Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading Part 4

WHAT NEGRO WOMEN ARE DOING.

BY H. R. BUTLER, ATLANTA, GA.

There are, according to the latest statistics, 1,280 Afro-American women secretaries and clerks.

No less than one dozen newspapers are edited by intelligent colored women.

Seventy-five Afro-American lady dentists, some of whom have a large practice among the best white people, are an honor to the profession.

Sixty Negro women proclaim the gospel to dying sinners with telling effect.

There are 4,314 colored lady musicians in the land of the "Father of his country."

There are 111 colored women who are regular practicing physicians in the United States.

In 1870 there was not a colored lady bookkeeper in this country.

To-day there are 347.

There are 18 Afro-American women who are competent land surveyors.

Statistics show that there are no less than seventy stenographers among the colored women, most of whom are employed on good salaries.

The census of 1890 shows that there are 3,949 actresses in this country, more than a score of whom are women of the race.

Besides the above-named avocations, we have sculptors, painters, lawyers, architects, merchants, and, in fact, our women are filling with success and ability almost every avocation and profession of to-day, and the day is in the near future when the service of thousands of others will be in still greater demand.

WHAT RACE NEWSPAPERS HAVE DONE.

(FROM BALTIMORE CHURCH ADVOCATE.)

The history of the colored newspaper is one of pathetic but vigorous struggle. Upon the whole, with all of its drawbacks and want of proper support, it has ever been one of the most potential arms of race progress. It has been the means of throwing open to the race the columns of the great Anglo-Saxon newspapers. .h.i.therto closed against them. It has educated both races. It has been a mirror to reflect the advance made by the race from time to time. Like the Negro pulpit, it is far from being perfect. But its slow but steady progress const.i.tutes the very best commentary on racial life, its hopes and fears.

RACE EVILS.

BY REV. G. W. JOHNSON, AUGUSTA, GA.

One trouble with us as a race is that we are not enough interested in our progress, not enough interested in our standing among other races.

We are too easily satisfied, and not very anxious to get far away from the fleshpots of Egypt. Every race must have its leaders, defenders, and champions. If they have them not, they must produce them.

We should begin with childhood. Every criminal was once an innocent child, and when he first commenced to do wrong, he found it hard and difficult. Conscience called, alarmed, and remonstrated; and even after wrongs were committed, conscience, the interior judge, held court on the inside. He arraigned the prisoner at the bar of reason for trial; but he continues to do wrong, and in early manhood he stands a criminal. Step by step he was led away.

Take the murderer. He occupies his cell hardened by crime. Sentence has been pa.s.sed; the day of execution comes. The sheriff enters the prison, reads the death warrant, pinions his hands, and the slow and steady death march begins. The scaffold is reached, steps ascended, and the prisoner takes his place on the center of the death trap; the black cap is securely tied over his face, and the rope around his neck, and as the trapdoor is sprung, the unfortunate man leaps into darkness. This criminal was once the idol of a mother's heart, who bowed over his cradle, taught him to walk and to say his prayers. She looked forward to the time when he would grow up to manhood and make himself felt among the world's great men; but alas! those hopes are blighted. The boy begins the downward way keeping bad company, and staying out late at night. He a.s.sociates with gamblers and drunkards, and soon becomes both. He goes to jail, to the chain gang, to the penitentiary, and finally to the gallows. Much of the dishonesty is due to the negligence of parents in early training.

I want to call your attention to that craze for fine dressing. If parents would teach their daughters that a beautiful character is the best and greatest ornament, and that a pure heart beneath the most common costume is to be prized above silk and satin at the price of virtue, we would have a better and purer race.

We have many enemies of the race who are members of the race. I will call your attention to them by cla.s.ses.

We have a cla.s.s of women who boast of their a.s.sociation with white men, and yet demand honor and respect from men of the race. Some of our churches have been so loose as to give them membership, and every now and then some fool Negro man will marry one. This cla.s.s of women hinders the progress of the race, and is indeed a curse to it, and many of the white men who seek to lead astray every good-looking woman in our race frequently refer to the immorality of colored women. The race must frown upon this cla.s.s of women, and make them feel their isolation at all hazards. They should be treated as the lepers were and are treated in the East to-day--put off to themselves; and all who a.s.sociate with them should be p.r.o.nounced unclean.

The next cla.s.s is the professional pimps. This cla.s.s is represented by a number of men and women who make a business of leading astray every girl they can, disregarding their destruction and the sorrow brought to the hearts of parents and friends, the disgrace to the race, just since they receive some money for their h.e.l.lish work. Some of these professional pimps are members of some of our churches, I am told. I would suggest that every father and mother, and every man who has a sister, resolve to make it extremely hot for this cla.s.s of the devil's agents. Hand them around; blackball them; sound the alarm of mad dog.

Get them out of the church; have no a.s.sociation with them. Keep your daughters from about them. Greet them as you would the devil, for they are devils wrapped up in human flesh. I warn you against these men and women who carry notes to girls for white men, and who lay snares for the destruction of our girls. Have nothing to do with them.

