For he had made decree,
Since all men are born equal,
Then all men shall be free.
He removed the yoke of bondage,
And unto him freedom gave;
He did educate the Negro
And unfit him for a slave.
6. When the Negro gained his freedom
Of body and of soul,
He caught the wheels of progress,
Gave them another roll.
He was held near three long centuries
In slavery's dismal cave,
But now he is educated
And unfitted for a slave.
7. He's able to fill any place
On this terrestrial ball,
All the way from country teacher
To the legislative hall.
He has proved himself a hero,
A soldier true and brave,
And now he's educated
And unfit to be a slave.
8. We have lawyers and we've doctors,
Teachers and preachers brave,
And a host of noble women,
Who have safely crossed the wave.
We are pressing on and upward,
And for education crave,
For it's written now in history,
We shall never more be slaves.
TOPIC XXXIV.
A NEGRO IN IT.
BY MRS. LENA MASON.
1. In the last civil war,
The white folks, they began it,
But before it could close,
The Negro had to be in it.
2. At the battle of San Juan hill,
The rough-riders they began it;
But before victory could be won
The Negro had to be in it.
3. The Negro shot the Spaniard from the tree,
And never did regret it;
The rough-riders would have been dead to-day
Had the Negro not been in it.
4. To Buffalo, McKinley went,
To welcome people in it;
The prayer was prayed, the speech made,
The Negro, he was in it.
5. September sixth, in Music Hall,
With thousands, thousands in it,
McKinley fell, from the assassin's ball,
And the Negro, he got in it.
6. He knocked the murderer to the floor,
He struck his nose, the blood did flow;
He held him fast, all nearby saw,
When for the right, the Negro in it.
7. J. B. Parker is his name,
He from the state of Georgia came;
He worked in Buffalo, for his bread,
And there he saw McKinley dead.
8. They bought his clothes for souvenirs,
And may they ever tell it,
That when the President was shot
A brave Negro was in it.
9. He saved him from the third ball,
That would have taken life with it;
He held the foreigner fast and tight,
The Negro sure was in it.
10. McKinley now in heaven rests,
Where he will ne'er regret it;
And well he knows, that in all his joys
There was a Negro in it.
11. White man, stop lynching and burning
This black race, trying to thin it,
For if you go to heaven or hell
You will find some Negroes in it.
12. Parker knocked the assassin down,
And to beat him, he began it;
In order to save the President's life,
Yes, the Negro truly was in it.
13. You may try to shut the Negro out,
The courts, they have begun it;
But when we meet at the judgment bar
God will tell you the Negro is in it.
14. Pay them to swear a lie in court,
Both whites and blacks will do it;
Truth will shine, to the end of time,
And you will find the Negro in it.
TOPIC XXXV.
THE NEGRO'S ADVERSITIES HELP HIM.
BY PROF. JOSEPH D. BIBB, A. M.
[Illustration: Joseph D. Bibb, A. M.]
PROF. JOSEPH D. BIBB, A. M.
Prof. Joseph D. Bibb comes from the city of Montgomery,
Ala., of excellent parents. His early life was spent among
pleasant surroundings and he received his primary education
at the Swain Public School of that city. While quite young
he entered Fisk University, where he was prominent because
of his splendid scholarship and original ideas. Being
impressed with the idea that Negroes were the natural and
best teachers for the Negro youth, he left that institution
and entered Livingstone College at Salisbury, N. C., at the
head of which was the justly celebrated Dr. J. C. Price.
Here he received the degree of A. B. in 1886.
He was not contented with his academic attainment, but
completed the courses of law and theology, and has
constantly applied himself to the fulfillment of his high
ideal.
After graduating he spent his first year as instructor in
the State Normal at Montgomery, ten years as principal of
the public school, in which he received his training, and
two years as professor of Hebrew and Bible history at Morris
Brown College, Atlanta, Ga. Neither of these nor the minor
fields of usefulness satisfied his ideal, and it was not
until he entered the active ministry that he felt that
satisfaction that comes with fitness. He is now laboring
acceptably as a minister in the A. M. E. Church and is
recognized as one of its most scholarly divines.
The world needs men who will use all of their cultivated
powers to bless and to lift up their fellowmen, who will
dedicate themselves to their fullest energies and their
energies to their people. Such a man is the subject of our
sketch.
In this hour when the sun is just beginning to climb the horizon of a
new day in the life of the Negro race, there is an imperative need for
close observation and serious, earnest thought. We cannot content
ourselves with appearances. We cannot trust the decision reached
mainly through our emotional nature. We must bring the whole personal
conscious man into our meditation in order that we may see and
comprehend that hand of God laid in love upon the Negro of this
country.
