THE NEW RACE CONSCIOUSNESS.
_The Negro’s Own Radicalism_
Twenty years ago all Negroes known to the white publicists of America
could be classed as conservatives on all the great questions on which
thinkers differ. In matters of industry, commerce, politics, religion,
they could be trusted to take the backward view. Only on the question of
the Negro’s “rights” could a small handful be found bold enough to be
tagged as “radicals”—and they were howled down by both the white and
colored adherents of the conservative point of view. Today Negroes
differ on all those great questions on which white thinkers differ, and
there are Negro radicals of every imaginary stripe—agnostics, atheists,
I.W.W.’s Socialists, Single Taxers, and even Bolshevists.
In the good old days white people derived their knowledge of what
Negroes were doing from those Negroes who were nearest to them,
generally their own selected exponents of Negro activity or of their
white point of view. A classic illustration of this kind of knowledge
was afforded by the Republican Party; but the Episcopal Church, the
Urban League, or the U. S. Government would serve as well. Today the
white world is vaguely, but disquietingly, aware that Negroes are awake,
different and perplexingly uncertain. Yet the white world by which they
are surrounded retains its traditional method of interpreting the mass
by the Negro nearest to themselves in affiliation or contact. The
Socialist party thinks that the “unrest” now apparent in the Negro
masses is due to the propaganda which its adherents support, and
believes that it will function largely along the lines of socialist
political thought. The great dailies, concerned mainly with their chosen
task of being the mental bellwethers of the mob, scream “Bolshevist
propaganda” and flatter themselves that they have found the true cause;
while the government’s unreliable agents envisage it as “disloyalty.”
The truth, as usual, is to be found in the depths; but there they are
all prevented from going by mental laziness and that traditional
off-handed, easy contempt with which white men in America, from scholars
like Lester Ward to scavengers like Stevenson, deign to consider the
colored population of twelve millions.
In the first place, the cause of “radicalism” among American Negroes is
international. But it is necessary to draw clear distinctions at the
outset. The function of the Christian church is international. So is
art, war, the family, rum and the exploitation of labor. But none of
these is entitled to extend the mantle of its own peculiar
“internationalism” to cover the present case of the Negro
discontent—although this has been attempted. The international Fact to
which Negroes in America are now reacting is not the exploitation of
laborers by capitalists; but the social, political and economic
subjection of colored peoples by white. It is not the Class Line, but
the Color Line, which is the incorrect but accepted expression for the
Dead Line of racial inferiority. This fact is a fact of Negro
consciousness as well as a fact of externals. The international Color
Line is the practice and theory of that doctrine which holds that the
best stocks of Africa, China, Egypt and the West Indies are inferior to
the worst stocks of Belgium, England and Italy, and must hold their
lives, lands and liberties upon such terms and conditions as the white
races may choose to grant them.
On the part of the whites, the motive was originally economic; but it is
no longer purely so. All the available facts go to prove that, whether
in the United States or in Africa or China, the economic subjection is
without exception keener and more brutal when the exploited are black,
brown and yellow, than when they are white. And the fact that black,
brown and yellow also exploit each other brutally whenever Capitalism
has created the economic classes of plutocrat and proletarian should
suffice to put purely economic subjection out of court as the prime
cause of racial unrest. For the similarity of suffering has produced in
all lands where whites rule colored races a certain similarity of
sentiment, viz.: a racial revulsion of racial feeling. The peoples of
those lands begin to feel and realize that they are so subjected because
they are members of races condemned as “inferior” by their Caucasian
overlords. The fact presented to their minds is one of race, and in
terms of race do they react to it. Put the case to any Negro by way of
test and the answer will make this clear.
