followed his thoughts. In his swift
self-blame he felt that the least amends he could make for his unspoken
discourtesy was a prompt acceptance of the invitation.
So he looked up and said, hurriedly: "Mr. Driver, forgive me for not
speaking sooner. I'll do the best I can"; and then, regaining his
composure, "Have you any idea as to the subject I'm supposed to talk
about?"
"Yes," the colored minister replied, not without a touch of curious
tenseness in his voice. "The committee wanted me to get a representative
from your Chapter to make a ten-minute address of welcome on behalf of
the Epworthians of First Church!"
Again J.W. was forced to hesitate. Here he was an Epworthian, but
knowing nothing at all about the work of these other young Methodists.
Until to-day he scarcely knew they existed. And now he was asked to
welcome them to town in the name of the League!
But once again shame compelled him to take the bold course. With an
apologetic smile he said, "Well, that's the last subject I could imagine
you'd give to any of us at First Church. Your young people and ours have
hardly been aware of each other, and it seems queer that you should ask
me to make an address of welcome in your church. But as I think of it,
maybe this is just what somebody ought to do, and I might as well try
it. Trouble is, what am I going to say?"
"We'll risk that, Mr. Farwell," said Pastor Driver, confidently. "Just
say what you think, and you'll do all right."
J.W. was by no means sure of that, and the more he thought about his
speech in the next few days, the more confused he became. Any ordinary
speech of welcome would be easy--"Glad you were sensible enough to come
to Delafield," "make yourselves at home," "freedom of the city," "our
latch strings are out," "command us for anything we can do,"
"congratulate you on the fine work you are doing," "know when we return
this visit and come to the places you represent you will make us
welcome"--and so on. But it was plainly impossible for him to talk like
that. It wouldn't be true, and it would certainly not be prudent.
He put the thing up to J.W., Sr. "What'll I say, dad?" he asked. "You
know we haven't had much to do with the people of Saint Marks, and maybe
it wouldn't be best for us to make any sudden change as to that, even
if some of us wanted to. But I've got to talk like a Christian, whether
I feel like one or not."
"My son," his father answered him, sententiously, "it's your speech, not
mine. But if an old fogy may suggest something, why not forget all about
the usual sort of welcome address? Why not say something of the whole
program of our church as it affects our colored people? It touches the
young folks more than any others. Welcome them to that."
"That's all very fine," J.W. objected. "Everybody who's on for an
address of welcome is advised by his friends to cut out the old stuff,
but it means work. And you know that I don't know the first thing about
what you call the whole program of our church for the colored people.
That man Driver knows, but I can't ask him."
"Of course not," assented J.W., Sr., "but you can ask somebody else.
I'll venture Mr. Drury can tell you where to find all you would want to
talk about. Ask him. You're never bothered by bashfulness with him, if I
remember right."
J.W. admitted he had already thought of that. "He and I were talking
about this very thing the night before I went to see about that roofing.
But here's the point--I'm not to represent the pastor, but the young
people. And I'm not so sure that what Mr. Drury might give me, if he
were willing, could be made to fit into a League speech, under the
circumstances."
"I'd try it anyway," said the elder Farwell. "He's nearly always
willing, seems to me, and a pretty safe adviser most of the time."
"All right," agreed J.W., "I'll see him, but he'll probably tell me to
find things out for myself. He's a good scout, is Mr. Drury; the best
pastor I ever knew or want to know, but sometimes he has the queerest
streaks; won't help a fellow a little bit, and when you're absolutely
sure he could if he would. It won't be enough to see him, though; even
if he is in a generous mood and gives me more dope than I can use. I'd
better talk to some of the League people." And still he gravitated
toward the pastor's study. It was the easiest way.
The pastor was always in a more generous mood than J.W. gave him credit
for. It was only that he never supplied crutches when people needed to
use their legs, nor brains when they needed to use their heads, nor
emotions when they needed to use their hearts.
He told J.W. to rummage through the one bookshelf in the study which
held his small but usable collection of books and pamphlets on the
Negro, and see what he might find. And, as always, they talked.
"I can tell by that preacher at Saint Marks," said J.W., "how I had the
wrong end of the argument that night we came from Hightower's address. A
man with a big job like his has to be a pretty big man, and he needs all
the education he can get."
"There's a principle in that, J.W.," suggested Mr. Drury; "see if this
seems a reasonable way to state it: In dealing with any people, the
more needy they are, the better equipped and trained their leaders
should be."