All problems in a nation's life must be unraveled and solved by that
nation. It may take advantage of foreign influences and examples,
incorporate and utilize them, but the real work must be done by the
nation itself. The same principle obtains in problems affecting
individual life or the life of a race. To adjust the Negro in
harmonious relationship to American civilization is a question that
depends for solution not so much upon the nation as upon the thought
and life of the race itself. The Negro seen through the refractory
medium of fear and prejudice is regarded as an unhealthy member, yet
it is evident that he is a vital member and cannot be removed by the
surgeon's scalpel. It is necessary, therefore, that this unhealthy
member should be toned up to harmony with the great organism of which
he is a part.
"No cross, no crown," is a trite saying, yet it has lost nothing of
the beauty of strength of originality, but, rather, it has grown to be
the sustaining, inspiring motto of all men as they plod up the hill of
life. Great souls do not whine and fret in adversity. The men and
women who lay the foundation of great institutions that bless mankind,
that fling rainbows on the black bosom of the tempest, do not tremble
and falter because of the clouds and mountain peaks, but onward and
upward they go until the victory is won. The church came up by the way
of the cross. If you would know the path of civilization, look for the
great battlefields in the world's history. The greatest battles of
reform in church and state have been fought, and the right has
conquered. The Negro to-day reaches his hand out and plucks the best
fruitage of the highest and grandest age known to man. Even liberty, a
plant that grows luxuriantly only when watered with human blood, and
rooted in the hearts and affections of a free people, is within the
very grasp of the American Negro.
The history of the free American Negro is one continuous and unbroken
chain of success. I shall lay the proof of the statement before you as
we advance. Did you ever consider the agencies at work for the
amelioration of the condition of the Negro in this country? Here and
there counter-forces may appear to hinder the too rapid advance of the
Negro, but such is the inevitable law of growth. Life is conditioned
upon its ability to absorb and assimilate the good and reject and
expel the bad. What are these counter-forces, these hostile external
relations? Do they tend to destroy the equilibrium of the race, or,
rather, do they conduce to its stability and strength? The answer is
obvious. The Negro is being sharpened and fashioned here under
Providence into a better and nobler manhood. He is suffering no more
than all infant races suffered. Slavery and oppression is the school
in which races are trained for the enjoyment of the fullest life. God
has a purpose in thus dealing with the Negro. The power of his
individuality, his highly developed religious nature, his disposition
to linger in peace in whatever condition he finds himself; his
preserving a truly magnanimous spirit in the very face of an
unwarranted and violent opposition, foretell his future history. He is
contributing his part toward the industrial development of the South
and the religious elevation of the nation. Many of his redeeming
qualities are often regarded as evidences of puerility and barbarism.
Character cannot be built in a day, neither in an individual nor in a
race, but the Negro is old enough now to be an American citizen. He
has reached the years of maturity; his character is formed, and what
is good for the most advanced citizen is good for him. He demands
equal and exact justice; he will content himself with nothing less.
There are divine purposes in each life, in each race and nation. How
well these purposes are subserved is left with the individual, the
race or the nation.
Afflictions are a wholesome discipline, and the people who would
survive the wreck of nations must fight their way up under the
inexorable law of God, through trials, through tribulations, through
persecution and through blood. I do not wish in any way to condemn the
agitation of the hour in the name of justice, and civil political
liberty, but rather to urge it in a reasonable way. Agitation, says
Wendell Phillips, is the method that puts the school by the side of
the ballot box. Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace and
secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are
the weapons of animals. "Agitation is the atmosphere of brains." Sir
Robert Peel defines it as the marshaling of the conscience of a nation
to mold its law. Injustice cannot stand before exposure and argument
and the force of public opinion. No sharper weapon of defense will be
required against the wrongs which afflict the South." No race can rise
higher than its ideal. To teach the Negro that the evils of his
environments will crush him forever, that a servant is and must be
servile in disposition and in general habit of mind; that hair and
skin and the shape of the head stamp him an inferior, is a doctrine of
creation without God in it.
No, let him know and feel that he is a man with the great
ever-expanding capacity of a man, and that a step beyond him is Deity.
Let him see himself mirrored in Hamlet's sublime outbursts of
admiration: "What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in reform, how express and admirable; in action
how like an angel in apprehension how like a god." Let him know that
he has and will yet realize in his racial life the loftiest ideal of
civilization. The Negro has profited immeasurably by the lessons,
stern and severe--taught him in this country.
Yet these adverse forces are but ministers of Heaven, awakening his
sleeping energies and accelerating his motion towards racial unity and
organization. They are stern, at times, inhuman teachers, but so long
as the Negro considers himself inferior, so long as a barber
discriminates against his father and brother, so long as a waiter
feels himself disgraced if he waits upon one of his own race, and the
washer-woman if she washes for her sisters, so long as we loathe to
serve only our own kith and kin these rough and severe teachers are
absolutely indispensable.
