SOME EXCEPTIONAL MEN AND WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM THEM
There are some opportunities that come to the boy or girl who is born
poor that the boy or girl who is born rich does not have. In the same
way there are some advantages in belonging to a disadvantaged race. The
individual or the race which has to face peculiar hardships and to
overcome unusual difficulties gains an experience of men and things and
gets into close and intimate touch with life in a way that is not
possible to the man or woman in ordinary circumstances.
In the old slavery days, when any of the white folks were a little
uncertain about the quality of a new family that had moved into the
neighbourhood, they always had one last resource for determining the
character and the status of the new family. When in doubt, they could
always rely on old “Aunt Jenny.” After “Aunt Jenny” had visited the new
family and returned with her report, the question was settled. Her
decision was final, because “Aunt Jenny” knew. The old-fashioned house
servants gained, through their peculiar experiences, a keen sense for
what was called the “quality.”
In freedom also the Negro has had special opportunities for finding out
the character and the quality of the white people among whom he lives.
If there is a man in the community who is habitually kind and
considerate to the humblest people about him, the coloured people know
about that man. On the contrary, if there is a man in that community who
is unfair and unjust in his dealings with them, the coloured people know
that man also.
In their own way and among themselves the coloured people in the South
still have the habit of weighing and passing judgment on the white
people in their community; and, nine times out of ten, their opinion of
a man is pretty accurate. A man who can always be counted on to go out
of his way to assist and protect the members of an unpopular race, and
who is not afraid or ashamed to show that he is interested in the
efforts of the coloured people about him to improve their condition, is
pretty likely to be a good citizen in other respects.
In the average Southern community, also, it is almost always the best
people, those who are most highly cultured and religious, who know the
coloured people best. It is the best white people who go oftenest into
the Negro churches or teach in the Negro Sunday-schools. It is to
individual white men of this better class that the average coloured
people go most frequently for counsel and advice when they are in
trouble.
The fact that I was born a Negro, and the further fact that I have all
my life been engaged in a kind of work that was intended to uplift the
masses of my people, has brought me in contact with many exceptional
persons, both North and South. For example, it was because I was a poor
boy and a Negro that I found my way to Hampton Institute, where I came
under the influence of General Armstrong, who, as teacher and friend,
has had a larger influence upon my life than any other person I have
ever known, except my mother. As it was in my boyhood, so it has been in
a greater degree in my later life; because of the work I was trying to
do for the Negro race I have constantly been brought into contact with
men of the very highest type, generous, high-minded, enlightened, and
free. As I have already suggested, a large part of my education has been
gained by my personal contact with these exceptional men.
There have been times in my life when I fear that I should have lost
courage to go forward if I had not had constantly before me the example
of other men, some of them obscure and almost unknown outside of the
communities in which they lived, whose patient, unwavering cheerfulness
and good-will, in spite of difficulties, have been a continued
inspiration to me.
On my way to Tuskegee for the first time I met one of the finest
examples of the type of man I have tried to describe. He was a railroad
conductor and his name was Capt. Isaiah C. Howard. For many years he had
charge of a train on the Western Railroad of Alabama, between Montgomery
and Atlanta. I do not know where Captain Howard got his education, or
how much he had studied books. I do know that he was born in the South
and had spent all his life there. During a period of twenty years I
rarely, if ever, met a higher type of the true gentleman, North or
South.
I recall one occasion in particular when I was on his train between
Atlanta and Montgomery during the Christmas holiday season, when the
rougher and more ignorant of my race usually travel in large numbers,
and when owing to the general license that has always prevailed during
the holiday season, a certain class of coloured people are likely to be
more or less under the influence of whiskey.
After a time a disturbance arose in the crowd at the lower end of the
car. When Captain Howard appeared, some of the men who had been drinking
spoke to him in a way that most men, white or black, would have
resented. In the case of some men, the language these Negroes used might
easily have furnished an occasion for a shooting, the consequences of
which it was not difficult for me to picture to myself. I was deeply
touched to see how, like a wise and patient father, Captain Howard
handled these rough fellows. He spoke to them calmly, without the least
excitement in his voice or manner, and in a few moments he had obtained
almost complete order in the car. After that he gave them a few words of
very sensible advice which at once won their respect and gratitude,
because they understood the spirit that prompted it.
