Universal Negro Improvement Association

“ The National Colored Women's Association possibly means more to the social order and improvement of the colored race in this country than anything yet attempted outside of the churches. It has already succeeded in making important many things that have been too long neglected. It has succeeded in calling attention to the fact that the Negro race has a good deal more intelligence and virtue than it uses for its own advancement. The controlling spirit of this new association of colored women is first of all for self-improvement. ”

“ The great weakness of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has been and is that, whereas it aims to secure certain results by affecting the minds of white people and making them friendly to it, it has no control over these minds and has absolutely no answer to the question, “What steps do you propose to take if these minds at which you are aiming remain unaffected? What do you propose to do to secure life and liberty for the Negro if the white Southerner persists, as he has persisted for sixty years, in refusing to grant guarantees of life and liberty?” ”

“ Whenever there is a considerable number of demonstrators of that kind, it is safe to do organization work along agricultural and home-economics lines. In fact, negroes who have demonstrated that kind of enterprise and dependability are ready for cooperative marketing or other welfare organization. The great task that is before the negro extension force is to multiply the numbers of good demonstrators. In this way, they will develop leaders and magnify the kind of activities which will meet with universal approval. ”

“ Yet experience has shown the impracticability of the project of helping these negroes with the long arm of the Federal law. All that has been undertaken in this way has been fruitless or worse. The only chance for lifting the black man to the full status of the citizen is by leaving his future essentially in the hands of the masterful folk who alone can help him. We see that the ruling class in the South have a measure of interest in the status of the negro and an opportunity to benefit his state that can never belong to the people of the North. ”

“ Such a condition does not exist, at the South, even in theory, for any man of color. In no career can such a man compete with white men upon equal terms. He must not only meet the prejudice of the individual, not only the united prejudice of the white community; but lest some one should wish to treat him fairly, he is met at every turn with some legal prohibition which says, "Thou shalt not," or "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." But the Negro race is viable; it adapts itself readily to circumstances ”

“ The aim of many, if not most, of those living outside the south who take an active interest in the Negro is to secure for him fuller political rights and wider social opportunities, believing that as restrictions are removed, the Negro's position will improve in every respect, and he will ultimately take his place side by side with the whites, on an equal footing and possessing an identical cultural equipment. ”

“ The blood of all the ethnic types that go to make up American citizenship flows in the veins of the Afro-American people, so that of the ten million of them in this country, accounted for by the Federal census, not more than four million are of pure negroid descent, while some four million of them, not accounted for by the Federal census, have escaped into the ranks of the white race, and are re-enforced very largely by such escapements every year. The vitiation of blood has operated irresistibly to weaken that pride of ancestry, which is the foundation-stone of pride of race ”

“ It thus becomes all the more imperative that the race should gain for itself the primary principles of knowledge and culture.
The social separation of the races in America renders it imperative that the professional classes among the Negroes should be recruited from their own ranks. Under ordinary circumstances, professional places are filled by the most favored class in the community. In a Latin or Catholic country, where the fiction of “social equality” does not exist, there is felt no necessity for Negro priest, teacher, or physician to administer to his own race. ”

“ The relationship between those figures and the history of unequal treatment afforded to the Negro cannot be denied. At every point from birth to death, the impact of the past is reflected in the still disfavored position of the Negro.
In light of the sorry history of discrimination and its devastating impact on the lives of Negroes, bringing the Negro into the mainstream of American life should be a state interest of the highest order. ”

“ 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 youth of negro blood might naturally expect to find in a community devoted to the maintenance of his rights at least a welcome to the external business society. He will, however, find that the people who would willingly sacrifice much to ensure him an equal place in matters political, allow their race prejudices or those of their associates to deny him fair play. ”

“ American Negroes have even crossed the waters and held three Pan-African Congresses to arouse black men through the world to work for modern democratic development. Thus the emancipation of the Negro slave in America becomes through his own determined effort simply one step toward the emancipation of all men. ”

“ To be sure, if they are unusually gifted and pushing they may push higher at the risk of insult and bitter opposition. Thus the fact remains that the mass of the willing, eager workers of the race are held back and forced down by a deep and growing race prejudice, and these, pressing down on the lower strata, encourage in them laziness and vagrancy and crime. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is an organization for giving the colored race a reasonable opportunity to help itself. ”

“ There are thirty-two million whites to four million blacks in the country, and there need be no fear of Negro domination. The State laws do not protect the Negro in his rights, as they forbade their entrance into the State. (Action of loyal convention of '64) . I am not willing to trust the rights of my people with the white men, as they have not preserved those of their own race, in neglecting to provide them with the means of education. ”

