Twentieth Century Negro Literature Part 44

Humility, fidelity, patience, large-heartedness, love--this is Africa's contribution to Christianity. If the contribution of the Saxon is Pauline, that of the African is Johanine. Paul, with his consuming energy, carrying the Gospel to the uttermost parts, stands for the white man; John, the man of love, leaning on his Master's bosom, is typical of the black. The white man and the black are contrasts, not contraries; complementary opposites, not irreconcilable opponents.

The Jew has given us ethics; the Greek, philosophy; the Roman, law; the Teuton, liberty. These the Saxon combines. But the African--"latest called of nations, called to the crown of thorns, the scourge, the b.l.o.o.d.y sweat, the cross of agony"--the African, I say, has the deep, gushing wealth of love which is yet to move the great heart of humanity.

FIFTH PAPER.

THE NEGRO AS A CHRISTIAN.

BY REV. S. KERR.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rev. S. Kerr]

REV. S. KERR.

To give anything like a true sketch of Mr. Kerr's life and labors both in and out of the ministry would fill a good-sized volume rather than a page of this book, as his life has been replete with thrilling, romantic incidents.

The Rev. Mr. Kerr graduated with honors, having received the degree of A. B. from Rawden College, Leeds, England. He returned at once to the West Indies, where he labored three years.

In 1859 he did extensive missionary work in the Turks and Caicos Islands, where, in 1860, he accepted the appointment of Registrar of Births and Deaths. In 1863 he accepted the appointment of a.s.sistant Master of the Government Schools at Grand Turk, and was afterwards appointed Head Master. In 1864 he filled the dual role of Inspector of Schools and missionary, and he pa.s.sed unscathed through the great hurricane of 1866 which devastated the whole colony, destroyed all the schools and public buildings, as well as 2,500 dwelling houses, including Mr. Kerr's personal property. In 1867 he was sent as missionary to Hayti, where, as everywhere, he did good work. In 1873 he was appointed professor in the National Lyceum College for boys and young ladies, where he did effective and extensive missionary work in Cape Hatien, Grande Riviere and Dondon, and maintained considerable influence with the Haytien officials and authorities.

In 1880 he was advanced to the Priesthood of the Episcopal Church of America, by the Rt. Rev. J. Th. Holly, D. D., LL.

D., Bishop of Hayti. In 1882 he was delegated to represent the Episcopal Church in the United States, and to collect funds for the building of the same in Hayti. On landing in New York, his reception by Bishop Horatio Potter was cordial in the extreme--the same by Bishops Littlejohn, of Long Island; T. A. Starkey, of Northern New Jersey; T. M. Clark, of Warwick, R. I.; M. A. De Wolf Howe, Central Pennsylvania; William C. Doane, Albany; Alfred Lee, Primate, Delaware; W.

B. Stevens, Pennsylvania; H. A. Neely, of Maine; A. C. c.o.xe, Western New York. He occupied the pulpits of the leading Episcopal Churches in New York--Old Trinity, Grace Church, St. Chrysostom's, St. Paul's, St. Philip's and others. The leading churches in Brooklyn, Yonkers, Newport, R. I., Newark, N. J., Orange, N. J., Syracuse, Saratoga Springs, Utica, Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, Newburg, Poughkeepsie, Sing Sing, Barrytown, Tarrytown, Philadelphia, Germantown, Ashebourne, Reading, Cheltenham and many others.

In 1883 be was sent to Jamaica, W. I., and the following year he was appointed by the Provincial Synod (under the auspices of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel--London. Eng.) Rector of the Panama Railroad Church and Arch-deacon of the Church of England Mission, and Chaplain to the Panama Ca.n.a.l Company. In 1889 he made an extensive missionary tour through Central America, where he performed religious services at the opening of the Nicaragua Ca.n.a.l, coming in touch with several Indian tribes, and gaining considerable knowledge of their manners and customs in their crude condition.

In 1890 he returned to the West Indies and was transferred to the Diocese of Florida and made Rector of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Key West, where he has a large parish and congregation and where he is highly esteemed by all cla.s.ses, white and colored.

