Twentieth Century Negro Literature Part 5

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bishop H. M. Turner.]

BISHOP H. M. TURNER, D. D., LL. D.

Bishop H. M. Turner, D. D., LL. D., D. C. L., was born near Newbury Court House, South Carolina, February 1, 1833 or 1834. His mother's maiden name was Sarah Greer, the youngest daughter of David Greer, who was brought to this country when a boy and sold in Charleston, S. C. Greer was the son of an African king. His father, the African king, sent seven African slaves for the return of his son, but the captain of the slave ship dying before he returned, the son received his freedom when South Carolina was still under British rule, upon the ground that Royal blood could not be enslaved. Henry McNeal Turner was the oldest son of Hardy Turner and Sarah Greer Turner. Henry grew up on the cotton fields of South Carolina, and when eight or nine years old he dreamed he was on a high mountain and millions of people were looking up at him for instruction, white and colored.

He then procured a spelling book and commenced to learn to read and write, to prepare to give that vast mult.i.tude instruction. He got a white boy to teach him his alphabet and how to spell to three syllables. By this time he was large enough to wait in a law office at Abbeville Court House, S. C. The young lawyers took great pleasure in giving him instruction in their leisure moments for pastime. He gained a respectable knowledge of history, arithmetic, geography, astronomy and some other branches, but would not study grammar, as he thought he could talk well enough without a knowledge of grammar.

He made such remarkably rapid progress that by the time he was fifteen years old he had read the Bible through five times, and by the aid of Walker's p.r.o.nouncing Dictionary and the young white lawyers he became a good reader, and read Watson's Apology for the Bible, Buck's Theological Dictionary and very largely in Dr. Adam Clark's Commentary and other books. He became acquainted with the African M. E.

Church, joined the same, leaving the M. E. Church South, met the Conference in St. Louis, Mo., and was admitted after an examination. Bishop D. A. Payne, D. D., LL. D., appointed him to a mission in Baltimore city. While he served his appointment he studied English Grammar, Latin, Greek, German and the Hebrew languages, and became what was regarded as an excellent scholar. He studied the rules of elocution under Dr. c.u.mmings of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and was regarded as quite an orator. He was appointed in charge of Israel Church, Washington, D. C., and his fame became so notable that President Lincoln appointed him Chaplain, the first colored man that was ever made a commissioned officer in the United States Army. He served his regiment so faithfully and gained such a reputation that President Johnson commissioned him a Chaplain in the regular service of the United States Army. He resigned in a short time and commenced the organization of the A. M. E. Church in Georgia, and was so abundantly successful that the General Conference elected him manager of the Publication Department in 1876. He served there four years with headquarters in Philadelphia, and in 1880 the General Conference sitting in St. Louis, Mo., elected him Bishop, and on the 20th of May he was consecrated to that holy office. Bishop Turner has worked up territory enough as an organiser of the A. M. E.

Church to demand five conferences. He has organized four conferences in Africa, making eleven conferences that he is the founder of.

Dr. Turner was for many years superintendent in the church for the whole State of Georgia and was the first Bishop of Africa, which position he held for eight years, while having his regular conferences in the United States. He says he has received over forty-three thousand on probation in the African M. E. Church. He has been a member of the Georgia Legislature twice, a member of the Const.i.tutional Convention, Postmaster, Inspector of Customs and held other minor positions, and was at one time regarded one of the greatest orators of his race in the United States.

This interrogatory appears to presuppose that the seventeen or more millions of colored people in North and South America are not a part of the American population, and do not const.i.tute a part of its civilization. But the term "this country" evidently refers to the United States of America, for this being the largest and the most powerful government on the American continent, not unfrequently, is made to represent the entire continent. So the Negro is regarded as a foreign and segregated race. The American people, therefore, who grade the type of American civilization are made up of white people, for the Indian, Chinamen, and the few Mexicans are not taken in account any more than the Negro is, by reason of the live numbers, and not because they are regarded wanting in intellectual capacity, as the Negro is.

The above is an interrogatory that can be easily answered if the term "American" is to include the United States and the powers that enact its laws and proclaim its judicial decisions, as we have no civilization in the aggregate. Civilization contemplates that fraternity, civil and political equality between man and man, that makes his rights, privileges and immunities inviolable and sacred in the eyes and hearts of his fellows, whatever may be his nationality, language, color, hair texture, or anything else that may make an external variation.

