reformers as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Frederick
Douglass, John G. Whittier and Horace Greeley, the organizations of
the colored people themselves, and their appreciation of the meager
educational advantages afforded them prior to Appomattox, the
sentiment of the country yielded one by one the rights and privileges
of citizens, until colored members of state legislatures in more than
half a dozen Northern states, delegates to city councils, a judgeship
each in Massachusetts and Michigan, and state elective officers in
Kansas--in none of which communities was the colored voting population
of itself sufficiently numerous to elect--evidences the remarkable
revolution in public opinion towards the Negro throughout the North.
In the South, since 1867, there have been more than a score of
congressmen, including two senators, state legislators by the
hundreds, councilmen, police officers, city and county officials
without number; but nearly all of these were obtained by the numerical
preponderance of the Negro rather than any liberalizing of dominant
white sentiment.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America. Samuel
Wilberforce.
[2] History of Education in North Carolina.--United States Bureau of
Education.
[3] Semi-Centenary Discourses.--Rev. William T. Catto.
[4] Rise of the Baptists.--R. B. Semple.
[5] Slavery and Anti-Slavery.--Wm. Goodell.
SECOND PAPER.
WHAT PROGRESS DID THE AMERICAN WHITE MAN MAKE, IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY, ALONG THE LINE OF CONCEDING TO THE NEGRO HIS RELIGIOUS,
POLITICAL, AND CIVIL RIGHTS?
BY REV. J. M. COX, D. D.
[Illustration: J. M. Cox, D. D.]
JAMES MONROE COX.
James Monroe Cox was born in Chambers County, Alabama,
February 26, 1860. While he was yet a boy his parents moved
to Atlanta, Ga., and in the public schools of that city he
received his first educational training. Having a desire to
go to college and receive the best training possible for
life's work, he entered Clark University. He took high rank
in his studies, completing the classical course in 1884, and
graduated from Gammon Theological Seminary in 1886, being
the first student to receive the degree of B. D. from that
institution. The year following his graduation from Gammon
he was appointed teacher of ancient languages in Philander
Smith College, Little Rock, Ark. In the fall of 1887 he was
married to Miss Hattie W. Robinson, a young woman of culture
and refinement, who after graduating from Clark University
in 1885, taught two years in the public schools of Macon,
Ga. They have five interesting children, and their married
life has been singularly happy and helpful. After a
professorship of eleven years in Philander Smith College he
was appointed president of the institution. As president he
has served for five years, and under his administration the
school has had a strong, healthy growth, until now it
numbers almost five hundred students. A much-needed addition
to the main building has been completed at a cost of
fourteen thousand dollars, the faculty has been increased,
and through the efforts of the students he has raised some
money, which forms the nucleus of a fund for a trades
school. He is a member of the Little Rock conference of the
M. E. Church, and has twice represented his brethren as
delegate to the General Conference,--at Omaha, Neb., in 1892
and at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1896. His influence over the
young people committed to his care is great, and he is
striving to send out strong, well-rounded, Christian
characters, and thus erect monuments more enduring than
granite or marble. Last year Gammon honored him with the
degree of D. D.
