WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM BLACK MEN
No single question is more often asked me than this: “Has the pure
blooded black man the same ability or the same worth as those of mixed
blood?”
It has been my good fortune to have had a wide acquaintance with black
as well as brown and even white Negroes. The race to which I belong
permits me to meet and know people of all colours and conditions. There
is no race or people who have within themselves the choice of so large a
variety of colours and conditions as is true of the American Negro. The
Japanese, as a rule, can know intimately human nature in only one hue,
namely, yellow. The white man, as a rule, does not get intimately
acquainted with any other than white men. The Negro, however, has a
chance to know them all, because within his own race and among his own
acquaintances, he has friends, perhaps even relatives, of every colour
in which mankind has been painted.
Perhaps I can answer the question as to the relative value of the pure
Negro and the mixed blood in no better way than by telling what I know
concerning, and what I have learned from, some four or five men of the
purest blood and the darkest skins of any human beings I happen to
know—men to whom I am indebted for many things, but most of all for what
they have done for me in teaching me to value all men at their real
worth regardless of race or colour.
Among those black men whom I have known, the one who comes first to my
mind is Charles Banks, of Mound Bayou, Miss., banker, cotton broker,
planter, real-estate dealer, head of a hundred-thousand-dollar
corporation which is erecting a cottonseed oil mill, the first ever
built and controlled by Negro enterprise and Negro capital, and,
finally, leading citizen of the little Negro town of Mound Bayou.
I first met Charles Banks in Boston. As I remember, he came in company
with Hon. Isaiah T. Montgomery, the founder of Mound Bayou, to
represent, at the first meeting of the National Negro Business League in
1900, the first and at that time the only town in the United States
founded, inhabited, and governed exclusively by Negroes. He was then, as
he is to-day, a tall, big-bodied man, with a shiny round head, quick,
snapping eyes, and a surprisingly swift and quiet way of reaching out
and getting anything he happens to want. I never appreciated what a big
man Banks was until I began to notice the swift and unerring way in
which he reached out his long arm to pick up, perhaps a pin, or to get
hold of the buttonhole and of the attention of an acquaintance. He
seemed to be able to reach without apparent effort anything he wanted,
and I soon found there was a certain fascination in watching him move.
I have been watching Banks reach for things that he wanted, and get
them, ever since that time. I have been watching him do things, watching
him grow, and as I have studied him more closely my admiration for this
big, quiet, graceful giant has steadily increased. One thing that has
always impressed itself upon me in regard to Mr. Banks is the fact that
he never claims credit for doing anything that he can give credit to
other people for doing. He has never made any effort to make himself
prominent. He simply prefers to get a job done and, if he can use other
people and give them credit for doing the work, he is happy to do so.
At the present time Charles Banks is not, by any means, the wealthiest,
but I think I am safe in saying that he is the most influential, Negro
business man in the United States. He is the leading Negro banker in
Mississippi, where there are eleven Negro banks, and he is secretary and
treasurer of the largest benefit association in that state, namely, that
attached to the Masonic order, which paid death claims in 1910 to the
amount of one hundred and ninety-five thousand dollars and had a cash
balance of eighty thousand dollars. He organized and has been the moving
spirit in the state organization of the Business League in Mississippi
and has been for a number of years the vice-president of the National
Negro Business League.
Charles Banks is, however, more than a successful business man. He is a
leader of his race and a broad-minded and public-spirited citizen.
Although he holds no public office, and, so far as I know, has no desire
to do so, there are, in my opinion, few men, either white or black, in
Mississippi to-day who are performing, directly or indirectly, a more
important service to their state than Charles Banks.
Without referring to the influence that he has been able to exercise in
other directions, I want to say a word about the work he is doing at
Mound Bayou for the Negro people of the Yazoo Delta, where, in seventeen
counties, the blacks represent from seventy-five to ninety-four per
cent. of the whole population.
As I look at it, Mound Bayou is not merely a town; it is at the same
time and in a very real sense of that word, a school. It is not only a
place where a Negro may get inspiration, by seeing what other members of
his race have accomplished, but a place, also, where he has an
opportunity to learn some of the fundamental duties and responsibilities
of social and civic life.
Negroes have here, for example, an opportunity, which they do not have
to the same degree elsewhere, either in the North or in the South, of
entering simply and naturally into all the phases and problems of
community life. They are the farmers, the business men, bankers,
teachers, preachers. The mayor, the constable, the aldermen, the town
marshal, even the station agent, are Negroes.
