The American Negro Academy
Occasional Papers, No, 3, ♦
CIVil \TlON THE PRIMAL NEED OF THE RACE, *
The Inaugural Address,
— by—
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL,
march 5, 1897
— and —
THE ATTITUDE OF THE AMERICAN MIND TOWARD
THE NEGRO INTELLECT,
First Annual Address,
dec. 28, 1897,
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL,
President ofthe American Negro Academy.
Price, Fifteen Cents.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
PUBLISH ED BY THE ACADEMY
1898.
Robert W. Woodruff
Library
Gift of
Nancy and Randall Burkett
special collections
emory university
The American Negro Academy
Occasional Papers, No, 3.
CIVILIZATION THE PRIMAL NEED OF THE RACE,
The Inaugural Address*
—by—
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL,
march 5, 1897.
—AND —
THE ATTITUDE OF THE AMERICAN MIND TOWARD
THE NEGRO INTELLECT,
First Annual Address,
dec. 28, 1897,
—by—
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL,
President ofthe American Negro Academy.
Price, Fifteen Cents.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
PUBLISHED BY THE ACADEMY.
1898.
OCCASIONAL PAPERS,
No. i.—A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and
Tendencies of the American Negro.—Kelly Miller 25 Cts.
No. 2.—The Conservation of Races.—
W. E. Burghardt DuBois - - - - 15 Cts-
No. 3.—(a) Civilization, the Primal Need of the Race;
(b) The Attitude of the American Mind Toward
the Negro Intellect.—Alexander Crummell - - 15 Cts,.
o
Orders filled through the Corresponding Secretary, J. W. Crom¬
well, 1439 Pierce Place, Washington, D. C.
Trade supplied through John H. Wills, 506 Eleventh Street,
N. W., Washington, D. C.
CIVILIZATION, THE PRIMAL NEED OF THE RACE.
Gentlemen :—
There is no need, I apprehend, that I should undertake to impress-
3*ou with a sense either of the need or of the importance of our assem¬
blage here to-day. The fact of your coming here is, of itself, the clearest
evidence of your warm acquiescence in the summons to this meeting,,
and of your cordial interest in the objects which it purposes to con¬
sider.
Nothing has surprised and gratified me so much as the anxious—
ness of many minds for the movement which we are on the eve of be¬
ginning. In the letters which our Secretary, Mr. Cromwell, has re¬
ceived, and which will be read to us, we are struck by the fact that
one cultured man here and another there,—several minds in different
localities,—tell him that this is just the thing they have desired, andi
have been looking for.
I congratulate you, therefore, gentlemen, on the opportuneness of
your assemblage here. I felicitate you on the superior and lofty aims'
which have drawn you together. And, in behalf of your compeers,
resident here in the city of Washington, I welcome you to the city
and to the important deliberations to which our organization invites
you.
Just here, let me call your attention to the uniqueness and speci¬
alty of this conference. It is unlike any other which has ever taken
place in the history of the Negro, on the American Continent. There
have been, since the landing of the first black cargo of slaves at James¬
town, Va., in 1619, numerous conventions of men of our race. There
have been Religious Assemblies, Political Conferences, suffrage
meetings, educational conventions. But our meeting is for a pur¬
pose which, while inclusive, in some respects, of these various con¬
cerns, is for an object more distinct and positive than any of them.
What then, it may be asked, is the special undertaking we have
before us, in this Academy ? My answer is the civilization of the
Negro race in the United States, by the scientific processes of
4
literature, art, and philosophy, through the agency of the cultured
men of this same Negro race. And here, let me say, that the special
race problem of the Negro in the United States is his civilization.
I doubt if there is a man in this presence who has a higher con¬
ception of Negro capacity than your speaker; and this of itself, pre¬
cludes the idea, on my part, of race disparagement. But, it seems
manifest to me that, as a race in this land, we have no art; we have
no science; we have no philosophy; we have no scholarship. In¬
dividuals we have in each of these lines; but mere individuality
cannot be recognized as the aggregation of a family, a nation, or a
race; or as the interpretation of any of them. And until we
attain the role of civilization, we cannot stand up and hold our place
in the world of culture and enlightenment. And the forfeiture of
such a place means, despite, inferiority, repulsion, drudgery, poverty,
and ultimate death ! Now gentlemen, for the creation of a complete
and rounded man, you need the impress and the moulding of the
highest arts. But how much more so for the realizing of a true and
lofty race of men. What is true of a man is deeply true of a people.
The special need in such a case is the force and application of the
highest arts; not mere mechanism; not mere machinery; not mere
handicraft; not the mere grasp on material things; not mere tem¬
poral ambitions. These are but incidents; important indeed, but
pertaining mainly to man's material needs, and to the feeding of the
body. And the incidental in life is incapable of feeding the living
soul. For "man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God." And civilization is the
secondary word of God, given for the nourishment of humanity.
