A noted English lawyer-author has declared that the twelfth chapter of
Ecclesiastes is the final word of the world's philosophy; that no ancient
or modern thinker has uttered a profounder word. And in the seventh verse
of that chapter it reads, "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it
was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."
Metaphysicians tell us that through his five senses, man is in touch with
and in relation to his physical environment and a physical world, and that
through his reason, imagination, conscience, aesthetic and religious
intuitions, man is in touch with and in relation to his spiritual
environment and a spiritual world. They also tell us that at death, the
soul and body merely part company and go their respective ways. The
oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and other chemical elements in the body mingle
with the material elements from which they came. And the soul of man, the
ego, the center of self-consciousness, recognitive memory and reflective
thought, which has maintained its identity amid the changes of the
physical organism, will survive the destruction of that organism and live
on and on in the spirit world, embodied in whatever form and clothed with
whatever garments its Maker so decreed.
Scientists tell us that when you throw a pebble in a stream, it sets up a
series of ever-widening circles until it reaches the shore. They tell us
that when you utter an audible sound, you start in motion sound waves
which travel on for miles and miles. So it is with the influence of a
human personality. It does not end at the grave. It lives in the lives
that have been inspired, in the example set and the thoughts thrown out.
Twenty years and three months have elapsed since the soul of Alexander
Crummell bid its bodily partner farewell and took its flight to its
spiritual home. But Alexander Crummell's terrestial influence did not end
thus. It still goes on and will go on for centuries. We will briefly
review his life and career and then estimate the weight, worth and
significance of the ideas which he advocated, for which he lived and which
were incarnated in his personality.
The Rev. Dr. Alexander Crummell, the Negro apostle of culture, was a born
autocrat, a man born to command. And men instinctively bowed before him.
Some even trembled before his wrath.
Crummell was born in New York in 1819, nearly a century ago. He was the
son of Boston Crummell, a prince of the warlike Temene tribe, who was
stolen while a boy playing on the sands of the seashore. At first,
Crummell, with George T. Downing attended a school in New York taught by
the Reverend Peter Williams, then went to the school in Canaan, New
Hampshire, which was hauled into the pond by those who were angry because
the Negro was taught to read. Crummell with others took refuge in a barn.
They were fired upon; but Henry Highland Garnet fired a return shot, at
which they were allowed to depart in peace. Then Crummell attended the
Oneida Institute, of which Beriah Green was the President. He became a
priest in the Episcopal Church, was for twenty years a missionary on the
west coast of Africa, during which period he visited seventy tribes. He
returned to this country in the late sixties or the early seventies, was
for a year or two rector of St. Philip's Church, New York, and for
twenty-three years rector of the St. Luke's Church in Washington, D. C.
The last years of his life were spent in issuing his race tracts and
founding the American Negro Academy, the first body to bring Negro
scholars from all over the world together. He died at Point Pleasant,
N. J., in Dr. Matthew Anderson's summer home in September, 1898, in his
eightieth year.
He was not as famous a man as Douglass, because in the most eventful years
of the Negro race's history from 1850 to 1870 he was in Africa. When he
died, men like Phillips Brooks and Dr. Fuller, of Rochester, who were old
friends of his and who knew him intimately, the man and his work, had
already crossed the mystic stream of death and passed over to the other
shore. But he was a power in his own race to the last. Still in the late
forties, he delivered three addresses that attracted considerable
attention. In 1847 he addressed a colored convention at Troy, N. Y. And in
1848 he visited London and spoke at the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery
Society, with such fire, force, finish and polish that he made many
friends, both for himself and his race.
He visited Liverpool. He so impressed the Bishop of the diocese, that he
was invited to officiate as minister in the St. George's Church at
Everton, of which the Reverend Mr. Eubanks was rector. The audience had
never heard a colored man preach before. And Crummell's dignity and
bearing in the pulpit, his polish and refinement, his lucid exposition of
the text, his sublimity of thought, beauty of diction, and fire and force
of utterance for nearly an hour held that cultured audience spellbound.
