Afro-Americans

“ Daniel Webster Davis, Editor Young Men's Friend.
When the history of the country and the present achievements of the Afro-American are written, it will be seen that the young men identified with this race have not been inactive. It will be observed that they have performed the part assigned them in the race of life with courage and fidelity. Upon the shoulders of the young Afro-American, man or woman, devolves the solving of the question, commonly called the Negro (Afro-American) Problem. ”

“ They publish dispatches from the South, which always put the Afro-American in a bad light. In short, they are those who are ever anxious to parade the faults and fallacies of the race. If they demand equal justice for the Afro-American, it is in the hope of reaping a political harvest in the future. They parade an harmonious and mellifluous speech, like that of the immortal Grady in Boston, in 1889, in the hope of injuring the kindly relation of the Northern friend to the Afro-American. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was forgetfulness of God, idolatry! "Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people."
The Negro tribes of Africa are as widely separated by mental, moral, physical, and social qualities as the Irish, Huns, Copts, and Druids are. Their location on the Dark Continent, their surroundings, and the amount of light that has come to them from the outside world, are the thermometer of their civilization. It is as manifestly improper to call all Africans Negroes as to call, Americans Indians. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Once filled with the common national spirit, partaking of its thoughts, entering heartily into the common movements, having the same dress, language and manners as others, and being as able and as willing to help as to be helped, and withal being in fact the most intensely American element on the continent because constructed on this soil, we may hope that the Afro-American will ultimately win and hold his proper place. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But from the point of view of the black man himself, the benefits of progress seem far more questionable. I read without the appropriate sense of horror that “not more than half of the native population is effectively reached by religious and educational influences,” and that 60 per cent. of the births are illegitimate. It seems to me that the Jamaican negro enjoys all the advantages of the primitive life without 274its disadvantages, whereas the American negro (broadly speaking) is subjected to all the evils of civilization, while he receives but a disproportionate share of its benefits. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Coming now to the slowly swelling stream of a distinct group literature, by and primarily for the Negro, we enter a realm only partially known to white Americans. First, there come the rich mass of Negro folk lore transplanted from Africa and developed in America. ”

“ I quoted to him this passage from “The Souls of Black Folk:”
“Deeply religious and intensely democratic as are the mass of the whites (in the South) , they feel acutely the false position in which the negro problems place them.... But ... the present social position of the negro stands as a menace and a portent before even the most open-minded; if there were nothing to charge against the negro but his blackness or other physical peculiarities, they argue, the problem would be comparatively simple; but what can we say to his ignorance, shiftlessness, poverty, and crime?” ”

“ Whoever may doubt the superiority of the white race, it is not he; and it is a racial, not merely a social or economic superiority to which he does instinctive homage. It does not enter his head to champion his own racial ideal, to set up an African Venus in rivalry to the Hellenic, and claim a new Judgment of Paris between them. If wishing could change the Ethiopian’s skin there would be never a negro in America. [63] The black 224race, out of its poverty, spends thousands of dollars annually on “anti-kink” lotions, vainly supposed to straighten the African wool. ”

“ 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 tenseness of this new situation has been reflected here in the United States in the mental attitude of the Negro people. They have developed new ideas of their own place in the category of races and have evolved new conceptions of their powers and destiny. These ideas have quickened their race-consciousness and they are making new demands on themselves, on their leaders and on the white people in whose midst they live. These new demands apply to politics, domestic and international, to education and culture, to commerce and industry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ In short, even before the Negro Renaissance of the 1920s the Afro-American community had made a basic contribution to American culture, providing America with a peasant folk tradition of the greatest importance. The social mobility in the American scene had permitted each wave of European immigrants to move up the social ladder before it had time to develop into an American peasant class. ”

“ But, fortunately for the Negro and for humanity at large, we live now in an epoch when race malice and sectional hate are disappearing beneath the horizon of a brighter and better future. The Negro in America is free. He is now an acknowledged factor in the affairs of the continent; and no community, state, or government, in this period of the world's history, can afford to be indifferent to his moral, social, intellectual, or political well-being. ”

“ It would seem indeed, that if any race have a right claim to a sort of pre-eminence over others, on the fair and honorable ground of talents displayed, and benefits conferred, it is precisely this very one, which we take upon us, in the pride of a temporary superiority, to stamp with the brand of essential degradation. It is hardly necessary to add, that while the blacks were the leading race in civilization and political power, there was no prejudice among the whites against their color. ”

“ The circumstances that led to the founding of the Negro Republic in the wilds of Africa perished in the fires of civil war. The Negro is free everywhere; but the republic of Liberia stands, and should stand until its light shall have penetrated the gloom of Africa, and until the heathen shall gather to the brightness of its shining. May it stand through the ages as a Christian Republic, as a faithful light-house along the dark and trackless sea of African paganism! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”