My purpose in writing upon this subject is to investigate G.o.d's disciplinary and retributive economy in races and nations, with a hope of arriving at some clear conclusion concerning the Negro as a Christian.

First, it may be just and proper to view the races of mankind in respect to growth and mastery. The principles of growth and mastery in a race, a nation, or a people, are the same all over the globe. The same great agencies needed for one quarter of the globe, and in one period of time, are needed for all quarters of the globe, for all people and for all time, and consequently needed for this American nation.

The children of Africa in America are in no way different from any other people in respect to Christianity. Many of the differences of races are accidental and oftentimes become obliterated by circ.u.mstances, position and religion.

Go back to a period in the history of England, when its rude inhabitants lived in caves and huts, when they fed on bark and roots, when their dress was the skins of animals. Then look at the eminent Englishman of the present day--cultivated, graceful, refined, Christianized. When we remember that his distant ancestors were wild and b.l.o.o.d.y savages, and that it took centuries to change his forefathers from rudeness and brutality into enlightened, civilized Christians, there is no room to doubt the susceptibility of the Negro to Christianity.

The same great general laws of growth continue unchangeable. The Almighty neither alters nor diminishes these laws for the convenience of a people, of whatever race they may be. The Negro race is equally susceptible of growth in Christianity as in civilization.

At once the question arises--Is the Negro race doomed to destruction?

Or, does it possess those qualities which will enable it to reach a high degree of moral and Christian civilization? To the first of these questions I reply that the Negro race is by no means doomed to destruction. It is now over five hundred years since the breath of the civilized world touched powerfully, for the first time, the mighty ma.s.ses of the pagan world in America, in Africa and the isles of the sea, and we see everywhere that the weak heathen tribes of the earth have gone down before the civilized world; tribe and nation have dispersed before its presence. The Iroquois, the Pequods, the brave Mohawks, the once refined Aztecs and others have gone, nevermore to be ranked among the tribes of men. In the scattered islands of the Pacific seas, like the stars of the heavens, the sad fact remains that from many of them their populations have departed like the morning cloud. They did not retain G.o.d in their knowledge. Just the reverse with the Negro. Destructive elements, wave after wave, have swept over his head, yet he has stood unimpaired.

Even this falls short of the full reality of the Negro as a Christian, for civilization at numerous places has displaced ancestral heathenism, and the standard of the cross, uplifted on the banks of its great river, showing that the heralds of the cross have begun the glorious conquests of their glorious King. Vital Christian power has become the property of the Negro. Does G.o.d despise the weak? No, the Providence of G.o.d intervenes for the training and preservation of such people.

But has the Negro race any of those qualities which emanate from Christianity? Let us see. The flexibility of the Negro character is universally admitted. The race is possessed of a nature more easily moulded than that of any other cla.s.s of men. Unlike the Indian, the Negro yields to circ.u.mstances and flows with the current of events, hence afflictions, however terrible, have failed to crush him; his facile nature wards them off, or else through the inspiration of hope their influence is neutralized. These peculiarities of the Negro character render him susceptible to imitation. Burke tells us that "imitation is the second pa.s.sion belonging to society, and this pa.s.sion arises from much the same cause as sympathy." This is one of the strongest links of society. It forms our manners, our opinions, our lives. Indeed, civilization is carried down from generation to generation, or handed over from a superior to an inferior, by means of imitation. A people devoid of imitation is incapable of progress or advancement, and must retrograde. If it remains stagnant, it must of necessity bring its own decay. The quality of imitation has been the grand preservative of the Negro in all lands. Indeed, the Negro is a superior man to-day to what he was three centuries ago.

I feel fortified in the principles I have advanced by the opinions of great, scrutinizing thinkers. In his treatise on Emanc.i.p.ation, written in 1880, Dr. Channing says: "The Negro is one of the best races of the human family; he is among the mildest and gentlest of men; he is singularly susceptible to improvement." Kinmont declares in his "Lecture on Man" that "The sweet graces of the Christian religion appears almost too tropical and tender plants to grow in the soil of the Caucasian mind; they require a character of the human nature of which you can see the rude lineaments in the Ethiopian, to be implanted in and grow naturally and beautifully withal." Adamson, the traveler who visited Senegal in 1754, said: "The Negroes are sociable, humane, obliging and hospitable, and they have generally preserved an estimable simplicity of domestic manners. They are distinguished by their tenderness for their parents, and great respect for the aged--a patriarchal virtue which, in our day, is too little known." Dr.

