WHAT OF THE FUTURE?
A young professor, after reading portions of the manuscript here
printed, asked, “Where is this leading to? Suppose the Negro is
evangelized and educated as thoroughly as your ideal for him seems
to desire. What will happen, and what is to be his relation to
the white people in this country?” That has been the white man’s
question ever since the possible consequences of his bringing the
Negroes to the new land were brought home to him. The question
was faced with impelling emphasis as the Fathers of the Republic
contemplated the purposes and ideals of the new form of government
which they established. From this government they expected to realize
an equality of opportunity for all men such as no other had ever
dreamed of as an ideal to be desired. The Declaration of Independence
inevitably brought the white man’s question to the fore as he faced
the red man, owner by right of occupation, and the black man, now
become American by right of birth. Just as inevitably, with the first
freedman, arose the negro’s question, “What is my status in American
life?” The clamor for a true, unclouded answer to both questions
increased with the increasing numbers of the freedmen.
Even during the slave era, with the growth in numbers and in race
consciousness on the part of the intelligent, educated few, the
question of the status of the Negro in American life inevitably
arose. Among those who were first to awake to the inevitable was the
Rev. James W. C. Pennington, D.D., of New York, foremost among the
negro scholars and leaders of the last century.
Lecturing in England and Scotland about 1840, Dr. Pennington said,
“The colored population of the United States have no destiny separate
from that of the nation in which they are an integral part. Our
destiny is bound up with that of America. Her ship is ours; her pilot
is ours; her storms are ours; her calms are ours. If she breaks upon
any rock, we break with her. If we, born in America, cannot live upon
the same soil on terms of equality with the descendants of Scotchmen,
Englishmen, Irishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Hungarians, Greeks, and
Poles, then the fundamental theory of America fails and falls to the
ground.”
The same question is involved today in any discussion of the status
of the Negro. The Negro cannot answer it alone, the white race must
enter with him into these too often forbidden portals, and help him
unlock the door of mystery.
What, then, is the Negro’s status in American political life? It
is that which our national Constitution gives him, with lawful
qualifications made by several States. No sincere Christian can
stand for the breaking or the ignoring of law. If laws are bad,
change them; but safety, justice, and decency demand that they
be obeyed—else, anarchy. The national Constitution declares the
ideal. The qualifications of the States are based upon the same just
principle “that the best qualified should rule;” the practice of the
politicians is quite another thing. The wise know that the resort to
illegality to gain ends is as the pit to destroy others.
During the slave era, the negro leaders of the freedmen set
themselves to the task of establishing their citizenship; so that
this question was a live issue even before the Civil War. Out of it,
grew two distinct theories of relationship of the Negro to American
life. Richard Allen was the leader of one school of thought. He and
his confrères had been treated with scant courtesy in the white
Methodist Church of Philadelphia; he therefore withdrew, and founded
the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His contention was that the
Negro should have his own Church, his own leaders, and should build
his own enterprises in every line of endeavor.
The leader of the opposite school was Frederick Douglass, who thus
declared the principle upon which his following proceeded: “I am
well aware of the anti-Christian prejudices which have excluded many
colored persons from white churches, and the consequent necessity of
erecting their own places of worship. This evil I would charge upon
its originators, and not the colored people. But such a necessity
does not now exist to the extent of former years. There are societies
where color is not regarded as a test of membership, and such places
I deem more appropriate for colored persons than exclusive or
isolated organizations.”
While, in detail, these two theories may vary in their developing
expression, the principles upon which they were founded remain, and
powerfully affect the Negroes’ attitude towards all the departments
of our complex life. The question was both natural and inevitable,
and became an increasingly live issue with the growing free
population, as they looked forward hopefully, in 1850, to the day of
universal freedom. It was a question which could not be answered by
themselves alone. The disfranchisement of the Negro before the Civil
War, was so nearly universal, that the answer to his question of
relation to the political life of America was clearly a negative one.
But there was a growing sentiment in the Northern States, coincident
with the rise of the Abolition party, toward negro suffrage on a
restricted basis.
It is probable that President Lincoln’s very conservative view of
the matter would have expressed the view of the growing minority of
whites before the war; and, had he lived after it, it is equally
likely that it would have prevailed over all the reunited Union, as
it does, with qualifications, in many States at the present time.
I quote his letter, written in 1864, to the Governor of Louisiana,
and printed in the _Negro Year Book_ of 1919. “Now you are about to
have a Convention which, among other things, will probably define the
elective franchise. I barely suggest, for your private consideration,
whether some of the colored people may not be let in, as for
instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought
gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help, in some trying
time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom.
But this is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you alone.”
Again in his last public speech, April 11, 1865, in speaking of the
new Louisiana Government, he said: “It is also unsatisfactory to
some, that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I
would myself prefer that it were conferred on the very intelligent,
and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.”
It is true that a State like Mississippi would be in an intolerable
condition if unqualified suffrage were in practice, because the
majority of the Negroes and some of the Whites are either illiterate,
or too nearly so, to be intelligent voters. It is safe to say that
no intelligent man, black or white, in the State, would vote for
unrestricted franchise with its certain consequence of domination by
the mass of the unfit.
In no sense does this age face the problems of the old reconstruction
of 1865 to 1880. But the tragedies of that old time were not
primarily of the Negro’s making. The thoughtful, older men, who are
familiar with the age, and analyze the motives of conduct, know that
Negroes, whose loyalty to their old masters has never faltered,
transferred that loyalty to their liberators in utmost good faith and
profound gratitude. We know that the Negro bowed before the “Yankee”
with the same motive of grateful reverence that the American bows
to the statues of Washington and Lafayette. The wise, thoughtful
Negro of today looks back upon that wild era, and sees the mistakes
and the loss to his race; while he lets others do the talking. Its
lessons are not lost to him, difficult as it is for many people
in the South to believe it. No one can read between the lines of
the lectures of their great leaders without knowing how keen their
insight is. An illuminating example is Dr. Isaiah Montgomery’s debate
in the Mississippi Constitutional Convention in favor of the present
suffrage law of the State.
There is but one demand—that laws be honestly administered. But
this would involve office-holding! Well, why not if it contribute
to mutual interest? Is it true democracy that would leave half of
a population (as in some communities) unrepresented, all the way
from State Legislature to policemen of a negro ward in town? Can
that be Christian justice, whose approval we ask of our Lord, but
which deprives a people of the right to guard the most sacred trust
which God imposes—the homes in which they live? There are just as
many classes among the Negroes as among the Whites. They are all
forced into solidarity for like reasons that make the solid South.
Neither is healthy. Both are based on unreasonable prejudice. The
solid Negro believes he faces a solid white wall. The solid South
believes it faces two solids, North and Negro. In neither case is it
true. Just let somebody begin to do justly, trust the other fellow,
and trust, above all, God’s power to inject a sense of justice and
fair play even where human shortsightedness cannot see, and most
of our troubles in this line would evaporate. The problem of trust
is at once a community problem and a world problem which only the
determined faith which removes mountains can solve.
Every one of our States has some wise, patriotic negro leaders
who are earnestly studying the problems of race and of State, and
who are profoundly anxious that race-integrity be maintained and
race-relations be cordial and mutually helpful. They, and they alone,
know the trials and burdens, the achievements and ambitions of their
race so perfectly as to witness with authority. Over our entire
nation, it is by the white race that the laws are made and executed,
that social needs are ministered to, that prisons are administered,
and that education is provided, and health and sanitation supervised.