Civility comprehends harmony, system, method, complacency, urbanity, refinement, politeness, courtesy, justice, culture, general enlightenment and protection of life and person to any man, regardless of his color or nationality. It is enough for a civilized community to know that you are a human being, to pledge surety of physical and political safety to you, and this has been the sequence in all ages among civilized people. But such is not the condition of things as they apply to this country, I mean the United States. True, we have a National Congress, State Legislature, Subordinate and Supreme Courts, and almost every form of government, necessary to regulate the affairs of a civilized country. But above these, and above law and order, which these legislative and judicial bodies have been organized to observe, and execute justice in the land, we are often confronted through the public press with reports of the most barbarous and cruel outrages, that can be perpetrated upon human beings, known in the history of the world. No savage nation can exceed the atrocities which are often heralded through the country and accepted by many as an incidental consequence. Men are hung, shot and burnt by bands of murderers who are almost invariably represented as the most influential and respectable citizens in the community, while the evidences of guilt of what is charged against the victims, who are so inhumanly outraged, are never established by proof in any court, and all we can learn about the guilt and horrible deeds charged upon the murdered victims comes from the mouth of the b.l.o.o.d.y handed wretches who perpetrate the murders, yet they are not known according to published accounts. But enough is known to get from their mouths same horrible statements as to why this and that brutal murder was done, and invariably, it is told with such oily tongues, and the whole narrative is polished over and glossed with such skillfully constructed lies, that the ruling millions lift up their hands in holy horror and exclaim "they done him right."

Why, the very judges surrounded with court officers are powerless before these b.l.o.o.d.y mobs. Prisoners are cruelly, fiendishly and inhumanly dragged from their very custody. Sheriffs are as helpless as new-born babes. I do not pretend to say that in no instance have the victims been guilty as a whole or in part of some blood-curdling crime, for men perpetrate lawless acts, revolting deeds, disgraceful and brutal crimes, regardless of nationality, language or color, at times. But civilization presurmises legal adjudication and the intervention of that judicial authority which civilized legislation produces. And when properly administered the accused is innocent till he gets a fair trial; no verdict of guilt from a drunken lawless mob should be accepted by a civilized country; and when they do accept it they become a barbarous people. And a barbarous people make a barbarous nation. Civilization knows no marauders, mobs or lynchers and any one adjudged guilty by a drunken band of freebooters is not guilty in the eyes of a civilized people. For the ruthless and violent perpetrators of lawless deeds, especially when they are incarnate, are murderers to all intents and purposes, and popular approval does not diminish the magnitude of the crime. Millions may say, "Well done,"

but G.o.d, reason and civilization stamp them as culprits.

I confess that the United States has the highest form of civilized inst.i.tutions that any nation has had. Let us take a cursory glance at the inst.i.tutions in this country. It has common schools by the tens of thousands; colleges and universities of every grade by the hundred; millions of daily newspapers are flying from the press, and weekly papers and monthly magazines on all imaginary subjects; it has a Congress and President, Governors and State Legislatures without end, judges, various courts and law officers in countless numbers. Hundreds of thousands of school teachers, professors, and college presidents, and Doctors of Divinity, thousands of lecturers and public declaimers on all subjects, railroads, telegraphs and telephones in such vast numbers as stagger imagination itself, churches and pulpits that are filled by at least a hundred and twenty-five thousand ministers of the gospel, and Bibles enough to build a pyramid that would almost reach to heaven; a land of books upon every subject scattered among the people by the billions, and in short, we have all the forms and paraphernalia of civilization. But no one can say, who has any respect for truth, that the United States is a civilized nation, especially if we will take the daily papers and inspect them for a few moments, and see the deeds of horror that the ruling powers of the nation say "well done" to.

