He had passed the three score and ten mark. Never strong or robust
physically, he had lived a very active life. It seemed as if his days of
usefulness were over. But, no, this grand old man of the Negro race,
nearly eighty years of age, endeavored to realize a dream that he had
conceived when a student in Cambridge University, England. He proposed to
found and establish the American Negro Academy, an organization composed
of Negro scholars, whose membership should be limited to forty and whose
purpose should be to foster scholarship and culture in the Negro race and
encourage budding Negro genius. He communicated with colored scholars in
America, England, Hayti and Africa. The result was that in March, 1897,
when McKinley was inaugurated, the most celebrated scholars and writers in
the Negro race for the first time assembled together in the Lincoln
Memorial Church and formally organized into a brotherhood of scholars.
Dunbar, the poet; DuBois, the sociologist; Scarborough, the Greek scholar;
Kelly Miller, the mathematician; Dr. Frank J. Grimke, the theologian;
Prof. John W. Cromwell, the historian; President R. R. Wright, Principal
Grisham, Prof. Love and Prof. Walter B. Hayson, noted educators; Prof. C.
C. Cook, the student of English literature, and Bishop J. Albert Johnson,
the brilliant preacher, were among those present. Bishop Tanner, of the A.
M. E. Church, and two or three other bishops were enrolled as members, and
such distinguished foreign Negroes as Prof. Harper were added as members.
The Academy seemed destined to do for the Negro race what the French
Academy did for France.
But Crummell soon died; DuBois was elected president. The industrial fad
swept over the country and men soon forgot the Academy. But Prof. John
Wesley Cromwell, the secretary, Dr. Francis J. Grimke, the treasurer,
Prof. Kelly Miller, Prof. C. C. Cook and Prof. John L. Love, of
Washington, D. C., did not despair. In December, 1902, the Academy
startled the country by a two days' session in which a series of papers
were read upon "The Religion of the Negro." The papers of Prof. Harper,
the Rev. Orishatukeh Faduma and Dr. Matthew Anderson attracted
considerable attention at the time. Later the "Literary Digest" noticed my
paper upon "A Historical and Psychological Account of the Genius and
Development of the Negro's Religion." In December, 1903, Archibald H.
Grimke was elected as President. The Academy took a new lease of life and
in March, 1905, a brilliant series of papers were read upon "The Negro and
the Elective Franchise." They were afterwards published in an eighty-five
page pamphlet and they remain today the best discussion upon Negro
Suffrage and Southern Disfranchisement.
The session of the Academy in December, 1906, was held in Howard
University, and at that session the audience that assembled in the small
chapel of Howard University listened to an illuminating discussion upon
the "Economic Condition of the Negro." Kelly Miller's paper upon "Labor
Conditions in the North" attracted some attention in the "Washington
Post." I do hope the scholars of the race will perpetuate the
organization, which was the dream of Crummell's life. I well remember the
Saturday in September, 1898, when I received a card from Walter B. Hayson,
Crummell's protege, announcing that Crummell was dying. I hurried to
Point Pleasant, N. J., but Crummell had breathed his last and his body was
carried to New York City. For two hours on Monday night I walked up and
down the beach at Asbury Park. I looked up at the stars shining so
silently in the immensity of space and heard the distant murmur of the
ocean as it rolled and broke upon the shore. In the silent midnight hour,
Nature's calmness and repose seemed to touch my soul and then from the
depth of my being came the cry, "Crummell is not dead, but he liveth; he
is now with his God and Maker."
No man is bigger than the idea that dominates him, and that he embodies in
his life. If his personality is grand and sublime, he will live on in the
moral world. But if his ideas are not progressive, he will not live long
in the thought world. Dr. Alexander Crummell believed that the Negro
belonged to the genus vir as well as to the genus homo, that he could be
included in the class aner as well as anthropos, that he had a soul to be
trained as well as a body to be clothed, sheltered and fed. In a word, he
believed that the Negro was made out of the same clay as the rest of
mankind, that he was worthy of the same education and training, and was
entitled to the same treatment, consideration, rights and privileges as
other men.
The question is, were the soaring ideals that inspired Dr. Crummell's
effort dreams of the imagination, or were they grounded in reality? Did
his perspective belong to the class of mirages in the desert, or did his
Weltauschanung belong to that class of visions, of which it was said in
Proverbs, "Where there is no vision, the people perish?"
We can only answer those questions by studying the state of the American
mind when the Academy was formed. In 1776, the high sounding and world
resounding Declaration of Independence was signed, which said that all men
were created free and equal and had an inalienable right to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. And yet some of the signers of that
Declaration held slaves. Why was it? The late Prof. William Graham Summer
of Yale said that it was because they did not regard the Negro as a man.
And the whole slavery debate hinged on the question of the humanity of the
Negro, hinged upon the question as to whether he possessed the
intellectual, ethical, aesthetical and religious potentialities and
possibilities which white men possessed, hinged upon the question as to
whether the Negro did or did not possess a soul. The South said that the
Negro was a beast and not a man, and was not capable of intellectual or
moral improvement. In Georgia and other states, they took particular pains
to see that the Negro had no chance or opportunity for mental improvement.
