C., November 4, 1850. Son of Henry and Nancy (Weston)
Grimke; attended school in Charleston; entered Lincoln
University, Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1866, and
graduated in 1870 (A. M., D. D.); graduated from Princeton
Theological Seminary in 1878. Ordained pastor of the
Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church the same year. Remained
until 1885. Took charge of Lama Street Presbyterian Church
1885-1889. Returned to Fifteenth Street Church, Washington,
D. C., in 1889, where he is still. Has published articles in
the New York Independent and New York Evangelist. Wrote
monographs on "The Negro: His Rights and Wrongs; The Forces
For and Against Him." In 1898, "The Lynching of Negroes in
the South: Its Causes and Remedy;" "Some Lessons from the
Assassination of President William McKinley," 1901; "The
Roosevelt-Washington Episode; or, Race Prejudice," 1901.
Address, 1526 L Street, Washington, D. C.
Extracts from his sermon on the race problem.
"Some of these days all the skies will be brighter,
Some of these days all the burdens be lighter,
Hearts will be happier, souls will be whiter,
Some of these days.
"Some of these days, in the deserts uprising,
Fountains shall flash while the joybells are ringing,
And the world, with its sweetest of birds, shall go singing,
Some of these days.
"Some of these days: Let us bear with our sorrow,
Faith in the future--its light we may borrow,
There will be joy in the golden to-morrow--
Some of these days."
That is my faith; I am no pessimist on this Negro problem. Terrible as
the facts are, cruel and bitter as is this race prejudice, and
insurmountable, almost, as are the obstacles which it sets up in our
pathway, I see a light ahead, I am hopeful, I look forward to better
times. And I want to tell you this morning what the ground of this
hope is.
(2.) I am hopeful, because of the progress which the Negro is making
in intelligence and in wealth. Think of what our condition was at the
close of the war, and of what it is to-day, in these respects. That we
are progressing, there can be no doubt; indeed, in view of all the
circumstances, our progress has been marvelous.
Take the matter of wealth. Since freedom, hundreds and thousands of
our people have become property owners in the South. Many of them are
prosperous and successful farmers; thousands and hundreds of thousands
of acres of land have come into their possession, hundreds and
thousands of them in the cities own their own homes, and are engaged
in small but lucrative business enterprises of one kind or another.
They are now paying taxes on some three hundred million dollars' worth
of property. That is not a very large sum, I admit, considered as the
aggregate wealth of a whole race, numbering some seven or eight
millions; but whether much or little, it indicates progress, and very
considerable progress, and that is the point to which I am directing
attention. The acquisitive faculty in the Negro is being developed;
his eyes are being opened more and more to the importance of getting
wealth; and slowly, but surely, he is getting it.
Educationally, the same is true. Thirty years ago there were but few
educational institutions among us, but few professional men--doctors,
lawyers, ministers--ministers of intelligence--teachers; but few men
and women of education. Now, there are thousands of well-equipped men
and women in all the professions, and thousands upon thousands of men
and women of education in every part of the country. Not only are
there institutions, founded especially for our benefit, crowded with
students, but all the great institutions of the land are now open to
us, and in all of them, with scarcely an exception, are to be found
representatives of our race; and the number in such institutions is
steadily increasing. The last report of the Commissioner of Education
shows that in the common schools of the sixteen former slave States
and the District of Columbia, there are enrolled 1,429,713 pupils, and
that in these schools, some twenty-five thousand teachers are
employed. It also shows that there are 178 schools for secondary and
higher education, with an enrollment of over forty thousand pupils.
There are, of course, thousands of our people who are still very
ignorant, but that there is vastly more intelligence in the race now
than at the close of the war, no one will pretend to deny. The
colleges and universities, the high and normal schools, are turning
out hundreds of graduates every year. The educational outlook for the
race is certainly very encouraging.