During all the time that I travelled with him I never saw Captain
Howard, even under the most trying circumstances, lose his temper or
grow impatient with any class of coloured people that he had to deal
with. During the long trips that I used to make with him, whenever he
had a little leisure time, he would drop down into the seat by my
side and we would talk together, sometimes for an hour at a time, on the
condition and prospects of the Negro in the South. I remember that he
had very definite ideas in regard to the white man’s duty and
responsibility, and more than once he expressed to me his own reasons
for believing that the Negro should be treated with patience and with
justice. He used frequently to express the fear that, by allowing
himself to get into the habit of treating Negroes with harshness, the
white man in the South would be injured more than the Negro.
I have spoken of Captain Howard at some length because he represents a
distinct class of white people in the South, of whom an increasing
number may be found in nearly every Southern community. He possessed in
a very high degree those qualities of kindness, self-control, and
general good breeding which belong to the real aristocracy of the South.
In his talks with me he frequently explained that he was no
“professional” lover of the Negro; that, in fact, he had no special
feeling for the Negro or against him, but was interested in seeing fair
play for every race and every individual. He said that his real reason
for wanting to give the Negro the same chance that other races have was
that he loved the South, and he knew that there could be no permanent
prosperity unless the lowest and poorest portion of the community was
treated with the same justice as the highest and most powerful.
I count it a part of my good fortune to have been thrown, early in my
life in Alabama, in contact with such a man as Captain Howard. After
knowing him I said to myself: “If, under the circumstances, a white man
can learn to be fair to my race instead of hating it, a black man ought
to be able to return the compliment.”
In connection with my work in Alabama, I early made the acquaintance of
another Southern white man, also an Alabamian by birth but of a
different type, a man of education and high social and official
standing—the late J. L. M. Curry.
It was my privilege to know Doctor Curry well during the last twenty
years of his life. He had fought on the side of the Confederacy during
the Civil War, he had served as a college professor and as United States
Minister to Spain, and had held other high public positions. More than
that, he represented, in his personal feelings and ways of thinking, all
that was best in the life of the Southern white people.
Notwithstanding the high positions he had held in social and official
life, Doctor Curry gave his latter years to the cause of education among
the masses of white and coloured people in the South, and was never
happier than when engaged in this work.
I met Doctor Curry for the first time, in a business way, at Montgomery,
Ala. While I was in the Capitol building I happened to be, for a few
moments, in a room adjoining that in which Doctor Curry and some other
gentlemen were talking, and could not avoid overhearing their
conversation. They were speaking about Negro education. One of the state
officials expressed some doubt about the propriety of a Southern
gentleman taking an active part in the education of the Negro. While I
am not able to give his exact words, Doctor Curry replied in substance
that he did not believe that he or any one else had ever lost anything,
socially or in any other way, on account of his connection with Negro
education.
“On the other hand,” Doctor Curry continued, “I believe that Negro
education has done a great deal more for me than I have ever been able
to do for Negro education.”
Then he went on to say that he had never visited a Negro school or
performed a kindly act for a Negro man, woman, or child, that he himself
was not made stronger and better for it.
Immediately after the Civil War, he said, he had been bitterly opposed
to every movement that had been proposed to educate the Negro. After he
came to visit some of the coloured schools, however, and saw for himself
the struggles that the coloured people were making to get an education,
his prejudice had changed into sympathy and admiration.
As far as my own experience goes—and I have heard the same thing said by
others—there is no gentler, kindlier, or more generous type of man
anywhere than those Southern white men who, born and bred to those
racial and sectional differences which, after the Civil War, were
mingled with and intensified by the bitterness of poverty and defeat,
have struggled up to the point where they feel nothing but kindness to
the people of all races and both sections. It is much easier for those
who shared in the victory of the Civil War—I mean the Northern white man
and the Negro—to emancipate themselves from racial and sectional
narrowness.