Raleigh, also, at a great meeting in London, said: "There is in these people a hitherto undiscovered mine of love, the development of which will be for the amazing welfare of the world. * * * Greece gave us beauty; Rome gave us power; the Anglo-Saxon unites and mingles these, but in the African people there is the great gushing wealth of love, which will develop wonders for the world."

I feel that the Almighty, who is interested in all the great problems of civilization, is interested in the Negro problem. He has carried the Negro through the wilderness of disasters, and at last put him in a large open place of liberty. There is not the shadow of a doubt that this work which G.o.d has begun, and is carrying on, is for the mental and spiritual elevation of the Negro.

TOPIC XXI.

DOES THE NORTH AFFORD TO THE NEGRO BETTER OPPORTUNITIES OF MAKING A LIVING THAN THE SOUTH?

BY REV. J. H. ANDERSON.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rev. J. H. Anderson.]

REV. J. H. ANDERSON, D. D.

Rev. J. H. Anderson was born June 30, 1848, in Frederick, Md. Dr. Anderson is what is called a self-made man, he having attended school only six months in his life and studied a short time under a private tutor. By hard, persistent efforts and close application to books, Dr.

Anderson has risen to a point in scholarship and prominence that only a few college Negroes have reached. He is noted as a pulpit orator and platform speaker. He has attained to some prominence as a writer and takes front rank as a preacher in his denomination. For his scholarly attainments and usefulness as a minister of the gospel, Livingstone College conferred upon him, in 1896, the degree of doctor of divinity. Dr. Anderson was one of those heroic liberty-loving souls who went to the battlefield in the Civil War to fight for their and their race's freedom.

Colonization is a condition of cosmopolitan society as it is of races.

As "birds of a feather flock together," so the different races in the American civilization form settlements or colonies, as far as possible. The truthfulness of this statement is seen in the thickly-settled German, Irish, Jewish and Italian communities in the North. Their race affinities produce natural and social relations promotive of their varied interests. The Negro's civil and social privileges are more restricted in the South than in the North, owing to which fact the Negroes of the South are more united than the Negroes of the North. In the North a few individuals may rise to intellectual, professional, business and mechanical distinctions, but from general employment in the skilled industries, business enterprises and political preferment he is debarred, and, being cheaply and conveniently accommodated in almost every respect by the whites, he is not under the same necessity as the Southern Negro to establish and operate business enterprises. It is rather inconvenient to establish and maintain Negro business enterprises and schools in the North, for the reason that there are no thickly settled communities. A Negro lawyer, doctor, dressmaker, music teacher, hair dresser and mechanic do well in some instances, because they receive patronage from the whites. It is not so much the prejudice of the whites nor the indifference of the Negro as it is the peculiar conditions of the North that prevent the Negro from enjoying the business enterprises and founding race inst.i.tutions. The few new inst.i.tutions and even churches in the North are largely sustained by donations from the whites. Renting houses and purchasing property and living in the North are commensurate with the large scale and compet.i.tion along all lines of industry, and social life is so active that the most rigid economy and business tact are essential to success in any kind of business in the North.

The Negro who embarks in business in the North has not only to compete with his own people, but with the shrewd Yankee, who seeks to monopolize all interests that have money in them. The Negro of the North for the most part appears to be content with his superior civil and social privileges. He breathes the air with more perfect liberty, enjoys life free from violence, is vindicated and redressed at law and recognized in his citizen rights, and, like the Pharisee, thanks G.o.d that he is not like the ex-slave of the South, and this is the height of his ambition. Three-fourths of the freeholding and tax-paying Negroes in the North are from the South, and Southern Negro labor is preferred in the North as in the South. Waiters, domestic servants, janitors, teamsters, laundry men and coachmen from the South can find employment in the North. Any industrious Southern Negro can find common labor to do in the North.