In view of these two factors--the growing desire on the part of the
Negro for material possessions, the fact that he is actually acquiring
property, and his growing intelligence--I see signs of a brighter
future for him. These are elements of power that will make themselves
felt. You may deprive a poor and ignorant people of their rights, and
succeed in keeping them deprived of them, but you can't hope to do
that when these conditions are changed; and the point to which I am
directing attention here, is that this change is taking place. All
that has been done, and is being done to stimulate in the Negro this
principle of acquisitiveness, and to increase his thirst for
knowledge, is a harbinger of a better day. Every dollar saved, or
properly invested; every atom of brain power that is developed, is a
John the Baptist in the wilderness, crying, Make straight the pathway
of the Negro. In proportion as the race rises in intelligence and
wealth, the valleys will be filled and the mountains will be leveled,
that now stand in the way of his progress, in the way of the complete
recognition of all of his rights. Ignatius Donnelly, in that
remarkable book of his, "Doctor Huguet," which some of you, doubtless,
have read, would seem to teach the opposite of this. He attempts to
show that never mind what the intellectual attainments of the Negro
may be--he may be a Doctor Huguet, learned with all the learning of
the schools, and cultured with all the culture of the ages--still
there is no chance for him, there is no hope of his being recognized.
The story as told by him is, at first, quite staggering and terribly
depressing. But when we remember that, according to the story, there
was but one Doctor Huguet with a black skin, and that he was poor, and
that all the rest of his race were poor and ignorant, light breaks in
upon the darkness, the awful pall which it casts upon us, is at once
lifted. How will it be when instead of one Doctor Huguet there are
hundreds and thousands of them, scholarly men and women, cultivated
men and women, men and women of wealth, of large resources? It will be
very different. If the Negro was indifferent to education; if he was
actually getting poorer, then we might lose heart; but, thank God, the
very opposite is true. His face is in the right direction. He may not
be pressing on as rapidly as he might towards the goal, as rapidly as
some of us might wish to see him, but it is a matter for
congratulation, that he is not retrograding, nor even standing still,
but is moving on. Poor? Yes, but he isn't always going to be poor.
Ignorant? Yes, but he isn't always going to be ignorant. The progress
that he has already made in these directions shows clearly what the
future is to be. Knowledge is power; wealth is power, and that power
the Negro is getting. He is not always going to be a mere hewer of
wood and a drawer of water; he is not always going to be crude,
ignorant. American prejudice is strong, I know; it is full of infernal
hate, I know, but in the long run it will be found to be no match for
the power which comes from wealth and intelligence.
(3.) I am hopeful because I have faith in the ultimate triumph of
right. You remember what Lowell says in his "Elegy on the Death of Dr.
Channing:"
"Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deep
Of everlasting Soul her strength abides,
From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap,
Through Nature's veins her strength, undying tides.
* * * * *
"I watch the circle of the eternal years,
And read forever in the storied page
One lengthened roll of blood, and wrong, and tears--
One onward step of Truth from age to age.
"The poor are crushed; the tyrants link their chain;
The poet sings through narrow dungeon-grates;
Man's hope lies quenched;--and, lo! with steadfast gain
Freedom doth forge her mail of adverse fates.
"Men slay the prophets; fagot, rack, and cross
Make up the groaning records of the past;
But Evil's triumphs are her endless loss,
And sovereign Beauty wins the soul at last."
* * * * *
"From off the starry mountain-peak of song,
The spirit shows me, in the coming time,
An earth unwithered by the foot of wrong,
A race revering its own soul sublime."
And in the "Ode to France," from which I quoted on last Sabbath, the
same glorious thought is expressed:--
"And surely never did thine altars glance
With purer fires than now in France;
While, in their bright white flashes,
Wrong's shadow, backward cast,
Waves cowering o'er the ashes
Of the dead, blaspheming past,
O'er the shapes of fallen giants,
His own unburied brood,
Whose dead hands clench defiance
At the overpowering good:
And down the happy future runs a flood
Of prophesying light;
It shows an Earth no longer stained with blood,
Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud
Of Brotherhood and Right."