Black men cleared the land, built the houses, and founded the town. Year
by year, as the colony has grown in population, these pioneers have had
to face, one after another, all the fundamental problems of
civilization. The town is still growing, and as it grows, new and more
complicated problems arise. Perhaps the most difficult problem the
leaders of the community have to face now is that of founding a school,
or a system of schools, in which the younger generation may be able to
get some of the kind of knowledge which these pioneers gained in the
work of building up and establishing the community.
During the twenty years this town has been in existence it has always
had the sympathetic support of people in neighbouring white communities.
One reason for this is that the men who have been back of it were born
and bred in the Delta, and they know both the land and the people.
Charles Banks was born and raised in Clarksdale, a few miles above Mound
Bayou, where he and his brother were for several years engaged in
business. It was his good fortune, as has been the case with many other
successful Negroes, to come under the influence, when he was a child, of
one of the best white families in the city in which he was born. I have
several times heard Mr. Banks tell of his early life in Clarksdale and
of the warm friends he had made among the best white people in that
city.
It happened that his mother was cook for a prominent white family in
Clarksdale. In this way he became in a sort of a way attached to the
family. It was through the influence of this family, if I remember
rightly, that he was sent to Rust University, at Holly Springs, to get
his education.
In 1900 Mr. Banks, because of his wide knowledge of local conditions in
that part of the country, was appointed supervisor of the census for the
Third district of Mississippi. In speaking to me of this matter Mr.
Banks said that every white man in town endorsed his application for
appointment.
Since he has been in Mound Bayou, Mr. Banks has greatly widened his
business connections. The Bank of Mound Bayou now counts among its
correspondents banks in Vicksburg, Memphis, and Louisville, together
with the National Bank of Commerce of St. Louis and the National Reserve
Bank of the City of New York. One of the officers of the former
institution, Mr. Eugene Snowden, in a recent letter to me, referring to
this and another Negro bank, writes: “It has been my pleasure to lend
them $30,000 a year and their business has been handled to my entire
satisfaction.”
Some years ago, in the course of one of my educational campaigns, I
visited Mound Bayou, among other places in Mississippi. Among other
persons I met the sheriff of Bolivar County, in which Mound Bayou is
situated. Without any suggestion or prompting on my part, he told me
that Mound Bayou was one of the most orderly—in fact, I believe he said
the most orderly—town in the Delta. A few years ago a newspaper man from
Memphis visited the town for the purpose of writing an article about it.
What he saw there set him to speculating, and among other things he
said:
Will the Negro as a race work out his own salvation along Mound Bayou
lines? Who knows? These have worked out for themselves a better local
government than any superior people has ever done for them in freedom.
But it is a generally accepted principle in political economy that any
homogeneous people will in time do this. These people have their local
government, but it is in consonance with the county, state, and
national governments and international conventions, all in the hands
of another race. Could they conduct as successfully a county
government in addition to their local government and still under the
state and national governments of another race? Enough Negroes of the
Mound Bayou type, and guided as they were in the beginning, will be
able to do so.
The words I have quoted will, perhaps, illustrate the sort of interest
and sympathy which the Mound Bayou experiment arouses in the minds of
thoughtful Southerners. Now it is characteristic of Charles Banks that,
in all his talks with me, he has never once referred to the work he is
doing as a solution of the problem of the Negro race. He has often
referred to it, however, as one step in the solution of the problem of
the Delta. He recognizes that, behind everything else, is the economic
problem.
Aside from the personal and business interest which he has in the growth
and progress of Mound Bayou, Mr. Banks sees in it a means of teaching
better methods of farming, of improving the home life, of getting into
the masses of the people greater sense of the value of law and order.
I have learned much from studying the success of Charles Banks. Before
all else he has taught me the value of common-sense in dealing with
conditions as they exist in the South. I have learned from him that, in
spite of what the Southern white man may say about the Negro in moments
of excitement, the sober sentiment of the South is in sympathy with
every effort that promises solid and substantial progress to the Negro.