“ The N.A.A.C.P. has done some good and worth-while work as an organization of protest. But the times call for something more effective than protests addressed to the other fellow’s consciousness. What is needed at present is more of the mobilizing of the Negro’s political power, pocketbook power and intellectual power (which are absolutely within the Negro’s own control) to do for the Negro the things which the Negro needs to have done without depending upon or waiting for the co-operative action of white people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore, if the negro will insist upon some race manipulation in order to raise the average of intelligence, thrift and morality in our national citizenship, the only safe and sane method is to take measures to restrict the increase of the negro race and let it die out like the Indian. ”

“ Race prejudice is bound to give way before the potent influences of character, education, and wealth. And these are necessary to the growth of the race. Without wealth there can be no [Pg 552] leisure, without leisure there can be no thought, and without thought there can be no progress. The future work of the Negro is twofold: subjective and objective. Years will be devoted to his own education and improvement here in America. He will sound the depths of education, accumulate wealth, and then turn his attention to the civilization of Africa. ”

“ The same principle obtains in problems affecting individual life or the life of a race. To adjust the Negro in harmonious relationship to American civilization is a question that depends for solution not so much upon the nation as upon the thought and life of the race itself. The Negro seen through the refractory medium of fear and prejudice is regarded as an unhealthy member, yet it is evident that he is a vital member and cannot be removed by the surgeon's scalpel. ”

“ On the other hand, a sincere desire among the American people to help the Negroes undertake their own social regeneration means, first, that the Negro be given the ballot on the same terms as other men, to protect him against injustice and to safeguard his interests in the administration of law; secondly, that through education and social organization he be trained to work, and save, and earn a decent living. But these are not all: wealth is not the only thing worth accumulating; experience and knowledge can be accumulated and handed down, and no people can be truly rich without them. ”

“ This is the least of the negro’s cares. His demand for civil rights is no demand for “social equality.” This is a mistaken view of the subject. It is this dread of social equality, this fear of social contact with the negro that precludes many well-meaning people from securing accurate information in regard to the aims, and purposes, and capabilities of those whom they desire to help. But there is light ahead, dark as at times it now may seem, and erroneous as are the views in regard to the negro’s relation to the American body-politic. ”

“ The problems of life are manifold. Wherever we turn questions of moment are presented to us for solution and settlement. At no period in the history of the American Negro has his status as a man and an American citizen been so closely scrutinized and criticised as at the present time.
The galling chain and merciless lash were the instruments used to accomplish the humiliation and degradation of the African. Avarice was the factor in the composition of the character of a large number of the white men of America that wrought such ravishes in the well-being of the African. ”

“ It is about time for all of us to stop going out of our way, and making occasion, where none exists, to blackguard the Negro, and instead encourage him to industry and correct living and increase our efforts to make him a steadier laborer and better citizen. It is hardly fair to place the whole race under a common condemnation because of the slothfulness and lawlessness of some of its members; it would hardly be fair even if this percentage were larger than it is, and it is hardly worthy of a people to continue nagging at, and seeking to arouse further prejudice against its own race. ”

“ He ranges, in type, from the radical editors of The Messenger to the "new bourgeoisie" which has learned to fight back and die, if need be, for the sake of principle and justice. This is the type of Negro who, in spite of differences of opinion within the race itself, is gradually working his way toward leadership; and this is the Negro who now "faces America." "Newly emancipated from reliance upon any white savior, [he] stands ready to make his unique contribution to what may some time become American civilization." ”

“ The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future. Though it is orthodox to think of America as the one country where it is unnecessary to have a past, what is a luxury for the nation as a whole becomes a prime social necessity for the Negro. For him, a group tradition must supply compensation for persecution, and pride of race the antidote for prejudice. History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generations must repair and offset. ”

“ As a race, the Negro cannot enjoy in this country, like the Anglo-Saxon, the immunities and privileges guaranteed to him by the Constitution. The civil rights, the ample protection and the broad and liberal sentiment that protect and inspire the white people, are nowhere in America accorded to the black man. He is everywhere proscribed, because he is a Negro. No matter how much culture and refinement he may possess, he does not receive at the hands of the prejudiced whites that respectful consideration to which his culture entitles him. ”

“ Among the most potent forces in the uplift of a people are the school, the press, the courts and the church.
Under a system of compulsory education, the Negro would much sooner learn to observe the laws of health and thus to extend his life.
When newspapers in Southern cities are fairer in their attitude toward the black citizen, he will become a better citizen. It will increase his respect for others and greatly increase his self respect. He will then make more effort to live and to live well, because his life will seem more worth living. ”

“ We cannot see, neither do we believe, that it is possible for the Negro to attain unto the American type of civilization, while he lives in the same territory and in immediate contact with the white people. This, however, applies especially to the former slave states. Eight-tenths of the Negroes are at present in the old slave states, and if they remain there, which is very questionable, they will never be brought into the political, religious and social fabrics. They can never become full-fledged and free citizens like the white people. ”