Twentieth Century Negro Literature Part 60

THE NEGRO'S ADVERSITIES HELP HIM.

BY PROF. JOSEPH D. BIBB, A. M.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Joseph D. Bibb, A. M.]

PROF. JOSEPH D. BIBB, A. M.

Prof. Joseph D. Bibb comes from the city of Montgomery, Ala., 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 inst.i.tution and entered Livingstone College at Salisbury, N. 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 the fulfillment of his high ideal.

After graduating he spent his first year as instructor in the State Normal at Montgomery, ten years as princ.i.p.al of the public school, in which he received his training, and two years as professor of Hebrew and Bible history at Morris Brown College, Atlanta, Ga. Neither of these nor the minor fields of usefulness satisfied his ideal, and it was not until he entered the active ministry that he felt that 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 fellowmen, 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 the 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 G.o.d 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 the Negro in harmonious relationship to American civilization is a question that depends for 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 surgeon's scalpel. It is necessary, therefore, that this unhealthy member should be toned up to harmony with the great organism of which he is a part.

"No cross, no crown," is a trite saying, yet it has lost nothing of the beauty of strength of originality, but, rather, it has grown to be the sustaining, inspiring motto of all men as they plod up the hill of life. Great souls do not whine and fret in adversity. The men and women who lay the foundation of great inst.i.tutions 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 to-day reaches his hand out and plucks the best fruitage of the highest and grandest age known to man. Even liberty, a plant that grows luxuriantly only when watered with human blood, and rooted in the hearts and affections of a free people, is within the very 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 this country? Here and there counter-forces 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 a.s.similate the good and reject and expel the bad. What are these counter-forces, 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 n.o.bler 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. G.o.d 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 evidences of puerility 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 under the inexorable law of G.o.d, through trials, through tribulations, through persecution and through blood. I do not wish in any way to condemn the agitation of the hour 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 brains." 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 afflict the South." No race can rise higher than its ideal. To teach the Negro that the evils of his environments will crush him forever, that a servant is and must be servile in disposition and in general habit of mind; that hair and skin and the shape of the head stamp him an inferior, is a doctrine of creation without G.o.d in it.

No, let him know and feel that he is 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 n.o.ble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in reform, how express and admirable; in action how like an angel in apprehension how like a G.o.d." 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, inhuman 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, and the washer-woman 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 a 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 att.i.tude and then demand a free man's portion. In that att.i.tude you are neither feared nor loved, but tolerated. You are 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 above the ruins of the slave's log cabin of yesterday. Wilberforce and Morris Brown, Tuskegee, Biddle and Livingstone, each gallantly manned by black men, and thousands of schools dotting the South--all immortalizing Christian philanthropy--are sending forth annually torch-bearers of truth to light the paths the race must pursue in the great civilization of to-day. How well these advantages will subserve his progress, his interest--depend upon the confidence and faith which they will inspire in him toward 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 or inst.i.tutions 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 had settled down upon the Negro; but they have done their duty and gone to their reward. G.o.d bless them. The Negro is now prepared to take care of himself. Let the child crawl, he will learn 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 and coming generations are taught to believe the crushing and slanderous dictum of natural inferiority, what hope is there for the salvation of the race, for a man can rise no higher than his ideal? These great, honest, sincere souls in the race, who show their love as do fathers to their children, rebuke because they love.

Moses, the great leader of and lawgiver to the Israelites--a people who gave to the world its n.o.blest song, its widest 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 G.o.d, 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 other criticisms are questionable.

But grant that the negro likes the idea, worships the idea of white supremacy, with its inst.i.tutions and customs, vitalized 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 Nineteenth 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.

TOPIC x.x.xVI.

THE AMERICAN NEGRO AND HIS POSSIBILITIES.

BY GEO. L. KNOX.

[Ill.u.s.tration: George L. Knox]

GEORGE L. KNOX.

The subject of this sketch, George L. Knox, was born in Wilson County, Tenn., September 16, 1841. He was a slave, spending his early life on the farm and in following the vocation of shoemaker, which he learned while serving a master.

