The evidence is accumulating every day that the Colored citizen, under
favorable environments, has performed his whole duty in the work of
benefiting mankind, whether in arduous labor or advancing the world by
his thought.
The records of the United States Patent office show more than four
hundred inventors and inventions among the Colored people. Many of these
inventions are of the highest value and utility. These inventions are
for devices of every conceivable use, from a rapid fire gun, invented by
Eugene Burkins, a young colored man of Chicago, down to a pencil
sharpener in common use today. In the line of humanity, life saving
guards for locomotives and street cars have been invented. All of this
goes to show the trend of the Colored man’s mind, and what he can do by
thinking and the proper use of his brain.
As an inventor Mr. James Marshall, of Macon, Georgia, has attracted
national notice through his novel flying machine which he has
had patented. Mr. Marshall has introduced what is called a
“Circumplanoscope,” which renders the flying machine non-capsizable, and
which will enable it to stand still in the air.
R. W. Overton, a sixteen-year-old student of the Stuyvesant High School,
within the past year won the long distance record for model aeroplanes
against more than twenty competitors from all the high schools of
Greater New York and vicinity.
It was said that the pioneer leaders of our Colored Americans struggled
up and carried their people up with them. The questions presented them,
the problems they were called upon to solve were new and the lights
given them to solve them was somewhat dim. They worked for betterment by
this dim light, but the light grew stronger as they advanced, and when
they came to lay down the lamp of leadership, it was taken up by their
successors burning brightly, and with added wisdom to carry on the great
work.
Who can tell then, the names of the leaders to succeed them? They were
in process of training, however, just as there are other leaders being
trained or growing up to follow in the footsteps of the present leaders.
They appeared and have expended and are expending their labors in
elevating their fellow citizens, but they will eventually be obliged to
lay down their mantle of leadership for others to take up. This means
that in the present Colored Americans there are those destined, or who
will make themselves fit to become great leaders in every department of
uplift.
Conditions have improved during the past generation, and the new
generation looks upon an enlarged field, with more varied prospects,
greater development, and opportunities that did not exist before, and
which have naturally sprung from the gradual progress of the race.