proprietors of the soil on the farms and plantations of the stricken
South, and dreams of "forty acres and a mule" for a long time
possessed the more ambitious only, in many instances, to meet a rude
awakening; but notwithstanding the fact that the system of renting
land, combined with the credit system of obtaining the necessities of
life while waiting for the production and sale of the crop, is not
conducive to the ownership of land on the part of the tenant;
notwithstanding the very natural tendency on the part of the Negro to
disassociate ideas of freedom and of tilling the soil, added to a
desire to segregate in large cities in place of branching out to the
sparsely settled districts of the great West and Northwest, there to
take up rich farming lands and by a pioneer life to mend his fortunes
in company with the peasants of other nations who are thus acquiring a
firm foothold and a competence for their descendants; we repeat--in
spite of the facts mentioned--before the close of the century the
Negro had accumulated farms and homes valued in the neighborhood of
seven hundred and fifty million dollars; personal property valued at
one hundred and seventy millions; and had raised eleven millions for
educational purposes. From these, and such other statistics as are
available, relative to the achievements of the Negro in the United
States during the nineteenth century, bearing in mind our first
proposition--the measure of the success of a people is the depths
from which it has come--we conclude that educationally, morally,
financially, the Negro has accomplished by means of the opportunities
at his command about all that could be expected of him or any other
race under similar conditions.
That the Negro has made mistakes goes without saying. All races as
well as all individuals have made them, but--"Let the dead past bury
its dead."
The great problem confronting this and future generations is and will
be, how to surpass or even equal our ancestors in bringing about
results that make for the upbuilding of sterling character; how with
our superior advantages to make the second forty years of freedom and
the entire future life proportionally worthy of honorable mention.
"Build to-day, then strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base,
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.
Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
And one boundless reach of sky."
THIRD PAPER.
DID THE AMERICAN NEGRO MAKE, IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, ACHIEVEMENTS
ALONG THE LINES OF WEALTH, MORALITY, EDUCATION, ETC., COMMENSURATE
WITH HIS OPPORTUNITIES? IF SO, WHAT ACHIEVEMENTS DID HE MAKE?
BY REV. J. W. E. BOWEN, D. D.
[Illustration: J. W. E. Bowen, D. D.]
J. W. E. BOWEN, A. M., PH. D., D. D.
Dr. John Wesley Edward Bowen was born in New Orleans. His
father, Edward Bowen, went to New Orleans from Washington,
D. C. He was a free man, a boss carpenter and builder by
trade, and able to read, write and cipher. He was highly
esteemed, was prosperous in business, accumulated some money
and lived in comfort. Dr. Bowen's mother, Rose Bowen, he
says, was the grand-daughter of an African Princess of the
Jolloffer tribe, on the west coast of Africa. When he was
three years old his father bought him and his mother out of
slavery. When he was thirteen he went to the preparatory
school of New Orleans University for colored people,
established after the war by the Methodist Episcopal church.
When he was seventeen he entered the University proper, and
five years later he was graduated with the degree of A. B.
At the age of seventeen he was converted in a Methodist
revival meeting, and nine months later was licensed as a
local preacher, and has been preaching ever since.
Soon after his graduation Dr. Bowen became Professor of
Latin and Greek in the Central Tennessee College, at
Nashville, in which position he remained for four years. In
1882 he resigned his professorship and entered Boston
University, where he studied four years, taking the degree
of B. D. in 1885; and the degree of Ph. D. in 1887 from the
school of all sciences of Boston University. He also did
special advanced work in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Chaldee,
Arabic and German, and in Metaphysics and Psychology.
He was the first colored man in the Methodist church to take
the degree of Ph. D. and the second colored man to take the
degree in any university in this country.
Soon after leaving the university, Dr. Bowen joined the New
England Methodist Conference, and was appointed pastor of
the Revere Street Church. While in New England he also
preached acceptably in many white churches--serving one for
a month, and was asked to become their pastor after this
period. After serving St. John's colored church in Newark
three years, he became pastor of the Centennial Methodist
Episcopal church in Baltimore, and at the same time
professor of church history in the Morgan college for
colored people in that city. During this pastorate he
conducted a phenomenal revival in which there were 735
conversions.
