The Opportunity and Obligation of the Educated
Class of the Colored Race in the
Southern States.
An Address delivered before the Agricultural and Mechanical
College for Negroes, at Normal, Alabama, iVlay 29,
1899, by Rev. A. D. Mayo, A. M., LL. D.
I do not appear before the Faculty and students of the Agricultural
and Mechanical College to discuss what the newspapers and politicians
call "The Race Question" in the Southern United States. What is here
called the "Race Problem," under another form, is equally pressing in
the Northern States of the Union. It is only one section of the raeMkf
problem raised by that new departure in human affairs, the original
declaration of American Independence; fought out through eight ter¬
rible years of the War of the Revolution, and finally embodied in the
constitution of a republican government for the United States of
America, declared substantially by Mr. Gladstone; the most remarkable
achievement of original statesmanship ever struck out by any body of
men in the history of mankind.
The motive power of that new government and order of society,
now a century old; the great political dynamo that generates the force
which moves and illumines the national life, is the raeHni* idea, then
for the first time deliberately adopted by any government, that it is
possible to construct a nationality in which "all orders and conditions
of people" can live together, each man, woman and child a vital part
of the whole, every member protected in all the fundamental rights of
human nature, including the sovereign right to strive for his own
highest possibility of manhood or womanhood, and all working together
for the common good.
That lofty idea of our new American nationality is only the trans¬
lation into public affairs of the idea of human nature and possibility
announced by Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's
Prayer, the Beatitudes, the Golden Rule, and the Law of Love. After
an eighteen century struggle upward out of the darkness of a paganism
which held to the fundamental heresy of antiquity, that every superior
man was a brevet deity and all the rest of the world human trash, "in
the fullness of time" this great American new departure sent greeting
back to Palestine and began the mighty experiment of educating all
2
orders and conditions of people upward toward that American Sover¬
eign Citizenship, which, truly achieved, is the loftiest position in the
world, made possible to every son and daughter of God.
Of course, it was not to be expected that ideals so lofty could at
once be wrought into the actual life of any people. The entire history
of this republic during its first century is only a record of the intermit¬
tent progress toward this exalted declaration. It was only after the
most terrible civil war of modern times, involving the slaughter of half
a million of the flower of American youth, and the disappearance of
the earnings of an entire generation of the people in the form of pow¬
der and shot; with the complete overthrow of the entire organization
of human society through half the national area and its reorganization
through the entire extent; that we were able to include the whole
American people in the world's great roll of honor, American citizen¬
ship, and with that the perilous attempt to confer on every man the
last and most eminent right of free suffrage. Even this was only an¬
other attempt to legislate an ideal into the common life of the nation—
an attempt whose realization remains for our children.
But this has been gained. "The past is secure." We begin the
twentieth century of our Lord and the second century of the nation
with the all-round agreement that hereafter this sovereign obligation
to educate all orders and conditions of people towards the high ideal
of American society shall proceed by the agencies of peace. "Peace
hath its victories more renowned than war."
From this time onward, all the forces of the higher civilization of
the twentieth century are to be concentrated and worked to their
uttermost to solve the original American problem: How can all these
people who, since the dawn of history, have lived in a chronic state of
active warfare only broken by more or less brief periods of truce, here,
in the world's greatest republic, be educated up to living together in a
government and order of society consecrated to the highest welfare of
all? And for the solution of this mighty problem the American people
presents to the world the most original of all its many "new inven¬
tions," the people's common school. This, the most central and pow¬
erful of all our present agencies of American civilization, is practically
a little republic, planted in 250,000 school houses, in every State, Terri¬
tory, county, city, township and hamlet of this broad land. It is, when
truly understood, fitly organized and well conducted, the most complete
and influential representative of the practical religion announced and
lived by the great Teacher, Statesman and Savior of mankind.
The American ideal of manhood and womanhood is the same as
that announced and lived by him, so fitly named by the poet; J'the
first true gentleman that ever lived." The motto of "the first society"
in this republic is simply the old scripture: "Let him who is greatest
among you be your servant." The American ideal of personal super-
3
iority that overrides every theory of race, class, culture, power, man¬
hood or womanhood of the past, is that all superiority of the individual
is only another opportunity to serve the whole. We shall never reach
the impracticable dream of the optimistic philanthropist—a millennium
where all people will he equal in all respects. The law of human
superiority through its myriad of forms will forever assert itself; it is
to-day as relentless and masterful here as in any of the older nation¬
alities or in any period of history. All discussion of this most puerile
of fancies is idle breath. The only question left us to discuss, by the
providence that sets limits and bounds to every soul, is what are the
opportunities and obligations of every man, every class, every race, in
its relations to the mass of mankind? And here we face the ever¬
lasting ordinance: the Son of man and Son of God comes into this
world "not to be ministered unto, but to minister." The end of all
activity in the family, the church, the school, the State, through all the
higher agencies of civilization, in every Christian land, is to educate the
whole people into the complete possession and use of their own superi¬
orities towards the idea of the law of service. This is all there is in
the "Race Question" of the South, and the larger question of the wel¬
fare of all the races and classes now represented in the seventy-five
millions of the American people.
It is doubtless an interesting question, What are the opportunities
and obligations of the sixty millions of the American people, made up
from the ingathering here of all the European nationalities, towards
the eight millions of- new-made colored citizens in the United States,
and the ten millions of strangers in the islands of the sea that may
be thrown upon us by the providence of the past year of successful war?
But I do not discuss this question to-day, although never declining to
discuss it, when presented upon proper conditions, as an American
and not a local or sectional question, at a fit time and place. To-day I
propose to talk, not at long, but at short range. I propose to inquire,
What are the opportunities and obligations of the one hundred thou¬
sand more or less youth of the colored race who, in contrast with the
remaining seven millions, nine hundred thousand, may be called edu¬
cated in respect to this vast multitude, more than twice as numerous as
the entire population of the United States under the first Presidency of
Washington? For this body of the one hundred thousand colored peo¬
ple this inquiry transcends all others, just now, in importance. For,
according to the way in which this opportunity and obligation are
understood, accepted and lived out by this one hundred thousand, will
depend, not only the present welfare of the eight millions of the colored
race at home, but in large measure the future policy of the nation in
dealing with the coming multitudes that the providence of God may
bring, through years to come, within the expanding influence of the
national life.
i
Let us, at first, try to understand the actual condition of affairs
among the eight millions of the colored race in the Southern States,
as far as relates to their higher development. The air is darkened, and
the sunlight of common sense, not to say common humanity, is now
obscured by a flock of theories. But we may as well remember that this
great problem is finally to be solved by those who best understand
the facts of the case, and have the broadest and most profound appre¬
hension of the eternal principles of justice and love, to which all
our human affairs must sooner or later adjust themselves.
What is the actual condition of the eight millions of the colored race
in these sixteen United States, which creates the opportunity and
obligation of the one hundred thousand, more or less, who to-day, by the
favor of providence and largely through the benevolence of friendly
people in both sections of the country, are recognized as the educated
class?
After twenty years of careful observation in every Southern State,
each of which I know geographically and educationally as well as I
know my native State (Massachusetts), I see a few evident facts.
1. I see that no people in human history has made such
progress out of the underworld of paganism and barbarism, from which
we all emerged, in three hundred years, as the colored people of the
United States. I certainly do not undertake to defend the institution
of negro slavery, which, every first-class statesman and moralist of the
South has denounced on moral, social, industrial and civic grounds.
But that man must be blind who does not see -that the five million
people who in 1865 stepped over the threshold of the nation's temple of
liberty, were in every essential respect another people than their ances¬
tors in the dark continent—perhaps the majority of whom were there
not a hundred and fifty years before. In all save the education that
comes through schools and books, the colored race, in 1865, at the close
of the Civil War, had laid the foundations of all education in the three
great acquirements that underlie our Christian civilization. They had
learned the art of continuous and profitable work. They had learned
the English language, the language of the peoples that lead in the idea
of constitutional republican government. They had accepted the Chris¬
tian religion, according to the creeds and ideals of conduct prevailing
among the vast majority of the American people. With all its defects
and diabolism, the American people, at that period, had made the most
headway in the organization of Christian ideals of life in their form of
society and government, of any people. The whole people was respon¬
sible for the condition of these five millions, of whom it could be said
that, on the whole, its transition from African barbarism and paganism
to American citizenship had been accomplished with less suffering and
general demoralization than the similar elevation of any European
people during the past thousand years.
5
How this came about no theologian, sociologist or statesman has
yet been fully able to explain. But practical, everyday men, who are
doing the work of this world, have come to the conclusion, after
eighteen centuries of a half-paganized and half-Christianized civiliza¬
tion, that God Almighty is the great moral economist of the universe.