There is not a State in which the regulation of civic life would,
or could, be turned over to the Negroes. This lays upon the Whites
the chivalric obligation of studying, the more conscientiously and
carefully, the needs and interests of their negro fellow-citizens.
This cannot be done apart from the highly intelligent Negroes. In
our State governments we should have negro representatives of their
race to confer with law-makers as advisers. An hour’s conference with
two or three of their leaders, chosen for the purpose by their own
people, informed and freely representing their interests, would clear
the atmosphere of racial misunderstanding, as no debate of a white
legislature could do in a whole session.
In our city administration, the white and colored population are,
by mutual choice, not by law, segregated; yet, through employment
in daily contact, if one member suffer, all members suffer with
it—but the Negro, most. In many cities, never a peace-officer is
seen, save _after_ crime has been committed. How much better that
his ward of the city be guarded and cared for _before_, so that the
order and decency which ordinarily prevails, in spite of neglect,
may be guarded and maintained! The Negroes should have their own
peace officers; and their right to protect their own homes should be
kept utterly inviolate. Citizenship is a sacred trust, and the care
of citizens and the harmony of life demand that the most wholesome
conditions of life be made for all alike.
We, of the Episcopal Church, have tested this out through many
years. We have sat in councils, in conferences, on committees and
boards with Negroes. With scarcely an exception, we have found them
as courteous as ourselves. In counsel, some are wise and valued
advisers; some are less so; none are useless. Their addresses sound
much like ours; upon matters of their own race, far more illuminating
than ours, as a rule. We mutually fulfil the covenant which Dr.
Washington’s Atlanta speech proposed, and which our whole people
accepted in 1884. The substance of that proposal was that “in our
outward, common life, in all that goes to make a harmonious relation
and a prosperous people, we are a unit like a man’s hand; in our
inner social life, in all that contributes to racial integrity and
the separate trusts that God imposes, we are separate as the fingers
of that hand; but hand and fingers unite in striving to perfect the
human family, to strengthen and build up, to guard and to purify,
the great living Temple of God.” Can the Church be God’s Church, and
stand for less?
The educated, intelligent Negroes of today, who read and think, are
as anxious to contribute to the best interests of their communities,
their States, and our common Nation, as are the Whites. This has
been tested in community “clean-up campaigns,” in anti-tuberculosis
movements, in liberty loan drives, in volunteers for war, in active
service in army and navy—in every movement in which they have been
assigned a share. They have never asked exemption from any duty. If
service be a badge of honor, the Negro has won it. If the laborer
is worthy of his hire, then the Negro has earned the fruit of his
service as a citizen. If there are difficulties to be encountered in
the bestowal of his earnings, they should be met squarely. Conference
on any vital subject whatever, is always courteous and cordial when
the Negro is accorded the place that God gave him in creating him a
man. That, too, is not conjecture, but long-proved fact. When men
have learned that the house of State is as much God’s house as that
of Church, we shall learn how to hold brotherly conference with black
or red or yellow or brown, and differences and misunderstandings and
green-eyed hatred will be banished.
Utopia, one says! Possibly; but if there were no Utopia to strive
for, we would cease the striving, and be content to live in any
jungle that gave us birthplace.
The philosophy of life changes as present ideals are reached, and as
loftier ones replace them in the half-conscious process of spiritual
growth. A retrospect of child-growth, with its heightening ambitions
urged upward by progressive ideals and mental and spiritual growth,
illustrates this changing philosophy. It ought also to illustrate the
folly of a rigid fixedness in life’s relationships such as leaves no
room for that expansion which enlightenment brings both to ourselves
and to others. Thoughtful people cannot suppose that our ideas about
race-relations will always remain just as they are. They have changed
greatly in the past, and we do not know just how God is going to lead
us through the maze of the future. There is but one sure rule—to do
justly, and to know that righteous obedience to God’s law of justice,
and conformity to God’s law of love, constitute the wisdom which will
be justified of its children in never-ending generations. There ought
also to be a human reliance that can be depended upon. In every age,
it has been the unusual stability of character based upon profound
religious conviction on the part of the few, that has saved the many.
We have traced, in brief, the lives of some of those outstanding
negro characters of deep conviction, who have been the ensigns of
their people. It was upon these men of Church and School, with their
co-workers like Booker Washington and others, that the duty of
leadership has fallen in these years, beginning in the ’80s, and
continuing until now, when new relations between the races have been
in the making. At the beginning of this period the old régime had
not yet been forgotten; the bad start of reconstruction had muddied
the waters, and no one could see the bottom; the new freed race had
still to try its wings; the old survivors of both races—now few,
indeed—who had made the old relations, were then the many in middle
life clinging to the past; the old “Uncles” and the old “Mammies”
were still too many, and the endearment of the old ties was still too
strong to give immediate place to a new relation between free Whites
and black Freedmen or their free-born sons.
The North did not know just where to place the members of a race
in its existing level of development; and the South was unwilling
to have them where reconstruction had placed them. In consequence
that happened, which has always happened in the history of the race
when others had the power; the Negroes were largely unconsidered
or ill-considered, and their real interest and their best good
were alike submerged, while North and South spent weary years in
controversies in which each side was sure of its own rectitude and
distrustful of the other’s. No better condition for missing the
conservative right can be found than that which extremist advocates
necessarily make in imputing error to others because of the
conviction that those others must think wrong. Through such a maze,
the younger leaders were raised up to guide their people, and to
demonstrate to the older, more advanced, white race, the real worth
of the backward black.
It is difficult to see how anybody can trace the life and work of the
comparatively small band of negro leaders, during these forty years
past, without a profound feeling of admiration for their Christian
character, their patience, their wisdom, and their fine sense of
Christian delicacy, exhibited under trying conditions. Think of the
men upon whom God has placed this most difficult and delicate task
of laying the foundation for a totally new relation toward a more
numerous and powerful race, and then try to remember how very few
have seriously blundered! Think of their task of remaking their
relations with a people who were recently their masters! Think of
their task of teaching themselves (and in such true way that the
members of the other race will also accept the lesson) to live as
free black men with white men, on the same soil, and amid the same
surroundings, as of yore! Then say whether you can withhold your
chivalrous sympathy, or your resolve to help on the learning of the
lesson so utterly essential to the peace of both races.
The Negro has had, and still has, this tremendous task laid upon
him of making the place which is his in life; and of taking it,
not because he demands it, but because he has successfully made
that place. In general, he who has to _demand_ his place, has
never _earned_ it. In general, too, he who has _made_ a place has
deserved it, and, in the long run, it will be accorded him. The
Negroes of education, of refinement, of gifts and of culture, are,
too generally, held back from the place they have made. This is
partly because of ignorance on the part of white people that such
Negroes exist, while the only ones they know are the great majority
of ignorant farm hands; partly because of the strange anachronism,
“social equality,” which cuts straight across race integrity, and
nowhere exists even within the single bounds of any race.
