African people

“ Resolved, That without arts, without science, without a proper knowledge of government, to cast into the savage wilds of Africa the free people of color, seems to us the circuitous route through which they must return to perpetual bondage. ”

“ A cursory reading of this literature discloses at once that our general knowledge of Africa has been based in the past mainly on those external facts that strike the sense of sight, such as the physical appearance of the population, native dress and handiwork, musical instruments, implements of warfare, and customs peculiar to the social and religious life of the people. Only through the folk literature, however, can we get a glimpse of the working of the mind of the African Negro. ”

“ During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. ”

“ They tell us that it is our home; that they desire to make a people of us, which we can never be here; that they want Africa civilized; and that we are the very persons to do it, as it is almost impossible for any white person to exist there. ”

“ The object of the African Institution, was, "To improve the temporal condition and the moral faculties of the natives of Africa; to diffuse knowledge and excite industry, by methods adapted to the peculiar situation and manners of the inhabitants; to watch over their execution of the laws which have been passed by this and other countries, for abolishing the African slave trade; and finally, to introduce the blessings of civilized society, among a people sunk in ignorance and barbarism, and occupying no less than a fourth part of the habitable globe." ”

“ We need not go so far away from home, indeed, to see little black children with woolly, kinky hair and flat noses like the little African. In the sunny South of our own land are many negro children as like the little negro cousin in Africa as one pea is like another. Years and years ago slave-ships brought to this country negroes, stolen from their own African homes to be the slaves and servants of the white people here. ”

“ But the native African has a totally different experience of life, and much that is taken for granted by a child of a Northern civilized land needs explanation to one used to tropical uncivilized surroundings. Again, the African knows the essential operations of everyday life in their simplest form, whereas the European knows them disguised by an elaborate industrial system. ”

“ A school of thought whose aim it is to see Nigeria, at least, become in time the home of highly-trained African peoples, protected in their property and in their rights by the paramount Power, proud of their institutions, proud of their race, proud of their own fertile and beautiful land. ”

“ But the hard facts were that fifty years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights. ”

“ Again, often men of different tribes build their villages near one another, but the people of the two villages keep quite separate. Each has its own chief and follows its own customs. Several villages of one tribe may all obey a great chief, but no tribe has a chief so powerful as the king of Uganda. The Congo tribes have not learnt nearly so much as some other African peoples. ”

“ Of all the various tribes, nations, colours, and races of men who inhabit this immense country, there is not one which has not its enemy; and the universal creed of Africa seems to be, that the freedom and happiness of one tribe rest upon the slavery and misery of another. ”

“ There are common elements which run throughout the entire continent of Africa, but to gain the best insight into the background of the American slaves, West African culture can be isolated and studied by itself. ”

“ The African is constitutionally indolent and improvident. Work he will not, so far as he is able to avoid it, nor will he economize what falls into his hands, I do them no injustice. I appeal to facts. Look at the condition of the free negroes, North and South! Look at Africa—behold the African race the world over, and then tell me from whence come their universal poverty, ignorance and degradation. The African possesses none of that sensitiveness—that acuteness of sensibility—that delicacy and refinement of taste, which characterize the white race. ”

“ More than ten millions of Africans are scattered over the wide area indicated, and possess amongst them instances of mental and other qualifications which render them remarkable among their fellow-men. But like the essential parts of a complicated albeit perfect machine, these attainments and qualifications so widely dispersed await, it is evident, some potential [260] agency to collect and adjust them into the vast engine essential for executing the true purposes of the civilized African Race. ”

“ In the higher questions, affecting the divine government, Africa, at the era of the discovery of America, furnished, under the most sordid influences, a portion of her population to supply the defect of the aborigines of this country in compulsory labor. ”

“ In Africa, the home of the negro, there has been a monotonous repetition of the same old facts which historians learned from monumental inscriptions and indestructible tablets thousands upon thousands of years old.
The African negro has always been a distinct type, an inferior type, a savage type, a non-progressive type. ”

“ We believe in the freedom of Africa for the Negro people of the world, and by the principle of Europe for the Europeans and Asia for the Asiatics; we also demand Africa for the Africans at home and abroad. ”

“ Africa will have [Pg 87] to be evangelized from within, not from without. The Colonization society has spent mints of money and tons of human blood in the selfish attempt to plant an Anglo-African colony on the West Coast of Africa. ”

“ It is a philanthropic and consoling reflection that the moral and physical condition of the African race in the U. States, even in a state of Slavery, is far better than it would have been if their ancestors had not been brought from their native land. ”

“ In a word, all the exertions now made, by the benevolent friends of the African, appear to us likely to produce or suggest, directly or indirectly, a great amount of good, and to promise the early dawning of that bright day, when, in the moral view of his fellow men, no less than of that Creator who has 'made them all of one blood,' the African shall be as the American, and the black man as the white. ”

“ The millions, he says, of African negroes that have, during three centuries, been transported to the New World and its islands, are the same in colour as the present inhabitants of the parent country of their forefathers. ”

“ The names of Dingane and Bambata, Hintsa and Makana, Squngthi and Dalasile, Moshoeshoe and Sekhukhuni, were praised as the glory of the entire African nation. I hoped then that life might offer me the opportunity to serve my people and make my own humble contribution to their freedom struggle. ”