In 1862 he joined the Union forces in the Civil War; after the termination of that terrible crisis he went to Indianapolis, where he learned the tonsorial art. He did not stay any great while in that city, but went to Greenfield, Ind., not many miles away, where he concluded to make his home. He established himself in business in a small way, and by dint of persistency, thrift and integrity, such as has marked his course ever since, he, in a few years, succeeded in gaining a competence. He took an active part in politics as a Republican, of which party he has been an unswerving member up to this time. He won great respect for himself and family among the whites, and the older Greenfieldians never visit Indianapolis without dropping in to see George, as they so familiarly call him.

In 1895 he moved to Indianapolis and finally became the sole proprietor of the Bates House barber shop, said to be the most elegant shop in the country. He is a member of the M.

E. Church, which has greatly honored him by sending him as a delegate-at-large to the general conference in New York in 1888, and to Omaha, Neb., in 1892. He has filled numerous offices in the local church.

He has been very active and prominent in Republican councils in his new home. Has served as delegate-at-large to the National Convention that met in Minneapolis, Minn., 1892, where Benjamin Harrison was nominated for the Presidency. He was selected as an Alternate Delegate-at-large to St. Louis, Mo., in 1896, when President McKinley was nominated. His voice has been heard all over the state in advocacy of the principles of his party.

In 1892 he look charge of the Freeman and since that time he has given the publication considerable attention, the results of which are shown by its very large and very wide circulation. The active management of this well-known paper is in charge of his son, Elwood C., who is rapidly developing as a man of business and affairs.

History has, since time begun, shown the rise, decline and fall of empires, nations, races and individuals. It is but fair to say that the fate of the Negro has been cast along these lines that were as fixed as the stars in their courses. There have been exceptions to the laws of civil and political change. We have read with joy the triumph of the black man of ancient times, his power in battle, his eminence in letters, his skill in science, his genius as an agriculturist, his patience as a herdsman. In the great cycles of changes, it stands to reason that the wheel of civil and political fortune will again revolve in the Negro's favor.

The history of the black man's past in no wise serves to usurp the functions of present duties. Notwithstanding the fact that there are lowering clouds and muttering thunders, yet there is every indication of a day, to express it boldly, that is coming that will outshine the glittering sun.

'Tis not much that the American Negro asks in this racial warfare; his aid has always been scant and rare; he has been thrown on his own resources, buffeted about until he has become hidebound, as it were, to those circ.u.mstances which have been so hurtful to the progress of other nations.

Slavery, while a curse, has been a redeeming inst.i.tution to the American Negro.

It was that purgatorial step between African slavery and American wealth. It was a necessary evil to prepare us for this most advanced civilization of the world. Since that refining period, the Negro has proven that he has the elements that make him a fit part of this great country. There are those among us who have reached fame in nearly all of the avenues of life. I take this as an index to the total possibilities of the race. The ma.s.ses, however, are to be reached. The abilities of the few will not answer for the sins of the many. Crispus Attucks, whose blood stained Boston Commons, the black soldiers of the wars of our country down to that memorable engagement at El Caney, will stand for Negro patriotism. Professors Washington, Councill and thousands of others who are holding up the torch of learning will stand for Negro intellect and citizenship, but behind all of these stand the Negro ma.s.ses that are not sufficiently quickened. These must be prodded up, that they reach the front ranks of the procession. It is but justice to the Negroes, however, to say that the doors of opportunity do not swing wide for them. It ought to be otherwise, and I believe it will be otherwise when a better understanding exists between the races as to their aims and objects. The white man is quick to judge the Negroes by those he meets in his every-day life.

Unfortunately, these are too much in evidence, giving color to the charge that all Negroes look alike. The better Negro is not, as a rule, seen; his works, as a rule, are not known; his refinement, his morals and industry are not advertised--hence a wrong notion as to the bent and intent of the race is noised abroad. Prejudice is not confined to one side alone; both races show it to a hurtful extent.