There is another type of white man in the South who has aided me in
getting a broader and more practical conception of my work. I refer to
the man who has no special sentiment for or against the Negro, but
appreciates the importance of the Negro race as a commercial asset—a man
like Mr. John M. Parker, of New Orleans. Mr. Parker is the president of
the Southern Industrial Congress, and is one of the largest planters in
the Gulf states. His firm in New Orleans, I understand, buys and sells
more cotton than any other firm in the world. Mr. Parker sees more
clearly than any white man in the South with whom I have talked, the
fact that it is important to the commercial progress of the country that
the Negro should be treated with justice in the courts, in business, and
in all the affairs of life. He realizes also that, in order that the
Negro may have an incentive to work regularly, he must have his wants
increased; and this can be brought about only through education.
I have heard many addresses to coloured people in all parts of the
country, but I have never heard words more sensible, practical, and to
the point from the lips of any man than those of an address which Mr.
Parker delivered before nearly a thousand Negro farmers at one of the
annual Negro Conferences at the Tuskegee Institute. Mr. Parker has for
years been a large employer of Negro labour on his plantation. He was
thus able to speak to the farmers simply and frankly, and, even though
he told them some rather unpleasant truths, the audience understood and
appreciated not only what was said, but the spirit in which it was
uttered.
The hope of the South, so far as the interests of the Negro are
concerned, rests very largely upon, men like Mr. Parker, who see the
close connection between labour, industry, education, and political
institutions, and have learned to face the race problem in a large and
tolerant spirit, and are seeking to solve it in a practical way.
A quite different type of man with whom I have been thrown in frequent
contact is Col. Henry Watterson, of the Louisville _Courier-Journal_.
Colonel Watterson seems to me to represent the Southern gentleman of the
old school, a man of generous impulses, high ideals, and gracious
manner. I have had frequent and long conversations with him about the
Negro and about conditions in the South. If there is anywhere a man who
has broader or more liberal ideas concerning the Negro, or any
undeveloped race, I have not met him.
A few years ago, when a meeting had been arranged at Carnegie Hall, New
York, in order to interest the public in the work of our school at
Tuskegee, we were disappointed in securing a distinguished speaker from
the South who had promised to be present. At the last moment the
committee in charge telegraphed to Colonel Watterson. Although (because
of the death of one of his children) he had made up his mind not to
speak again in public for some time, Colonel Watterson went to New York
from Louisville and made one of the most eloquent speeches in behalf of
the Negro that I have ever heard. He told me at the time that nothing
but his interest in the work that we were trying to do at Tuskegee would
have induced him to leave home at that time.
Whenever I have been tempted to grow embittered or discouraged about
conditions in the South, my acquaintance with such men as Mr. Parker and
Colonel Watterson has given me new strength and increased my faith.
I have been fortunate also in the coloured men with whom I have been
associated. There is a class of Negroes in the South who are just as
much interested as the best white people in the welfare of the
communities in which they live. They are just as much opposed as the
best white people to anything that tends to stir up strife between the
races. But there are two kinds of coloured people, just as there are two
kinds of white people.
There is a class of coloured people who are narrow in their sympathies,
short-sighted in their views, and bitter in their prejudices against the
white people. When I first came to Alabama I had to decide whether I
could unite with this class in a general crusade of denunciation against
the white people of the South, in order to create sympathy in the North
for the work that I was seeking to carry on, or whether I would consider
the real interests of the masses of my race, and seek to preserve and
promote the good relations that already existed between the races.
I do not deny that I was frequently tempted, during the early years of
my work, to join in the general denunciation of the evils and injustice
that I saw about me. But when I thought the matter over, I saw that such
a course would accomplish no good and that it would do a great deal of
harm. For one thing, it would serve only to mislead the masses of my own
race in regard to the opportunities that existed right about them.
Besides that, I saw that the masses of the Negro people had no
disposition to carry on any general war against the white people. What
they wanted was the help and encouragement of their white neighbours in
their efforts to get an education and to improve themselves.
Among the coloured men who saw all this quite as clearly as myself was
Rufus Herron, of Camp Hill, Ala. He was born in slavery and had had
almost no school advantages, but he was not lacking in practical wisdom
and he was a leader in the community in which he lived. Some years ago,
after he had harvested his cotton crop he called to see me at the
Tuskegee Institute. He said that he had sold all of his cotton, had got
a good price for it, had paid all his debts for the year, and had twenty
dollars remaining. He handed me ten dollars and asked me to use it in
the education of a student at Tuskegee. He returned to his home and gave
the other ten to the teacher of the white school in his vicinity, and
asked him to use it in the education of a white student.
