 Topic 29 of 20th Century Negro Literature This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Shasta, Oakland, California 20th Century Negro Literature Topic 29 by Professor Thomas de Sader's Tucker Why the Negro Race Survives Thomas Tucker first saw the light of day at Victoria in Sherbro, Sarah, Leone, west coast of Africa on the 21st day of July 1844. His mother was the youngest daughter of James Tucker hereditary chief of Sherbro. The founder of the family, about 200 years previous was an Englishman from whom the surname is derived. On the paternal side, Tucker comes from an ancient noble family on the east of France, the de Sader's of Marseille. His father, Joseph, although descended from this noble lineage was an ardent admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte whose checkered fortunes he followed to the disastrous field of Waterloo. In accordance with the custom of the country, the wife being deemed of higher social standing than the husband, the son took the maternal surname. Tucker was sent at a tender age to a school located in the family territory. Such was his rapid progress that in a few years he had acquired English sufficiently enough to read and write it about as well as the average child of his age in this country. In the summer of 1856 he came to the United States to complete his education. Having just completed the English course in the public schools of Oberlin, Ohio, he entered college and completed the course in 1865. He then crossed over into Kentucky and opened date and night schools for the education of the newly freed race. From Kentucky he removed to Louisiana where the climate was more congenial to his tropical constitution. During his residence of many years in that state he was employed most of the time in the customs service with chances of preferment to higher and more lucrative posts which he never sought nor cared for. His tastes have always inclined him to the more quiet and private walks of life where he can promote the welfare of his fellow men without show and the applause of the giddy crowd. President Grant once advised him that he intended to offer him the Liberian mission but Tucker was so indifferent in the honor that he made no effort to be commissioned. Anxious to pass away from official duties he studied law and entered on practice in New Orleans. This profession was so fully in keeping with his tastes he hoped to pursue it the rest of his days. Finding that his legal training practically restricted him only to Louisiana he removed to Florida and located at Pensacola. He was admitted to practice and with it he rose rapidly both in knowledge and of the common law and in securing a paying clientage. He stood high with the bar from judge and attorneys to officials. He saw every prospect of realizing the fond dream of his ambition when once again a call of duty to serve God's humble children came in stentorious tones. The state in 1887 had founded a normal and industrial school for the training of colored teachers. A telegram unexpectedly announced that Tucker had been elected by the State Board of Education to take the management of it. He demurred, he objected, but leading colored men and the chief executive importuned and requested his acceptance of the place. By patient perseverance and tact he succeeded in enlisting the hearty goodwill of all classes to the maintenance of the institution. The history of his work is a part of the educational records. Many men and women of worth and saving influence in their respective communities in Florida owe their training to the devoted consecration to duty of this native of the dark continent. The school itself will ever remain a lasting monument to his tireless efficient devotion to the welfare of his race. He retired from the field of his labors at the close of the 14th year carrying with him universal regret for his departure and the esteem and respect of the whole state and the acclamations of goodwill especially of the people of the capital in which the normal school is located. It requires no stretch of thought to understand our constant and earnest interest in everything which concerns our environments. Every question and issue of national significance have for us a vital consideration for wheel or woe. We scan with greedy eagerness the expressed policy of the statesman. We hang with baited breath on the eloquence of the sentiment molder. We probe with timeless care the feelings of the community to find out if we had been pushed to the rear or given a fair chance in the race to a higher life, our final place in American life. While we are not and should never be unmindful of all interests which appertain to others in this vast country of which we form such a necessary part, it is natural and right that our first thought should be of our own welfare. The position we are to definitely assume and maintain in the distinctive American civilization now in process of formation is yet concealed in the womb of futurity. We can neither anticipate nor force it against the period of its advent. While we are passing through this slow process of development, it is well at times to take a reckoning of our race powers by way of encouragement to such as may become faint and weary in the combat. All are not strong. All are not determined. All are not forceful. The fiercest courage will now and then lose its force when battling against steady odds. Moreover, our shortcomings like the shirt of Nessus are not only with us ever, but they are on constant exhibition to shame, mortify, and humiliate us. While it is not sensible to shut our eyes to these painful reminders of the obstacles to our progress, while it is even best to invite a searching scrutiny of them again that they may be torn off by heroic methods, if need be, after all an occasional study of our strong parts is a help in the struggle. Discard self-gratulation. In the attempt to reflect on the stinging powers of the race, I have not the remotest idea of pandering to conceit or vanity. To the contrary, I decry any disposition to extol and magnify whatever we are subjectively and whatever we have achieved. The fierce conflicts we have undergone and the terrible crucible through which the cruel hand of fate promises to pass us dispel the idea of self-gratulation. Life for us in the conflict ahead is all stern and serious. Wounds and scars will for generations yet to come be the decorations for our leaders in thought and action. There is no niche in the edifice consecrated to our present and coming heroes for fulsome, windy flatteries airing their importance to the galleries. Hearts, true and stout, charged with big emotions to raise and elevate their suffering kind to a higher plane should be the only thinkers to claim our considerate attention and command our homage. Theme under consideration. In the theme I have chosen for this paper, I shall endeavor to show that the latent and active attributes of the Negro eminently adapt him to be classed among the survivals of the fittest in the family of races. Before proceeding, however, to a formal discussion of the subject, it might not be a miss for a minute or two to take a running retrospect of the race and then into its present civil life. The three decades which mark the close of our civil war have perhaps not only written history more broadly in the behalf of humanity in general, as interpreted by Christian civilization than any other similar period, but they have been the most momentous in shaping the national life by molding and settling policies of a lasting nature. The admission of medians of what is termed an alien race into the solution of an untried problem of government by the people rendered that problem still more difficult, hence wild and extravagant speculations bearing on the future of the Negro and the questionable influence of his changed relations on America life became the current literature of the country for two decades. Friends spoke in fulsome praise or doubtful measure according to conviction, while enemies protested in exultant tone that a generation or two hence would suffice to write the Negro's epitaph. But even in that early period of his infancy had the nation been disposed to study him with other than preconceived erroneous views that might have perceived traits which justified the wisdom implied by his changed condition. Thus far if he has not risen to the desi heights to which the hopes of ardent enthusiasts invited him he has at least not only belied the gloomy fate of inglorious extension but he is going forward with steady strides to realize an honorable destiny in common with the many other people of the republic, origin of a strong race. A strong race like marked personality is the product of varied and opposing agencies. As in nature when conflicting elements struggle for the mastery and bear the impress of the strongest the evolution of a forceful people this character takes on the form of the means that has been most efficacious in molding it. There is no instance in the authentic annals of the human family where a masterly people has emerged into greatness from the tame school of gentle methods. Trials keen and severe have first slashed cut and tortured the entire being in mind and soul to fit it for the new life it is to enjoy in accordance with this destined end. What has ever been thus will always be soul. Qualities indicating the Negro's survival. In this law of nature in the formation of dominant powers the Negro has no favor to expect. He must pass through the fiery furnace and be shorn of dross to leave the solid matter which is to constitute the framework of his strength first among the many qualities of survival which distinguish him as an enduring race is patient endurance and fortitude