The power that permanently lifts a people is within that people, so
also the forces that degrade them. You cannot change public opinion by
drifting with its current. You cannot present yourself in a slavish
attitude and then demand a free man's portion. In that attitude you
are neither feared nor loved, but tolerated. You are regarded an
excrescent growth on the body of civil society. But it cannot always
be thus.
How can this race fail? In this day a million new homes, comfortable
homes of cultured black men, are built above the ruins of the slave's
log cabin of yesterday. Wilberforce and Morris Brown, Tuskegee,
Biddle and Livingstone, each gallantly manned by black men, and
thousands of schools dotting the South--all immortalizing Christian
philanthropy--are sending forth annually torch-bearers of truth to
light the paths the race must pursue in the great civilization of
to-day. How well these advantages will subserve his progress, his
interest--depend upon the confidence and faith which they will inspire
in him toward himself. Responsibility alone educates. Skill comes by
constant practice. Any reason alleged that the Negro is not yet
prepared for the leadership of his people, whether in the church or
institutions of learning or in politics, or whether in any of the
various avenues of business or of life, weakens the character of the
race, and augments and quickens the prejudice of the enemy both within
and without the race.
Our rightful leaders may be comparatively inexperienced, but
experience is not acquired by inactivity. It took the Civil War to
make Grant. The Northern missionary at the time when it tried the
souls of men following in the wake of battle came to break the long
night of ignorance that had settled down upon the Negro; but they have
done their duty and gone to their reward. God bless them. The Negro is
now prepared to take care of himself. Let the child crawl, he will
learn to walk. Lift up the men and women of your own race. Let some
great, towering example of Negro manhood and thrift and virtue and
wisdom point the youth to the pole star of redemption. Trust the Negro
now, and the future will take care of itself.
I repeat, if this and coming generations are taught to believe the
crushing and slanderous dictum of natural inferiority, what hope is
there for the salvation of the race, for a man can rise no higher than
his ideal? These great, honest, sincere souls in the race, who show
their love as do fathers to their children, rebuke because they love.
Moses, the great leader of and lawgiver to the Israelites--a people
who gave to the world its noblest song, its widest proverbs, its
sweetest music--throws down the Table of the Ten Commandments in
righteous indignation when he found them worshiping idols, but the
next day his heart, gushing forth love for his people, he found his
way in prayer to God, seeking forgiveness for his idolatrous people.
This was but an expression of his burning zeal for the safety and
progress of his people. So do I regard the scathing criticism given
within the race by its own men. All other criticisms are questionable.
But grant that the negro likes the idea, worships the idea of white
supremacy, with its institutions and customs, vitalized apparently
with the energy of violent opposition to his moral and industrial
development; I cannot believe that he will always be thus.
Necessity is not merely the mother of invention, but the soul of the
law of progress--the genius of civilization. It is here in the closing
period of the Nineteenth Century effulgent with the light of all the
historic past and marvelous achievements that the Negro must stand or
fall. Here in the wilderness where peaks of cultivated mountain-tops
in the near distance invite him onward and upward; here under the full
ordered sun of the brightest day the world has seen he must work out
his salvation with fear and trembling.
TOPIC XXXVI.
THE AMERICAN NEGRO AND HIS POSSIBILITIES.
BY GEO. L. KNOX.
[Illustration: George L. Knox]
GEORGE L. KNOX.
The subject of this sketch, George L. Knox, was born in
Wilson County, Tenn., September 16, 1841. He was a slave,
spending his early life on the farm and in following the
vocation of shoemaker, which he learned while serving a
master.
In 1862 he joined the Union forces in the Civil War; after
the termination of that terrible crisis he went to
Indianapolis, where he learned the tonsorial art. He did not
stay any great while in that city, but went to Greenfield,
Ind., not many miles away, where he concluded to make his
home. He established himself in business in a small way, and
by dint of persistency, thrift and integrity, such as has
marked his course ever since, he, in a few years, succeeded
in gaining a competence. He took an active part in politics
as a Republican, of which party he has been an unswerving
member up to this time. He won great respect for himself and
family among the whites, and the older Greenfieldians never
visit Indianapolis without dropping in to see George, as
they so familiarly call him.
In 1895 he moved to Indianapolis and finally became the sole
proprietor of the Bates House barber shop, said to be the
most elegant shop in the country. He is a member of the M.
E. Church, which has greatly honored him by sending him as a
delegate-at-large to the general conference in New York in
1888, and to Omaha, Neb., in 1892. He has filled numerous
offices in the local church.