To make men you need civilization; and what I mean by civili¬
zation is the action of exalted forces, both of God and man. For
manhood is the most majestic thing in God's creation; and hence the
demand for the very highest art in the shaping and .moulding of
human souls.
What is the great difficulty with the black race, in this era, in
this land ? It is that both within their ranks, and external to them¬
selves, by large schools of thought interested in them, material ideas
in divers forms are made prominent, as the master-need of the race,
and as the surest way to success. Men are constantly dogmatizing
theories of sense and matter as the salvable hope of the race. Some
of our leaders and teachers boldly declare, now, that property is the
source of power; and then, that 'money is the thing which commands
respect. At one time it is official position which is the masterful in-
5
fluence in the elevation of the race; at anDther, men are disposed to
fall back upon blood and lineage, as the root (source) of power and
progress.
Blind men ! For they fail to see that neither property, nor
money, nor station, nor office, nor lineage, are fixed factors, in so
large a thing as the destiny of man; that they are not vitalizing qual¬
ities in the changeless hopes of humanity. ■ The greatness of peoples
springs from their ability to grasp the grand conceptions of being.
It is the ab'sorption of a people, of a nation, of a race, in large
majestic and abiding things which lifts them up to the skies. These
once apprehended, all the minor details of life follow in their proper
places, and spread abroad in the details and the comfort of prac¬
ticality. But until these gifts of a lofty civilization are secured, men
are sure to remain low, debased and grovelling.
It was the apprehension of this great truth which led Melancthon,
400 years ago, to declare—"Unless we have the scientific mind we
shall surely revert again to barbarism." He was a scholar and a
classic, a theologian and a philosopher. With probably the excep¬
tion of Erasmus, he was the most erudite man of his age. He was
the greatest Grecian of his day. He was rich "with the spoils of
time." And so running down the annals of the ages, he discovered
the majestic fact, which Coleridge has put in two simple lines:—
"We may not hope from outward things to win
The passion and the life whose fountains are within;"
which Wordsworth, in grand style, has declared,
"By the soul only the nations shall be free."
But what is this other than the utterance of Melancthon,—
"Without the scientific mind, barbarism." This is the teaching
of history. For 2,000 years, Europe has been governed, in all its
developments, by Socrates, and Aristotle, and Plato, and Euclid.
These were the great idealists; and as such, they were the great pro¬
genitors of all modern civilization, the majestic agents of God
for the civil upbuilding of men and nations. For civilization is,
in its origins, ideal; and hence, in the loftiest men, it bursts forth,
producing letters, literature, science, philosophy, poetry, sculp¬
ture, architecture, yea, all the arts; and brings them with all
their gifts, and lays them in the lap of religion, as the essential
condition of their vital permanance and their continuity.
But civilization never seeks permanent abidence upon the
heights of Olympus. She is human, and seeks all human needs.
And so she descends, re-creating new civilizations; uplifting the
6
crudeness of laws, giving scientific precision to morals and religion,
stimulating enterprise, extending commerce, creating manufactures,
expanding mechanism and mechanical inventions; producing revo¬
lutions and reforms; humanizing labor; meeting the minutest hu¬
man needs, even to the manufacturing needles for the industry of
seamstresses and for the commonest uses of human fingers. All these
are the fruits of civilization.
Who are to be the agents to lift up this people of "ours to the
grand plane of civilization ? Who are to bring them up to the height
of noble thought, grand civility, a chaste and elevating culture, re¬
finement, and the impulses of irrepressible progress ? It is to be
done by the scholars and thinkers, who have secured the vision
which penetrates the center of nature, and sweeps the circles of his¬
toric enlightenment; and who have got insight into.the life of things,
and learned the art by which men touch the springs of action.
For to transform and stimulate the souls of a race or a people
is a work of intelligence. It is a work which demands the clear induc¬
tion of world-wide facts, and the perception of their application to
new circumstances. It is a work which will require the most skillful
resotirces, and the use of the scientific spirit.
But every man in a race cannot be a philosopher: nay, but few
men in any land, in any age, can grasp ideal truth. Scientific ideas
however must be- apprehended, else there can be no progress, no
elevation.
Just here arises the need of the trained and scholarly men of a
race to employ their knowledge and culture and teaching and to
guide both the opinions and habits of the crude masses. The masses,
nowhere are, or can be, learned or scientific The scholar is excep¬
tional, just the same as a great admiral like Nelson is, or a grand
soldier like Caesar or Napoleon. But the leader, the creative and
organizing mind, is the master-need in all the societies of man. But,
if they are not inspired with the notion of leadership and duty, then
with all their Latin and Greek and science they are but pedants,
trimmers, opportunists. For all true and lofty scholarship is weighty
with the burdens and responsibilities of life and humanity.