Whatever may be the status of man as he comes into this world, no
man is permitted to get out of this world until, by his own will, or over
his will, he has contributed something to the common cause of the
uplift of the human race. If there indeed be an eternal hell, no eternal
sir.ner can get there without, at some point in his doleful journey, he
pays toll at some gate of heaven. No government was ever so weak,
despotic, or base that it did not leave some idea, law or custom that
made a better government possible. No institution was ever so selfish
or corrupt that society did not draw upon it for some contribution to a
more wholesome social order. The old Constitution of the United
States might have been, in one sense, what Mr. Garrison persisted in
calling it—"A covenant with hell." Like every man, every com¬
munity, every nation, from the beginning, it doubtless had in it great
possibilities of evil, and with everything else in this world, took its
turn in "raising hell." But the relation of the American people to the
present eight millions of colored American citizens will finally be
judged by history, from th& fact of the progress of the colored race
during its two hundred and fifty years' residence in the country, as re¬
vealed by its condition in the year of final emancipation, in 1865.
Indeed, so evident was this fact that the Northern people, then
representing the Union, in due time after the close of the Civil War, was
moved to confer upon these five millions of freedmen the highest
earthly distinction—full American citizenship.
No man whose opinion is worthy of consideration now maintains
that this great act was done in a spirit of revenge, with the view of the
permanent humiliation or harm of the white people of the South. It
was doubtless done in partial ignorance of the condition of Southern
society. It now certainly appears the most hazardous experiment of the
kind in history. But it was only an extension of the established prac¬
tice of the whole country which, in 1860, had already admitted to full
citizenship great multitudes of the lower orders of European immi¬
grants; hundreds of thousands of whom were, in several essential ways,
less prepared to use worthily this supreme gift than many correspond¬
ing thousands of the more intelligent of the colored folk. In fact, this
act was far more a compliment to the training of the colored people
in the South than a vindictive political measure. And no statesman
to-day is wise enough to decide with confidence, whether things in the
United States would have been, on the whole, better at the beginning
of the second century of the national life had not this happened. If we
are to believe half we hear and read concerning the present material
6
progress of the South, and its claim as a fit residence for the best who
will come to it, we can not understand how a people, so depressed
thirty-five years ago, could have done much better than they seemed
to have done already.
But the most grievous result of this experiment has not been
to the white, but to the colored man himself. Every European people
has been compelled to reach its present condition of political and
social emancipation through a thousand years of war, pestilence and
famine. Every step in the rough road has been gained only after a
generation, sometimes a century, of conflict, that has made Europe
the cemetery of the human race. But the American colored man re¬
ceived more than any European people has yet gained, with no con¬
spicuous effort of his own. Indeed, through the Civil War, the aid and
comfort given to the Confederacy from the service of the colored con¬
tingent at home and in the field was of more importance than the
service, however faithful, of the one hundred thousand colored soldiery
who certainly, according to the reports of the day, "fought nobly" for
the Union. Still, the everlasting law abides, that nothing worth having
in this world is won and held save through the extreme of toil, suffering
and sacrifice. And the real tragedy of the present situation is, that our
eight millions of colored American citizens must now pass through this
•entire experience of toil, suffering and sacrifice, after having received
the greatest gift of the ages, in order to secure it for their children, lest
it should be taken from them even in the face of constitution, law and
all the outward forms of possession. The work of gaining and holding
the prize is transferred from their "previous" to their present condition.
Our eight million of colored people in the United States are now pass¬
ing through their own wilderness on their way to the promised land,
which, to-day, to all save a superior class, is like a far-away mountain
range on a distant horizon, sighted now and then through clouds and
storms and mists by the dwellers in the valley below.
Doubtless there are still some great advantages in the situation.
It is such an advantage as no people in history has yet enjoyed, that the
final destiny of this people can be wrought out through the agencies of
peace. We are certainly approaching that new and blessed era when
"Sword, Pestilence and Famine," the three terrible teachers of the past,
are being remanded to ancient history. In their place the colored man
is now invited to take his place in the great university of the new
American life, whose faculty consists of Professor Free Labor, Pro¬
fessor Free Church, and Professor Free School, with the good will of
every wise and benevolent man and woman in Christendom, and such a
prize on the gleaming mountain top has never yet allured the hopes
and strung the nerves of any race of men. Surely no people on earth,
at any time in a similar condition of the colored race in these States,
has had so much to encourage it, so many friends, such powerful forces
7
working in its behalf, as these eight millions, represented by this insti¬
tution of learning and civilization in which we are gathered to-day.
2. But another thing I see, just as plainly as what has now been
stated. I can not help seeing that more than half the eight millions of
these colored people are still weighed with the bottom disability to the
use and enjoyment of full American citizenship, an illiteracy that still
holds practically in bondage 60 per cent, of the entire number. In the six
States where what is called the "Race Problem," is now the most strin¬
gent—Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi and
North Carolina—this illiteracy, during the present decade, has ranged
from 60 per cent, of all persons over ten years of age in North Carolina
and Mississippi, to 64 per cent, in South Carolina, 67 per cent, in Georgia,
69 per cent, in Alabama, and even to 72 per cent, in Louisiana. In the
District of Columbia, where the national government, in connection
with the District, supports the best common school system in the coun¬
try for the colored race, 35 per cent, of these people over ten years of
age are illiterate, largely from the constant drifting of the poorer
classes from the neighboring States.
It is certainly a great tribute to the American people of all sec¬
tions that during the past thirty-five years this illiteracy of the colored
race has been reduced 40 per cent. Especially is it honorable to the
Southern people, that one hundred millions of dollars have been ex¬
pended, chiefly by the white race, under conditions that we all know,
during the past thirty years, for the education of the freedmen in com¬
mon schools. It is also honorable that the North, and the nation, from
the beginning of the Civil War to the present day, have probably con¬
tributed an equal sum. The Christian people of the Northern States
are now spending more than one million of dollars a year, largely for
the superior education of Southern colored youth. But this does not
change the stubborn fact that sixty of every one hundred colored people
in our own sixteen Southern States, men, women and .children, abo«ve
the age of ten, are living to-day in the most unfortunate of all condi¬
tions—illiteracy.
We are all the time discussing this question of illiteracy at cross
purposes. It is regarded simply as an ignorance of letters; and we are
reminded that the use of letters, five hundred years ago, was the luxury
of the few, and that within the memory of living men the majority of
people in Christendom were in this condition. We are called anew to
admire the model virtues of people unable to read and write. An
entire literature has sprung up concerning the colored race, in which
the moral and social excellencies of the old-time slave population are
duly magnified, sometimes to the extent that we suspect the author
never heard of a respectable colored man who could read and write.
But all conditions of this sort are perilous or harmless, according to
their social and civil environment. Illiteracy in these United States
8
to-day is no longer an amiable or, except under conditions rapidly
passing away, an excusable weakness. Illiteracy in Alabama to-day
means Ignorance, Superstition, Shiftlessness, Vulgarity and Vice, rolled
together in the person of one illiterate man or woman, and concen¬
trated as the bottom slum and slough of every American community.
It is indeed a great black ocean, pestilent, hideous, malarious, under
every State, community and family, steaming up death and destruction
through all the lowlands of our American semi-civilization and drifting
in its poisonous moral and social atmosphere through the open door
and window of every palace in the land.
The only condition under which ignorance is apparently a harmless
element in society is in a social order, organized according to the old-
time patriarchal and paternal method, guided by an aristocracy of
intelligence and character that protects the masses from their foes
without, and their own folly and unrighteousness. Doubtless in some
of its localities, and everywhere in some of its aspects, the institution
of American slavery could be mentioned in this connection. Indeed,
even the desire for, not to say the possession of, letters, would not
only have been a constant peril to the institution itself, but, under ordi¬
nary conditions, intelligence could scarcely be regarded a blessing to
the enslaved. But all this is ancient history. To-day every ignorant
man, woman or child in this republic is in a state of siege from the
Grand Army that marches under its four generals-in-chief—Superstition,
Shiftlessness, Vulgarity and Vice. His ignorance is not only his great
misfortune, but his deadliest temptation to all varieties of folly, weak¬
ness and transgression, which land their victim in a state more hopeless
than any form of "natural depravity."
And even more than this, the illiteracy of any considerable American
class is the greatest peril to every grade of people above it. No Amer¬
ican community, Anglo-Saxon or otherwise, however exalted by wealth
and culture and social refinement and civic power, even by the Chris¬
tian religion, as it is now understood, preached and practiced, is proof
against the terrible temptation from a race in the present condition of
60 per cent, of the colored people of these sixteen States. I make no
charge, and have none to make, concerning the moral superiority or
inferiority of the Southern people in all that concerns good American
manhood and womanhood. They, doubtless, like all portions of the
American people, have peculiar superstitions, shadowed by the defects
that are the peculiar temptation of every superior or dominant race.