He has been very active and prominent in Republican councils
in his new home. Has served as delegate-at-large to the
National Convention that met in Minneapolis, Minn., 1892,
where Benjamin Harrison was nominated for the Presidency. He
was selected as an Alternate Delegate-at-large to St. Louis,
Mo., in 1896, when President McKinley was nominated. His
voice has been heard all over the state in advocacy of the
principles of his party.
In 1892 he look charge of the Freeman and since that time he
has given the publication considerable attention, the
results of which are shown by its very large and very wide
circulation. The active management of this well-known paper
is in charge of his son, Elwood C., who is rapidly
developing as a man of business and affairs.
History has, since time begun, shown the rise, decline and fall of
empires, nations, races and individuals. It is but fair to say that
the fate of the Negro has been cast along these lines that were as
fixed as the stars in their courses. There have been exceptions to the
laws of civil and political change. We have read with joy the triumph
of the black man of ancient times, his power in battle, his eminence
in letters, his skill in science, his genius as an agriculturist, his
patience as a herdsman. In the great cycles of changes, it stands to
reason that the wheel of civil and political fortune will again
revolve in the Negro's favor.
The history of the black man's past in no wise serves to usurp the
functions of present duties. Notwithstanding the fact that there are
lowering clouds and muttering thunders, yet there is every indication
of a day, to express it boldly, that is coming that will outshine the
glittering sun.
'Tis not much that the American Negro asks in this racial warfare; his
aid has always been scant and rare; he has been thrown on his own
resources, buffeted about until he has become hidebound, as it were,
to those circumstances which have been so hurtful to the progress of
other nations.
Slavery, while a curse, has been a redeeming institution to the
American Negro.
It was that purgatorial step between African slavery and American
wealth. It was a necessary evil to prepare us for this most advanced
civilization of the world. Since that refining period, the Negro has
proven that he has the elements that make him a fit part of this great
country. There are those among us who have reached fame in nearly all
of the avenues of life. I take this as an index to the total
possibilities of the race. The masses, however, are to be reached. The
abilities of the few will not answer for the sins of the many. Crispus
Attucks, whose blood stained Boston Commons, the black soldiers of the
wars of our country down to that memorable engagement at El Caney,
will stand for Negro patriotism. Professors Washington, Councill and
thousands of others who are holding up the torch of learning will
stand for Negro intellect and citizenship, but behind all of these
stand the Negro masses that are not sufficiently quickened. These must
be prodded up, that they reach the front ranks of the procession. It
is but justice to the Negroes, however, to say that the doors of
opportunity do not swing wide for them. It ought to be otherwise, and
I believe it will be otherwise when a better understanding exists
between the races as to their aims and objects. The white man is quick
to judge the Negroes by those he meets in his every-day life.
Unfortunately, these are too much in evidence, giving color to the
charge that all Negroes look alike. The better Negro is not, as a
rule, seen; his works, as a rule, are not known; his refinement, his
morals and industry are not advertised--hence a wrong notion as to the
bent and intent of the race is noised abroad. Prejudice is not
confined to one side alone; both races show it to a hurtful extent.
Hon. Robert Allen, one of the most noted criminal lawyers of Texas,
said to a jury: "While it is true that we all have some trace of race
prejudice against the Negro, which makes it hard for us to do him
justice, I can not see why it is so; I know it should not be so. If
the Negro owes us something, we also owe the Negro something. It is a
mutual debt of gratitude that we owe each other. We as a race are
inclined to think that the white man is against us naturally. It is
true to a great extent, but we have reasons for thinking that the
white man thinks more of the law-abiding, intelligent, taxpaying
Negroes than he does of that set that turn up on election day, looking
for something. It may be that the white man is jealous of the Negro's
success, but I rather think that it is a mistaken notion. It is not
toward the better class that he hurls his hatred, but against that
class that the Negro himself is learning to fear. Until the colored
man changes his position and conditions it will be useless for him to
look for that consideration and respect that is accorded his more
fortunate brother and fellow-citizen. The Negro must not conceive the
idea that he has no friends among those now in supremacy; neither must
he entertain the belief that fortune will come to him without effort
on his part, or that citizenship will receive the proper recognition
without improvement in his morals and political attitude. These are
the days of newer and greater things in every conceivable direction.
The Negroes are taking but a small part in their creation, glory and
profit. If there are men among us who can be the means of bringing
better conditions to the great Negro masses, and who can weed out the
slow, dull, plodding process of evolution, they should not be denied
the opportunity. The masses seem to be hedged about by a wall of
indifference. Negroes have such little respect for their own kind that
the thing is becoming proverbial. Now they pretend otherwise in
self-defense.