But these reformers must not be mere scholars. They must
needs be both scholars and philanthropists. For this, indeed, has- it
been in all the history of men. In all the great revolutions, and in
all great reforms which have transpired, scholars have been con¬
spicuous; in the re-construction of society, in formulating laws, in
producing great emancipations, in the revival of letters, in the ad-
7
vancement of science, in the rennaissance of art, in the destruction of
.gross superstitions and in the restoration, of true and enlightened
religion.
And what is the spirit with which they are to come to this work ?
My answer is, that disinterestedness must animate their motives and
their acts. Whatever rivalries and dissensions may divide man in the
social or political world, let generosity govern us. Let us emulate
one another in the prompt recognition of rare genius, or uncommon
talent. Let there be no tardy acknowledgment of worth in our
world of intellect. If we are fortunate enough, to see, of a sudden, a
■clever mathematician of our class, a brilliant poet, a youthful, but
promising scientist or philosopher, let us rush forward, and hail his
•coming with no hesitant admiration, with no reluctant praise.
It is only thus, gentlemen, that we can bring forth, stimulate,
and uplift all the latent genius, garnered up, in the by-places and
sequestered corners of this neglected Race.
It is only thus we can nullify and break down the conspiracy
which would fain limit and narrow the range of Negro talent in this
caste-tainted country. It is only thus, we can secure that recognition
of genius and scholarship in the republic of letters, which is the
rightful prerogative of every race of men. It is only thus we can
spread abroad and widely disseminate that culture and enlightment
which shall permeate and leaven the entire social and domestic life
of our people and so give that civilization which is the nearest ally
of religion.
8
THE ATTITUDE OF THE AMERICAN MIND TOWARD
THE NEGRO INTELLECT,
For the first time in the history of this nation the colored people
of America have undertaken the difficult task, of stimulating and
fostering the genius of their race as a distinct and definite purpose.
Other and many gatherings have been made, during our own two
and a half centuries' residence on this continent, for educational pur¬
poses; but ours is the first which endeavors to rise up to the plane
of culture.
For my own part I have no misgivings either with respect to
the legitimacy, the timeliness, or the prospective success of our vent¬
ure. The race in the brief period of a generation, has been so fruit¬
ful in intellectual product, that the time has come for a coalescence
of powers, and for reciprocity alike in effort and appreciation. I
congratulate you, therefore, on this your first anniversary. To me
it is, I confess, a matter of rejoicing that we have, as a people, reach¬
ed a point where we have a class of men who will come together for
purposes, so pure, so elevating, so beneficent, as the cultivation of
mind, with the view of meeting the uses and the needs of our be¬
nighted people.
I feel that if this meeting were the end of this Academy; if I
could see that it would die this very day, I would nevertheless, cry
out—"All hail!" even if I had to join in with the salutation—"fare¬
well forever!" For, first of all, you have done, during the year, that
which was never done so completely before,—a work which has
already told upon the American mind; and next you have awakened
in the Race an ambition which, in some form, is sure to reproduce
both mental and artistic organization in the future.
The cultured classes of our country have never interested them¬
selves to stimulate the desires or aspirations of the mind of our race.
They have left us terribly alone. Such stimulation, must, therefore,
in the very nature of things, come from ourselves.
Let us state here a simple, personal incident, which will well
serve to illustrate a history.
I entered, sometime ago, the parlor of a distinguished southern
clergyman. A kinsman was standing at his mantel, writing. The
clergyman spoke to his relative—"Cousin, let me introduce to you the
9
Rev. C., a clergyman of our Church," His cousin turned and looked
down at me; but as soon as he saw my black face, he turned away
with disgust, and paid no more attention to me than if I were a
dog.
Now, this porcine gentleman, would have been perfectly cour¬
teous, if I had gone into his parlor as a cook, or a waiter, or a boot¬
black. But my profession, as a clergyman, suggested the idea of
letters and cultivation; and the contemptible snob at once forgot his
manners, and put aside the common decency of his class.
Now, in this, you can see the attitude of the American mind to¬
ward the Negro intellect. A reference to this attitude seems neces¬
sary, if we would take in, properly, the present condition of Negro
culture.
It presents a most singular phenomenon. Here was a people
laden with the spoils of the centuries, bringing with them into this
new land the culture of great empires; and, withal, claiming the
exalted name and grand heritage of Christians. By their own vol¬
untary act they placed right beside them a large population of
another race of people, seized as captives, and brought to their plan¬
tations from a distant continent. This other race was an unlettered,
unenlightened, and a pagam people.
What was the attitude taken by this master race toward their
benighted bondsmen ? It was not simply that of indifference or
neglect. There was nothing negative about it.
They began, at the first, a systematic ignoring of the fact of in¬
tellect in this abased people. They undertook the process of darken¬
ing their minds.