I know that thousands, yea millions and tens of millions would not plead guilty of having a part in the violent and gory outrages which are often perpetrated in this country upon human beings, chiefly because they are of African descent, and are not numerically strong enough to contend with the powers in governmental control. But that is no virtue that calls for admiration. As long as they keep silent and fail to lift up their voices in protestation and declaim against it, their very silence is a world-wide acquiescence. It is practically saying, well done. There are millions of people in the country who could not stand to kill a brute, such is their nervous sensitiveness, and I have heard of persons who would not kill a snake or a bug. But they are guilty of everything the drunken mobs do, as long as they hold their silence. Men may be ever so free from the perpetration of b.l.o.o.d.y deeds, personally, but their failure to object to any outrageous crime makes them particeps crimines.

I forgot to say in cataloguing the crimes committed in the United States that persons for the simple color of their skin are thrust into what are called Jim Crow cars on the public highways and charged as much as those who are riding in rolling palaces with every comfort that it is possible for man to enjoy. This is simple robbery on the public highways and the nine United States judges have approved of this robbery and said, "well done," by their verdict.

Such being the barbarous condition of the United States, and the low order of civilization which controls its inst.i.tutions where right and justice should sit enthroned, I see nothing for the Negro to attain unto in this country. I have already admitted that this country has books and schools, and the younger members of the Negro race, like the younger members of the white race, should attend them and profit by them. But for the Negro as a whole, I see nothing here for him to aspire after. He can return to Africa, especially to Liberia where a Negro government is already in existence, and learn the elements of civilization in fact; for human life is there sacred, and no man is deprived of it or any other thing that involves his manhood, without due process of law. So my decision is that there is nothing in the United States for the Negro to learn or try to attain to.

SECOND PAPER.

WILL IT BE POSSIBLE FOR THE NEGRO TO ATTAIN, IN THIS COUNTRY, UNTO THE AMERICAN TYPE OF CIVILIZATION?

BY BISHOP L. H. HOLSEY.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bishop L. H. Holsey]

BISHOP L. H. HOLSEY.

Bishop Holsey was born a slave near Columbus, Ga., July 3, 1842. In 1862 he was married to Miss Harriet Turner, a young girl who belonged to Bishop Geo. F. Pierce, of the M. E.

Church South, who performed the marriage ceremony in his own house. His early life was spent in Sparta, La. He was licensed to preach in 1868 in the M. E. Church South, and served the Hanc.o.c.k circuit for nearly two years. In 1870 he pastored the church in Savannah, Ga. Early in 1869 he became a member of the colored conference which belonged to the M.

E. Church South. This conference was composed entirely of colored ministers. At this conference Bishop Holsey was ordained deacon by Bishop Pierce and a year later he was ordained elder. In the fall of 1870 his conference elected him a delegate to the first General Conference of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, held in America. This conference was held in Jackson, Tenn., where the first C. M.

E. Church in America was organized. In 1871 he was sent to Augusta, Ga., as pastor of Trinity Church and served there until in 1873 he was elected Bishop of the C. M. E. Church.

In 1881 he was sent to London, England, to represent the C.

M. E. Church in the first ec.u.menical council. In that council Bishop Holsey represented his church well. He was also sent as delegate to the same council, which met in Washington, D. C., in 1897. He is the founder of Paine College in Augusta, Ga., which is now in a flourishing condition. Bishop Holsey has always taken an active part in all that concerns the C. M. E. Church. He has written all the messages but one to the General Conferences and has suggested its entire legislation up-to-date. He also wrote the Manual of Discipline, and composed the hymnal of the church, and he is the author of a book of Drawings and Lectures, containing an autobiography. He has written much for his church and done many other good things, too numerous to mention here.

This question is one of pre-eminent importance and interesting alike to both races. Civilization means culture and refinement. The American type of civilization is somewhat different from the European and Asiatic; but, in the main features or characteristics, the world's great civilizations have always been the same in tone and design.

Patriotism, religion, and a thirst for power are the most prominent features of all civilizations. All civilizations have their imperfections. One of the strong features of the American type of civilization is the widespread and terrible social prejudice, which seems to be greatly increasing.

In this country the negro is despised and rejected, simply because he has a black skin, and social traits that distinguish him from other races. We cannot see, neither do we believe, that it is possible for the Negro to attain unto the American type of civilization, while he lives in the same territory and in immediate contact with the white people. This, however, applies especially to the former slave states.

