American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 by Various
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Various >> American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5
II. How much time will be required for the consciousness of having
been wronged to wear from the breast and the blood of the black man?
This consciousness of having been wronged is not a race-prejudice, and
yet it may become one. It is hard to eradicate. It is aggravated when
the same feelings are in many hearts. This is a complicated factor.
Some of {125} the blacks seem incapable of sentiments of revenge. They
are too lighthearted to cherish grievances. But all are not so. The
pure blacks who carry with them the consciousness of having been
deeply injured, are many. What will you say of the mulattoes? A man
who knows his father, and knows that his father ignores his existence,
may keep it to himself, but he cannot smother his feeling. He who sees
his brothers and sisters pass him on the street in carriages, living
in comfort and honor, while he is poor, and nothing to them, will, in
proportion as he is a man, hate the social order in which they live.
Until this consciousness of having been injured and degraded vanishes,
the Southern question will disturb political and social life.
III. Closely allied to the consciousness of degradation is the lack of
manly feeling. Appreciation of manhood is a condition of improvement.
He who thinks himself only an animal will live like one. Does this
condition exist at the South? It could not be otherwise. Any one who
has travelled there must have his faith in the evolution of some men
from the lower animals immeasurably strengthened. Rev. Dr. Taylor, of
New York, has said that he knows that the Darwinian theory cannot be
true, because, if it were, "an Englishman's right arm would have
developed into an umbrella long ago." But Dr. Taylor would find faces
in the South which, from their resemblance to lower orders of life,
might weaken his faith in his demonstration.
The black race is no more degraded than our own would be under similar
circumstances, but its condition is appalling. How long will it take
to develop the consciousness of manhood where all the tastes, and all
the tendencies, and almost all the environment, are low and in the
opposite direction? The colored people have not the help of higher and
refining influences. Their tendencies have been downward, and present
environment increases the tendency. Regeneration or reform is not the
work of a year or a generation. The change will come only by the
creation of new and higher conditions, and with the birth of a more
self-respecting stock.
IV. How long will be required for the education of the colored people
and the poor whites?
The author of "An Appeal to Caesar" says, "The Southern man, black or
white, is not likely to be greatly different to-morrow from what he
was yesterday. Generations may modify; years can only restrain. The
question is not whether education, begun to-day and carried on however
vigorously and successfully by the most approved agencies, would
change the characteristics of to-day's masses. Not at all. The
question is whether it would so act upon them _as they are_, would so
enlighten and inform their minds, as to convince them of the mutual
danger, peril, disaster, that must attend continual oppression or
sudden uprising. We cannot expect to make intelligence instantly
effective in the elevation of individual citizenship, or the exercise
of collective power. Little by little that change must come."
{126}
About ninety per cent, of the whole colored population of the South,
and about forty-five per cent. of those above ten years of age, are
illiterate. In 1880, nineteen per cent., or about one in every five,
of the white people of the South, and seventy-three per cent. of the
colored people, could neither read nor write; and this estimate is far
too large. After fifteen years of the ballot, seventy-three per cent.
of the colored race of the South could neither read nor write. Much is
being done to promote education by schools and charities, but what are
these among so many? To meet the ignorant condition of things, the
Government is doing nothing. The State governments are doing only a
little. In the Southern States previous to the war there was no system
of common schools. After the war there were not even old foundations
to build upon. Everything had to be started _de novo_ by those who had
nothing with which to start. "We must remember," said Dr. Mayo, "that
nine men out of ten of the South never saw what we call a good public
elementary school. It has been said that the public school-buildings
of Denver alone exceed in value all the public school-buildings of the
State of North Carolina."
