Afro-American

“ About the Afro-American in politics and in business, Editor Turner says truthfully: "When the negro in America begins business for himself, and accumulates wealth and intelligence, the race problem then will be solved. Business must be first and politics last." ”

“ The new generation of children is being brought up to glorify Negro color. It is told of the princes and warriors from which it is descended, learns with [210] the geography of the United States the geography of Africa, and delights in the cognomen—Afro-American. The color issue will never be settled by all Negroes becoming Whites. It seems clear also that it cannot be solved by all men becoming mulattoes. There seems to remain just one obvious solution, and that is in distinct and parallel development, equality before the law, and mutual understanding and tolerance. ”

“ Pioneer Press indorse The Journal by taking the same view of the question.
The Chicago (Ill.) Inter-Ocean, one of the largest and most widely circulated papers of the Northwest, gives the following opinion of Afro-American progress: "In the entire history of mankind, no race has ever made such rapid progress against tremendous odds as the colored people of this country have since the chains of slavery were stricken off, less than a generation ago. Nor did emancipation, followed as it was by enfranchisement, remove their disabilities. The negro color has remained, with all its disadvantages." ”

“ This study of Afro-Americans seeks to describe the character and culture which they produced for themselves in America. It also points to the many important contributions which they have made to American cultural life. ”

“ They are those who do not argue that the condition of the black man is the cause of his rejection and nonrecognition, and offer no remedy for his elevation; but they heed the black man's continued cries for assistance, in his efforts to advance; those who give a listening ear as he cries—"Save me, or I perish." This friendly class knows that we are seeking for educational, moral and religious improvement, not social equality; and when others demand the expulsion of the race from America, though we have been here three hundred years, they, in accents loud and strong, proclaim our freedom. ”

“ FROM the very first time the Afro-American had a right to exercise his freedom in this country, his course with regard to church, state and society, has been followed with more than ordinary zeal, and his progress in the various pursuits undertaken by him have been noted with an exacting eye, characteristic of the most watchful. ”

“ The word "African" or "Negro" may be applied in a general way to the native-born African and his descendants or to the Negro of Africa, because of the intense blackness of color, but the "Afro-American" race does not now nor ever did exist. It is argued that the German-American, the Irish-American, and the Anglo-American are distinctly racial lines, and for that reason the "Afro-American" must be applied to the race of African descent in America. ”

“ The Afro-American's heightened sense of racial consciousness was not an end in itself. This racial self-consciousness gave him strength to withstand the daily injustices which confronted him, and it provided him with faith in himself and hope in the future. ”

“ The Afro-American editor has demonstrated the capacity of his race to win success and distinction in every department of life in which he finds his white brother a competitor. He has, by his capacity for his work, both natural and acquired, demonstrated to the world that he does not represent a race of mere imitators, but a race, which, under the same conditions, is capable of doing all the Anglo-Saxon race can accomplish.
No agency has been more potent in compelling a just recognition of the negro, as a man and a citizen, than the Press in his hands. ”

“ Has the Afro-American made any commendable progress amid the multiplicity of disadvantages which have beset him? We freely assert that he has; and it is with this thought in mind that we propose to deal with the facts of his journalistic career of sixty-three years, dating from the first paper published in New York City, March 16, 1827, to the present auspicious year of 1890. ”

“ Their reverses in this matter in the old slave-holding States, coupled with a vast mass of class legislation, modelled on the slave code, have affected the Afro-American people in their civil and political rights in all of the States of the Republic, especially as far as public opinion is concerned. This was inevitable, and follows in every instance in history where a race element of the citizenship is set aside by law or public opinion as separate and distinct from its fellows, with a fixed status or caste. ”

“ The Independent came to us this week, asking the question 'Should the negro be disfranchised?' There is as much absurdity in thinking of his disfranchisement, as there is in thinking of placing the United States in the center of Africa, There have been some curious exaggerations prevailing concerning the negro, and many have been the controversies relating to him; but if he is examined with the view of discovering his noble qualities, he will be found a being made in the image of God, placed in the United States there to stay. ”

“ These papers were started by some of the ablest men of the race at that time. They were men whose loyalty to their people could not be questioned, and whose efforts for race development could not fail to win appreciation. They labored at a time when the Afro-American, just out of slavery, did not engage to any great extent in literary efforts; and consequently a support for their journals was obtained by the hardest efforts only. ”

“ This field is naturally ours, and is the only fair one we ever had for usefulness before. Moreover, the race to be educated and elevated is ours; therefore we are deeply interested in the kind of education it receives, etc."
The Anglo-African lived to see the Afro-American a freedman, and to enjoy the awarded—"Well done, good and faithful servant," in the Abolition fight. ”