"Put out the light, and then, put out the light!" was their cry for
centuries. Paganizing themselves, they sought a deeper pagan¬
izing of their serfs than the original paganism that these had brought
from Africa There was no legal artifice conceivable which was not
resorted to, to blindfold their souls from the light of letters; and the
church, in not a few cases, was tke prime offender.*
* Baptfcm, for well nieh a century, was denied Negro slaves in the colonies, for fear
it oarried emancipation wUh it. Legislation on Education began at a subsequent date. In
1740 it was enacted in SOUTH CAROLINA : "Whereas, the having slaves taught to write
or -ufflring them to be employed in writing, may be attended with great imconvenience.
Be it enacted, That all and every person or persons whatsoever who shall hereafter teach or
cause any slave or slaves to be taught to write, or shall use or employ any slave as a Scribe
in any manner of writing, hereafter taught to write/ every such person or persons shall
forever, for every such offense, forfeit the sum of ^100 current money."
The next step, in South Carolina, was aimed against ment al instruction of every kind,
in reading and writing.
A similar law was pas ed in Savannah, Georgia, In 1711, in the Colony of Maryland,
a special enactment was passed to bar freedom by baptism- and in 1715, in South Carolina !
See "Stroud's Slave Laws."
IO
Then the legislatures of the several states enacted laws and
Statutes, closing the pages of every book printed to the eyes of Ne¬
groes; barring the doors of every school-room against them! And
this was the systematized method ot the intellect of the South, to
stamp out the brains of the Negro!
It was done, too, with the knowledge that the Negro had brain
power. There was then, no denial that the Negro had intellect.
That denial was an after thought. Besides, legislatures never pass
laws forbidding the education of pigs, dogs, and horses. They pass
such laws against the intellect of men.
However, there was then, at the very beginning of the slave
trade, everywhere, in Europe, the glintings forth of talent in great
Negro geniuses,—in Spain, and Portugal, in France and Holland and
England;* and Phillis Wheatley and Banneker and Chavis and
Peters, were in evidence on American soil.
It is manifest, therefore, that the objective point in all this leg-
slation was INTELLECT,— the intellect of the Negro! It was an
effort to becloud and stamp out the intellect of the Negro!
The first phase of this altitude reached over from about 1700 to
1820:—and as the result,almost Egyptian darkness fell upon the mind
of the race, throughout the whole land.
Following came a more infamous policy. It was the denial of
intellectuality in the Negro; the assertion that he was not a human
being, that he did not belong to the human race. This covered the
period from 1820 to 1835, when Gliddon and Nott and others, pub¬
lished their so-called physiological work, to prove that the Negro was
of a different species from the white man.
A distinguished illustration of this ignoble sentiment can be giv¬
en. In the year 1833 or 4 the speaker was an errand boy in the
Anti-slavery office in New York City
On a certain occasion he heard a conversation between the Sec¬
retary and two eminent lawyers from Boston,—Samuel E. Sewell and
*At the time when France was on the eve of plunging deeply into the slave trade and
of ruining her colonies by the curse of Slavery, the ABBE GKEGOIRE stept forth in vin¬
dication of the Neero, and published his celebrated work—"The Literature of Negroes."
In this w-rk he fives the names and narrates the achievements of the distinguished Ne¬
groes, writers, scholars, painters, philosophers, priests and Roman prelates, in Spain, Por¬
tugal. France, England, Holland, Italy and Turkey who had risen to eminence in the
15th century.
Not long after BLUMENBACH declared that "entire and large provinces of Europe
might be named, in which it would be difficult to meet with such good writers, poets, philo¬
sophers, and correspondents of the trench Academy,- and that moreover there is no savage
poeple, who have distinguished themselves by such examples of perfectibility and capacity
for scientific cultivatior: and consequently that none can approach m»re nearly to the polifch-
ed nations of the globe than the Negro."
II
David Lee Child. They had been to Washington on some legal bus¬
iness. While at the Capitol they happened to dine in the company of
the great John C. Calhoun, then senator from South Carolina. It was
a period of great ferment upon the question of Slavery, States'
Rights, and Nullification; and consequently the Negro was the topic
of conversation at the table. One of the utterances of Mr. Calhoun
was to this effect—"That if he could find a Negro who knew the
Greek syntax, he would then believe that the Negro was a human
being and should be treated as a man."
Just think of the crude asininity of even a great man! Mr.
Calhoun went to "Yale" to study the Greek Syhtax, and graduated
there. His son went to Yale to study the Greek Syntax,and graduated
there. His grandson, in recent years, went to Yale, to learn the Greek
Syntax, and graduated there. Schools and Colleges were necessary
for the Calhouns, and all other white men to learn the Greek syn¬
tax.
