An investment in brains has always been regarded as the most productive
in profitable returns. It is becoming the fixed opinion, based upon ages
of experience, that the uplift of the world, the advancement of people
and their progress can be accomplished by brains only.
War and its desolations, its ravages, rapine, and cruelties, have for a
time swayed and dominated various parts of the earth, but, it must be
considered that violence is the mere handmaid to an uplift by
intellectual effort. War prepares the way for intellect and secures it
an opportunity to be made manifest without molestation.
If we refer to the “Catalogue des manuscripts Ethiopiens,” already
mentioned, we shall find a most amazing condition of intellectual
development among the ancient Ethiopians. It was this intellectual
condition that made its impress upon Egypt, and the other nations of
Europe and Asia, because the Ethiopians were not a conquering race by
force of arms, except so far as it was necessary to protect themselves
against attack.
If we turn to their descendants—our Colored Americans—we find the same
intellectual efforts resumed and progress going on in a marked degree
under favorable circumstances and highly civilized and free conditions
and environments. The same talent and genius that sculptured the
exquisite Ethiopian bronze statuary recently discovered in The Soudan,
carved the beautiful designs on Egyptian monuments, traced the
architecture of noble palaces and immortal buildings, still traceable in
ruins more than three thousand years old, and other evidences of art, is
manifesting itself at the present day among our Colored Americans and
other descendants in foreign countries.
Consider Lethierre, once president of the School of Fine Arts at Rome,
within our present generation, and view his paintings that now adorn the
walls of the Louvre in Paris.
We should not omit Edmonia Lewis, the sculptress, whose admirable works
required a residence in Rome, nor Henry Owassa Tanner, the eminent
artist, whose gems of art are represented in the fine art museums of the
world. There are numerous others but these are given to emphasize the
point of present Ethiopian intellectual ability.
Among writers were Alexander Poushkin, the celebrated Russian poet. He
was a Negro with curly hair and a black complexion, but a man of
extraordinary talent and versatility, in prose fiction, and history as
well as poetry.
Jose Maria Heredia, the greatest of Spanish-American poets, was a
Colored man, likewise the poet Placidio.
We can not forget Paul de Cassagnac, of France, editor, author and poet,
who was also a Colored man.
Dumas, the noted dramatic author and novelist, was a colored man, and a
most prolific popular author, poet, dramatist, novelist and essayist.
That great production “Camille” is familiar to all theater-goers in the
world, and when a man rises and says: “The world is mine,” he uses the
language of Dumas’ Monte Christo, a world-wide novel that has been
translated in all languages and performed on every stage.
We might go on for pages and refer to the Ethiopian intellect as
something almost dominant in the world of letters in foreign countries,
but must refer to our own Colored Americans as this work concerns them
particularly.
We can claim as our own Williams, the historian, the first Colored
American ever elected to the Ohio legislature, and at one time judge
advocate of the G. A. R. of Ohio.
Phillis Wheatley, the girl who translated the Latin “Metamorphoses of
Ovid” in Boston, which were republished in England as standard. Under
the most distressing and adverse circumstances Phillis Wheatley became a
scholar and a poetess of distinction and the associate of culture and
refinement in Boston.
Paul Laurence Dunbar may be held up to all as an example worth following
as a man, a poet, a novelist, and a journalist. At the age of twenty-one
years he published his first book, “Oak and Ivy,” and followed it with
others that commanded the attention and received the encomiums of the
literary world in the United States. His poetry appeals to the heart and
the hearth, and the intensity of thought displayed in his numerous
writings is relieved by humor and quaint philosophy. Dunbar is a
triumphant and unerring demonstration of Ethiopian intellect.
James B. Corrothers, the poet and prose writer, is another illustration
of the power of applied intellect. Corrothers will be always known for
the high order as well as humor of his writings, in the United States
and in England where his “Jim Crow” idea of Negro fun is still supreme.
Of his “The Black Cat Club,” a prominent literary and critical magazine,
says: “The Black Cat Club should be commemorated by cultivated people of
color as a second Emancipation Day.”
Charles W. Chesnutt, lawyer, writer, editor, historian and novelist,
easily stands as a standard to be looked up to by the members of his
race.