Since that day I have come to know Rufus Herron well. He never misses a
session of the annual Tuskegee Negro conference. He is the kind of man
that one likes to listen to because he always says something that goes
straight to the point, and after he has covered the subject he stops. I
do not think that I have ever talked with him that he did not have
something to suggest in regard to the material, educational, and moral
improvement of the people, or something that might promote better
relations between white people and black people. If there is a white
man, North or South, that has more love for his community or his country
than Rufus Herron, it has not been my good fortune to meet him. In his
feelings and ambitions he also is what I have called an aristocrat.
I have no disposition to deny to any one, black or white, the privilege
of speaking out and protesting against wrong and injustice, whenever and
wherever they choose to do so. I would do injustice to the facts and to
the masses of my people in the South, however, if I did not point out
how much more useful a man like Rufus Herron has made his life than the
man who spends his time and makes a profession of going about talking
about his “rights” and stirring up bitterness between the white people
and coloured people. The salvation of the Negro race in America is to be
worked out, for the most part, not by abstract argument and not by mere
denunciation of wrong, but by actual achievement in constructive work.
In Nashville there is another coloured man—a banker, a man of education,
wealth, and culture. James C. Napier is about the same age as Rufus
Herron. I have been closely associated with him for twenty years. I have
been with him in the North and in the South; I have worked with him in
conventions, and I have talked with him in private in my home and in his
home. During all the years that I have known him I have never heard Mr.
Napier express a narrow or bitter thought toward the white race. On the
contrary, he has shown himself anxious to give publicity to the best
deeds of the white people rather than the worst. During the greater part
of my life I have done my work in association with such men as he. There
is no part of the United States in which I have not met some of this
type of coloured men. I honour such men all the more because, had they
chosen to do so, they could easily have made themselves and those about
them continually miserable by dwelling upon the mean things which people
say about the race or the injustices which are so often a part of the
life of the Negro.
Let me add that, so far as I have been able to see, there is no real
reason why a Negro in this country should make himself miserable or
unhappy. The average white man in the United States has the idea that
the average Negro spends most of his time in bemoaning the fact that he
is not a white man, or in trying to devise some way by which he will be
permitted to mingle, in a purely social way, with white people. This is
far from the truth. In my intercourse with all classes of the Negro,
North and South, it is a rare occurrence when the matter of getting away
from the race, or of social intermingling with the white people, is so
much as mentioned. It is especially true that intelligent Negroes find a
satisfaction in social intercourse among themselves that is rarely known
or understood by any one outside of the Negro race. In their family
life, in the secret societies and churches, as well as other
organizations where coloured people come together, the most absorbing
topic of conversation invariably relates to some enterprise for the
betterment of the race.
Among coloured farmers, as among white farmers, the main topic of
discussion is naturally the farm. The Negro is, in my opinion, naturally
a farmer, and he is at his very best when he is in close contact with
the soil. There is something in the atmosphere of the farm that develops
and strengthens the Negro’s natural common-sense. As a rule the Negro
farmer has a rare gift of getting at the sense of things and of stating
in picturesque language what he has learned. The explanation of it is,
it seems to me, that the Negro farmer studies nature. In his own way he
studies the soil, the development of plants and animals, the streams,
the birds, and the changes of the seasons. He has a chance of getting
the kind of knowledge that is valuable to him at first-hand.
In a visit some years ago to a Negro farmers’ institute in the country,
I got a lesson from an unlettered coloured farmer which I have never
forgotten. I had been invited by one of the Tuskegee graduates to go
into the country some miles from Tuskegee to be present at this
institute. When I entered the room the members of the institute were
holding what they called their farmers’ experience meeting. One coloured
farmer was asked to come up to the platform and give his experience. He
was an old man, about sixty-five years of age. He had had no education
in the book, but the teacher had reached him, as he had others in the
community, and showed him how to improve his methods of farming.