“ The Arabs, the Banyans, and the Mohammedan Hindis, represent the higher and the middle classes. These classes own the estates, the ships, and the trade. To these classes bow the half-caste and the negro.
The next most important people who go to make up the mixed population of this island are the negroes. They consist of the aborigines, Wasawahili, Somalis, Comorines, Wanyamwezi, and a host of tribal representatives of Inner Africa. ”

“ Still some principles may be laid down for the great negroid population of Africa which, as far as my experience goes, apply in most instances. I will ignore platitudes as to the equality of men irrespective of colour and progress, and take as an hypothesis what is patent to all who have observed the African native, that he is fundamentally inferior in mental development and ethical possibilities (call it soul if you will) to the white man. ”

“ Unprotected from the perpendicular rays of the sun, the African is black, muscular, and cheerful; under the shadow of primeval forest, man assumes a coppery hue, lacking the endurance of the negro, and becomes in disposition cold and melancholy. ”

“ Then, too, there is another question which the ecclesiastical authorities may never, it is true, find it possible frankly to confront, but which laymen, it seems to me, are bound to do—those, at any rate, who are persuaded that the African race is one of the great races of mankind, not intended by the Almighty Architect to disappear from the scene of human affairs. ”

“ To return to Africa people who could contribute to her betterment; indeed, to return to Africa the descendants of her enslaved sons and daughters improved by contact with the civilization of the whites would be a recompense to that continent for the wrongs perpetrated, during a period of two hundred years, on her population. It was only America's moral obligation, said the colonizationists, to return the black population to Africa. ”

“ The above traits are inborn and fundamental, belonging to the race everywhere, in Africa as well as America. Strict correctness requires, however, that attention be called to the fact that there are tribal differences among African Negroes that amount almost to the national variations of Europe; and these are reflected in American Negroes, who are the descendants of these different tribes. ”

“ Indeed, the closer one’s knowledge of African life and the more insight one obtains into the immense sea of human misery heaving beneath the crust of Western civilization, the more one is led to marvel at the shallow commonplaces which picture the African wallowing in degraded barbarism. ”

“ What they may become in Africa, their native home, carrying with them to those shores, the vigorous elements imbibed during their apprenticeship of servitude here, other generations yet to come will know better than we of the present. The part which the African is to perform in the progress of civilization, and the development of the entire character of humanity, is a problem which has begun to attract the attention of enlightened men. ”

“ As a matter of fact the Africans are the only contemporaneous primitive people who have anywhere achieved race consciousness and civilization without losing their racial identity. As a consequence almost every fundamental process and stage of civilization, from the most primitive to the most cosmopolitan man, is somewhere represented in the contemporary life of the Negro in Africa and America. ”

“ From the above considerations, we sincerely recommend to our white countrymen honor and humanity, which will render useless the transportation of the colored population to the coast of Africa, it being altogether gratuitous and uncalled for. ”

“ And while the great body of the Negro races have been located geographically in Africa, they have been, in no small sense, a cosmopolitan people. Their wanderings may be traced from the rising to the setting sun. ”

“ Here, on the contrary, the African part of our population bears so large a proportion to the residue of European origin, as to create the most lively apprehension, especially in some quarters of the Union. ”

“ The African seems to seize on the tropical fervor and luxuriance of Scripture imagery as something native; he appears to feel himself to be of the same blood with those old burning, simple souls, the patriarchs, prophets, and seers, whose impassioned words seem only grafted as foreign plants on the cooler stock of the Occidental mind. ”

“ The Lord is going to save that Dark Continent, and it behooves his servants here to honor themselves in doing something to hasten the completion of this inevitable work! Africa is to be redeemed by the African, and the white Christians of this country can aid the work by munificent contributions. Will you do it, brethren? ”

“ The African you have got in your mind up here, that you are legislating for and spending millions in trying to improve, doesn’t exist; your African is a fancy African.... You keep your fancy African and I wish you joy of him, but I grieve more than I can say for the real African that does exist and suffers for all the mistakes you make in dealing with him through a dream thing, the fiend-child African of your imagination. ”

“ You must understand that these tracts of land which have been taken possession of by the European powers are not by any means deserted or uninhabited lands. On the contrary, many of them teem with people, and these lands on the west of Africa are especially populous. You must bear in mind that the extensive slave trade which existed for so many years was carried on with the west coast of Africa.
Many of these black people are intelligent races of men, and all are divided into tribes and kingdoms governed by rulers and kings. ”

“ To preserve the white man’s life in Africa, other elements are equally essential. The dwelling-house, recreation and provisions are features sadly neglected by the majority of whites.
AN AFRICAN HOME
There is so much monotony, so much to irritate and to depress in West Africa, that everything Governments [79] and merchants can do to brighten the lives of their employés should be done. The prettiest and happiest of homes are without doubt in German and Portuguese colonies. ”

“ For five years the Universal Negro Improvement Association has been advocating the cause of Africa for the Africans—that is, that the Negro peoples of the world should concentrate upon the object of building up for themselves a great nation in Africa. ”

“ If they could see the wretched conditions and surroundings of the black people of Africa today, the contrast would be apparent and the fact clearly evident that the black race in America enjoys incomparable advantages. The comfort and civilization under which they live here are due to the white man’s effort and sacrifice. ”