any kind of excitement is resorted to in order to give advantage to
the competitors, the minority race, especially in inferior
circumstances, must suffer along lines of battle for bread in which,
the masses engage. Thus it is, while the Northern Negro enjoys high
privileges of an intellectual character among the classes, he is
bumped, shunned, and pushed to the rear among the quarreling,
scrambling masses.
There are scattered far and wide a few Negroes in the North who are
doing well in business. They get the patronage of their white
neighbors. There are few communities in the North where the Negro
population is strong enough to support a Negro in business, if the
race lines were drawn in business. I think the voluntary collections
of like tribes and races of men, as Italians, Jews, Chinese, Poles,
Norwegians, Swedes, and the like, in settlements in our large cities
and some country districts, show clearly the gregarious disposition of
like peoples; and from time out of mind each tribe, clan or race, has
depended upon itself for patronage and support. In order for the Negro
to succeed in any considerable degree in business in the North, it
would be necessary to increase the Negro population in that section.
As I have intimated above, there are few fields for operation in the
North for Negroes, regardless of their ability to succeed, for there
are few cases where Negro patronage is not limited to the Negro
population. While occasionally a few Negroes may get patronage from
the other clans and tribes it is nevertheless true that as a general
rule the aim is to keep the trade in the family, as it were. Every
whip of tribal differentiation and prejudice is applied to enforce a
rigid observance of this general rule. I think that we may logically
conclude that the opportunity for that training and education which
could make the Northern Negro immediately useful to the mass of the
race, and the opportunity to gather material wealth, are not ideal in
the North.
Ninety-two per cent of the Negro population reside in the South, where
slavery left them. Under normal conditions there should be ninety-two
per cent of Negro wealth, thrift and energy in the South. The
opportunity to accumulate wealth and the accumulation are different.
The Southern Negro is a wealth producer. He does four-fifths of the
agricultural labor of the South and thereby adds four-fifths to the
wealth of the South derived from agriculture, the leading Southern
industry. If the whole of the billion dollars to the credit of the
Negro race were placed to the credit of the Southern Negro alone, it
would be less than half of what he should have saved since the war.
The Negroes of the South handle more money than New England did one
hundred years ago, and yet New England would be glad to place her
barrels of gold and silver at nominal interest--so rich has she grown,
although in the chilly winds of the Northeast.
The opportunities for the Southern Negro are as good for material gain
as are enjoyed by any other people in this country. The census of 1890
shows two hundred and twenty-four occupations followed by the
wage-earners of the United States. The Negroes are represented in
every one of these occupations--grouped under five heads:
Professional, Agriculture, trade and transportation, manufactures and
personal service. The Southern Negro, while not in all of them,
occupies in the South the vantage ground in those that bring the most
independence in living. We must not forget that agriculture is what we
might call the staple industry of the South.
I am indebted to Hon. Judson W. Lyons, register of the United States
Treasury, for the following statistics, showing the wonderful
influence of Negro labor in the commercial industries of the world:
More cotton is exported from the United States than any other article.
In the last ten years, 30,000,000,000 pounds of cotton, valued at
$225,000,000 have been exported. The United States produces more
cotton than all the balance of the world. The cotton manufactories of
Great Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, and Italy depend upon our
cotton exports. Ten years ago, $354,000,000 were invested in cotton
manufactories, employing 221,585 operatives, who received for wages
$67,489,000 per annum. The South produced from 1880 to 1890,
620,000,000 bushels of corn, 78,000,000 bushels of wheat, and
97,000,000 bushels of oats. The Negro performed four-fifths of the
labor of the South, as we have seen. Therefore, his share in the
average annual production in the last ten years would be 6,988,000
bales of cotton, valued at $209,640,000. In the last ten years the
Negro's part of the production of corn, wheat, oats and cotton was
$431,320,000 per annum. The entire cotton acreage of the South would
form an area of 40,000 square miles. Negro labor cultivates 32,000
square miles of this space.
Fifty-seven per cent of the Negro race are engaged in agricultural
pursuits, and 31 per cent are engaged in personal service. Therefore,
88 per cent of the wage-earners of the race in the South are engaged
in these two pursuits, or, in other words, 88 per cent of the
wage-earners of the race have opportunity for profitable employment.
Where the masses of the Negroes are found and can get paying work, as
they can in the South, there we must expect the greatest prosperity
among Negroes. Our expectation is highly gratified in this case in the
South. No doubt if the ninety-two per cent Negro population were to
exchange places with the eight per cent, the opportunities now held
out in the South would be transferred to the North. Our opportunities
over those enjoyed by our Northern brethren are the creatures of
accidents rather than of our meritorious invention.