And yet this great man knew that there was not a school, nor a
college in which a black boy could learn his A. B. C's. He knew that
the law in all the Southern States forbade Negro instruction under
the severest penalties. How then was the Negro to learn the Greek
syntax? How then was he to evidence to Mr. Calhoun his human
nature ? Why, it is manifest that Mr, Calhoun expected the Greek
syntax to grow in .Negro brains, by spontaneous generation!
Mr. Calhoun was then, as much as any other American, an ex¬
ponent of the nation's mind upon this point. Antagonistic as they
were upon other subjects, upon the rejection of the Negro intellect
they were a unit. And this, measurably, is the attitude of the
American mind today:— measurably, I say, for thanks to the Al¬
mighty, it is not universally so.
There has always been a school of philanthropists in this land
who have always recognized mind in the Negro; and while recognizing
the limitations which individual capacity demanded, claimed that for
the RACE, there was no such thing possible for its elevation save the
widest, largest, highest, improvement. Such were our friends and
patrons in New England in New York, Pennsylvania, a few among
the Scotch Presbyterians and the "Friends" in grand old North Car¬
olina; a great company among the Cohgregationalists of the East,
nobly represented down to the present, by the "American Mission¬
ary Society," which tolerates no stint for the Negro intellect in its
grand solicitudes. But these were exceptional.
12
Down to the year 1825,1 know of no Academy or College which
would open its doors to a Negro.* In the South it was a matter of
absolute legal disability. In the North, it was the ostracism of uni¬
versal caste-sentiment. The theological schools of the land, and
of all names, shut their doors against the black man. An eminent
friend of mine, the noble, fervent, gentlemanly Rev. Theodore S.
Wright, then a Presbyterian licentiate, was taking private lessons in
theology, at Princeton; and for this offense was kicked out of one of
its halls.
In the year 1832 Miss Prudence Crandall opened a private school
for the education of colored girls; and it set the whole State of Con¬
necticut in a flame. Miss Crandall was mobbed, and the school was
broken up.
The year following, the trustees of Canaan Academy in New
Hampshire opened its doors to Negro youths; and this act set
the people of that state on fire. The farmers of the region
assembled with 90 yoke of oxen, dragged the Academy into a swamp,
and a few weeks afterward drove the black youths from the town.
These instances will suffice. They evidence the general state¬
ment, i. e. that the American mind has refused to foster and to culti¬
vate the Negro intellect. Join to this a kindred fact, of which there
is the fullest evidence. Impelled, at times, by pity, a modicum of
schooling and training has been given the Negro; but even this,
almost universally, with reluctance, with cold criticism, with micro¬
scopic scrutiny, with icy reservation, and at times, with ludicrous
limitations.
Cheapness characterizes almost all the donations of the American
people to the Negro:—Cheapness, in all the past, has been the regi¬
men provided for the Negro in every line of his intellectual, as well
as his lower life. And so, cheapness is to De the rule in the future, as
well for his higher, as for his lower life:—cheap wagfes and cheap food,
cheap and rotten huts; cheap and dilapidated schools; cheap and
stinted weeks of schooling; cheap meeting houses for worship; cheap
and ignorant ministers; cheap theological training; and now, cheap
learning, culture and civilization!
Noble exceptions are found in the grand literary circles in
which Mr. Ho wells moves— manifest in his generous editing of our
own Paul Dunbar's poems. But this generosity is not general, even
in the world of American letters. '
You can easily see this in the attempt, now-a-days, to side-track
*"Oberlin College" in Ohio wat the first opening its doors to the Negro in 1836.
J3
the Negro intellect, and to place it under limitations never laid upon
any other class.
The elevation of the Negro has been a moot question for a gen¬
eration past, But even to-day what do we find the general reliance of
the American mind in determinating this question ? Almost uni¬
versally the resort is to material agencies! The ordinary, and some¬
times the extraordinary American is unable to see that the struggle
of a degraded people for elevation is, in its very nature, a warfare,
and that its main weapon is the cultivated and scientific mind.
Ask the great men of the land how this Negro problem is to be
solved, and then listen to the answers that come from divers classes
of our white fellow-citizens. The merchants and traders of our great
cities tell us—"The Negro must be taught to work;" and they will
pour out their moneys by thousands to train him to toil. The clergy
in large numbers, cry out—''Industrialism is the only hope of the
Negro;" for this is the bed-rock, in their opinion, of Negro evangel¬
ization! "Send him to Manual Labor Schools," cries out another set
of philanthropists, "Hie haec, hoc," is going to prove the ruin of the
Negro" says the Rev. Steele, an erudite Southern Savan. ''You
must begin at the bottom with the Negro," says another eminent
authority—as though the Negro had been living in the clouds, and
had never reached the bottom. Says the Honorable George T.
Barnes, of Georgia—"The kind of education the Negro should receive
should not be very refined nor classical, but adapted to his present
condition:" as though there is to be no future for the Negro.
And so you see that even now, late in the 19th century, in this
land of learning and science, the creed is—"Thus far and no far¬
ther", i. e. for the American black man.
