do the rest. The white people have found that nothing is to be feared
of colored people when it comes to helping racial cause. The
individual who is loudest in defense of his race generally gets the
most generous cursing from Negroes. Newspapers are often held in
abomination by Negroes. A Negro editor would be mobbed if he told the
truth about Negroes; they say, let the white people do it. Negroes who
engage in business of any kind are usually criticised most severely by
Negroes who are incapable of engaging in any kind of business for
themselves. They are always full of suggestions as to how Mr. "A" and
Mr. "B" should conduct or run their business; still they have nothing
substantial to offer. Criticisms coming from such a source simply
amount to nothing. It is about time for all of us to stop going out of
our way, and making occasion, where none exists, to blackguard the
Negro, and instead encourage him to industry and correct living and
increase our efforts to make him a steadier laborer and better
citizen. It is hardly fair to place the whole race under a common
condemnation because of the slothfulness and lawlessness of some of
its members; it would hardly be fair even if this percentage were
larger than it is, and it is hardly worthy of a people to continue
nagging at, and seeking to arouse further prejudice against its own
race. No man can reach the elevated plane of good character and worth
who drags behind him a great load of little and mean dislikes for his
fellowman. The possibilities of higher professional standing of
colored men and women depend upon the unity and determination of the
colored people to push their professional and business men to the
front. I appeal to you as a race to cultivate race pride, not race
prejudice. Stand up like men and women and cultivate unity and protect
and defend each other's interest. Let the elevation of one be the joy
of the other, instead of pulling down those who are trying to elevate
themselves and the race. The possibilities of colored professional men
will be great to the extent that the colored people will allow their
greatness. Their destiny is with the colored race. This world is not
a place of peace and unmixed happiness. There has always been a
struggle of individuals and races for existence and mastery.
It is beginning to dawn on the Negroes generally, that if they would
be saved, they must save themselves. The idea that they were to enter
at once into all the walks of American life without violent protest
has been dissipated through the actual occurrences of the last four
decades. It would be too long a story to rehearse the reasons for the
seeming undiminished prejudices.
In the interest of truth, the exact truth, we feel free to say,
however, that the reasons are not to be charged altogether to one
race. There is much that can yet be done on the Negro's side that
would tend to put a better face on the matter. There has been
undergoing a gradual change in the minds of the thoughtful of both
races concerning education and politics as it concerns the Negroes,
which has, indeed, upset the first calculations of many, but which,
after all, has a tendency to broaden the foundation on which racial
progress must rest. The Booker T. Washington theory of education has
come to stay; not because he advocates it; not because rich men are
sustaining his school, but because he has an institution that meets
the requirements, the demands of the day. It is a pity, but true, that
the race as a rule has entertained inflated notions about the matter
of education. It rather looked forward to an education that vied with
the whites, with their centuries of leisure and their myriad routes
for employment. Education that unfits the individual to grapple with
his surroundings, his environments, is a misfit. The masses of any
race do not hope to be educated as its classes do. Those who oppose
Mr. Washington's theory advance the argument, but those intimately
acquainted with the race must admit that the Negro parent slaves
himself to make a fine lady or gentleman out of the daughter or son,
whereas the poor white parents hope and endeavor to turn out
breadwinners, notwithstanding they have no color conditions to
overcome. The lady and gentleman idea, doubtless, was born of the
slavery period, when the so-called "great" received flattering
attention from master and slave. The desire to be the recipient of
such attention, or to have it bestowed on their kind, was the result
of association and infantile minds, which have not as yet left the
will free to have the children taught to feel that the conditions must
determine the education. Happily, we may say that the notion of
turning out ladies and gentlemen instead of women and man is on the
wane. The trades, the fields, the shops are, as they should now be,
given greater consideration. Mr. Washington eternally dwells on the
theory of doing something, producing something, and especially do we
recommend the field, with its thousand-avenued opportunities.
Competition in the products of the field is fair. The school prepares
the farmer as well as it does the classic. A company of Negroes,
equipped to make a wagon throughout, will at least make living wages,
even should the article be sold for a few dollars less in order to
make it go. Material is always the smaller item of expense. The public
will not question the nationality of the makers. Reputation for good
work is always understood to be a condition.