The average school year throughout the South, in 1880, was less than
one hundred days; the average attendance less than thirty per cent. of
those within school age. In a belt of States where seventy-three per
cent., and probably ninety per cent., of the population are
illiterate, where they are too poor to do much except keep up the
struggle for existence, where there are no traditions of culture,
where it has been a crime for a black man to read, where the Nation is
doing nothing, and where the State, when it does its best, provides
instruction which reaches only thirty per cent. of those of school age
for one hundred days in a year, and where the population is increasing
so rapidly that in 1900 the blacks will be in a decided majority,
charity and religion are doing--what? The progress under the
circumstances is amazing, but how long will it take to educate the
nineteen per cent. of Southern whites, and seventy-three per cent., of
Southern blacks? There is more illiteracy now than at the close of the
war, because education has not kept pace with the increase of the
race.
V. How long will be required for the _moralizing_ of the lower classes
of the South? Ability to make moral discriminations grows slowly.
Ability to appreciate moral motives grows still more slowly. These
people were trained in a school in which virtue was ignored. They have
lived under conditions which have put a premium on theft. Slavery
always makes thieves. The heredity of the passion for stealing is just
as clearly marked as the heredity of the Roman nose or the faculty for
music. The transmission of the tendency toward the gratification of
the animal propensities is as definite as, and stronger than, the
tendency for insanity and consumption to reproduce themselves. These
people come into life blind, {127} and find little but darkness around
them. Here you have about eight millions with an ancestry which began
in heathenism and has had two centuries of slavery--a people
inheriting all the evils of slavery; a people who have never been
trained to make moral discriminations, and whose ancestors for unknown
generations have been trained still less than they; a people who have
none, or at least but little, of the inspiration toward a higher moral
life which comes from a healthy environment; a people whose religion
is almost all emotional; who can soar on the wings of imagination and
enthusiasm to heights which would make an archangel dizzy; who from
paroxysms of anguish at the condition of those whose burning bodies
are lighting the fires of hell, will go off and commit adultery or rob
a hen-roost as complacently as if to do so were a part of their
religion. This is not fiction. Religion has not meant chastity, for
slavery made that impossible; it has not meant justice, for injustice
forged their chains; it has not meant generosity, for they had
nothing; it has been simple emotion. The ethical element has been
absent, and it was through no fault of the black man.
In 1860, President Hopkins said that a greater proportion of the
Sandwich Islanders could read than of the people in New England. They
were educated but not moralized. There were three hundred thousand of
them a century and a half ago; in 1883, there were forty-nine
thousand. Education without morality is no safeguard.
Prof. Gilliam shows, from census reports, that if the population of
the Southern whites increases for a century, as at present, in 1985,
there will be ninety-six million whites in the Southern States, and in
1980, one hundred and ninety-two million blacks. Statistics may lie;
but there is enough truth in these to give terrible emphasis to the
inquiry, How long before the colored people will be sufficiently
educated to need no help? How long before they will have sufficient
moral discrimination to know what the commandments require? When we
realize how difficult is the task of inducing men with the environment
of Christian influence at the North, and in England, to live even
decent lives, the wonder is that the freedmen do as well as they do.
How long before we can expect a race with such antecedents and
environments to be fitted to be left to themselves? What answer must
be given? I am not exaggerating the picture. I am only hinting at
conditions of heathenism which exist. I am least of all blaming these
poor and needy people; but none the less clear and strong comes the
appeal for their moral and intellectual emancipation. The moralizing
of a race which has such a history, how long will that require? No
people ever rose more rapidly in the world's history. That shows what
is possible. It does not tell us when our work will be finished. So
long as one-half of the American republic is inhabited by those whose
interests are alien to the other half, there can be no permanent
prosperity. It has been said that there are three essentials to the
{128} permanent unity of a nation; viz., unity of language, unity of
interest and unity of religion. There is a common language between the
blacks and whites, but the unity of interest is not recognized, and
agreement in religion is only in name. The religion of the poor whites
in the South is mechanical, and unintelligently doctrinal; the
religion of the blacks is emotional and fantastic; and the religion of
both blacks and whites is lacking in the ethical element. The process
of political reconstruction has been progressing for twenty years and
more, and is still incomplete. That is an easy work compared with what
must be created intellectually, and socially, and morally. Before the
Southern problem will be solved, a new stock must take the place of
those who were reared in slavery; the old traditions must fade, and
education, and an ethical type of Christianity, must do their work.
