sadness. She was, as we have said, much more mature than her
schoolmates, and to her, somehow, the problem of the spiritual and
intellectual freedom of the bondsmen presented itself. Strange that
she should be so possessed by this problem! She had of course thought
of the possibility of working in China, or India, or Africa--but of
this, never!
In February a man who had been on Island No. 10 came to the Seminary
and told the girls of the hundreds of women and children there in
distress. Cabins and tents were everywhere. As many as three families,
with eight or ten children each, cooked their food in the same pot on
the same fire. Sometimes the women were peevish or quarrelsome; always
the children were ignorant and dirty. "What can a man do to help such
a suffering mass of humanity?" asked the speaker. "Nothing. A woman is
needed; nobody else will do." For the student listening so intently,
the cheery schoolrooms with their sweet associations faded; the vision
of foreign missions also vanished; and in their stead stood only a
pitiful black woman with a baby in her arms.
She reached Island No. 10 in November. The outlook was dismal enough.
The Sunday School at Belvidere of which she was a member pledged four
dollars a month toward her support; and this was all the salary in
sight. The Government had provided transportation and soldiers'
rations. That was in 1863, more than fifty years ago; but every year
since then, until 1916, in summer and winter, in sunshine and rain, in
the home and the church, with teaching and praying, feeding and
clothing, nursing and hoping and loving, Joanna P. Moore in one way or
another ministered to the needs of the Negro people of the South.
In April, 1864, her whole colony was removed to Helena, Arkansas. The
Home Farm was three miles from Helena. Here was gathered a great crowd
of women and children and helpless old men, all under the guard of a
company of soldiers in a fort near by. Thither went the missionary,
alone, except for her faith in God. She made an arbor with some rude
seats, nailed a blackboard to a tree, divided the people into four
divisions, and began to teach school. In the twilight every evening a
great crowd gathered around her cabin for prayers. A verse of the
Bible was read and explained, prayers were offered, one of the
sorrow-songs was chanted, and then the service was over.
Some Quaker workers were her friends in Helena, and in 1868 she went
to Lauderdale, Mississippi, to help the Friends in an orphan asylum.
Six weeks after her arrival the superintendent's daughter died, and
the parents left to take their child back to their Indiana home to
rest. Miss Moore was left in charge of the asylum. Cholera broke out.
Eleven children died within one week. She stood by her post. Often, as
she said, those who were well and happy when they retired, ere the
daylight came were in the cold grave, for they were buried the same
hour they died. Night after night the lone woman prayed to God in the
dark, and at length the fury of the plague was abated.
From time to time the failing health of her mother called her home,
and from 1870 to 1873 she once more taught school in the vicinity of
Belvidere. The first winter the school was in the country. "You can
never have a Sunday School in the winter," she was told. But she did;
in spite of the snow the house was crowded every Sunday; whole
families came in sleighs. Even at that the real work of the missionary
was still with the Negroes of the South. In her prayers and in her
public addresses they were always with her; and in 1873 friends in
Chicago made it possible for her to return to the work of her choice.
In 1877 the Woman's Baptist Home Mission Society honored itself by
giving to her its first commission.
Nine years she spent in the vicinity of New Orleans. Near Leland
University she found a small, one-room house. After buying a bed, a
table, two chairs, and a few cooking utensils, she began housekeeping.
Often she started out at six in the morning, not to return until dark.
Most frequently she read the Bible to those who could not read.
Sometimes she gave cheer to mothers busy over the washtub. Sometimes
she would teach the children to read or to sew. Often she would write
letters for those who had been separated from friends or kindred in
the dark days. She wrote hundreds and hundreds of such letters; and
once in a while, a very long while, came some response.
Most pitiful of all the objects she found in New Orleans were the old
women worn out with years of slavery. They were usually ragpickers who
ate at night old scraps for which they had begged during the day.
There was in the city an Old Ladies' Home; but this was not for
Negroes. A house was secured and the women taken in, Miss Moore and
her associates moving into the second story. Sometimes, very often,
there was real need; but sometimes, too, provisions came when it was
not known who sent them; money or boxes came from Northern friends who
had never seen the workers; and the little Negro children in the
Sunday Schools in New Orleans gave their pennies.
In 1878 Miss Moore started on a journey of exploration. In Atlanta Dr.
Robert at Atlanta Baptist Seminary (now Morehouse College) gave her
cheer; so did President Ware at Atlanta University. At Benedict in
Columbia she saw Dr. Goodspeed, President Tupper at Shaw in Raleigh,
and Dr. Corey in Richmond. In May she appeared at the Baptist
anniversaries, with fifteen years of missionary achievement already
behind her.
