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Title: The Future of the American Negro

Author: Booker T. Washington

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Language: English

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 THE FUTURE OF
THE AMERICAN NEGRO
Booker T. Washington

Boston
Small, Maynard & Company
1900

Copyright, 1899,
By Small, Maynard & Company
(Incorporated)

Entered at Stationers' Hall

First Edition (2,000 copies), November, 1899

Second Edition (2,000 copies), February, 1900

Press of
George H. Ellis, Boston, U.S.A.

Booker T. Washington.
 PREFACE.
In giving this volume to the public, I deem it fair to say that I have yielded to the
oft-repeated requests that I put in some more definite and permanent form the
ideas regarding the Negro and his future which I have expressed many times on
the public platform and through the public press and magazines.

I make grateful acknowledgment to the "Atlantic Monthly" and "Appleton's

Popular Science Monthly" for their kindness in granting permission for the use
of some part of articles which I have at various times contributed to their
columns.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.

TUSKEGEE NORMAL AND INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE,

TUSKEGEE, ALA., October 1, 1899.
 CONTENTS.
Chapter I.Page 3
First appearance of Negroes in America—Rapid increase—Conditions during Civil War—During the
reconstruction.

Chapter II.Page 16
Responsibility of the whole country for the Negro—Progress in the past—Same methods of education
do not fit all cases—Proved in the case of the Southern Negro—Illustrations—Lack of money—
Comparison between outlay for schools North and South—Duty of North to South.

Chapter III.Page 42
Decadence of Southern plantation—Demoralization of Negroes natural—No home life before the war
—Too much classical education at the start—Lack of practical training—Illustrations—The well-
trained slaves now dead—Former plantations as industrial schools—The decayed plantation built up
by a former slave—Misunderstanding of industrial education.

Chapter IV.Page 67
The Negroes' proper use of education—Hayti, Santo Domingo, and Liberia as illustrations of the lack
of practical training—Present necessity for union of all forces to further the cause of industrial
education—Industrial education not opposed to the higher education—Results of practical training so
far—Little or no prejudice against capable Negroes in business in the South—The Negro at first
shunned labor as degrading—Hampton and Tuskegee aim to remove this feeling—The South does not
oppose industrial education for the Negroes—Address to Tuskegee students setting forth the necessity
of steadfastness of purpose.

Chapter V.Page 106

The author's early life—At Hampton—The inception of the Tuskegee School in 1881—Its growth—
Scope—Size at present—Expenses—Purposes—Methods—Building of the chapel—Work of the
graduates—Similar schools beginning throughout the South—Tuskegee Negro Conference—The
Workers' Conference—Tuskegee as a trainer of teachers.

Chapter VI.Page 127

The Negro race in politics—Its patriotic zeal in 1776—In 1814—In the Civil War—In the Spanish War
—Politics attempted too soon after freedom—Poor leaders—Two parties in the South, the blacks' and
the whites'—Not necessarily opposed in interests—The Negro should give up no rights—The same
tests for the restriction of the franchise should be applied alike to both blacks and whites—This is not
the case—Education and the franchise—The whites must help the blacks to pure votes—Rioting and
lynching only to be stopped by mutual confidence.
Chapter VII.Page 157
Difficulty of fusion—Africa impossible as a refuge because already completely claimed by other
nations—Comparison of Negro race with white—Physical condition of the Negro—Present lack of
ability to organize—Weaknesses—Ability to work—Trustworthiness—Desire to rise—Obstructions
put in the way of Negroes' advancement—Results of oppression—Necessity for encouragement and
self-respect—Comparison of Negroes' position and that of the Jews—Lynching—Non-interference of
the North—Increase of lynching—Statistics of numbers, races, places, causes of violence—
Uselessness of lynching in preventing crime—Fairness in carrying out the laws—Increase of crime
among the Negroes—Reason for it—Responsibility of both races.

Chapter VIII.Page 200

Population—Emigration to the North—Morality North and South—Dangers: 1. incendiary advice; 2.
mob violence; 3. discouragement; 4. newspaper exaggeration; 5. lack of education; 6. bad legislation—
Negroes must identify with best interests of the South—Unwise missionary work—Wise missionary
work—Opportunity for industrial education—The good standing of business-educated Negroes in the
South—Religion and morality—Justice and appreciation coming for the Negro race as it proves itself
worthy.
 CHAPTER I.
IN this volume I shall not attempt to give the origin and history of the Negro race
either in Africa or in America. My attempt is to deal only with conditions that
now exist and bear a relation to the Negro in America and that are likely to exist
in the future. In discussing the Negro, it is always to be borne in mind that,
unlike all the other inhabitants of America, he came here without his own
consent; in fact, was compelled to leave his own country and become a part of
another through physical force. It should also be borne in mind, in our efforts to
change and improve the present condition of the Negro, that we are dealing with
a race which had little necessity to labour in its native country. After being
brought to America, the Negroes were forced to labour for about 250 years under
circumstances which were calculated not to inspire them with love and respect
for labour. This constitutes a part of the reason why I insist that it is necessary to
emphasise the matter of industrial education as a means of giving the black man
the foundation of a civilisation upon which he will grow and prosper. When I
speak of industrial education, however, I wish it always understood that I mean,
as did General Armstrong, the founder of the Hampton Institute, for thorough
academic and religious training to go side by side with industrial training. Mere
training of the hand without the culture of brain and heart would mean little.