Dr. Bowen next was the pastor of Asbury Methodist Episcopal
church in Washington for three years, and at the same time
Professor of Hebrew in Howard University for colored people
in that city. He here acquired a national fame as a scholar,
orator and thinker. During this pastorate he pursued the
study of the Semitic languages in the school of
correspondence of Dr. W. R. Harper, then at Yale University.
When he resigned his positions at Washington, he became for
one year a Field Secretary of the Missionary Society of the
Methodist Episcopal church, retaining his Washington
residence.
Dr. Bowen was next elected Professor of Historical Theology
in Gammon Theological Seminary for colored people at
Atlanta, Ga., which position he still holds. In consequence
of the resignation of the president, the Rev. Dr.
Thierkield, he has been for several months the chairman of
the faculty, and the executive officer of the institution.
He is also the Secretary of the Stewart Foundation for
Africa, a member of the American Negro Academy, and a member
of the American Historical Association, which last society
numbers among its members some of the most learned men in
this and other countries. Dr. Bowen received the degree of
A. M. from the University of New Orleans in 1886, and that
of D. D. from Gammon Theological Seminary in 1892.
Amid all these engrossing occupations, Dr. Bowen has been a
voluminous writer and an indefatigable lecturer. His
publications include a volume of sermons and addresses,
"Plain Talks to the Colored People of America," "Appeal to
the King," "The Comparative Status of the Negro at the Close
of the War and To-day," "The Struggle for Supremacy Between
Church and State in the Middle Ages," and "The American and
the African Negro." He has now ready for the press a volume
of "University Addresses" and a volume of "Discussions in
Philosophy and Theory;" also "The History of the Education
of the Negro Race."
Dr. Bowen was voted for at the last General Conference for
Bishop. He stood second on first ballot. His friends predict
that he will be elected at the forthcoming General
Conference.
Inference and conjecture are the stock methods of argument of the
unintelligent or the superficially informed. Such indisposition or
incapacity leads to erroneous conclusions. Nothing but an appeal to
facts involving careful and painstaking labor and a wise sifting of
facts, that myth and legend be eliminated, should claim the attention
of thinking men. It must be confessed, however, that in any discussion
that relates to the comparative status of the Negro over against his
standing in slavery full and accurate data are lacking. The
statistical science of to-day was unknown then, and it is next to the
impossible to affirm positively the relative superiority or
inferiority of present day growth over those of that day. This
statement is not made to deny the truth of the immense stride of the
latter times, but it is made as a reasonable off-set to those
prejudicial and dogmatic declarations of the superior conditions of
slavery over those of freedom. Dogmatism is the argument of the bigot.
It is not wide of the truth, to say that the claims of certain writers
that the Negro has retrograded physically, morally and socially, lacks
the confirmation of veritable data. It is admitted that the modern
diseases of civilized life have made inroads into his hardy nature,
but the universal declaration of inferiority is not proved. It is also
true that in isolated cases physicians of that day noted the
comparative freedom of the blacks from the maladies of ennui and
bacchanalian feastings, but no half-kept record of that day is before
us to justify the statement that the Negro of to-day is superior to
his mighty sire of ante-bellum fame that stood between the plow
handles all day and danced or shouted all night. The increase of
zymotic diseases is admitted, but there has been a corresponding
increase of power in many lines that will more than counteract this
baleful growth.
Again, over against this admission may be placed another statement of
fact, not to minify the truth already alluded to, but to illustrate
the futility of basing an entire argument upon one arm of a syllogism,
viz.: the Negro's numerical growth since freedom sung in his ears, is
a clear evidence of physical vitality. This growth has kept pace with
the glowing prophecies of statisticians.