under affliction. The elastic temperance of the race in the ability to adapt itself to varying conditions in swaggering with the force of the tempest until the fury spent in seizing with instinct on circumstances that tend to save is something not only amazing but marvelous. No oppression however heavy no abolition of wrath however fiery can swerve him from the road he has chosen to attain his purpose as a part of the pulsating life of this nation. From a dogged determination to butt aside forces which contained the elements of his salvation the Indian has passed into a retreat closed to contact with the active life of the dominant power of the land. The future of the parent race of the American Negro in the dark continent is bright with hope from its ready assimilation of the civilizing agencies of European civilization. In obedience to this self-evident law of survival, Japan has entered on a new resistance while its neighbor, China the home of a kindred race bids fair to become the easy prey of western greed. Strength not weakness now this easy swigging to conditions when his welfare is in hazard and for which the superficial thinker twits with lack of manliness is one of the strongest elements of his being. Where he less malleable than he is less ready to conceive where contention can only work him woe where he want to resent in wild and reckless fury real or fancy wrongs who obtuse to perceive and profit by the passing advantage where he to remove his cause from the buyer of reason and the verdict of a calm judgment he would neither be inviting the civilization of his native land nor would he have achieved a tithe of the wonderful progress which is today the vindication of his freedom and at the same time the shame and confusion of those who foretold his ignominious passing away. Patience, pure and simple, coupled with embracing the quiet purism has enabled him to bridge over the earlier days of his trials and confirm his status in the body politic to the general acceptance of the American people. The Negro's warfare, moral and mental the honor which waits on material contest counts for little to the Negro's advantage. Indeed if the strive with which he is confronted were to be waged on such an issue the result could be foretold in advance. His warfare is moral and mental and by the arts of peace he is to be left a cipher or rise in triumph to honorable destiny. Physical courage which the Negro shows largely in common with other races has its trophies lasened in marble and brass only to crumble beneath the corroding tooth of time. The warfare of mind and heart which ever calls in evidence only the highest courage of man's nature leaves its achievement to immortal fame to grow with the ages and surrenders it to eternity. What has been accomplished? By the exercise of this gentle but potent virtue of learning to labor and to wait we have mined our way into the heart of educational authorities to grant such of our sons and daughters as our competent coming preceptors to the youth of the race. By the nurture of the same virtue our slender means have tickled the greed of capital to call us away from obscure streets and narrow lanes that we may enjoy a wider range of selection of homes befitting higher tastes and growing ambition. Go, if you will, into the southern section of our country where the bulk of our race resides and there you will find by this same sturdy persistence to wait on time for a reward that schools, colleges, churches and business enterprises are being built and maintained. These are the ones which retired our progress are crumbling to pieces. The optimistic temperament the cheerful sunny temperament of the Negro is another of the many sturdy qualities which declare his fitness to withstand the blows of adverse fortune. His long training in the school of fitness wherein he had need to cultivate a sanguine temperament to boy him up stands proof against dark foreboardings and pessimism. But Grotesque and the ludicrous find in him a joyous patron where others count and bewail their foes he sees only Bloom and sorrow melt away at his approach while his features are ever radiant with mirth and joy. His head is up and erect and every sense attuned to the bright and dead to the doleful. He thanks God that the lot apportioned him as fashioned wisdom while he munches with contentment the humble crust that honest toil has brought him. Malevolence toward his fellow men is at the most a passing emotion. Wealth and the happiness attended on it he neither end these nor Mars he asks a chance to live no matter how sumptuously others by fair beyond his rendition such a being is forever beyond the pale of anarchy and other tendencies which work to detriment of society. In this portraiture I have drawn no ideal with the average digrow as he is known of all men. Peace and in war such a being is an invaluable factor in a nation's well-being and as he does not envy the class which fortune has blessed 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 assume his share of the dangers consequent on the maintenance of the existing order of the fares. 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 accommodation is commonly rewarded with cold indifference or at least with damnable praise and yet when driven as it were with brutal tics and cuffs from the service and defense of his country's honor he hangs on to the outer folds of its flag with the 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 today only a passive 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 citizenship 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 headgear in air out yell the lustiest 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 bigger of bandhood 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 sputtered claim to the negro's regard yet his untimely taking off has been lamented by none more sincerely than by our race in a country in town in state in every section the negro is broadly American the only thing 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 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 trivial and goes within into every land and climb 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 assigned the fate of Europe to the absolute sway of the little Corsican Wellington exclaimed to such of his staff has still remained around him hot pounding this gentleman but the day was at last one and the endangered constitutional liberty of Europe leaped forth in the heat of blood to inspire man with new hope and aspiration as a race we are struggling for life our hopes and fears are crumbling in the balance against might power and moss covered prejudices a continuous pounding directed by the impulse of a will to do succeed will bring us victory but says the carving critic if the Negro will less patient for bearing and more embedded 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 members and tougher seniors the latter bent the neck non-intelligence bided their time and brought the victor down to inequality 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 constitutes 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 assert 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 to renew and untried regions with a radiant hope for a better fate he goes to the semi-artic lands of the west readily becomes domesticated and so insinuates himself into the hard prosaic customs of the country that he at once becomes insofar as he is not debarred from the rules or organizations a sharp competitor with the wage earner in the strife for bread his blood has no lazy microbes to dam the current of his movement assure him of reasonable compensation and his brawny arm is bared to the pick and the mattocks his axe and hoe and plow without wealth from mine and soul active everywhere wherever he has blot his cast there he enters with zest into this live settlement 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 articles of trade 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 pronounced take as a sample the spirit of the race to absorb elevating influence from the dominant class 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 wheel 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 more over 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 will I am admonished that this paper must come to a close I am compelled to omit even by beer mention many of the exemplary virtues of the race I have however touched on just enough to furnish the inquiring mind with deductions even the pessimists is constrained to admit that under the circumstances 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 hardships the race undergrows in this period of development constitute the necessary training school and the virtues which spring fence are intended as much for the betterment of the other race as for our own often 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 today the past gives us assurance 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 God has endowed us with the capacity to suffer and undergo the trials incited 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 by 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 End of Topic 29 Topic 30 of 20th Century Negro Literature This is the LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Chris Pyle 20th Century Negro Literature Topic 30 The Signs of a Brighter Future for the American Negro by Reverend F. J. Grimke Doctor of Divinity Francis J. Grimke, clergyman was born near Charleston, South Carolina November 4th, 1850 son of Henry and Nancy Weston Grimke attempted school in Charleston entered Lincoln University Chester County, Pennsylvania in 1866 and graduated in 1870 with a Master of Arts and a Doctor of Divinity graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1878 ordained pastor of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church the same year remained until 1885 took charge of Loma Street Presbyterian Church 1885 to 1889 returned to 15th Street Church Washington DC 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 foreign against him in 1898 the lynching of Negroes in the south its causes and remedy some lessons from the assassination of President William McKinley 1901 the Roosevelt Washington episode or Race Prejudice 1901 address 1526 L Street Washington DC 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 so flash while the joy bells are ringing and the world with its sweetest of birds should go singing some of these days let us bear with our sorrow faith in the future is light we may borrow there will be joy in the golden tomorrow 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 an 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 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 what it is today in these respects that we are progressing there can be no doubt indeed in view of all the circumstances 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 300 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 30 years ago there were but few educational institutions among us but few professional men doctors, lawyers, ministers intelligence, teachers but few men and women of education now there are thousands of well equipped many women in all their professions and thousands upon thousands of men and women of education in every part of the country not only are there institutions founded especially for our benefit crowded with students but all the great institutions 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 institutions is steadily increasing the last report of the commission of education shows that in the common schools of the 16 former slave states and the District of Columbia there are enrolled 1 million 429,713 pupils and that in these schools some 25,000 teachers are employed it also shows that there are 178 schools for secondary and higher education with an enrollment of over 40,000 pupils there are of course thousands of our people who are still very ignorant and 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 and 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 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 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 and that remarkable book of his Dr. Huget 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 Dr. Huget 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 we remember that according to the story there was but one Dr. Huget with a black skin and that he was poor that all the rest of his race were poor and ignorant light breaks in upon the darkness the awful Paul which he cast upon us is at once lifted how will it be when instead of one Dr. Huget 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 in his education he was actually getting poorer then we might lose heart but thank God 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 or even standing still but is moving on poor, yes but he isn't always going to be poor yes, but he isn't always going to be ignorant the progress that he has already made in these direction 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 cure 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 we've found to be no match for the power that comes from wealth and intelligence 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 or strength abides from nature's heart her mighty pulses leap through nature's veins or strength undying tides I watch the circle of the eternal years and read forever in the storied page when the length and role 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 Lowell with steadfast gain freedom doth forge her mail of adverse fates men slay the prophets faggot wrack 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 of France from which I quoted on last sabbath the same glorious thought is expressed and surely never did thine altars glance with pure fires than now in France while in their bright white flashes wrong shadow backward cast waves cowering over the ashes of the dead blaspheming past over the shapes of fallen giants his own unburied brood whose dead hands clench defiance at the overpowering good and down the happy future runs a flood of prosophing light it shows an earth no longer stained with blood blossom and fruit where now we see the bud of brotherhood and right that is my faith the wrong may triumph for the moment but in its very triumph is its death knell it cannot always prevail god has so constituted the moral universe has so planted in the human heart the sense of right that ultimately justice is sure to be done ever the right comes uppermost is no mere poetic fancy but one of god's great laws in the future of that law I am hopeful I know that things cannot go on as they are going on now that the outrageous manner in which we are present treated cannot always continue it is bound to end sooner or later I am hopeful because I have faith in the power of the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ to conquer all prejudices to break down all walls of separation and to well together men of all races and to one great brotherhood it is a religion that teaches the fatherhood of god and the brotherhood of man a religion in which there is neither greek nor jew barbarian, sythian, bond or free and this religion is in this land there are according to the statistics of the churches for 1898 excluding christian scientists, jews and latter day saints 135,667 ministers in the united states 187,075 churches and 26,100,884 communicans in these churches this would seem to be a guarantee that every right belonging to the negro would be secured to him that in the struggle which he is making in this country for simple justice and fair play for manhood recognition for such treatment as this humanity and citizenship entitle him back of him would be these 135,667 ministers 187,075 churches and 26,100,884 church members but alas such is not the case these professed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ who came to seek and to save the lost friend of publicans and sinners whose gospel was a gospel of love and who was all the time reaching down and seeking to befriend the lowly those who were despised and who were trampled upon by others the Christ of whom it is written and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes neither approve after the hearing of his ears but with the righteousness shall he judge the poor and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth and who in speaking of himself said the spirit of the Lord God that is upon me because he hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound to comfort all that mourn to give them a garland for ashes the oil of joy for mourning the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness these professed followers of this wonderfully glorious Christ instead of standing back of the poor Negro and the earnest desperate struggle which he is making against this damnable race prejudice which curses him because he is down and landing him with vile epithets calling him low to great ignorant, besotted and yet putting its heel upon his neck so as to preventive him rising despising him because he is down and hating him when he manifests in a disposition to throw off his ignorance and degradation and show himself a man and this struggle I say against this damnable race prejudice these professing Christians are often his worst enemies his most malignant haters and traducers In saying that the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ is in the land, I do not therefore base my assertion upon the fact that there are 135,667 ministers in it, and 187,075 churches, and 26,100,884 professing Christians, no. The American church, as such, is only an apology for a church. It is an apostate church, utterly unworthy of the name which it bears. Its spirit is a mean and cowardly and despicable spirit. One shall chase a thousand, we are told, in the good book, and two shall put ten thousand to flight. And yet, with 135,667 preachers, and more than two million church members in this land, this awful black record of murder and lawlessness against a weak and defenseless race still goes on. In the presence of this appalling fact, I can well understand the spirit which moved Theodore Parker, that pulpit Jupiter of his day. When his great sermon on the true idea of a Christian church he said, in the midst of all these wrongs and sins, the crimes of men's society in the state, amid popular ignorance, populism, crime and war, and slavery too, is the church to say nothing, do nothing. Nothing for the good of such as feel the wrong, nothing to save them who do the wrong. Men tell us so, in word and deed, that way alone is safe. If I thought so, I would never enter the church for once again and then to bow my shoulders to their manliest work, to heave down his strong pillars, arch and dome and roof and wall, steeple and tower, though like Samson I buried myself under the ruins of that temple, which profane the worship of the God most high, of God most loved. I would do this in the name of men, in the name of Christ I would do it, yes in the dear and blessed name of God, and I would do it too. But in spite of the shallowness and emptiness and glaring hypocrisy of this thing which calls itself the church, this thing which is so timid, so cowardly, that it dares not touch any sin that is unpopular, I shall believe that Christianity is in this land. Today it is like a little grain of mustard seed that has entered the soil, has germinated and is springing up. It is like the