The great World War, by virtue of its great advertising campaign for
democracy and the promises which were held out to all subject peoples,
fertilized the Race Consciousness of the Negro people into the stage of
conflict with the dominant white idea of the Color Line. They took
democracy at its face value—which is—equality. So did the Hindus,
Egyptians and West Indians. This is what the hypocritical advertisers of
democracy had not bargained for. The American Negroes, like the other
darker peoples, are presenting their checques and trying to “cash in,”
and delays in that process, however unavoidable to the paying tellers,
are bound to beget a plentiful lack of belief in either their intention
or their ability to pay. Hence the run on Democracy’s bank—“the Negro
unrest” of the newspaper paragraphers.
Undoubtedly some of these newly-awakened Negroes will take to Socialism
and Bolshevism. But here again the reason is racial. Since they suffer
racially from the world as at present organized by the white race, some
of their ablest hold that it is “good play” to encourage and give aid to
every subversive movement within that white world which makes for its
destruction “as it is.” For by its subversion they have much to gain and
nothing to lose. Yet they build on their own foundations. Parallel with
the dogma of Class-Consciousness they run the dogma of
Race-Consciousness. And they dig deeper. For the roots of
Class-Consciousness inhere in a temporary economic order; whereas the
roots of Race-Consciousness must of necessity survive any and all
changes in the economic order. Accepting biology, as a fact, their view
is the more fundamental. At any rate, it is that view with which the
white world will have to deal. —The _New Negro_, October, 1919.
_Race First Versus Class First_
“In the old days white people derived their knowledge of what Negroes
were doing from those Negroes who were nearest to them, largely their
own selected exponents of Negro activity or of their white point of
view. * * * Today the white world is vaguely, but disquietingly, aware
that Negroes are awake; different, but perplexingly uncertain. Yet the
white world by which they are surrounded retains its traditional method
of interpreting the mass by the Negro nearest to themselves in
affiliation or contact. The Socialist party still persists in thinking
that the unrest now apparent in the Negro masses is due to the
propaganda which its paid adherents support, and believes that the
unrest will function largely along the lines of Socialist political
thought.” It is necessary to insist on this point today when the
Socialist party of America has secretly subsidized both a magazine and a
newspaper to attempt to cut into the splendid solidarity which Negroes
are achieving in response to the call of racial necessity. It is
necessary to point out that “radical” young Negroes may betray the
interests of the race into alien hands just as surely as “the old
crowd.” For, after all, the essence of both betrayals consists in making
the racial requirements play second fiddle to the requirements dictated
as best for it by other groups with other interests to serve. The fact
that one group of alien interests is described as “radical” and the
other as “reactionary” is of very slight value to us.
In the days when the Socialist Party of America was respectable,
although it never drew lines of racial separation in the North, it
permitted those lines to be drawn in the South. It had no word of
official condemnation for the Socialists of Tennessee who prevented
Theresa Malkiel in 1912 from lecturing to Negroes on Socialism either in
the same hall with them or in meetings of their own. It was the national
office of the party which in that same presidential year refused to
route Eugene V. Debs in the South because that Grand Old Man let it be
known that he would not remain silent on the race question while in the
South. They wanted the votes of the white South then, and were willing
to betray by silence the principles of inter-racial solidarity which
they espoused on paper.
Now, when their party has shrunk considerably in popular support and
sentiment, they are willing to take up our cause. Well, we thank honest
white people everywhere who take up our cause, but we wish them to know
that we have already taken it up ourselves. While they were refusing to
diagnose our case we diagnosed it ourselves, and, now that we have
prescribed the remedy—Race Solidarity—they come to us with their
prescription—Class Solidarity. It is too late, gentlemen! This racial
alignment is all our own product, and we have no desire to turn it over
to you at this late day, when we are beginning to reap its benefits. And
if you are simple enough to believe that those among us who serve your
interests ahead of ours have any monopoly of intellect or information
along the lines of modern learning, then you are the greater gulls
indeed.