Let us subdivide the subject, that the facts may be grouped in a
logical order. Let us study the growth of the race under three heads:
Numerical growth, material growth, moral and social growth.
Growth in numbers is growth in power of resistance, and this is basal
in the life of any people. If there be not found in a people a power
to resist the forces of death and to reproduce itself by the natural
laws of race increase, then such a people should not be counted in the
struggle of races. In other words, race fecundity contains the germs
of intellectual and national existence.
At the distance of forty years from slavery, the declarations of the
early extinction of the Negro, under the conditions of freedom, are
comical and absurd. It was affirmed with all the authority of divine
prophecy that the Negro race could not exist under any other condition
than slavery, and this concern became a basis for contending for his
continued enslavement.
The unvarnished facts brought to light by cold mathematicians are now
before us, and a few interesting and startling discoveries are placed
before us. In the next place growth in material productions and the
possession of the fruits of civilized life deserve attention.
The story of the burdens and disadvantages of the Negro at the
beginning of his days of freedom has not yet been committed to paper.
It will require a black writer to perform this deed. But it is within
the limits of truth to affirm that history can furnish no burdens upon
a race's shoulders parallel to those upon the shoulders of the
untutored black man when he was shot out of the mouth of the cannon
into freedom's arena. A Hindoo poet, of English blood, has written a
beautiful poem upon the "White Man's Burden," but it is poetry. "The
Black Man's Burden" is a burden that rests upon his heart, and, like
the deepest feelings of the human heart, it cannot be reduced to cold
type. Thomas Nelson Page describes the untoward beginnings of the
race:
"No other people ever had more disadvantages to contend with on their
issue into freedom. They were seduced, deceived, misled. Their habits
of industry were destroyed, and they were fooled into believing that
they could be legislated into immediate equality with a race that,
without mentioning superiority of ability and education, had a
thousand years' start of them. They were made to believe that their
only salvation lay in aligning themselves against the other race, and
following blindly the adventurers who came to lead them to a new
promised land. It is no wonder that they committed great blunders and
great excesses. For nearly a generation they have been pushed along
the wrong road. But now, in place of political leaders, who were
simply firebrands, is arising a new class of leaders, which, with a
wider horizon, a deeper sagacity and a truer patriotism, are
endeavoring to establish a foundation of morality, industry and
knowledge, and to build upon them a race that shall be capable of
availing itself of every opportunity that the future may present, and
worthy of whatever fortune it may bring."
Slavery did not teach him economy; on the contrary, it taught him
profligacy, and, where he learned to economize, it was in spite of the
system. His wastefulness is not yet a thing of the past, but he has
made commendable advance in learning how to save. What are the facts?
In the state of Georgia alone, the Negro has dug out of the hills more
than $30,000,000 of taxable property. This amount represents more
than five times the entire wealth of all the Negroes of the United
States, North and South, bond and free, taxable and personal, at the
birth of freedom. But when we collect together the wealth of the
entire race, the figures read like romance.
Some facts for reflection:
Four millions of slaves were valued at $3,500,000,000. Negroes own 87
per cent of their homes in fee simple; 89 per cent of their farms are
unencumbered.
They own, Banks 3
Magazines 5
Newspapers 400
Value of Libraries $ 500,000
Drug stores 500,000
School property 20,000,000
Church property 42,000,000
160,000 farms 400,000,000
150,000 homes 350,000,000
Personal property 200,000,000
With these facts undisputed, the question, Has the Negro kept pace
with his opportunities? contains its own affirmative answer. It is an
incomparable achievement that the Negro should have accumulated and
saved this vast amount of wealth within the short space of forty
years.
In the social and intellectual life the Negro has surpassed all hopes.
There can be furnished by the race a thoroughly equipped man for any
chair of learning for a university. He began with the blue-back
spelling book and has steadily grown in learning and power until he
now occupies a respectable position in the literary world.