How long will be required for that, none can tell. In the meantime,
new complications may arise. The principles of socialism and anarchy
are not unlikely to pervade the South, and if the masses of blacks are
ever exploited by a central, unknown and irresponsible committee of
agitators, the results must be a new reign of terror. The labor
agitators are moving southward. It has been said that colored people
have no tendencies toward socialism and anarchy. I am no prophet, but
I will hazard the prediction that it will not be long before the
socialistic agitator will stir up a commotion at the South that will
make employers of labor and people of wealth tremble.
The sentiment has sometimes been whispered, that the work of this
Association, and those akin to it, was about accomplished. That
sentiment has selfishness or ignorance at the bottom of it. How long
must this work be kept up? Until all that mass of darkness which fills
the Southern horizon be shot through and through with shafts of light.
How long must it be kept up? Until the last trace of prejudice that
separates brother from brother shall have been removed. How long will
this thing be kept up? Until the black man feels that he is a man;
until he can vote intelligently, and live wisely, and until he has the
ability and the will to discriminate carefully in matters of morals.
How long must it be kept up? Until no man can plead ignorance, or want
of opportunity, for rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ. The Eastern
question has been a live question in European politics for more than
four centuries. It is no more puzzling than the Southern question is
with us. There is an experiment in physics that is typical of this
work. An iron bar is suspended in the air and then a tiny cork, hung
from a string, is thrown against it. At first no impression is made,
but the blows are repeated, until, by and by, the bar begins to
tremble, then to vibrate, then to swing to and fro. The repeated
impacts of the little cork at last move the mass. It will not be by
any great rush that the Southern problem will be solved. It will yield
at last to the constancy, and fidelity, of the great multitude of
those who love their brother because they love their Lord; who are
content to work in secret, {129} and many of whom already rest in
unmarked graves. That mass of ignorance, wretchedness and wrong will
swing and disappear at last before the multitudinous strokes of
individual gifts and individual prayers.
All the problems which are vexing the older nations are essentially
social problems, and the watchword of all the movements that are
undermining thrones and caste, and the wicked social order, is, "The
world no longer for the few, but for the many." In America the _many_
are already in possession, and the problem with us is, How may our
rulers--the people who can never be dethroned--be rendered competent
to rule? That is the question to which the American Missionary
Association is devoting itself; and its answer is the only true one:
By making the people intelligent, and Christian. And how long before
that will be accomplished? A Scotchman once asked an Irishman, "Why
were half-farthings coined in England?" Pat instantly replied, "To
give Scotchmen an opportunity of contributing to missions." When will
this problem be solved? Never, if the Christians of America are like
Pat's Scotchman, but quicker than any of us dream, if all the
Christians of America are like that woman in the New Testament who put
into the treasury two mites.
* * * * *
THE SOUTH.
SOUTHERN TESTIMONY.
We insert the following from the _Southern Presbyterian_, as a recent
testimony to the views, principles and work of the American Missionary
Association. It will be all the stronger from the fact that it was not
written for a testimony, but as a setting forth of facts by a
Southerner to Southerners.
The old masters and the old slaves are now rapidly passing into
eternity. In ten years more no one of our people, white or black,
under _forty years_ of age, will know personally anything of
slavery. It then comes to this, that now and from this time
forward, we white Christians must be impressed with the fact that
we have here at our doors, in our houses, offices, stores and
kitchens, and on our farms, not slaves, but a race of people,
three-fourths of whom are but a little removed from savages in so
far as their knowledge of religion is concerned. They have among
them those whom they call preachers; they hold meetings, they
halloo, they shout, but no _saving truth_ is preached or heard from
that source. The result is great animal excitement, but no moral
elevation. Then many of them are receiving secular education. That
sharpens their intellects but gives no Christian character. It does
just the opposite; it fits them for rascality. They are increasing.
There are probably eight millions of them now, and there will be
many millions more. Those who are dying without Christ are dying
here in a Christian land without hope.