The opportunities to win character and wealth afforded the Negroes of
the South by agriculture and domestic service are probably better than
are enjoyed by any other class of people in the world. The field is
broad and ripe and the Negro must now see and seize these
opportunities or they will pass from the race forever. No peasant
population ever had more favorable environments. The Negro does not
only do four-fifths of the agricultural labor of the South, but he has
the opportunity to own four-fifths of the land he cultivates. This
opportunity is not enjoyed by any other peasant class in the world. As
I see it, the greatest success for the Negro race in America lies in
the farm. There he meets the least resistance and obtains the greatest
sustenance. There color prejudice is almost unknown, while everywhere
in the mechanic arts, prejudice is bitter, competition is sharp, and
the chances for success are small. This is a matter which the Negro
must seriously consider now, or weep over his procrastination. The
drift to the cities to exchange the free, honest, healthful, plenteous
conditions of farm life for the miserable slums, sin, and squalor of
city life must be checked. Our boys and girls must be educated for the
farm.
It would be hard to find a people better suited for domestic and
personal service than the Negro. In all the elements which are
necessary for personal and domestic service, the Negro cannot be
excelled. He is not treacherous. He forms no plots and schemes to
entrap his master. He resorts to no violent incendiary measures of
avenging himself against his master, but he humbly and tamely submits
to the conditions, ever looking for betterment through superhuman
agencies. If the South would only look this matter squarely in the
face, it would admit that it has the best service on earth, and would
vote liberal appropriations for the development of Negro education of
every character.
It may seem to persons not informed incredible, but it is no less a
fact that where racial prejudice runs highest in the South and the
demarcation between the races is most distinct along social lines,
there the Negro is most prosperous, and, strange to say, advances most
rapidly in material wealth. Self-help, self-dependence, faith in self,
seem to spur to success as nothing else does. The drug store is the
creature of Anglo-Saxon prejudice in denying Negroes accommodations at
the soda-water fountains run by white men. In a score of channels the
Negro is pushed on to success by Anglo-Saxon discrimination. What
seems a curse is in reality a blessing to the race. Anglo-Saxon
prejudice forces the Negro to take advantage of his great opportunity
to get rich.
TOPIC XXII.
WHAT IS THE NEGRO TEACHER DOING IN THE MATTER OF UPLIFTING HIS RACE?
BY PROF. A. ST. GEORGE RICHARDSON.
[Illustration: Prof. Arthur Richardson.]
PROF. ARTHUR ST. GEORGE RICHARDSON.
Far out in mid-Atlantic ocean about 700 miles east of New
York lies the group of sunny isles known as the Bermudas. On
one of these beautiful coral formations called St. Georges
was born, July 5, 1863, the subject of this writing. Arthur
was sent to Canada in 1878 to attend the public schools of
St. Johns, N. B. Being an apt pupil he soon finished the
curriculum of studies of the grammar schools and in 1880
entered the high school from which in three years' time he
was graduated.
Not considering his education complete at this point, Arthur
matriculated at the University of New Brunswick at
Fredericton, in the fall of the same year, being the first
and only colored young man to enter this institution of
higher learning. As in the high school so now in college
young Arthur distinguished himself among his classmates by
winning a scholarship and at times leading his class in
Greek. He was graduated from the university with honors in
classics, June, 1886.
He was then elected principal of the Wilberforce Collegiate
Institute at Chatham, Ont., where he served one year,
increasing the attendance, and greatly improving the work of
the school. The following year, 1887, he returned to his
native home and visited his parents from whom he had been
separated nine years. The next year after his return to
Canada he was invited by Bishop W. J. Gaines to come to
Georgia and assume the principalship of Morris Brown College
in Atlanta. After much hesitancy, Mr. Richardson accepted
the invitation and took charge of Morris Brown College when
it was a school of small proportions and modest pretensions.
Here Professor Richardson served ten successive years, each
year adding something to the fame and increasing popularity
of the school.
In 1898 he was offered the Presidency of Edward Waters
College in Jacksonville, Fla., by Bishop W. J. Gaines, who
felt that the educational work in Florida then needed just
such a person as Professor Richardson had proven himself to
be in Georgia. Resigning his position in Atlanta he came to
Florida and at once set to work to restore Edward Waters
College to the confidence of the people. In a year's time
the school was again assuming the flourishing condition that
it once had.
The great fire of Jacksonville, May 3, 1901, caused him to
lose all his possessions in the destruction of the college
buildings, nevertheless he has held on unflinchingly to the
work and at great sacrifice and loss has kept the school
together, and is now serving his fourth year at the head of
this institution.
An examination into the earliest records of history will reveal a fact
that is not observant to the casual reader--that man, as an
individual, has ever been groping in darkness, seeking hither and
thither to find a ray of light that would safely guide him and lead
him through the mystic vale of doubt and uncertainty--be a "light to
his pathway, a lantern to his feet."
To this end he has lent all his energies and directed all his forces.