Other enterprises, with a small output of capital, would insure wages
if no more. Do Negroes receive fair wages generally? If the Negroes
have dreamed that they were to move unscathed in the industrial
procession as they found it existing when they obtained their freedom,
they have long ere this been rudely awakened. It is not always
prejudice with shop owners and proprietors that prevent them from
employing Negroes; it is that general mass prejudice that puts an
emphatic veto on any such intentions. It resolves itself into a
business proposition with him. The store owner allows no philanthropy
in his business. He is dictated to by that course which insures him
the greatest prosperity. He may not be wholly free from prejudices,
but it is not that which determines his actions, it is the prejudice
of the masses. He will not sacrifice his existence by opposing it. It
is a mistake to wail at the class who is at the mercy of the masses.
It is more than probable that they would do different if free to do
so.
The question is often asked, can the Negroes work out their own
salvation? Will they do it? The answer is: they have it to do or reap
the very bitter consequences. The wardship idea is not the part of the
American institution as it concerns them. Competition, deadly
competition, is the pass word. The white man gives no quarter nor
takes any; nothing but sheer force, absorption, extinction,
annihilation, or what not in the commercial, industrial competitive
sense. Nothing is longer conceded; no special place for the white man,
for the black man, but for the man with the greatest pull. White
barbers, white waiters, white coachmen, are no longer "curios;" they
are persistent in their efforts to establish themselves, having no
regard for peculiar races with peculiar occupations. It means that the
Negroes must hustle and rustle, create avenues, open new vistas,
announce new projects, and thus avoid alms-seeking and poor houses in
the end.
Politics has played an undue part in perpetuating prejudices. It has
contributed much in the way of wealth to many of the race. It has
honored thousands by places of trust, honor and profit; it has been
the means of developing the latent abilities of the village Hampdens,
Pitts, Gladstones, Websters, Clays and Calhouns. It has been the means
of demonstrating fealty to party, and to country. For this a glorious
apostrophe is due those who have proven no cravens at any stage of the
race's career. If there were but that picture on which to look, the
occasion of this very lecture would not be necessary. The triumphs in
political, civil, church, scholastic, and army life have been attested
by such men as Douglass, Bruce, Washington, Langston, Revels, Walters,
Turner, Derrick, Grant, Pinchback, Councill, Lyons, Cheatham, White
and Dancy, not to speak of a host of younger men of journalistic
careers, that, according to opportunity, compare favorably with those
of greater reputations. But beyond all of this stands that grim
complement in the way of civil depression, political stagnation, if
not utter palsy. The courts have rendered their functions to the mobs
in some localities, and all but anarchy sits enthroned. The white man
has been held to blame altogether for the reversed picture. It is not
quite the case. Slavery left a legacy of hate when it gave away to
freedom. The older Negro, better groomed in the art of preserving
peace, did not forget the depth from which he sprang. He was ever
pouring oil on the troubled water, trying to bring peace out of
confusion; as a consequence that period immediately subsequent to the
war period was eventful, as it concerned the prospective peace of the
races and general prosperity. It is the new Negro, the latter day
product, who knows nothing but freedom, freedom modified by native
propensities, idleness and a groveling disposition, that is causing
the trouble. He does not understand the philosophy of the situation,
and cares less--like the Andalusian, his mule, his guitar, and it ends
right there. This strenuous American life demands work of every
individual in some form; it revolts at the idler.
Disfranchisements owe their rise as much to the indolence and vice of
too large a class of Negroes as they do to prejudice on the part of
the whites. No respectable class of men, white or black, is going to
be governed by a hoodlum element whose bellies are the main objects of
their existence. The Indianapolis _Journal_, one of the most
influential northern dailies, is right when it says that Booker T.
Washington will not be disfranchised; it means further that his class
will not be disturbed.
It will concern us but little as to what this country may do to the
whites to spur them up to their duties, providing that is their
object. The whites are not on trial; it is the Negroes. If the
disfranchisements are the means of creating better Negroes they will
have builded better than they knew. If they reduce hoodlumism,
creating Washingtons, we will not be concerned about the hoodlums of
other races. The decline and fall of disfranchisement are the two last
acts of the great political drama. The Negroes have it in their power
to hasten or prolong the day. What will they do with it? Our lives are
measured by that which we are and that which we do. The two elements
most essential to a successful life, are character and achievement.