But no people in history has been able to resist the perpetual influence
of having among it another people, mixed up with everything in their
daily life, always accessible, dependent, and always in the way in the
hour of temptation, sixty of every hundred in the condition that every
illiterate colored man or woman must be; each of them, meanwhile,
endowed with all the powers of full American citizenship. As well
y
might a colony expect to avoid the blight of malaria in the great Dismal
Swamp, or expect to live in health and comfort with the basement
story of their houses under water in a Mississippi River overflow, a
turbid ocean, a hundred miles wide, choked with drift, swarming with
all the fearful, loathsome and malignant creatures driven from their
own haunts by the frightful invasion. It is not in the South alone
that this terrible scourge of colored illiteracy is manifest. It is a
national breeding place of all manner of moral sickness and mental
perversion, touching the most remote outpost of the republic, turning
the national mind and conscience upside down, with now and then an
explosion, as from the bottomless pit, of wrath, fear and hatred, that
often reveals the- best man and the most saintly woman to themselves
as a possible rebel against every human sanctity and every ordinance
of justice, order and common humanity, established by the experience
of the human race.
Now I am not here to-day to lecture the white people of these
States, as I have been talking and writing to and about them for the
past twenty years, with the encouragement and general assent and
approval of their foremost people in every State, city and hamlet
visited, concerning their duty in this emergency. I am not here to
declare that the North should repent of its great failure, in Congress,
ten years ago, to put forth the mighty hand of the nation to enable the
South to increase the quantity and improve the quality of the schooling
it had already established for both races of its people. I am here to-day
to call attention to the opportunity and the obligation of the one hun¬
dred thousand, more or less, of colored youth, below the age of thirty-
five, all born under the American flag, all American citizens, concern¬
ing the deliverance of one-half the race out of the submerged district,
the lowest slough and slum of the nation, which we still choose to
cover up by the fine dictionary word—Illiteracy.
3. For, at the opposite end of the social plateau of these eight mil¬
lions we find a body which, in contrast with the illiterates, may be
named an educated class. It is only by a sharp contrast that this dis¬
tinction can be awarded' to possibly more than a hundred thousand
young persons of both sexes, who, during the past thirty-five years,
have been enrolled for a longer or shorter period in the group of insti¬
tutions originally established by the churches and benevolent associa¬
tions of the North, but latterly supplemented by all the States of the
South, for the secondary, higher and industrial training of selected
colored youth. Within the past fifteen years every Southern State has
established one, or more than one, free school of the secondary, normal
and industrial grade, after the type of the famous Hampton Normal
and Industrial Institute, founded by General S. C. Armstrong, at
Hampton, Virginia, soon after the close of the Civil War. In the year
1896-97 there were one hundred and sixty-nine schools for the secondary
10
and higher education of colored youth in operation in these sixteen
States, with 1,795 professors and teachers, 1,008 of whom were women,
45,402 students, 25,159 girls, and 20,243 boys; 2,008 of these (1,526 males
and 582 females) were in college grades. In the secondary, the high
and academical grades there were 15,203 students, a majority of 2,000
girls. In the elementary, or what is known as the primary and gram¬
mar grades, there were 28,091 pupils—11,773 boys, and 16,318 girls.
Apart from these State normal and industrial seminaries, which, as
a rule, do not include the classics, and the pupils in attendance on an
increasing number of free high schools in cities, there would seem to
be at present some 2,410 students in classical, 974 in scientific, and
11,340 in higher English studies; 14,720 in all above the elementary
grades. In the normal classes, put few of which can be regarded as
professional other than in name, there were 5,081 students, about
equally divided by sex. There were only 295 students in "business
courses," of whom 179 were males. There were 1,311 professional
students named, the large majority in theology and medicine. Of the
13,581 included in industrial training, 8,611 were girls and 4,971 boys,
of whom 1,027 were studying farming, 1,496 carpentry, .and a smaller
number other mechanical occupations.
These schools report 224,794 volumes in libraries. The entire
value of their buildings, grounds, etc., is $7,714,958. Their annual
income is $1,045,278. All this, save $145,262 from tuition money, and
$271,890 from permanent funds, comes in the way of a benefaction
from the North, whence this entire plant of $7,700,000 has been derived.
Probably $3,000,000 have been given in permanent funds. Many of these
higher schools have been in existence for twenty or more years. More
than a dozen of them, established by the Northern churches, have
assumed the title "college" or "university," and are organized according
to the academical and collegiate methods of the leading denominational
seminaries in both sections of the country, fifty years ago, with such
additions especially in their industrial and normal departments, and
improved methods of teaching, as may have been found expedient.
It is impossible to determine the number of colored youth who,
since the year 1870, have been at different times enrolled in these six
hundred and sixty-nine seminaries of the secondary and higher educa¬
tion, and who, to a greater or less extent, have received a permanent
influence from such attendance.
The majority have doubtless profited more in their improved man¬
ners and morals than in their scholarship by this experience. Still, it
would seem impossible that any save a perverse or utterly careless
youth could spend even a year in one of these schools, in contact with
these often cultivated and always faithful teachers, really surrounded
by a new world, without becoming in some way a member of the edu¬
cational in contrast with the illiterate class.
11
It is probably not an over-estimate, and it may be an under¬
estimate, to say tliat bf the eight million colored people in the United
States, one hundred thousaud, under the age of thirty years, are
regarded by the masses of their own people as educated. Certainly more
than five hundred thousand, possibly one million, children and youth
of this race --during the thirty-five years since emancipation, have
entered manhood and womanhood with more schooling than George
Washington, John Marshall, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman,
Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Wilson, Horace Greeley,
George Peabody, and multitudes of men and women in all sections of
the country who are named m history or cherished in the memory of
important communities as leaders in the higher region of American
life during the first century of the republic. This is a great testimonial
to the capacity of the race the last to step over the threshold of civil¬
ized life in these modern days. And it should assure the most despon¬
dent friend of the negro that the destiny of these eight millions is safe
in charge of the American people. It is only necessary that it be itself
awakened to the one supreme obligation of every class in the republic,
the duty to learn the great American art of self-help, and follow its
own noblest and wisest leaders towards the "prize of the high calling,"
a complete American citizenship, the grandest prize that now tempts
the worthy ambitions of mankind.
Of this body of the educated one hundred thousand, twenty-seven
thousand are now reported as teachers of the one million, five hundred
thousand children enrolled in the public schools, nine hundred thou¬
sand of whom are in "average daily attendance."
The attendance of colored children and youth in public schools is
on the whole an encouraging tribute to the demand of this people for
education. There were 1,460,087 enrolled in all the public schools for
the race in 1896-97. There are 2,816,340 colored children and youth
between five and eighteen years of age in the sixteen Southern States,
32.65 per cent, of the entire school population of the South. Of this
number 51.81 per cent, were enrolled in public schools, against 67.69 per
cent, of the white children of similar grade. The average daily attend¬
ance of those enrolled in colored "schools was 61.95 per cent., in com¬
parison with 67.58 per cent, of the white. In 1897-98 there was one
colored teacher to every thirty-three colored pupils in average attend¬
ance at the Southern common schools. The annual cost of the public
schooling of these nine hundred thousand children in 1897-98 was
$6,575,000, with probably $2,000,000 additional for the secondary and
higher education. Of the public school expenditure, almost the entire
sum Is obtained by taxation of the white people of the South. But this
is simply in accordance with t^e American common school idea, which
is "that the property of the State shall educate the children of the
State. As the colored laboring class in the South, like the correspond-
12
ing white class in the North, is in large measure the creator of the
wealth of the country, it is no special hardship that the white property
owners of the South should largely support the common school for all.
But the historian of education will record to the enduring praise of
the 'Southern people that during the past thirty years, despite the
overwhelming destruction of property and demoralization of society
by the greatest civil war of modern times, it has invested $515,900,000
in public schools alone, and several other millions for the secondary
and higher education: $100,000,000 having been invested in the education
of children and grand-children of a people who, in 1860, were held in
chattel slavery and declared by the Supreme Court of the United States
not citizens of the Republic. And it is a cause of rejoicing to the coun¬
try that to-day there are more than one million colored children in the
public schools of the South, every one of whom was born a freeman,
under the American flag, a citizen of the United States.
4. Always and everywhere the most favored class is compelled to
deal with the loss favored portion of mankind, for its uplifting, through
the agency of the great intermediate multitude who walk in the middle
of the road, "the plain people," who are the "bone and sinew" of every
civilization. It is of this cldss of which the good Book says, "the com¬
mon people heard Jesus gladly." It is to this body, the 40 per cent, of
the colored race above ten years of age, who have risen out of the
almost absolute illiteracy of forty years ago, and the smaller class who,
still deprived of letters, are educated, educated by life, above their fel¬
lows, that the one million of the colored educated youth must turn for
the "rank and file" of the grand army of invasion of the dismal realm of
ignorance, superstition, shiftlessness, and vulgarity and vice that still
holds out against all efforts of a republican civilization working for its
regeneration since the emancipation of the race. For here, among the
better sort of those who have enlisted in the army of intelligence and
progress, will be found the most reliable advisers, the safest counsel¬
ors, the most faithful allies of the enthusiastic and devoted educated
young men. alnd young women, going forth to serve the Master by
"preaching the Gospel to every creature." And here, also, will be
found the well-to-do in worldly goods, who must be instructed in the
Christian idea of using money, saving on the lower to spend on the
upper side of life. And, above all, here is a solid, conservative class,
which will restrain the pernicious antics of the professional agitator,
visionary enthusiast, the chronic impracticable, and the cranks and
humbugs of every description, shaping the direction of a sound policy
concerning the public affairs and discerning the most effective manner
of meeting and repelling every assault upon the rights of the masses.