We can respect the Socialists of Scandinavia, France, Germany or England
on their record. But your record so far does not entitle you to the
respect of those of us who can see all around a subject. We say Race
First, because you have all along insisted on Race First and class after
when you didn’t need our help. We reproduce below a brief portion of
your record in those piping times of peace, and ask you to explain it.
If you are unable to do so, set your lackeys to work; they may be able
to do it in terms of their own “radical scientific” surface slush. The
following is taken from the majority report of one of your national
committees during one of your recent national conventions. It was signed
by Ernest Untermann and J. Stitt Wilson, representing the West, and
Joshua Wanhope, editor of the _Call_, and Robert Hunter, representing
the East, and it was adopted as a portion of the party program. We learn
from it that—
“Race feeling is not so much a result of social as of biological
evolution. It does not change essentially with changes of economic
systems. It is deeper than any class feeling and will outlast the
capitalist system. It persists even after race prejudice has been
outgrown. It exists not because the capitalists nurse it for economic
reasons, but the capitalists rather have an opportunity to nurse it
for economic reasons because it exists as a product of biology. It is
bound to play a role in the economics of the future society. If it
should not assert itself in open warfare under a Socialist form of
society, it will nevertheless lead to a rivalry of races for expansion
over the globe as a result of the play of natural and sexual
selection. We may temper this race feeling by education, but we can
never hope to extinguish it altogether. Class-consciousness must be
learned, but race consciousness is inborn and cannot be wholly
unlearned. A few individuals may indulge in the luxury of ignoring
race and posing as utterly raceless humanitarians, but whole races
never. Where races struggle for the means of life, racial animosities
cannot be avoided. Where working people struggle for jobs,
self-preservation enforces its decrees. Economic and political
considerations lead to racial fights and to legislation restricting
the invasion of the white man’s domain by other races.”
It is well that the New Negro should know this, since it justifies him
in giving you a taste of your own medicine. The writer of these lines is
also a Socialist; but he refuses in this crisis of the world’s history
to put either Socialism or your party above the call of his race. And he
does this on the very grounds which you yourselves have given in the
document quoted above. Also because he is not a fool. —March 27th, 1920.
_An Open Letter to the Socialist Party of New York City_
Gentlemen: During 1917 the white leaders of the Republican party were
warned that the Negroes of this city were in a mood unfavorable to the
success of their party at the polls and that this mood was likely to
last until they changed their party’s attitude toward the Negro masses.
They scouted this warning because the Negroes whom they had selected to
interpret Negro sentiment for them still confidently assured them that
there had been no change of sentiment on the part of the Negro people,
and white politicians did not think it necessary to come and find out
for themselves. Consequently they were lied to by those whose bread and
butter depended on such lying. Then came the mayoralty campaign, and,
when it was too late they discovered their mistake. At a memorable
meeting at Palace Casino John Purroy Mitchell, the candidate of the
Republican party, and Theodore Roosevelt, its idol, were almost hissed
off the stage, while the Mitchell outdoor speakers found it impossible
to speak on the street corners of Harlem. The party went down to defeat
and Judge Hylan was elected.
All this is recent history, and it is called to your attention at this
time only because you are in danger of making a similar costly mistake.
You, too, have selected Negro spokesmen on whose word you choose to rely
for information as to the tone and temper of Negro political sentiment.
You have chosen to adopt the same faulty method of the white Republican
politicians, and you do not care to go behind the word of your selected
exponents of Negro thought and feeling. Yet the pitiful vote which you
polled in the last election might have warned you that something had
gone wrong in your arrangements. What that something is we shall now
proceed to show you—if you are still able to see.