The very language of our subject assumes that the Negro is entitled to
religious, political and civil rights, and limits our task to showing
the extent these rights have been conceded to him by the American
white man. In considering this, as well as other subjects that concern
the race, it is well to bear in mind the fact that men make conditions
and conditions also make men. The truth of this statement is
strikingly demonstrated in the reactionary influence which slavery had
upon the American white man. The chains that bound the Negro and made
him a chattel, also fettered the mind and soul of the white man and
caused him to become narrow and selfish. Lincoln's proclamation gave
freedom alike to slave and master, and now the progress made by each
along all lines of human development will depend upon the extent he
leaves behind slavery conditions and thinks on purer and higher
things. Living in the past, meditating upon the time when he was owner
of men and women, the white man must still be a slaveholder. If he can
not hold in subjugation human beings, he will arrogate unto himself
the rights of others and use them to further his own selfish ends. The
Negro also must get away from slavery conditions, if he hopes ever to
be a man in the truest sense of the word and have accorded him the
rights of a man. Time and growth are determining factors in what is
known as the Negro problem. The white man must grow out of, and above,
his prejudice, learn to measure men by their manly and Christian
virtues rather than by the color of their skin and the texture of
their hair. The Negro must devote himself to character-making,
wealth-getting, and to the faithful performance of all duties that
belong to him as a man and a citizen, for, he may only hope to receive
his rights to the extent that he impresses the white man that he is
worthy and deserving of them. We repeat, it will take time to
accomplish these things, but when they are accomplished, rights which
now the white man withholds, and which it seems he will never concede,
will, like Virgil's golden branch, follow of their own accord. Viewing
the subject in the light of the above stated facts, we believe that
much progress was made by the American white man in the nineteenth
century along the line of conceding to the Negro his religious,
political, and civil rights.
In fact, the progress made in this direction stands without a parallel
in the annals of history. It surpasses the most sanguine expectation
of the Negro's friends, and even of the Negro himself. Although the
white man is not entirely rid of his prejudice in religion and the
color line is written over the entrance to many of his temples of
worship, yet he recognizes the Negro as a man and a brother and
accords to him religious rights and privileges. The Negro worships God
according to the dictates of his own conscience, and the laws of the
land protect him in this worship. He is a potent factor in all
religious and reformatory movements and works side by side with his
brother in white for the overthrow of vice and sin and for the
hastening of the time when man and nations shall live and act in
harmony with the principles of the Christian religion. He sits in the
councils of the leading denominations of the country and assists in
making their laws and determining their polity. He is accorded a place
on the programs of the different young people's gatherings and is
listened to with the same attention which other speakers receive. He
bears fraternal greetings from his to white denominations, and is
courteously received and royally entertained. In international
assemblies and ecumenical conferences he enjoys every right and
receives the same attention that others enjoy and receive.
But this progress is further evidenced by the profound interest
manifested by the white man in the Negro's religious and moral
development and by the strong pleas on the part of the nation's best
and ablest men for the complete obliteration of the color line in
religion and for dealing with the Negro as with any other man.
Millions of dollars have been given for the building of churches and
schools and hundreds of noble men and women have toiled and suffered
that the Negro might be elevated. The bishops of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, representing two and a half million members, said in
their address to the General Conference, at Omaha, in 1892: "We have
always affirmed them (the Negroes) to be our brothers of the same
blood and stock of all the races which compose one common humanity. As
such, we have claimed for them the same rights and privileges which
belong to all other branches of the common family."
His political rights. He, who but yesterday was a slave, is now a
citizen, clothed with the elective franchise. This is marvelous, and
all the more so, because the ballot is a wonderful force. It is the
ground element of our American civilization. In its exercise the poor
man counts as much as the rich, the ignorant as much as the learned,
and the black as much as the white. Indeed, the free and untrammeled
use of the ballot makes its possessor a veritable sovereign and gives
him power over men and their possessions. Opinion is divided as to the
wisdom of giving the Negro citizenship at the time it was given him.
We think no mistake was made. It came at the time the Negro needed it
most. It was the weapon with which he defended himself when he had but
few friends. The Negro has not been a failure in politics. The very
leaders who urge our young men to let alone politics, will, on the
other hand, point out Bruce, Douglass, Pinchback and others as the
most worthy and conspicuous characters of the race. That a reaction
has set in, and the Negro is being deprived of the ballot, should
occasion no alarm and little surprise.
The grandfather clause in the different state constitutions will serve
as a check to the white man's progress along educational lines, but a
spur to urge us on. These seeming setbacks in the concession of
political rights I count as progress, and place it to the white man's
credit.