The first slaves were brought into this country by the Dutch in 1619, and were
landed at Jamestown, Virginia. The first cargo consisted of twenty. The census
taken in 1890 shows that these twenty slaves had increased to 7,638,360. About
6,353,341 of this number were residing in the Southern States, and 1,283,029
were scattered throughout the Northern and Western States. I think I am pretty
safe in predicting that the census to be taken in 1900 will show that there are not
far from ten millions of people of African descent in the United States. The great
majority of these, of course, reside in the Southern States. The problem is how to
make these millions of Negroes self-supporting, intelligent, economical and
valuable citizens, as well as how to bring about proper relations between them
and the white citizens among whom they live. This is the question upon which I
shall try to throw some light in the chapters which follow.

When the Negroes were first brought to America, they were owned by white
people in all sections of this country, as is well known,—in the New England,
the Middle, and in the Southern States. It was soon found, however, that slave
labour was not remunerative in the Northern States, and for that reason by far the
greater proportion of the slaves were held in the Southern States, where their
labour in raising cotton, rice, and sugar-cane was more productive. The growth
of the slave population in America was constant and rapid. Beginning, as I have
stated, with fourteen, in 1619, the number increased at such a rate that the total
number of Negroes in America in 1800 was 1,001,463. This number increased
by 1860 to 3,950,000. A few people predicted that freedom would result
disastrously to the Negro, as far as numerical increase was concerned; but so far
the census figures have failed to bear out this prediction. On the other hand, the
census of 1890 shows that the Negro population had increased from 3,950,000 in
1860 to 7,638,260 twenty-five years after the war. It is my opinion that the rate
of increase in the future will be still greater than it has been from the close of the
war of the Rebellion up to the present time, for the reason that the very sudden
changes which took place in the life of the Negro, because of having his
freedom, plunged him into many excesses that were detrimental to his physical
well-being. Of course, freedom found him unprepared in clothing, in shelter and
in knowledge of how to care for his body. During slavery the slave mother had
little control of her own children, and did not therefore have the practice and
experience of rearing children in a suitable manner. Now that the Negro is being
taught in thousands of schools how to take care of his body, and in thousands of
homes mothers are learning how to control their children, I believe that the rate
of increase, as I have stated, will be still greater than it has been in the past. In
too many cases the Negro had the idea that freedom meant merely license to do
as he pleased, to work or not to work; but this erroneous idea is more and more
disappearing, by reason of the education in the right direction which the Negro is
constantly receiving.

During the four years that the Civil War lasted, the greater proportion of the
Negroes remained in the South, and worked faithfully for the support of their
masters' families, who, as a general rule, were away in the war. The self-control
which the Negro exhibited during the war marks, it seems to me, one of the most
important chapters in the history of the race. Notwithstanding he knew that his
master was away from home, fighting a battle which, if successful, would result
in his continued enslavement, yet he worked faithfully for the support of the
master's family. If the Negro had yielded to the temptation and suggestion to use
the torch or dagger in an attempt to destroy his master's property and family, the
result would have been that the war would have been ended quickly; for the
master would have returned from the battlefield to protect and defend his
property and family. But the Negro to the last was faithful to the trust that had
been thrust upon him, and during the four years of war in which the male
members of the family were absent from their homes there is not a single
instance recorded where he in any way attempted to outrage the family of the
master or in any way to injure his property.

Not only is this true, but all through the years of preparation for the war and
during the war itself the Negro showed himself to be an uncompromising friend
to the Union. In fact, of all the charges brought against him, there is scarcely a
single instance where one has been charged with being a traitor to his country.
This has been true whether he has been in a state of slavery or in a state of
freedom.

From 1865 to 1876 constituted what perhaps may be termed the days of
Reconstruction. This was the period when the Southern States which had
withdrawn from the Union were making an effort to reinstate themselves and to
establish a permanent system of State government. At the close of the war both
the Southern white man and the Negro found themselves in the midst of poverty.
The ex-master returned from the war to find his slave property gone, his farms
and other industries in a state of collapse, and the whole industrial or economic
system upon which he had depended for years entirely disorganised. As we
review calmly and dispassionately the period of reconstruction, we must use a
great deal of sympathy and generosity. The weak point, to my mind, in the
reconstruction era was that no strong force was brought to bear in the direction
of preparing the Negro to become an intelligent, reliable citizen and voter. The
main effort seems to have been in the direction of controlling his vote for the
time being, regardless of future interests. I hardly believe that any race of people
with similar preparation and similar surroundings would have acted more wisely
or very differently from the way the Negro acted during the period of
reconstruction.