The negro people are not standing for social equality among
themselves, even though some of their extremists, along with the
Japanese, are muddying the stream of concord with a cry of “equality
of races.” No one can doubt but that sane people of every race will
continue to stand for that which God made them—white, yellow, brown,
red and black—and will try to keep themselves so. In the long run,
all will learn to value most the respect that righteous living and
service to mankind merit, and to contend least for that which has not
been earned. Whatever the future may bring, whether return to Africa
in large numbers, or migration to Haiti as some of their leaders
contend, or permanence in America, the duty of each day is to help
the Negro to help himself in attaining the fullest preparation for
the destiny which God’s providence has surely in store for him.
So much for political and social relationships, as between the two
races. The Negroes have asked the momentous question, “What is our
status?”
So too, in matters concerning the Church, they are asking the same
question; not, indeed, as involving membership, but as regards
organization. The proposal, made in 1874, to create separate
Missionary Jurisdictions, resulted in separate Convocations, in a
few Dioceses, some fourteen years later. Its renewal, in 1904, in
the form of a Memorial, nearly unanimous, from the colored clergy,
resulted, in 1918, in the application of the Canon on the Suffragan
Episcopate to those Dioceses which should desire to adopt its
provisions. The two Bishops elected by Arkansas and North Carolina
have been given all the authority and personal initiative possible
under the Canon. That it did not, and does not now, satisfy the
full desire of the Memorialists is well known. That the conditions
obtaining in the South and not now felt to be needful in the North,
constitute ground for local adaptation of the Historic Episcopate, is
the judgment of the Memorialists.
* * * * *
The reasons for the petition as “the result of many years of patient
observation, study and prayer,” are clearly set forth, and may be
found in the successive Journals of General Convention from 1904
to 1918. Meanwhile, there are no negro delegates in the House of
Deputies, save one from Liberia and no direct voice, from the more
than thirty thousand lay members, to represent their interests in the
national body. This does not mean that the race is nowhere heard,
or its interest never sought. But it does mean that, in national
Conferences and Boards, to which the Negro has sought entrance, the
Church is still slow to grant his request.
The picture is not wholly dark. What are the results which, in the
midst of confusion and difficulties, the Negro has been able to
achieve?
The statistics for the whole race, here given, are taken from the
_Negro Year Book_ of 1919. In 1866, the Negroes owned 12,000 homes;
in 1919, 600,000. Farms owned in 1866, 20,000; in 1919, 50,000. The
wealth, for the two contrasted years, is represented as $20,000,000
and $1,110,000,000.
These figures are very eloquent in their announcement. They do not,
and cannot, even begin to tell the story of the supreme devotion, the
untiring labor, the self-abasement, the sacrifice, the consummate
wisdom, of most of that small company of real negro leaders, who,
from the ’80s down to now, have accepted the responsibility,
and performed the tremendous task, of retrieving the losses of
reconstruction and inspiring the race with an indomitable will to
move forward. For this company of leaders was from among the 3.6% of
those in professional service, as teachers, doctors, lawyers and the
like. Upon them fell the sacred task of guiding the remaining 96.4%,
less than 10% of whom were literate. There is no more interesting
reading than that which the story of these leaders presents; and that
of the trade-schools, farmers’ conferences, educational rallies, and
religious institutes.
And how was the progress accomplished? It began with the veritable
crusade of constructive service preached by the leaders.
“If educated men and women of the race will see and acknowledge the
necessity of practical industrial training, and go to work with a
zeal and determination, their example will be followed by others who
are now without ambition of any kind. The race cannot hope to come
into its own until the young colored men and women make up their
minds to assist in the general development along these lines. The
elder men and women trained in the hard school of slavery, and who so
long possessed all the labor—skilled and unskilled—of the South, are
dying out; their places must be filled by their children, or we shall
lose our hold upon these occupations. Again, Phillips Brooks gave
expression to the sentiment: ‘One generation gathers the material,
and the next builds the palaces.’ As I understand it, he wished
to inculcate the idea that one generation lays the foundation for
succeeding generations.”
This is a sample of the messages of these crusaders, borne in varying
cadences throughout the race. The appeal was to the cultured, by
precept and even more by example, to stimulate the ambition of the
whole race; to realize that foundation-building is the task of each
generation, and that the neglect of one generation means loss to
itself and the next.
But they were not preaching only. They did what they exhorted others
to do. With the help of white friends, they began to build schools,
and to teach those who could teach others the value of industry and
thrift, and the blessings of the self-respect that is unafraid to
face life and contribute to its needs. And thus the army of teachers
began to go forth. Most of them were not well prepared, and are not
at this day, for the calls have been so hurried that the preparation
has been equally so.
Today there are 38,000 teachers, against the 600 in 1866; most
of them in the little country schools; many under most difficult
conditions and impossible surroundings, both of which are rapidly
improving under the kindly interest of the dominant whites. And, too,
there are many thousands, trained to a degree in the various trades,
and taking their places in the industrial life of their homes. The
fact that, in 1866, 95% were illiterate, and now only 20%, stands as
a living monument to the devoted leaders of these forty years past.
What then is the status of the Negro in American life? Our
forefathers fought for liberty to bestow it on all when the
time came that the humblest members were prepared to assume its
responsibilities. A later generation fought for Democracy—that
crowning and pervading principle of liberty. Our great leaders have
been as wise, as clear, as simple in the interpretation of democracy
as their forefathers were in that of liberty. Shall the Church of
God be wise enough, and devoted enough, and fearless enough, to lead
the people of God to realize what has been purchased with blood and
consecrated by sacrifice?
Now, as then, self-interest engenders prejudice; prejudice of class
towards other classes, of crafts towards other crafts, of race
towards other races. All the prejudice is not on one side; but no
white man, with an eye to justice, can fail to admit the Negro has
far the greater cause for his prejudice.
The very existence of different crafts and classes, and still more of
different races occupying the same national home, makes problems. The
only solution that really solves is Justice, with its accompanying
weight in the balance—Mercy. Without the exercise of these, no class
or race could hope for continuous life or persistent growth. Where
truth and justice meet together, righteousness and peace will kiss
each other in a brotherly, harmonious relation, that only the devil’s
lies and cruel injustice ever mar and distort.
The Negro has been free for sixty years and more. Building upon
the wonderfully fine foundation of the past (in spite of manifold
and manifest flaws in its making), he has reared racial structures
of social, commercial, industrial and religious life, that command
respect and admiration. The credit belongs to both races—to the Negro
himself, but no less to the race which was once his owner, and whose
hand is clearly seen in the building.
The Negro knows even better than his white critics how faulty a
living building is in which the majority of the living stones
are still rough, unpolished, unsquared. He asks, and he has the
right which God gives to His people to ask, that, as a free man,
he be treated as a man; that, as justice is the right of life, he
be accorded it; that, as a citizen, he be granted the rights of
citizenship—the equal right of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness; that laws governing citizenship be applied with equal
justice to Negroes and to Whites.
If the Church of God (that is, her members) can bring herself
to stand for less than that, it is difficult to find ground for
forgiveness at the hands of the Son of Man who died upon the Cross
for the salvation of all.
Of course there is a problem; but the real problem is not how to
escape doing justice, but how to be just without destroying racial
integrity. Race and family are of God’s institution, God’s alone,
and their respective relations are of His making. Both are written
in God’s handwriting, in flesh and blood; not in man’s, on scraps
of paper. But this phase of the subject is exceedingly large. The
apology for its introduction here, is to be found in the emphasis
which it seeks to lay upon the ultimate purpose of education and
training.