The decision of the Supreme Court at Washington against the
constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 has had its effect,
and to-day we find the Negro more discriminated against in his civil
than in any other class of rights. Then, too, the social bugbear has
had much to do with this discrimination. However, progress has been
made. It has been slow, of course, because of the channel (public
opinion) through which it has been compelled to come. In many sections
of the country the Negro enjoys the most of his civil rights. He is
admitted to the hotels, theaters, and other public places, and on
public conveyances he is furnished fair accommodations. We believe in
the ultimate triumph of right. Let us be patient. There is a
disposition on the part of the better class of white people to do the
fair and just thing by the Negro. This class will continue to
increase, and some day the Negro will enjoy all of his rights, and our
fair country will indeed be the land of the free, as well as the home
of the brave.
TOPIC XIX.
THE NEGRO AS A LABORER.
BY N. W. HARLLEE.
[Illustration: Prof. N. W. Harllee]
N. W. HARLLEE, A. M., A. B.
The subject of this sketch was born a slave in Robeson
county, near Lumberton, North Carolina, July 15th, 1852. His
father was a Methodist preacher who exhorted the plantation
slaves, and was noted as "a natural mathematician." His
mother was deeply religious.
Mr. Harllee is a self-made man, for he taught himself to
read and write after being taught to spell about a third
through Webster's blue-back spelling book, and with this
small beginning he laid the foundation for a collegiate
education and for the active work of life.
In 1881 he was elected register of deeds in Richmond county,
N. C., where he had taught school for a number of years, and
in 1882 was appointed United States postal clerk on the
Carolina Central Railway and transferred to Charlotte,
Columbia and Augusta Railway, which position he held till
1885. In 1879 he was graduated at the Biddle University,
Charlotte, N. C., with honors. In 1885 he went to Texas and
engaged in the profession of teaching, and served for a
number of years as principal of the Grammar School No. 2 of
Dallas, Texas. Afterward he was promoted to the
principalship of the Colored High School of the Dallas City
Public Schools, which position he now holds.
Professor Harllee has taken an active part in the
educational work of his state, and has served as president
and secretary of the Teachers' State Association of the
state of Texas; he has also held the position of
Superintendent of the Colored Department of the Texas State
Fair for eight years, and still holds that position. He is a
practical staff reporter on the Dallas Morning News, Dallas,
Tex.
Mr. Harllee was married to Miss Florence Belle Coleman of
Dallas, Tex., 1891, and has three children, Lucretia,
Chauncey Depew and Norman W., Jr.
He is author of "Harllee's Tree of History," a new and
graphic method of teaching history; also Harllee's
"Simplified Long Division," a new graphic method of teaching
long division; also Harllee's "Diagram System of Geography."
He has for a number of years advocated the establishment of
a State University for the youth of Texas, and is also
working with the Rev. W. Lomas and D. Rowens to establish an
industrial school for his people at Dallas.
He is also chairman of the Y. M. C. A. board of education of
Dallas, and along with Messrs. Rice, Darrell, Polk, Weems
and Anderson is conducting a successful Y. M. C. A. night
school for all ages and sexes.
For two hundred and fifty years the American Negro has been a drawer
of water and a hewer of wood. He felled the trees and turned the
forest into fields of cotton and corn; he drained the swamps and
turned them into fields of rice; he graded the highways and made them
possible for railroad transit and traffic. In summer he was to the
white man, his owner, an umbrella; in winter, to the same owner, he
was his winter wood, and always a ready servant with hand and brawn,
as bread and meat and shelter.
The question of labor is one of bread and meat. To the bread-winner it
means much; to the unemployed it often lends a charm for crime; for
after all, the unemployed needs food, clothing, medicine, a shelter
and employment alike for body and mind.
But the subject of labor is not a new one, and, indeed, it has been
made a question of many complex phases introduced by prejudice from
white trade unions. Also, climate makes an important factor, hence the
different sections of our country employ to a large extent different
kinds of labor, suited to the prevailing industries, thrift and
enterprises.