During the recent world war the Negro in America was taught that while
white people spoke of patriotism, religion, democracy and other sounding
themes, they remained loyal to one concept above all others, and that
was the concept of race. Even in the throes of war, and on
the battlefields of France it was “race first” with them. Out of this
realization was born the new Negro ideal of “race first” for us. And
today, whether Negroes be Catholics or Protestants, capitalists or wage
workers, Republicans or Democrats, native or foreign-born, they begin
life anew on this basis. Alike in their business alignments, their
demands on the government and political parties, and in their courageous
response to race rioters, they are responding to this sentiment which
has been bred by the attitude of white men here and everywhere else
where white rules black. To be sure, neither Burleson nor Palmer have
told you or the rest of the white world this. The Angle-Saxon white man
is a notorious hypocrite; and they have preferred to prate of
Bolshevism—your “radicalism”—rather than tell the truth of racialism,
our “radicalism,” because this was an easier explanation, more in
keeping with official stupidity. But we had supposed that you were
intelligent enough to find this out. Evidently, you were not.
Your official Negro exponents, on behalf of their bread and butter, have
seized on this widely-published official explanation to make you believe
that the changed attitude of the Negro masses was due to the propaganda
which you were paying them (at their published request) to preach. But
this is a lie. Don’t take our word for it. Do some reading on your own
account. Get a hundred different Negro newspapers and magazines, outside
of those which you have subsidized, and study their editorial and other
pronouncements, and you will see that this is so.
But let us come nearer home. The propaganda of Socialism has been
preached in times past in Harlem by different people without awakening
hostility of any sort. Today it elicits a hostility which is outspoken.
Send up and see; then ask yourselves the reason. You will find a Negro
Harlem reborn, with business enterprises and cultural arrangements. And
these things have been established without any help from you or those
who eat your bread. Even the work of Socialist propaganda was neglected
by you between 1912 and 1917. Consult your own memories and the columns
of the Call.
All these things are the recent products of the principle of “race
first.” And among them the biggest is the Universal Negro Improvement
Association, with its associate bodies, the Black Star Line and the
Negro Factories Corporation. No movement among American Negroes since
slavery was abolished has ever attained the gigantic proportions of
this. The love and loyalty of millions go out to it as well as the cold
cash of tens of thousands. Yet your Negro hirelings have seen fit to use
the organs which you have given them to spread Socialist propaganda for
the purpose of attacking all these things, and the Black Star Line in
particular. Do you wonder now that they meet with such outspoken
opposition that they have been driven to seek an underhanded alliance
with the police (as your Negro Socialist organ avows in its latest
issue)? Isn’t that a glorious alliance for purposes of Negro propaganda?
When such things can happen you may depend upon it that someone has been
fooling you.
And, just as the white Republicans did, you have assumed that those whom
chance or change brought your way have, somehow, achieved a monopoly of
the intellect and virtue of the Negro race. Do you think that this is
sound sense on your part? Of course, it was natural that they should
tell you so. But was it natural for you to be so simple as to believe
it? On March 27 this newspaper in an editorial quoted a passage from one
of your official documents showing that the white men of your party
officially put “race first” rather than “class first,” which latter
phrase is your henchmen’s sole contribution to “sociology”—for us. The
quoted passage cuts the very heart out of their case. And yet, those
whom you have selected to represent you are so green and sappy in their
Socialism that, although six weeks have elapsed since this was hurled at
their thick heads, not one of them has yet been able to trace to its
source, this quotation from one of your own official documents. Think of
it! And in the meantime you yourselves are such “easy marks” that you
believe them, on their own assertion, to be the ablest among the Negroes
of America. It is not easy to decide which of the two groups is the
bigger joke—you or they.
You have constantly insisted that “there is no race problem, only an
economic problem,” but you will soon be in a fair way to find out
otherwise. Some day you will, perhaps, have learned enough to cease
being “suckers” for perpetual candidates who dickered with the Democrats
up to within a month of “flopping” to your party only because they
“couldn’t make it” elsewhere; some day, perhaps, you will know enough to
put Socialism’s cause in the hands of those who will refrain from using
your party’s organ for purposes of personal pique, spite and venom. When
that day dawns Socialism will have a chance to be heard by Negroes on
its merits. And even now, if you should send anyone up here (black or
white) to put the cause of Karl Marx, freed from admixture of rancor and
hatred of the Negro’s own defensive racial propaganda, you may find that
it will have as good a chance of gaining adherents as any other
political creed. But until you change your tactics or make your
exponents change theirs your case among us will be hopeless indeed.