When one considers the few years from Emancipation, the reflection
must come that long, long steps forward have been taken; and who can
doubt that where unalloyed interest in the progress of the black
members reigns in the hearts of the white, the guidance of the loving
Father has stayed our impatience? Who can doubt that, in His guiding
providence, He will deal with us according to His lovingkindness?
APPENDIX
NOTE 1
(_Chapter VI, page 159_)
The Hospital was the result of the devoted work of the Rev. Dr. and
Mrs. Hunter, the latter making this her special charge, raising most
of the funds, and keeping them separate from those of the School.
The earlier Principals of the School itself each performed
distinctive services which won the affection and gratitude of the
Church in North Carolina. The Rev. Dr. J. Brinton Smith founded
the school in his five years of service from 1867 to 1872. The
Rev. Dr. John E. C. Smede nourished it through the most difficult
reconstruction period, 1872 to 1884, when tension was high, and
when sympathy between North and South and White and Black was at
its lowest ebb. The Rev. Dr. Robert B. Sutton, 1884-1891, succeeded
to an atmosphere of relaxed weariness following the long drawn-out
controversies over the “race question,” when support was most
difficult, the more so because the Church had no settled policy of
school work for the Negroes. Each had a task requiring all his fine
ability.
It is no reflection on others (for comparison is impossible where the
times and tasks were so distinct) to say that the Rev. Dr. Hunter’s
great contribution was the complete reorganization of the educational
ideal of St. Augustine’s, and its refounding on the devoted and
heroic labors of his predecessors. Dr. Hunter’s 25 years of service
contributed most powerfully to the movement which made the Church
Institute possible, as well as to the present strong growth toward
a solid foundation for the Christian education of the Negroes. He
became Dr. Sutton’s assistant, when the “modern period” began. Old
things were passing away, and the new had yet to be fashioned. The
modern educational system was just beginning to be realized in the
South. Dr. Hunter brought youth, vigor and ability to the task not
only of justifying the wisdom of the fathers but of fulfilling the
office of the wise steward in bringing forth old and new treasures
to enrich the present and the future. He was ably seconded by Mrs.
Hunter, and by his assistant who is now Bishop Delany.
The Rev. Edgar H. Goold, for four years Dr. Hunter’s assistant, is
now the Principal. He is a graduate of Amherst College and of the
General Theological Seminary.
NOTE 2
(_Chapter VI, page 159_)
James Solomon Russell was born of slave parents in Mecklenburg,
Va., Dec. 20th, 1827. The name Solomon was bestowed by his mother
with the prayer that the little one would inherit the wisdom of his
namesake; and the prayer has been answered, for this boy has ripened
into one of the wisest of his people. A war-boy, his early years were
subjected to the privations of the general poverty of the times. At
twelve years his schooling began, the boy paying his way partly by
selling butter and eggs, and, for the balance, his labor. Hampton
was the earthly goal of the young colored youths of that time, and
Russell attained it. From Hampton he entered Major Cooke’s School in
Petersburg, and graduated from the theological department, in 1882.
Upon being ordered a deacon, he was at once appointed missionary to
Brunswick and Mecklenburg counties, with residence at Lawrenceville.
Within eight months he brought his wife, Miss Virginia M. Morgan, to
make the happy home which has been the haven of the busiest man of
his race in the world, with the exception of Dr. Washington. Mrs.
Russell, until her death two years ago, was as vital to the life
of the School as was her husband. In 1917, the Virginia Seminary
conferred the Degree of Doctor of Divinity on Mr. Russell, the first
person of color to receive this honor so rarely bestowed upon anyone
by that venerable Seminary. Once has Dr. Russell declined election to
the Episcopate, and once again to have his name presented. He felt
the urge of duty too strongly at Lawrenceville to allow himself to be
diverted. For many years he has been Archdeacon of Southern Virginia,
and the most conspicuously wise leader among the 400,000 Negroes of
the Diocese.
As a deacon, he opened a school in the vestry-room of the little
church built by his own efforts. Mrs. Russell and himself were
the teachers. The population was 88 per cent illiterate, and
correspondingly prejudiced and superstitious. The story of the
transformation is a romance of absorbing interest. The teacher was a
travelling missionary, without other means than nature had provided
for transporting himself over great distances. He pleaded for a
horse before the Diocesan Convention. “Let’s give Brother Russell a
horse,” was the response, and “Ida” became as well known as Russell
himself over two large “black-belt” counties. So Russell and Ida
became the missionary team, each producing fruit after its kind. The
Archdeacon’s pupils became scouts and recruits in the forward army
against sin and ignorance; Ida’s colts increased the transportation
facilities of workers.
In the midst of besetting difficulties, the young priest found a
steady sympathetic helper in Mrs. Buford whose daughter became the
wife of the late Bishop of East Carolina. She had started a hospital
for infirm colored people, and now extended her interest to the
school.
NOTE 4
(_Chapter VII, page 180_)
The Methodist Bishop, William Capers, father of the late Bishop of
South Carolina and grandfather of the Bishop of West Texas, gave much
of his life to the Negro. No better witness can be found of the power
of Jesus Christ over the life of those Negroes whom He specially
called. These samples from Bishop Capers’ Autobiography are selected,
his description regretfully abridged:
“The most remarkable man in Fayetteville (N. C.) when I went there,
and who died during my stay, was a Negro by the name of Henry Evans.
I say the most remarkable in view of his class; and I call him Negro
with unfeigned respect. The name simply designates the race, and it
is vulgar to regard it with opprobrium. I have known and loved and
honored not a few Negroes in my lifetime, who were probably as pure
of heart as Evans, or anybody else. Such were my old friends, Castile
Selby and John Boquet, of Charleston; Will Campbell and Harry Myrick,
of Wilmington; York Cohen, of Savannah; and others I might name.
These I might call remarkable for their goodness. But I use the word
in a broader sense for Henry Evans, who was confessedly the father
of the Methodist Church, black and white, in Fayetteville, and the
best preacher of his time in that quarter; and who was so remarkable,
as to have become the greatest curiosity of the town; insomuch that
distinguished visitors hardly felt that they might pass a Sunday in
Fayetteville without hearing him preach.”
Henry Evans was a shoemaker in Virginia, licensed to preach by
the Methodists. Being free, he decided to move to Charleston. On
the way, Fayetteville detained him. His spirit was stirred at
perceiving the ungodliness of his people. There was no religion
of any denomination, so Evans began preaching to his people. The
Town Council objected, and he withdrew to the sandhills nearby. The
results upon the changing lives were notable. Evans explained his
motives to the authorities; and this, with the fruits of his work,
won the day; he was allowed the liberty of the town. Mistresses and
masters, powerfully influenced by the great improvement in their
servants, began to attend the Services. They built a frame structure
for the preaching, with seats for the Whites and a projection for
Evans’ home. It became too small and was enlarged, for the Whites
now occupied all of the original building, the Negroes the addition.
“That,” continues Bishop Capers, “was the identical state of the
case when I was pastor. Often was I in that shed, and much to my
edification. I have known not many preachers who appeared more
conversant with Scripture than Evans, and whose conversation was
more instructive as to the things of God. He seemed always deeply
impressed with the responsibility of his position; and not even our
old friend Castile was more remarkable for his humble and deferential
deportment towards the Whites than Evans was. Nor would he allow
any partiality of his friends to induce him to vary, in the least
degree, the line of conduct or the bearing which he had prescribed
for himself in this respect; never speaking to a white man but with
his hat under his arm, never allowing himself to be seated in their
houses; and even confining himself to the kind and manner of dress
proper for Negroes in general, except his plain black coat for the
pulpit. ‘The Whites are kind to me, and come to hear me preach; but I
belong to my own sort, and must not spoil them.’ And yet, Henry Evans
was a Boanerges; and, in his duty, feared not the face of man.”