little lump of leaven which the woman hid in three measures of meal, but it has begun to work and will go on working, defusing itself, until the whole is leavened. God has promised to give to his son the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession, and in that promise this land is included. Christianity shall one day have sway even in negro-hating America. The spirit which it inculcates and which it is capable of producing is sure sooner or later to prevail. I have myself here and there seen its mighty transforming power. I have seen white men and women under its regenerating influence lose entirely the cast feeling to whom the brother in black was as truly a brother as the brother in white. If Christianity were a mere world influence I should have no such hope, but it is something more than a mere world influence. It is from above. Back of it is the mighty power of God. The record is, to as many as received him to them gave he power to become children of God. Even to them that believed on his name, which were born not a blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. It can do what no mere human power can do. Jesus Christ is yet to reign in this land. I will not see it. You will not see it. But it is coming all the same. In the growth of Christianity, true, real, genuine Christianity in this land, I see the promise of better things for us as a race. End of topic 30, recording by Chris Pyle. Topic 31 of 20th Century Negro Literature This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Phyllis Vinceli. 20th Century Negro Literature. Topic 31 by John Henry Smythe. Negro Criminality John Henry Smythe, LLD, ex-U.S. minister, resident and consul general to Liberia, was born in the city of Richmond. His parents were Sully Smythe of Lynchburg, Campbell County, Virginia, and Anne Eliza, formerly Good, of Chesterfield County, Virginia. He received his first instruction from a lady of his own race at a time when the laws of Virginia made it a penal offence to teach Negroes any other thing than manual labor. At the age of seven years he was sent to Philadelphia to be educated. He attended the public schools of that city for years and two private schools under the control and direction of friends or Quakers. He graduated from the Institute for Colored Youth May 4, 1862. He displayed a decided taste and aptitude for the fine arts early in life, and at the age of sixteen years he became a student of art, and was admitted a member of the Life School of the Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, a year before graduation. In 1870 he graduated from the law school of Howard University. The same year he married the daughter of Reverend John Shippen of Washington, D.C., Miss Fanny Ellen, a lady whom he had the pleasure of instructing in the first Elocution class of Howard University. For eighteen years he was in the service of the United States, beginning as a first class clerk and ending as United States Minister and Consul General. For seven years he taught in the public schools of Pennsylvania, practiced law in the District of Columbia, North and South Carolina. On retiring from the diplomatic service in Liberia, two distinctions were conferred upon Mr. Smythe by Liberia College, the Honorary Degree of LLD, and by the President of Liberia, the Honorable Hilary Richard Wright Johnson, the Order of Night Commander of the Humane Order of African Redemption. They were only two Americans so honored by the Black Republic. At present Mr. Smythe is at the head of the Negro Reformatory Association of Virginia, a corporation resident in Virginia, with authority to establish reform schools for delinquent Negro minors of both sexes in Virginia. The first school of the Association is the Virginia Manual Labor School, Hanover, Virginia, with 1,800 acres of land, 800 of which is under cultivation. The good people of Mr. Smythe's native city, Richmond, and friends in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York have made possible the purchase of the plantation known as Broadneck Hanover. The principal benefactor was Mr. Collis P. Huntington of New York, who was pleased to make a contribution of $12,000 toward this worthy and necessary charity. We have need to felicitate ourselves as members of a great, though oppressed race, that in Armstrong the founder and promoter of this institution of practical learning was given to us and to the nation, and that through his influence and example Tuskegee and other similar institutions have grown into vigorous youth. Two of these seats of industrial education, through a system of race conferences, have given to us who are deprived of a popular press an opportunity to be heard in our own behalf upon subjects, the public discussion of which, through literary mediums, has been monopolized by members of the other race. Our moral delinquencies have been discussed recently, at the north and in the south, at times in a sensible and at other times in a nonsensical way. Arguments have been made to the world by orators and writers seemingly more interested and concerned in making the worse appear the better reason than in philosophically looking into facts or honestly seeking to discover truth. From much that has been said it would appear to one unacquainted with the American branch of the Negro race that within 35 years it has become criminal. Although for nearly three centuries it has been a stranger to wrongdoing, law-abiding and not law-breaking. Such radical change, if changed there has been in individuals or classes of people, is rare, abnormal, and must be accounted for in some other way than by the wholesale charge of inherited savagery and innate moral obliquity. Crime from an hereditary standpoint may not justly be chargeable to one race of men, to the exclusion of another, to the black race more than to the white, to the yellow races more than to the white or black. The first crime was in the first family. The sacred writings teach that God gave, mid the thunderings of the heavens, the smoking of the mountain, and the consternation of the people, the criminal code in the Ten Commandments, which may be found in the traditions of heathen peoples, somewhat modified, just as in the written laws of all Christian nations. Had crime not existed prior to this heavenly edict, there would have been little apparent reason for this ancient pronouncement through a Hebrew medium. The conclusion seems then to be irresistible, that mankind coveted, stole, lied, were disobedient to parents, were adulterers and murderers from the earliest times, and only ceased to be so, measurably, in proportion as the sanctions of law were strong or weak. The Christian religion and civilizations other than Christian, with their religions, growth, and development under the influence of good, wise, and godly men, have contributed more than all else through the decrease of crime and among all classes and conditions of men. Thou shalt not, stays the course of crime. The history of the black or African race, since the decadence and destruction of the cities of North Africa, and the Nile Delta, and the loss of prestige of the peoples who held sway in them, has been shrouded and obscured, and hence gratuitous arguments are made in regard to the savagery and bestiality, which it is claimed we inherit, of the progenitors of Negro Americans that are wholly unsupported by reliable data. The acts of the Puritan fathers of New England, and of the Cavaliers and the Huguenots of the South, toward Indian and Negro heathen in the New World, men of whom it has been facetiously said that, they fell first upon their knees and then upon the Aborigines. These acts, together with the horrors of the middle passage, and the unrequited toil of centuries, of which the blacks were victims, must be taken into account in considering the matter of crime in connection with this race, and go far to explain a condition which otherwise would be abnormal. The baleful influences of a dead and buried past account for crime among the old and the young Negro Americans, the responsibility for which rests upon the United States rather than the Southern States upon this nation rather than any part of it. In Virginia and Maryland there were indentured white slaves. When the system was abolished the same conditions plagued the colonists that annoy us now. Mr. Doyle, in his work entitled English Colonies in America, says, The liberated servant, white, became an idler, socially corrupt, and often politically dangerous. The whites became an irresponsible, shiftless, and criminal class, just as the Negroes have become to an alarming extent since freedom. There are today in certain sections of the South whole neighborhoods of whites almost without moral sense and near to barbarism. It will not be pretended, however, that there has not been, and is not now, criminality among the Negro race, just as there was during the years of its oppression. But a condition upheld and approved by the Constitution, laws, and public sentiment of the nation cannot do other than plead guilty to having contributed to this result, which has so greatly affected the estimation in which good men, equally with bad men, the innocent as well as the guilty of our race, are held by the whites. I am not clanking my chains as a Negro in remembering the past, and only do so in accounting for what the unreasoning and unsympathetic are disposed to regard as abnormal criminality in the American Negro. Negro parents under the old regime were parents physically only. The government of their children was in the hands of others. Obedience to parents enjoined by the decalogue was not rendered by children, was not encouraged by others, nor could it have been enforced by parental authority. Filial