It was evident that, on the appearance of this great body of six
millions of new-made citizens of the United States, in 1870, a "nation
within a nation," the old saying would be verified: "Where the carcass
13
is, there the eagles will be gathered together." Such a temptation to
all sorts of plunderers and demagogues, clerical, political, and industrial,
was never at any previous time of our national history offered to the
evil-disposed and foolish well-intentioned who flocked around this
multitude. Every sane man can now see the result, and the period
of "reconstruction" stands out in history as even more unbreakable
than the four years of war.
But the cause of that mischief and misery was the condition of £he
six millions of people who, until freed by the "dread arbitrament 6f
war," had never known the meaning of freedom- or the significance of
that great boon of citizenship to which they were invited. And the
birds and beasts of prey that, for ten years, hovered about this devoted
multitude, were not all from beyond Mason's and Dixon's line. I have
never heard that there was ever any holding back of any class of selfish
and corrupt people, intent on the common cause of official plunder,
whi}e making a "blind" of a dependent, weak and confiding multitude.
Sin, like death, levels all distinctions in those who go about to com¬
pass unrighteousness. Let it be confessed that largely through fhe
ignorance of Southern life and the natural exasperation of a people,
through four years involved in horrid war for the preservation of the
Union, ever for those who were bent on destroying it, the new-made
negro citizen was exposed to such a temptation as could not be resisted,
with the result that even his greatest privilege, his new American citi¬
zenship, became to himself a "delusion and a snare."
But, happily for the opportunity of the one hundred thousand of the
new generation now called to the leadership of the race, they find in
the better sort, the 40 per cent, of their people who have seeil the light
of knowledge, a most efficient ally in their great enterprise, and not
only from the most worthy of this class, but from an increasing number
who have not enjoyed the opportunity of schools and letters, will come
forth, year by year, new levies of people who have no longer "any use"
for the "blind leaders of the blind," in the pulpit, on the platform, in
office, or as advisers in any department of common or public life. And,
of all the following to be desired by a wise and progressive leader, the
most desirable is a people, just in the condition in which several millions
of the colored race are now found. Nowhere do you find such a genuine
respect and even reverence for true and tried superiority; such a con¬
fiding regard in whoever proves himself as a reliable, sound and stead¬
fast friend of a people's cause, as here.
Indeed, one of the most inspiring and pathetic spectacles in Amer¬
ican life to-day is the attitude of hundreds of thousands of the better
sort of the colored folk before any man or woman, from either race or
section, approved as a leader able to lead a friend who is neither a
flatterer nor a fool; as rea,dy to declare the defects as to recognize the
virtues of his followers; as severe to restrain as courageous to lead the
u
advance. Here is such an opportunity for the highest achievement ol
good for great numbers of people as has never before, and may never
again, be offered to a superior class, called by God to go forth and lead
the wandering tribes out of the desert, across Jordan, into the promised
land.
For the present is a transitional period. A generation hence, with
the larger extension of education, the increase of comfort and a more
general prosperity, it will be far more difficult than now for any favored
one hundred thousand to go before and marshal the army of the Lord
for a new exodus out of any Egypt. To-day is the golden opportunity
for a supreme effort of the class that can honestly call on a generation
to set its face towards the future. Every young man or woman now
going forth from one of these great schools is accepted by his friends
and has a following, as a representative of good education and all the
indescribable blessings connected therewith. To every one of these
it can be said, as the Master in the Mount said to his new and untried
disciples: "Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill can not
be hid." You will be received with a great expectation and a hearty
welcome. And of you it can be said that this attitude of the mind and
heart of your constituency is of itself one of the greatest opportunities
given to man to do his uttermost for the uplifting of a race.
And it is a part of this great opportunity that even the illiterate, of
whom the majority are only in part involved in all the perils of their
condition, contide in you for the instruction of their children with a
mighty faith that you will send them out from the churches and the
schools far better and wiser than themselves, and that they will often
become, through their children, your most docile and devoted followers.
The greatest following of the noblest reformers of the world has often
been from the class that has been cast away as the offscouring of the
race by those who sit up in the high places of culture and power. Jesus
said to the proud Pharisee, the contemptuous Sadducee and the mocking
Scribe: "These publicans and harlots will go into the kingdom of God
before you." It was among the slaves, the obscure and afflicted and
oppressed lower orders of the Roman Empire that Paul and Peter and
the other ten found the materials to build the primitive Christian
Church. Even the "upper ten" of old revolutionary Boston "sailed away
at break of day" to Halifax when General George Washington marched
into town. The true reformer should never despise his audience or
turn his back upon any sincere following, for the "Word of God often
comes to the poor and lowly, and the child that was born in stable and
cradled in manger became the leader of the centuries and the Savior
of mankind.
Permit me, then, to ask the more thoughtful members of this young
army of the Lord, "one hundred thousand strong": "Do you, who, by
the blessings of God and the favor of your friends, have been able to
15
come up out of the darkness into the twilight of knowledge, where you
now abide, realize the grandeur*of your opportunity?" It is to be
acknowledged leaders toward the upper region of American life of a
people twice as numerous as the entire population of the republic under
the Presidency of Washington. Do you reply that you are still shut off
by the obstinate prejudice of race and class from much that every child
among the white people enjoys? True, at present, there are barriers,
not insurmountable, but difficult to be surmounted, and only by the
ablest and most distinguished of your race. You are shut out of what
is known as "good society"; i. e., the society that represents the average
social gentility of the day. Even in the North you are elbowed out of
many open avenues of industry; not by the people who saved the Union,
fought for your freedom and gave you American citizenship, but by
the Labor Unions—an association chiefly of immigrating European
laborers, working often under the most relentless despotism in America;
in the remorseless grip of a body of social, civic and industrial agitators,
who assume to determine who shall or shall not work for wages as a
free American citizen.
This movement, so imperious now, is drifting to a crisis, and the
time is at hand when the right to work of every man and woman,, with
the desire and ability, will be vindicated at all hazards. The illiterate
class of your race will probably be deprived of the right of suffrage
in all the Southern States, as the same class of any' race has been for a
generation in New England. Because many white people in the South¬
land, ignorant of books, are often otherwise competent for full citizen¬
ship, there will be discrimination. Possibly there are more serious
times ahead for the colored race than have yet been known since the
days of emancipation. All this is deplorable, especially in a republic;
for a republic is not a paternal government, but the self-government
of a self-reliant, self-supporting, self-helping citizenship; the hardest of
governments for a man who is still only a grown-up child.
But there is a compensation for all this for you to whom I speak.
There is one region of American life, and that the highest—the oppor¬
tunity of all others, worked and prayed for by the noblest of mankind—
that is yours without rivalship or resistance. Nowhere in this world
to-day is a body of one hundred thousand young men and women called
to such a ministry of service and sacrifice for the uplift of eight
millions of the human race as you. Any one hundred thousand young
people of any other race who should go work out with such a mission
as your own would be srpothered in the great multitude who are already
engaged in similar work, and only now and then one, a "survivor of
the fittest," would obtain a position where he could show himself for
what he was. But you stand on this high plateau of opportunity, the
observed of all observers, with no jealous or hostile body outside your
own race to hinder, and all Christian people, at home or abroad,
16-
applauding every success, giving generously to you of all sorts of good
gifts, bearing up your work on the wings of prayer, that signifies as
much to-day as in any of the days of old. You have not made this great
occasion for yourself, and it comes not as any reward of merit, but as
an invitation to prove yourselves fit "soldiers of the cross." Thi«
glorious and unique opportunity was created for you by the providence
of God. This standing place where you now are marshaled was gained
for you by the sacrifice of half a million patriotic lives and the inde¬
scribable sufferings of an entire section of our common country. The
continued benevolence of the friends of your people for a whole genera¬
tion has made it possible that you should be lifted up to this high mount
lOf opportunity and obligation. The "gracious favor of Almighty God,"
invoked by Abraham Lincoln in his proclamation of freedom, has called
you, not because you are especially worthy, but that you might be made
worthy to answer this summons from on high.
5. In view of all this, do you still complain concerning the good
things of this life that are still withliolden from you, as they were from
the twelve apostles sent forth to "preach the gospel to every creature"?
Are you going about the streets "wiping your weeping eyes" because
you can not "dine and wine" with the elect of fashion, when Garrison
and Phillips, in my boyhood, were cast out of "good society," perse¬
cuted, and for years lived in danger of daily violence and indignity, for
your sakes? Is there one of you who, if worthy and found deserving,
had not a group of friends among the best American people, whose
esteem and confidence is worth more than all the fickle favors of all
the children of luxury and ease in the Republic? Good society is the
society of the wise and good. You have the same right and oppor¬
tunity to make yourselves the true "upper tens" of eight millions of
people as any four hundred or hundred thousand people, now celebrated
for their service to the community where tuey live.