—May, 1920.
_“Patronize Your Own.”_
The doctrine of “Race First,” although utilized largely by the Negro
business men of Harlem, has never received any large general support
from them. If we remember rightly, it was the direct product of the
out-door and indoor lecturers who flourished in Harlem between 1914 and
1916. Not all who were radical shared this sentiment. For instance, we
remember the debate between Mr. Hubert Harrison, then president of the
Liberty League, and Mr. Chandler Owen, at Palace Casino in December,
1918, in which the “radical” Owen fiercely maintained “that the doctrine
of race first was an indefensible doctrine”; Mr. Harrison maintaining
that it was the source of salvation for the race. Both these gentlemen
have run true to form ever since.
But to return to our thesis. The secondary principle of “patronize your
own,” flowing as it does from the main doctrine of “race first,” is
subject to the risk of being exploited dishonestly—particularly by
business men. And business men in Harlem have shown themselves capable
of doing this all the time. They seem to forget that “do unto others as
you would have them do unto you” is a part of the honest application of
this doctrine. Many of these men seem to want other black people to pay
them for being black. They seem to think that a dirty place and
imperfect service and 3 cents more a pound should be rewarded with
racial patronage regardless of these demerits.
On the other hand, there have grown up in Harlem Negro businesses,
groceries, ice cream parlors, etc., in which the application of prices,
courtesy and selling efficiency are maintained. This is the New Negro
business man, and we say “more power to him.” If this method of applying
the principle should continue to increase in popularity we are sure to
have in Harlem and elsewhere a full and flowing tide of Negro business
enterprises gladly and loyally supported by the mass of Negro purchasers
to their mutual benefit.
The Negro business man who is unintelligently selfish, makes a hash of
racial welfare in the attempt to achieve individual success. A case in
point is that of the brown-skinned dolls. Twenty years ago the Negro
child’s only choice was between a white Caucasian doll and the “nigger
doll.” On the lower levels the one was as cheap as the other. Then, a
step at a time came the picturesque poupee, variously described as the
“Negro doll,” the “colored doll” and the “brown-skinned doll.” This was
sold by white stores at an almost prohibitive price. It was made three
times as easy for the Negro child to idolize a white doll as to idolize
one with the features of its own race. When the principle of “Race
First” began to be proclaimed from scores of platforms and pulpits,
certain Negro business men saw a chance to benefit the race and,
incidently to reap a wonderful harvest of profits, by appealing to a
principle for whose support and maintenance, here and elsewhere, they
had never paid a cent. “Factories” for the production of brown-skinned
dolls began to spring up—most of the factoring consisting of receiving
these dolls from white factories and either stuffing them with saw dust,
excelsior or other filling, or merely changing them from one wrapper to
another. Bear in mind that the proclaimed object was to make it easier
for the Negro mother to teach race patriotism to her Negro child. Yet it
was soon notorious that these leeches were charging $3, $4 and $5 for
Negro dolls which could sell at prices ranging from 75 cents to $1.25,
and yet leave a handsome margin of profit.
The result is that today even in Negro Harlem nine out of ten Negro
children are forced to play with white dolls, because rapacious
scoundrels have been capitalizing the principle of “patronize your own”
in a one-sided way. By lowering their prices to a reasonable level, they
could extend their business tremendously. Failing to do this, they are
playing into the hands of the vendors of white dolls and making it much
easier for the Negro mother to select a white doll for her child;
limiting at once their own market and restricting the development of a
larger racial ideal.