Without experience, without preparation, and in most cases without ordinary

intelligence, he was encouraged to leave the field and shop and enter politics.
That under such circumstances he should have made mistakes is very natural. I
do not believe that the Negro was so much at fault for entering so largely into
politics, and for the mistakes that were made in too many cases, as were the
unscrupulous white leaders who got the Negro's confidence and controlled his
vote to further their own ends, regardless, in many cases, of the permanent
welfare of the Negro. I have always considered it unfortunate that the Southern
white man did not make more of an effort during the period of reconstruction to
get the confidence and sympathy of the Negro, and thus have been able to keep
him in close touch and sympathy in politics. It was also unfortunate that the
Negro was so completely alienated from the Southern white man in all political
matters. I think it would have been better for all concerned if, immediately after
the close of the war, an educational and property qualification for the exercise of
the franchise had been prescribed that would have applied fairly and squarely to
both races, and, also, if, in educating the Negro, greater stress had been put upon
training him along the lines of industry for which his services were in the
greatest demand in the South. In a word, too much stress was placed upon the
mere matter of voting and holding political office rather than upon the
preparation for the highest citizenship. In saying what I have, I do not mean to
convey the impression that the whole period of reconstruction was barren of
fruitful results. While it is not a very encouraging chapter in the history of our
country, I believe that this period did serve to point out many weak points in our
effort to elevate the Negro, and that we are now taking advantage of the mistakes
that were made. The period of reconstruction served at least to show the world
that with proper preparation and with a sufficient foundation the Negro possesses
the elements out of which men of the highest character and usefulness can be
developed. I might name several characters who were brought before the world
by reason of the reconstruction period. I give one as an example of others: Hon.
Blanche K. Bruce, who had been a slave, but who held many honourable
positions in the State of Mississippi, including an election to the United States
Senate, where he served a full term; later he was twice appointed Register of the
United States Treasury. In all these positions Mr. Bruce gave the greatest
satisfaction, and not a single whisper of dishonesty or incompetency has ever
been heard against him. During the period of his public life he was brought into
active and daily contact with Northern and Southern white people, all of whom
speak of him in the highest measure of respect and confidence.

What the Negro wants and what the country wants to do is to take advantage of
all the lessons that were taught during the days of reconstruction, and apply these
lessons bravely, honestly, in laying the foundation upon which the Negro can
stand in the future and make himself a useful, honourable, and desirable citizen,
whether he has his residence in the North, the South, or the West.
 CHAPTER II.
IN order that the reader may understand me and why I lay so much stress upon
the importance of pushing the doctrine of industrial education for the Negro, it is
necessary, first of all, to review the condition of affairs at the present time in the
Southern States. For years I have had something of an opportunity to study the
Negro at first-hand; and I feel that I know him pretty well,—him and his needs,
his failures and his successes, his desires and the likelihood of their fulfilment. I
have studied him and his relations with his white neighbours, and striven to find
how these relations may be made more conducive to the general peace and
welfare both of the South and of the country at large.

In the Southern part of the United States there are twenty-two millions of people
who are bound to the fifty millions of the North by ties which neither can tear
asunder if they would. The most intelligent in a New York community has his
intelligence darkened by the ignorance of a fellow-citizen in the Mississippi
bottoms. The most wealthy in New York City would be more wealthy but for the
poverty of a fellow-being in the Carolina rice swamps. The most moral and
religious men in Massachusetts have their religion and morality modified by the
degradation of the man in the South whose religion is a mere matter of form or
of emotionalism. The vote of the man in Maine that is cast for the highest and
purest form of government is largely neutralised by the vote of the man in
Louisiana whose ballot is stolen or cast in ignorance. Therefore, when the South
is ignorant, the North is ignorant; when the South is poor, the North is poor;
when the South commits crime, the nation commits crime. For the citizens of the
North there is no escape; they must help raise the character of the civilisation in
the South, or theirs will be lowered. No member of the white race in any part of
the country can harm the weakest or meanest member of the black race without
the proudest and bluest blood of the nation being degraded.

