Annie L. Burton

“ The negro loves his country, which he has proved beyond a doubt in every American battle, in every act of loyalty to his country, and in his long and patient suffering. Pay him what you owe him by educating him. ”

“ The memory of my happy, care-free childhood days on the plantation, with my little white and black companions, is often with me. Neither master nor mistress nor neighbors had time to bestow a thought upon us, for the great Civil War was raging. ”

“ To-day the marriage vow, which by the teaching of the whites the negro held to be of so little importance before the war, is guarded more sacredly. The one room cabin, with its attendant evils, is passing away, and the negro woman, the mightiest moral factor in the life of her people, is beginning to be more careful in her deportment and is no longer the easy victim of the unlicensed passion of certain white men. This is a great gain and is a sign of real progress, for no race can rise higher than its women. ”

“ With what eyes can the white child look upon the colored child and the colored child look upon himself, when they have completed the assigned course of United States history, and in it found not one word of credit, not one word of favorable comment for even one among the millions of his fore-parents who have lived through nearly three centuries of his country's history. ”

“ The history of the world cannot produce a more affecting spectacle than the growth of this mighty Christian philanthropy which, in beginning amid the din of battle, has steadily marched on through every opposing influence, and lifted a race from weakness to strength, from poverty to wealth, from moral and intellectual nonentity to place and power among the nations of the earth. ”

“ The Yankee soldiers found that they had such an army of men and women and children, that they had to build tents and feed them to keep them from starving. But from what I, a little child, saw and heard the older ones say, that must have been a terrible time of trouble. I heard my master and mistress talking. They said, "Well, I guess those Yankees had such a large family on their hands, we rather guessed those fanatics on freedom would be only too glad to send some back for their old masters to provide for them." ”

“ They suddenly emerge from their prison house poor, without a home, without food or clothing, and ignorant. Now the enemies of God and of the progress of civilization in our country are to-day introducing a system of slavery with which they hope to again enslave the colored people. To carry out their evil designs they retain able politicians, lawyers and newspapers to represent them, such as Senator Tillman, the Hon. John Temple Graves of Georgia and the Baltimore Sun, and they are trying the negro on four counts which allege that the race is ignorant, cannot be taught, is lazy and immoral. ”

“ In a little clearing in the backwoods of Harding County, Kentucky, there stood years ago a rude cabin within whose walls Abraham Lincoln passed his childhood. An "unaccountable" man he has been called, and the adjective was well chosen, for who could account for a mind and nature like Lincoln's with the ancestry he owned? His father was a thriftless, idle carpenter, scarcely supporting his family, and with but the poorest living. His mother was an uneducated woman, but must have been of an entirely different nature, for she was able to impress upon her boy a love of learning. ”

“ The first negro fact for white thought is—that my clients, the colored people here in America, are not responsible for being here any more than they are responsible for their conditions of ignorance and poverty. ”

“ The property per capita for every colored man, woman and child in the United States is estimated at $75, and we are operating successfully several banks and factories; we have 7,500,000 acres of land, and the business activity of the colored people was never as thoroughly aroused as it is to-day.
When I come to deal with the charge of immorality I bow my head and blush for shame, first because if the charge be true, I see they are getting like the white man every day. I know that at the close of the American civil war the 4,000,000 negroes had more than 25 per cent. ”

“ The Negro stands to-day upon an eminence that overlooks more than two decades spent in efforts to ameliorate the condition of seven million immortal souls by opening before their hitherto dark and cheerless lives possibilities of development into a perfect and symmetrical manhood and womanhood. ”

“ In education and morals the progress is still greater. As you all know, at the close of the war the whole race was practically illiterate. It was a rare thing, indeed, to find a man of the race who even knew his letters. In 1880 the illiteracy had fallen to 70 per cent. and rapid strides along that line have been made ever since.
To-day there are 37,000 negro teachers in America, of which number 23,000 are regular graduates of high and normal schools and colleges, 23 are college presidents, 169 are principals of seminaries and many are principals of higher institutions. ”

“ My sister, being the children's nurse, would take them and wash their hands and put them to bed in their luxurious bedrooms, while we little slaves would find what homes we could. My brother and I would go to sleep on some lumber under the house, where our sister Caroline would find us and put us to bed. She would wipe our hands and faces and make up our beds on the floor in Massa's house, for we had lived with him ever since our own mother had run away, after being whipped by her mistress. Later on, after the war, my mother returned and claimed us. I never knew my father, who was a white man. ”

“ All that the President of the United States would have to do would be to say, 'Stop exporting cotton.' The war would be ended in four days, for England cannot do without our cotton.
"We don't need a navy; we are impregnable. Because we have 9,000,000 colored men anxious and willing to work we hold this strong position, and I am interested in the negro from this material standpoint, as well as from the more humane point of view." ”

“ The white folks are good to me. They give me work, and I know, with God's help, I can get along." The white woman replied, "Yes, Auntie, my husband left me on a rich man's plantation. This man promised to look out for me until my husband came home; but he got killed in the war, and the Yankees have set his negroes free and he said he could not help me any more, and we would have to do the best we could for ourselves. I gave my things to a woman to keep for me until I could find my kinsfolk. They live about fifty miles from here, up in the country. ”

“ Let this great Christian nation of eighty millions of people do justice to the Black Battalion, and seeing President Roosevelt acknowledges that he overstepped the bounds of his power in discharging and renouncing them before they had a fair trial, and now that they are vindicated before the world, to take back what he called them, Cutthroats, Brutal Murderers, Black Midnight Assassins, and Cowards. ”

“ A sympathy which will see to it that every man shall have a man's chance in all the affairs of this great nation which boasts of being the land of the free and the home of the brave for which the black man has suffered and done so much in every sense of the word. ”