One would suppose from the universal demand for the mere
industrialism for this race of ours, that the Negro had been going
daily to dinner parties, eating terrapin and indulging in champagne;
and returning home at night, sleeping on beds of eiderdown; break-
fasting in the morning in his bed, aud then having his valet to
clothe him daily in purple and fine linen—all these 250 years of his
sojourn in this land. And then, just now, the American people, tired
of all this Negro luxury, was calling him, for the first time, to blister
his hands with the hoe, and to learn to supply his needs by sweatful
toil in the cotton fields.
Listen a moment, to the wisdom of a great theologian, and with¬
al as great philanthropist, the Rev. Dr. Wayland, of Philadelphia.
Speaking, not long since, of the "Higher Education" of the colored
M
people of the South, he said "that this subject concerned about
8,000,000 of our fellow-citizens, among whom are probably 1,500,000
voters. The education suited to these people is that which should
be suited to white people under the same circumstances. These peo¬
ple are bearing the impress which was left on them by two centuries
of slavery and several centuries of barbarism. This education must
begin at the bottom. It must first of all produce the power of self-
support to assist them to better their condition. It should teach
them good citizenship and should build them up morally. It should
be, first, a good English education. They should be imbued with the
knowledge of the Bible. They should have an industrial education.
An industrial education leads to self-support and to the elevation of
their condition. Industry is itself largely an education, intellectual¬
ly and morally, and, above all, an education of character. Thus we
should make these people self-dependent. This education will do a-
way with pupils being taught Latin and Greek, while they do not
know the rudiments of English."
Just notice the cautious, restrictive, limiting nature of this advice!
Observe the lack of largeness, freedom and generosity in it. Dr.
Wayland, I am sure, has never specialized just such a regimen
for the poor Italians, Hungarians or Irish, who swarm, in lowly
degradation, in immigrant ships to our shores. No ! for them he
wants, all Americans want, the widest, largest culture of the land;
the instant opening, not simply of the common schools; and then an
easy passage to the bar, the legislature, and even the judgeships of
the nation. And they oft times get there.
But how different the policy with the Negro. He must have
"an education which begins at the bottom." "He should have an
industrial education," &c. His education must, first of all, produce
the power of self-support, &c.
Now, all this thought of Dr. Wayland is all true. But, my friends,
it is all false, too; and for the simple reason that it is only half truth.
Dr, Wayland seems unable to rise above the plane of burden-bearing
for the Negro. He seems unable to gauge the idea of the Negro
becoming a thinker. He seems to forget that a race of thoughtless
toilers are destined to be forever a race of senseless boys; for only
beings who think are men.
How pitiable it is to see a great good man be-fuddled by a half
truth. For to allege "Industrialism" to be the grand agency in the
elevation of a race of already degraded labourers, is as much a mere
platitude as to say, "they must eat and drink and sleep;" for man can-
IS
not live without these habits. But they never civilize man; and civil¬
ization is the objective point in the movement for Negro elevation.
Labor, just like eating and drinking, is one of the inevitabilities of
life; one of its positive necessities. And the Negro has had it for
•centuries; but it has never given him manhood. It does not now,
in wide areas of population, lift him up to moral and social elevation.
Hence the heed of a new factor in his life. The Negro needs light:
light thrown in upon all the circumstances of his life. The light of
civilization.
Dr. Wayland fails to see two or three important things in this
Negro problem:—
(a) That the Negro has no need to go to a manual labor
school.* He has been for two hundred years and more, the greatest
laborer in the land. He is a laborer now: and he must always be a
laborer, or he must die. But:
(b) Unfortunately for the Negro, he has been so wretchedly
ignorant that he has never known the value of his sweat and toil.
He has been forced into being an unthinking labor-machine. And
this he is, to a large degree, to-day under freedom.
(c) Now the great need of the Negro, in our day and time, is
intelligent impatience at the exploitation of his labor, on the one
hand; on the other hand courage to demand a larger share of the
wealth which his toil creates for others.
It is not a mere negative proposition that settles this question.
It is not that the Negro does not need the hoe, the plane, the plough,
and the anvil. It is the positive affirmation th&t the Negro needs the
light of cultivation; needs it to be thrown in upon all his toil, upon
his whole life and its environments.
What he needs is CIVILIZATION. He needs the increase of
his higher wants, of his mental and spiritual needs. This, mere
animal labor has never given him, and never can give him. But it
will come to him, as an individual, and as a class, just in proportion
* "I am not so old as some of my young friends mav suspect, but I am too old to go
into the business ot'carrying coals to Newcastle.' * * * * The colored citizen of the
U. S. has already graduated with respectable standing from a course of 250 years in the
University of the old-time type of Manual labor. The South of to-day is what we see it
largely because the colored men and women at least during the past 250 years,have not been
lazv 'cumberers of the ground,' but the grand army of laborer* that has wrestled with nature
and Jed these 16 States out of the woods thus far on the high road to mate ial presperity.