_The Women of Our Race_
America owes much to the foreigner and the Negro in America owes even
more. For it was the white foreigner who first proclaimed that the only
music which America had produced that was worthy of the name was Negro
music. It naturally took some time for this truth to sink in, and, in
the meantime, the younger element of Negroes, in their weird worship of
everything that was white, neglected and despised their own race-music.
More than one college class had walked out, highly insulted, when their
white teachers had asked them to sing “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and “My
Lord, What a Morning.”
It is to be hoped that they now know better. But the real subject of
this editorial is not Negro music, but Negro women. If any foreigner
should come here from Europe, Asia or Africa and be privileged to pass
in review the various kinds of women who live in our America he would
pick out as the superior of them all—the Negro woman. It seems a great
pity that it should be left to the foreigner to “discover” the
Negro-American woman. For her own mankind have been seeing her for
centuries. And yet, outside of the vague rhetoric of the brethren in
church and lodge when they want her to turn their functions into
financial successes, and outside of Paul Dunbar and perhaps two other
poets, no proper amount of esthetic appreciation of her has been
forthcoming from their side.
Consider the facts of the case. The white women of America are charming
to look at-in the upper social classes. But even the Negro laundress,
cook or elevator-girl far surpasses her mistress in the matter of
feminine charms. No white woman has a color as beautiful as the dark
browns, light-browns, peach-browns, or gold and bronze of the Negro
girl. These are some of the things which make a walk through any Negro
section of New York or Washington such a feast of delight.
Then, there is the matter of form. The bodies and limbs of our Negro
women are, on the whole, better built and better shaped than those of
any other women on earth—except perhaps, the Egyptian women’s. And their
gait and movement would require an artist to properly describe. The
grace of their carriage is inimitable.
But their most striking characteristic is a feature which even the crude
mind of mere man can appreciate. It is, to quote “Gunga Din,” “the way
in which they carry their clothes.” They dress well—not merely in the
sense that their clothing is costly and good to look at; but in that
higher sense in which the Parisian woman is the best-dressed woman in
Europe. From shoes and stockings to shirtwaists and hats, they choose
their clothes with fine taste and show them off to the best advantage
when they put them on. That is why a man may walk down the avenue with a
Negro cook or factory girl without anyone’s being able to guess that she
has to work for a living. And, finally, in the matter of that
indefinable something which, for want of a better word, we call simply
“charm”—the Negro women are far ahead of all others in America. They
have more native grace, more winsomeness, greater beauty and more fire
and passion. These facts have already begun to attract attention, here
and elsewhere, and, eventually, the Negro woman will come into her own.
What say you, brothers! Shall we not love her while she is among us?
Shall we not bend the knee in worship and thank high heaven for the
great good fortune which has given us such sisters and sweethearts,
mothers and wives?
_To the Young Men of My Race_
The Negro is already at work on the problems of reconstruction. He finds
himself in the midst of a world which is changing to its very
foundations. Yet millions of Negroes haven’t now—and have never had—the
slightest knowledge or idea of what those foundations are. How can they
render effective aid to the world without understanding something of how
the world, or society, is arranged, how it runs, and how it is run?
No one, friendly or unfriendly, can deny that the Negroes of America do
wish to help in constructing this world of men and things which will
emerge from the Great War. They want to help, because they realize that
their standing and welfare and happiness in that world will very largely
depend upon what kind of world it is. They have not been happy, so far,
in America—nor, so far as the white man’s rule is concerned,—anywhere
else under it. And they want to be happy, if that be possible. For which
reason they want to help in the re-shaping of the world-to-be.
They feel the burdens put on them by the White Lords of subjection and
repression, of 39 cents worth of education a year in Alabama, of the
deep race hatred of the Christian Church, the Y.M.C.A. and the
Associated Press; of lynching in the land of “liberty,” disfranchisement
in “democratic” America and segregation on the Federal trains and in the
Federal departments. They feel that the world should be set free from
this machinery of mischief-for their sakes as well as that of the world.