Character is the excellence of spirit. It consists not in external
deeds, but in the thought, feeling and purpose enshrined in our
character. In the sight of God and in the eyes of our own spirit it
depends not so much upon the words we speak or the things we do, but
the thoughts we think and the feelings we cherish are the purity,
power and integrity of our spiritual nature. The first and best object
of life is character; what we do may command the admiration of
mankind, but to be is better than to do. The measure of our spiritual
excellency lies within us. It is in the heart rather than the deed.
Beauty, purity and generosity may appear in the external act, while
the motive prompting it may be mean, ignoble and selfish. Sweet truth,
purity and noble traits of character may be enshrined within the soul
and the life be so modest that they may not manifest themselves to the
public gaze.
When asked why Antipater was not dressed in purple, Alexander,
replying, said: "These men wear their purple on the outside, while
Antipater is royal within." It is the soul throbbing with a generous
feeling and a noble impulse. The soul is loyal to the claims of truth
and virtue. So you can see it is better to be loyal from within than
to make a display from the outside. If our race expects to meet the
possibilities we must learn what it takes to make true characters. It
is not the exhibit from the outside, it is what we are, as we are
judged from our actions, by the fruits we bring forth.
Character is the cultivated power; shun the examples of the world. How
many persons ever made a careful analysis of their own character or
labored to develop the good and suppress the evil? The first object of
life is character, but an object no less important is achievement.
Character is power, but power is of no use only when it is applied. A
cistern of water may contain a latent force enough to do the work of a
thousand men or overturn mountains, but only when its latent powers
are developed into the form of steam and applied to the arm of iron
for the accomplishment of a purpose is it of any good to the world. A
man of moral force must apply his power to become a blessing to
mankind. Character must go forth into the deed if it accomplishes that
whereunto it was sent. Public sentiment is beginning to measure a man,
not so much by his culture as what he can do with his culture. It
demands efficiency as well as scholastic acquirement. We must
understand that the demands are different now from what they were in
times gone by. A man must accomplish something if he expects to meet
the possibilities that await him and his race. I do not object to
education; I rather love education; but how must a man be educated?
His feet, his eyes, his hands, his head, must all be educated; and
when he is thus educated he is prepared to meet the emergencies that
await his race. As a race, thus educated, we can not be hindered from
taking position in life as American citizens. We often say that
everything is against us, and it seems so; but while this seems the
case we must be doing something individually and as a race. The
conditions of successful achievements are a correct idea of
intelligence, persistence and courageous labor. First we must have
purpose in life or, in other words, an object in view. A life that is
aimless is a sad spectacle, not so bad perhaps as a ruined life, but
not much more admirable. The Hindoos believe that the destiny of
mankind was lost in the personality by absorption in the Brahma, and
most persons are so aimless in life and so devoid of any higher or
nobler purpose that they lose their individuality in the great Brahma
of society. A man is an individual, not a mere unit in a mass; a
personality, not a mere member of a body politic. Did you ever think
what a fearful lack of that which is noble in humanity is contained in
the world? It ignores that which is highest and best in human
nature--man's freedom and power of self-organization and
self-determining influence in the masses of men. We are too apt to
fall in the same line or take on the same personalities of those
around us for the emancipation from bondage of social errors, evils,
spiritual freedom and individual aims. To float with the current is
easy; a chip can do that, but a man ought to be able to stem the tide
when necessary. Put manhood, womanhood into the world as a spiritual
force to mold, purify and elevate. Go forth into an active life with a
noble purpose, and attaining it achievement will be of the highest
success. The greater issue of the day and the demands of the hour have
not been made fundamental in our homes; the duties of the home have
not been pressed on the youth until they stand out erect in the
possession of a sterling womanhood and manhood, respecting and
respected in whatever sphere they find their vocation.
