Twentieth Century Negro Literature Part 57

In peace and in war such a being is an invaluable factor in a nation's well being. As he does not envy the cla.s.s which fortune has blest with good things of this world, he therefore breeds no feeling of ill will by which he might seek to level conditions, while he is equally ready to a.s.sume his share of the dangers consequent on the maintenance of the existing order of affairs.

PATRIOTISM OF THE RACE.

Another marked characteristic of race strength is love of country. The only race in this country which has more than a shadow of excuse to be indifferent to the nation's welfare is the Negro. Not unlike the dog in the fable whose devotion to his master's interest was recognized only after the sacrifice of life in that master's service, the Negro's love for his country in the civil service, on the tented field, and wherever sincere devotion should command the highest commendation, is commonly rewarded with cold indifference, or at least with d.a.m.nable praise, and yet when driven, as it were, with brutal kicks and cuffs from the service and defense of his country's honor, he hangs on to the outer folds of its flag with a grim determination to maintain its glory as though that duty had been specially entrusted him by heaven.

And herein again he shows the instinct of self-preservation, as people who would seek to become an appreciable power in the public affairs of their country, must be alive to every vital interest pertaining to it.

To become rooted it must maintain an unyielding grasp. That the Negro is to-day only a pa.s.sive member in the affairs of government, does not argue that his unflagging patriotism will not finally gain its reward.

That he is quietly working now at long range to prepare himself for citizens.h.i.+p, means that he will in due time enter into that rich inheritance. The foaming stream is not the water carrying most matter into the ocean; the deep current which gives no evidence on its surface is the hydraulic force which forms the Delta. And so it is with the latent influence of Negro patriotism. In every essential matter pertaining to national welfare, however keen his grievance, fancied or real, his regard for the honor of the government and the maintenance of its power, induces him to throw his head-gear in air, out-yell the l.u.s.tiest lung in the crowd and attest his enthusiasm by demoniac courage on the field of battle.

The chief magistrate of the nation is stricken down in the vigor of manhood and in the fullness of power. In the exercise of his great office morally and otherwise, without going out of his way, he might have benefited the race. But although he had no special claim to the Negro's regard, yet his untimely taking off has been lamented by none more sincerely than by our race. In country, in town, in state, in every section, the Negro is broadly American. Nothing that concerns this country is foreign to him, but with all there is to discourage him, what is the outcome of such steady, magnificent devotion to duty?

Geologists affirm that the wondrous chasm of Niagara is the creation of trickling drops of water during myriads of ages. In like manner, the fervent, unflagging patriotism of the Negro is slowly but surely crumbling away the granite of American prejudice to give him a permanent place in the national life of this country. A nation, the bulb of which comes of a race whose love of fair play is proverbial and goes with them into every land and clime, will be constrained in the end to recognize and confirm the merit the race is developing as a strong pillar in the edifice of state.

In the heat of that terrific contest at Waterloo where charge after charge of the imperial guard seemed likely to consign the fate of Europe to the absolute sway of the little Corsican, Wellington exclaimed, to such of his staff as still remained around him, "Hot pounding this, gentlemen." But the day was at last won, and the endangered const.i.tutional liberty of Europe leaped forth from the sea of blood, to inspire man with new hope and aspiration. As a race, we are struggling for life. Our hopes and fears are trembling in the balance against might, power, and moss-covered prejudices. A continuous pounding, directed by the impulse of a will to do, dare and succeed, will bring us victory.

But, says the carping critic, if the Negro were less patient, forbearing and more combative, if he risked less for country, and gloried more in deeds of heroism for his personal defense, he would lie truer to his self-preservation. Other races placed in condition quite similar to the Negroes have tried the experiment, and failed.

They opposed simple brute force to intelligence, and they went down in the contest either to extinction or to servitude. The Britons gave way to Saxon numbers and tougher sinews, the latter bent the neck to Norman intelligence, bided their time and brought the victor down to an equality of rights and privileges. If the Negro should attempt another way, he would soon be undone.

ADAPTABILITY TO ENVIRONMENTS.

Again the adaptability of the race to environments const.i.tutes one of the means of his endurance. In servitude as in freedom, no conditions have yet been so vigorous that the negro has not been able to adjust himself with ease. Indeed, it is not a figure of speech to a.s.sert that wherever he has suffered the most, there he has given the best proof of his vitality. His acquisition of wealth, his possession of material means in general, has been most rapid in parts where he has most obstacles to confront and encounter. He not only laughs at his misfortunes, but turns them to account. When he is ground down beyond the point of greatest resistance, he leaves for new and untried regions, with a radiant hope for a better fate. He goes to the semi-arctic lands of the West, readily becomes domesticated, and so insinuates himself into the hard, prosaic customs of the country that he at once becomes, in so far as he is not debarred from the rules of labor organizations, a sharp compet.i.tor with the wage-earner in the strife for bread. His blood has no lazy microbes to dam the current of its movement. a.s.sure him of reasonable compensation, and his brawny arm is bared to the pick and the mattox. His ax and hoe and plow drag out wealth from mine and soil.

ACTIVE EVERYWHERE.