"Yes, sir, it sounds reasonable enough," J.W. admitted. "And yet I never
thought of it until now. But you said something the other night that I
don't see yet."
"That may be no fault of yours, my boy," said the minister, with a
laugh. "What was it?"
"Why, you said men like Hightower are inclined to overlook the work of
the church, and that it was the church's own fault; something about
raising new questions when you settle old ones."
"Oh, yes," said Mr. Drury, "I remember. Maybe saying it's the church's
own fault is not just the way to put it. Say instead that you can't
educate children, nor yet races that are developing, and expect them to
turn out exactly according to your notions of the future. Because, when
their minds are growing they are developing, not according to something
in you, but according to something in them. So every teacher, and I
suppose every parent, has moments of wondering how it ever happens that
young people learn so much that is not taught them. And it's the same
way with races."
"You mean," inquired J.W., "that Hightower is like that?"
"I mean," Pastor Drury replied, "that everybody is like that. If we had
given the Negro no education at all, we could probably have kept him
contented for a good many years with just being 'free.' If we had given
no Negro anything but a common-school chance, the race would have been
pretty slow to develop discontent. But Hightower went to Yale, and Du
Bois went to Harvard and Germany, and Pickens went to Yale, and so on.
Thousands of colored men and women have been graduated from colleges of
liberal arts. And so they are not satisfied with conditions which would
have been heavenly bliss to their grandfathers and grandmothers."
"I know I'm stupid," said J.W., a trifle ruefully, "but I've always
supposed that education was good for everybody. Now you seem to say that
education makes people discontented."
"Of course it does," said Mr. Drury, "that's the reason it is good for
them. Would you be content to call a one-room shack home, and live as
the plantation hand lives? If you would, the world's profit out of you,
and your own profit out of yourself, wouldn't be much. Real education
does exactly mean discontent. And the people who are discontented may be
uncomfortable to live with, if we think they ought to be docile, but
they get us forward."
"Maybe you're right," J.W. conceded, "and the church is not to be
blamed. Still, if our work for the black man has made him troublesome,
and given him ideas bigger than he can hope to realize, how does that
fit in with our Christianity? Shouldn't the church be a peacemaker,
instead of a trouble-maker?"
"Now, John Wesley, Jr.," the other said, in mock protest, "that sermon
of mine on 'Not Peace, but a Sword' must have been wasted on you. Our
Lord most certainly came to make peace, and he spoke a great blessing on
peacemakers. But he was himself the world's greatest disturber. Peace
while there is injustice, or ignorance, or any sort of wickedness, has
nothing to do with Christ's intentions. I know that the old-time
slave-traders of the North, and the more persistent slave-buyers of the
South, were always asking for that sort of peace. But they couldn't have
it. Nobody ever can have it, so long as Jesus has a single follower in
the world."
"Well, what has all this to do," asked J.W., "with our church's special
work for the colored people?"
"Ah, yes," the pastor answered, "that's the very thing you must find out
before you make that address of welcome."
By this time J.W. had gathered up a pile of books, pamphlets, reports,
and papers--enough, he thought, to serve as the raw material of a Ph.D.
thesis, and he said to Mr. Drury, "Would you mind if I took this home?
I'll bring it all back, and it's not likely I'll damage it much.".
The asking was no more than a form; for years the people of First Church
had known themselves freely welcome to any book in the preacher's
shelves. An interest in his books was passport to his special favor. His
own evident love for books had been the best possible insurance that
these particular borrowers would be more scrupulous than the general.
This bit of pastoral work, it should be said, with the frequent
book-talk that grew out of it, was not least among all the reasons why
First Church people thought their bachelor minister just the man for
them.
So off went J.W. with his armful, and for a week thereafter you might
have supposed he was cramming for a final exam of some sort. Early in
his preparation he decided that his father's advice was wise, and he put
the stress of his effort on the church's work and how Negro youth had
responded to it. The other matter was too delicate, he felt, for his
amateur handling, and, besides, he was not altogether sure even of his
own position.
On the convention night Saint Marks was crowded with young colored
people, some of whom came from places a hundred miles away. They were
badged and pennanted quite in the fashion to which J.W. was accustomed.
But for their color, and, to be frank, for a little more restraint and
thoughtfulness in their really unusual singing, they were just young
Methodists at a convention, not different from Caucasian Methodists of
the same age.