Hon. Robert Allen, one of the most noted criminal lawyers of Texas, said to a jury: "While it is true that we all have some trace of race prejudice against the Negro, which makes it hard for us to do him justice, I can not see why it is so; I know it should not be so. If the Negro owes us something, we also owe the Negro something. It is a mutual debt of grat.i.tude that we owe each other. We as a race are inclined to think that the white man is against us naturally. It is true to a great extent, but we have reasons for thinking that the white man thinks more of the law-abiding, intelligent, taxpaying Negroes than he does of that set that turn up on election day, looking for something. It may be that the white man is jealous of the Negro's success, but I rather think that it is a mistaken notion. It is not toward the better cla.s.s that he hurls his hatred, but against that cla.s.s that the Negro himself is learning to fear. Until the colored man changes his position and conditions it will be useless for him to look for that consideration and respect that is accorded his more fortunate brother and fellow-citizen. The Negro must not conceive the idea that he has no friends among those now in supremacy; neither must he entertain the belief that fortune will come to him without effort on his part, or that citizenship will receive the proper recognition without improvement in his morals and political att.i.tude. These are the days of newer and greater things in every conceivable direction.

The Negroes are taking but a small part in their creation, glory and profit. If there are men among us who can be the means of bringing better conditions to the great Negro ma.s.ses, and who can weed out the slow, dull, plodding process of evolution, they should not be denied the opportunity. The ma.s.ses seem to be hedged about by a wall of indifference. Negroes have such little respect for their own kind that the thing is becoming proverbial. Now they pretend otherwise in self-defense.

You think of some little device for testing race love; try it--it will do the rest. The white people have found that nothing is to be feared of colored people when it comes to helping racial cause. The individual who is loudest in defense of his race generally gets the most generous cursing from Negroes. Newspapers are often held in abomination by Negroes. A Negro editor would be mobbed if he told the truth about Negroes; they say, let the white people do it. Negroes who engage in business of any kind are usually criticised most severely by Negroes who are incapable of engaging in any kind of business for themselves. They are always full of suggestions as to how Mr. "A" and Mr. "B" should conduct or run their business; still they have nothing substantial to offer. Criticisms coming from such a source simply amount to nothing. It is about time for all of us to stop going out of our way, and making occasion, where none exists, to blackguard the Negro, and instead encourage him to industry and correct living and increase our efforts to make him a steadier laborer and better citizen. It is hardly fair to place the whole race under a common condemnation because of the slothfulness and lawlessness of some of its members; it would hardly be fair even if this percentage were larger than it is, and it is hardly worthy of a people to continue nagging at, and seeking to arouse further prejudice against its own race. No man can reach the elevated plane of good character and worth who drags behind him a great load of little and mean dislikes for his fellowman. The possibilities of higher professional standing of colored men and women depend upon the unity and determination of the colored people to push their professional and business men to the front. I appeal to you as a race to cultivate race pride, not race prejudice. Stand up like men and women and cultivate unity and protect and defend each other's interest. Let the elevation of one be the joy of the other, instead of pulling down those who are trying to elevate themselves and the race. The possibilities of colored professional men will be great to the extent that the colored people will allow their greatness. Their destiny is with the colored race. This world is not a place of peace and unmixed happiness. There has always been a struggle of individuals and races for existence and mastery.

It is beginning to dawn on the Negroes generally, that if they would be saved, they must save themselves. The idea that they were to enter at once into all the walks of American life without violent protest has been dissipated through the actual occurrences of the last four decades. It would be too long a story to rehea.r.s.e the reasons for the seeming undiminished prejudices.

In the interest of truth, the exact truth, we feel free to say, however, that the reasons are not to be charged altogether to one race. There is much that can yet be done on the Negro's side that would tend to put a better face on the matter. There has been undergoing a gradual change in the minds of the thoughtful of both races concerning education and politics as it concerns the Negroes, which has, indeed, upset the first calculations of many, but which, after all, has a tendency to broaden the foundation on which racial progress must rest. The Booker T. Washington theory of education has come to stay; not because he advocates it; not because rich men are sustaining his school, but because he has an inst.i.tution that meets the requirements, the demands of the day. It is a pity, but true, that the race as a rule has entertained inflated notions about the matter of education. It rather looked forward to an education that vied with the whites, with their centuries of leisure and their myriad routes for employment. Education that unfits the individual to grapple with his surroundings, his environments, is a misfit. The ma.s.ses of any race do not hope to be educated as its cla.s.ses do. Those who oppose Mr. Washington's theory advance the argument, but those intimately acquainted with the race must admit that the Negro parent slaves himself to make a fine lady or gentleman out of the daughter or son, whereas the poor white parents hope and endeavor to turn out breadwinners, notwithstanding they have no color conditions to overcome. The lady and gentleman idea, doubtless, was born of the slavery period, when the so-called "great" received flattering attention from master and slave. The desire to be the recipient of such attention, or to have it bestowed on their kind, was the result of a.s.sociation and infantile minds, which have not as yet left the will free to have the children taught to feel that the conditions must determine the education. Happily, we may say that the notion of turning out ladies and gentlemen instead of women and man is on the wane. The trades, the fields, the shops are, as they should now be, given greater consideration. Mr. Washington eternally dwells on the theory of doing something, producing something, and especially do we recommend the field, with its thousand-avenued opportunities.