When this old man came up to the front of the room to tell his
experience, he said: “I’se never had no chance to study no science, but
since dis teacher has been here I’se been trying to make some science
for myself.”
Thereupon he laid upon the table by his side six stalks of cotton and
began to describe in detail how, during the last ten years, he had
gradually enriched his land so as to increase the number of bolls of
cotton grown upon each individual stalk. He picked up one stalk and
showed it to the audience; before the teacher came to the community, he
said, and before he began to improve his land, his cotton produced only
two bolls to the stalk. The second year he reached the point where, on
the same land, he succeeded in producing four bolls on a stalk. Then he
showed the second stalk to the audience. After that he picked up the
third and fourth stalks, saying that during the last few years he had
reached a point where a stalk produced eight bolls.
Finally he picked up the last stalk and said: “This year I made cotton
like dis”—and he showed a stalk containing fourteen bolls. Then the old
fellow took his seat.
Some one in the audience from a distance arose and said: “Uncle, will
you tell us your name?”
The old fellow arose and said: “Now, as you ask me for my name, I’ll
tell you. In de old days, before dis teacher come here, I lived in a
little log-cabin on rented land, and had to mortgage my crop every year
for food. When I didn’t have nothin’, in dem days, in my community dey
used to call me ‘Old Jim Hill.’ But now I’se out o’ debt; I’se de deeds
for fifty acres of land; and I lives in a nice house wid four rooms
that’s painted inside and outside; I’se got some money in de bank; I’se
a taxpayer in my community; I’se edicated my children. And now, in my
community, dey calls me ‘Mr. James Hill.’”
The old fellow had not only learned to raise cotton during these ten
years, but, so far as he was concerned, he had solved the race problem.
As one travels through the Southland, he is continually meeting old
Negro farmers like the one that I have described. It has been one of the
great satisfactions of my life to be able from time to time to go out
into the heart of the country, on the plantations and on the farms where
the masses of the coloured people live. I like to get into the fields
and into the woods where they are at work and talk with them. I like to
attend their churches and Sunday-schools and camp-meetings and revival
meetings. In this way I have gotten more material which has been of
service to me in writing and speaking than I have ever gotten by reading
books. There are no frills about the ordinary Negro farmer, no pretence.
He, at least, is himself and no one else. There is no type of man that I
more enjoy meeting and knowing.
A disadvantaged race has, too, the advantage of coming in contact with
the best in the North, and this again has been my good fortune. There
are two classes of people in the North—one that is just as narrow and
unreasonable toward the white man at the South as any Southern white man
can be toward the Negro or a Northern white man. I have always chosen to
deal with the other white man at the North—the man with large and
liberal views.
In saying this I make an exception of the “professional” friend of the
Negro. I have little patience with the man who parades himself as the
“professional” friend of any race. The “professional” friend of the
Chinese or Japanese or Filipino is frequently a well-meaning person, but
he is always tiresome. I like to meet the man who is interested in the
Negro because he is a human being. I like to talk with the man who wants
to help the Negro because he is a member of the human family, and
because he believes that, in helping the Negro, he is helping to make
this a better world to live in.
During the twenty-five years and more that I have been accustomed to go
North every year to obtain funds with which to build up and support the
Tuskegee Institute, I have made the acquaintance of a large number of
exceptional people in that part of the country. Because I was seeking
aid for Negro education, seeking assistance in giving opportunities to a
neglected portion of our population, I had an opportunity to meet these
people in a different and, perhaps, more intimate way than the average
man. I had an opportunity to see a side of their lives of which many of
their business acquaintances, perhaps, did not know the existence.
Few people, I dare say, who were acquainted with the late Mr. H. H.
Rogers, former head of the Standard Oil Company, knew that he had any
special interest or sympathy for the Negro. I remember well, however, an
occasion when he showed this interest and sympathy. I was showing him
one day the copy of a little Negro farmers’ newspaper, published at
Tuskegee, containing an account of the efforts the people in one of our
country communities were making to raise a sum of money among themselves
in order that they might receive the aid he had promised them in
building a schoolhouse. As Mr. Rogers read the account of this school
“rally,” as it was called, and looked down the long list of names of the
individuals who in order to make up the required sum, had contributed
out of their poverty, some a penny, some five cents, some twenty-five,
some a dollar and a few as much as five dollars, his eyes filled with
tears. I do not think he ever before realized, as he did at that moment,
the great power—and the great power for good—which his money gave them.