He died, Mr. Capers ministering to him, in 1810, his last breath
drawn in the act of pronouncing, “Thanks be to God Which giveth us
the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Bishop Capers continues: “On the Sunday before Evans’ death, during
this meeting, the little door between his humble shed and the chancel
where I stood, was open; and the dying man entered for a last
farewell to his people. He was almost too feeble to stand at all, but
supporting himself by the railing of the chancel he said, ‘I have
come to say my last word to you. It is this: None but Christ. Three
times I have had my life in jeopardy for preaching the Gospel to you.
Three times I have broken the ice on the edge of the water and swum
across the Cape Fear to preach the Gospel to you. And now, if in my
last hour, I could trust to that, or to anything else but to Christ
crucified for my salvation, all would be lost, and my soul perish
forever.’ A noble testimony, worthy, not of Evans only, but of Saint
Paul! His funeral at the church was attended by a greater concourse
of persons than had been seen on any funeral occasion before. The
whole community appeared to mourn his death, and the universal
feeling seemed to be that, in honoring the memory of Henry Evans, we
were paying a tribute to virtue and religion. He was buried under the
chancel of the church of which he had been in so remarkable a manner
the founder.”
Henry Evans was of the literate class; not educated in the sense of
this day, but of his day, when the Bible was far more the book of
Christian people than it is now; and Henry Evans, was “wiser than his
teachers.”
NOTE 5
(_Chapter VII, page 185_)
Attention may be called to two notable negro leaders of the early
Nineteenth Century.
The Rev. William Douglass, the son of a blacksmith, born in Baltimore
in 1805, made his way into the Methodist ministry. While at work
on the Eastern Shore, he sought episcopal orders, and was ordained
by Bishop Stone in St. Stephen’s, Cecil County. “In the evening,”
wrote the Bishop, “the church was given up to the Colored People,
and the Rev. Mr. Douglass preached to them an interesting sermon.”
This was on June 22, 1834. The same year he was called to St. Thomas’
African Church, Philadelphia, which, since the death, in 1818, of its
founder, the Rev. Absalom Jones, had been served by one and another
of the white rectors of the city. On February 14, 1836, Mr. Douglass
was advanced to the priesthood. Bishop Onderdonk who officiated,
wrote, “Mr. Douglass is a man of color. I take the opportunity of
recording my very high estimate of his highly respectable intellect
and most amiable qualities which entirely relieved my mind, in his
case, from the anxieties that I had long felt in regard to this
department of episcopal duty. He ministers to a congregation entirely
at unity in itself, much attached to him, and improving under his
pastoral care in principles and duties of our common Christianity.”
Mr. Douglass became a leader of power among his race. Bishop Alonzo
Potter, in announcing his death to the Convention of 1862, said,
“It hath pleased the Lord to call away from the Church Militant the
Rev. William Douglass, rector of St. Thomas’ African Church, in this
city, where he has ministered for the last twenty-seven years—a
man of great modesty, of ripe scholarship, and of much more than
ordinary talents and prudence. He is, as far as I am informed, the
only clergyman of unmixed African descent, who, in this country,
has published work of considerable magnitude. In two volumes, one of
sermons and one a history of St. Thomas’ Church, he has vindicated
his right to appear among our respected divines. As a reader of the
Liturgy he was unsurpassed.”
The Rev. Alexander Crummell, D.D., was born in New York in 1819. He
was early baptized by the Rev. Peter Williams of St. Philip’s Church,
under whom he was trained in the Church’s ways. In early manhood he
applied for Orders. The General Theological Seminary declined to
admit Negroes as students at that time, and Crummell was prepared for
ordination in Boston. In 1842, he was ordained by Bishop Griswold.
Dr. Clark, later Bishop of Rhode Island, was one of the examiners,
and years afterwards the impression then strongly made was thus
recorded: “I was appointed, with the late Rev. Dr. William Croswell,
to examine young Crummell when he applied for deacon’s orders in the
Diocese of Massachusetts; and I remember that Dr. Croswell afterwards
remarked to me that no candidate for the ministry had ever passed
through his hands who had given him more entire satisfaction.”
After a brief year in Providence, R. I., Mr. Crummell answered the
earnest call then coming from Liberia, and threw in his life with his
colored brethren there. He was at once missionary, teacher, and the
trainer of the theological students. Once he left Liberia for a stay
in England, and returned with a Cambridge degree. After the Civil
War, he returned to America, and, in Washington, founded St. Luke’s
Church, whose corner-stone Bishop Pinckney laid in 1876. For more
than twenty years he was its rector.
No man of the race in his day was more worthily esteemed, or more
worthy of it, than Alexander Crummell, and none more truly an apostle
of his Lord.
NOTE 6
(_Chapter VII, page 185_)
The Colony of Georgia affords another interesting illustration.
It was the result of James Oglethorpe’s venture in colonizing
debtor-prisoners and other unfortunates, a movement characterized as
“the beginning of modern philanthropy,” and giving an opportunity to
those noted missionaries of the Church of England, John and Charles
Wesley and George Whitfield. Slavery was to be forbidden in the
colony; but circumstances proved too strong. Rice was the staple
crop, the waters formed its congenial home, and the Negroes—who else
could so well subdue the swamps and make them productive? The result
was inevitable. Georgia conformed to the general policy of her sister
colonies.
As philanthropy was the motive, so religion was the animating spirit,
of the new colony. Accordingly John and Charles Wesley were among
the first colonists. The former established Christ Church Parish,
Savannah, which was later divided, allowing the formation of Christ
Church Parish, Frederica, named for the Savannah mother-church,
Charles Wesley being its first rector, in 1736. These were deadly
pioneer days, and rectors came thick and fast as predecessors were
driven out, sometimes by political influence, most often by climatic.
Charles Wesley remained a year, and then John, his brother, assumed
the charge of both parishes, making his way to Frederica on foot,
trusting, for the crossing of the large rivers, to the passing canoes
of the friendly Indians. “The fact of these visits to Frederica has
been questioned,” writes the Rev. D. W. Winn, the present rector,
“but the writer has seen Wesley’s own diary in which he tells how he
fell into the water from a small boat while embarking from Frederica,
and the leaves of the diary showed the marks of the water.” Mr. Winn,
the descendant of the sister of those first missionaries, Charles and
John Wesley, and fourteenth rector in succession from them, has had
more than ordinary interest in the labors of his predecessors and
in the knowledge of them. George Whitfield succeeded the Wesleys in
1737 or ’38; and, after them, three other missionaries of the period
of establishment. The last, the Rev. Bartholomew Zorabuhler, was
also the first of the line of permanent workers, serving from 1746
to 1766. Frederica, the chief centre of negro missions, furnishes
our sample for the study of this early work in Georgia. The English
Church Commissary, succeeding Commissary Bray for a part of the
period, was the Rev. J. Ottolonghe, who made his headquarters in
Savannah, and directed the Church’s enterprises in the colony.