Eighty of every hundred rich men in the United States to-day were
born as poor in worldly goods as any of you, and if you are willing to
work as hard for the mental and moral uplift of your people as any
of these men for the develpment of the material resources of the nation,
you will receive all the consideration from the real first society of the
Republic you deserve, with possibly the most honorable of all distinc¬
tion: the constant hostility of all the people in all parts of the country
who regard it an evidence of "superiority" to despise, misunderstand
and, according to their ability, suppress everybody they choose to regard
inferior to themselves.
Remember this, every young man and woman that hears me: the
wisest and best people of every section and community in the United
States are always on the watch for the appearance of one more young
man and woman worthy of their aid and encouragement. Your end of
the social scale is to do the best that lies in you with all your might.
11
If so, each of you will be the friend and beloved disciple of Him who
was fitly called by the poet "the first true gentleman that ever lived,"
with the love of God, "whose favor is life, and whose loving kindness
is better than life." You can manage to "worry along" with this sort
of social consideration while you are intrusted by Providence with
laying the foundation of the new social order for a whole people who,
if your life is prolonged to my own age, may number twenty millions,
every one of whom will speak of you, if you deserve it, as the schoolboys
and girls of my youth spoke of the fathers of the Revolution; as they
do *now of the heroes and statesmen of the war for the Union, and as
you speak of your own soldiers, who now, under the blazing sun in the
jungles of the tropical islands, are clearing the way for a new oppor¬
tunity for your children, perhaps even greater than your own. If you
are doing and living up to what God now calls you to be and do, you
can well afford to wait upon the coming of all the good things for which
you long to-day.
In fact, your present opportunity furnishes the only way by which
you can obtain all that belongs to any good American citizen. "There
is only one way under heaven known among men" whereby your great
hope can be realized for your people, and that is just the way where
you now enjoy an opportunity such as is given to no similar class in
Christendom—this great labor of love for the uplifting of your people,
which you can do with "none to molest or make you afraid."
But some one may reply: "All this is doubtlesw very fine, but it
is somewhat vague and vaporous, and does not seem to fit my own
case." Let me, then, "descend to particulars," and call your attention
to several ways in which you are able to serve in the great work of
training up your people in their present condition of childhood, "in the
way they should go," so that, when they rise to their complete status
of manhood and womanhood, "they shall not depart from it."
In 1896-97 there were, in the sixteen Southern States, six thousand
students in schools, classed as normal, theological and medical, repre¬
senting the three great liberal professions that touch most closely on
the professional life of the masses of any people. The statesman, the
lawyer, the author, the artist and the journalist—all move the superior
class at second-hand, and the illiterate class directly scarcely at all.
But the Christian minister, the teacher and the physician stand "next
of kin" to our own flesh and blood. Often, if the men and women in
these professions are worthy, they influence us in a way more personal
and radical than is possible for the majority of people in family relations
to minister to each other.
There are now probably not less than fifty thousand young colored
men and women more or less educated and competent, acting in all
these sacred relations among the eight millions of the colored people.
And there are still only half the colored children and youth of school
18
age in the South at school at all. Perhaps half the colored people are
not living in regular church relations; possibly not attending church.
And only a small portion of the colored families are living under healthy
sanitary conditions, or ever see a doctor 01* a health inspector until in
some "tight places" with a dangerous disease or warned by a visiting
policeman. Now, with the exception of the medical profession, the
white professional man or woman is almost banished from this, the
most important, field of professional service. Your people are no longer
gathered, like their fathers and grandfathers, in the gallery of the old
church, to hear the preaching of the most distinguished divine, but
flock around their own favorite preachers and religious leaders. The
teaching in the public schools, outside of a few cities, is all in the hands
of twenty-seven thousand colored schoolmasters and schoolmistresses.
What an opportunity is here—the bodily and mental training and
the religious ministry to a whole people, covering their entire higher
life! Read" the testimony of the experts who have recently examined
the sanitary conditions of great numbers of colored people now living
in the larger Southern cities, and more every year employed in the
rapidly increasing manufacturing institutions of the South. What a
dismal picture of sickness, death, sorrow and the demoralization of
families is this! Almost twice the ratio of deaths to the white race,
with the imminent danger of the entire colored race being involved
in the most deadly class of diseases, consumption and its attendant
complaints, which the best medical skill in the world has only recently
checked among the more careful and protected communities of all the
nations. Is not this an opportunity given to the faculties of your
schools of medicine, such as to no other body of physicians, the task
of dealing with the physical life of a whole people, and in so doing
lifting up thousands from destructive habits that are the curse of the
race? And when we read that this terrible mortality and disease is
not due so much to the physical environment of your people as to their
ignorance of the most common laws of health and the reckless indul¬
gence in the animalism that, in every people in similar conditions, is
the great black, underlying slough and slum of every community, is not
the opportunev of the colored physician and nurse lifted to a great
moral ministry? If the medical profession of this race in one generation
could reduce the death rate from an average of 34 to the 1,000 in five
of the larger cities of the South to some approach to the 20 per cent,
of the white race, would it not be an achievement worthy the highest
aspiration of the most devoted body of young men and women, doctors
and nurses, and especially in doing this so many of these poor children
could be saved from the bottomless pit of the animal vices, where all
manhood and womanhood sink down into an almost hopeless annihila¬
tion?
19
Think of the twenty-seven thousand, possibly of all sorts thirty
thousand, teachers of the one million children and youth now in school,
thirty-three to each in average daily attendance. What an opportunity
is this, to have in charge all the children, practically all the time during
the months allotted to their school life! What a change to multitudes
of these children, who come from such homes, as we know they have,
to such a place as you can easily make your schoolhouse—make it by
the cheerful work of your own pupils, at once transforming a bare and
thoroughly unsightly school building to a pleasant summer or winter
home! Even in doing this you are training every child in the fine art
of home-makir.g, without which there is no better future than to-day
for several millions of your people. And if, besides this, you can be
yourself a Christian man or woman in the teacher's chair, as every
young man or woman should be in his every-day "walk and conversa¬
tion," an object lesson of that character, without which your boasted
American citizenship is only "a prelude to a tragedy or a comedy, and
probably both," you may become a follower of the world's supreme
Teacher, who said: "Of all that the Father has givon me, I shall lose
nothing, and raise them up again at the last day." And if you can only
pry open the darkened window of the soul of one of these little ones,
so that, as through a little crack, a shaft of golden light may cleave
the gloom and remind this child of the infinite firmamfent that holds
the earth in its embrace, you may have made it possible that this pris¬
oner in the abode of ignorance may be aroused to break out of a sleep
cf mental dullness and range at will through all the glorious spaces of
the wisdom, beauty and love that are the heritage of every soul that
comes into the world.
And what can be said that has not been said of the minister of
religion? Only this: that a low, sensual, selfish, superstitious, and, in
any essential way, incompetent man in this position is a curse more
blasting than a pestilence to any youth that comes within the moral
malaria of his personality. But if he is in truth a good man of even
common ability, really devoted to his sacred calling, trying with "all
his heart and soul and strength" to serve the people, to protect the
young, to warn the careless, to rebuke the obstinate, to stand like a
rock across the way of any man or woman determined to go to the
evil one., he is such a blessing as only can be known to them who are
privileged to be of his flock. And let it be remembered that , even the
superior upper class of the colored flock are more accessible to the
influence of a worthy Christian ministry than any other sort of our
native American people.
The colored clergyman has a range of opportunity far beyond the
ordinary minister of religion elsewhere, and an unusual proportion of
the larger ability of the race has . been attracted to the pulpit. There,
too, is the place where women can do a work possible nowhere else.
20
Remembering all this, we may well realize the height, length and
breadth and depth of this great professional opportunity.
Then remember, you doctor, minister, teacher, that you are, by your
very position, compelled to be a missionary. At best you now have
access to only a small portion of your people. Indeed, the majority
of these eight millions of your folk are still, to a great degree, outside
your beat. What a call to the good physician to go forth into the
dark regions of the country and the submerged district of the city life
and give battle to the enemies of the bodies and souls of the people!
What a chance for every young,man and woman teacher, provided he
is not smitten with the personal ambition of opening a little private
arrangement, which will divert the small means of the few more favored
in their worldly goods to this exclusive use, and leave the majority to
go on in deeper discouragement than before! What an opportunity
to go down to the hardpan of the bottom strata of the country, break
up the crust of ignorance and indifference, and persuade the whole
people to come up towards a new life! In a few years of such work
he may change a dull and hopeless to an active, hopeful and progressive
neighborhood. If you can, at any sacrifice, plant yourself in any little
country side, however neglected and deserted, you may show how a
good and wise man or woman anywhere, by faith and hard work, may
reclaim even a mental and moral desert and make it "blossom like the
rose.'
Then, beyond this, remember that it is for you to lift each of
these great professions above the condition in which they have only
been known to your people during the first generation of their freedom.