But the pivotal point that is determinative in this discussion, and
that which is considered the conclusion of the whole matter, is the
moral and social question, as well as the domestic virtues of which
woman is the queen. The accumulation of property, and the achievements
in the world of letters, admirable as they are in themselves, and for
purposes of civilization, are secondary and valueless in the final
analysis, if there is no corresponding moral development and social
power. The evolution of the family, based upon monogamy, is one of the
chief glories of Christianity over against the libertinism and
polygamous practices of paganism.
Speaking of the women of our race, we cannot but speak the things
which we have seen and heard. With Dr. Crummell, "In her girlhood all
the delicate tenderness of her sex has been rudely outraged. In the
field, in the rude cabin, in the press-room and in the factory, she
was thrown into the companionship of coarse and ignorant men. No
chance was given her for delicate reserve or tender modesty. From her
girlhood she was the doomed victim of the grossest passions. All the
virtues of her sex were utterly ignored. If the instinct of chastity
asserted itself, then she had to fight like a tigress for the
ownership and possession of her own person, and oftentimes had to
suffer pains and lacerations for her virtuous self assertion. When she
reached maturity all the tender instincts of her womanhood were
ruthlessly violated. At the age of marriage, always prematurely
anticipated under slavery, she was mated as the stock of the
plantation were mated, not to be the companion of a loved and chosen
husband, but to be the breeder of human cattle for the field or
auction block."
Has this condition of affairs changed? I answer unequivocally, yea, a
thousand times, yea. A negative answer would be the quintessence of
ignorance. From a recent careful survey of every Southern state
through nearly one hundred trusty observers, I have the testimony that
the young women are pure in large numbers, and are rapidly increasing
in an intense desire and determination to preserve themselves chaste
and pure from the lustful approaches of the sinner, and that the
number of legally and lovingly married families, purely preserved in
the domestic and social virtues among husbands and wives, sons and
daughters, is so far beyond the days of slavery that a comparison
would minify the difference.
The marvel is, that the Negro has sufficient moral vitality left to
cut his way through the whirlpool of licentiousness to the solid rock
of Christian character. From the harem life of promiscuous and
unnameable sins of slavery, some of which were the natural and fatal
growth of pagan vices, others the fruit of prostitution, to the making
of one clean, beautiful, noble and divine family and home, covers a
period of intense, moral, spiritual and intellectual development, more
significant than the geologic transformation of ages. Be it known that
this one family can be duplicated by a hundred thousand and more.
The moral and social darkness has not been increased either in quality
or intensity. The splendid results of philanthropic effort have
served only as a small tallow candle which has been brought into the
darkness of this Egyptian night, and the darkness has thickened
relatively only because the light has been brought in. That faint and
flickering light reveals how great the darkness has been, and is. Some
think that the shadows are lengthening into eternal night for the
Negro, but that flickering light within has upon it the breath of God
which will some day fan it into the white and penetrating blazes of
the electro-carbon searchlight, that shall chase away the curse of
slavery. Thus, from every point of view, the growth of the Negro has
more than kept pace with his opportunities.
FOURTH PAPER.
DID THE AMERICAN NEGRO MAKE, IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, ACHIEVEMENTS
ALONG THE LINES OF WEALTH, MORALITY, EDUCATION, ETC., COMMENSURATE
WITH HIS OPPORTUNITIES? IF SO, WHAT ACHIEVEMENTS DID HE MAKE?
BY REV. M. C. B. MASON.
[Illustration: Rev. M. C. B. Mason, Ph. D.]
REV. M. C. B. MASON, PH. D.
Rev. Dr. M. C. B. Mason, senior corresponding secretary of
the Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, was born of slave parents near
Houma, La., March 27, 1859. In 1857, two years before young
Mason was born, his father purchased his own freedom, paying
$1,350. The papers were never legally made out and his
father had to wait with other members of the family for the
Emancipation Proclamation to secure their freedom.