But each year brought its own sorrows and disappointments. She wanted
her Society to establish a training school for women; but the
objection was raised to this on the score that such an institution
would overlap the educational work of the American Baptist Home
Mission Society. Down in Louisiana of course it was not without danger
that a white woman attended a Negro Baptist Association in 1877; and
there were always sneers and jeers. At length, however, a training
school for mothers was opened in Baton Rouge. All went well for two
years; and then a notice with skull and crossbones was placed on the
gate. The woman who had worked through the cholera still stood firm;
but the students had gone. Sick at heart and worn out with waiting,
she left Baton Rouge and the state in which so many of her best years
had been spent.
Bible Band work was started in 1884, and _Hope_ in 1885. Just how live
the idea is to-day may be seen from the recent experience of one of
the representative colleges for young men. With a crowded Sunday
schedule, and with all the distraction of concerts, rhetoricals, and
athletics, with Y.M.C.A. meetings and required chapel services, with
church and Sunday School, thirty men voluntarily meet each week after
the required Sunday evening service for the study of the lessons in
_Hope_. This little paper, beginning with a circulation of five
hundred, has now reached a monthly issue of more than eighteen
thousand copies; and daily it brings its lesson of cheer to thousands
of mothers and children in the South. In connection with it all has
developed the Fireside School, than which few agencies have been more
potent for the salvation and uplift of the humble Negro home.
What wisdom has been gathered from the passing of fourscore years! On
almost every page of her tracts, her letters, her account of her life,
one finds quotations that for proverbial pith may be equaled only by
the words of Franklin or Lincoln or Booker Washington:--
The love of God gave me courage for myself and the rest of
mankind; therefore I concluded to invest in human souls. They
surely are worth more than anything else in the world.
Beloved friends, be hopeful, be courageous. God cannot use
discouraged people.
I am very thankful to-day that there has always been some one
weaker than myself along some line, some one that I could really
help and comfort.
The good news spread, not by telling what we were going to do,
but by praising God for what had been done.
So much singing in all our churches leaves too little time for
the Bible lesson. Do not misunderstand me. I do love music that
impresses the meaning of words. But no one climbs to heaven on
musical scales.
I thoroughly believe that the only way to succeed with any
vocation is to make it a part of your very self and weave it
into your every thought and prayer.
You must love before you can comfort and help.
There is no place too lowly or dark for our feet to enter, and
no place so high and bright but it needs the touch of the light
that we carry from the Cross.
How shall we measure such a life? Who can weigh love and hope and
service, and the joy of answered prayer? "An annual report of what?"
she once asked the secretary of her organization. "Report of tears
shed, prayers offered, smiles scattered, lessons taught, steps taken,
cheering words, warning words--tender, patient words for the little
ones, stern but loving tones for the wayward--songs of hope and songs
of sorrow, wounded hearts healed, light and love poured into dark sad
homes? Oh, Miss Burdette, you might as well ask me to gather up the
raindrops of last year or the petals that fall from the flowers that
bloomed. It is true I can send you a little stagnant water from the
cistern, and a few dried flowers; but if you want to know the
freshness, the sweetness, the glory, the grandeur, of our God-given
work, then you must come and keep step with us from early morn to
night for three hundred and sixty-five days in the year."
Until the very last she was on the roll of the active missionaries of
the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society. In the fall of 1915
she decided that she must once more see the schools in the South that
meant so much to her. In December she came again to her beloved
Spelman. While in Atlanta she met with an accident that still further
weakened her. After a few weeks, however, she went on to Jacksonville,
and then to Selma. There she passed.
* * * * *
"When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels
with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory.... Then
shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an
hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we
thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when
saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall
answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have
done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it
unto me."
VII
SOME CRITICS AND THEIR FALLACIES
It is the purpose of the present chapter to reply to some of the more
common of the arguments brought forward against the Negro. We shall by
no means attempt to cover the whole ground, or even pretend that in
every case we have summoned the most representative critics. At the
same time we feel that those that are adduced are fairly typical of
those of harsher view.
One of the noteworthy characteristics of discussion in recent years
has been a tendency to deny the ideals on which America was founded,
especially where the Negro was concerned. One of the frankest
statements along this line was a Fourth of July address in 1911 by no
less a person than Ex-President Eliot of Harvard University. This
distinguished citizen gave voice to an opinion which is just now
gaining more and more converts in this country, in effect this: The
Declaration of Independence is a wornout document; it never was meant
to be taken seriously; and, in the words of Rufus Choate, it is made
up simply of "glittering and sounding generalities of natural right."