affection in the slave child existed to an appreciable degree, notwithstanding these disadvantages. Parents and children came into the possession of freedom not sufficiently understanding nor appreciating the relation of each to the other. While I am clearly of opinion that it may not be successfully shown that Negro children are more criminal in inclination than other children, their home training, or rather their lack of home training, is greatly responsible for what of criminality there is among them. Negro parents, as a rule, seemed disposed not only to give larger liberty to their children than they ought, but they give absolute license in too many instances. In illustration of this fact, in cities particularly, children are allowed to go from their homes in the nighttime and wander the streets amid their baleful associations until 9, 10, 11 o'clock and longer. And when they return home, they do so unattended. The accounts given by them as to where they have been cannot be relied upon. Further, children are not required to be respectful to their elders of either sex. This condition does not obtain a loan among children of ignorant and poor parentage, but absence of good manners is also often found among children and youths who have had fair, common, and high school advantages. This license has led directly and unerringly to the formation and cultivation of habits more likely to debase than elevate them. To venture criticism of parental latches or of the conduct of the young, to admonish or advise different manners and conduct from that which the inclination of the young seems to suggest, would be to run the risk of being regarded as officious or meddling, and thereby of inviting insult. Parents whose children are known to be of the class pictured are themselves timid and indisposed to insist upon obedience from them, for fear of offending them and causing them to go away from home. The inexperience and ignorance of childhood and youth, coupled with the grant of too great liberty, are responsible for the too general tendency to wrongdoing. Negro parents who were themselves victims of oppression, as well as those who were born under the benign influences of freedom, have crude and unwise notions about the duty of requiring their children to do some kind of work. Too many Negro children are guarded from soiling their hands and developing their muscles with necessary and useful toil. The struggling, industrious widow, as well as the well-conditioned housewife whose husband has a good home and makes a good living, seeks to relieve her children of work. This encouragement of laziness can have but one outcome, the living in the sweat of others' faces than their own. Under conditions such as these, parents possessed of radically ignorant and wrong notions about rearing their children unconsciously cultivate tendencies which lead to criminality. To the extent that a child's mind becomes familiar with higher conditions and mind work, to that degree does physical exertion in the way of mere muscle work become distasteful, and as a result the child becomes less efficient as a mere breadwinner by the sweat of his brow. Education is chargeable with producing a condition for which parents and not schoolteachers are responsible. Complete an entire reform and our system of home training of our boys and girls will go far to relieve youthful Negroes of the just censure for ill-breeding. How far all these reflections are applicable to the rearing and training of white children is for white parents to consider. Mr. Philip Alexander Bruce, in a recent publication in the Contemporary Review, accounts for moral delinquencies in the young of the race by the very natural and normal disposition of Negroes, where numerically strong to segregate themselves from the whites. In London one finds a French settlement. In nearly every large city in the United States Germans live together. Italians, Swedes, and Norwegians settle among their congeners. It is not contended that they are less law-abiding and loyal citizens as a consequence of their nearness of living and association. Mr. Bruce enlarges upon the thought thus. Quote, the worst impression made by that society, a Negro community, is seen in the temper of the children. Whatever may be said in condemnation of the old system, it at least not only compelled the parents to restrain and if needful to punish their offspring for bad conduct, but it also created an atmosphere of order and sobriety in the plantations which had a more or less beneficial influence on the character of the young. As the case now stands, the only discipline to which the little Negro is subject is that exercised by parents to untrained themselves to understand how to govern him properly and in most instances too ignorant to have any just idea as to the difference between right and wrong in the ordinary affairs of life. What is the result? The child grows up without any lessons in self-control and self-improvement or any intelligent appreciation of the cardinal principles of morality. If the child is a boy, he leaves his parents almost as soon as he can earn his own support and only too often leads for years the life of a vagabond. All the worst impulses of his nature are further encouraged by this wandering and irresponsible existence. Is it strange that, under the operation of this influence alone, the number of black criminals in the southern states is increased to an alarming degree? What good effect could result from restraint exercised or punishment inflicted by parents whose judgment and will were dormant? It is only when a parent governs and controls, ignorant though he may be, that the best results can be expected to follow. Judgment, affection, and concern for the child must enter into the method of his training if the rearing is to be beneficial and helpful. To my mind, but one merit can be claimed for the old system of enslavement, a discipline as to labor which produced the best results to the master class and made the slave orderly and systematic in the performance of his tasks. Though smarting even now under the resultant influences of a destroyed system, we can afford to do justice to the good men and women of the white race who constituted a part of the system. Slavery, as it has been known in the outside world, is not slavery as it was in the gentile and pious homes and households of the south. Here the people were treated almost as members of the family, uncles and aunts, and mammies and playmates. They were necessary supplements, sharers of all great occasions of joy or sorrow, of feasts and sufferings, and the tenderest and most watchful care was bestowed on them. Consideration for the servants was the test of the quality. Mutual influences went to make as pure, high and beautiful a civilization as the system was capable of, and no philanthropist on earth has ever had a deeper horror for the evils that have been represented as slavery in the south than many of the quality. Nor anywhere was the wise abolition of slavery more earnestly studied and desired than by the good people of the southern states. In the discussion of the criminality of the negro, too much importance is attached to mere statistics. In any discussion of an ethical character mere statistics may not be relied upon. I shall present a few which are entirely authentic, but which prove little, in my opinion, prejudicial to the negroes of today as compared with the negroes of the past, and could not unless figures could be adduced, alike authentic, showing the criminality of the negroes as bond men. Neither can comparison between the criminality of the blacks and whites be cited to the negroes' prejudice in the light of the disparity between the races in every essential element of race growth. The foregoing facts greatly detract from any comparative criminal exhibit in which negroes of today are made to figure. The last United States census furnishes some figures which seem to be more in the negroes' favor than against him. Persons of all races in the penitentiaries of the United States in 1890 were 45,233, of which number 14,687 were colored. Prisoners in county jails, 19,538, of which number 5,577 were colored. Inmates in juvenile reformatories, 14,846, of which 1,943 were colored. Of a total of 73,045 almshouse paupers, only 6,467 were negroes. Of murderers there were 2,739 negroes out of a total of 4,425. In 1850 there was one criminal to 3,500 of population. In 1890 one criminal to 645 of population. Whites one to every 1,000 and blacks one to every 284. Take the ignorance of the negro as to secular matters, the moral torpor in which he necessarily exists, his poverty, the presumption of guilt when charged with crime, his inability to defend himself, his being forced to plead to an information or indictment in form of paupers could crime charged and established against him be less than it is, ought not the record to be worse rather than better. Of the 14,846 juvenile delinquents given an opportunity to re-enter society and walk in the straight path through reformatories, only 1,943 were negroes. With the doors of almshouses swung wide to 73,046 paupers, racial pride prevented poor negroes entering these homes of mercy, and only 6,467 allowed themselves to become objects of public charity. With a larger percentage of unskilled than skilled negro laborers in 1890, only 2,253 of 6,546 convicts whose employments were known were in the penitentiaries of the land. Of 45,233 criminals, but 253 were persons who had enjoyed higher educational advantages and not a single educated negro figures in the enumeration. What are the remedies for existing criminality and how may its increase be checked? Popular secular education for whites and blacks, compulsory if