During the last years of his life, Mr. Rogers was greatly interested in
the building of the Virginian Railway, which was constructed upon his
own plans and almost wholly with his own capital, from Norfolk, Va., to
Deep Water, W. Va. One of the first things he did, after this new
railway was completed, was to make arrangements for a special train in
order that I might travel over and speak at the different towns to the
coloured people along the line and, at the same time, study their
situation in order that something might be done to improve their
condition. From his point of view, these people were part of the
resources of the country which he wanted to develop. He desired to see
the whole country through which this railway passed, which, up to that
time, had remained in a somewhat backward condition, made prosperous and
flourishing and filled with thriving towns and with an industrious and
happy people. He died, however, just as he seemed on the eve of
realizing this dream.
For a number of years before his death, I knew Mr. H. H. Rogers
intimately. I used to see him frequently in his office in New York;
sometimes I made trips with him on his yacht. At such times I had
opportunity to talk over in detail the work that I was trying to do. Mr.
Rogers had one of the most powerful and resourceful minds of any man I
ever met. His connection with large business affairs had given him a
broad vision and practical grasp of public and social questions, and I
learned much from my contact with him.
In this connection I might name another individual who represents
another and entirely different type of man, with whom I have frequently
come in contact during my travels through the Northern states. I refer
to Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of the New York _Evening Post_.
Mr. Villard is not primarily a business man in the sense that Mr. Rogers
was, and his interest in the education and progress of the Negro is of a
very different kind from that of Mr. Rogers; at least he approaches the
matter from a very different point of view.
Mr. Villard is the grandson of William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist.
He is a literary man and idealist, and he cherishes all the intense zeal
for the rights of the Negro which his grandfather before him displayed.
He is anxious and determined that the Negro shall have every right and
every opportunity that any other race of people has in this country. He
is the outspoken opponent of every institution and every individual who
seeks to limit in any way the freedom of any man or class of men
anywhere. He has not only continued in the same way and by much the same
methods that his grandfather used, to fight the battles for human
liberty, but he has interested himself in the education of the Negro. It
is due to the suggestion and largely to the work of Mr. Villard that
Tuskegee, at the celebration of its twenty-fifth anniversary received
the $150,000 memorial fund to commemorate the name and service of Mr.
William H. Baldwin to Tuskegee and Negro education in the South. Mr.
Villard has given much of his time and personal service to the work of
helping and building up some of the smaller and struggling Negro schools
in the South. He is a trustee of at least two of such institutions,
being president of the board of trustees in one case, and takes an
active part in the direction and control of their work. He has recently
been active and, in fact, is largely responsible for the organization of
the National Association for the Advancement of the Coloured People, a
sort of national vigilance committee, which will watch over and guard
the rights and interests of the race, and seek through the courts,
through legislation, and through other public and private means, to
redress the wrongs from which the race now suffers in different parts of
the country.
Perhaps I ought to add in fairness that, while I sympathize fully with
Mr. Villard’s purposes, I have frequently differed with him as to the
methods he has used to accomplish them. Sometimes he has criticised me
publicly in his newspaper and privately in conversation. Nevertheless,
during all this time, I have always felt that I retained his friendship
and good-will. I do not think there has ever been a time when I went to
him with a request of any kind either for myself personally or to obtain
his help in any way in the work in which I was engaged that he has not
shown himself willing and anxious to do everything in his power to
assist me. While I have not always been able to follow his suggestions,
or agree with him as to the methods I should pursue, I have,
nevertheless, I think, profited by his criticism and have always felt
and appreciated the bracing effect upon public sentiment of his vigorous
and uncompromising spirit.
I have learned also from Mr. Villard the lesson that persons who have a
common purpose may still maintain helpful, friendly relations, even if
they do differ as to details and choose to travel to the common goal by
different roads.
Another man who has exercised a deep influence upon me is Robert C.