That is my faith. The wrong may triumph for the moment, but in its
very triumph is its death-knell; it cannot always prevail. God has so
constituted the moral universe, has so planted in the human heart the
sense of right, that ultimately justice is sure to be done. "Ever the
Right comes uppermost," is no mere poetic fancy, but one of God's
great laws. In the light of that law, I am hopeful. I know that things
cannot go on as they are going on now, that the outrageous manner in
which we are at present treated cannot always continue. It is bound to
end sooner or later.
(4.) I am hopeful, because I have faith in the power of the religion
of the Lord Jesus Christ to conquer all prejudices, to break down all
walls of separation, and to weld together men of all races in one
great brotherhood. It is a religion that teaches the fatherhood of God
and the brotherhood of man, a religion in which there is neither Greek
nor Jew, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free. And this religion is in
this land. There are, according to the statistics of the churches for
1898, excluding Christian Scientists, Jews and Latter Day Saints,
135,667 ministers in the United States, 187,075 churches, and
26,100,884 communicants in these churches. This would seem to be a
guarantee that every right belonging to the Negro would be secured to
him; that in the struggle which he is making in this country for
simple justice and fair play, for manhood recognition, for such
treatment as his humanity and citizenship entitle him, back of him
would be found these 135,667 ministers, 187,075 churches and
26,100,884 church members. But, alas, such is not the case. These
professed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ who came to seek and to
save the lost, who was the friend of publicans and sinners, whose
gospel was a gospel of love, and who was all the time reaching down
and seeking to befriend the lowly, those who were despised and who
were being trampled upon by others;--the Christ of whom it is written,
"And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove
after the hearing of his ears; but with righteousness shall he judge
the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth;" and who,
in speaking of himself, said, "The spirit of the Lord God is upon me;
because he hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim
liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that
are bound; to comfort all that mourn; to give them a garland for
ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the
spirit of heaviness;"--these professed followers of this wonderfully
glorious Christ, instead of standing back of the poor Negro in the
earnest, desperate struggle which he is making against this damnable
race-prejudice, which curses him because he is down, branding him with
vile epithets, calling him low, degraded, ignorant, besotted; and yet
putting its heel upon his neck so as to prevent him from rising;
despising him because he is down, and hating him when he manifests any
disposition to throw off his ignorance and degradation and show
himself a man;--in this struggle, I say, against this damnable
race-prejudice, these professing Christians are often his worst
enemies, his most malignant haters and traducers.
In saying that the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ is in this land,
I do not therefore, base my assertion upon the fact, that there are
135,667 ministers in it, and 187,075 churches, and 26,100,884
professing Christians. No. The American Church as such is only an
apology for a church. It is an apostate church, utterly unworthy of
the name which it bears. Its spirit is a mean and cowardly and
despicable spirit. "One shall chase a thousand," we are told in the
good Book--and "two shall put ten thousand to flight." And yet with
135,667 preachers, and more than 2,000,000 church members in this
land, this awful, black record of murder and lawlessness against a
weak and defenseless race, still goes on. In the presence of this
appalling fact, I can well understand the spirit which moved Theodore
Parker--that pulpit Jupiter of his day--when in his great sermon on
"The True Idea of a Christian Church," he said, "In the midst of all
these wrongs and sins--the crimes of men, society and the state--amid
popular ignorance, pauperism, crime and war, and slavery, too--is the
church, to say nothing, do nothing; nothing for the good of such as
feel the wrong, nothing to save them who do the wrong? Men tell us so,
in word and deed; that way alone is safe! If I thought so, I would
never enter the church but once again, and then to bow my shoulders to
their manliest work, to heave down its strong pillars, arch and dome,
and roof, and wall, steeple and tower, though like Samson I buried
myself under the ruins of that temple which profaned the worship of
the God most high, of God most loved. I would do this in the name of
men; in the name of Christ I would do it; yes, in the dear and blessed
name of God." And I would do it, too.