Compet.i.tion in the products of the field is fair. The school prepares the farmer as well as it does the cla.s.sic. A company of Negroes, equipped to make a wagon throughout, will at least make living wages, even should the article be sold for a few dollars less in order to make it go. Material is always the smaller item of expense. The public will not question the nationality of the makers. Reputation for good work is always understood to be a condition.

Other enterprises, with a small output of capital, would insure wages if no more. Do Negroes receive fair wages generally? If the Negroes have dreamed that they were to move unscathed in the industrial procession as they found it existing when they obtained their freedom, they have long ere this been rudely awakened. It is not always prejudice with shop owners and proprietors that prevent them from employing Negroes; it is that general ma.s.s prejudice that puts an emphatic veto on any such intentions. It resolves itself into a business proposition with him. The store owner allows no philanthropy in his business. He is dictated to by that course which insures him the greatest prosperity. He may not be wholly free from prejudices, but it is not that which determines his actions, it is the prejudice of the ma.s.ses. He will not sacrifice his existence by opposing it. It is a mistake to wail at the cla.s.s who is at the mercy of the ma.s.ses.

It is more than probable that they would do different if free to do so.

The question is often asked, can the Negroes work out their own salvation? Will they do it? The answer is: they have it to do or reap the very bitter consequences. The wardship idea is not the part of the American inst.i.tution as it concerns them. Compet.i.tion, deadly compet.i.tion, is the pa.s.s word. The white man gives no quarter nor takes any; nothing but sheer force, absorption, extinction, annihilation, or what not in the commercial, industrial compet.i.tive sense. Nothing is longer conceded; no special place for the white man, for the black man, but for the man with the greatest pull. White barbers, white waiters, white coachmen, are no longer "curios;" they are persistent in their efforts to establish themselves, having no regard for peculiar races with peculiar occupations. It means that the Negroes must hustle and rustle, create avenues, open new vistas, announce new projects, and thus avoid alms-seeking and poor houses in the end.

Politics has played an undue part in perpetuating prejudices. It has contributed much in the way of wealth to many of the race. It has honored thousands by places of trust, honor and profit; it has been the means of developing the latent abilities of the village Hampdens, Pitts, Gladstones, Websters, Clays and Calhouns. It has been the means of demonstrating fealty to party, and to country. For this a glorious apostrophe is due those who have proven no cravens at any stage of the race's career. If there were but that picture on which to look, the occasion of this very lecture would not be necessary. The triumphs in political, civil, church, scholastic, and army life have been attested by such men as Dougla.s.s, Bruce, Washington, Langston, Revels, Walters, Turner, Derrick, Grant, Pinchback, Councill, Lyons, Cheatham, White and Dancy, not to speak of a host of younger men of journalistic careers, that, according to opportunity, compare favorably with those of greater reputations. But beyond all of this stands that grim complement in the way of civil depression, political stagnation, if not utter palsy. The courts have rendered their functions to the mobs in some localities, and all but anarchy sits enthroned. The white man has been held to blame altogether for the reversed picture. It is not quite the case. Slavery left a legacy of hate when it gave away to freedom. The older Negro, better groomed in the art of preserving peace, did not forget the depth from which he sprang. He was ever pouring oil on the troubled water, trying to bring peace out of confusion; as a consequence that period immediately subsequent to the war period was eventful, as it concerned the prospective peace of the races and general prosperity. It is the new Negro, the latter day product, who knows nothing but freedom, freedom modified by native propensities, idleness and a groveling disposition, that is causing the trouble. He does not understand the philosophy of the situation, and cares less--like the Andalusian, his mule, his guitar, and it ends right there. This strenuous American life demands work of every individual in some form; it revolts at the idler.