Miss Inez C. Parker, whose flights of fancy evolved from the higher
realms of thought, betray the poetic gift of her race to a singular
degree of beauty. As a poetess and writer, her destiny in aiding the
uplift of humanity and helping it toward the universal goal, is manifest
in every outpouring of her genius.
These are only a few of many, the most prominent now before the world.
There are many others coming on and they will soon appear to the
astonished eyes and ears of the people who have no thought of the great
future and destiny of the Colored Americans.
_THE OVERGROUND RAILROAD_
_A Mighty Way to Progress—The Underground Railroad a Thing of the Past_
The old folks revel in stories about the “Underground Railroad.” They
traveled over it, and we may admit that it took them to liberty. We may
even go farther than that, and say that it lifted from the shoulders of
a great race, a weight that was crushing them down, and brought them
into the land of “Opportunity.”
But all that is ancient history. What happened even yesterday is old,
and we are too busy today working to take advantage of the things
offered us today, and that will happen tomorrow, to dream about the
past.
We are all working to make things turn out to our advantage, and the
less we dwell about the past the closer we get to the golden fruit.
We are living in a practical age, and the man who does things prospers,
while the dreamer starves or gropes about at the bottom of the ladder.
All men need things; want something done for them. It is good business
policy to supply the wants and to do the things everybody wants done.
We mentioned the “Underground Railroad” as something that benefited the
race; but we have its successor in the way of transportation that is
reaping profit from that benefit.
That successor is the “Overground Railroad.” It is a system of
transportation such as the world has never seen or used.
You ask: “What is an ‘Overground Railroad?’” Everybody can answer, or
thinks he can, so he says: “Why, it is a railroad that runs over the
land and transports passengers and freight.” But the answer does not hit
the mark, for this particular Overground exercises a mightier power;
possesses a wider influence than the mere haulage of passengers and
freight.
It carries opportunity, activity, benefit, incentive, intelligence,
knowledge, and progress to every corner of this great land and into
every town, village, city, hamlet, even the cross-roads are reached.
It reaches every one of ten millions of a great race that less than two
decades ago were forbidden opportunity, and compelled to travel over the
“Underground Railroad.” Now, everything belonging to the great mass of
mankind, or to which they are entitled or may aspire, is parceled out
with lavish hand to all who wish to take. The effort is yours, the prize
awarded you.
In round numbers there are about two hundred thousand miles of railroads
in the United States, spreading out in every direction from ocean to
ocean, and from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. Many of them reach
over into Mexico and Canada.
On the trains operated by these railroads, there are thousands of
Pullman cars, drawing-room and chair-cars. All of these cars are in the
charge of Colored Americans, the sum total of their number running up
into tens of thousands. These men are the posterity, the descendants of
the passengers of the old “Underground Railroad.”
It is true philosophy that makes for education and wisdom, gives polish,
affords incentives to ambition and a leaning toward high ideals, as well
as offering opportunities—always bear in mind “Opportunity” for that is
what counts. Now imagine the bright men and women that travel on these
two hundred thousand miles of railroad. Imagine also, our ten thousand
men circulating among them; mixing with them; in daily and hourly
contact with them! Something must come of this association, and
something does come, which something is of incalculable benefit.
The passengers on the Overground Railroad are men and women from every
part of the world. They are the successful people; the experienced
people, and the leaders of thought. They have taken opportunity by the
forelock and ridden it to the finish. Otherwise they would not be able
to travel.
They are soldiers, statesmen, politicians, lawyers, clergymen,
physicians, scientists, and everything that is the highest and noblest
in the world.
Their number according to statistics, runs up into the hundreds of
millions of passengers annually. Our ten thousand in the performance of
their duties, listen to their interchange of opinions; note everything
that is worth knowing; glean opportunities, and absorb information and
wisdom.
If you have noticed any of these ten thousand off duty and on his way
home, you can not have failed to see gentlemen.
These men are really the operators of our “Overground Railroad” in the
highest sense of management. They are not mechanical, they are observing
and possess the power of mental acquisitiveness, due to their
surroundings and their contact with the passengers. They are the
opposites of the patrons and passengers, and managers of the old
“Underground Railroad,” which is switched off into the sidetrack of
forgetfulness.
