Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading Part 8

Young men, creation would be incomplete without you. From the beginning G.o.d made you ruler over every living thing. Do you properly appreciate the kingdom over which you reign? We know that these thoughts do not take hold of you in boyhood, but there is a time when they are fully realized and yet neglected. G.o.d has called you because you are strong. Then exercise that strength, both spiritually and temporally. (A. C. Davis, Rome, Ga.)

We have no great reason to be discouraged, cast down, or hopeless about our future, because of the many unfavorable happenings; we must not expect to be entirely free from the struggles necessary to be encountered to reach true greatness. It is our duty to use every possible and legitimate effort to avert dangers and troubles. We are earnestly persuaded to believe that the brightness of the future glory of the Negro of America is heightened by the darkness of the present clouds. All our sad experiences exhort us to proceed and inspire us with animating hopes of success, should we seek to "lay the foundation well." (Mrs. Julia A. Hooks, Memphis, Tenn.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: SUGAR PLANTATION OF EDWARD BUTLER, POTASH, LA.

One of the largest sugar cane growers in the state.]

There is a future before the race--a great and useful future, a future fraught with results which shall touch every phase of the world's life and bring men into sweeter harmony with each other and with G.o.d. (Rev.

George C. Rowe, Charleston, S. C.)

As soon as slavery ceased to be beneficial to the Negro, as soon as slavery lifted the Negro as high as it could lift him, G.o.d came and abolished it. When he was prepared for his deliverance the yoke of bondage pa.s.sed away. The race then pa.s.sed into the glorious sunshine of freedom, which has been getting more glorious every day since his emanc.i.p.ation. (W. H. Council, Normal, Ala.)

I am exceedingly anxious that every young colored man and woman should keep a hopeful and cheerful spirit as to the future. Despite all of our disadvantages and hardships, ever since our forefathers set foot upon American soil as slaves our pathway has been marked by progress.

Think of it. We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery a piece of property; we came out American citizens.

We went into slavery without a language; we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue. We went into slavery with slave chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands. (Prof. B. T. Washington.)

We are scarcely willing to admit the fact that our own prejudices and lack of self-a.s.sertion are largely responsible for our separation from the women who move the world by their intelligent progressiveness. If we would join these women in good works, we should at least meet them halfway by ridding ourselves of preconceived notions of their hostility and prejudice against us. It would add much to our strength and dignity of character and to our sense of importance among women if we could understand that white women can be strengthened in their generous impulses and made more exalted in their outlook to help weak and struggling women if they knew more of our condition, capabilities, and aspirations. The cause of women in all things needs the co-operation of all women of all races and colors in order to work out the conditions that all need and devoutly wish for. (Fannie Barrier Williams.)

I most confidently affirm that no man can fail of hopefulness as to the future of our race in this land who has broadly studied the problems and the progress of human liberty and civil justice in the world during the last three or four centuries. There has been a constant warfare and many reverses, together with long seasons of gloomy doubt: but the dominant fact in the whole record is that throughout the long contest, on the forum, in the sacred pulpit, in the hall of legislation, and on countless fields of b.l.o.o.d.y carnage, the struggle has been substantially the same: a struggle for larger liberty for the oppressed mult.i.tude, a better chance for the average man. And this further, that in every century--aye, in almost every generation--of this mighty conflict something has been gained for the right. This gain, once made, has never been lost. These things being so, it is foolish to say that these victories and this strifeful gain are matters of merely racial application. It is not so. (Bishop Embry.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: REV. M. VANN, D.D., CHATTANOOGA, TENN.]

I predict that the time will come and that it is not far off when we will have a negro poet from the South. He will set the magnificent splendor of the "Sunny South" to music. His muse will touch the lyre, and you will hear the sweet murmur of the stream, the rippling waters, and we shall see the beauty of that country as it was never seen before. It will come; and after him other still greater men. But it takes labor to become a great man just as it takes centuries to make a great nation. Great men are not fashioned in heaven and thrown from the hand of the Almighty to become potentates here on earth, nor are they born rich. I admit that there is, in some parts of this country, a prejudice against you on account of your color and former condition.