Wherever his lot is cast, there he enters with zest into the live sentiment of the community. No thought born of enterprise within the scope of his comprehension, no undertaking to enhance the common wealth fail to enlist his good will. He will at least talk for it and praise it, even if he has not a cent to invest. However limited by industrial conditions to few and humble ways of acquiring a livelihood, his scanty earnings are on the market to give healthy circulation to the arteries of trade. Merchants welcome him to open doors, and small dealers meet him with graceful smiles knowing he has come to apply the move-on ordinance to the jingling coin in his pocket. In church and school, in the pulpit and on the rostrum, his desire to fall in with the prevailing spirit to promote the betterment of the community, is equally p.r.o.nounced.

Take as a sample the spirit of the race to absorb elevating influence from the dominant cla.s.s. The African Methodist Episcopal Church is a race organization which justly challenges the admiration of every one of us no matter of what creed or sect. A race which in about one generation from a condition of base servitude can be so lively to a sense of its spiritual wants and the public weal as to advance enough to create such an organization is no mean factor in any age or country. In the show of this receptive capacity, it declares its eternal fitness to live and thrive under the blaze of the most searching civilization in the history of the world.

Take moreover, the many worthy bodies founded in the last quarter of a century for moral, mental and social elevation. All these have been inspired by the thought that if the race would hold its own, it must emulate the spirit of the country and age in which it lives.

Truly, if our coming to this land was involuntary, the genius of our being has built a home which can only be abandoned at our own will.

THE END.

I am admonished that this paper must come to a close. I am compelled to omit even by mere mention many of the exemplary virtues of the race. I have, however, touched on just enough to furnish the enquiring mind with deductions. Even the pessimist is constrained to admit that, under the circ.u.mstances, as a whole, the race has made a remarkable record, and that chiefly, because of the qualities with which he is endowed. Many historic races who have dominated mankind, made less rapid progress than we, at the point we have reached. This remarkable advancement may be ascribed in the main to the superior attributes which give us a flexible and well balanced temperament.

The hards.h.i.+ps the race undergoes in this period of development const.i.tute the necessary training school and the virtues which spring thence are intended as much for the betterment of the other race as for our own. We are to soften their stern qualities, while our life is to take on some of the iron of their soul.

That our nature will be largely modified by the necessities of our growth must be an accepted fact, but our merit, worth and fitness in American life will substantially be the product of our qualities as they are to-day. The past gives us a.s.surance of glorious possibilities to come. Just how far and to what extent we are to realize the fruition of our cherished dreams of rising to the full height of honorable manhood vests chiefly with us. G.o.d has endowed us with the capacity to suffer and undergo the trials incident to race development. If we can recognize the need for this training, severe though it be, if we do not chafe and fume and fret and get angry because our deliverance has not come, we may well be comforted in the meanwhile that any device of man to deny us a share in the government of a common heritage in this land consecrated by heaven to suffering humanity, will prove a complete failure.

TOPIC x.x.x.

THE SIGNS OF A BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO.

BY REV. F. J. GRIMKE, D. D.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rev. F. J. Grimke, D. D.]

FRANCIS J. GRIMKE, D. D.

Francis J. Grimke, clergyman, was born near Charleston, S.

C., November 4, 1850. Son of Henry and Nancy (Weston) Grimke; attended school in Charleston; entered Lincoln University, Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1866, and graduated in 1870 (A. M., D. D.); graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1878. Ordained pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church the same year. Remained until 1885. Took charge of Lama Street Presbyterian Church 1885-1889. Returned to Fifteenth Street Church, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., in 1889, where he is still. Has published articles in the New York Independent and New York Evangelist. Wrote monographs on "The Negro: His Rights and Wrongs; The Forces For and Against Him." In 1898, "The Lynching of Negroes in the South: Its Causes and Remedy;" "Some Lessons from the a.s.sa.s.sination of President William McKinley," 1901; "The Roosevelt-Was.h.i.+ngton Episode; or, Race Prejudice," 1901.

Address, 1526 L Street, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C.

Extracts from his sermon on the race problem.

"Some of these days all the skies will be brighter, Some of these days all the burdens be lighter, Hearts will be happier, souls will be whiter, Some of these days.

"Some of these days, in the deserts uprising, Fountains shall flash while the joybells are ringing, And the world, with its sweetest of birds, shall go singing, Some of these days.

"Some of these days: Let us bear with our sorrow, Faith in the future--its light we may borrow, There will be joy in the golden to-morrow-- Some of these days."

That is my faith; I am no pessimist on this Negro problem. Terrible as the facts are, cruel and bitter as is this race prejudice, and insurmountable, almost, as are the obstacles which it sets up in our pathway, I see a light ahead, I am hopeful, I look forward to better times. And I want to tell you this morning what the ground of this hope is.

(2.) I am hopeful, because of the progress which the Negro is making in intelligence and in wealth. Think of what our condition was at the close of the war, and of what it is to-day, in these respects. That we are progressing, there can be no doubt; indeed, in view of all the circ.u.mstances, our progress has been marvelous.

