1893 her health was in such condition that it was deemed wise for her to
return to America. So she did, and she brought back two native girls
with her. All the while, however, her chief thought was upon the work to
which she had given herself, and she constantly looked forward to the
time when she might be able to go back to Africa. In 1895 she became the
wife of Rev. S. C. Gordon, who was connected with the English Baptist
Mission at Stanley Pool. She sailed with her husband from Boston in July
and reached the Congo again in August. The station was unique. It was an
old and well established mission, the center of several others in the
surrounding country. It had excellent brick houses, broad avenues and
good fruit-trees, and the students were above the average in
intelligence. But soon the shadow fell. Nora Gordon herself saw much of
the well known Belgian atrocities in the Congo. She saw houses burned
and the natives themselves driven out by the state officials. They
crossed over into the French Congo; but hither Protestants were not
allowed to come to preach to them. In spite of the great heartache,
however, and declining health the heroic woman worked on, giving to
those for whom she labored her tenderest love. Seven months after the
death of her second child a change was again deemed necessary, and she
once more turned her face homeward. After two months in Belgium and
England she came again to America, and to Spelman. But her strength was
now all spent. She died at Spelman January 26, 1901. She was only
thirty-four; but who can measure in years the love and faith, the hope
and sorrow, of such a life?
Nora Gordon started a tradition, Spelman's richest heritage. Three other
graduates followed her. Clara Howard was in course of time forced by the
severe fevers to give up her work, and she now labors at home in the
service of her Alma Mater. Ada Jackson became the second wife of Rev. S.
C. Gordon and also died in service. Emma B. DeLany was commissioned in
1900 and still labors--in recent years with larger and larger
success--in Liberia. Within two or three years of Nora Gordon's return
in 1893, moreover, not less than five native African girls had come to
Spelman. The spirit still abides, and if the way were just a little
clearer doubtless many other graduates would go. Even as it is, however,
the blessing to the school has been illimitable.
* * * * *
Such have been the workers, such the pioneers. To what end is the love,
the labor--the loneliness, the yearning?
It is now nearly five hundred years since a prince of Portugal began the
slave-trade on the west coast of Africa. Within two hundred years all of
the leading countries of western Europe had joined in the iniquitous
traffic, and when England in 1713 drew up with France the Peace of
Utrecht she deemed the slave-trade of such importance that she insisted
upon an article that gave her a practical monopoly of it. Before the end
of the eighteenth century, however, the voice of conscience began to be
heard in England, and science also began to be interested in the great
undeveloped continent lying to the South. It remained for the work of
David Livingstone, however, in the middle of the nineteenth century
really to reveal Africa to the rest of the world. This intrepid explorer
and missionary in a remarkable series of journeys not only traversed
the continent from the extreme South to Loanda on the West Coast and
Quilimane on the East Coast; he not only made known the great lake
system of Central Africa; but he left behind him a memory that has
blessed everyone who has followed in his steps. Largely as a result of
his work and that of his successor, Stanley, a great congress met in
Berlin in 1884 for the partition of Africa among the great nations of
Europe. Unfortunately the diplomats at this meeting were not actuated by
the noble impulses that had moved Livingstone, so that more and more
there was evident a mad scramble for territory. France had already
gained a firm foothold in the northwest, and England was not only firmly
intrenched in the South but had also established a rather undefined
protectorate over Egypt. Germany now in 1884 entered the field and in
German East Africa, German Southwest Africa, Kamerun, and the smaller
territory of Togoland in the West ultimately acquired a total of nearly
a million square miles, or one-eleventh of the continent. All of this
she lost in the course of the recent great war. Naturally she has
desired to regain this land, but at the time of writing (November, 1918)
there is no likelihood of her doing so, a distinguished Englishman, Mr.
Balfour, the foreign secretary, having declared that under no
circumstances can Germany's African colonies be returned to her, as such
return would endanger the security of the British empire, and that is to
say, the security of the world. This problem is but typical of the
larger political questions that press for settlement in the new Africa.
Whatever the solution may be, one or two facts stand out clearly. One is
that Africa can no longer rest in undisturbed slumber. A terrible war,
the most ruinous in the history of humanity, has strained to the utmost
the resources of all the great powers of the world. Where so much has
been spent it is not to be supposed that the richest, the most fertile,
land in the world will indefinitely be allowed to remain undeveloped.