Young Mason was twelve years of age before he had ever seen
a school-house, having entered school in July, 1871, and
mastered the alphabet the first day. Subsequently he
attended a school of higher grade and in 1888 graduated from
the New Orleans University from the regular classical
course. Two years afterward he entered the Gammon
Theological Seminary at Atlanta. Ga., graduating therefrom
in 1891. Immediately after his graduation he matriculated in
the Syracuse University, at Syracuse, N. Y., taking the
"non-resident course" leading to the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy.
In July of the same year he was elected Field Agent of the
Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
being the first colored man ever called to such a position.
So successfully did he prosecute his work that at the
General Committee meeting, which met in New York in 1893, he
was elected Assistant Corresponding Secretary, and in May,
1896, at the General Conference in Cleveland, composed of
537 representatives, only 69 of whom were colored, he was
elected Corresponding Secretary, with a majority of 104
votes against 11 competitors, all of whom were white. Four
years later at the General Conference which assembled in
Chicago, Dr. Mason was re-elected and made Senior
Corresponding Secretary, receiving the largest vote ever
given to any General Conference Secretary in the history of
the Methodist Episcopal Church. This is all the more
remarkable when it is remembered that there were 14
candidates in a body composed of 701 representatives, of
whom only 73 were colored. It will be remembered also that
the salary paid a General Conference Officer of the
Methodist Episcopal Church is the same as that paid to the
Bishops, and Dr. Mason is no exception to the rule.
The Doctor is quite a success as a money raiser and has
secured hundreds of thousands of dollars during the ten
years he has been connected with this great educational
institution of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The
Freedmen's Aid and Southern Educational Society has educated
hundreds and thousands of men and women of our race, and has
an average attendance of over seven thousand young men and
women of color in its schools every year. Dr. Mason is thus
brought in contact with more young men and women of the race
than any other Negro in America. And the whole race is very
largely indebted to him for the work which, through this
institution, he is accomplishing.
As an orator the Doctor has no superiors, and few equals. He
is in great demand all over the country, especially in the
North. We are told that he has been offered $6,000 per year
with a guarantee for ten years, if he would resign his
present position and take the lecture platform. This offer
he has constantly refused preferring to remain in the work
where he can be more useful to his own people.
During a recent trip to Europe he was in constant demand for
lectures in London, Glasgow, Belfast and among the English
colony in France.
The progress made by the Negro since emancipation has challenged the
admiration and wonder of the world. In all the annals of the world's
history, there is no parallel to it, and this progress, remarkable as
it is, has been in all lines, and in all departments of his life and
activity. Indeed, it would be quite a problem to be able to declare in
what particular line he has made the most progress. To secure some
adequate conception of what he is to-day, we must compare him with
what he was yesterday. In no other way can we come to any
comprehensive idea of the progress which he has made and the work
which he has accomplished.
A generation ago, he had practically nothing. He started out with
scarcely a name--poor, ignorant, degraded, demoralized, as slavery
left him. Without a home, without a foot of land, without the true
sense of real manhood, ragged, destitute, so freedom found him. He
stood at one end of the cotton row with his master at the other and as
he stepped out into the new and inexperienced life before him his
master still claimed him and the very clothes upon his back. Under
these peculiar circumstances and amid these peculiar difficulties he
began life for himself. He had, however, learned how to work; so much
he brought out of slavery with him; and right royal service it has
rendered him. What is he to-day? From this humble beginning of a
generation ago when he had absolutely nothing he has begun to acquire
something of this world's goods. He has been getting for himself a
home, some land, some money in bank, and some interest in stocks and
bonds. His industry, thrift and economy are everywhere in evidence and
he is bravely and consciously struggling toward the plane where his
vindication as a man and a citizen is what he is and what he has
acquired. In Louisiana he pays taxes on twelve millions, in Georgia on
fourteen millions and in South Carolina on thirteen millions. A recent
statistician, writing for the New York Sun, estimates his wealth North
and South at four hundred millions. During the last few years much of
this accumulation of property is in farm land which everywhere is
rapidly increasing in value. In this matter of securing a home and
some land, the Negro's achievements are certainly commensurate with
his opportunities.