Take the matter of wealth. Since freedom, hundreds and thousands of our people have become property owners in the South. Many of them are prosperous and successful farmers; thousands and hundreds of thousands of acres of land have come into their possession, hundreds and thousands of them in the cities own their own homes, and are engaged in small but lucrative business enterprises of one kind or another.

They are now paying taxes on some three hundred million dollars' worth of property. That is not a very large sum, I admit, considered as the aggregate wealth of a whole race, numbering some seven or eight millions; but whether much or little, it indicates progress, and very considerable progress, and that is the point to which I am directing attention. The acquisitive faculty in the Negro is being developed; his eyes are being opened more and more to the importance of getting wealth; and slowly, but surely, he is getting it.

Educationally, the same is true. Thirty years ago there were but few educational inst.i.tutions among us, but few professional men--doctors, lawyers, ministers--ministers of intelligence--teachers; but few men and women of education. Now, there are thousands of well-equipped men and women in all the professions, and thousands upon thousands of men and women of education in every part of the country. Not only are there inst.i.tutions, founded especially for our benefit, crowded with students, but all the great inst.i.tutions of the land are now open to us, and in all of them, with scarcely an exception, are to be found representatives of our race; and the number in such inst.i.tutions is steadily increasing. The last report of the Commissioner of Education shows that in the common schools of the sixteen former slave States and the District of Columbia, there are enrolled 1,429,713 pupils, and that in these schools, some twenty-five thousand teachers are employed. It also shows that there are 178 schools for secondary and higher education, with an enrollment of over forty thousand pupils.

There are, of course, thousands of our people who are still very ignorant, but that there is vastly more intelligence in the race now than at the close of the war, no one will pretend to deny. The colleges and universities, the high and normal schools, are turning out hundreds of graduates every year. The educational outlook for the race is certainly very encouraging.

In view of these two factors--the growing desire on the part of the Negro for material possessions, the fact that he is actually acquiring property, and his growing intelligence--I see signs of a brighter future for him. These are elements of power that will make themselves felt. You may deprive a poor and ignorant people of their rights, and succeed in keeping them deprived of them, but you can't hope to do that when these conditions are changed; and the point to which I am directing attention here, is that this change is taking place. All that has been done, and is being done to stimulate in the Negro this principle of acquisitiveness, and to increase his thirst for knowledge, is a harbinger of a better day. Every dollar saved, or properly invested; every atom of brain power that is developed, is a John the Baptist in the wilderness, crying, Make straight the pathway of the Negro. In proportion as the race rises in intelligence and wealth, the valleys will be filled and the mountains will be leveled, that now stand in the way of his progress, in the way of the complete recognition of all of his rights. Ignatius Donnelly, in that remarkable book of his, "Doctor Huguet," which some of you, doubtless, have read, would seem to teach the opposite of this. He attempts to show that never mind what the intellectual attainments of the Negro may be--he may be a Doctor Huguet, learned with all the learning of the schools, and cultured with all the culture of the ages--still there is no chance for him, there is no hope of his being recognized.

The story as told by him is, at first, quite staggering and terribly depressing. But when we remember that, according to the story, there was but one Doctor Huguet with a black skin, and that he was poor, and that all the rest of his race were poor and ignorant, light breaks in upon the darkness, the awful pall which it casts upon us, is at once lifted. How will it be when instead of one Doctor Huguet there are hundreds and thousands of them, scholarly men and women, cultivated men and women, men and women of wealth, of large resources? It will be very different. If the Negro was indifferent to education; if he was actually getting poorer, then we might lose heart; but, thank G.o.d, the very opposite is true. His face is in the right direction. He may not be pressing on as rapidly as he might towards the goal, as rapidly as some of us might wish to see him, but it is a matter for congratulation, that he is not retrograding, nor even standing still, but is moving on. Poor? Yes, but he isn't always going to be poor.

Ignorant? Yes, but he isn't always going to be ignorant. The progress that he has already made in these directions shows clearly what the future is to be. Knowledge is power; wealth is power, and that power the Negro is getting. He is not always going to be a mere hewer of wood and a drawer of water; he is not always going to be crude, ignorant. American prejudice is strong, I know; it is full of infernal hate, I know, but in the long run it will be found to be no match for the power which comes from wealth and intelligence.

(3.) I am hopeful because I have faith in the ultimate triumph of right. You remember what Lowell says in his "Elegy on the Death of Dr.

Channing:"

"Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deep Of everlasting Soul her strength abides, From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap, Through Nature's veins her strength, undying tides.

"I watch the circle of the eternal years, And read forever in the storied page One lengthened roll of blood, and wrong, and tears-- One onward step of Truth from age to age.

"The poor are crushed; the tyrants link their chain; The poet sings through narrow dungeon-grates; Man's hope lies quenched;--and, lo! with steadfast gain Freedom doth forge her mail of adverse fates.

"Men slay the prophets; f.a.got, rack, and cross Make up the groaning records of the past; But Evil's triumphs are her endless loss, And sovereign Beauty wins the soul at last."

"From off the starry mountain-peak of song, The spirit shows me, in the coming time, An earth unwithered by the foot of wrong, A race revering its own soul sublime."

And in the "Ode to France," from which I quoted on last Sabbath, the same glorious thought is expressed:--