Happily we have access to some of the early reports of the Commissary
describing the negro work, these being kindly furnished by the Rev.
James Lawrence, present historiographer of the Diocese. These are
written with punctilious regard to the picturesquely bad spelling
of the days of “Bloody Mary” and “Good Queen Bess,” one line only,
in original, is here inflicted; it is dated Dec. 5, 1751. “In my
last sent you by ye _Charming Martha_ I took ye liberty to acquaint
you with my safe arrival in Georgia.” The lonely Commissary takes
large liberty in thus addressing his home-superiors through the
intermediary, not of a charming spinster, but of a boat whose picture
would belie the description; and he notes, in appropriate capitals,
his arrival, safe from peril, to which a good 20 per cent of the
adventurers of the time fell victims.
The letter proceeds: “As soon as the Fatigue of the Voyage permitted
it, I desired Reverend Zouberbuyler (Zorabuhler, Mr. Winn says;
but what matters such a liberty with names among friends?) that he
would be so good as to give the people notice in the Church that I
would instruct their Negroes three days in the week, viz.: Sundays,
Tuesdays and Thursdays, which he accordingly did, and that I might
make it easier to the Masters of these unhappy Creatures, I have
appointed the Time of their coming to me to be at Night, when their
daily Labour is done. When we meet, I make them go to Prayers with
me, having composed for the purpose a few Prayers, suitable (I hope)
to the Occasion. Having thus recommended Ourselves to the Protection
of Heaven, and for his Blessing on our Undertaking; I instruct them
to Reade, that they may be able in Time to comfort themselves in
reading the Book of God. After this is done, I make them repeat the
Lord’s Prayer and the Belief, and a Short Portion of the Catechism,
explaining to them in as easie and Familiar a manner as I can the
Meaning of what they repeat, and before I part with them, I make a
Discourse to them on the Being of God, or the Life and Death of our
adorable Redeemer, or upon some of ye Precepts of the Holy Gospel,
generally introducing some Event or Story, taken out of the Bible,
suitable to the Discourse in Hand; and in order to get their Love, I
use them with all the Kindness and endearing Words that I am capable
of, which makes them willing to come to me and ready to follow my
advice, and as Rewards are Springs that set less selfish minds than
these unhappy Creatures possess, on Motion, I have therefore promised
to reward the Industrious and Diligent, and Hope through Christ’s
Grace, that ’twill have its due Effect. These then, Dear Sir, are
the Methods, these the Path, that I have chalked out in order to
discharge my Duty. If right and agreeable to your better Judgement,
I shall continue in them; if not, I shall be very ready to put in
Practice any other Method, which you shall please to prescribe.”
As the efforts expand and the field is enlarged, new difficulties are
met. In 1754, the Commissary has pushed out among the new arrivals.
A more stable government had encouraged the expansion of planting
interests. There were great difficulties to be met in reaching the
Negroes of the new expansions. “Our Negroes,” he writes, referring
to the new plantations, “are so ignorant of the English language,
and none can be found to talk in their own, that it is a great while
before you can get them to understand what the meaning of Words is.
Again Slavery is certainly a great Depresser of the Mind, which
retards their learning a new Religion proposed to them in a new and
unknown Language, besides the superstitions of a false religion to
be combatted with, and nothing harder to be removed (you know) than
Prejudices of Education, riveted by Time and intrenched in deep
Ignorance.” So there was anguish of heart all along the line.
In 1858, the Commissary’s letter clearly infers another peril to
his efforts growing out of the quarrels of Christian denominations.
A Church-Bill was presented to the Assembly seeking to better the
conditions of the Slaves in all ways possible. But the Assembly
was composed of a large majority of Dissenters, and the bill was
presented by Church of England representatives—fair ground apparently
for religious disputes which lost sight of bill, of Negroes, of
religion and of justice.
It was the age of materialism which, as Professor Brawley says,
“defeated the benevolence of Oglethorpe’s scheme for the founding of
Georgia,” and against which the Church battled, not only on behalf of
the slaves, but for the very life of religion. A difficult battle it
was when self-interest was all arrayed on the side of materialism.
In his evident great zeal and anxiety, the Commissary was warmly
followed by the Rev. Mr. Zorabuhler of Frederica, under whom that
parish was fixed to include the “Town of Frederica, with the islands
of Great and Little St. Simon’s, and the adjacent islands,” and the
name changed to St. James’.
Throughout the Revolutionary period, the Missions were probably
served from Savannah. Recovery from the disasters of war was very
slow, and it was not until after the consecration of Bishop Elliott,
in 1841, that the Church became organized for work. Only three
clergymen were in Georgia to organize the primary Convention of the
Diocese, in 1823.
In his first address to this Convention, Bishop Elliott said: “The
religious instruction of our domestics, and of the Negroes upon
plantations, is a subject that never should be passed over in the
address of a Southern Bishop.” Six years later, he enlarged upon what
he deemed to be a worthy ministry to them. He spoke from experience.
“During the last week, I visited the mission upon the north side of
the Ogeeche River, under the charge of the Rev. William C. Williams.
A neat country church has been erected by some of the planters of
that side of the river, which was sufficiently completed for service
but not for consecration. I officiated in it on Sunday, the 18th of
April, when eight candidates were presented for Confirmation, the
first fruits of the earnest labor of their missionary. Mr. Williams
is pursuing the only plan that will be of any service with this
class of our population, identifying himself with their spiritual
condition, and going in and out among them as their pastor and guide.
It is my earnest hope that our Episcopal planters will take this
matter into consideration, and make arrangements for the employment
of missionaries of their own Church, so that Masters and Servants
may worship together in unity of spirit and in the bond of peace.
It would tend very much to strengthen the relation of Masters and
Servants, by bringing into action the highest and holiest feelings
of our common nature. There should be much less danger of inhumanity
on the one side, and of insubordination on the other, between
parties who knelt upon the Lord’s day around the same Table and were
partakers of the same Communion.”
* * * * *
The Ogeeche Mission has an interesting history of continuous life
from 1847 to the present day. It is ten miles from Savannah in the
heart of the then great rice fields, where two Churches—St. Mark’s
the first, and still used, and St. Barnabas’, now decayed—were
built. The Negroes were utterly illiterate, and remained so until
about 1890, when Mr. Dodge built a school, and the younger ones were
taught. The Services were committed to memory by that very large
congregation, and the responses were, and are, “as the sound of many
waters”; the singing, like a great organ. No instrument was used.
The “clark” for about fifty years was a very big, commanding, black
member with magnificent voice, who, at the proper time for chant
or hymn, stood before the congregation, sounded the note, raised
the tune, and both led and inspired the singers. The habit still
continues.
* * * * *
The Rev. Mr. Winn, for a long time their rector, wrote this
tribute in November, 1921. “They knew the Service and took part
in a way to make one’s heart glow, and which would put any white
city congregation to shame. To minister to and among them was an
inspiration, even though physical conditions as to locomotion, etc.,
were trying. I have dealt with Negroes from the time of my ‘black
Mammy’ Molinda, who was ‘no common nigger’ but a ‘Molly glossy
nigger,’ having come from Madagascar; but while I could understand
anything said to me while looking the speaker in the face and paying
close attention, yet, when one of them spoke to another, it was
mostly an unknown tongue to me.
“Bishop Nelson, late of Georgia, said that a Service among those
rice-field Negroes was the most splendid thing he ever experienced.