It is not especially necessary that the 2,000,000 of our colored children and youth in the
southern common schools should be warned against laziness, and what has always and
everywhere come of that since the foundation of the world."
The Rev. A. D. Mayo, M. A., LL. D.
Address before State Teachers' Association (Colored)
Birmingham, Ala.
i6
as the higher culture comes to his leaders and teachers, and so gets
into his schools, academies and colleges; and then enters his pulpits;
and so filters down into his families and his homes; and the Negro
learns that he is no longer to be a serf, but that he is to bare his
strong brawny arm as a laborer; not to make the white man a
Croesus, but to make himself a man. He is always to be a laborer;
but now, in these da3^s of freedom and the schools, he is to be a
laborer with intelligence, enlightenment and manly ambitions.
But, when his culture fits him for something more than a field
hand or a mechanic, he is to have an open door set wide before him !
And that culture, according to his capacit3r, he must claim as his
rightful heritage, as a man:—not stinted training, not a caste educa¬
tion, not a Negro curriculum.
The Negro Race in this land must repudiate this absurd notion
which is stealing on the American mind. The Race must declare
that it is not to be put into a single groove; and for the simple reason
(i) that man was made by his Maker to traverse the whole circle of
existence, above as well as below; and that universality is the
kernel of all true civilization, of all race elevation. And (2) that the
Negro mind, imprisoned for nigh three hundred years, needs breadth
and freedom, largeness, altitude, and elasticity; not stint nor rigidity,
nor contractedness.
But the "Gradgrinds" are in evidence on all sides, telling us that
the colleges and scholarships given us since emancipation, are all a
mistake; and that the whole system must be reversed. The convic¬
tion is widespread that the Negro has no business in the higher walks
of scholarship; that, for instance, Prof. Scarborough has no right to
labor in philology; Professor Kelly Miller in mathematics; Professor
DuBois, in history; Dr. Bowen, in theology; Professor Turner, in
science; nor Mr. Tanner in art. There is no repugnance to the Negro
buffoon, and the Negro scullion; but so soon as the Negro stands
forth as an intellectual being, this toad of American prejudice, as at
the touch of Ithuriel's spear, starts up a devil!
It is this attitude, this repellant, this forbidding attitude of the
American mind, which forces the Negro in this land, to both rec¬
ognize and to foster the talent and capacity of his own race, and to
strive to put that capacity and talent to use for the race. I have de¬
tailed the dark and dreadful attempt to stamp that intellect out of
existence. It is not only a past, it is also, modified indeed, a present
fact; and out of it springs the need of just such an organization as the
Negro Academy.
n
Now, gentlemen and friends, seeing that the American mind in
the general, revolts from Negro genius, the Negro himself is duty
bound to see to the cultivation and the fostering of his own race-
capacity, This is the chief purpose of this Academy. Our special
mission is the encouragement of the genius and talent in our own race.
Wherever we see great Negro ability it is our office to light upon it
not tardily, not hesitatingly; but warmly, ungrudgingly, enthusiasti¬
cally, for the honor of our race, and for the stimulating self-sacrifice
in upbuilding the race. Fortunately for us, as a people, this year has
given us more than ordinary opportunity for such recognition. Never
before, in American history, has there been such a large discovery of
talent and genius among us.
Early in the year there was published by one of our members, a
volume of papers and addresses, of more than usual excellence.
You know gentlemen, that, not seldom, we have books and pamphlets
from the press which, like most of our newspapers, are beneath the
dignity of criticism. In language, in style, in grammar and in
thought they are often crude and ignorant and vulgar. Not so with
" Talks for the I'imes" by Prof. Crogman, of Clark University. It is
a book with largess of high and noble common sense; pure and
classical in style; with a large fund of devoted racialism; and replete
everywhere with elevated thoughts. Almost simultaneously with
the publication of Professor Crogman's book, came the thoughtful
and spicy narrative of Rev. Matthew Anderson of Philadelphia. The
title of this volume is "Presbyterianismj its relation to the Negro" but
the title cannot serve as a revelation of the racy and spirited story of
events in the career of its author. The book abounds with stirring
incidents, strong remonstrance, clear and lucid argument, powerful
reasonings,the keenest satire; while, withal, it sets forth the wide
needs of the Race, and gives one of the strongest vindications of its
character and its capacity. *
Soon after this came the first publication of our Academy. And
you all know the deep interest excited by the two papers, the first
issue of this Society. They have attracted interest and inquiry
where the mere declamatory effusions, or, the so-called eloquent
harangues of aimless talkers and political wire-pullers would fall
like snowflakes upon the waters. The papers of Prof. Kelly Miller
and Prof. Da Bois have reached the circles of scholars and thinkers
* I owe Mr. Anderson an apology for omitting this references to his book on the deliv¬
ery of this address.; It was prepared while its author was in a foreign land; but had
Dassed entirely from his memory in the preparation of this address.