In my opinion, the best way to overcome this is to show your capability of doing everything that a white man does, and do it just as well or better than he does. If a white man scorns you, show him that you are too high-bred, too n.o.ble-hearted, to take notice of it; and the first opportunity you have do him a favor, and I warrant you that he will feel ashamed of himself, and never again will he make an exhibition of his prejudice. The future is yours, and you have it in which to rise to the heights or descend to the depths. (Senator John A. Logan.)

At one time a ship was lost at sea for many days, when it hove in sight of a friendly vessel. The signal of the distressed vessel was at once hoisted, which read: "We want water; we die of thirst." The answering signal read, "Cast down your bucket where you are;" but a second time the distressed vessel signaled, "We want water, water,"

and a second time the other vessel answered: "Cast down your bucket where you are." A third and fourth time the distressed vessel signaled, "We want water, water; we die of thirst," and as many times was answered: "Cast down your bucket where you are." At last the command was obeyed, the bucket was cast down where the vessel stood, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the Amazon River.

My friends, we are failing to cast down our buckets for the help that is right about us, and spend too much time in signaling for help that is far off. Let us cast down our buckets here in our own Sunny South, cast them down in agriculture, in truck gardening, dairying, poultry raising, hog raising, laundrying, cooking, sewing, mechanical and professional life, and the help that we think is far off will come, and we will soon grow independent and useful. (Booker T. Washington.)

Song is the music of the soul, the harmonious vibrations of the deep chords of the heart, and the melodies of the spirit life. It involves the elevation of the affections and the utterances of the lips, by which some theme, doctrine, or topic is proclaimed aloud and exultingly before and in the presence of others. It is the divinity in man rising to G.o.d. It is the better and higher nature of man springing forward and leaping heavenward. It is the soul plodding the deep blue sea upon its fiery pinions in search after G.o.d, its Maker, "who giveth songs in the night." (Bishop Holsey.)

If the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, the home is a great field for woman. The Negro race needs homes, not hovels and pens.

Christian character is built most largely there. Beautify the home, make it cheerful and cultured. Be economical in expenditures.

Cultivate economy in all lines. Be thrifty and industrious housewives.

We do not confine woman's work to the home. Her sphere is anywhere that she can do good. As women are doing most of the teaching now, here is a vast field for her activity that should be well cultivated.

Next to the home the schoolroom is probably the greatest factor in character building. As Daniel Webster once said: "If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon bra.s.s, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue them with principles, with a just fear of G.o.d, and love of our fellow-man, we engrave on those tablets something that will brighten to all eternity." Teachers, be faithful. Dress neatly and well, if your income will allow. One can always be neat and clean, however. It is certainly a miserable mistake that makes the majority of our people think that they must dress so as to be conspicuous for blocks away, wearing hats that are veritable flower gardens. Tight lacing should be abandoned by all sensible women. The thinking, solid women of our race ought to take some steps to save the young girls of our race, especially that vast throng in the larger cities who have no gentle home influences; thousands are being dragged down to destruction every year. Raise the fallen, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Lillie E. Lovinggood, in Afro-American Encyclopedia.)

The time has come when physicians must be employed to prevent as well as to cure. If this is done, there will be less sickness, and epidemics will be a thing of the past. Then sanitary science, under strict hygienic observance, will reach perfection. The rude, careless, and gross habits of living will be corrected, and a system of perfect drainage and pure ventilation will be inaugurated. Pure air and a good water supply will be furnished to every public and private house. Then only pure and unadulterated foods will be allowed in our markets and grocery houses. Every hotel and private and public boarding house will furnish properly prepared foods, and universal cleanliness will be the law, and the death rate among our people will reach its minimum. (Dr.