The Pullman man from New York City meets his brother Pullman employee
from San Francisco, let us say, at St. Louis. Their regular stunt is
about two thousand miles each, with the care of numbers of the
passengers coming from tens of thousands of miles apart, from all over
the globe, in fact.
What is the result of this meeting? To an outsider it is something like
this:
“How are you, Sam?”
“How are you, Bill?”
“Have a New York stogie.”
“Have a San Francisco cheroot.”
That is all the outsider sees or learns. But when these men get away and
apart, they exchange notes of everything that they have learned on the
trip or has transpired on their routes. They are message bearers of
everything they have learned new from their passengers.
Multiply this one instance with thousands of similar instances. We have
every city in the world linked with every other city; every nationality
brought in contact with every other nationality; every class and
character of individual tied up with every other class of individuals,
and these men are the great deposit reservoirs of everything.
They become laden with unlimited cosmopolitan and universal knowledge
and information, charged with it as a bee is charged with honey in its
flights from bush to bush and from flower to flower.
This is not an exaggeration, on the contrary, it is of such common
knowledge that we think nothing about it. It is every-day fact that any
one can see for himself by going to any railroad depot in the country.
We said these men are the great deposit reservoirs of everything, but
unlike the most of our deposit reservoirs, they are also the sources of
distribution through innumerable channels. Their business is like the
training at a State Normal School with actual experience added in
unlimited quantities. They go out from these training schools, or rather
from this educational system belonging to every Overground Railroad and
scatter knowledge, information, and opportunity. A word, even a hint, of
what “a man told me on the run from New Orleans to Chicago,” and one or
perhaps many, find themselves boosted into opportunities they never
would have found without the operators on the Overground Railroad.
These Pullman employees are evangelists, news gatherers, and experienced
men acquainted with the ways and doings of the world. They have homes,
abiding places, wives, sweethearts, brothers, sisters, friends. They
have their clubs and meeting places, and they unload their information
and knowledge, mixed with opportunity, to ears greedy for advancement,
and opportunities for betterment.
They scatter broadcast high aspirations and incentives to progress among
the ten millions of the posterity of the patrons of the old Underground
Railroad.
Through this means the most astounding results have been
accomplished—results that have never happened any other race since the
world began.
The Israelites dwelt in Egypt for four hundred and thirty years, and
waited for a Moses to come and lead them out of their unpleasant
environments. There were about six hundred thousand of them, and most of
their posterity are still dreaming of the past.
The four millions that started the Underground Railroad, have increased
to ten millions in a generation and a half, and they led themselves out
to the promised land.
Imagine ten millions of any other race in the United States with perfect
freedom of action! We might well shudder at what would happen us—happen
the country. We do not feel that way about the posterity of the
operators and passengers of the old Underground Railroad. They are
peaceable, earnest students of the ways of civilization, and they are
working upward—they are ambitious to learn and constantly devise methods
of improving their condition in the same way all true American citizens
are following. They have their homes, their children, and their
attachments in our midst, in fact, they belong to our soil, and have no
desire to depart elsewhere to spend their money. They are always ready
to shed their blood for the Stars and Stripes, and are always willing to
leap to the nation’s rescue, or to aid in promoting its welfare.
Where does the Colored race learn all these things? Not in the schools
for they are limited, and live too much in the musty past, but the
cap-sheaf of the education of the race, its maintenance as a factor in
the civilization of the earth, is in their contact with the world, their
absorption of the wisdom and experience of the world’s people, due in a
great measure to the operators of the Overground Railroad.
Through this source the great race is learning that there is no vocation
to which it may not aspire in time to come and the opportunities for
intellectual development and its benefits are multiplying rapidly.
Already there is a great sprinkling of dark skins in every avenue of
life, commerce, trade, science, and in everything that the white skin
aspires to. Look down for a moment, and compare your state with that of
the scavenger, the sewer digger, the section hand, and the grades of
labor so attractive to foreign elements that come here to scrape up
enough to return to their wallow in their various native lands. You are
far above these and you belong here and you are rising with the best.