In Georgia they would fine and imprison a white man and whip and imprison
a colored man who was caught teaching a slave to read and write.
The great Calhoun said that "The Negro race was so inferior that it had
never produced a single individual who could conjugate a Greek verb." Dr.
Crummell in his paper before the American Negro Academy upon "The Attitude
of the American Mind Towards the Negro Intellect," wittily said that
Calhoun must have expected Greek verbs to grow in Negro brains by some
process of spontaneous generation, as he never had tried the experiment of
putting a Greek grammar in the hands of a Negro student.
But ere long arose Dr. Blyden, the linguist and Arabic scholar; Prof.
Scarborough, who wrote a Greek text book and "The Bird of Aristophanes"
and the "Thematic Vowel in the Greek Verb;" Dr. Grimke, the theologian;
Prof. Kelly Miller, the mathematician, arose. Colored students of Harvard
like Greener, Grimke, DuBois, Trotter, Stewart, Bruce, Hill and Locke, and
Bouchet, McGuinn, Faduma, Baker, Crawford and Pickens of Yale arose, who
demonstrated every kind of intellectual capacity. Then Trumbull of Brown,
Forbes and Lewis of Amherst, Wright of the University of Pennsylvania, and
Hoffman and Wilkinson of Ann Arbor University, also won honors. Dr. Daniel
Williams distinguished himself as a surgeon, Dunbar as a poet, Chestnut as
a novelist, Tanner as an artist, and Coleridge Taylor as a musician.
So in the days when the American Negro Academy came into existence, the
Bourbons of the south and their northern sympathizers realized that the
Negro had achieved distinction in intellectual fields, where they said he
would be like fish out of water.
So then they changed their tack. They then said that the Negro could be
educated, but education made him "a builder of air castles," in the words
of their colored spokesman, and made him useless to his own people. They
barred the educated Negro from employment in keeping with his natural
tastes and aptitudes and previous training and inclination, and then said
that he couldn't make a living. They said the Negro was mentally inferior
to the Anglo-Saxons and then reduced the curriculum in the state colleges
and high schools to keep him mentally inferior.
At the same time, they encouraged the Negro churches and looked with favor
upon laboring men and washerwomen using their hard earned savings to erect
costly churches. Why did they look cross-eyed at and frown at the higher
education of the Negro, which they said made him impractical, while they
smiled and looked with satisfaction at his religion, which they didn't
take seriously, but regarded as a dope? Why did they emphasize education
and minimize religion for white men, and on the other hand minimize
education and emphasize religion for black men? Why did they set up Yale
and Harvard Universities as the white's ideal of education and Hampton and
Tuskegee as the colored man's ideal?
These Bourbons of the south and their northern sympathizers had a definite
propaganda and programme regarding the Negro. Their plan was to reduce the
colored race to a race of hewers of wood and drawers of water, to
disfranchise the Negro, run him out of Congress and lucrative political
jobs in the south, to jim-crow him and segregate him. They knew that
religion would act as a narcotic and opiate and that it would keep his
eyes and mind centered upon the golden streets, jeweled pavements,
sapphire walls and white-robed angels of the New Jerusalem, while they
were robbing him of the civil and political rights which were won on the
battlefields of the Civil War and guaranteed by the Constitution of the
United States.
They knew that to educate him would be to open his eyes, to cause him to
think and to prevent his being camouflaged. They knew that to educate him
would be to make him dissatisfied with his lot at the bottom of the
ladder. They knew that to educate him would introduce the leaven of divine
discontent into his being. They knew that to educate him would cause him
to aspire to something higher than hard labor or menial service. They knew
that to educate him would cause him to know that robbing him of the ballot
was reducing him to a pariah in American life and society and making him a
political outcast. They knew that to educate the Negro would cause him to
know that when he was being jim-crowed and segregated, a caste system
based on the color of the skin was being established in America. In a
word, those Americans who desired to rob the Negro of the fruits of the
Civil War and to reduce him as far as possible to his previous status as a
slave, knew that to educate the Negro was to open his eyes to the fact
that the restrictions which they were trying to impose upon him were
giving him a social, civil, political and economic status which was lower
than that of the illiterate emigrant from Europe, lower than that of the
Japanese, Chinese, Hindoo, Indian and Filipino. In a word, they knew that
to educate the Negro would open his eyes to the fact that the color of his
skin was a mark of shame and a badge of dishonor and that a caste
prejudice based upon color, was contrary to the spirit of Christianity and
to the democratic principles underlying this government. In a word, they
knew that it would be more difficult for them to carry out their programme
with the Negro educated. And these are the reasons why twenty years ago,
it was regarded as unwise and dangerous to give the Negro any higher
education above the three R's and a training in the trades. And most of
the leaders of the Negro race were asleep at the switch twenty years ago.