Maj. R. R. Moton, of Hampton Institute, is one of the few black men I
know who can trace his ancestry in an unbroken line on both sides back
to Africa. I have often heard him tell the story, as he had it from his
grandmother, of the way in which his great-grandfather, who was a young
African chief, had come down to the coast to sell some captives taken in
war and how, after the bargain was completed, he was enticed on board
the white man’s ship and himself carried away and sold, along with these
unfortunate captives, into slavery in America. Major Moton is, like
Charles Banks, not only a full-blooded black man, with a big body and
broad Negro features, but he is, in his own way, a remarkably handsome
man. I do not think any one could look in Major Moton’s face without
liking him. In the first place, he looks straight at you, out of big
friendly eyes, and as he speaks to you an expression of alert and
intelligent sympathy constantly flashes and plays across his kindly
features.
It has been my privilege to come into contact with many different types
of people, but I know few men who are so lovable and, at the same time,
so sensible in their nature as Major Moton. He is chock-full of
common-sense. Further than that, he is a man who, without obtruding
himself and without your understanding how he does it, makes you believe
in him from the very first time you see him and from your first contact
with him, and, at the same time, makes you love him. He is the kind of
man in whose company I always feel like being, never tire of, always
want to be around him, or always want to be near him.
One of the continual sources of surprise to people who come for the
first time into the Southern States is to hear of the affection with
which white men and women speak of the older generation of coloured
people with whom they grew up, particularly the old coloured nurses. The
lifelong friendships that exist between these old “aunties” and “uncles”
and the white children with whom they were raised is something that is
hard for strangers to understand.
It is just these qualities of human sympathy and affection that endeared
so many of the older generation of Negroes to their masters and
mistresses and which seems to have found expression, in a higher form,
in Major Moton. Although he has little schooling outside of what he was
able to get at Hampton Institute, Major Moton is one of the best-read
men and one of the most interesting men to talk with I have ever met.
Education has not “spoiled” him, as it seems to have done in the case of
some other educated Negroes. It has not embittered or narrowed him in
his affections. He has not learned to hate or distrust any class of
people, and he is just as ready to assist and show a kindness to a white
man as to a black man, to a Southerner as to a Northerner.
My acquaintance with Major Moton began, as I remember, after he had
graduated at Hampton Institute and while he was employed there as a
teacher. He had at that time the position that I once occupied in charge
of the Indian students. Later he was given the very responsible position
he now occupies, at the head of the institute battalion, as commandant
of cadets, in which he has charge of the discipline of all the students.
In this position he has an opportunity to exert a very direct and
personal influence upon the members of the student body and, what is
especially important, to prepare them to meet the peculiar difficulties
that await them when they go out in the world to begin life for
themselves.
It has always seemed to me very fortunate that Hampton Institute should
have had in the position which Major Moton occupies a man of such kindly
good humour, thorough self-control, and sympathetic disposition.
Major Moton knows by intuition Northern white people and Southern white
people. I have often heard the remark made that the Southern white man
knows more about the Negro in the South than anybody else. I will not
stop here to debate that question, but I will add that coloured men like
Major Moton know more about the Southern white man than anybody else on
earth.
At the Hampton Institute, for example, they have white teachers and
coloured teachers; they have Southern white people and Northern white
people; besides, they have coloured students and Indian students. Major
Moton knows how to keep his hands on all of these different elements, to
see to it that friction is kept down and that each works in harmony with
the other. It is a difficult job, but Major Moton knows how to negotiate
it.
This thorough understanding of both races which Major Moton possesses
has enabled him to give his students just the sort of practical and
helpful advice and counsel that no white man who has not himself faced
the peculiar conditions of the Negro could be able to give.
I think it would do any one good to attend one of Major Moton’s
Sunday-school classes when he is explaining to his students, in the very
practical way which he knows how to use, the mistake of students
allowing themselves to be embittered by injustice or degraded by calumny
and abuse with which every coloured man must expect to meet at one time
or another. Very likely he will follow up what he has to say on this
subject by some very apt illustration from his own experience or from
that of some of his acquaintances which will show how much easier and
simpler it is to meet prejudice with sympathy and understanding than
with hatred; to remember that the man who abuses you because of your
race probably hasn’t the slightest knowledge of you personally, and,
nine times out of ten, if you simply refuse to feel injured by what he
says, will feel ashamed of himself later.