Ogden. Some months after I became a student at Hampton Institute, Mr.
Robert C. Ogden, in company with a number of other gentlemen from New
York, came to Hampton on a visit. It was the first time I ever saw him
and the first sight of a man of the physical, mental, and moral build of
Mr. Ogden—strong, fresh, clean, vigorous—made an impression upon me that
it is hard for any one not in my situation to appreciate. The thing that
impressed me most was this: Here was a man, intensely earnest and
practical, a man who was deeply engrossed in business affairs, who still
found time to turn aside from his business and give a portion of his
time and thought to the elevation of an unfortunate race.
Mr. Ogden is a man of a very different type from either Mr. Rogers or
Mr. Villard. He does not look at the question of uplifting the Negro as
a question of rights and liberty exclusively: he does not think of it
merely as a means of developing one of the neglected resources of the
South. He looks upon it, if I may venture to say so, as a question of
humanity. Mr. Ogden is intensely interested in human beings; he cannot
think of an unfortunate individual or class of individuals without
feeling a strong impulse to help them. He has spent a large portion of
his time, energy, and fortune in inspiring a large number of other
people with that same sentiment. I do not believe any man has done more
than Mr. Odgen to spread, among the masses of the people, a spirit of
unselfish service to the interests of humanity, irrespective of
geographical, sectarian or racial distinction.
Perhaps I can in no better way give an idea of what Mr. Ogden has
accomplished in this direction than by giving a list of some of the
activities in which he has been engaged. Mr. Ogden is:
President and only Northern member of the Conference for Southern
Education,
President of the Southern Education Board,
President of the Board of Trustees of Hampton Institute,
Trustee of Tuskegee Institute,
Trustee of the Anna T. Jeans Fund for Improvement of the Negro Common
School,
Member of the General Education Board.
From this it will be seen that Mr. Ogden is directly connected with
almost every important movement for education in the South, whether for
white people or for black people. In addition to that he is president of
the Board of Directors of the Union Theological Seminary of New York,
member of the Sage Foundation Board, and of the Presbyterian Board of
Home Missions. In all these different directions he has worked quietly,
steadily, without stinting himself, for the good of the whole country.
Many of the sentiments which he has expressed in his annual addresses at
the meetings of these different organizations have in them the breadth
of view of a real statesman. His idea was that in giving an equal
opportunity for education to every class in the community he was laying
the foundation for a real democracy. He spoke of the educational
conference, for instance, as “a congress called by the voice of
‘democracy’”; and again he said of this same institution, “Its
foundation is the proposition that every American child is entitled to
an education.”
In spite of what he has done in a multitude of ways to advance
education, I have heard Mr. Ogden say, both in public and in private,
that he was not an educated man. Perhaps he has not gotten so much
education in the usual, formal, technical matter out of books as some
other people. But through the study of books, or men, or things, Mr.
Ogden has secured the finest kind of education, and deserves to be
classed with the scholars of the world. So far as I have studied Mr.
Ogden’s career, it is of interest and value to the public in three
directions:
First: He has been a successful business man.
Second: More than any other one individual except Gen. S. C.
Armstrong, he has been the leader in a movement to educate the whole
South, regardless of race or colour.
Third: In many important matters relating to moral and religious
education in the North, Mr. Ogden is an important leader.
I know of few men in America whose life can be held up before young
people as a model as can Mr. Ogden’s life.
It would be difficult for me to describe or define the manner and extent
to which I have been influenced and educated by my contact with Mr.
Ogden. It was characteristic of him, that the only reason I came to know
him is because I needed him, needed him in the work which I was trying
to do. Had I not been a Negro I would probably never have had the rare
experience of meeting and knowing intimately a man who stands so high in
every walk of life as Mr. Robert C. Ogden. Had Mr. Ogden been a weak
man, seeking his own peace of mind and social position, he would not
have been brave enough and strong enough to ignore adverse criticism in
his efforts to serve the unfortunate of both races in the South, and in
that case I should probably not have made his acquaintance.
The men that I have mentioned are but types of many others, men
intellectually and spiritually great, who, directly and indirectly, have
given comfort, help, and counsel to the ten millions of my race in
America.