18
in this country. So consummate was the handling of Hoffman's
"Race Traits and Tendencies" by Prof. Miller, that we may say that
it was the most scientific defense of the Negro ever made in this
country by a man of our own blood: accurate, pointed, painstaking,
and I claim conclusive.
The treatise of Prof. Du Bois upon the "Conservation of Race."
separated itself, in tone and coloring, from the ordinary effusions of
literary work in this land. It rose to the dignity of philosophical in¬
sight and deep historical inference. He gave us, in a most lucid and
original method, and in a condensed form, the long settled conclu¬
sions of Ethnologists and Anthropologists upon the question of Race.
This treatise moreover, furnished but a limited measure of our
indebtedness to his pen and brain. Only a brief time before our
assembly last year, Prof. Du Bois had given a large contribution to
the literature of the nation as well as to the genius of the race. At
that time he had published a work which will, without doubt, stand
permanently, as authority upon its special theme. "The Suppression
of the Slave Trade" is, without doubt, the one unique and special au¬
thority upon that subject, in print. It is difficult to conceive the
possible creation of a similar work, so accurate and painstaking, so
full of research, so orderly in historical statement, so rational in its
conclusions. It is the simple truth, and at the same time the high¬
est praise, the statement of one Review, that " Prof. Du Bois has ex¬
hausted his subject " This work is a step forward in the literature
of the Race, and a stimulant to studious and aspiring minds among
us.
One further reference, that is, to the realm of Art.
The year '97 will henceforth be worthy of note in our his¬
tory. As a race, we have, this year, reached a high point in intellec¬
tual growth and expression.
In poetry and painting, as well as in letters and thought, the
Negro has made, this year, a character.
On my return home in October, I met an eminent scientific
gentleman; and one o£ the first remarks he made to me was—"Well,
Dr. Crummell, we Americans have been well taken down in Paris,
this year. Why," he said, "the prize in painting was taken by a
colored young man, a Mr. Tanner from America. Do you know
him ?" The reference was to Mr. Tanner's " Raising of Lazarus," a
painting purchased by the French Government, for the famous
Luxembourg Gallery. This is an expectional honor, rarely bestowed
upon any American Artist. Well may we all be proud of this, and
19
with this we may join the idea that Tanner, instead ot having a hoe
in his hand, or digging in a trench, as the faddists on industrialism
would fain persuade us, has found his right place at the easel with
artists
Not less distinguished in the world of letters is the brilliant
career of our poet-friend and co-laborer, Mr. Paul Dunbar. It was
my great privilege last summer to witness his triumph, on more than
one occasion, in that grand metropolis of Letters and Literature, the
city of London; as well as to hear of the high value set upon his
work, by some of the first scholars and literati of England. Mr.
Dunbar has had his poems republished in London by Chapman &
Co.; and now has as high a reputation abroad as he has here in
America, where his luminous genius has broken down the bars, and
with himself, raised the intellectual character of his race in the
world's consideration.
These cheering occurrences, these demonstrations of capacity,
give us the greatest encouragement in the large work which is
before this Academy. Let us enter upon that work, this year, with
high hopes, with large purposes, and with calm, and earnest persis¬
tence. I trust that we shall bear in remembrance that the work we
have undertaken is our special function; that it is a work which calls
for cool thought, for laborious and tireless painstaking, and for clear
discrimination; that it promises nowhere wide popularity, or, exu¬
berant eclat; that very much of its ardent work is to be carried on
in the shade; that none of its desired results will spring from' spon¬
taneity; that its most prominent features are the demands of duty to
a needy people; and that its noblest rewards will be the satisfaction
which will spring from having answered a great responsibility,
and having met the higher needs of a benighted and struggling Race.
The American Negro Academy
Organized March 5, 1897
o
OBJECTS;
The Promotion of Literature, Science, and Art.
The Culture of a form of Intellectual Taste.
The Fostering of Higher Education.
The Publication of Scholarly Work.
The Defense of the Ne^ro against Vicious Assaults.
o o
REV. F. J. GRIMKE.
Recording Secretary.
REV. L. B. MOORE.
Corresponding Secretary.
J. W. CROMWELL. 1439 Pierce Place, Washington, D. C.
■o
President.
REV. ALEX. CRUMMELL.
Vice Presidents.
W. E. B. Da BOIS,
W. S. SCARBOROUGH
REV. J. ALBERT JOHNSON,
W. H. CROGMAN.
Treasurer.
Executive Committee.
REV. ALEX. CRUMMELL,
REV, F. J. GRIMKE,
J. W. CROMWELL,
CHAS. C. COOK.
KELLY MILLER.