I think one of the greatest difficulties which a Negro has to meet is in
travelling about the country on the railway trains. For example, it is
frequently difficult for a coloured man to get anything to eat while he
is travelling in the South, because, on the train and at the lunch
counters along the route, there is often no provision for coloured
people. If a coloured man goes to the lunch counter where the white
people are served he is very likely, no matter who he may be, to find
himself roughly ordered to go around to the kitchen, and even there no
provision has been made for him.
Time and again I have seen Major Moton meet this situation, and others
like it, by going up directly to the man in charge and telling him what
he wanted. More than likely the first thing he received was a volley of
abuse. That never discouraged Major Moton. He would not allow himself to
be disturbed nor dismissed, but simply insisted, politely and
good-naturedly, that he knew the custom, but that he was hungry and
wanted something to eat. Somehow, without any loss of dignity, he not
only invariably got what he wanted, but after making the man he was
dealing with ashamed of himself, he usually made him his friend and left
him with a higher opinion of the Negro race as a whole.
I have seen Major Moton in a good many trying situations in which an
ordinary man would have lost his head, but I have never seen him when he
seemed to feel the least degraded or humiliated. I have learned from
Major Moton that one need not belong to a superior race to be a
gentleman.
[Illustration:
RUFUS HERRON
OF CAMP HILL, ALA.
“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”
]
[Illustration:
PROFESSOR GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER
“One of the most thoroughly scientific men of the Negro race”
]
[Illustration:
MAJOR ROBERT RUSSA MOTON
“It has been through contact with men like Major Moton that I have
received a kind of education no books could impart”
]
[Illustration:
BISHOP GEORGE W. CLINTON
“He is the kind of man who wins everywhere confidence and respect”
]
It has been through contact with men like Major Moton—clean, wholesome,
high-souled gentlemen under black skins—that I have received a kind of
education no books could impart. Whatever disadvantages one may suffer
from being a part of what is called an “inferior race,” a member of such
a race has the advantage of not feeling compelled to go through the
world, as some members of other races do, proclaiming their superiority
from the house tops. There are some people in this world who would feel
lonesome, and they are not all of them white people either, if they did
not have some one to whom they could claim superiority.
One of the most distinguished black men of my race is George W. Clinton,
of Charlotte, N. C., bishop of the A. M. E. Zion Church., Bishop Clinton
was born a slave fifty years ago in South Carolina. He was one of the
few young coloured men who, during the Reconstruction days, had an
opportunity to attend the University of South Carolina. He prides
himself on the fact that he was a member of that famous class of 1874
which furnished one Negro congressman, two United States ministers to
Liberia—the most recent of whom is Dr. W. D. Crum—five doctors, seven
preachers, and several business men who have made good in after life.
Among others was W. McKinlay, the present collector of customs for the
port of Georgetown, D. C.
Bishop Clinton has done a great service to the denomination to which he
belongs and his years of service have brought him many honours and
distinctions. He founded the _African Methodist Episcopal Zion Quarterly
Review_ and edited, for a time, another publication of the African
Methodist Episcopal Zion denomination. He has represented his church in
ecumenical conferences at home and abroad, is a trustee of Livingstone
College, chairman of the publishing board, has served as a member of the
international convention of arbitration and is vice-president of the
international Sunday-school union.
Bishop Clinton is a man of a very different type from the other men of
pure African blood I have mentioned. Although he says he is fifty years
of age, he is in appearance and manner the youngest man in the group. An
erect, commanding figure, with a high, broad forehead, rather refined
features and fresh, frank, almost boyish manner, he is the kind of man
who everywhere wins confidence and respect.
Although Bishop Clinton is by profession a minister, and has been all
his life in the service of the Church, he is of all the men I have named
the most aggressive in his manner and the most soldierly in his bearing.
Knowing that his profession compelled him to travel about a great deal
in all parts of the country, I asked him how a man of his temperament
managed to get about without getting into trouble.
“I have had some trouble but not much,” he said, “and I have learned
that the easiest way to get along everywhere is to be a gentleman. It is
simple, convenient, and practicable.
“The only time I ever came near having any serious trouble,” continued
Bishop Clinton, “was years ago when I was in politics.” And then he went
on to relate the following incident: It seems that at this time the
Negroes at the bishop’s home in Lancaster, S. C., were still active in
politics. There was an attempt at one time to get some of the better
class of Negroes to unite with some of the Democrats in order to elect a
prohibition ticket. The fusion ticket, with two Negroes and four white
men as candidates, was put in the field and elected. It turned out,
however, that a good many white people cut the Negroes on the ticket
and, at the same time, a good many Negroes cut the whites, so that there
was some bad blood on both sides. A man who was the editor of the local
paper at that time had accused young Clinton of having advised the
Negroes to cut the fusion ticket.