Long and tedious have been the ways and the journeys, yet onward and
upward has he continued to travel, through storm and tempest, amid
trials and vexations, until finally, after many centuries of
progressive endeavor and honorable achievements, he has reached the
loftiest pinnacle of fame, and there, on its rugged summit, has
inscribed in letters of gold the result of his many conquests in
literature, science and art, in religion, philosophy and commerce.
We use the generic term man as embracing all the various descendants
of the sons of Noah. For each race-variety has in its turn played its
part in producing the high degree of civilization that it is now our
heritage and privilege to enjoy. Each has been an important factor in
the development of some element that is essentially its own.
In thus reviewing the early history of the world we also find that the
peoples who sat in darkness were brought to the light only through the
agency of the teachers of the times in which they lived. Who made
Egypt renowned? Were they not her great teachers, whose pupils came
from far and near to learn, as it were, the foundation steps of our
great civilization? Who in China is better known to the world than the
great teacher Confucius? Who gave to Greece her renown for philosophy
and art? Was it not Aristotle and Plato? Mention Rome, and the names
of Quintilian and Cicero are recalled to our minds as the foremost
educators. The Israelites had their prophets to instruct them, until
the Great Teacher came to earth to enlighten all mankind. What was
best and noblest in the systems of the famous teachers before the
advent of Christ was crystallized into the method adopted by the Son
of Man. He came to elevate the whole man, to shed light into his whole
being--his mind, his body, and his soul.
Many and various have been the devices of mortal man to imitate the
plan of the Master; and yet, after centuries of earnest endeavor, we
have but recently begun to recognize the fact that complete success in
the education of man lies in the secret of training the whole
man--mind, body and soul.
Passing over the long period of scholastic apathy in European history,
we come to a more recent epoch of intellectual awakening in the
founding of great universities and stately colleges. These several
institutions, through the instructions given by their most eminent
teachers, have of themselves made the respective places of their
establishment famous in both hemispheres.
Between the periods of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars in America,
educational interests seemed to be centered mainly in the cultivation
of the intellect as the only part of man that required special
training.
The abolition of slavery and the consequent endeavor to enlighten the
freedmen gave rise to a new phase of educational activity. This new
ideal was the training of the body and the soul along with that of the
mind. This system naturally reduced the length of time usually devoted
to mind culture in proportion as time was required for the training of
the hand and the cultivation of the moral side of man.
Foremost among the early teachers to inaugurate this system were Mrs.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mrs. Sarah J. Early, and Bishop John M.
Brown. As a result of their efforts in this direction we have
Wilberforce University, the first school by Negro teachers to follow
the plan of the Great Teacher. Since the establishment of Wilberforce
in the North, many similar institutions have been founded in order to
give the "brother in black" an opportunity to show to the world what
the Negro teacher is doing and can do towards uplifting his race.
It is a difficult matter to estimate the good that a true teacher can
do, be he of whatever race-variety. But to calculate on the noble work
of the majority of the self-sacrificing and virtuous Negro teachers is
a task beyond the ability of man. Bishop Daniel A. Payne, the apostle
of an educated ministry, is known throughout the country for the noble
work he did in teaching the people at large as well as his immediate
pupils both how to live and how to die. Almost every educated Negro
preacher has at some period of his scholastic career served in the
capacity of a teacher, and therefore, after his advent to the gospel,
ministry has continued to instruct the people under the same
principles of teaching.
To be a teacher in the strict sense of the word requires the
possession of certain qualities of mind and soul, and the power to
exercise these qualities in such a manner as to awaken in the mind of
another thoughts similar to those of the person assuming to teach, and
thereby causing the mental activity on the part of the learner to
become knowledge and power. We, therefore, hold that the Negro teacher
has acted along the method here described, and has thus been the means
of enlightening the masses of the colored people that lay claim to any
degree of education whatever. What the Negro teacher has accomplished
has been done not from a selfish motive or a mercenary point of view,
but primarily because he has endeavored to do his part toward
elevating the race with which he is identified. If it is true that the
salvation of the Negro lies in his being educated, then to the Negro
teacher must be attributed the greater portion of his salvation.
Again, the majority of the Negro teachers are Christian men and women
of high moral character, and as such are shining lights in the
community in which they may be engaged in teaching. The good they thus
do is not confined to the school or class-room, but permeates every
sphere of society, ennobling and enriching the thoughts and minds of
all with whom they may have dealings, both by their chaste
conversation and by their upright and godly lives. The Negro teacher,
therefore, wields an influence for good, not only by precept, but what
is considered far better, also by example. Furthermore, the Negro
teacher in the day school invariably becomes a teacher in the
Sunday-school of the town where he happens to be living. And here
again he exerts a power for good, confirming and strengthening the
teachings of the past week.