Character--character, resting upon the foundation of integrity, has
not been as it ought the burning theme of every day's instruction,
until it becomes the very soul of every boy and girl. Without
character a man had better be as dumb as a fish and as ignorant as a
snail. Intelligence, skill, industry, economy, endurance, courage and
power will be so many elements of destruction unless character shall
dominate the life and be expressed in the actions. My hands and yours
have a work to do; my head and yours have a duty to perform. Here is
the only solution for the Negro problem. It may not be out of place
for me to here emphasize the need of our working in harmony with our
environments. Our destiny is American in place and American in spirit.
It is nonsense to talk of emigration of the masses. We endured slavery
243 years and stayed here, and we shall still be here when lynch law
shall have spent its force, and with us shall be our white brother.
It is the dictate of wisdom to develop friendship, to teach unity, to
rivet the ties of fraternal love. It is the policy of annihilation to
deepen the chasm between the races. God forbid the day when the white
educators of the land shall no longer be willing to spend and be spent
for the moral and intellectual uplift of our masses. Let us be done
with sowing the seed of bitterness; we can only reap the whirlwind of
destruction. Because an inflamed sentiment drove black miners from
Pana, Illinois, every community is not repellent. Because a man rose
in the Christian Endeavor meetings in Detroit and tried to cast bad
reflections on our race, every Christian Endeavorer is not our enemy.
We shall be wise when we find our friends of whatever locality, of
whatever faith, of whatever rank, or of whatever race, and pour into
their open bosoms the full measure of our confidence. So shall we
hasten the day of our final disenthrallment There is one thing the
Negro must be proud of before he can reach the height and
possibilities that await him, he must learn to be proud of his race
and color. No race can be successful until it does these things. I
would not change my color, because I am proud of it. If there is any
one thing that will clog the wheels of our material progress, it is
the fact that some of us try to overreach ourselves. We should not
become dazzled at the splendor and magnificence of those who have had
hundreds of years to make this country what it is to-day. No man is a
success who has not a fixed sign post, an aim in life to attain unto.
A man should get that amount of education that will best fit him for
the performance and attainment of his object in life. Too much Greek
will do you no good with a white apron on. I do not say that you
should not study Greek if you intend to fill a chair in some
institution of learning. I do not say that you should not read
medicine if you intend to become a physician, or law if you desire to
follow the profession. If we watch our chances, and take timely
advantage of the opportunities offered us, our race will greatly
improve and we will be wage workers, skilled artisans, and eventually
land owners and a wealthy class of citizens of this country. I advise
you to learn trades; learn to become mechanics. We have the ability
and capacity to reach the highest point, and even to go further in the
march of progress than has been made by any people.
TOPIC XXXVII.
IMPORTANT LESSONS FROM THE AWFUL TRAGEDY.
BY E. E. COOPER.
[Illustration: E. E. Cooper.]
EDWARD E. COOPER.
For twenty-five years following Emancipation and the new
opportunities which that great event brought, many of the
brightest minds the colored race has produced had been
endeavoring to solve the perplexing and important problem of
how to make a newspaper, published in the interest of the
colored people, a profitable business enterprise. The number
of such newspaper ventures whose managers failed to solve
the problem mounts well up into the hundreds.
In the early spring of 1893, Mr. Edward E. Cooper, fresh
from conquests in race journalism in Indianapolis, came to
Washington and established "The Colored American," a weekly
newspaper whose circulation last year was put down at 12,000
copies per week, and numbers among its readers residents in
every clime where our flag floats. Mr. Cooper interpreted
the "want" for such a newspaper.
His first venture in journalism was "The Colored World,"
published at Indianapolis. This was quite a success, but he
gave it up to accept a position in the Railway Mail Service.
On leaving the Mail Service be again embarked in journalism
and established "The Indianapolis Freeman," an illustrated
weekly. This was a new feature. "The Freeman" quickly jumped
into great popularity and soon gained national fame. Having
made "The Freeman" a success, he decided to go to Washington
for a larger field of endeavor. Mr. Cooper is undoubtedly
the best all-around newspaper man the colored race has yet
produced.
Edward E. Cooper was born near the little town of Smyrna,
Tenn., and attended the old barracks school for colored
children on Knowles Street, Nashville, south of the
Nashville and Chattanooga depot; which school afterwards
became the nucleus of Fisk University. He began life selling
papers, etc., on trains; then worked on a farm two years. He
next went to Indianapolis, attended the public schools and
graduated from the high school. In 1883, he married Miss
Tenie Jones, one of the most cultivated young ladies of
Paris, Ky.