“As I knew him well,” said the bishop, “I went up to his office to
explain. Some rather foolish remark I made irritated the editor and he
jumped up and came toward me with a knife in his hands.”
The bishop added that he didn’t think the man really meant anything
“because my mother used to cook in his family” and they had known each
other since they were boys, so he simply took hold of his wrists and
held them. The bishop is a big, stalwart, athletic man with hands that
grip like a vise. He talked very quietly and they settled the matter
between them.
Bishop Clinton has told me that he has made many lifelong friends among
the white people of South Carolina, but this was the only time that he
ever had anything like serious trouble with a white man.
I first made the acquaintance of Bishop Clinton when he came to Tuskegee
in 1893 as representative of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion
Church, at the dedication of the Phelps Hall Bible training school. The
next year he came to Tuskegee as one of the lecturers in that school and
he has spent some time at Tuskegee every year since then, assisting in
the work of that institution.
Bishop Clinton has been of great assistance to us, not only in our work
at Tuskegee, but in the larger work we have been trying to do in
arousing interest throughout the country in Negro public schools. He
organized and conducted through North Carolina in 1910 what I think was
the most successful educational campaign I have yet been able to make in
any of the Southern States.
Although he is an aggressive churchman, Bishop Clinton has found time to
interest himself in everything that concerns the welfare of the Negro
race. He is as interested in the business and economic as he is in the
intellectual advancement of the race.
One of the most gifted men of the Negro race whom I ever happened to
meet is George W. Carver, Professor Carver, as he is called at Tuskegee,
where he has for many years been connected with the scientific and
experimental work in agriculture carried on in connection with the
Tuskegee Institute. I first met Mr. Carver about 1895 or 1896 when he
was a student at the State Agricultural College at Ames, Ia. I had heard
of him before that time through Hon. James Wilson, now secretary of
agriculture, who was for some time one of Mr. Carver’s teachers. It was
about this time that an attempt was made to put our work in agriculture
on a scientific basis, and Mr. Carver was induced to come to Tuskegee to
take charge of that work and of the state experiment station that had
been established in connection with it. He has been doing valuable work
in that department ever since and, as a result of his work in breeding
cotton and of the bulletins he has prepared on experiments in building
up wornout soils, he has become widely known to both coloured and white
farmers throughout the South.
When some years ago the state secretary of agriculture called a meeting
at Montgomery of the leading teachers of the state, Professor Carver was
the only coloured man invited to that meeting. He was at that time
invited to deliver an address to the convention and for an hour was
questioned on the interesting work he was doing at the experiment
station.
Professor Carver, like the other men I have mentioned, is of unmixed
African blood, and is one of the most thoroughly scientific men of the
Negro race with whom I am acquainted. Whenever any one who takes a
scientific interest in cotton growing, or in the natural history of this
part of the world, comes to visit Tuskegee, he invariably seeks out and
consults Professor Carver. A few years ago the colonial secretary of the
German empire, accompanied by one of the cotton experts of his
department, travelling through the South in a private car, paid a visit
of several days to Tuskegee largely to study, in connection with the
other work of the school, the cotton-growing experiments that Professor
Carver has been carrying on for some years.
In his book, “The Negro in the New World,” Sir Harry Johnston, who has
himself been much interested in the study of plant life in different
parts of the world, says: “Professor Carver, who teaches scientific
agriculture, botany, agricultural chemistry, etc., at Tuskegee, is, as
regards complexion and features, an absolute Negro; but in the cut of
his clothes, the accent of his speech, the soundness of his science, he
might be professor of botany, not at Tuskegee, but at Oxford or
Cambridge. Any European botanist of distinction, after ten minutes’
conversation with this man, instinctively would treat him as a man on a
level with himself.”
What makes all that Professor Carver has accomplished the more
remarkable is the fact that he was born in slavery and has had
relatively few opportunities for study, compared with those which a
white man who makes himself a scholar in any particular branch of
science invariably has.
Professor Carver knows but little of his parentage. He was born on the
plantation of a Mr. Carver in Missouri some time during the war.