Crummell made history for the race on that Sunday morning in 1848. And I
suppose that Crummell's eulogy on Clarkson, delivered in New York City in
1846, in its grandeur of thought, sublimity of sentiment and splendor of
style, surpasses any oratorical effort of any colored man in the
antebellum days. From that time until his death in 1898, Crummell swayed
both colored and white audiences.
I remember in the fall of 1896, a Baptist preacher lectured in Newport,
R. I. At the close of the lecture, a tall, slender, venerable looking man,
with an aristocratic air, arose and stirred the audience with his heroic
words. The Baptist preacher was so touched that he sought Crummell out.
And then an influence entered his life that made him a new man, a stronger
moral force in the Baptist denomination. I remember, too, when McKinley
was inaugurated in 1897. Men and women, old and young, from all sections
of the country, of varying degrees of culture, of divers religious creeds,
came to Crummell's house as a mecca. Some had been thrilled by his sermons
and commencement addresses; others caught the inspiration of their lives
from his works, "Africa and America," "The Future of Africa," and "The
Greatness of Christ, and Other Sermons." Today his memory is treasured in
Washington, in cities of the north and south, and along the west coast of
Africa. Such was the influence the imperial Crummell wielded.
There you have the historic Alexander Crummell, the finished scholar, the
magnetic preacher, the brave, uncompromising idealist, who was dreaded by
imposters and fakirs and time-servers and flunkies. He was one of those
rugged, adamantine spirits, who could stand against the world for a
principle, but he was gracious, courteous, tender and sympathetic withal.
Tall, slender, symmetrical, erect in bearing, with a graceful and elastic
walk, with a refined and aristocratic face that was lighted up by keen
penetrating but kindly eyes, and surrounded by the gray hair and beard
which gave him a venerable appearance, with a rich, ringing, resonant
baritone voice, which had not lost its power even in old age, with an air
of unmistakable good breeding and a conversation that flavored of books
and literature and art, Dr. Crummell was a man that you could never
forget, once you met him or heard him preach. He frequently said that what
the race needed was an educated gentry, and he was himself one of the
finest specimens of that rugged strength, tempered with Christian culture
and a refined benevolence, which was his ideal, that the race has yet
produced. Sprung from the fierce Timene Tribes, who on the west coast of
Africa cut to pieces a British regiment near Sierre Leone several years
ago, he possessed the tireless energy, the untamed spirit and the fearless
daring that made his warrior ancestors dreaded. But like the apostle Paul,
his native strength was mellowed by the Christian religion.
There was an ineffable charm in his conversation. He was a delightful
companion, ever ready in wit and repartee, versatile and resourceful in
debate, with the wide knowledge that is gained by travel and garnered from
many fields of study. He reminded me of Wendell Phillips as an orator,
with the impression of having an immense reserve power behind him; he
could fill a large hall by speaking in his natural conversational voice.
He possessed the same keen Damascus blade of sarcasm when aroused.
Undoubtedly he was the Sir Philip Sidney of the Negro race.
In my chapter upon "The American Negro's Contribution to literature," I
tell how beautifully DuBois in his "Souls of Black Folk" has drawn the
figure of a man, whom I regard in some respects the grandest character of
the Negro race. Read the chapter and read Crummell's book upon "Africa and
America," and then you will recognize the greatness of Crummell. Some
people say that great Negroes are jealous of each other. But read
Crummell's chapter upon Henry Highland Garnet and DuBois's chapter upon
Crummell, and you will see how kindred spirits appreciate each other's
worth and value.
Those who are interested in Tuskegee Institute will remember that in
February, 1899, a memorable meeting was held in the Hollis Theatre in
behalf of that celebrated school. The Hampton and Tuskegee Quartettes
sang. Dunbar recited his dialect poems; Dr. Washington, as usual, spoke in
an impressive and eloquent manner. But the event that interested many
thoughtful minds was the paper of Dr. Wm. E. Burghardt DuBois upon the
"Strivings of a Negro for the Higher Life."