We may consider at once the two general classes of labor, the crude
and the skilled. For generations the black man, as a crude laborer,
raised "King Cotton" in the cottonfields of the South. He has had no
competition as a crude laborer; he still holds a trust on the fleecy
staple; his right there is none to dispute.
But to-day a new and brighter era opens before us. We are to
manufacture cotton as well as raise it. We are to advance and keep
pace with the mental training of our children and provide employment
for them in every avenue. As the Turk weaves his carpet and darns his
shawl and as the Chinese prepares his silk, so the black youth must be
trained to change cotton into cloth.
Trained hands and trained minds are inseparable companions. If we
educate our boys and girls, we create in them a desire, we thrust upon
them a stimulus which pushes them out into the active world, and, if
only with polished brain and soft hands, they wander from place to
place seeking the shady side of active, stern reality.
Since we, by educating our boys and girls, create new appetites, new
desires, new activities, we set in motion new forces; then we ought
the more to create new enterprises, open new avenues, establish new
business or improve the old so as to meet the new relations, the
awakened appetites, the growing activities and the employment of the
new forces in the culture of cotton and the establishment of cotton
mills.
We commit a crime by creating appetites and then failing to appease
them.
The education of our children should no longer be a mere theory, but a
matter of real practical nature, such as will benefit the
bread-winner, the home-seeker, the higher citizenship, the welfare of
the greatest number.
While I favor the higher education of the youth of the nation, I also
think the youth ought to learn trades, to wear the overalls at the
forge, at the work-bench, to adjust the machinery in the work-shop and
the factory. I would have the youth able to design and build a house
as well as to live in one, to raise potatoes as well as to eat them,
to produce as well as consume. For many years the great majority of
the youth must be common laborers, whatever their education, whatever
their social condition or station; then it follows as the day follows
the night that they should be educated with the trend of the mind and
in connection with environment.
In the days of slavery many of our young men and women were trained
along certain lines; the young men such as skilled carpenters,
blacksmiths, stone masons, bricklayers, and the like, and the young
women were trained in dressmaking and the like, and these boys and
girls grew up having a kind of monopoly in their respective lines,
although controlled by their owners. But for a quarter of a century
very little attention has been paid to trade learning in many sections
of the South.
This condition confronts us to-day; however, it is claimed that it is
no fault of the children that they do not learn trades, and it is
further urged by many parents that the blame does not lie at their
hands; but that it is the fault of the times, of conditions and
circumstances; and still others claim that the trade unions are the
main cause. Many claim that, if their children are trained along
certain lines, they will be debarred by the opposition of the trade
unions. But these excuses seem too trivial. The opposition of the
labor organizations should urge greater activity in superior trade
learning in every pursuit, so that when the white striker walks out of
the shops the black man, skilled, trusted and tried, should walk in
and demonstrate his ability to do better and more work than the
outgoing striker.
We are to take no steps backward in industrial and intellectual
progress in the opening days in the dawn of the new century. A
thinking people is a prosperous people. We are to be measured by what
we can accomplish, not by the color of the skin, the texture of the
hair, the color of the eye or the contour of the head. But we are to
be measured as skilled farmers, mechanics, printers, artists and
scholars.
This age demands substantial progress in every department of industry,
in the home, at the fireside, in the shop and on the farm. To labor
with skill, to facilitate and hasten its benign results with trained
hands and cultivated brain, must ever be the fiery incentive of our
people, in order that they may keep abreast of the times in all
practical operations as skilled laborers, and, as such, vindicate
their usefulness as citizens.
As laborers and citizens, the black face must stand for integrity in
the community, the emblem of sterling worth, the black diamond
intrinsic in value.
The time has come when one person ceases to employ another because he
is of color, but he employs the one who can give more than value
received. The race needs to bring the hand and the head nearer
together.