The statement of a Congregational missionary recently made, is
probably true, viz.: that "one-fourth of the race is improving
rapidly," yet much the larger part of them are almost, if not
altogether, _heathen_. They are not across the ocean; under God's
providence they are here, where you can touch them with your
finger. Why here? {130} It will not do to say that nothing can be
made out of them. Go to Texas, to Tennessee, and come right here to
Atlanta now, and our most intelligent white men will tell you that
on the prohibition question, negroes, educated, smart and very
eloquent, have made, and are making, _ringing_ speeches. There have
been smart speakers on both sides. Some of their speeches would do
credit to any white orator in the South. Dr. Sanderson, our late
Professor at Tuskaloosa, stated on the floor of the Synod of
Alabama last week, that he had taught a good deal, and that a young
negro, twenty years of age, one of our divinity students at
Tuskaloosa, was as smart a pupil as he had ever seen; that if he
were in the State University he would be in its first rank of
students, and that he heard him recently preach a sermon on the
mediatorial work of Christ, such that he (Dr. Sanderson) would not
undertake to make a better one on that majestic theme. * * *
In Dallas Presbytery, Texas, recently, a black man was examined for
two days on Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and on all that is required by
our Book of Government for ordination, and he did not falter once.
So the brethren there testify.
Then it comes to this: this race of people is here; the great body
of them are heathen. Can anyone doubt that it is the purpose of the
Almighty to prepare a large number of them, converted, educated and
civilized, to go back to Africa to redeem that continent for
civilization and for Christ? We are commanded to preach the Gospel
to every creature, to teach it to all nations.
* * * * *
OUR WORK, AS A GRADUATE OF FISK UNIVERSITY SEES IT.
BY WILLIAM A. CROSTHWAITE.
The American Missionary Association is doing more to quicken the hopes
and aspirations of the Southern Negro, more toward arousing the
Southern white man to educate himself, and more toward bringing the
two races to an acknowledgment of each other's rights, than any other
similar institution in the country.
In the summer of 1884, near Leesburg, Texas, a well-appointed Negro
school was burned by the whites of that community. The colored people,
seeing their hope of years in ashes, advertised their little holdings
for sale, and prepared to leave in a body. But the whites offered to
supplement the insurance on the former building and to re-build the
school, if the colored people would remain in the community. The terms
were accepted, and now _West Chapel_, which is the name of the school,
is excellently furnished and has a $200 bell upon it, and is the best
known school in Northeast Texas. Previous to the burning of West
Chapel, the whites were continually distracted by factional fights.
There was general apathy with regard to improvement in any way
whatever. Their teachers were always of the inferior class. But, when
they found that the colored people would have a school, they decided
to have one also. The colored people bought a bell. So did they. The
colored people had a foreign teacher. So must they have one, and they
paid $750 a year for him. One of the white citizens of the locality
summed the situation up thus:--"West Chapel is to the whites what a
coal of fire is on the back of a terrapin." This school was organized
by a Fisk student and has ever {131} since been taught by students of
Fisk. Thus is the A.M.A. lifting up the Negro directly and the whites
indirectly, and establishing friendly relations between the two.
But this is no isolated case. The story is the same wherever the
educated Negro comes in contact with the whites. At one time, our
school was so far in advance of the white school, that I was told by
my school director that "no high-learnt teacher was wanted to teach
'Nigger Schools,'" and I was actually driven from my school by threats
of violence.
The North can better understand the work of the American Missionary
Association, when it is fully understood that the presence of Fisk
University in Nashville brought about the existence of Vanderbilt
University. When Fisk began to send out her graduates as refined and
upright gentlemen, and the newspapers were enthusiastic in their
accounts of its literary and musical exhibitions, the white people
said; "We must have a university in Nashville also."
In the recent Prohibition campaign in Tennessee, the students of Fisk
were one of the chief factors. In the beginning of the movement, the
cry; "Where does Fisk stand on this question?" went up from the good
people all over the State. Fisk was the first college to declare in
favor of the proposed Amendment, and one hundred young men and women
went from her walls and fought valiantly for the cause.