Such is the state of mind of the Negro masses here. And now what does
this attitude of the Negro masses require? GUIDANCE! Guidance, shaping
and direction. Here is strength, here is power, here is a task to call
forth the sublimest heroism on the part of those who should lead them.
And what do we find? No guidance, no shaping of the course for these
millions. The blind may not safely lead the blind in these critical
times—and blind men are practically all that we have as leaders.
The old men whose minds are always retrospecting and reminiscing to the
past, who were “trained” to read a few dry and dead books which they
still fondly believe are hard to get—these do not know anything of the
modern world, its power of change and travel, and the mighty range of
its ideas. Its labor problems and their relation to wars and alliances
and diplomacy are not even suspected by these quaint fossils. They think
that they are “leading” Negro thought, but they could serve us better if
they were cradelled in cotton-wool, wrapped in faded roses, and laid
aside in lavender as mementoes of a dead past.
The young men must gird up their loins for the task of leadership and
leadership has its stern and necessary duties. The first of these is
TRAINING. Not in a night did the call come to Christ, not in a day was
He made fit to make the great sacrifice. It took thirty years of
preparation to fit him for the work of three. Even so, on you, young men
of Negro America, descends the duty of the great preparation. Get
education. Get it not only in school and in college, but in books and
newspapers, in market-places, institutions, and movements. Prepare by
knowing; and never think you know until you have listened to ten others
who know differently—and have survived the shock.
The young man’s second duty is IRREVERENCE. Reverence is in one sense,
respect for what is antiquated because it is antiquated. This race has
lived in a rut too long to reverence the rut. Oldsters love ruts because
they help them to “rub along,” they are easy to understand; they require
the minimum of exertion and brains, and they give the maximum of ease.
Young man! If you wish to be spiritually alert and alive; to get the
very best out of yourself—shun a rut as you would shun the plague! Never
bow the knee to Baal because Baal is in power; never respect wrong and
injustice because they are enshrined in “the sacred institutions of our
glorious land”; never have patience with either Cowardice or Stupidity
because they happen to wear venerable whiskers. Read, reason, and think
on all sides of all subjects. Don’t compare yourself with the runner
behind you on the road; always compare yourself with the one ahead; so
only will you go faster and farther. And set it before you, as a sacred
duty always to surpass the teachers that taught you—and this is the
essence of irreverence.
The last great duty is COURAGE. Dear man of my people, if all else
should fail you, never let _that_ fail. Much as you need preparation and
prevision you are more in need of Courage. This has been, and is yet, A
DOWNTRODDEN RACE. Do you know what a down-trodden race needs most? If
you are not sure, take down your Bible and read the whole story of
Gideon and his band. You will then understand that, as Dunbar, says:
“Minorities since time began
Have shown the better side of man;
And often, in the lists of time,
One Man has made a cause sublime.”
You will learn the full force of what another American meant when he
told the young men of his age:
“They are slaves who dare not choose
Hatred, scoffing and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think,
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.”
A people under the heels of oppression has more need of heroic souls
than one for whom the world is bright. It was in Egypt and in the
wilderness that Israel had need of Moses, Aaron and Joshua. No race
situated like ours, has any place of leadership for those who lack
courage, fortitude, heroism. You may have to turn your eyes away from
the fleshpots of Egypt; you may be called on to fight with wild beasts
at Ephesus; you may have to face starvation in the wilderness or
crucifixion on Calvary. Have the courage to do that which the occasion
demands when it comes. And I make you no promise that “in the end you
will win a glorious crown.” You may fail, fall and be forgotten. What of
it? When you think of our heroic dead on Messines Ridge, along the Aisne
and at Chateau Thierry—how does your heart act? It thrills! It thrills
because
“Manhood hath a larger span
And wider privilege of life than Man.”
and you, young Negro Men of America, you are striving to give the gift
of manhood to this race of ours.
The future belongs to the young men.
—January, 1919.