Theodore DeBose Bratton

“ The fortitude and courage and patience and enthusiasm with which those people have devoted themselves to their task, are beyond praise. The Republic of Liberia, in spite of malign influence and slander and misrepresentation, in spite of poverty which would have broken the spirit of white men, is an established entity. Let Liberia make good, and she will have made possible the realization of the phrase, ‘Africa for the Africans.’ That Liberia can do it, would be evident to anyone who has the wish to see and comprehend the miracle that has been wrought there. ”

“ Negro has far the greater cause for his prejudice.
The very existence of different crafts and classes, and still more of different races occupying the same national home, makes problems. The only solution that really solves is Justice, with its accompanying weight in the balance—Mercy. Without the exercise of these, no class or race could hope for continuous life or persistent growth. Where truth and justice meet together, righteousness and peace will kiss each other in a brotherly, harmonious relation, that only the devil’s lies and cruel injustice ever mar and distort. ”

“ How many of the heartaches and tragedies of the succeeding long years might have been prevented, had the people of America been as ready to follow their leaders in making pathways for peace and righteousness, and in establishing right and justice and self-government for their Negro and Indian people, as they had been ready to follow them in paths of war in fending their own rights and establishing their own self-government! ”

“ I do not believe that the Negro was so much at fault for entering so largely into politics, and for the mistakes that were made in too many cases, as were the unscrupulous white leaders who got the Negro’s confidence, and controlled his vote, to further their own ends, regardless, in many cases, of the permanent welfare of the Negro. I have always considered it unfortunate that the southern white man did not make more effort during the period of reconstruction to get the confidence and sympathy of the Negro, and thus have been able to keep him in close touch and sympathy in politics.... ”

“ It is difficult to see how anybody can trace the life and work of the comparatively small band of negro leaders, during these forty years past, without a profound feeling of admiration for their Christian character, their patience, their wisdom, and their fine sense of Christian delicacy, exhibited under trying conditions. Think of the men upon whom God has placed this most difficult and delicate task of laying the foundation for a totally new relation toward a more numerous and powerful race, and then try to remember how very few have seriously blundered! ”

“ The problem of trust is at once a community problem and a world problem which only the determined faith which removes mountains can solve.
Every one of our States has some wise, patriotic negro leaders who are earnestly studying the problems of race and of State, and who are profoundly anxious that race-integrity be maintained and race-relations be cordial and mutually helpful. They, and they alone, know the trials and burdens, the achievements and ambitions of their race so perfectly as to witness with authority. ”

“ Professor Ely, in his Political Economy, argues, from this universal practice doubtless, that slavery is both right and wrong. “There is a time in human development when slavery represents a step in human progress, the best and longest that men were able to take. Such a step is always right. It is wrong, when men have learned how to do better.” Upon this view of the case, a host of African explorers and observers have testified to what they regard as the obvious advantages of the well-nigh universal slave-system of the more progressive tribes. ”

“ If this be true, the sum total of the process of civilization would be a Caucasian civilization, and a Negro, and an Indian, no matter how much each contributed to the other in the fashioning of his own. Would it not be a great loss to the culture of the human family, if all the races were to lose their predominant characteristics, and were to be reduced to a dead medium level? ”

“ Can that be Christian justice, whose approval we ask of our Lord, but which deprives a people of the right to guard the most sacred trust which God imposes—the homes in which they live? There are just as many classes among the Negroes as among the Whites. They are all forced into solidarity for like reasons that make the solid South. Neither is healthy. Both are based on unreasonable prejudice. The solid Negro believes he faces a solid white wall. The solid South believes it faces two solids, North and Negro. ”

“ In the long run, all will learn to value most the respect that righteous living and service to mankind merit, and to contend least for that which has not been earned. Whatever the future may bring, whether return to Africa in large numbers, or migration to Haiti as some of their leaders contend, or permanence in America, the duty of each day is to help the Negro to help himself in attaining the fullest preparation for the destiny which God’s providence has surely in store for him. ”

