Benjamin Griffith Brawley

“ If now we look into our American life we are brought face to face with the fact that in our haste to get rich or even to meet new conditions that must legitimately be met we are in danger of losing all of our old standards of conduct, of training, and of morality. America is still bourgeois. We have hardly begun to reap the real fruits of rich, abiding culture, and because we have not we are still wasteful, superficial, and insincere, in our economic life, in our church life, in our courts, in literature, in education, in every phase of activity. ”

“ Again, consider the Negro soldier. In all our history there are no pages more heroic, more pathetic, than those detailing the exploits of black men. We remember the Negro, three thousand strong, fighting for the liberties of America when his own race was still held in bondage. We remember the deeds at Port Hudson, Fort Pillow, and Fort Wagner. We remember Santiago and San Juan Hill, not only how Negro men went gallantly to the charge, but how a black regiment faced pestilence that the ranks of their white comrades might not be decimated. ”

“ In the history of the Negro race in America no more heroic work has been done than that performed by the Negro woman. The great responsibilities of life have naturally drifted to the men; but who can measure the patience, the love, the self-sacrifice of those who in a more humble way have labored for their people and even in the midst of war striven most earnestly to keep the home-fires burning? Even before emancipation a strong character had made herself felt in more than one community ”

“ For decades now, this charming old Negro has been held up to the children of the South as the perfect expression of the beauty of life in the glorious times "befo' de wah," when every Southern gentleman was suckled at the bosom of a "black mammy." Why should we not occasionally attempt to paint the Negro of the new day—intelligent, ambitious, thrifty, manly? Perhaps he is not so poetic; but certainly the human element is greater. ”

“ As to labor, how can any one assert that the Negro in the North has had an equal chance with the white man, in view of the attitude of the labor unions? The whole matter of education represents the circle worse than anything else. Would anybody who knows the South contend for a moment that public school appropriations are evenly divided between the white and black? And shall we allow one stupid pupil in a poorly organized school to offset the brilliant attainments in the foremost colleges in the country, from which institutions Negro graduates are each year coming by the scores? ”

“ He buckled on his sword,
To dare the rampart ranged with fire,
Or where the thunder roared;
Into the smoke and flame he went,
For God's great cause to die—
A youth of heaven's element,
The flower of chivalry. ”

“ The natural result is to unite Latin America against us, especially when the United States draws a color-line offensive to South American sensibilities.
We call upon our country for a new consecration—to law, to order, to justice. Too long has the crime of lynching disgraced us in the eyes of the world. Too long have we eased our conscience with a specious thought of necessity or irresponsibility. ”

“ The fact is that the Negro has such a contagious brand of humor that many people never realize that this plays only on the surface. The real background of the race is one of tragedy. It is not in current jest but in the wail of the old melodies that the soul of this people is found. There is something elemental about the heart of the race, something that finds its origin in the forest and in the falling of the stars. ”

“ I was born in a country where slavery had been established by British kings and parliaments, as well as by the laws of that country ages before my existence. I found the Christian religion and slavery growing under the same authority and cultivation. I nevertheless disliked it. In former days there was no combating the prejudices of men supported by interest; the day I hope is approaching when, from principles of gratitude as well as justice, every man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with the golden rule. ”

“ Our country is still in the midst of the greatest war in the history of mankind. Already our sons and brothers have died in Europe. While the sacrifice is great, and each day comes home more closely to us, there must be no ceasing of the conflict until victory is assured. The principles of Christ must prevail, and democracy must be given some chance in the world. Because we believe this, because we love our country, because we wish to see our country truly noble and great, I am once more asking your attention to the vital subject of the place of the Negro in our American life. ”

“ Some day our little children will not slave in mines and mills, but will have some chance at the glory of God's creation; and some day the Negro will cease to be a problem and become a human being. Then, in truth, we shall have the Promised Land. But until that day comes let those who mold our ideals and set the standards of our art in fiction at least be honest with themselves and independent. Ignorance we may for a time forgive; but a man has only himself to blame if he insists on not seeing the sunrise in the new day. [180] ”

“ Will you despair now so many champions are coming to your help, and the trump of jubilee is sounding long and loud; when is heard a voice from the East, a voice from the West, a voice from the North, a voice from the South, crying, Liberty and Equality now, Liberty and Equality forever! ”