Mr. Cooper freely acknowledges that his wife has been the
balance-wheel in his life that has brought him what success
he has gained.
We stand in the shadow of a national sorrow.
In an hour of national pride and jubilation, with the eyes of the
world upon the greatest republic since the eagles of Rome overspread
the earth, in the fullness of his powers and the prime of his
usefulness, the Chief Magistrate of the Republic was stricken down by
the hand of an assassin. It is meet here that I should refer in the
opening of my address to this third assassination in the history of
our country, for the purpose of illustrating the short story that I
have to tell you and to point a moral and adorn a tale which may not
be without value to us. For it is true that
"Lives of great men all remind us
We may make our lives sublime,
And departing leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time."
William McKinley was the incarnation, not only of the possibilities of
the humblest American boy who, by diligence, integrity and devotion to
the best interests of the country, rose by steady strides to the
highest dignities in the gift of the people, but he was also the
embodiment of that grand sweep of American business genius which has
spread over the world, and promises to predominate it. If this man who
now rests from his labors with his honors full upon him represented
anything, it was the logic of business development in its largest and
best sense, for, as Governor of Ohio and member in Congress and
President of the United States, his name is indissolubly associated
with the commercial promotion, protection and expansion of American
trade.
He was not only a great executive and a great legislator, but, when
yet a youth, when the great Republic was in the agony of possible
dissolution, he heroically shouldered a musket and went to the front
as a private to preserve the union of the states bequeathed to us by
the noble fathers and the heroism of the American revolutionary
soldier in that memorable struggle, the first victim of which was
Crispus Attucks, the lineaments of whose personality have been
chiseled in marble and will stand a monument upon Boston Common, to
show a "Man's a man for a' that and a' that," and that the rank is but
the guinea's stamp.
Ah, well, we faithful hearts and true, who were never false to a
friend, who have always loved the flag, even when the flag waved not
over us, who fought with Washington at Valley Forge and with Perry at
Lake Erie, with Jackson at New Orleans, with Shaw at Fort Wagner, and
with Butler at New Market Heights, who went up San Juan Hill with
Theodore Roosevelt and the immortal Rough Riders and followed little
Joe Wheeler in Luzon, who, although a Southern brigadier, as a
reconstructed unionist in a reunited country showed in Cuba and Manila
that he had the same regard for a black soldier as for a white one
when he was loyal to the flag and faithful to his country, are here to
mourn our loss. This great heart that loved his country and gave his
life to it and for it is stilled in death!
The assassin! What of him? It is a matter of notorious fact that he
was so obscure in the life that he had led and had contributed so
little to the public weal in the place where his hands found labor
that he was utterly unknown and went down to the quicklime that
consumed his miserable remains, to the chaos from which we all spring,
stigmatized with at least two cognomens and with the reputation of
having contributed nothing to the wealth of the Republic or the
happiness of mankind. There are millions of him in Europe and America
who keep in perpetual jeopardy the splendid civilization evolved out
of the tumult of Egypt and Rome and the Dark Ages. And the very genius
of logical business development sprung out of the bosom of Moroe on
the Nile and of Tyre where ancient Afro-Phoenicians ruled the blue
waters of the adjacent seas and of the lordly Egyptians, who were
African in their fiber, historians to the contrary notwithstanding,
were the founders of the commercial spirit that dominates the world
to-day. More than that, they laid the basis of our literature and of
our philosophy. As Lord Byron hath beautifully said:
"Ye have the Pyrrick dances yet--
Where has the Pyrrick phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
Ye have the letters Cadmus gave;
Think ye he meant them for a slave?"
Now, Cadmus was a black African slave captured in war; so was Aesop,
the world's greatest fabulist; so was Terence, among the grandest of
Rome's lyric poets; so was Pushkin, the national poet to-day of
Russia; so was Alexander Dumas the first, the greatest, not only of
French novelists, but of novelists of all times and the infinite
storehouse from which all novelists draw, Honore De Balzac and Charles
Dickens to the contrary notwithstanding.