But, in spite of the shallowness and emptiness and glaring hypocrisy
of this thing which calls itself the church; this thing which is so
timid, so cowardly that it dares not touch any sin that is unpopular,
I still believe that Christianity is in this land. To-day it is like a
little grain of mustard seed, but it has entered the soil, has
germinated, and is springing up. It is like the little lump of leaven
which the woman hid in three measures of meal; but it has begun to
work, and will go on working, diffusing itself, until the whole is
leavened. God has promised to give to his Son the heathen for his
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession;
and in that promise this land is included. Christianity shall one day
have sway even in Negro-hating America; the spirit which it
inculcates, and which it is capable of producing, is sure, sooner or
later, to prevail. I have, myself, here and there, seen its mighty
transforming power. I have seen white men and women under its
regenerating influence lose entirely the caste feeling, to whom the
brother in black was as truly a brother as the brother in white. If
Christianity were a mere world influence, I should have no such hope;
but it is something more than a mere world influence; it is from
above; back of it is the mighty power of God. The record is, "To as
many as received him to them gave he power to become children of God,
even to them that believed on his name, which were born, not of blood,
nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." It can
do what no mere human power can do. Jesus Christ is yet to reign in
this land. I will not see it, you will not see it, but it is coming
all the same. In the growth of Christianity, true, real, genuine
Christianity in this land, I see the promise of better things for us
as a race.
TOPIC XXXI.
NEGRO CRIMINALITY.
BY JOHN HENRY SMYTH.
[Illustration: Prof. John H. Smyth]
JOHN HENRY SMYTH, LL. D.
John Henry Smyth, LL. D., ex-U. S. Minister Resident and
Consul-General to Liberia, was born in the city of Richmond.
His parents were Sully Smyth of Lynchburg, Campbell County,
Va., and Ann Eliza, formerly Goode of Chesterfield County,
Va. He received his first instruction from a lady of his own
race, at a time when the laws of Virginia made it a penal
offense to teach Negroes any other thing than manual labor.
At the age of seven years he was sent to Philadelphia to be
educated. He attended the public schools of that city four
years and two private schools under the control and
direction of friends or Quakers. He graduated from the
Institute for Colored Youth, May 4, 1862. He displayed a
decided taste and aptitude for the fine arts early in life,
and at the age of sixteen years he became a student of art,
and was admitted a member of the Life School of the Academy
of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, a year before graduation. In
1870 he graduated from the Law School of Howard University.
The same year he married the daughter of Rev. John Shippen,
of Washington, D. C., Miss Fannie Ellen, a lady whom he had
the pleasure of instructing in the first elocution class of
Howard University.
For eighteen years he was in the service of the United
States, beginning as a first-class clerk and ending as
United States Minister and Consul-General. For seven years
he taught in the public schools of Pennsylvania, practiced
law in the District of Columbia, North and South Carolina.
On retiring from the diplomatic service in Liberia, two
distinctions were conferred upon Mr. Smyth, by Liberia
College, the honorary degree of LL. D., and by the President
of Liberia, the Honorable Hilery Richard Wright Johnson, the
order of Knight Commander of the Humane Order of African
Redemption. There were only two Americans so honored by the
Black Republic. At present Mr. Smyth is at the head of the
Negro Reformatory Association of Virginia, a corporation
resident in Virginia, with authority to establish reform
schools for delinquent Negro minors of both sexes in
Virginia.
The first school of the association is the Virginia Manual
Labor School, Hanover, Va., with 1,800 acres of land, 800 of
which is under cultivation. The good people of Mr. Smyth's
native city, Richmond, and friends in Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York have made possible
the purchase of the plantation known as Broad Neck, Hanover.
The principal benefactor was Mr. Collis P. Huntington of New
York, who was pleased to make a contribution of $12,000
toward this worthy and necessary charity.