R. F. Boyd.)

The one thing that should appeal most strongly to our hearts is the need of a better and purer home life among our people in many parts of the South. I scarcely need tell you that our most embarra.s.sing heritage from slavery was a homelessness and a lack of home ties. All the sanct.i.ties of marriage, the precious instincts of motherhood, the spirit of family alliance, and the upbuilding of home as an inst.i.tution of the human heart were all ruthlessly ignored and fiercely prohibited by the requirements of slavery. Colored people in bondage were only as men, women, and children, and not as fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. Family relationships and home sentiments were thus no part of the preparation of colored people for freedom and citizenship. It is not agreeable to refer to these things, but they are mentioned merely to suggest to you how urgent and immensely important it is that we should be actively and helpfully interested in those poor women of the rural South, who in darkness and without guides are struggling to build homes and rear families. When we properly appreciate the fact that there can be no real advancement of the colored race without homes that are purified by all the influences of Christian virtues, it will seem strange that no large, earnest, direct, and organized effort has been made to teach men and women the blessed meaning of home. Preachers have been too busy with their churches and collections, and teachers too much hara.s.sed by lack of facilities, and politicians too much burdened with the affairs of state and the want of offices to think about the feminine consideration of good homes. Money, thought, prayer, and men and women are all freely and n.o.bly given in the upbuilding of schools and churches, but no expenditures to teach the lesson of home making.

Colored women can scarcely escape the conclusion that this work has been left for them, and its importance and their responsibilities should arouse and stir them as nothing else can do. Let us not be confused and embarra.s.sed by the thought that what needs to be done is too difficult or far away. There should be no limitations of time and s.p.a.ce when man needs the helping sympathy of man. If our hearts are strong for good works, ways and means will readily appear for the exercise of our talents, our love, and our heroism. (Mrs. Fannie B.

Williams.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: F. A. STEWART, M.D., NASHVILLE, TENN.]

THE COLORED PHYSICIAN IN THE SOUTH.

BY H. R. BUTLER.

When the civil war was over and the smoke of battle had cleared away, the field in the South was occupied by the red-eyed voodoo, who styled himself a "doctor." There were at that time possibly two or three exceptions to this rule, but only two or three.

Should you ask one of these voodoo doctors, better known among the illiterate as "root workers," what might be his business, the answer would quickly be given something like this: "My trade? Dat am a doctor."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, sar; I is a root doctor from way back; and when I gits done standin' at de forks ob de road at midnight pullin' up roots, twixt de hollowin' ob de owls, and gittin' a little fresh dirt frum de graveyard--honey, dar am su'thin' agwinter drop."

The above is part of a conversation held with me by one of these "herb kings" in South Carolina in 1890. Hence you can see that, like all other evils, these voodoo doctors do not die fast; and even to-day not a few still live.

This being with his weird stories went forth among a people who were rocked, as it were, in the cradle of superst.i.tion, and early became monarch of all he surveyed. He or she was known and feared throughout the country. They claimed to be able to cure anything from consumption to an unruly wife or husband, and furnishing charms to make love matches and to keep the wife or husband at home was one of their specialties.

Every patient they called on they diagnosed the trouble thus: he or she was tricked; if pneumonia, they were tricked; if a fever, they were tricked; or if a case of consumption, they were tricked.

Their stock of medicines, if such we must call them, generally consisted of such things as small bags of graveyard soil, rusty nails, needles, pins, goose grease, rabbits' feet, snake skins, and many other such things.

I say that a little more than a generation ago this was the cla.s.s of so-called colored doctors that predominated in the South, and which for many years was a great stumbling-block to the educated physicians of our race, because it seemed to be understood that all colored doctors were and must be root doctors. But, thanks to Him who holds the destiny of races in his hands, in the flight of years and in this electric age of progress this voodoo doctor has almost--not entirely, but almost--pa.s.sed away; while his territory is being occupied by colored physicians whose qualifications in education, character, and honor are equal to similar qualifications in the physicians of any other race.

The colored physicians in the South to-day are men and women fully equipped in education, morals, and integrity for the high calling they have elected, as their n.o.ble work will show. In the United States to-day there are about one thousand colored physicians, men and women, and more than seven hundred of them are located in the Southern States. While they represent the homeopathic and eclectic schools, yet the regulars are largely in the majority.

The majority of the colored physicians now operating in the South took a college course of education before taking up the study of medicine.