Eight-tenths of the Negroes are at present in the old slave states, and if they remain there, which is very questionable, they will never be brought into the political, religious and social fabrics. They can never become full-fledged and free citizens like the white people. As a race, the Negro cannot enjoy in this country, like the Anglo-Saxon, the immunities and privileges guaranteed to him by the Const.i.tution.

The civil rights, the ample protection and the broad and liberal sentiment that protect and inspire the white people, are nowhere in America accorded to the black man. He is everywhere proscribed, because he is a Negro. No matter how much culture and refinement he may possess, he does not receive at the hands of the prejudiced whites that respectful consideration to which his culture ent.i.tles him. If we enter the field of legislative enactments by the Southern people, we find the prejudice still more p.r.o.nounced.

Every enactment that has found its way to the statutory doc.u.ments of the Southern States, where the rights and privileges of the two races are involved, shows race prejudice; then this thing is getting no better, but worse. As the Negro rises from the darkness of the past and approximates the American standard of civilization, the feeling against him becomes more intense, bitter and decisive, which does not speak well for the American civilization.

No Negro, however highly accomplished, can be brought into the social fabric. The lowest Greek, the dirtiest Jew, the vilest Russian, and the most treacherous Spaniard can be absorbed and a.s.similated into the social compact, but the Negro, because he is black, cannot enter into this compact.

Unless the Negro can enter the political and social compacts in some part of this country, there is no way for him to attain unto the American type of civilization. Can this be done? We think not, because as the Negro migrates to the North or to the Northwest, the process by which he enters the arena of full citizenship annuls and destroys his social characteristics in a greater or less degree.

There is, at present, among the majority of Negroes in the South, an unrest. Millions of them are waiting and wishing for somebody to lead them from the land of oppression and proscription to some more congenial clime, outside of the land of their nativity, but they do not want to depart, unless they can be a.s.sured that by so doing, they can better their condition. As it is, many are going to the North, East and West, and the time is fast approaching when the Black Belts of the South will be things of the past, unless the white people change their way of treating a Negro. The cotton fields and sugar farms now maintained by the Negroes will eventually be deserted by them, if the whites continue to oppress them. This, perhaps, would be beneficial to the South, as it would relieve them of the perplexing Race Problem. Now, if the Negroes were as free and as safe in their homes; if they had the same feeling of security of life and property; if they had the same treatment before the courts and had all the rights and privileges of a full citizen, as the white man, he would not be long in attaining to the American type of civilization. All Southern people, and many Northern people, for that matter, do not believe that the Negro is capable of as high a degree of civilization as the Anglo-Saxon. They believe him to be by nature inferior to the white man. But I contend that the Negro is not by nature inferior to the white man, but that he is as capable of reaching the American type of civilization as the white man. This is obvious from the phenomenal strides made by him within the past thirty-six years along material, moral and educational lines.

No one seems to take on and absorb the American civilization more readily than the American Negro, and if he has the same advantages and was allowed to enjoy the same full and free citizenship along with his white neighbor, his advancement in civilization would be as rapid as that of the white man.

There are to be found now not a few Negro men and women whose culture and refinement would not suffer by comparison with that of the best white people of this country. It is not native incapacity and the want of vital manhood that limit the Negro's progress in civilization, but it is the fight made against him on the ground of his previous condition. Remove this and give the Negro the white man's chance and he will keep pace with the white man in his march toward civilization.

THIRD PAPER.

WILL IT BE POSSIBLE FOR THE NEGRO TO ATTAIN, IN THIS COUNTRY, UNTO THE AMERICAN TYPE OF CIVILIZATION?

BY R. S. LOVINGGOOD, A. M.

[Ill.u.s.tration: R. S. Lovinggood, A. M.]

PROF. R. S. LOVINGGOOD, A. M.

Prof. R. S. Lovinggood was born in Walhalla, S. C., in 1864.

He came to Clark University, Atlanta, Ga., in 1881, and remained in school nine years, completing the college course and taking a course in carpentry. Immediately after graduating, he began to publish the "Atlanta Times," a weekly paper, which he continued for two years. He sold out his interest in the paper, and was elected princ.i.p.al of a city school in Birmingham, Ala., where he taught with great success for three years. Here he was married to Miss Lillie G. England, in 1894. In the fall of 1895, he was elected to the chair of Greek and Latin at Wiley University, Marshall, Texas, and entered upon his work with enthusiasm. His wife died in January, 1896, leaving him a boy only ten days old.

