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LIGHT AHEAD FOR THE NEGRO
by
E. A. JOHNSON
Author of
_The School History of the Negro Race
Colored Soldiers in the Spanish American War
The Negro Almanac_
[Illustration]
The Grafton Press
New York
Copyright 1904 by
E. A. Johnson.
PREFACE
The author dedicates this work to the thousands of sympathetic and well
wishing friends of the Negro race. He is trying to show how the Negro
problem can be solved in peace and good will rather than by brutality.
His idea is that the Golden Rule furnishes the only solution.
He believes that at the bottom of southern society there is a vein of
sympathy and helpfulness for the Negro and that this feeling should be
cultivated and nourished that it may grow stronger and finally supplant
harsher sentiments.
There are two factions striving for the mastery of the south to-day,
one seeking political power on the idea that Negro manhood is to be
crushed and serfdom established, and the other willing that the Negro
should have a freeman’s chance and work out his destiny as best he can
with the powers God has given him. This faction is ready to give its
sympathy and help, and it is the efforts of this class that the author
desires to endorse and encourage.
The story weaved into the work is subordinate to the discussion of
facts, and not paramount; it is intended to be mild, thus putting it
in keeping with the character of the heroine whose deeds it portrays;
and should the day ever come when America can arise to the height of
adopting and following her sentiments, it will then indeed be the
“Sweet land of liberty,” for the black as well as the white man.
E. A. JOHNSON.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE LOST AIRSHIP--UNCONSCIOUSNESS, 1
II. TO EARTH AGAIN--ONE HUNDRED YEARS LATER, 6
III. AT THE PUBLIC LIBRARY WITH IRENE, 13
IV. NOW AND THEN, 21
V. A VISIT TO PUBLIC BUILDINGS, 99
VI. A RIDE WITH IRENE, 107
VII. DR. NEWELL AND WORK OF THE YOUNG LADIES’ GUILD, 111
VIII. WITH IRENE AGAIN, 116
IX. THE PRIZE ESSAY, 120
X. SAD NEWS FOR IRENE, 131
_Light Ahead for the Negro_
CHAPTER I
THE LOST AIRSHIP--UNCONSCIOUSNESS
From my youth up I had been impressed with the idea of working among
the Negroes of the Southern states. My father was an abolitionist
before the war and afterward an ardent supporter of missionary
efforts in the South, and his children naturally imbibed his spirit
of readiness and willingness at all times to assist the cause of the
freedmen.
I concluded in the early years of my young manhood that I could render
the Negroes no greater service than by spending my life in their midst,
helping to fit them for the new citizenship that had developed as a
result of the war. My mind was made up throughout my college course at
Yale; and, while I did not disclose my purpose, I resolved to go South
as soon as I was through college and commence my chosen life-work.
In keeping with this design, I kept posted on every phase of the
so-called “Negro problem”; I made it my constant study. When I had
finished college I made application to the Union Missionary Association
for a position as teacher in one of their Negro schools in a town in
Georgia, and after the usual preliminaries I received my certificate of
appointment.
It was June, 1906, the year that dirigible airships first came into
actual use, after the innumerable efforts of scores of inventors to
solve final problems, which for a long time seemed insurmountable. Up
to this time the automobile--now relegated to commercial uses, or,
like the bicycle, to the poorer classes--had been the favored toy
of the rich, and it was thought that the now common one hundred and
one hundred and fifty horse-power machines were something wonderful
and that their speed--a snail’s pace, compared with the airship--was
terrific. It will be remembered that inside of a few months after the
first really successful airships appeared a wealthy man in society
could hardly have hoped to retain his standing in the community without
owning one, or at least proving that he had placed an order for one
with a fashionable foreign manufacturer, so great was the craze for
them, and so widespread was the industry--thanks to the misfortune
of the poor devil who solved the problem and neglected to protect
his rights thoroughly. Through this fatal blunder on his part, their
manufacture and their use became world-wide, almost at once, in spite
of countless legal attempts to limit the production, in order to keep
up the cost.
A wealthy friend of mine had a ship of the finest Parisian make, the
American machines still being unfashionable, in which we had often made
trips together and which he ran himself. As I was ready to go to my
field of labor, he invited me to go with him to spend from Saturday to
Sunday in the City of Mexico, which I had never seen, and I accepted.
We started, as usual, from the new aërial pier at the foot of West
Fifty-ninth Street, New York City, then one of the wonders of the
world, about one o’clock, in the midst of a cloud of machines bound
for country places in different parts of the United States and we
were peacefully seated after dinner, enjoying the always exhilarating
sensation of being suspended in space without support--for my friend
had drawn the covering from the floor of clear glass in the car, which
was coming into use in some of the new machines--when there was a
terrific report. The motor had exploded!
We looked at each other in horror. This indeed was what made
air-travelling far-and-away the most exciting of sports. Human beings
had not yet come to regard with indifference accidents which occurred
in mid-air.
My friend picked his way through a tangled mass of machinery to the
instruments. We were rising rapidly and the apparatus for opening the
valve of the balloon was broken. Without saying a word, he started
to climb up the tangle of wire ropes to the valve itself; a very
dangerous proceeding, because many of the ropes were loosened from
their fastenings. We suddenly encountered a current of air that changed
our course directly east. (We had been steering south and had gone
about six hundred miles.) It drew us up higher and higher. I glanced
through the floor but the earth was almost indistinguishable, and was
disappearing rapidly. There was absolutely nothing that I could do. I
looked up again at my friend, who was clambering up rather clumsily, I
remember thinking at the moment. The tangle of ropes and wires looked
like a great grape vine. Just then the big ship gave a lurch. He
slipped and pitched forward, holding on by one hand. Involuntarily, I
closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, _he was gone_!
My feelings were indescribable. I commenced to lose consciousness,
owing to the altitude and the ship was ascending more rapidly every
moment.
Finally I became as one dead.