possible, erected on a broad basis of Christianity, is the only safe, enduring, moral, and economic remedy. Mere secular education may not be relied upon to restrain crime, and we must honestly own that our only hope is in the diffusion of true religion. The Church should take the initiative in this matter. The State, I, the Nation should come to the assistance of the Church, and of those States in which the burden is too great for them to bear it successfully. If the Holy Scriptures be not the basis of all worthy knowledge, our civilization is a fraud. Individual philanthropy has done much towards aiding in the matter of education, particularly so-called higher education. May not individual wealth help to minimize ignorance, dissipate poverty, help the feeble in mind and morals of the race to robust Christian manhood? Quote, For many men of great possessions, the voice of conscience is effective, as the contemplated grasp of the tax-gatherer could never be. Around them they see ignorance to be banished, talent missing its career, misery appealing for relief. They know that the forces of the times have brought them their large fortunes, only through cooperation and the protection of the whole community. So with justice in their hearts, as well as generosity, they found the benefactions which are doing so much to foster the best impulses of American life. And in this response to public duty, they find conferred upon riches a new power and fascination. The reform schools for juveniles throughout the North and West, and those in Virginia, represent Christian agencies for the reduction and destruction of crime in its germinal state, and are a display of wise and humane statesmanship on the part of legislators. The white people of Virginia, ever responsive to appeals in behalf of human need, made possible the Virginia Manual Labor School at Broadneck Farm, Hanover, Virginia. It was this sentiment, in behalf of moral reform among Negro children and youths, that brought to the aid of this institution the interested concern of a man of wealth and national influence, whose sympathy for the poor and ignorant of his countrymen, white and black, is as broad and far-reaching as ignorance and human suffering. This reformatory, opened September 12, 1899, and aided by the state, February 5, 1900, began with a nucleus of five Negro boys, and has now, under its guardianship, fifty-two children. It has thus early demonstrated conclusively that saving and redemptive elements of character exist in Negro children no less than in those of other races. Also that for attractiveness and responsiveness to kindly influences, delinquent Negro children show themselves of legitimate kinship to that race among whom, as the classic writer tells us, the gods delighted to desport themselves, the gentle Ethiopians. I know how disposed as a race we are to wilt, to lose heart, and complain, in the glare of new exhibitions of prejudice, such as harass us in our native Virginia and our brethren in other parts of the country. To such, I put the question, by courage can we not lessen misfortune? Yes, a thousand times yes. Courage turns ignoble agony into beautiful martyrdom. Its alchemy is universal. Is the stake a misfortune to the martyr? It is his dearest fortune. Is oppression, prejudice, or ignorance a misfortune to the reformer? It is the very condition of his reform. Is misunderstanding, injustice, suspicion, or contempt a misfortune to the earnest man or woman anywhere who is trying to guide his life by a more celestial trigonometry than petty minds can conceive? In one sense these things are to be deplored, but in another and deeper sense nothing is to be dreaded that can be faced and known by an unfrighted human spirit. A misfortune bravely met is a fortune, and the world is full of people happy because bravely unhappy. End of topic 31 Of 20th Century Negro Literature This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org 20th Century Negro Literature Topic 32 by William H. Herd The American Negro's Opportunities in Africa Dr. William H. Herd Ex-Minister, resident and consul general to Liberia was born in Elbert County, Georgia of slave parents and therefore was a slave himself until Lee surrendered to Grant in April 1865. He was only 15 years of age at this period. He began his education at this age attending South Carolina University, Clark University, and Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia, taught school 12 years, was elected to South Carolina Legislator from Advil County in 1876, appointed bravely Postal Clark in 1880, but resigned this position in 1883 and entered the ministry at Macon, Georgia. He pastured churches in Athens in Atlanta, Georgia, Eichon and Charleston, South Carolina, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Wilmington, Delaware, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and was appointed minister resident and consul general to Liberia by President Grover Cleveland, February 1895. He served this position with honor to his race and to himself. He is one of the most successful ministers in his denomination and has served the best appointments, both as pastor and as presiding elder. He is now the pastor of Allen Temple Atlanta, Georgia, has written a book called The Bright Side of African Life, which has a large circulation. He is now president of the Colored National Immigration Association. The Liberian government takes charge of all persons landing as immigrants and looks after their comfort preparatory to their settling. But if one prefers, he may secure board in the best of families at a cheap rate until settled. As the government gives each settler from 15 to 25 acres of land and allows him to choose his own plot, it takes a little time to settle. He must locate and survey his land and build his hut. All newcomers build a hut as it is cheap and quickly built. From 15 to 50 dollars will put up a good-touch hut, which will answer all purposes for at least three years. The land cleared, coffee, ginger, sugarcane, Edo's, cassada, oranges, limes, plums, breadfruit, pawpaws, can be planted. It takes three years for coffee to yield five to six for oranges, limes, breadfruit, etc. Edo's, cassadas and such breadstuffs yield in three or four months and ginger and sugarcane once a year. From these two commodities an income at once is had. All of the above fruits and products are obtainable from neighbors while yours are maturing. This is the condition of the farmer. But should you go out as a professional or businessman, you have a wide field and little competition. Any educated person will find ready employment by individuals or the government and a remuneration in keeping with the vocation. Citizenship is the result of a deed to your land and this is obtained at your option. And citizenship means an election to any office say that of president and vice president. It requires a residence of five years to be elected to one of these offices. I Tony Wright, Professor Stevens, Reverend Frazier and others filled national positions before they had been citizens five years. The government needs strong men to assist in running the republic and such if loyal are always welcomed. The merchant of Liberia received the greatest profit of any merchant on the face of the globe not less than 100% on the purchasing price and 150% on the selling price. Rent is cheap, tax is low and duties moderate so that everything is in favor of the merchant. The scientists find the widest field imaginable. Silver, gold, precious stones, herbs, coal, iron and such articles are as plentiful as leaves unto trees. They never fall. All that is needed is a scientific eye to see these things. The zoologists could make a fortune in one year catching insects and shipping them to colleges in America, England, Germany and France. Why so many of our young people educated and refined will don white aprons and stand behind chairs and watch other people eat is a problem. If there is one, that needs to be solved. Many of our educated girls when they can work on people's heads and feet and present a card with some big word on it as Cairopodist which means foot cleaner are perfectly satisfied. All of this must be done but it does not require a knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, German and all the sciences to do this successfully. Yet, it is the highest ambition of many of our young people while Africa invites them to higher walks. In America, cotton is the staple in many of the southern states. The farmer plants and grows this staple to obtain clothing and the necessaries of life and, if possible, lay by a dollar for a rainy day. In Liberia, coffee holds the same relation to the farmer as cotton in America. Yet, it is planted like the peach tree or apple tree. It takes about 5 years to yield but when it begins to yield it increases yearly, costing about 5 cents a pound to clean, hull and shipped market, giving a clear profit off from 2 to 5 cents on the pound while there is no real profit in cotton growing. Liberia would yield cotton as prolifically as Arkansas or Mississippi have cultivated. The Englishmen are turning their attention to cotton growing in West Africa. Cassadars takes the place of the American sweet potato but is much easier produced as the greatest cost is the labor of planting. It produces without cultivation and, as there is no frost in West Africa once planted it will produce for 20 years. It is a root as is the sweet potato. The upland rise of West Africa grows anywhere and everywhere it chances to fall upon the ground. Very little attention is given to cultivation. Yet, it could be made in export which would yield the farmer a most valuable income. Corn grows as prolifically in Africa as in the bottoms of Georgia and Alabama. Planting is the hardest task. The palm trees grow as the pine in Georgia or North Carolina and the nut which it produces is as large as or larger than a horse chestnut. These nuts contain an oil that answers all the purposes of bacon, lard and butter in America. The greatest task is to have a boy climb the tree and cut them down. The soil fries your fish, seasons your greens, shortens your bread and answers all the purposes of lard or butter. There are hogs, cows, sheep and goats in West Africa but no meat can be cured therefore all bacon is shipped from abroad. Rubber farms are much more profitable than terpentine farms for the reason that it costs so much less to produce rubber and the profit is so much greater. Rubber is produced at from 15 to 20 cents per pound and sold at from 75 cents to 1 dollar per pound. Well, all of these products are used on the ground with a few exceptions yet all of them are profitable commodities for export. We have presented this area of facts to sustain our position that the Negro will be benefited by returning home to Africa as fast as he is self-reliant and independent but he must be a man. Boys cannot stand the hardships of pioneer life. End of topic 32. Topic number 33 of 20th century Negro literature. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Mike Overby, Parkland, Washington. 20th century Negro literature. Topic number 33 by Lena Mason. Mrs. Lena Mason, the Evangelist, was born in Quincy, Illinois, May 8th, 1864. Her parents, Relda and Von Duhlen, were devout Christians and they brought up their daughter Lena as far as they knew how in the nature and admonition of our Lord so that Lena became a Christian at a very early age. She attended the Douglas High School of Hannibal, Missouri. She also attended Professor Knott's School in Chicago. She married March 9th, 1883, to George Mason. Of this union, six children were the result for boys and two girls. Of these, only one, Bertha May survives. At the age of 23, Mrs. Mason entered the ministry preaching for the first three years to white people exclusively and later preaching to mixed congregations. She now belongs to the colored conference. Mrs. Mason has preached in nearly every state in the union and the preachers are few who can excel her in preaching. She has, since she began preaching, been instrumental in the conversion of 1,617 souls. Her five months work in colored and white churches in Minneapolis will never be forgotten by those who are greatly benefited by her services. Mrs. Mason possesses considerable ability as a poet and has written several poems and songs that do not suffer by comparison with poems by the best poets. Mrs. Mason is powerful in argument and picture painting. Reverend C. L. Leonard, pastor of the Central German ME Church in speaking of Mrs. Mason says, I desire to express my highest appreciation of Mrs. Mason's church and effective evangelical work in my church and in many others. Mrs. Mason is now making a tour of the South and by her lectures and sermons is doing the work among the colored people that will bear good fruit in the future. One only needs to hear Mrs. Mason's lecture and preach to understand how it is that one never tires of listening to her. The Negro and Education by Lena Mason said once a noble ruler, Thomas Jefferson by name, all men are created equal, all men are born the same. God made the Negro equal to any race above the grave, although once made a captive and sold to man a slave. Of all the crimes recorded, our histories do not tell of a single crime more brutal or in a parallel. It was said by men of wisdom, no knowledge is how they have, for if you educate a Negro, you unfit him for a slave. Fred Douglas's young mistress, moved by a power divine, determined she would let the rays of knowledge on him shine. But her husband said, twill never do, twill his way to freedom pave, for if you educate a Negro, you unfit him for a slave. But there is no mortal being, who can the wields of progress stay? And all wise God intended he should see the light of day. God drew back the sable curtains that shut out wisdom's rays. He did give unto him knowledge and unfit him for a slave. But God's works were not completed, for he had made decree, since all men are born equal, then all men shall be free. He removed the yoke of bondage that him freedom gave. He did educate the Negro and unfit him for a slave. When the Negro gained his freedom of body and of soul, he caught the wheels of progress, gave them another role. He was held near three long centuries in slavery's dismal cave, but now he is educated and unfitted for a slave. He's able to fill any place on this terrestrial ball, all the way from country teacher to the legislative hall. He has proved himself a hero, educated and unfit to be a slave. We have lawyers and we've doctors, teachers and preachers brave, and a host of noble women who have safely crossed the wave. We are pressing on and upward, and for education crave, for as written now in history, we shall never more be slaves. End of Topic 33 Topic 34 of 20th Century Negro Literature This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recording by Mike Overby, Parkland, Washington. 20th Century Negro Literature Topic 34 by Lena Mason, a Negro in it. In the last Civil War, the white folks, they began it, but before it could close, the Negro had to be in it. At the Battle of San Juan Hill, the Rough Riders, they began it, but before victory could be won, the Negro had to be in it. The Negro shot the Spaniard from the tree, and never did regret it. The Rough Riders would have been dead today, had the Negro not been in it. To Buffalo, McKinley went, to welcome people in it. The prayer was prayed, the speech made, the Negro, he was in it. September 6th, in Music Hall, with thousands, thousands in it, McKinley fell from the assassin's ball, and the Negro, he got in it. He knocked the murderer to the floor, he struck his nose, the blood did flow. He held him fast, all nearby saw, went for the right, the Negro in it. J.B. Parker is his name. He, from the State of Georgia came, he worked in Buffalo for his bread, and there he saw McKinley dead. They bought his clothes for souvenirs, and may they ever tell it, that when the president was shot, a brave Negro was in it. He saved him from the third ball, that would have taken life with it. He held the foreigner fast and tight, the Negro sure was in it. McKinley now in heaven rests, where he never regret it. And well he knows, that in all his joys, there was a Negro in it. White man, stop lynching and burning, this black race trying to thin it, for if you go to heaven or hell, you will find some Negroes in it. Parker knocked the assassin down, and to beat him he began it. In order to save the president's life, yes, the Negro truly was in it. You may try to shut the Negro out, the courts they have begun it, but when we meet at the judgment bar, God will tell you the Negro is in it. Pay them to swear a lion court, both whites and blacks will do it. Truth will shine to the end of time, and you will find the Negro in it. End of Topic 34 Topic number 35 of 20th century Negro literature. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bavia. 20th century Negro literature. Topic 35 by Professor Joseph D. Bibb. Professor of the LibriVox.org. Thank you. Professor Joseph D. Bibb. E. M. Professor Joseph D. Bibb comes from the city of Montgomery, Alabama, of excellent parents. His early life was spent among pleasant surroundings and he received his primary education at the Swain Public School of that city. While quite young, he entered Fisk University, where he was prominent because of his splendid scholarship and original ideas. Being impressed with the idea that Negroes were the natural and best teachers for the Negro youth, he left that institution and entered Livingstone College at Salisbury and C. At the head of which was the justly celebrated Dr. J. C. Price. Here he received the degree of A.B. in 1886. He was not contented with his academic attainment but completed the courses of law and theology and has constantly applied himself to his high ideal. After graduating, he spent his first year as instructor in the state normal of Montgomery, 10 years as a principal of the public school in which he received his training and 2 years as professor of Hebrew and Bible history at Morris Brown College, Atlanta, Georgia. Neither of these nor the minor fields of usefulness satisfied his ideal and it was not entirely into the active ministry that he felt the satisfaction that comes with fitness. He is now laboring acceptably as a minister in the A.M.E. Church and is recognized as one of its most scholarly divines. The world needs men who will use all of their cultivated powers to bless and to lift up their fellow men who will dedicate themselves to their fullest energies and their energies to their people. Such a man is the subject of our sketch. In this hour when the sun is just beginning to climb the horizon of a new day in the life of the Negro race, there is an imperative need for close observation and serious earnest thought. We cannot content ourselves with appearances. We cannot trust a decision reached mainly through our emotional nature. We must bring the whole personal conscious man into our meditation in order that we may see and comprehend that hand of God laid in love upon the Negro of this country. All problems in a nation's life must be unraveled and solved by that nation. It may take advantage of foreign influences and examples, incorporate and utilize them, but the real work must be done by the nation itself. The same principle obtains in problems affecting individual life or the life of a race. To adjust a Negro in harmonious