Aside from his professional duties, the Negro teacher is often called
upon to decide on matters of grave importance. In many cases he is the
attorney for individuals who are unable to secure the services of a
competent lawyer. In this capacity he often acts as justice of the
peace, as well as a peacemaker, thereby allaying strife and
contention. From early morn till late at night the Negro teacher is
besieged by questions of every sort and kind, which he must
satisfactorily answer to the benefit of the inquirer, be he farmer or
blacksmith, preacher or vagrant. In fact, the Negro teacher in the
rural districts answers the purposes of a bureau of information.
Such is the lot of the average Negro teacher. That there are
exceptions need not here be stated. From what he has done on a small
scale may be inferred what is being done on a larger basis of
operation by the best and most renowned of the Negro teachers.
In nearly every Southern state of the Union may be found some one or
two famous educators and teachers of Negro descent. Prof. Jno. R.
Hawkins of North Carolina, Commissioner of Education of the A. M. E.
Church, has established Kittrell College. Prof. J. C. Price gave us
Livingston College in North Carolina. Prof. E. A. Johnson of Virginia
has written a worthy history of the Negro race, now in use as a
text-book in many public schools. In South Carolina we find results of
the great work in science by Prof. J. W. Hoffman. Georgia is proud of
Prof. R. R. Wright, President of the State Industrial College at
Savannah, orator and historian; also Prof. W. H. Crogman, scholar and
author. In Florida the names of Prof. T. de S. Tucker, Prof. T. V.
Gibbs, and Prof. T. W. Talley stand high as eminent scholars and
professional teachers. Alabama is rich in having the foremost men of
the race as her great teachers--Prof. B. T. Washington, founder and
principal of Tuskegee Institute, and Prof. W. H. Councill, President
of the State Normal and Industrial College at Normal. And thus we
might mention each state and her eminent Negro teachers; but it is not
necessary; the above suffices our purpose. And yet we would not
conclude without referring to the noble work of Prof. W. S.
Scarborough, of Wilberforce, Ohio. He has gone a step beyond the
ordinary and given us a Greek text-book that has been adopted in many
schools. Moreover, his contributions to the leading magazines and
periodicals are eagerly sought and read by the best scholars of the
day, without reference to race.
With this accumulated force of intelligence, radiating its numerous
beams of light in every section of the land, one need not seek far to
find an answer to the query: "What is the Negro teacher doing in the
matter of uplifting his race?"
As we endeavored to show in the beginning that it was through the
instrumentality of their teachers that many countries acquired fame
and gave to posterity a name honorable and glorious, so now the Negro
teacher in his weak strength is laying the foundation for successive
generations to build upon--a foundation more durable than stone or
granite, more valuable than rubies or diamonds--the cultivation of
the morals, the training of the hand, and the enlightenment of the
mind. With an informed mind, a skillful hand, and an upright conduct,
there is no reason why the Negro should not take his place upon the
stage of action; play well his part in the drama of life, and
meritoriously receive the plaudits of the gazing nations of the world.
SECOND PAPER.
WHAT IS THE NEGRO TEACHER DOING IN THE MATTER OF UPLIFTING HIS RACE?
BY PROF. E. L. BLACKSHEAR.
[Illustration: Prof. E. L. Blackshear.]
PROF. E. L. BLACKSHEAR.
Prof. E. L. Blackshear was born in Montgomery. Ala., in
1862. He was educated in the negro public schools of
Montgomery. So rapid had been his progress that he graduated
from Tabor College at the age of eighteen.
Prof. Blackshear is now principal of Prairie View State
Normal School and Industrial College of Texas.
The following is the testimony of Prof. Blackshear
concerning his grandmother. These words give us a glimpse of
the bright side of slave life, and of the ideal "mammy" of
the ante-bellum Southern plantation home.
"My grandmother was a remarkable woman. She idolized my
mother, the only child that slavery had allowed her to keep.
When grandma was sold from Georgia to Alabama, the humanity
of her Georgia owners caused them to sell mother and child
to the same people.
"My grandmother, although ignorant, had a profound belief in
education. But if she knew absolutely nothing of the world
of letters, she had something as good, perhaps better--a
warm, honest, loving heart and Christian principles. She had
genuine hatred for dirt and disorder, a regard, amounting to
a fearful reverence, for white people of 'quality,' and a
great and ill-disguised contempt for common, shiftless,
'darkies,' and low-bred whites. She was the best type of the
faithful and efficient slave. But it was as a cook that
'Grandma's' reputation was known in two States. To my
youthful imagination she was a magician; things she cooked
for the white folks seemed so good to me. I think now of the
batter-cakes, the light rolls, the syllabub, the sally-lunn,
the ship-ships and the wafers grandma made. The light-bread
she made is made no more. It is a lost art, an art that died
with grandma."