The passage to which exception seems especially to be taken is this:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness." It will be observed that in a way each successive one of
the three clauses here explains the one preceding; that is to say, all
men are equal in the rights given to them by God, and these rights
consist in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The fathers
were not thinking about such things as that one child was born in a
palace and another in a hut, or that one was born with brilliant
intellect and the other with little power of mind. Certainly the
"facts submitted to a candid world" are based on no such principles as
these. The founders were talking about things moral. Each man deserved
at least that no other man should have power to declare that he _must_
live in a hut. In other words, each man deserved a man's chance in the
world.
So far as the Negro is concerned then we hold that the Declaration of
Independence is a very live document. More and more, however, within
recent years has it been the fashion to fix attention upon his
shortcomings, and this attitude has led some people to strange
conclusions. One of the most accessible statements of the adverse
point of view is "The Color Line," by Prof. William Benjamin Smith,
for years a teacher at Tulane University. This book is in no sense
better than many others. At the same time it was written by a man who
had broadened his scholarship in Europe, being the holder of a
doctor's degree from a German university, and who in his own studies
had emphasized such subjects as mathematics and philosophy. From such
a source one would at least expect some degree of consideration for
logic; and yet "The Color Line" but shows the lengths to which some
persons will go when they discuss the Negro. The central thesis seems
to be the following (p. 174): "Drawing the color line, firm and fast,
between the races, first of all in social relations, and then by
degrees in occupations also, is a natural process and a rational
procedure, which makes equally for the welfare of both." Professor
Smith remarks several Negroes of distinction, shows that in fact most
of them were not pure Negroes at all, but persons with an infusion of
white blood, and concludes (p. 44): "It seems vain to deny that the
mixed blood is notably more intelligent than the pure black; the
necessary inference is that the white blood with which it was mixed is
far more intelligent still." The same line of argument is used by Mr.
Alfred Holt Stone in his _Atlantic_ paper on "The Mulatto Factor in
the Race Problem," included in "Studies in the American Race Problem,"
as well as by Mr. E.B. Reuter in his recent study in the _American
Journal of Sociology_, "The Superiority of the Mulatto." "Have equal
opportunities," we are asked, "raised the Negroes in Pennsylvania to
the white level?" Education has been a complete failure. Professor
Smith visited a Negro school (p. 166): "An olive-colored young man was
at the board trying to explain to a mulatto woman, the only member of
the class, the mysterious nature of the perpendicular. He appeared
very earnest in his exposition, but unable to awaken any answering
intelligence." "The higher culture at 'colored universities' merely
spoils a plough-hand or house-maid." Finally (p. 259), "nearly forty
years of devoted and enthusiastic effort to elevate and educate the
Southern Negro lie stretched out behind us in a dead level of
failure."
This whole argument is guilty of the vicious fallacy of begging the
question by arguing in a circle. First we degrade human beings by the
curse of slavery for two hundred and fifty years, and then because
they are not advanced we argue that they have not the capacity to
rise. Far from being an advantage to both races the color line is the
curse of both. Obsessed by the Negro problem, the white South has
always been held back and still finds it impossible to think in the
large; while the Negro is daily met with such insults as shake the
very foundations of his citizenship. The argument on the mulatto goes
back to the circle already remarked. Everybody knows that in a country
predominantly white the quadroon has frequently been given some
advantage that his black friend did not have, from the time that one
was a house-servant and the other a field-hand; but no thorough test
in Negro schools has ever demonstrated that the black boy is
intellectually inferior to the fair one. This is all a part of the
general American snobbishness that places on the Negro the burden of
any blame or deficiency, but that claims for the white race any merit
that an individual may show, even while many advantages of citizenship
are withheld from both mulatto and Negro alike. Furthermore, and this
is a point not previously remarked in discussions of the Negro
problem, the element of genius that distinguishes the Negro artist of
mixed blood is most frequently one characteristically Negro rather
than Anglo-Saxon; note the romantic and elemental sculpture of Meta
Warrick Fuller and the mystical religious paintings of Henry O.
Tanner. As to labor, how can any one assert that the Negro in the
North has had an equal chance with the white man, in view of the
attitude of the labor unions? The whole matter of education represents
the circle worse than anything else. Would anybody who knows the South
contend for a moment that public school appropriations are evenly
divided between the white and black? And shall we allow one stupid
pupil in a poorly organized school to offset the brilliant attainments
in the foremost colleges in the country, from which institutions Negro
graduates are each year coming by the scores? Not a year passes now
but that some of these students win noteworthy honors, receive
valuable prizes, or take doctors' degrees. Let one observe in full
proof of this the educational number of the _Crisis_, published in
July of each year. The point about "colored universities" simply
represents a state of ignorance common throughout the South. The day
never was when Fisk and Knoxville and Morehouse simply crammed Greek
into unreceptive minds. No schools in the country have had a clearer
idea of their mission, or have done more to answer it with limited
facilities. The pity is that not one of a dozen representative
colleges has the beginning of an adequate endowment, and all have had
to do their work with the cheapest tools. And certainly such
leadership as the race has had, and such advance as the race has made,
have been due primarily to the large idea of Christian service behind
the missionary institutions.