It was a time when it was becoming very uncomfortable to hold slaves in
Missouri and so he and his mother were sent south into Arkansas. After
the war Mr. Carver, the master, sent south to inquire what had become of
his former slaves. He learned that they had all disappeared with the
exception of a child, two or three years old, by the name of George, who
was near dead with the whooping-cough and of so little value that the
people in Arkansas said they would be very glad to get rid of him.
George was brought home, but he proved to be such a weak and sickly
little creature that no attempt was made to put him to work and he was
allowed to grow up among chickens and other animals around the servants’
quarters, getting his living as best he could.
The little black boy lived, however, and he used his freedom to wander
about in the woods, where he soon got on very good terms with all the
insects and animals in the forest and gained an intimate and, I might
almost say personal, acquaintance with all the plants and the flowers.
As he grew older he began to show unusual aptitude in two directions: He
attracted attention, in the first place, by his peculiar knack and skill
in all sorts of household work. He learned to cook, to knit and crochet,
and he had a peculiar and delicate sense for colour. He learned to draw
and, at the present time, he devotes a large part of his leisure to
making the most beautiful and accurate drawings of different flowers and
forms of plant life in which he is interested.
In the second place, he showed a remarkable natural aptitude and
intelligence in dealing with plants. He would spend hours, for example,
gathering all the most rare and curious flowers that were to be found in
the woods and fields. One day some one discovered that he had
established out in the brush a little botanical garden, where he had
gathered all sorts of curious plants and where he soon became so expert
in making all sorts of things grow, and showed such skill in caring for
and protecting plants from all sorts of insects and diseases that he got
the name of “the plant doctor.”
Another direction in which he showed unusual natural talent was in
music. While he was still a child he became famous among the coloured
people as a singer. After he was old enough to take care of himself he
spent some years wandering about. When he got the opportunity he worked
in greenhouses. At one time he ran a laundry; at another time he worked
as a cook in a hotel. His natural taste and talent for music and
painting, and, in fact, almost every form of art, finally attracted the
attention of friends, through whom he secured a position as church
organist.
During all this time young Carver was learning wherever he was able. He
learned from books when he could get them; learned from experience
always; and made friends wherever he went. At last he found an
opportunity to take charge of the greenhouses of the horticultural
department of the Iowa Agricultural College at Ames. He remained there
until he was graduated, when he was made assistant botanist. He took
advantage of his opportunities there to continue his studies and finally
took a diploma as a postgraduate student, the first diploma of that sort
that had been given at Ames.
While he was at the agricultural college in Iowa he took part with the
rest of the students in all the activities of college life. He was
lieutenant, for example, in the college battalion which escorted
Governor Boies to the World’s Fair at Chicago. He began to read papers
and deliver lectures at the horticultural conventions in all parts of
the state. But, in spite of his success in the North, among the people
of another race, Mr. Carver was anxious to come South and do something
for his own race. So it was that he gladly accepted an invitation to
come to Tuskegee and take charge of the scientific and experimental work
connected with our department of agriculture.
Although Professor Carver impresses every one who meets him with the
extent of his knowledge in the matter of plant life, he is quite the
most modest man I have ever met. In fact, he is almost timid. He dresses
in the plainest and simplest manner possible; the only thing that he
allows in the way of decoration is a flower in his buttonhole. It is a
rare thing to see Professor Carver any time during the year without some
sort of flower on the lapel of his coat and he is particularly proud
when he has found somewhere in the woods some especially rare specimen
of a flower to show to his friends.
I asked Professor Carver at one time how it was, since he was so timid,
that he managed to have made the acquaintance of so many of the best
white as well as coloured people in our part of the country. He said
that as soon as people found out that he knew something about plants
that was valuable he discovered they were very willing and eager to talk
with him.
“But you must have some way of advertising,” I said jestingly; “how do
all these people find out that you know about plants?”
“Well, it is this way,” he said. “Shortly after I came here I was going
along the woods one day with my botany can under my arm. I was looking
for plant diseases and for insect enemies. A lady saw what she probably
thought was a harmless old coloured man, with a strange looking box
under his arm, and she stopped me and asked if I was a peddler. I told
her what I was doing. She seemed delighted and asked me to come and see
her roses, which were badly diseased. I showed her just what to do for
them—in fact, sat down and wrote it out for her.
“In this,” he continued, “and several other ways it became noised abroad
that there was a man at the school who knew about plants. People began
calling upon me for information and advice.”