That was my experience also; for, excepting the great procession
and Service at the laying of the corner-stone of the Washington
Cathedral, some eighteen years ago, there has not been, in my 41
years of ministry, any approach to the joy of a Service among those
Negroes. It was not merely enthusiasm—I could arouse that among any
congregation of Negroes—it was apprehension, appreciation, and the
outpouring of the soul.”
There is perhaps no congregation in the South upon which the ravages
of war had so little effect. Later changes have greatly reduced their
number, but the old habits remain. The offering is still, in part,
eggs or other farm produce as reverently offered as the money and
coins in the silver alms-basins of the city-church.
The reports of Georgia parishes in 1860, show that practically all
were ministering to the Negroes. In addition to the extended work
of Frederica Parish and St. Mark’s, Ogeeche, St. Stephen’s Chapel,
Savannah, had been established in ’56, especially for the Negroes,
and was the base of mission-work on nearby plantations.
NOTE 7
(_Chapter VII, page 185_)
Regarding the instruction in religion given to the Negroes by their
white owners, the following may be of interest.
It is only occasionally that one finds a record like this: “In
1712 the Rev. Gilbert Jones was Rector of Christ Church Parish.
He felt a great interest in the spiritual welfare of the Negroes,
and endeavored to persuade their owners to assist in having them
instructed in the Christian faith; but he found this good work lay
under difficulties as yet insuperable.”
Generally the testimony is most favorable and encouraging, as, for
example, “The Rev. William Taylor wrote to the Society in 1713,
stating that Mrs. Haig and Mrs. Edwards, who lately came to the
plantations in Carolina, have taken extraordinary pains to instruct
a considerable number of Negroes in the principles of the Christian
religion, and to reclaim and reform them. The wonderful success
they met with in about six months, encouraged me to go and examine
the Negroes about their knowledge in Christianity. They declared to
me their faith in the chief articles of our religion, which they
sufficiently explained. They rehearsed by heart, very distinctly, the
Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Fourteen of them
gave me so great satisfaction, and were so desirous to be baptized,
that I thought it my duty to do it on the last Lord’s Day. I doubt
not but these gentlewomen will prepare the rest of them for Baptism
in a little time, and I hope their good example will provoke some
masters and mistresses to take the same care and pains with their
poor Negroes.”
NOTE 8
(_Chapter VII, Page 186_)
About 1834, an unknown writer, in South Carolina (a journal published
by the State Agricultural Department) makes this significant
statement which is strong testimony to the advancement of the race:
“Despite the injunction, ‘Judge not,’ it has been asserted that the
morality of the Negroes is not in proportion to their religious
fervor. A class, marked as distinctly by their inferior social
position as they are by race, invites such charges which are far
more sweeping than just. If morality be the fruit of religion, it is
not surprising (wonderful as the progress of the African in South
Carolina has been) that morality has not, in one century and a half,
attained the maturity, among the colored race, which has been the
result of nearly nineteen centuries of Christian teachings to the
European. Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to suppose that
any people exhibit in a higher degree that instinctive faith in the
existence of absolute justice, truth, and goodness, which marks the
capacity of human nature alike for religion and for morality, than do
the colored people of this State.”
NOTE 9
(_Chapter VII, page 186_)
“Resolved, 1, That it is unnecessary at present for this body to take
measures for the formation of any fund for supporting Missionaries to
the colored people; it being understood that the difficulty is rather
to obtain the missionaries, than the means of supporting them.
“... 5. That this Convention have heard, with great satisfaction,
of the employment, by proprietors of estates on the Wateree and
in Prince Williams Parish, of Missionaries of our Church, for the
religious instruction of their colored people.”
And the reason is significantly, though perhaps unconsciously, given
in these two extracts from the same issue:
“Wateree Mission—94 colored communicants. A decided religious
influence prevails among the Negroes, for many are acting on
principles but recently known to them. Sunday services on plantation,
45 times.”
NOTE 10
(_Chapter VII, page 189_)
From the many who wrought devotedly and mightily and lovingly
among the plantation Negroes, there stand out a few men whom their
contemporaries would have singled out for peculiar honors. And it
surely is a peculiar honor to merit note among the able spirits
who formed the staff of missionaries; for the Church entrusted the
spiritual care of the Negro to her ablest and best. Among them
all, the Rev. Alexander Glennie, rector of All Saints, Waccamaw,
1832-1866, must hold a place all his own in the annals of time. For
thirty-four years he was the shepherd of the negro folds of the
Waccamaw area. During those years the needs of his flock; the wise
way to provide them; their capacity, intellectual and spiritual;
the food needful for soul sustenance; the social cravings, and how
to provide wholesome gratifications—all these, and more, were Mr.
Glennie’s life study, and that of his life-long friend and co-worker,
Mr. Plowden Weston, of Hagley Plantation, the seat of the largest
single mission in the field.
Gaining completely and very early the confidence of planters and
servants, Mr. Glennie labored in a vast field, restricted only by his
powers of endurance, which were enormous. As plantations, one after
another, came under his care, chapels were built and filled with
well-instructed members and catechumens. By about 1845, in addition
to teachers and catechists in large numbers, an Assistant Minister
was employed, and, two years later, two. His sermons to the Negroes,
published with an introduction by himself, are marvels of beautiful
simplicity, the high art of the perfect teacher. In reading his Good
Friday sermon, the wonder is how so great and so marvelous a mystery
could be so truly and beautifully unfolded in a wealth of one and
two-syllable words. And the blessed story loses absolutely nothing
from the simplicity of the telling.
In him were combined the art of the teacher and the tending care
of the shepherd. “My habit is,” he writes, “after concluding the
Service, to question the people assembled upon the sermon they have
just heard, which enables me to dwell more at large upon matters
briefly touched upon in the sermon. This practice, and the frequent
use of our Church Catechism, is, I need scarcely say, the most
important part of the duty of those engaged in the instruction of
Negroes.” We might add, in the better instruction of anybody.
NOTE 11
(_Chapter VII, page 191_)
Similar to the work of Mr. Glennie and of Mr. Weston (after whom
Weston Chapel was named) was that of Mr. Drayton.
The Rev. J. G. Drayton was both a clergyman and a planter, his
plantation being the far-famed “Magnolia” in St. Andrew’s Parish,
of which he was rector. Besides Magnolia chapel built by him, he
ministered regularly for many years from about 1850, to two other
chapels for the Negroes—Barker’s and Magwood’s, in the same parish.
From a letter of a descendant of Mr. Drayton’s, these extracts are
quoted rather freely:
“In looking back to them, I now realize how out of the ordinary these
Services were; how beautiful the feeling existing between the priest
and his people; how simple, sweet, and uplifting it all was—even to
a little child—to sit there listening to his words, feeling that
greater love through his love. The picture of him that I carry in my
memory I wish that I might send to you. One cannot put an influence
into words. His face during the prayers; the high, weird singing of
the Negroes in the familiar hymns; the breath of the fresh spring
woods as it brought the Easter message through the wide windows—all
blend to make the memory. I remember, too, a ceremony that was always
amusing. It was his habit before Service to distribute among the
poorest of the congregation a contribution which, later, they placed,
with the air of millionaires, in the alms basin. And then, after
‘Marse John’ had exhorted them to his and their satisfaction, there
was a great crowding around his small phaeton. The drive home was
frequently made lively, and precarious as well, because of the gifts
of ‘frizzle fowls’ and ‘yard aigs.’ The roads were often bad and the
eggs good, and one had to be careful.”