It is due the profound Christian spirit that characterizes the work of
the Association to say, that every student and alumnus of Fisk in the
State of Tennessee was an ardent supporter of the cause, save two.
During the campaign the most cordial feelings existed between the
better elements of both races. Heretofore these things were almost
unheard of.
There was a time when policy or political expediency had no effect
upon the prejudices of the Southern whites, but the educational
process inaugurated by the North is elevating a class of colored
people to a plane where they are respected as never before. No State
or Federal aid can do for us what the A.M.A. is doing. Such aid as the
Blair Bill proposed would meet a certain need, and enable the men that
are educated by the A.M.A. to get at the masses; but the peculiar work
of preparing honest and devout Christian leaders must be otherwise
provided for. The complete regeneration of the South is a thing of the
future. The A.M.A. must remain among us to hasten on "the harvest of
the golden year."
That the Christianization of the Negro must come from without his own
institutions, will be clearly seen by looking at his present religious
condition. The new life that is developing cannot be crowded into the
narrow limits of his church. The moral element is almost entirely
wanting in his creed and doctrine. Such is the condition of the church
that moral and spiritual growth are impossible. He must be educated
away from the institutions that attended his enslavement; as far from
them as Canaan is from Egypt. Again, the pulpit, with comparatively
few honorable exceptions, {132} is filled with adventurers and impure
ministers. To a great extent this is true. But signs of a spiritual
and moral exodus are everywhere manifest. The judgment of God rests
heavily upon the Negro's temple-worship and the structure tumbles to
the ground. Within the last two years I have seen six of the largest
colored churches in Tennessee split on moral grounds, and the
discontent with what is bad, grows among them. The old associations
are losing their power over the rising generation. Intelligent men are
seeking to supply their spiritual and moral wants. The A.M.A. has but
to persist in the establishment of its school and church work among
the colored people, with good strong men as ministers, and it is sure
to be the leaven of the church of the future for the Negro people.
Last summer an old father, who had educated four children at Fisk
University and had himself been there on one Commencement occasion,
said to me:--"That Fisk school is the _buildin'-up-est_ place to our
people in the world. I never expect to have such a good time and
treatment again until I get to heaven." Thus are our hopes quickened
and our aspirations for nobler things awakened.
But to one who understands the situation, the question of our
education is of serious moment. All our institutions of higher
learning are living from hand to mouth, with no endowment, and the
North's purse-strings are growing tighter as the years go by. On the
other hand, prejudice strikes savagely at our State appropriations.
This year, in the advanced State of Tennessee, the white State-student
gets one hundred dollars while the colored gets only twenty-two
dollars and a half. In his poverty what can the Negro student do with
this sum in the way of educating himself?
I could take you in the homes of those whom you have educated, then
could you appreciate the wisdom of your investments. It is around the
fireside, and in the conduct of the children, that your noble work is
manifesting itself so clearly. The intellectual, moral and spiritual
life found there are the true and only guarantees that old things are
passing away.
The abject condition of the great body of Negroes appeals to Christian
religion and philanthropy for the help that must come to redeem their
lost minds and souls. The South cannot give them a Christian
education. The cry goes up to the great, warm heart of the North. We
crave the crumbs that fall from your God-given, bountiful table.
* * * * *
A PASTOR'S FIRST VIEW.
A pastor who was educated at the North and who was graduated at the
Hartford Theological Seminary, has for the first time made the
acquaintance of his race in the South. He had never met his own
people as a race until he entered into the service of the American
Missionary Association. His impressions and testimony have,
therefore, an additional interest.
In reference to the field: it is large and interesting, and requires
more {133} than ordinary attention, both to that part of it under
cultivation and that which is not yet. I have arranged my visits in
such a way as to make it practicable for me to do justice to both;
visiting church members the last week in each month (except in case of
sickness), and using the rest of the time (apart from other necessary
duties) for visits outside.