I myself recall that several years ago a dispute arose down town about
the name of a plant. No one knew what it was. Finally one gentleman
spoke up and said that they had a man out at the normal school by the
name of Carver who could name any plant, tree, bird, stone, etc., in the
world, and if he did not know there was no use to look farther. A man
was put on a horse and the plant brought to Professor Carver at the
Institute. He named it and sent him back. Since then Professor Carver’s
laboratory has never been free from specimens of some kind.
I have always said that the best means which the Negro has for
destroying race prejudice is to make himself a useful and, if possible,
an indispensable member of the community in which he lives. Every man
and every community is bound to respect the man or woman who has some
form of superior knowledge or ability, no matter in what direction it
is. I do not know of a better illustration of this than may be found in
the case of Professor Carver. Without any disposition to push himself
forward into any position in which he is not wanted, he has been able,
because of his special knowledge and ability, to make friends with all
classes of people, white as well as black, throughout the South. He is
constantly receiving inquiries in regard to his work from all parts of
the world, and his experiments in breeding new varieties of cotton have
aroused the greatest interest among those cotton planters who are
interested in the scientific investigation of cotton growing.
There are few coloured men in the South to-day who are better or more
widely known than Dr. Charles T. Walker, pastor of the Tabernacle
Baptist Church of Augusta, Ga. President William H. Taft, referring to
Doctor Walker, said that he was the most eloquent man he had ever
listened to. For myself I do not know of any man, white or black, who is
a more fascinating speaker either in private conversation or on the
public platform.
Doctor Walker’s speeches, like his conversation, have the charm of a
natural-born talker, a man who loves men, and has the art of expressing
himself simply, easily, and fluently, in a way to interest and touch
them.
On the streets of Augusta, his home, it is no uncommon thing to see
Doctor Walker—after the familiar and easy manner of Southern
people—stand for hours on a street corner or in front of a grocery
store, surrounded by a crowd who have gathered for no other purpose than
to hear what he will say. It is said that he knows more than half of the
fifteen thousand coloured people of Augusta by name, and when he meets
any of them in the street he is disposed to stop, in his friendly and
familiar way, in order to inquire about the other members of the family.
He wants to know how each is getting on and what has happened to any one
of them since he saw them last.
If one of these acquaintances succeeds in detaining him, he will, very
likely, find himself surrounded by other friends and acquaintances and,
when once he is fairly launched on one of the quaintly humorous accounts
of his adventures in some of the various parts of the world he has
visited, or is discussing, in his vivid and epigrammatic way, some
public question, business in that part of the town stops for a time.
Doctor Walker is a great story teller. He has a great fund of anecdotes
and a wonderful art in using them to emphasize a point in argument or to
enforce a remark. I recall that the last time he was at Tuskegee,
attending the Negro conference, he told us what he was trying to do at
the school established by the Walker Baptist Association at Augusta for
the farmers in his neighbourhood. From that he launched off into some
remarks upon the coloured farmer, his opportunities, and his progress.
He said Senator Tillman had once complained that the coloured farmer
wasn’t as ignorant as he pretended to be, and then he told this story:
He said that an old coloured farmer in his part of the country had
rented some land of a white man on what is popularly known as “fourths.”
By the term of the contract the white man was to get one fourth of the
crop for the use of the land.
When it came time to divide the crop, however, it turned out that there
were just three wagon loads of cotton and this the old farmer hauled to
his own barn.
Of course the landlord protested. He said: “Look here, Uncle Joe, didn’t
you promise me a fourth of that cotton for my share?”
“Yes, cap’n,” was the reply, “Dat’s so. I’se mighty sorry, but dere
wasn’t no fort’.”
“How is that?” inquired the landlord.
“There wasn’t no fort’ ’cause dere was just three wagon loads, and dere
wasn’t no fort’ dere.”
Doctor Walker is not only a fascinating conversationalist, a
warm-hearted friend, but he is, also, a wonderfully successful preacher.
During the time when he was in New York, as pastor of the Mt. Olivet
Baptist Church, his sermons and his wonderful success as an evangelist
were frequently reported in the New York papers.