The boy who has completed a college education should, in the course of
time, raise more corn to the acre, if he be a farmer, than his
uneducated father; for his knowledge of geology should better fit him
to know the condition and nature of the soil; if a mechanic, his
knowledge of geometry and of physics should enable him to be an adept.
The question of labor during the last few years has become, in many
respects, intensely sectional. North of Mason and Dixon's line, the
color of the skin has to do with the employment of the colored man
along certain lines of skilled labor. While this is true in the South,
the prejudice is not so rank as in the North, except where the colored
laborer comes in contact with the Yankee or the foreigner.
SECOND PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A LABORER.
BY PROF. R. G. ROBINSON, B. L.
[Illustration: Prof. R. G. Robinson, B. L.]
PROF. R. G. ROBINSON.
Prof. R. G. Robinson, B. L., the subject of our sketch, was
born in Hamilton, Bermuda Islands, B. W. I., February 16,
1873. In pursuit of education he came to the United States
at the early age of eleven, going directly to New Hampshire.
In the fall of '85 he entered Dow Academy in Franconia, N.
H. By economy and thrift he maintained himself in this
institution for eight years, graduating in 1893, second in
his class. During this course he was several times elected
president of the Autonomation Literary Society. His conduct
and standing was very tersely stated by one of his
professors, when he said that "he was courteous and obliging
under all circumstances, clear and logical in his deductions
and conscientious as a Christian."
He immediately entered Dartmouth College in the class of
'97. During his college course he was prominent in
athletics, at the same time holding a good position in his
class. Despite the fact he was one of the two colored men in
a class of a hundred and twenty-eight, yet at the close of
Freshman year he was unanimously elected class auditor for
the ensuing year. He was a charter member of the Ruskin
Society, a society for the cultivation of the histrionic art
in Dartmouth College. In 1897 Dartmouth gave him the degree
of Bachelor of Letters. Says President Tucker of Dartmouth:
"He is a man of clear and earnest purpose, possessing tact
and good executive ability."
After graduation he was elected to the chair of English
language and literature in the Tuskegee Institute, but
resigned at the close of the year and was elected principal
of one of the city schools of Montgomery, Ala., which
position he held until elected by the Freedmen's Aid and
Southern Educational Society as principal of the La Grange
Academy, La Grange, Ga.
In 1899 he was married to Lily Belle, the daughter of Wm.
Hill, the wealthy truck gardener of Montgomery. Mrs.
Robinson is a graduate of the A. & M. College at Normal,
Alabama. They have a son, Mason Francis.
Prof. Robinson has a brother who is a member of the Boston
Bar. He graduated from Dow Academy in Franconia, N. H., in
1893; attended Oberlin College and received the degree of
LL. B. from Boston University. In 1898 he was a member of
the Boston Common Council.
So artful is nature that she does not permit man to break one of her
laws for his pleasure without a sacrifice on his part; that for every
action there is a corresponding reaction; and so the laws of
compensation hold good in the dealings of man with man, races with
races, and nations with nations. Slavery, as ignominious as it was,
had a dual effect. The master race, forming what might be termed a
landed aristocracy, looked upon manual labor as degrading; while it of
necessity became the natural sphere of the weaker. Thus the spirit of
work became engrafted into the very being of the Negro. This is the
path all races have trod.
The basis of the South's industrial system was Negro labor; and
although the Emancipation Proclamation changed the whole structure
from a base of slave labor to that of free labor, nevertheless the
Negro remained virtually in the same position, but with enlarged
opportunities. This was a legacy greater than the ballot, for it is
vastly more important to a man to be able to earn an honest living
than to be privileged to cast a ballot, and doubly so if the element
of doubt as to its being counted enters into the privilege. It was a
cruel change from that of an irresponsible creature to that of a man
clothed with the responsibility of self-support and of American
citizenship--a change that would have staggered any race, but the
Negro has acted nobly his part.