“ The negro people are not standing for social equality among themselves, even though some of their extremists, along with the Japanese, are muddying the stream of concord with a cry of “equality of races.” No one can doubt but that sane people of every race will continue to stand for that which God made them—white, yellow, brown, red and black—and will try to keep themselves so. ”

“ To the latter—the man who knows the Negro more remotely—the miracle is explained only upon the assumption that the Negro is a Caucasian in black and not what God made him—a Negro—with his own racial characteristics, able to absorb what is best in the world, to build it unto himself and to stand before his Master and before mankind in God and self-fashioned black manhood. ”

“ No one, except perhaps the political economist here or there, or some fond soul of the olden time who has been asleep ever since, will attempt to defend slavery; yet it is also difficult to understand the philosopher, North or South, White or Negro who attaches nothing but obloquy to it, and sees nothing that is good resulting from it. ”

“ If there are difficulties to be encountered in the bestowal of his earnings, they should be met squarely. Conference on any vital subject whatever, is always courteous and cordial when the Negro is accorded the place that God gave him in creating him a man. That, too, is not conjecture, but long-proved fact. When men have learned that the house of State is as much God’s house as that of Church, we shall learn how to hold brotherly conference with black or red or yellow or brown, and differences and misunderstandings and green-eyed hatred will be banished. ”

“ THE CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEGRO IN AMERICA In approaching the evangelization of the Negro in America it is necessary to go back to the primitive days of the colonists in order to picture the scene at the beginning.
Whether in the villages or on the plantations, the large majority of slave-holders felt a genuine compassion and an honorable responsibility for the helpless human beings brought under their care. They felt also an equal helplessness in the higher realms of guidance of the people who must yet learn the language of common intercourse. ”

“ Had wiser counsels prevailed, and had old racial and personal attachments and interdependencies, so carefully built up, been fostered as the best condition under which to work out the stupendous problems of the new time, no one can doubt that the story of American life would have been different, and few can doubt that it would have been better. As it was, the conditions which served the unworthy ends of the white demagogue, were sadly fruitful in heartrending results upon the religion of the Negro. ”

“ The well-nigh universal testimony is proclaimed as a tragic wail, that contact with the white man has, upon the whole, been degrading, not elevating to the Negro. And this is consistently true, though with bright and hopeful exceptions here and there.
From the demoralizing era of the slave-traffic, involving robbing, cheating, the violation of the most solemn treaties, and the bad example of private life, up to the settling of the Congo, the one aim of the white man has been his own profit at whatever cost to the natives. ”

“ A later generation fought for Democracy—that crowning and pervading principle of liberty. Our great leaders have been as wise, as clear, as simple in the interpretation of democracy as their forefathers were in that of liberty. Shall the Church of God be wise enough, and devoted enough, and fearless enough, to lead the people of God to realize what has been purchased with blood and consecrated by sacrifice?
Now, as then, self-interest engenders prejudice; prejudice of class towards other classes, of crafts towards other crafts, of race towards other races. All the prejudice is not on one side ”

“ The Revolutionary War, with the Declaration of Independence, and its assertion of the freedom and equality of men as its justifying principle and motive, produced a profound effect upon the mind of America; not, indeed, sufficiently great to enable any State to enact laws looking to gradual emancipation, but great enough to arouse most of the Northern States and all of the Southern, except Georgia, to prohibit, by the year 1787, the further importation of slaves from beyond their borders. ”

“ This marks the beginning of a new era for the race; for until Christian faith, the instinct of prayer, and the habit of belief, come to be the heritage of a people, making the atmosphere of life, it is not possible to begin to build the generations into the great Temple as true and tried living stones. True, such habit, such atmosphere, may become in time but the empty shell of life that is dead ”