We have need to felicitate ourselves as members of a great though
oppressed race, that an Armstrong, the founder and promoter of this
institution of practical learning, was given to us and to the nation,
and that through his influence and example, Tuskegee and other similar
institutions have grown into vigorous youth. Two of these seats of
industrial education, through a system of race conferences, have given
to us who are deprived of a popular press an opportunity to be heard
in our own behalf upon subjects, the public discussion of which,
through literary mediums, has been monopolized by members of the other
race. Our moral delinquencies have been discussed recently at the
North and in the South--at times in a sensible and at other times in a
nonsensical way; arguments have been made to the world by orators and
writers seemingly more interested and concerned in making the worse
appear the better reason than in philosophically looking into facts or
honestly seeking to discover truth. From much that has been said, it
would appear to one unacquainted with the American branch of the Negro
race that within thirty-five years it has become criminal, although
for nearly three centuries it has been a stranger to wrongdoing, law
abiding and not law breaking. Such radical change, if change there has
been, in individuals or classes of people, is rare, abnormal, and must
be accounted for in some other way than by the wholesale charge of
inherited savagery and innate moral obliquity. Crime from an
hereditary standpoint may not justly be chargeable to one race of men
to the exclusion of another, to the black race more than to the white,
to the yellow races more than to the white or black.
The first crime was in the first family. The sacred writings teach
that God gave, mid the thunderings of the heavens, the smoking of the
mountain, and the consternation of the people, the criminal code in
the ten commandments, which may be found in the traditions of heathen
peoples, somewhat modified, just as in the written laws of all
Christian nations. Had crime not existed prior to this heavenly edict,
there would have been little apparent reason for this ancient
pronouncement through a Hebrew medium. The conclusion seems then to be
irresistible--that mankind coveted, stole, lied, were disobedient to
parents, were adulterers and murderers from the earliest times, and
only ceased to be so, measurably, in proportion as the sanctions of
law were strong or weak. The Christian religion and civilizations
other than Christian, with their religions, growth, and development
under the influence of good, wise, and godly men, have contributed
more than all else, to the decrease of crime and among all classes and
conditions of men. "Thou shalt not" stays the course of crime.
The history of the black or African race, since the decadence and
destruction of the cities of North Africa and the Nile Delta and the
loss of prestige of the peoples who held sway in them, has been
shrouded and obscured, and hence gratuitous arguments are made in
regard to the savagery and bestiality (which it is claimed we inherit)
of the progenitors of Negro Americans that are wholly unsupported by
reliable data. The acts of the Puritan fathers of New England and of
the cavaliers and Huguenots of the South, toward Indian and Negro
heathen in the New World--men of whom it has been facetiously said
that, "they fell first upon their knees and then upon the
aborigines,"--these acts, together with the horrors of the middle
passage and the unrequited toil of centuries, of which the blacks were
victims, must be taken into account in considering the matter of crime
in connection with this race, and go far to explain a condition which
otherwise would be abnormal. The baleful influences of a dead and
buried past account for crime among the old and the young Negro
Americans, the responsibility for which rests upon the United States
rather than the Southern states, upon this nation rather than any part
of it.
In Virginia and Maryland there were indentured white slaves. When the
system was abolished the same conditions plagued the colonists that
annoy us now. Mr. Doyle, in his work entitled _English Colonies in
America_, says, "The liberated servant (white) became an idler,
socially corrupt and often politically dangerous." The whites became
an irresponsible, shiftless, and criminal class, just as the Negroes
have become to an alarming extent since freedom. There are to-day in
certain sections of the South whole neighborhoods of whites almost
without moral sense and near to barbarism. It will not be pretended,
however, that there has not been and is not now, criminality among the
Negro race just as there was during the years of its oppression; but
a condition upheld and approved by the constitution, laws, and public
sentiment of the nation cannot do other than plead guilty to having
contributed to this result which has so greatly affected the
estimation in which good men, equally with bad men, the innocent as
well as the guilty of our race, are held by the whites. I am not
clanking my chains as a Negro in remembering the past, and only do so
in accounting for what the unreasoning and unsympathetic are disposed
to regard as abnormal criminality in the American Negro.