It was inevitable that the colored minister, the doctor and the teacher
of thirty years ago should have been a great contrast to those whom
the freedmen had known in the old days on the plantation. He was too
often not good enough or intelligent enough to be intrusted with any
responsibility in connection with the families; that he often preyed
upon more than he prayed for. We need not be too severe now upon
the feeble beginnings of the professional life among your people. But
we must remember that, while "the days of their ignorance God winked
at, He now calls on all men to repent." It is given to you to lift all
these, the most sacred and important of all these professional callings,
to their real dignity. It is for you to prove that the new minister,
doctor, teacher, man or woman, should be "the guide, philosopher and
friend" of every man and woman and child. Just such an elevation of
these three professions as you can achieve during the thirty coming
years will be in itself a service whose value can only be estimated when
it is seen in the improving life of the entire people.
And remember again that your brothers, off in the islands of the
sea, are clearing the way for your young men and women to go forth
on a mission of peace, bearing the gifts of knowledge, righteousness
21
and health to other millions, even more in need than your own country¬
men. I will not enlarge on the great possibilities opening to your
people in the inauguration of the new colonial policy of the nation.
But I believe I can see, in a not distant future, such opportunities of
the more enterprising of your young people in the way of an honorable
success in life, and especially in the great opening for Christian service,
in the years to come, as in themselves would repay all the blood and
treasure expended in the past year or all the toil and trouble of the
future administrations of our new possessions. It is certainly some¬
thing to be grateful for that the colored American soldier has won
a most honorable mention in a conflict that has sent the most despotic
and reactionary of all civilized nations back to Europe, "to cultivate
its own virtues," and reveal to millions of people, a year age sitting
in the darkness of superstition and barbarism, the coming of a "great
wakening light," "the light which lighteth every man that cometh into
the world."
Then I note with great satisfaction, in the last report of that
eminent educator and fast friend of the colored race, Dr. William T.
Harris, United States Commissioner of Education, that 13,581 pupils
in the 169 superior schools for your race in 1896-97 were receiving
instruction in the different industries, the boys in the various depart¬
ments of manual training and the girls chiefly in the improved house¬
keeping, cooking and the important art of sewing. I am glad to note
that, nearly twice the number of girls than boys are thus engaged—
8,611 girls to 4,970 boys—for the fundamental industry of any people
is the art of making a good home, where, on the ordinary income of
a few hundred dollars a year, a family can be maintained in health,
morality, intelligence, and all the refinement possible to the humblest
abode that shelters a truly mated husband and wife and a group of
children, like a cluster of roses crowning the altar of a Christian house¬
hold. Your own good President, Council and your faithful teachers
are all the time telling your people that, until they rise up and leave
the one-room cabin, there is no hope for them this side the abode of the
blest, even if there is any reasonable chance of getting there at all by
this, the purgatory line.
The Queen of England and Empress of India had a habit of giving
each of her own half-dozen, more or less, girls, at an early age, a little
house, witE strict instructions to each to become a first-class house¬
keeper, if nothing else. And when the little woman had learned to
cook a good meal, set the table and preside at its head, the good old
lady accepted an invitation to her daughter's first dinner party, bringing
with her any of the crowned heads of Europe that happened to be
visiting at Osborne. So it came about that every one of Victoria's
girls, besides receiving the scholarly accomplishments of a cultivated
lady, became an especially good housekeeper. And as "the time is at
22
* hand" when the business of playing king and emperor will be less
attractive and successful than in the past, it may be that some of the
husbands of these very girls, or their daughters' husbands, may find
it a decided advantage to have a wife who can keep house out on a
^exas ranch, or on a northwestern prairie, or even in Chicago, where
all these dignities seem to be investing .against a rainy day.
An-old keeper of a first-class railroad restaurant in Ohio used to
reply to the compliments of his customers after a particularly good
lunch: "Sir, it requires eternal vigilance to keep a good eating-house."
The mental and spiritual and physiological responsibility within the
next twenty-five years to place the majority of the colored people in
a good home is itself a "degree" more significant than any college
honor, and the young graduate of any school, who can achieve that
in the house given her not by the Queen of England, but by her "king
of men," inay well be more proud of her neat morning rig in her own
kitchen than of the Senior uniform in which aattaator fiH'Itiv disguisaQ
, their good looks on Commencement day. ^
If Victoria of England is not ashamed to look after the house¬
keeping of her girls, I wonder where1 the colored American girl any¬
where can be found who will set her face against the most womanly
of occupations, as it were a "let down" from her dignity? "I don't
want to be k servant," you say. Well, that is just where you differ
from the Lord Jesus Christ, who said: "I came not to be ministered
unto [i. e., to be served, waited on], but to minister [i. e., to be the
servant of all men]; and to give my life a ransom for many." Oh, my
dear girls, I entreat you, put out of your heads and hearts this supreme
vulgarity and sin of contempt, for any necessary labor of the hands, for
service and sacrifice are the central law of our human life. The higher
education, according to the last American interpretation, is just this:
The art. of placing an educated mind, a consecrated heart and a trained
will, the whole of a refined manhood and womanhood, right at the
ends of the ten fingers of both your hands, so that "whether you eat or
drink, or whatsoever you do," you may "do all to the glory of God."
I say I am especially glad that the girls are just now giving more
attention to industrial training than the boys. For there is no great
danger that every American boy, unless an idiot or a criminal, will not
sooner or later be brought down to the grindstone of hard work of some
sort, for hard work of body, mind and soul is the one qualification of
the new American gentleman. The story goes that a young European
dude of some high degree called on President Abraham Lincoln in
the White House. Good natured "Uncle Abe" gave him a hearty wel¬
come, and, "sizing up" his guest, remarked: "Now, I was brought up
in the wilderness out West, and never could afford to visit Europe, and
have always wanted to know just how your sort of great people live
abroad." So the young man went on instructing Father Abraham, until
28
the President, suddenly starting up, said: "Why, just look at my boots.
I have come in from visiting the soldiers' hospitals, and forgot to
black them. Excuse me while I put them in shape." "Why," cried
out the astonished youngster, "Mr. President, in Europe no gentleman
blacks his own boots." "He doesn't? Why, if he doesn't black his
own boots, whose boots does he black?" Every man, of whatever rank
or importance, must do his own part of the drudgery of common life.
The American idea of a gentleman is a man who carries master and
servant under the same skin. If a gentleman and his servant are tw6
men, under two skins, there is always a chance for periodical friction,
not to say of permanent disagreement—a strike, a rebellion, anything.
But if a gentleman carries his servant under his own skin, "he has him
just where he wants him." He has all the service he needs at his
hands, and if there is any tussle about it, it concerns nobody but
himself.
Industrial^ education, as understood by the genuine educator of the
country, is the art of abolishing drudgery and menial labor through
the invention of labor-saving machinery. A labor-saving machine
enables every workman to call in the help of God Almighty through
his obedient servants, air, water, steam, electricity—all the wondrous
powers of nature, which are the habits of the great Creator and the
grand dynamo of the universe, to do the work of this world and verify
the old prophecy concerning man: "Thou hast made him little lower
than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor. Thou hast
put all things under his feet." Don't believe any man who tells you
that this great movement of Industrial Education is oply a clever
device of your enemies to crowd down the colored man to the condition
of a European peasantry, only another name for the old-time chattel
slavery. So far from this, it is the science of sciences, the supreme art
of all the* fine arts, the science and art of putting the trained mind and
the consecrated manhood and womanhood into the body, so that all
labor may be exalted to a mental and moral discipline and the mighty
saying of the great apostle be verified: "Know ye not that ye are
the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"
I am told, but I hope it is not true—for the fact that 40 per cent,
of all the colored students of the secondary and higher schools of the
South are under industrial training contradicts it—that there is a
growing disinclination among the educated young men of this race to
take up this department of education. If so, a dark day has come to
the colored race and to the Southern section of this republic. For
here the opportunity of the one hundred thousand educated youth
of your race is such as has never been offered before to any special
class of young men in the United States.
Within the coming thirty years this entire Southland is to be
reclaimed from the condition to which it was brought by two hundred
24
years of unskilled, servile labor, to what God made it to be—one of the
most productive and attractive portions of the earth for the occupation
and enjoyment of man. As I have gone up and down this marvelous
country during the past twenty years, becoming as well acquainted with
every one of its sixteen commonwealths as with my own New England,
I have not been surprised that even the prosaic land agent and the
hard-headed railroad president should break forth into eloquence in
the attempt to prophesy the wonders of its future. Why, then, is it
that the wail of poverty comes up from your farms and plantations,
that the old race of statesmen that made the South illustrious seems
to be declining towards the cheap-John type of politician—the man
who rides into office on the pledge of reducing taxation, even at the
risk of cutting off the school tax, as if political economy signified
knocking out the brains of things to save money?