The next cla.s.s among our race that is a hindrance and a barrier is represented by a number of men. These men seem to regard themselves called to win the affections of light-headed and light-hearted girls, get engaged to them, and after destroying their characters betake themselves to others for marriage. The man who destroys the character of a woman has as much right to be put aside and excluded from society as the woman, and that society which recognizes such a man, and yet ignores the woman, is rotten and demoralizing. We can never purify society until we have good men as well as good women. We have too many men in our race who delight to speak disreputably of nearly every woman when they themselves have a very unsavory reputation, and should be regarded with great diffidence. There are many women in our race who are just as pure, and whose characters are just as irreproachable as the women of any race, and our men owe it to these women and to the race the duty of defending and protecting them, even to the risk of our own lives. We should always speak of them in complimentary terms, and allow no one to speak otherwise in our presence without positive resentment.

The next cla.s.s I want to discuss is the idle, lazy, shiftless, vagrant cla.s.s. The cla.s.s I refer to are those who will not work, and yet hate every man and woman who will labor and strive to acc.u.mulate something.

As a race, we are too jealous and grudgeful of each other's success and prosperity. The prophet in his vision saw the image of jealousy set up. In lifting the veil of futurity he must have seen the condition of the Negro in the closing years of the nineteenth century.

Our children must be taught to work, and to love work. They must be taught that work is honorable. The working people of any community are the mainstay and backbone of that community. Paul said: "If any would not work, neither should he eat." Christ, our glorious example, was a working man, the carpenter of Nazareth, a busy man, a man distinctively of the common people. Christ did not have among his disciples a single gentleman of leisure. They were all working men. In the early history of the church the great majority of believers were from among the working people. Peter, Andrew, James, and John were fishermen; Paul was a tent-maker; Moses, the greatest human legislator the world ever produced, was once a shepherd; Elisha was a farmer, and was called from the plow to succeed Elijah. Joseph and Daniel were servants before they were made prime ministers. Martin Luther was a miner's son. Cardinal Wolsey was the son of a butcher. John Bunyan was a tinker. William Carey was a shoemaker. Jeremy Taylor was a barber.

Dr. Livingstone was a weaver. Every man ought to engage in some kind of work, either braincraft or handicraft.

TWO CULTURED RACES.

The cultured cla.s.s of white society in the South, as a rule, comes in contact only with the hewers of wood and drawers of water of the Negro race, and are p.r.o.ne to judge the rest by what it sees. A great mistake. There is a large and growing cultured cla.s.s of Negroes in the South, which can mingle only with itself. When the strength of these cultured cla.s.ses--living in the same section, but separate and distinct, and ignorant of each other--become more equal, as it surely will in the future under the present specially fine educational advantages now being engaged by the Negro, what is going to be the effect? I believe that, in time, we will have in the South two almost universally cultured races. That is the trend. (Smith Clayton [white], Atlanta, Ga.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: L. J. BROWN, WASHINGTON, D. C. Manager Henrietta Vinton Davis Concert and Dramatic Company]

THE NEW COLORED WOMAN.

BY FANNIE BARRIER WILLIAMS, CHICAGO, ILL.

In nothing else is our progress more happily signalized than in the growing interest in the new usefulness of our women.

Ten years ago colored women were little heard of as useful members of society, except in the work of teaching, religious interests, and the domestic arts. Ten years ago the conscience of womankind among us was scarcely aroused to the opportunities presented for multiplying our activities in all the questions that concern social improvements. Ten years ago the interest of colored women in each other was personal or individual, and not racial or social. The great forces that are now shaping all things toward newer and better conditions, that teach new duties and suggest new opportunities for the exercise of all the virtues of heart and mind have begun to affect our women in a wonderful way. This year has witnessed a remarkable exhibition of the spirit of unity in colored women. They have effected a truly national organization of representative women. The organization is genuine in its representative capacity, sincere in purpose, and positive and practical in its proclamation of principles.

The National Colored Women's a.s.sociation possibly means more to the social order and improvement of the colored race in this country than anything yet attempted outside of the churches. It has already succeeded in making important many things that have been too long neglected. It has succeeded in calling attention to the fact that the Negro race has a good deal more intelligence and virtue than it uses for its own advancement. The controlling spirit of this new a.s.sociation of colored women is first of all for self-improvement. It is the most distinct voice of self-admonition and self-examination yet uttered by a national body of Afro-Americans. In other words these women coming from all parts of our country and from various conditions of the people, seem burdened with an earnestness to make pure and strong and beautiful the home life and all the social relationships of the race. Perhaps it is not necessary thus to call attention to this a.s.sociation and its work after all that has been said and written about it. But it seems to me that it cannot be too strongly urged that the a.s.sociation needs for its success the enthusiasm and hearty support of all of our women. The special organ of the a.s.sociation and all of its other functions need the co-operation of colored women everywhere. The questions outlined in its resolutions and address to the public should be themes of wide and helpful discussion wherever our women meet together. The way to make a great national movement truly national, important, and effective is to talk about it and try to realize in each community the high and important purposes of that movement. That is the secret of the enormous success of such bodies as the W. C. T. U., the Federation of Women's Clubs, the National Council of Women, and others like them. Every community where earnest women dwell is made to feel the living and active presence of these organizations. Let our women everywhere give the National a.s.sociation of Colored Women power and permanency by every available means of encouragement and support.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. GEORGIA E. L. PATTON, MEMPHIS, TENN.]