He continued his work at Wiley University for five consecutive years. His success was notable in this position.

He wrote a work which has received favorable mention in several papers of high grade. The t.i.tle of the work is "Why Hic, Halc, Hoc for the Negro?"

He was married a second time on April 25, 1900, to Miss Mattie A. Townsend of Birmingham, Ala. In the fall of 1900, he was elected to the presidency of Samuel Houston College, Austin, Texas. His success here has been notable. Though this is a new school, he enrolled 205 the first year. This is its second year, and the enrollment will doubtless reach 300.

Prof. Lovinggood is a good scholar, a fluent speaker, and an earnest Christian. He was a delegate to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Chicago in 1900. He is quite popular with the preachers and the people wherever he goes. A bright future is before him and the young school of which he is president.

I presume it is not necessary to show in detail what the American type of civilization is, or will be. Whatever that type is, or may be; will the Negro attain unto it in this country? Of the American type of civilization this much may be said, that this is a "government of the people, for the people and by the people; that all men are created with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;" that governments derive "their just power from the consent of the governed;" that in such governments each individual is ent.i.tled to all the rights vouchsafed to any other individual in that government; that every one is ent.i.tled to stand on his merits as a citizen of the government.

Taking this view of the American type of civilization, will it be possible for the Negro to attain unto it? Will the time ever come when the Negro will stand on his merits in our government? Will it ever be that the Negro will stand the same chance to be Mayor, Congressman, Senator, Governor, President? That he will be tried for crimes as other men are tried? No one who believes in the innate capacity of the Negro to achieve as high a type of civilization as any other race, will question that it will be possible for him to achieve the American type of civilization along the lines of invention, commerce, philanthropy, scholarship, etc. The Negro _can be_ industrious, patriotic, courageous. He can be useful in the community in which he lives. He can be as good as anybody else. No one doubts that he can be as meritorious as any other. Geographical lines cannot prevent the Negro from being meritorious. Now, if he is meritorious, will he be treated according to his merits in both church and state? Is it possible in this country that he will be treated according to his deserts? I take this to be the gist of the question, and it is a hard one to answer. The prejudice against the Negro is more severe than that against any other people, and the prejudice grows stronger. Even the Christian churches are yielding to it. I remember that the Plebeians in the Roman Empire, though of the same blood as the Patricians, were excluded from the Comitia, the Senate and all civil and priestly offices of the state for several hundred years. Though of the same color, the statute of Kilkenny prohibited the Irish and English from intermarrying in the fourteenth century. Prejudice ran high, and has not ended yet. The wail of sorrowful Ireland continues to go up before England for justice. I remember the sad story of Kosciusko and the Poles. The Poles were white.

Here we are of a different color, ex-slaves, poor, beaten back by prejudice. Who can tell our future? We can only hope and give the reason for the hope that is in us.

I believe it is _possible_ for us to succeed in America. I should despair if I did not believe this. Why do I believe it? Here is my ground for hope: First, the Negro is the only race that has ever looked into the face of the blue-eyed Anglo-Saxon without being swept from the face of the earth. There is that docility, that perseverance, that endurance, long-suffering patience and that kindness in the Negro which rob the pangs of the hatred of the white man of much of their deadly poison. The Negro thrives on persecution. He never loses faith.

Individuals may lose hope, but the race will never. The Negro does not run against the buzz-saw of destruction, and this fact should be put down to his credit. The saw will not whirl forever.

Second: The success of the last thirty-seven years gives hope of ultimate triumph. The Negro has increased in intelligence, in wealth, in moral worth, in population, etc. It is useless to give figures. All right-thinking men admit this.

I take no part in that view of a few pessimists, that the Negro race grows worse; that the "old time Negro" is better than the young "new Negro." The old Negro was submissive because he was not allowed to be otherwise. There is no character in slavish goodness. Character must be developed in freedom of action. Under freedom, a few young Negroes have gone to excess, but, thank G.o.d, under freedom, hundreds of thousands of young Negroes, in schools and out of schools, are struggling up the hill of virtue, of industry, of learning, not goaded on by the lash of the master, but impelled by a holy ambition that does not halt at temporary defeats.