“ Just ask the Pullman Car Company, which employs hundreds of negroes, [64] into whose care thousands of women and children of our best American families are entrusted every day.
Now, you cannot do without the negro, because if you send him away, you will run after him. He is here to stay. The only way to deal successfully with the colored race is God's way. First, recognize that he is your guest; second, recognize that you have robbed him of his birthplace, home, family and savings. It is these facts that are causing so much unrest on the part of the whites in this country. ”

“ Now, are the negroes, as a whole, guilty of these charges? In the first place, the negro race of America is not ignorant. In the year 1833 John C. Calhoun, senator from South Carolina, is reported to have said that if he could find a single negro who understood the Greek syntax, he would believe the negro was human and would treat him as such. At that time it was a very safe test. God accepted the challenge in behalf of the negro race, and inspired his white sons and daughters both in the North and South to teach their brothers in black ”

“ If they were able to-day to produce the articles in common use as boots, shoes, hats, cotton and woolen goods, made-up clothing and enterprises such as farming, mining, forging, carpentering, etc., negroes would find a ready sale in prefer [69] ence to all others, because of its being a race enterprise, doing what no other corporation does, giving employment to members of the race as tradesmen, and teaching others to become skilled workers. These enterprises should be started in the southern, northern and western states, where the negro population will warrant such an undertaking. ”

“ A rich lady came to our house one day, looking for some one to take care of her little daughter. I was taken, and adopted into this family. This rich lady was Mrs. E. M. Williams, a music teacher, the wife of a lawyer. We called her "Mis' Mary."
Some rich people in Clayton who had owned slaves, opened the Methodist church on Sundays, and began the work of teaching the negroes. My new mistress sent me to Sunday school every Sunday morning, and I soon got so that I could read. Mis' Mary taught me every day at her knee. ”

“ Then she seated her little brood around the fire on the pieces of blanket, where we watched with all our eyes, our hearts filled with desire, looking to see what she would do next. She took down an old broken earthen bowl, and tossed into it the little meal she had brought, stirring it up with water, making a hoe cake. ”

“ One day the cook from a shipwrecked vessel came to my restaurant, and in return for his board and a bed in the place, agreed to do my cooking. After trade became good, I changed my residence to a house of four rooms, and put three cheap cots in each of two of the rooms, and let the cots at a dollar a week apiece to colored men who worked nearby in hotels. Lawrence and I did the chamber work at night, after the day's work in the restaurant.
I introduced "Boston baked beans" into my restaurant, much to the amusement of the people at first ”

“ I was promised three dollars and a half a week, and no washing to do. I was told that the farm had been offered for sale, and of course it might change hands any day. I was promised, however, that I should lose nothing by the change.
Lawrence was very lonely at the farm, with no companions, and used to sit and cry.
The place was sold about ten weeks after I went there, and I came into Boston to look about for a restaurant, leaving Lawrence at the farm. When the home was broken up, the owners came to the Revere House, Boston. Barrels of apples, potatoes and other provisions were given to me. ”

“ Then came the great sugar-cane grinding time, when they were making the molasses, and we children would be hanging round, drinking the sugar-cane juice, and await [37] ing the moment to help ourselves to everything good. We did, too, making ourselves sticky and dirty with the sweet stuff being made. Not only were the slave children there, but the little white children from Massa's house would join us and have a jolly time. The negro child and the white child knew not the great chasm between their lives, only that they had dainties and we had crusts. ”

“ Within a year from the firing on Sumter, benevolent and farsighted Northern friends had established schools from Washington to the Gulf of Mexico, which became centers of light penetrating the darkness and scattering the blessings of an enlightened manhood far and wide. ”

“ We five children were eagerly watching the pot boiling, with the pease and ham-bone. The rain was pattering on the roof of the hut. All at once there came a knock at the door. My mother answered the knock. When she opened the door, there stood a white woman and three little children, all dripping with the rain. My mother said, "In the name of the Lord, where are you going on such a night, with these children?" The woman said, "Auntie, I am travelling. Will you please let me stop here to-night, out of the rain, with my children?" My mother said, "Yes, honey. ”

“ The slaves got their allowance every Monday night of molasses, meat, corn meal, and a kind of flour called "dredgings" or "shorts." Perhaps this allowance would be gone before the next Monday night, in which case the slaves would steal hogs and chickens. Then would come the whipping-post. Master himself never whipped his slaves; this was left to the overseer.
We children had no supper, and only a little piece of bread or something of the kind in the morning. Our dishes consisted of one wooden bowl, and oyster shells were our spoons. ”

“ There are hidden wrongs perpetrated by the whites against the negro race that will never be brought to light until the race owns and controls its own daily newspapers which alone have the power to discover and enthrone truth, thus becoming a safe guide to all honest seekers of facts respecting the race whether from a moral, educational, political or religious field. ”

“ The negro ministry, together with these teachers have been prepared for [67] their work by our schools and are the greatest factors the North has produced for the uplift of the colored man.
To-day there are those who wish to impede the negro's progress and lessen his educational advantages by industrializing such colleges as Howard University of Washington by placing on their Boards of Trustees and Managers the pronounced leaders of industrialism, giving as a reason that the better he is educated the worse he is; in other words, they say crime has increased among educated negroes. ”

“ The man on whose plantation this cabin stood, [13] hired my mother as cook, and gave us this little home. We children used to sell blueberries and plums that we picked. One day the man on whom we depended for our home and support, left. Then my mother did washing by the day, for whatever she could get. We were sent to get cold victuals from hotels and such places. A man wanting hands to pick cotton, my brother Henry and I were set to help in this work. We had to go to the cotton field very early every morning. For this work, we received forty cents for every hundred pounds of cotton we picked. ”