relationship to American civilization is a question that depends for a solution not so much upon the nation as upon the thought and life of the race itself. The Negro seen through the refractory medium of fear and prejudice is regarded as an unhealthy member. Yet, it is evident that he is a vital member and cannot be removed by the searchian's scalpel. It is necessary, therefore, that this unhealthy member should be toned up to harmony with the great organism of which he is apart. No cross, no crown is a tried saying. Yet, it has lost nothing of the beauty of the strength of originality. But, rather, it has grown to be sustaining, inspiring motto of all men as they plot up the hill of life. Great souls do not whine and fret in adversity. The men and women who lay the foundation of great institutions that bless mankind, that fling rainbows on the black bosom of the tempest do not tremble and falter because of the clouds and mountain peaks, but onward and upward they go until the victory is won. The church came up by the way of the cross. If you would know the path of civilization, look for the great battlefields in the world's history. The greatest battles of reform in church and state have been fought and the right has conquered. The Negro today reaches his handout and plucks the best footage of the highest and grandest age known to man. Even Liberty, a plant that grows luxuriously only when watered with human blood and rooted in the hearts and affections of free people is within the wary grasp of the American Negro. The history of the free American Negro is one continuous and unbroken chain of success. I shall lay the proof of the statement before you as we advance. Did you ever consider the agencies at work for the amelioration of the condition of the Negro in the country? Here and there, counterforces may appear to hinder the too rapid advance of the Negro, but such is the inevitable law of growth. Life is conditioned upon its ability to absorb and assimilate the good and reject and expel the bad. What are these counterforces? These hostile external relations. Do they tend to destroy the equilibrium of the race? Or rather, do they conduce to its stability and strength? The answer is obvious. The Negro is being sharpened and fashioned here under providence into a better and nobler manhood. He is suffering no more than all infant races suffered. Slavery and oppression is the school in which races are trained for the enjoyment of the fullest life. God has a purpose in thus dealing with the Negro. The power of his individuality, his highly developed religious nature, his disposition to linger in peace in whatever condition he finds himself, his preserving a truly magnanimous spirit in the very face of an unwarranted and violent opposition foretell his future history. He is contributing his part toward the industrial development of the south and the religious elevation of the nation. Many of his redeeming qualities are often regarded as evidence of plurality and barbarism. Character cannot be built in a day. Neither in an individual nor in a race, but the Negro is old enough now to be an American citizen. He has reached the years of maturity, his character is formed, and what is good for the most advanced citizen is good for him. He demands equal and exact justice. He will content himself with nothing less. There are divine purposes in each life in each race and nation. How well these purposes are subserved is left with the individual the race or the nation. Afflictions are a wholesome discipline, and the people who would survive the wreck of nations must fight their way up or near the inexorable law of God through trials, through tribulations through persecution and through blood. I do not wish in any way to condemn the agitation of the R in the name of justice and civil political liberty, but rather to urge it in a reasonable way. Agitation, says Wendell Phillips, is the method that puts the school by the side of the ballot box. Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace and secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are the weapons of animals. Agitation is the atmosphere of the nations. Sir Robert Peel defines it as the marshaling of the conscience of a nation to mold its law. Injustice cannot stand before exposure and argument and the force of public opinion. No sharper weapon of defense will be required against the wrongs which afflicted south. No race can rise higher than its ideal. To teach the negro that the evils of his environments will crush him forever, that his and must be servile in disposition and in general habit of mind that hair and skin in the shape of the head stamp him an inferior is a doctrine of creation without God in it. No, let him know and feel that he's a man with the great ever expanding capacity of a man and that a step beyond him is deity. Let him see himself mirrored in Hamlet's sublime outbursts of admiration. What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how in finage in faculties, in reforms, how express in admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a God. Let him know that he has and will yet realize in his racial life the loftiest ideal of civilization. The negro has profited immeasurably by the lessons stern and severe taught him in this country. Yet these adverse forces are but ministers of heaven awakening his sleeping energies and accelerating his motion towards racial unity and organization. They are stern at times in human teachers but so long as the negro considers himself inferior so long as a barber discriminates against his father and brother so long as a waiter feels himself disgraced if he waits upon one of his own race. Wash her women if she washes for her sisters so long as we loathe to serve only our own kith and kin these rough and severe teachers are absolutely indispensable. The power that permanently lifts the people is within that people so also the forces that degrade them. You cannot change public opinion by drifting with its current you cannot present yourself in a slavish attitude and then demand a free man's portion. In that attitude you are neither feared nor loved but tolerated you're regarded an excrescent growth on the body of civil society but it cannot always be thus. How can this race fail? In this day a million new homes comfortable homes of cultured black men are built about the ruins of the slaves locked cabin of yesterday. Wilberforce and Morris Brown, Tuskegee, Biddle and Living each gallantly men by black men and thousands of schools darting the south all immortalizing Christian philanthropy are sending forth annually torchbearers of truth to light the paths the race must pursue in the great civilization of today. How well these advantages will subserve his progress his interest depending upon the confidence and faith which they will inspire in him towards himself. Responsibility alone educates. Skill comes by constant practice. Any reason alleged that the Negro is not yet prepared for the leadership of his people whether in the church are institutions of learning or in politics or whether in any of the various avenues of business or of life weakens the character of the race and augments and quickens the prejudice of the enemy both within and without the race. Our rightful leaders may be comparatively inexperienced but experience is not acquired by inactivity. It took the civil war to make grant. The northern missionary at the time when it tried the souls of men following in the wake of battle came to break the long night of ignorance that has settled down upon the Negro, but they have done their duty and gone to their reward. God bless them. The Negro is now prepared to take care of himself. Let the child crawl. He will learn how to walk. Lift up the men and women of your own race. Let some great towering example of Negro manhood and thrift and virtue and wisdom point the youth to the pole star of redemption. Trust the Negro now and the future will take care of itself. I repeat if this then coming generations are taught to believe the crushing and slanderous dictum of natural inferiority, what hope is there for the salvation of the race where a man can rise no higher than his ideal. These great, honest, sincere souls in the race who show their love as to fathers to their children rebuke because they love. Most is the great leader of and law giver to the Israelites. A people who gave to the world its noblest song, its wildest proverbs, its sweetest music, throws down the table of the Ten Commandments in righteous indignation when he found them worshiping idols. But the next day his heart, gushing forth love for his people, he found his way in prayer to God, seeking forgiveness for his idolatrous people. This was but an expression of his burning zeal for the safety and progress of his people. So do I regard the scathing criticism given within the race by its own men. All of the criticisms are questionable. But grant that the Negro likes the idea, worships the idea of white supremacy with its institutions and customs whitelized apparently with the energy of violent opposition to his moral and industrial development I cannot believe that he will always be thus. Necessity is not merely the mother of invention, but the soul of the law of progress, the genius of civilization. It is here in the closing period of the 19th century effulgent with the light of all the historic past and marvelous achievements that the Negro must stand or fall. Here in the wilderness where peaks of cultivated mountain tops in the near distance invite him onward and upward. Here under the full-ordered sun of the brightest day the world has seen he must work out his salvation with fear and trembling. End of topic number 35 Recording by Babia