“ The wail of the old melodies and the plaintive quality that is ever present in the Negro voice are but the reflection of a background of tragedy. No race can rise to the greatest heights of art until it has yearned and suffered. The Russians are a case in point. Such has been their background in oppression and striving that their literature and art are to-day marked by an unmistakable note of power. The same future beckons to the American Negro. ”

“ If America has not reached her heights after three hundred years, she ought not to be impatient with the Negro after only fifty years of opportunity. Furthermore, all signs go to prove the assumption fundamentally false. We know of some of the younger men of to-day who have not only mastered language and science, but who have outshone brilliant groups of white students in pure philosophy. It would be a miracle if this were the everyday occurrence. It is not; but the fact that it is an occurrence at all means that the Negro is at least capable of the highest things. ”

“ However, the Negro has no reason to be discouraged. If one will but remember that after all slavery was but an incident and recall the status of the Negro even in the free states ten years before the Civil War, he will be able to see a steady line of progress forward. After the great moral and economic awakening that gave the race its freedom, the pendulum swung backward, and finally it reached its farthest point of proscription, of lawlessness, and inhumanity. ”

“ Is the American white man, in the face of the rising brotherhood of man the world over, going to take the position that other races, and especially the colored races—the Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindu, the Negro—shall not occupy places of dignity and responsibility in this country? Does [100] he expect to maintain the position that any person not an Anglo-Saxon, no matter how cultured or educated or talented he may be, must forever maintain a politically and socially inferior status in the greatest republic in the world? ”

“ INCOMPARABLY the foremost exponent in verse of the life and character of the Negro people has been Paul Laurence Dunbar. This gifted young poet represented perfectly the lyric and romantic quality of the race, with its moodiness, its abandon, its love of song, and its pathetic irony, and his career has been the inspiration of thousands of the young men and women whose problems he had to face, and whose aspirations he did so much to realize. ”

“ Obviously now if the Negro, if any race, is to make to America the contribution of which it is capable, it must be free; and this raises the whole question of relation to the rest of the body politic. One of the interesting phenomena of society in America is that the more foreign elements enter into the "melting pot" and advance in culture, the more do they cling to their racial identity. Incorporation into American life, instead of making the Greek or the Pole or the Irishman forget his native country, makes him all the more jealous of its traditions. ”

“ THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN FICTION
EVER since Sydney Smith sneered at American books a hundred years ago, honest critics have asked themselves if the literature of the United States was not really open to the charge of provincialism. Within the last year or two the argument has been very much revived; and an English critic, Mr. Edward Garnett, writing in The Atlantic Monthly, has pointed out that with our predigested ideas and made-to-order fiction we not only discourage individual genius, but make it possible for the multitude to think only such thoughts as have passed through a sieve. ”

“ To train our boys in the virtues of citizenship and at the same time in knowledge of the rights of others; to teach them respect for others at the same time that they cultivate their own self-respect; to teach them the value of scholarship and also to let them know when scholarship [60] must become dynamic; to teach them to work, to love, to sing, to have faith, even when they see wrong all around them—this is a task calling for all one has of Christianity, of scholarship, and of delicacy. ”

“ The Negro either at home or abroad is only one of many moral problems with which she has to deal. At the close of the war extravagance reigned, crime was rampant, and against any one of three or four races there was insidious propaganda. To add to the difficulties, the government was still so dominated by politics and officialdom that it was almost always impossible to get things done at the time they needed to be done. At the same time every patriot knows that America is truly the hope of the world. Into her civilization and her glory have entered not one but many races. ”

“ A child of the wilderness and a slave, by her grace and culture she satisfied the conventionalities of Boston and of England. Her brilliant conversation was equaled only by her modest demeanor. Everything about her was refined. More and more as one studies her life he becomes aware of her sterling Christian character. In a dark day she caught a glimpse of the eternal light, and it was meet that the first Negro woman in American literature should be one of unerring piety and the highest of literary ideals. ”

“ When in course of time the status of the Negro in the American body politic became a live issue, the possibility and the danger of an imperium in imperio were perceived; and Rev. James W.C. Pennington, undoubtedly a leader, said in his lectures in London and Glasgow: "The colored population of the United States have no destiny separate from that of the nation in which they form an integral part. Our destiny is bound up with that of America. Her ship is ours; her pilot is ours; her storms are ours; her calms are ours. If she breaks upon any rock, we break with her. ”