“ Yet there is greater significance, as a negro newspaper writes, in the fact that the equatorial telescope now used by the Lawrence University of Wisconsin was made entirely by colored pupils in the School of Mechanical Arts of Nashville, Tenn. In other words, the Afro-American is finding his place as an intelligent worker, a property owner, and an independent citizen, rather than as an agitator, a politician or a race advocate. In religion, superstition and effusive sentiment are giving way to stricter morality. ”

“ Let it be remembered, however, that this is the first generation of negro prosperity. Will the second or third generation really assimilate the American ideal, or develop a “refined” domesticity of its own? ”

“ There seems to be little doubt that the negro 240race, as a whole, would welcome any reasonable means of escape from the galling conditions of their life in the South. On the other hand, there is no doubt whatever that all the more intelligent members of the race are staunchly and even pathetically loyal to American ideals, and would be very unwilling to live under any other than the American form of government. In the new State, they would be members of a negro community without ceasing to be American citizens. ”

“ Although most Americans would have insisted that these activities sprang from a genuine concern for racial justice, Afro-Americans were convinced that it had been the pressure of world opinion which had turned these humanitarian convictions into action. ”

“ I commit this work to the public, white and black, to the friends and foes of the Negro, in the hope that the obsolete antagonisms which grew out of the relation of master and slave may speedily sink as storms beneath the horizon; and that the day will hasten when there shall be no North, no South, no Black, no White,—but all be American citizens, with equal duties and equal rights. ”

“ Second, A growing desire among the enlightened Negroes in America to learn all that is possible from research concerning the antiquity of the race,—Africa, its inhabitants, and the development of the Negro governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia, led me to furnish something to meet a felt need. If the Negro slave desired his native land before the Rebellion, will not the free, intelligent, and reflective American Negro turn to Africa with its problems of geography [pg vii] and missions, now that he can contribute something towards the improvement of the condition of humanity? ”

“ On the basis of the foregoing declaration, and firmly believing in our high destiny, we, as American Negroes, are resolved to strive in every honorable way for the realization of the best and highest aims, for the development of strong manhood and pure womanhood, and for the rearing of a race ideal in America and Africa, to the glory of God and the uplifting of the Negro people. ”

“ We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty-handed: there are to-day no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? ”

“ But if we decide that the negro is a man -- that he has the attributes of humanity -- then let us for our own sake, if not for his, for consistency's sake, ever recognize him as a man and treat him as a man.
Now, sir, it does not follow that because we recognize the African as a man, as belonging to the human species, that therefore we must at once bestow upon him all the privileges, social and political, which we bestow upon other men. We recognize all those foreigners from the old world, who are thronging to our shores, as men. ”

“ The American Negroes are the aristocrats of the Negro world. It may be a paradox to assume that a proletariat can become an aristocracy, but an aristocracy is the best a race can produce in culture and manners. No doubt African Negrodom is made up of a great number of races, but all seem to have one common interest and to yield more homage to the name of Africa itself than to any constituent part, kingdom, or state or pasture. The American Negro is beginning to lead Africa as he is leading the Indies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nobody can understand this country without understanding the African American experience. It began when America began. And throughout our history, the experience of black Americans has challenged every American to live up to the best ideals of our country: freedom, equality and justice. ”

“ The fact that the Negro brought with him from Africa so little tradition which he was able to transmit and perpetuate on American soil makes that race unique among all peoples of our cosmopolitan population." [8] In connection herewith, moreover, we must also take into account that slave-groups, upon reaching America, were broken up and the members thereof sold into different parts of the country, where new habits had to be formed, because of a different environment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A moment's thought will easily convince open minded persons that the contribution of the Negro to American nationality as slave, freedman and citizen was far from negligible. No element in American life has so subtly and yet clearly woven itself into the warp and woof of our thinking and acting as the American Negro. ”

“ The time has not yet come for the great development of American Negro literature. The economic stress is too great and the racial persecution too bitter to allow the leisure and the poise for which literature calls. “The Negro in the United States is consuming all his intellectual energy in this gruelling race-struggle. ”

“ From the moment of initial contact between the mass of the American population and the country’s most important racial minorities—the Indian, the Jew, the Oriental, and the Negro—the self-congratulatory feelings of the majority have always found a partial or complete counterpart everywhere except among the slaves and the children of the slaves. The352 long delay in the inception of All-Africanism in America, and the groping uncertainty which still characterizes its manifestations, are due in large part to the cultural youthfulness of the American Negro. ”

“ Already in poetry, literature, music, and painting the work of Americans of Negro descent has gained notable recognition. Instead of being led and defended by others, as in the past, American Negroes are gaining their own leaders, their own voices, their own ideals. ”

“ Phillis Wheatley has been mentioned already. So, in the midst of darkness and oppression, the Negro race in America, without the use of the Christian church, schoolhouse, or printing-press, produced a poetess, an astronomer, a mathematician, and a physician, who, had they been white, would have received monuments and grateful memorials at the hands of their countrymen. But even their color cannot rob them of the immortality their genius earned. ”