“ Among other things for which we labor, we are striving to complete the well-being of their acquired nationality by raising up a native clergy among the people, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh—a most desirable object, the accomplishment of which no other religious denomination, aside from ours, has essayed to realize in a systematic manner. To this end, we need a theological training-school. We are also wrestling with the problem of extending popular education among the illiterate masses; to do which, more successfully, a better equipped normal school is needed. ”

“ Who can say what further progress—slow, very slow, and deliberate—awaits achievements, in view of that which, in the past, has been distinctly and, in many cases, wholly their very own? It is beside our purpose to make a comparison of races. Our study is of the Negro himself; and our findings prove, what naturally would have been expected of God’s creation, a people worth while in themselves. ”

“ To this day, the pride of the Negroes in the “Great Negro Churches” with their own Bishops in the case of the Methodists, and, in the case of both Methodists and Baptists, their own strong leaders utterly independent of a responsibility shared by the white race, is a powerful motive in holding them to these Churches. This very great achievement which they have accomplished for themselves through sacrifices that white people of the same age know only faintly, is a source of unending satisfaction to them, and an evidence of their ability to inaugurate and maintain great enterprises. ”

“ Indeed, when the fork in the road of life was reached, the white youths found something to envy in the freedom of their fellows’ feet from the cramping weight of shoes, and the freedom of their minds from the restraints of school. With the approach of maturity, came routine and responsibility for the whites ”

“ Washington’s Atlanta speech proposed, and which our whole people accepted in 1884. The substance of that proposal was that “in our outward, common life, in all that goes to make a harmonious relation and a prosperous people, we are a unit like a man’s hand; in our inner social life, in all that contributes to racial integrity and the [Pg 219] separate trusts that God imposes, we are separate as the fingers of that hand; but hand and fingers unite in striving to perfect the human family, to strengthen and build up, to guard and to purify, the great living Temple of God.” ”

“ Yet the Commission found the Liberian people realizing clearly the obstacles to be overcome in self-development, and calmly and courageously facing problems which demand for their solution the most perfect skill, and earnestly endeavoring to overcome natural obstacles such as only wealth wisely used can control. “To think what would be the effect throughout the continent of Africa if, in Liberia, free institutions were definitely established, is to make one tingle with enthusiasm. ”

“ Over our entire nation, it is by the white race that the laws are made and executed, that social needs are ministered to, that prisons are administered, and that education is provided, and health and sanitation supervised. There is not a State in which the regulation of civic life would, or could, be turned over to the Negroes. This lays upon the Whites the chivalric obligation of studying, the more conscientiously and carefully, the needs and interests of their negro fellow-citizens. This cannot be done apart from the highly intelligent Negroes. ”

“ The Negroes should have their own peace officers; and their right to protect their own homes should be kept utterly inviolate. Citizenship is a sacred trust, and the care of citizens and the harmony of life demand that the most wholesome conditions of life be made for all alike.
We, of the Episcopal Church, have tested this out through many years. We have sat in councils, in conferences, on committees and boards with Negroes. With scarcely an exception, we have found them as courteous as ourselves. In counsel, some are wise and valued advisers; some are less so; none are useless. ”

“ Can the Church be God’s Church, and stand for less?
The educated, intelligent Negroes of today, who read and think, are as anxious to contribute to the best interests of their communities, their States, and our common Nation, as are the Whites. This has been tested in community “clean-up campaigns,” in anti-tuberculosis movements, in liberty loan drives, in volunteers for war, in active service in army and navy—in every movement in which they have been assigned a share. They have never asked exemption from any duty. If service be a badge of honor, the Negro has won it. ”

“ The fulfilment of all religion is Jesus Christ; without Whom, religion has ever degenerated into superstition. In its primary meaning, Religion is the law of relation—personal relation to all that is outside of self—to God, to one’s own complex nature, to man, and to the world. And since the law of relation is personal, it is susceptible of an infinite variety of interpretations and applications as personality grows and expands. Upon the growth of the religious sense, therefore, depends the progress of moral and spiritual character. ”