Along with material development must go also the education and the
spiritual culture of the natives on a scale undreamed of before. In this
training such an enlightened country as England will naturally play a
leading role, and America too will doubtless be called on to help in
more ways than one. It must not be supposed, however, that the task is
not one of enormous difficulties. As far as we have advanced in our
missionary activities in America, we have hardly made a beginning in
the great task of the proper development of Africa. Here are
approximately 175,000,000 natives to be trained and Christianized. Let
us not make the common mistake of supposing that they are all ignorant
and degraded savages. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Many
individuals have had the benefit of travel and study in Europe and more
and more are themselves appreciating the great problems before their
country. It is true, however, that the great mass of the population is
yet to be reached. In the general development delicate questions of
racial contact are to be answered. Unfortunately, in the attitude of the
European colonist toward the native, South Africa has a race problem
even more stern than that of our own Southern states. As for religion we
not only find paganism and Mohammedanism, but we also see Catholicism
arrayed against Protestantism, and perhaps most interesting of all, a
definite movement toward the enhancement of a native Ethiopian church,
with the motto "Africa for the Africans." Let us add to all this
numerous social problems, such as polygamy, the widespread sale of rum,
and all the train of African superstition, and we shall see that any one
who works in Africa in the new day must not only be a person of keen
intelligence and Christian character, but also one with some genuine
vision and statesmanship. Workers of this quality, if they can be found,
will be needed not by the scores or hundreds, but by the thousands and
tens of thousands. No larger mission could come to a young Negro in
America trained in Christian study than to make his or her life a part
of the redemption of the great fatherland. The salvation of Africa is at
once the most pressing problem before either the Negro race or the
Kingdom of Christ. Such a worker as we have tried to portray was Nora
Gordon. It is to be hoped that not one but thousands like her will
arise. Even now we can see the beginning of the fulfilment of the
prophecy, "Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch
out her hands unto God."
[Illustration: META WARRICK FULLER]
META WARRICK FULLER
IV.
META WARRICK FULLER[B]
The state of Massachusetts has always been famous for its history and
literature, and especially rich in tradition is the region around
Boston. On one side is Charlestown, visited yearly by thousands who make
a pilgrimage to the Bunker Hill Monument. Across the Charles River is
Cambridge, the home of Harvard University, and Longfellow, and Lowell,
and numerous other men whose work has become a part of the nation's
heritage. If one will ride on through Cambridge and North Cambridge and
Arlington, he will come to Lexington, where he will find in the little
Lexington Common one of the most charming spots of ground in America.
Overlooking this he will see the Harrington House, and all around other
memorials of the Revolution. Taking the car again and riding about seven
miles more he will come to Concord, and here he will catch still more of
the flavor of the eighteenth century. Walking from the center of the
town down Monument Street (he _must_ walk now; there is no trolley, and
a carriage or automobile does not permit one to linger by the wayside),
he will come after a while to the Old Manse, once the home of Emerson
and of Hawthorne, and then see just around the corner the Concord Bridge
and the statue of the Minute Man. There is a new bridge now, one of
concrete; the old wooden one, so long beloved, at length became unsafe
and had to be replaced. In another direction from the center of the town
runs Lexington Road, within about half a mile down which one will see
the later homes of Emerson and Hawthorne as well as that of Louisa May
Alcott. Near the Alcott House, back among the trees, is a quaint little
structure much like a Southern country schoolhouse--the so-called
Concord School of Philosophy, in which Emerson once spoke. It is all a
beautiful country--beautiful most of all for its unseen glory. One gives
himself up to reflection; he muses on Evangeline and the Great Stone
Face and on the heroic dead who did not die in vain--until a lumbering
truck-car on the road calls him back from it all to the workaday world
of men.
It is in this state of Massachusetts, so rich in its tradition, that
there resides the subject of the present sketch. About halfway between
Boston and Worcester, in the quiet, homelike town of Framingham, on a
winding road just off the main street, lives Meta Warrick Fuller, the
foremost sculptor of the Negro race.