Doctor Walker is not only an extraordinary pulpit orator, but he is a
man of remarkably good sense. I recall some instances in particular in
which he showed this quality in a very conspicuous way. The first was at
a meeting of the National Convention of Negro Baptists at St. Louis in
1886. At this meeting some one delivered an address on the subject,
“Southern Ostracism,” in which he abused the Southern white Baptists,
referring to them as mere figureheads, who believe “there were separate
heavens for white and coloured people.”
Later in the session Doctor Walker found an opportunity to reply to
these remarks, pointing out that a few months before the Southern
Baptist Convention had passed a resolution to expend $10,000 in mission
work among the coloured Baptists of the South. He formulated his protest
against the remarks made by the speaker of the previous day in a
resolution which was passed by the convention.
[Illustration:
A MEETING OF THE NEGRO MINISTERS OF MACON COUNTY, ALABAMA
]
His speech and the resolution were published in many of the Southern
newspapers and denominational organs and did much to change the currents
of popular feeling at that time and bring about a better understanding
between the races.
Dr. Charles T. Walker was born at the little town of Hepzibah, Richmond
County, Ga., about sixteen miles south of his present home, Augusta. His
father, who was his master’s coachman, was also deacon in the little
church organized by the slaves in 1848, of which his uncle was pastor.
Doctor Walker comes of a race of preachers. The Walker Baptist
Association is named after one of his uncles, Rev. Joseph T. Walker,
whose freedom was purchased by the members of his congregation who were
themselves slaves. In 1880, upon a resolution of Doctor Walker, this
same Walker Association passed a resolution to establish a normal school
for coloured children, known as the Walker Baptist Institute. This
school has from the first been supported by the constant and unremitting
efforts of Doctor Walker.
Meanwhile he has been interested in other good works. He assisted in
establishing the Augusta _Sentinel_, and in 1891, while he was
travelling in the Holy Land, his accounts of his travels did much to
brighten its pages and increase its circulation. In 1893 he was one of a
number of other coloured people to establish a Negro state fair at
Augusta, which has continued successfully ever since. Another of his
enterprises started and carried on in connection with his church is the
Tabernacle Old Folks’ Home. He has taken a prominent part in all the
religious and educational work of the state and has even dipped, to some
extent, into politics, having been at one time a member of the
Republican state executive committee.
Aside from these manifold activities, and beyond all he has done in
other directions, Doctor Walker has been a man who has constantly sought
to take life as he found it and make the most of the opportunities that
he saw about him for himself and his people. He has not been an agitator
and has done more than any other man I know to bring about peace and
good-will between the two sections of the country and the races. It is
largely due to his influence that in Augusta, Ga., the black man and the
white man live more happily and comfortably than they do in almost any
other city in the United States.
The motto of Doctor Walker’s life I can state in his own words. “I am
determined,” he has said, “never to be guilty of ingratitude; never to
desert a friend; and never to strike back at an enemy.”
It is because of such men as Doctor Walker and many others like him that
I have learned not only to respect but to take pride in the race to
which I belong.
In seeking to answer the question as to the relative value of the man of
pure African extraction and the man of mixed blood I have referred to
five men who have gained some distinction in very different walks of
life. There are hundreds of others I could name, who, though not so
conspicuous nor so well known, are performing in their humble way
valuable service for their race and country. I might also mention here
the fact that at Tuskegee, during an experience of thirty years, we have
found that, although perhaps a majority of our students are not of pure
black blood, still the highest honours in our graduating class, namely,
that of valedictorian, which is given to students who have attained the
highest scholarship during the whole course of their studies, has been
about equally divided between students of mixed and pure blood.
For my own part, however, it seems to me a rather unprofitable
discussion that seeks to determine in advance the possibilities of any
individual or any race or class of individuals. In the first place,
races, like individuals, have different qualities and different
capacities for service and, that being the case, it is the part of
wisdom to give every individual the opportunities for growth and
development which will fit him for the greatest usefulness.
When any individual and any race is allowed to find that place, freely
and without compulsion, they will not only be happy and contented in
themselves, but will fall naturally into the happiest possible relations
with all other members of the community.
In the second place, it should be remembered that human life and human
society are so complicated that no one can determine what latent
possibilities any individual or any race may possess. It is only through
education, and through struggle and experiment in all the different
activities and relations of life, that it is possible for a race or an
individual to find the place in the common life in which they can be of
the greatest value to themselves and the rest of the world.
To assume anything else is to deny the value of the free institutions
under which we live and of all the centuries of struggle and effort it
has cost to bring them into existence.