The cause of this is not hard to find. Within the past half century
the whole civilized, even the Oriental world, has been awakened as by
the voice of "a great angel out of heaven" to the fact that the intelligent
labor of the masses of mankind, under the leadership of the expert
captains of industry, is the new gospel for making this world a fit place
for the abode of civilized and Christianized man. The day of the old,
slow, stupid drildgery of the toiling millions to keep soul and body
together is passing by, and the era of that enlightened industry, which
makes every laborer a "co-worker with God" and "an active partner"
in business with all the great, silent, majestic forces of the universe,
is now upon us.
The South finds itself to-day with a heritage of natural resources
of which no man has yet compassed the grandeur and possibility, but
with a great laboring class, eight millions strong, half of whom are
still in the bonds of illiteracy and the other half just waking up -to the
understanding of what a creature man can become when joined in
co-partnership with omnipotence in dressing and keeping this Southern
garden of God.
You are now directly concerned with the opportunity and obliga¬
tion connected with the eight millions of your own people, who, for
good or ill, are here "to stay." Who, then, is to superintend the mobili¬
zation of this grand colored army of industry, that shall march forward,
conquering and to conquer, over this wide field, where such honors and
prizes are to be gathered as make all the titles, badges and glories
of war only as tinsel and sounding brass in the presence of fin$ gold?
If you, young men and women, whom the educational public of the
whole nation has put to school for this organizing and leading your
people, shirk the studies and the exercises that will train you to go
before your own and lead them in this inspiring campaign towards
a prosperity such as never before came to the Southern people, who
will take your places?
25
For a little while, if you so will it, you may be able to disport
yourselves as superior to your fellows, disdaining to put your own
hand to the plow of reform, scorning the great leadership now offered
to you. But after that, what? In one generation the entire lower side
of Europe will then be let loose upon you. The Labor Union will
inclose you like the iron prison-house in the old story, which every
clay contracted itself upon its victim till he was crushed in its awful
embrace. I tell you, young men and women, unless you do get up
early in the morning while "for you it is called day," "the hour is
coming and now is" when you and your people will be elbowed off
into the holes and corners of the industrial world, like the young men
whom I very often see with college diplomas in their pockets, waiting
on table, watching a hotel bell, doing anything to keep the wolf from
the door. And these young women—God help the young colored woman,
educated or ignorant, thirty years hence who has not learned how to
keep house in which she is permitted to live!
If there be a depth of degradation below the old-time slavery—
which was not a degradation, but only the inevitable schooling of
bondage through which every race has been compelled to make its
way upward to civilization—it is found in that class of young men
looking around for a chance to stand up to the crib and be fed, like
human live stock, by their mothers, "sisters, and cousins, and aunts;"
and worst of all, by their wives, the mothers of their children. A
bright young colored girl in Texas said to me: "I don't want to marry.
These young men are all such comical creatures that their wives have
to support them." Such a life—the life of any young man who expects
to live without solid and continuous work—is like the mask of the
old Greek actor, a double face, half tragedy and half comedy. If half
a century hence your people are found where their enemies declare
they belong, the "hewers of wood and drawers of water" of a superior
race, you, the known educated, will figure in the pages of history as
another of the failures of the ages—a people that were called and
would not come.
Your race will not finally go down with you. For, as in the parable,
when those that were called to the feast "begged to be excused," the
highways and the hedges were ransacked and the wedding was fur¬
nished with guests.
The operative industry of the South should in time be largely
in the hands of your people, for your race has an aptitude for it not
inferior to any other sort or condition. The great mechanical industry
of the South, which, during the coming generation, is to reach gigantic
proportions, is to-day in every department open to you. What is to
prevent you from having your part in the new era of skilled agricul¬
ture, fruit raising, the care of animals (dogs left out), in a country
where there is land enough and to spare, and where every young
26
colored man and woman should resolve to own at least one square
mile of "sacred Southern soil"? There is no reason why the higher
departments of textile engineering and architectural industry shall not
be open to you.
And do not talk the foolishness that there is no place for you in
this new industrial revival of the South. Any man or woman of you,
who can do as good or a better job of work than others, will be called
to do it. The new South is now bent on having the best of every¬
thing. If you can give it the best in any department of productive
industry, you will find your own place. I am not insensible to the
force of prejudice and custom, and above all the power, A-aiadU. fueling
of pretentious inferiority wttij^modest and deserving worth. But this
American people of ours believe in fair play, and, in the long run,
every man, class, race, will be estimated for just what it is worth in
the field, the workshop—in every occupation and art that makes for
the building up of the nation. Thomas Carlyle says: "No book was
ever written down except by itself." No set of people in the United
States of America can permanently be kept below its actual worth to
the country. You and yours are left to decide what that position shall
finally be.
Yes, if you are indeed able to face this mighty opportunity, here
comes in the obligation which, like a gloomy shadow, so often tempts
the best of us to pray to God to be delivered from the greatest oppo-
tunities of life, lest in our weakness and wickedness they may become
our final condemnation. This fundamental obligation of all to the
one hundred thousand educated youth of your race, all born under
the flag of the reconstructed Union, comes down to us through eighteen
centuries in the stirring words of the great apostle: "When I was a
child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child;
but when I became a man, I put away childish things." The most
serious peril to this entire body of the educated young manhood and
womanhood of the colored race is an inveterate juvenility, that views
this marvelous opportunity as a child takes all the gifts showered
upon it as something belonging of right to itself, until it can not be
satisfied by anything, but "claims the earth" and cries for the moon
and "stars."
There has not been a generation of youth in American history
that has been so demoralized or is now in such peril of being demor¬
alized by the greatness of opportunity thrown upon it, the magnitude
of the favors it has received, and the intoxication of a mighty sym¬
pathy from the best people in the world, as just this one hundred
tfiousand of whom I speak. From out the wilderness of bondage
trodden by their fathers it has suddenly been transferred, as by magic,
to the mountain heights of human opportunity, a privilege and position
only conquered by any other race of men through centuries of conflict,
27
the education which is the greatest gift to any generation. And a
mighty opportunity like this is like the great hall of a spacious man¬
sion, full of open doors, broad stairways and swift elevators, that
admit to every chamber of magic in life, even to the lofty roof, from
which our American citizenship lies outspread, beneath, around and
above. '
It must be from this obstinate and protracted childhood that so
much of the apparent inability to recognize even the commonplace
obligation to appreciate this opportunity comes. Otherwise I can not
understand why so many of those who have been its recipients now
seem to be more concerned by the impossibility of getting something
else that just now can not be given by anybody than in considering
"what manner of men they should be to whom this word of God has
come." Why are so many of these young men and women apparently
so careless in the use of these, the choicest gifts of Providence to any
youthful generation? Why are they so greatly concerned to use these
summits of opportunity to which they have been invited, to magnify
themselves in the eyes of their less fortunate brothers and sisters,
rather than to "remember those yet in bonds as bound with them"?
Why are they often so eager to shoot the track of sane and practical
duty at the call to any little personal gratification? And above all,
why are so many of this class apparently fixed in the idea that they
are the especial "wards cf the nation," that the friendly people who
bought their personal freedom "with a great price," and have con¬
tinued for a generation to dispense the supreme bounty of education,
are hereafter bound to help those who have already been educated to
their present opportunity, still to assist in any little personal enter¬
prise that may be chosen, even if a bypath away from the hot and
dusty highway up which their people must toil in its long journey
for success?
I warn these young men and women that the childish habit of
dependence on the communities and people that have already done
so much for them is their greatest peril. These Northern friends,
who have caused to be spent the one hundred millions of dollars
especially for the superior education during the first generation after
emancipation, have not done it because they propose to keep these
beneficiaries in perpetual childhood, or even as an attractive and
unique spectacle of a precocious development of the race. They have
done and are still doing this with the expectation that these persons
will in due time come of age, and, with a grateful' acknowledgment
for past favors, will only ask the future privilege of being the true
leaders of their own people to their own place in the Republic.
For if this one hundred thousand can not attempt this work, who
can do it for them? If they fail to come forward as a body, each in
his or her best way enlisting for life in the "good fight," on whom
are we to rely? Of course the people of the South understand this
peculiar weakness. They know all about the defects of the Negro
character, this self-indulgent and dependent habit that holds itself
away from the rough contact with the hard and repulsive features of
the situation and works "on the lines of least resistance." Many of
the Southern people honestly believe, and are telling us with great
emphasis, that this is a fatal lack of native capacity, a chronic "race
habit," that will keep this people forever in the rear, not only of the
all-dominating Anglo-Saxon, but of all these immigrating European
peoples, and that even the educated portion of the race may as well
be content to retire into their own little corner of national life and
keep auiet. But we of the North have seen enough of your people tc
keep alive in us the hope of better things. Now and then a young
man or woman comes up to us so excellent and efficient in all good
things that we take heart and open our pockets and rejoice that so
much has been achieved, and believe these dismal prognostications
are not to be realized.