There are three little boys in the family. They keep their mother very
busy; but they also make her very happy. Buttons have to be sewed on and
dinners have to be prepared for the children of an artist just as well
as for those of other people; and help is not always easy to get. But
the father, Dr. S. C. Fuller, a distinguished physician, is also
interested in the boys, so that he too helps, and the home is a happy
one.
At the top of the house is a long roomy attic. This is an improvised
studio--or, as the sculptor would doubtless say, the workshop. Hither,
from the busy work of the morning, comes the artist for an hour or half
an hour of modeling--for rest, and for the first effort to transfer to
the plastic clay some fleeting transient dream.
Meta Warrick Fuller was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 9,
1877. For four years she attended the Pennsylvania School of Industrial
Art, and it was at this institution that she first began to force
serious recognition of her talent. Before very long she began to be
known as a sculptor of the horrible, one of her first original pieces
being a head of Medusa, with a hanging jaw, beads of gore, and eyes
starting from their sockets. At her graduation in 1898 she won a prize
for metal work by a crucifix upon which hung the figure of Christ in
agony, and she also won honorable mention for her work in modeling. In a
post-graduate year she won a much coveted prize in modeling. In 1899
Meta Warrick (then best known by her full name, Meta Vaux Warrick) went
to Paris, where she worked and studied three years. Her work brought her
in contact with many other artists, among them Augustus St. Gaudens, the
sculptor of the Robert Gould Shaw Monument at the head of Boston Common.
Then there came a day when by appointment the young woman went to see
Auguste Rodin, who after years of struggle and dispraise had finally won
recognition as the foremost sculptor in France if not in the world. The
great man glanced one after another at the pieces that were presented to
him, without very evident interest. At length, thrilled by the figure
in "Silent Sorrow," sometimes referred to as "Man Eating His Heart Out,"
Rodin beamed upon the young woman and said, "Mademoiselle, you _are_ a
sculptor; you have the sense of form." With encouragement from such a
source the young artist worked with renewed vigor, looking forward to
the time when something that she had produced should win a place in the
Salon, the great national gallery in Paris. "The Wretched," one of the
artist's masterpieces, was exhibited here in 1903, and along with it
went "The Impenitent Thief." This latter production was demolished in
1904, after meeting with various unhappy accidents. In the form as
presented, however, the thief, heroic in size, hung on the cross torn by
anguish. Hardened, unsympathetic, and even defiant, he still possessed
some admirable qualities of strength, and he has remained one of the
sculptor's most powerful conceptions. In "The Wretched" seven figures
greet the eye. Each represents a different form of human anguish. An old
man, worn by hunger and disease, waits for death. A mother yearns for
the loved ones she has lost. A man bowed by shame fears to look upon his
fellow-creatures. A sick child suffers from some hereditary taint. A
youth is in despair, and a woman is crazed by sorrow. Over all is the
Philosopher who suffers perhaps more keenly than the others as he views
the misery around them, and who, powerless to relieve it, also sinks
into despair.
Other early productions were similarly characterized by a strongly
romantic quality. "Silent Sorrow" has already been remarked in passing.
In this a man, worn and gaunt and in despair, is represented as leaning
over and actually eating out his own heart. "Man Carrying Dead Body" is
in similar vein. The sculptor is moved by the thought of one who will be
spurred on by the impulse of duty to the performance of some task not
only unpleasant but even loathsome. She shows a man bearing across his
shoulder the body of a comrade that has evidently lain on the
battlefield for days. The thing is horrible, and the man totters under
the great weight; but he forces his way onward until he can give it
decent burial. Another early production was based on the ancient Greek
story of Oedipus. This story was somewhat as follows: Oedipus was the
son of Laius and Jocasta, king and queen of Thebes. At his birth an
oracle foretold that the father Laius would be killed by his son. The
child was sent away to be killed by exposure, but in course of time was
saved and afterwards adopted by the King of Corinth. When he was grown,
being warned by an oracle that he would kill his father and marry his
mother, he left home. On his journey he met Laius and slew him in the
course of an altercation. Later, by solving the riddle of the sphinx, he
freed Thebes from distress, was made king of the city, and married
Jocasta. Eventually the terrible truth of the relationship became known
to all. Jocasta hanged herself and Oedipus tore out his eyes. The
sculptor portrays the hero of the old legend at the very moment that he
is thus trying to punish himself for his crime. There is nothing
delicate or pretty about all such work as this. It is grewsome in fact,
and horrible; but it is also strong and intense and vital. Its merit was
at once recognized by the French, and it gave Meta Warrick a recognized
place among the sculptors of America.