Within recent years, however, there has developed a fear of the part
that the Negro is to play in American civilization. This was fairly
well stated in an article in the _Forum_ a few years ago by Mr. W.W.
Kenilworth, "Negro Influences in American Life." Mr. Kenilworth is
much disturbed. "Can it be," he asks, "that America is falling prey to
the collective soul of the Negro?" "It is unthinkable that the
increase of Negro population, the increased and unhampered (_sic_)
circumstances of Negro expression should not have an important
reaction on the white population." The pity is that the whole article
is based on unwarranted assumptions, and, in spite of some elements of
truth, the reasoning, condensed, is somewhat as follows:--
The Negro element is daily becoming more potent in American society.
American society is daily becoming more immoral.
Therefore at the door of the Negro may be laid the general increase of
divorce and all other evils of society.
Somewhat more subtle than all this is the criticism in Volume VII of
"The South in the Building of the Nation," in the article on "The
Intellectual and Literary Progress of the Negro" written by Mr. H.I.
Brock. The central thesis here is the following: "The Negro is mentally
quite sufficiently developed to use his brain with effect upon the
immediate and the concrete. He is not sufficiently developed to start
with the white man's generalizations, or more exactly, the formulas in
which these generalizations are expressed, and work down to the
concrete. He is in the class in arithmetic. He is not fit yet awhile
for that in algebra and analytics." In proof of this position it is
asserted that Booker T. Washington was in type and in fact "exactly
like Peter the successful barber and Walker who runs a profitable
carrier's business in a certain Southern town, though neither Peter nor
Walker can read or write." As for Frederick Douglass, what happened to
him "cannot be set down as his achievement. He was a sign and a symbol
held up for men to see. He was floated on the top of the abolition wave
into public office. He did not climb there." Phillis Wheatley was
"taught the trick of verse. Her verses were printed as a curiosity at
the time and her 'Poems' have no other interest." "Even Paul Laurence
Dunbar has a fame quite disproportionate to his actual place in the
catalogue of contemporary minor poets. He, too, is, in part, a
curiosity." The whole question at issue, so far as the country at large
is concerned, is "not so much how to advance the Negro as how to
prevent the Negro from retarding the upward tendency of the rest of the
population." All of his books and compositions so far "are like the
schoolboy's essay which gets into the school magazine; they are to be
considered as 'exercises,' not as achievements."
There is a very real criticism here, one deliberately frank and even
harsh, but deserving of attention. If we understand it, it says in
substance that the Negro in America has not yet developed the great
creative or organizing mind that points the way of civilization. He
has so far produced no Plato, no Jonathan Edwards, no Pierpont Morgan,
no Edison. The larger thought here will be considered in our next
chapter. Just now let us observe that the argument makes the familiar
assumption that because a thing never has been it never will be. All
America is crude, however. While she has made great advance in applied
science, she certainly has not as yet produced a Shakespeare or a
Beethoven. If America has not reached her heights after three hundred
years, she ought not to be impatient with the Negro after only fifty
years of opportunity. Furthermore, all signs go to prove the
assumption fundamentally false. We know of some of the younger men of
to-day who have not only mastered language and science, but who have
outshone brilliant groups of white students in pure philosophy. It
would be a miracle if this were the everyday occurrence. It is not;
but the fact that it is an occurrence at all means that the Negro is
at least capable of the highest things. Furthermore, it is not true
that everything that the Negro has written may be dismissed with a
wave of the hand as school boy exercises, though we grant that only a
beginning has been made. Give us time. Give us time! Within the next
fifty years we shall astound you!
VIII
THE PROMISE OF THE NEGRO
So far we have lightly touched upon some of the most important phases
of the life of the Negro people in America. We have looked at a people
whose ancestors were brought to the country against their own will and
suddenly thrust into the rising civilization of a new nation, and we
have looked at some of the more hopeful features of their life as well
as at some of their greatest problems. Even now, however, in spite of
untoward conditions there are those who honestly ask if the effort and
money that have been expended have been wisely invested. Those who
have spent most time on the problem only wish that ten times as much
had been done. Nevertheless for the sake of the honest seeker after
truth, we wish to answer one or two fundamental questions.