Before the formation of labor unions and federations in the North, the Negro skilled laborer found employment, but after deciding to exclude the Negro from membership these unions became an effective dictating power to employ when Negroes applied to them for work.

The tax-payers in many Northern sections favor mixed schools because it is less expensive to have them. They would not be justified in maintaining separate schools for the few Negro pupils. Of course, race favoritism, compet.i.tion and prejudice, combine to exclude Negro teachers, and yet a few Negro teachers are employed to teach in the mixed schools. That Negro children, procuring their education by Negro teachers in the Negro schools, can better appreciate race efficiency and dignity there can be no question. The Northern Negro is ill fitted for living in the South, it being difficult for him to adapt himself to the conditions of the South, yet it is quite easy for the Southern Negro to adapt himself to the North where full and free expression is equally accorded to all, and where no legal discriminations are made and where the social question is left for adjustment by the parties nearest concerned. In the North the Negro has the opportunity of advocating the interests of his Southern brother in a way that would not be tolerated in the South, and thus the Northern Negro can a.s.sist in the formation of a proper sentiment in his favor. The Northern Negro is, therefore, a necessity to the Southern Negroes, and vice versa. The Negro's destiny is to be worked out in the South because he has greater numerical strength and superior advantages in the South, notwithstanding the civil, social and legal restrictions upon him. The lesson of self-dependence and self-effort is forced upon the Southern Negro as not upon the Northern Negro.

When the Southern Negro was emanc.i.p.ated, his first thought was education, and, adhering steadfastly to this idea, he has made a progressive education since his emanc.i.p.ation that has astounded the civilized world. No school-loving race can be kept down or back.

Brought here a heathen, the Negro soon exchanged fetichism for Christianity, and, having been trained in the school of servile labor for centuries, he learned how to labor so that when his emanc.i.p.ation came he was prepared to strike out on lines of self development, and he has made in thirty-six years a progress in the acquisition of wealth that is without a parallel in history.

The prejudices of the whites against the Negro have rather helped him, in that they have stimulated him to make greater efforts to reach the independence of the white man.

Having lived in both sections of our country, I am prepared to say that the Negro can do better towards working out his destiny in the South than in the North.

SECOND PAPER.

DOES THE NORTH AFFORD TO THE NEGRO BETTER OPPORTUNITIES OF MAKING A LIVING THAN THE SOUTH?

BY PROF. W. H. COUNCILL.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Prof. W. H. Councill]

PROF. W. H. COUNCILL, PH. D.

W. H. Councill was born in Fayetteville, N. C., in 1848, and was carried to Alabama by the traders in 1857, through the famous Richmond Slave Pen. In Alabama he worked in the fields with the other slaves. He is a self-made man, having had only few school advantages. He attended one of the first schools opened by kind Northern friends at Stevenson, Ala., in 1865. Here he remained about three years, and this is the basis of his education. He has been a close and earnest student ever since, often spending much of the night in study. He has acc.u.mulated quite an excellent library, and the best books of the best masters are his constant companions, as well as a large supply of the best current literature. By private instruction and almost incessant study, he gained a fair knowledge of some of the languages, higher mathematics, and the sciences. He was Enrolling Clerk of the Alabama House of Representatives in 1872-4. He was appointed by President Grant Receiver of the Land Office for the Northern District of Alabama in 1875. He was founder and editor of the "Huntsville Herald" from 1877 to 1884. He founded the great educational inst.i.tution, Normal, of which he is president, and has been for a quarter of a century. He read law and was admitted to the Supreme Court of Alabama in 1883. But he has never left the profession of teaching, although flattering political positions have been held out to him. He has occupied high positions in church and other religious, temperance, and charitable organizations, and has no mean standing as a public speaker.

Prof. Councill has traveled quite extensively in Europe, and was warmly received and entertained by the Hon. W. E.

Gladstone and His Majesty, King Leopold, of Belgium.

And thus by earnest toil, self-denial, hard study, he has made himself, built up one of the largest inst.i.tutions in the South, and educated scores of young people _at his own expense_.