After the destruction of Sherman’s raid, being left very poor and
the phæton destroyed, Mr. Drayton, though an old man, never faltered
but used to walk some twelve or sixteen miles each Sunday to hold at
least three Services in the houses of the parish. (The chapels were
burned in the raid.)
NOTE 12
(_Chapter VII, page 197_)
Notable among the founders of schools and parishes was John W.
Perry, who spent his life in Tarboro, N. C., as rector, founder of a
parochial school, and missionary over a wide area. From his school
went his gifted son, now Principal of St. Athanasius’, Brunswick, Ga.
Another is the Rev. James S. Russell, D. D., founder of St. Paul’s
School and many missions, and Archdeacon of Southern Virginia. Had
it not been for St. Augustine’s, and St. Paul’s, the Church would
be barren indeed of workers. Still another is the Rev. Hutchins C.
Bishop, whose strong personality has quickened the life of the negro
churches of New York, and helped to treble their growth. Others
are the Rev. Henry S. McDuffy, long a worker in North Carolina,
now a fine spiritual power, with Dr. Henry Phillips, in the life
of Philadelphia; the Rev. Primus B. Alston, founder of the parish
and school in Charlotte, N. C., the soldier of steadfast faith and
loyalty; the Rev. Geo. F. Bragg, a church-builder in his first
years in Virginia, and for thirty years rector of old St. James’,
Baltimore, whose intense love for the Church has been contagious,
and whose loyalty to his race has been an inspiration to them; the
Rev. Geo. G. Middleton, who built his church and rectory in Natchez,
Miss., for he was a carpenter and followed his Master in trade and
calling; the Rev. William V. Tunnell, Warden and Professor in King
Hall and rector of St. Phillips, Washington, an inspiring teacher in
classroom and parish; the Rt. Rev. Henry B. Delaney, D. D., Dean of
St. Augustine’s Raleigh, his Alma Mater, Archdeacon of negro work,
and, since 1918, Suffragan Bishop of N. C., and acting in that office
for all the Carolinas; the Rev. Dr. W. T. Hermitage who served nearly
all his ministry in North Carolina, building churches and giving a
son to the ministry.
Education was bringing about new class relationships within the negro
race itself as well as between the Negroes and the Whites; and upon
these men and their associates devolved the task of adjusting these
relationships. Wisely, with Christian patience and grace and faith,
have they accepted the call and met the difficult duties. Looking
back upon these forty years, it must fill the student of the story
with admiration for these sane, steady, Christian leaders. Reflecting
upon the great difficulties which beset them, surely only the most
profound sympathy must be felt.
NOTE 13
(_Chapter VII, page 200_)
The story of Mr. Dodge is interesting, and his benefaction, in this
region certainly, has but one parallel—that of Mr. Clarkson in South
Carolina, which failed because of pre-war adverse laws.
Young Dodge came, about 1884, to visit his father, whose large
interests were near Brunswick. The beauty of the surroundings, still
with the scars of war apparent everywhere, the ruins of the old
churches, the unshepherded Negroes wandering astray, the poverty
from which recovery was necessarily slow—all these appealed to his
fine sensibilities. He determined to apply for Holy Orders and
devote himself to the negro people of the islands. The story of
Frederica parish had been a romance; its ruin formed an irresistible
appeal. On the foundation of the ruins he began to build, and, with
the building, his vision enlarged to include the evangelization of
some thirty-nine counties. After the earlier structures had been
reared, he was ordained, and then proceeded to devote $72,000 to
the Missions, of which he became Missionary Trustee with successive
rectors of Frederica as Trustees in turn. With the approval of the
Bishop, he took over the negro mission work of the Diocese. One by
one, mission-chapels (used often as schools during the week) were
built, served sometimes by priests, sometimes by teachers who were
also lay readers. The Rev Mr. Winn came first, as Assistant and
remains in charge to this day.
One of the most noted of Mr. Dodge’s negro teachers was J. B.
Gillespie, who went from the Sewanee St. Mark’s Mission, in 1875,
as lay reader of St. Perpetua Chapel and School, of which he was
the first teacher. Gillespie’s father had been chief of one of the
black tribes of Africa. He was captured in battle and sold to one
of the last slave-ships smuggling cargoes into America. In America,
he came into the hands of Col. Peter Turney (afterwards Governor
of Tennessee), a man of remarkable power and humanity. Gillespie
was treated by the Colonel with due appreciation of his native
standing. So Gillespie, the teacher, was a prince once removed from
his native land; and he was one in character and in intellectual
reach. Eventually he was ordained, intending to return to Africa as
a Christian priest; but a fever epidemic through which he nursed
his people, carried him away at its close, and he was buried by his
chapel in 1887. The older people still revere his name.
NOTE 14
(_Chapter VII, page 207_)
The story of such establishments is not without its romance. These
have been difficult to secure; but there are doubtless many more to
parallel this tribute which is taken from _The Church Advocate_,
of August, 1921. In the initial work leading to the foundation of
Epiphany, Orange, Miss Ruth Mason was the moving spirit. She opened
a Sunday School for the Negroes of the old parish, and has been a
devoted friend and co-worker ever since. Says _The Advocate_, “In
spite of her advanced age, she is worth more to the work in Orange
than a curate. If we only had a few more such in every northern
community, Church extension among our group in such localities would
become vitally real. Miss Mason was also instrumental in getting St.
Andrew’s, Patterson, under way.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PROBLEMS OF THE PRESENT SOUTH—E. G. Murphy. Longmans, Green & Co.,
New York. 1909.
THE UPWARD PATH—M. Helm. Young People’s Missionary Movement, New
York. 1909.
THE NEGRO RACES—J. Dowd, 2 vols. Neale Publishing Co., New York.
1914.
THE NEGRO—W. E. B. DuBois, Ph. D. Henry Holt & Co., New York. 1915.
THE BASIS OF ASCENDENCY—E. G. Murphy. 1918.
AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY—U. B. Phillips. Appleton, New York. 1918.
NEGRO LIFE IN THE SOUTH—W. D. Weatherford, Ph. D. Association
Press, New York. 1918.
ENEAS AFRICANUS—H. S. Edwards. J. W. Burke Co., Macon, Ga.
THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN—Stephen Graham. Macmillan Company, New York.
1920.
AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE?—J. H. Harris. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York.
1920.
THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO—B. Brawley. Macmillan
Company, New York. 1921.
THE NEGRO YEAR BOOK—M. N. Work. Negro Year Book Publishing Co.,
Tuskegee, Alabama. 1922.
MANUAL OF AFRO-AMERICAN CHURCH WORK—G. F. Bragg. 1922.
THE TREND OF THE RACES—G. E. Haynes. Missionary Education Movement,
New York. 1922.
IN THE VANGUARD OF A RACE—L. H. Hammond, Missionary Education
Movement, New York. 1922.
NEGRO HISTORICAL CALENDAR. Roxbury Publishing Co., Boston, Mass.
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 54 Changed: music, athletics, courage, markmanship
to: music, athletics, courage, marksmanship
pg 69 Changed: their decendants became French subjects
to: their descendants became French subjects
pg 247 Changed: I remember, too, a cermony
to: I remember, too, a ceremony