On her return to America the artist resumed her studies at the School of
Industrial Art, winning in 1904 the Battles first prize for pottery. In
1907 she produced a series of tableaux representing the advance of the
Negro for the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition, and in 1913 a group
for the New York State Emancipation Proclamation Commission. In 1909 she
became the wife of Dr. Solomon C. Fuller, of Framingham, Massachusetts.
A fire in 1910 unfortunately destroyed some of her most valuable pieces
while they were in storage in Philadelphia. Only a few examples of her
early work, that happened to be elsewhere, were saved. The artist was
undaunted, however, and by May, 1914, she had sufficiently recovered
from the blow to be able to hold at her home a public exhibition of her
work.
After this fire a new note crept into the work of Meta Warrick Fuller.
This was doubtless due not so much to the fire itself as to the larger
conception of life that now came to the sculptor with the new duties of
marriage and motherhood. From this time forth it was not so much the
romantic as the social note that was emphasized. Representative of the
new influence was the second model of the group for the Emancipation
Proclamation Commission. A recently emancipated Negro youth and maiden
stand beneath a gnarled, decapitated tree that has what looks almost
like a human hand stretched over them. Humanity is pushing them forth
into the world while at the same time the hand of Destiny is restraining
them in the full exercise of their freedom. "Immigrant in America" is in
somewhat similar vein. An American woman, the mother of one strong
healthy child, is shown welcoming to the land of plenty the foreigner,
the mother of several poorly nourished children. Closely related in
subject is the smaller piece, "The Silent Appeal," in which a mother
capable of producing and caring for three sturdy children is shown as
making a quiet demand for the suffrage and for any other privileges to
which a human being is entitled. All of these productions are clear cut,
straightforward, and dignified.
In May, 1917, Meta Warrick Fuller took second prize in a competition
under the auspices of the Massachusetts Branch of the Woman's Peace
Party, her subject being "Peace Halting the Ruthlessness of War." War is
personified as on a mighty steed and trampling to death numberless human
beings. In one hand he holds a spear on which he has transfixed the head
of one of his victims. As he goes on his masterful career Peace meets
him and commands him to cease his ravages. The work as exhibited was in
gray-green wax and was a production of most unusual spirit.
Among other prominent titles are "Watching for Dawn," a conception of
remarkable beauty and yearning, and "Mother and Child." An early
production somewhat detached from other pieces is a head of John the
Baptist. This is one of the most haunting creations of Mrs. Fuller. In
it she was especially successful in the infinite yearning and pathos
that she somehow managed to give to the eyes of the seer. It bears the
unmistakable stamp of power.
In this whole review of this sculptor's work we have indicated only the
chief titles. She is an indefatigable worker and has produced numerous
smaller pieces, many of these being naturally for commercial purposes.
As has been remarked, while her work was at first romantic and often
even horrible, in recent years she has been interested rather in social
themes. There are those, however, who hope that she will not utterly
forsake the field in which she first became distinguished. Through the
sternness of her early work speaks the very tragedy of the Negro race.
In any case it is pleasant to record that the foremost sculptor of the
race is not only an artist of rank but also a woman who knows and
appreciates in the highest possible manner the virtues and the beauties
of the home.
FOOTNOTE:
[B] For the further pursuit of this and related subjects the attention
of the reader is invited to the author's "The Negro in Literature and
Art" (Duffield & Co., New York, N. Y., 1918).
[Illustration: MARY McLEOD BETHUNE]
MARY McLEOD BETHUNE
V.
MARY McLEOD BETHUNE
On October 3, 1904, a lone woman, inspired by the desire to do something
for the needy ones of her race and state, began at Daytona, Florida, a
training school for Negro girls. She had only one dollar and a half in
money, but she had faith, energy, and a heart full of love for her
people. To-day she has an institution worth not less than one hundred
thousand dollars, with plans for extensive and immediate enlargement,
and her school is one of the best conducted and most clear-visioned in
the country. Such has been the result of boundless energy and thrift
joined to an unwavering faith in God.