Here is this great opportunity of Industrial training, which is
welcomed by the foremost educators of the Union as one of the peculiar
contributions of the age to the new life of the Republic. Why do so
many of the one hundred thousand educated hold b&ck from the most
important work for their people, going down to the common level of
the common school and toiling in the low and dark places of the
land for the practical schooling of the race? Why shrink from this
battle for the masses and skirmish around for the chance to gather
a little select group of children of the more favored, who will support
your own plan and place you as one more in the lengthening "tail" of
applicants that will stretch through the villages, the cities and the
watering places of the North through the coming summer, each more
unfoi l,uiijH than the last for his own share of what is going down
South? Why can not more of these students wake up out of the
childish habit of school life, the habit of becoming the bodyguard of
every offender of school order and law, as if the chief honor or dignity
of the young man or woman at college was to be a shield for every
idle, mischievous, sensual or selfish boy or girl who has come in
collision with the government of the institution? I would not judge
too hardly of this, the bottom weakness of the class of educated youth
which I summon to-day to such a magnificent opportunity. I do them
all honor by holding them up to their loftiest obligation. But after
twenty years spent among the schools of the South, I long to discover
the signs of a more manly and womanly habit of life among this
class I now address. I long to see these young people coming together,
not to obtain new favors of their old friends, or to hold them respon¬
sible for the fact that often in this Southland all things are not done
as they should be, but to make of themselves the new American pha-
20
lanx that, like the embattled ten thousand of old, shall be placed at
the center of the great wavering multitude of the eight millions to
assure it of victory during the century that is before us.
Indeed, my young friends, this seems to me about all there is in
the great problem that this year again looms up, black and threatening,
above the social and political horizon. Can the one hundred thousand
more or less educated colored youth, who, during the first generation
of their freedom, have b^en schooled and sent forth to "spy out the
land" and survey the road along which their people may walk up to
their own place in our many-sided American life, lift themselves,
each for himself or herself, out of the little environment of personal
interest in which they are sunk out of sight of their great opportunity,
and really open their eyes upon it, stretching like a splendid land¬
scape, rising from the lowlands to the foothills, scaling the different
plateaus even to the azure encirclement of the mysterious mountain
ranges that block the horizon? Will they take account of stock "in
their own spiritual condition," and, responding to the call from heaven,
"show thyself a man," and to be like the woman who "hath chosen
the better part," build themselves up "after the manner of the perfect
man," to the measure of the stature of the fullness in Christ? In
proportion as you can do this, the revelation of your opportunity will
be the revelation of your sense of obligation. Children use the gifts
of life as playthings. Men and women, after the pattern of the Master,
use opportunities as a summons to new obligations and ever new effort
to achieve the best given to them to do.
As I have gone over, in the light of my past experience in the
Southern States, what I should say to the young men and women
who here represent the one hundred thousand youth of the colored
race, my mind has constantly turned to the great original order from
headquarters, given by the "Captain of our salvation" to his first
twelve obscure and untired disciples, sent forth to preach the gospel
of love to God and man to an unbelieving and unrighteous world.
Wonderful as that tenth chapter of Matthew's record is in its
profound insight into human nature and perfect comprehension of
the conditions of all radical missionary effort, it is no less remarkable
for its complete adaptation to the opportunities and obligations of
the body of people for whom I have meditated this discourse. How
can I find a more fitting climax to all I have said to-day than in
reading over again this great order No. 1 from headquarters, delivered
eighteen centuries ago?
First Take courage, all of you, from the fact that such an order
should have been given to these twelve obscure young men, absolutely
untried in the great work to which they were appointed. Even in the
Sermon on the Mount, when the disciples were only a little group
of people attracted by a new preacher, Jesus had said to them: "Ye
30
are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill can not be hid.
Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works
and glorify your Father which is in heaven." And to the twelve
apostles, two of whom were to fall away and all were to "forsake
him and fiee" in the hour of supreme trial, and later the eleven were
to be involved in bearing contentions and misunderstandings among
themselves and with the chief of apostles, Paul, he gave such power
and authority to preach, heal and even "cast out unclean spirits" as
would indicate a body of men tried and proved as by the fire. He
gave them no inspiration that was proof against their own folly, con¬
ceit or sin, but simply issued his sublime order, demanding the most
exalted courage, persistence and character, even a consecration unto
death.
This is just what the Lord Christ now says to each of you. It
is not given because of any special merit in yourself. It is given as
an inspiration to the grandest and most unselfish service for God
and man of which you are capable. This ministry for God and humanity
to which you are invited is in itself the highest "higher education"
for every man and woman, strong and sweet and brave, enduring
enough to receive it. If you can not live up to it, it will appear, as in
many an enthusiastic follower of the Master, who, in the hour of
danger, "forsook him and fled." If you are made of the right stuff, the
call, with all its overwhelming splendor of opportunity and weight
of obligation, will only introduce you to your better self, and as you
go on, bring forth qualities in you never suspected by you or by your
nearest and dearest friends.
Like the twelve apostles, you are sent, not to deal with the people,
friendly or otherwise, among whom your lot is cast. They have their
opportunity and their obligation in their connection with you, and a
responsibility in no respect less important to them than yours to your¬
self. But you are sent to "the lost sheep" of your own "house of Israel."
First, to the lower strata of your own race, in your own common¬
wealth, 60 per cent, of whom are still in the bonds of an illiteracy
that means everything that should be hateful and abhorrent to every
friend of mankind. Your order is: "As ye go, preach, saying the
kingdom of heaven is at hand." Now is the time for this people,
"sitting in darkness," to be "wakened out of sleep" as by the shining
forth of a great light. The kingdom of heaven to them and all like
them is a new birth into the Christian manhood and womanhood that
this great Republic no less than the Master now demands from every
man and woman on whom it has bestowed the eminent degree of
American citizenship. The sick, the poor, especially the dead-alive,
will all be brought to you. And if you can cast out the legion of devils
and the "unclean spirits" that now torment the lower order of these,
your unhappy brothers and sisters, great will be your reward long
31
before you go to any other heaven than the one you are called to
build up right here in this great commonwealth, in this beautiful and
bountiful Southland.
Do not waste time prospecting for a favorable situation, or give
too much thought to your supply of gold and silver [whether 16 to 1
or otherwise], or to your own rank in the army of the Lord. Shoulder
your Bible and go in wherever there is an open door. In any city
"those who are worthy" of your ministry will find you out, and "your
peace will come upon them." Otherwise "let your peace return to
you." Always "keep the peace," for somebody will finally accept it.
At the worst "shake the dust from your feet" where there is no place
for you, and go your way, leaving God, through his all-directing
providence, to deal with the situation. "If they persecute you in one
city, flee ye into another," for you will not have gone through even
all the cities of Alabama before the kingdom of God will have come.
Somewhere will be found somebody who will welcome your coming
and "hear the Word with gladness." And the kingdom of God always
comes in this world when one soul throws open all doors and windows
and bids the everlasting truth, love and beauty come in and there
abide.
Do not imagine that your ministry, even if it is confined to living
up to the "mark of the high calling" in the most common station in
life, is to be a promenade, a reception, a festival, or even a Sunday-
school picnic. Read over again the awful words of the Master, prophetic
of every sincere endeavor made since He went to the Cross to preach
and live a new departure in righteousness, intelligence, social or political
uplifting anywhere. Perhaps the most obstinate of all who resist
you will be your own people, offended with your call to repentance
and newness of life; for "a man's foes shall be of his own household."
There is no hatred, contempt or malignity like that of a people "half
savage and half BhwL" when shown the true picture of themselves.
But if you can be "wise as serpents and harmless as doves," falling
back on God in the hour of emergency to know "what ye shall speak"
and do, and especially if you can "endure unto the end," you will be
saved and your success will be the earthly and spiritual salvation of
many of those to whom you come.
Even if you are broken down with only the burden of living up
to the best you know, be not disheartened, for what you meditate in
darkness will be spoken into the light, and what you hear with the
ear and fitly speak and worthily do will be repeated and done over
and over again, till it is shouted from every housetop and proclaimed
from all the mountain summits around the world. If "the Master
of the house was called Beelzebub," who are you "of his household,"
even if you are "hated of all men for his name's sake?" Your bodily
life is only lent you from God to be spent in the service of God for
the uplifting of man. Even if taken from you, you will not die. Your
"soul will be marching on." Abraham Lincoln in the White House
was a man on a mountain top, bracing himself against the tempest
and thunders of a nation in the throes of a mighty revolution. Abraham
Lincoln, the martyr President, is now the father of the new Republic,
honored and everywhere beloved throughout the world.
And finally, never forget that God is the supreme economist in the
affairs of this world. "Not a sparrow falls to the ground without the
Father," and the very hairs of the head grown gray or bald in the
Master's service are all "numbered." Not a word, or act, or thought,
or look, if worthy of your high calling, will be lost. And "whosoever
shall give to drink unto one of these litle ones a cup of cold water
in the name of a disciple, verily, I say unto you, he shall in nowise
lose his reward." God grant that, whether the "time of departure"
of any of us is far off or "now at hand," each one may be able to say
with the apostle: "I have fought a good fight. I have finished my
course. I have kept the faith."