When J.W.'s turn came to speak, the chairman introduced him in the
fewest possible words, but with the courtesy which belongs to
self-respect, saying, "Mr. Farwell will make the delegates welcome in
the name of the First Church Epworthians."
And he did. He had his notes, pretty full ones, to which he made
frequent references, but the quality in his speech which drew the
convention's cheers was its frank and natural simplicity.
"I would have begged off from this duty, if I could," he began, "but I
knew from the moment I was asked that I had no decent excuse. But I knew
so little of what I ought to say that it was necessary for me to dig,
just as I used to do at school."
The result of my digging is that I know now and I want you to know that
I know, why First Church young people should join in welcoming you to
Delafield. Some of them don't know yet, any more than I did ten days
ago; but I intend to enlighten them the first chance I get.
We First Church Epworthians might welcome you for many reasons, but I
have decided to stick to two, because, as I have said, I have just been
learning something about them.
We welcome you, then, because you represent the most eager hunger for
complete education that exists in America to-day, unless our new Hebrew
citizens can match it. No others can. The record of our church's schools
for your race prove that it simply is not possible to keep the Negro
youth out of school. They will walk further, eat less, work harder, and
stay longer to get an education than for anything else in the world.
Not so many days ago I ignorantly thought that the 'three R's' was all
that ought to be offered, partly because the need is so great. I hope
you will forgive me that thought, when I tell you that now I know what
ignorance it revealed in me. The great need is the strongest argument
for the highest education. Because of your great numbers, and because
of your ever intenser racial self-respect, the Negro must educate the
Negro, be physician for the Negro, preach to the Negro, nurse the Negro,
lead the Negro in all his upward effort. Otherwise these things will be
done badly, or patronizingly, or not at all.
But if you are to do your own educational work, your educators must be
fully equipped. It is not possible to send the whole race to college,
but it is possible to send college-trained youth to the race. For this
reason our church has established normal schools, colleges of liberal
arts, professional schools, homes for college girls, so that the coming
leaders of your people may have access to the best the world offers in
science and literature, in medicine and law, in business and religion.
You will not mistake my purpose, I am sure, in saying that you know
better than we can guess how your people, through no fault of theirs,
have been long in bondage to the unskilled hand, the unawakened mind,
and the uninspired heart. But it is more and more an unwilling bondage.
And our church, your church, has set up these schools and these
training homes I have mentioned, as though she were saying, in the words
of one of your own wonderful songs, 'Let my people go!' And the results
are coming. Your two bishops, one in the South and one in Africa, your
leaders in the church's highest councils, your educators, your
far-seeing business men, your great preachers, are part of the answer
to your church's passion to give full freedom to all her people.
For you are _her_ people, the people of the Christian Church; we are
all God's people. It seems to me that just now God is interested in
bringing to every race in the world the chance of liberty for hand and
head and heart. God has greater things for us all to do than we can now
understand, but all his purposes must wait on our getting free from
everything that would defeat our work.
Our First-Church young people welcome you because with all else you
represent a great purpose to make religion intelligent. You know, as we
do, that piety to be vital must be mixed with sound learning. You have
the missionary spirit, which never thrives in an atmosphere of
resistance to education. You are 'fellow Christians,' fellow workers. We
are sharers with you in personal devotion to our Lord, and in the common
purpose to make him Master of all life.
And, finally, let me say it bluntly, we welcome you because we believe
in your pride of race, and honor it in you as we honor it in our fellow
citizens of other races. They and you have some things in common, but
you will not misunderstand me when I congratulate you on what is
peculiar to you. You have been fully Americanized for more generations
than most other Americans. You have no need to strive after the American
spirit. I have a friend of Greek birth, who thinks pridefully back to
the Golden Age of Greece, and I envy him his glorying. But your pride
of race, turning away from the unhappy past, sees your Golden Age in
the days to come, not in the dim yesterdays. You are the makers, not the
inheritors, of a great destiny.
"For that noble future which is to be yours in our common America, you
do well to hold as above price the purity and strength of your racial
life. Better than we of Caucasian stock, you know that only so may all
the values be fully realized which are to be Africa's contribution to
the spiritual wealth of America and the world."
There was a moment of silence, for the implications of the last sentence
were not as plain as they might have been. But when the audience caught
J.W.'s somewhat daring appeal to its racial self-respect it broke into
such cheers as are not given to the polite phraser of conventional
commonplaces.