Mary McLeod was born July 10, 1875, in a three-room log cabin on a
little cotton and rice farm about three miles from Mayesville, South
Carolina, being one in the large family of Samuel and Patsy McLeod.
Ambitious even from her early years, she yearned for larger and finer
things than her environment afforded; and yet even the life that she
saw around her was to prove a blessing in disguise, as it gave to her
deeper and clearer insight into the problems, the shortcomings, and the
needs of her people. In course of time she attended a little mission
school in Mayesville, and she was converted at the age of twelve. Later
she was graduated at Scotia Seminary, Concord, North Carolina, and then
she went to the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. In the years of her
schooling she received some assistance from a scholarship given by Miss
Mary Chrisman, a dressmaker of Denver, Colorado. Mary McLeod never
forgot that she had been helped by a working woman. Some day she
intended to justify that faith, and time has shown that never was a
scholarship invested to better advantage.
In 1898 Mary McLeod was married. She became the mother of one son. Not
long after, the family moved to Palatka, Florida. Now followed the hard
years of waiting, of praying, of hoping; but through it all the earnest
woman never lost faith in herself, nor in God. She gained experience in
a little school that she taught, she sang with unusual effect in the
churches of the town, and she took part in any forward movement or
uplift enterprise that she could. All the while, however, she knew that
the big task was yet to come. She prayed, and hoped, and waited.
By the fall of 1904 it seemed that the time had come. In a little rented
house, with five girls, Mrs. Bethune began what is now the Daytona
Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls. By means of concerts
and festivals the first payment of five dollars was made on the present
site, then an old dump-pile. With their own hands the teacher and the
pupils cleared away much of the rubbish, and from the first they invited
the co-operation of the people around them by lending a helping hand in
any way they could, by "being neighborly." In 1905 a Board of Trustees
was organized and the school was chartered. In 1907 Faith Hall, a
four-story frame house, forty by fifty feet, was "prayed up, sung up,
and talked up;" and we can understand at what a premium space was in the
earlier days when we know that this building furnished dormitory
accommodations for teachers and students, dining-room, reading room,
storerooms, and bathrooms. To the rear of Faith Hall was placed a
two-story structure containing the school kitchen and the domestic
science room. In 1909 the school found it necessary to acquire a farm
for the raising of live stock and vegetables and for the practical
outdoor training of the girls. After six weeks of earnest work the
twelve-acre tract in front of the school was purchased. In 1914 a Model
Home was built. In this year also an additional west farm of six acres,
on which was a two-story frame building, was needed, asked for and
procured. In March, 1918, the labors of fourteen years were crowned by
the erection and dedication of a spacious auditorium; and among the
speakers at the dedication were the Governor of Florida and the
Vice-President of the United States. Efforts now look forward to a great
new dormitory for the girls.
Such a bare account of achievements, however, by no means gives one an
adequate conception of the striving and the hopings and the praying that
have entered into the work. To begin with, Daytona was a strategic place
for the school. There was no other such school along the entire east
coast of Florida, and as a place of unusual beauty and attractiveness
the town was visited throughout the winter by wealthy tourists. From the
very first, however, the girls were trained in the virtues of the home,
and in self-help. Great emphasis was placed on domestic science, and
not only for this as an end in itself, but also as a means for the
larger training in cleanliness and thrift and good taste. "We notice
strawberries are selling at fifty and sixty cents a quart," said a
visitor, "and you have a splendid patch. Do you use them for your
students or sell them?" "We never eat a quart when we can get fifty
cents for them," was the reply. "We can take fifty cents and buy a bone
that will make soup for us all, when a quart of berries would supply
only a few."
For one interested in education few pictures could be more beautiful
than that of the dining-room at the school in the morning of a day in
midterm. Florida is warm often even in midwinter; nevertheless, rising
at five gives one a keen appetite for the early breakfast. The ceiling
is low and there are other obvious disadvantages; but over all is the
spirit of good cheer and of home. The tablecloths are very white and
clean; flowers are on the different tables; at the head of each a
teacher presides over five or six girls; the food is nourishing and
well-prepared; and one leaves with the feeling that if he had a sister
or daughter he would like for her to have the training of some such
place as this.