They eagerly swallowed the sugar-coated and chocolate-coated pills. They
took the medicine which their Anglo-Saxon friends offered because it was
honeyed and sugared with a few fat jobs and contributions to churches and
schools. And while they slept, as Samson slept on the lap of Delilah, they
were shorn of their political and civil locks, and awoke one bright
morning to find that their strength was gone.
It was a rude awakening that they experienced in the summer of 1917, when
the edict went forth that all American citizens, black as well as white
men, were subject to the selective draft. It was a rude awakening that
they experienced, when they discovered that their sons must cross the
ocean and give their lives to bring a freedom to war-ridden Europe, which
was denied their race in this country. It was a rude awakening that they
experienced when they realized that they who only experienced partial
citizenship in this country were called upon to make the same sacrifice in
blood and treasure as their fairer-skinned brothers, who had experienced
the full blessings of citizenship.
A Baptist preacher whom I met in St. Louis a year ago voiced the thought
of the entire colored race when he said, "Ferris, what a mighty big price
we have to pay for a little freedom."
It was a rude awakening, when Hog Island was calling for riveters and the
Remington Company at Eddystone for machinists, and yet would turn down
colored men who were capable. It was a rude awakening, when colored men
and women who passed the Civil Service in Washington, D. C., during war
times and were certified, were turned down because of their color. It was
a rude awakening, when colored soldiers could fight and die side by side
with white soldiers in France, and yet couldn't visit the same service
camps in America. And it was a still ruder awakening, when the Y. M. C. A.
carried color prejudice to France where it had never existed before and
attempted to jim-crow and segregate the very colored soldiers who were
fighting to save France and to make the world safe for democracy.
Such was the state of the American mind twenty-two years, when Dr.
Alexander Crummell gathered his colored friends around him and formed the
Academy. The same reason that led the American mind to discountenance the
Negro's higher aspirations and strivings and longings caused Dr. Crummell
to encourage them. He realized that living in the same country with the
American white man, facing the same problems and conditions, the Negro
needed the same kind of education and training that the white man needed,
or he would lag hopelessly behind in the race of life. General Armstrong
once triumphantly told a class of colored students at Hampton, "Hampton
will give you enough education to cope with any colored men you may meet."
But Dr. Alexander Crummell saw deeper. He saw that the Negro needed also
an education that would enable him to cope on equal intellectual terms
with any white men that he might meet. For that reason the Negro needed to
dip into literature, history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, sciences,
anthropology and ethnology; needed in a word to be kept in touch with the
trend of modern science and the tendencies of modern thought.
Dr. Crummell was right. If there ever was a time in the Negro's history
when he needed trained and well-equipped leadership, it is now, when the
recent world war has brought about a new earth, when new problems
affecting Europe, America and Africa are pressing for solution, and when a
readjustment of social, political and industrial conditions will be made,
not only in Europe and Africa but in America. If there was ever a time in
the Negro's history when he needed trained and well-equipped leadership,
it is now when tens of thousands of black Africans and black Americans
have demonstrated on scores of bloodstained battlefields in France that
heroism can wear a sable hue and be clothed in ebony; when the American
Negro proved his patriotism and loyalty by subscribing to the Liberty
Loan, the War Chest, War Savings Stamps and by Red Cross service, and when
by reason of his helping to lay low the Prussian menace to civilization,
he has established his title clear to recognition and respectful
consideration.
At a time, when the humanitarian plums will be handed out at the Peace
Table at Versailles, at a time when the small and weak nations of Europe
will have their day in court, at a time when the oppressed and suppressed
peoples of Europe, Palestine and Armenia will have their innings, now is
the time for the Negro to make his appeal, present his plea and submit his
case.
Twenty years ago we did not fully realize that the treatment and
consideration that an individual, a race or a nation received, is
determined by the estimate in which the world holds the individual or
race, and that this estimate is largely determined by the estimate in
which the individual or race holds itself. And at this golden moment and
rare opportunity, we need far-sighted pilots, wise guides, who can seize
and utilize the civic, political, economic and industrial opportunities,
which may present themselves.
We have had too many leaders who have pursued the Fabian policy of
watchful waiting, who have been the creatures of circumstance, who have
been the sport of chance, who have been determined by their environment,
and who have been dependent upon the turn or course that events would
take.
We need a Scipio Africanus, who saw with an eagle eye that Rome must carry
the war into Africa and forthwith proceeded to take the initiative, made
himself the compeller of circumstances, himself determined the course that
events would take, and made himself the master of Rome's fate and the
architect of her destiny.
In the past we have been dependent upon what our Anglo-Saxon friends have
thought of us and have blindly worshipped the hand-picked leaders our
Anglo-Saxon godfathers have set up for us, to bow down to. The time has
now arrived for us to mold the opinion of our Anglo-Saxon friends by what
we think of ourselves, and to select and follow our own leaders. The time
has now arrived for us to take a hand in shaping our destiny.