It seems to me that there never was a time in the history of the country when
those interested in education should the more earnestly consider to what extent
the mere acquiring of the ability to read and write, the mere acquisition of a
knowledge of literature and science, makes men producers, lovers of labour,
independent, honest, unselfish, and, above all, good. Call education by what
name you please, if it fails to bring about these results among the masses, it falls
short of its highest end. The science, the art, the literature, that fails to reach
down and bring the humblest up to the enjoyment of the fullest blessings of our
government, is weak, no matter how costly the buildings or apparatus used or
how modern the methods of instruction employed. The study of arithmetic that
does not result in making men conscientious in receiving and counting the
ballots of their fellow-men is faulty. The study of art that does not result in
making the strong less willing to oppress the weak means little. How I wish that
from the most cultured and highly endowed university in the great North to the
humblest log cabin school-house in Alabama, we could burn, as it were, into the
hearts and heads of all that usefulness, that service to our brother, is the supreme
end of education. Putting the thought more directly as it applies to conditions in
the South, can you make the intelligence of the North affect the South in the
same ratio that the ignorance of the South affects the North? Let us take a not
improbable case: A great national case is to be decided, one that involves peace
or war, the honour or dishonour of our nation,—yea, the very existence of the
government. The North and West are divided. There are five million votes to be
cast in the South; and, of this number, one-half are ignorant. Not only are one-
half the voters ignorant; but, because of the ignorant votes they cast, corruption
and dishonesty in a dozen forms have crept into the exercise of the political
franchise to such an extent that the conscience of the intelligent class is seared in
its attempts to defeat the will of the ignorant voters. Here, then, you have on the
one hand an ignorant vote, on the other an intelligent vote minus a conscience.
The time may not be far off when to this kind of jury we shall have to look for
the votes which shall decide in a large measure the destiny of our democratic
institutions.

When a great national calamity stares us in the face, we are, I fear, too much
given to depending on a short "campaign of education" to do on the hustings
what should have been accomplished in the school.

With this idea in view, let us examine with more care the condition of
civilisation in the South, and the work to be done there before all classes will be
fit for the high duties of citizenship. In reference to the Negro race, I am
confronted with some embarrassment at the outset, because of the various and
conflicting opinions as to what is to be its final place in our economic and
political life.

Within the last thirty years—and, I might add, within the last three months,—it
has been proven by eminent authority that the Negro is increasing in numbers so
fast that it is only a question of a few years before he will far outnumber the
white race in the South, and it has also been proven that the Negro is fast dying
out, and it is only a question of a few years before he will have completely
disappeared. It has also been proven that education helps the Negro and that
education hurts him, that he is fast leaving the South and taking up his residence
in the North and West, and that his tendency is to drift toward the low lands of
the Mississippi bottoms. It has been proven that education unfits the Negro for
work and that education makes him more valuable as a labourer, that he is our
greatest criminal and that he is our most law-abiding citizen. In the midst of
these conflicting opinions, it is hard to hit upon the truth.

But, also, in the midst of this confusion, there are a few things of which I am
certain,—things which furnish a basis for thought and action. I know that
whether the Negroes are increasing or decreasing, whether they are growing
better or worse, whether they are valuable or valueless, that a few years ago
some fourteen of them were brought into this country, and that now those
fourteen are nearly ten millions. I know that, whether in slavery or freedom, they
have always been loyal to the Stars and Stripes, that no school-house has been
opened for them that has not been filled, that the 2,000,000 ballots that they have
the right to cast are as potent for weal or woe as an equal number cast by the
wisest and most influential men in America. I know that wherever Negro life
touches the life of the nation it helps or it hinders, that wherever the life of the
white race touches the black it makes it stronger or weaker. Further, I know that
almost every other race that has tried to look the white man in the face has
disappeared. I know, despite all the conflicting opinions, and with a full
knowledge of all the Negroes' weaknesses, that only a few centuries ago they
went into slavery in this country pagans, that they came out Christians; they
went into slavery as so much property, they came out American citizens; they
went into slavery without a language, they came out speaking the proud Anglo-
Saxon tongue; they went into slavery with the chains clanking about their wrists,
they came out with the American ballot in their hands.

I submit it to the candid and sober judgment of all men, if a race that is capable
of such a test, such a transformation, is not worth saving and making a part, in
reality as well as in name, of our democratic government. That the Negro may be
fitted for the fullest enjoyment of the privileges and responsibilities of our
citizenship, it is important that the nation be honest and candid with him,
whether honesty and candour for the time being pleases or displeases him. It is
with an ignorant race as it is with a child: it craves at first the superficial, the
ornamental signs of progress rather than the reality. The ignorant race is tempted
to jump, at one bound, to the position that it has required years of hard struggle
for others to reach.

It seems to me that, as a general thing, the temptation in the past in educational

and missionary work has been to do for the new people that which was done a
thousand years ago, or that which is being done for a people a thousand miles
away, without making a careful study of the needs and conditions of the people
whom it is designed to help. The temptation is to run all people through a certain
educational mould, regardless of the condition of the subject or the end to be
accomplished. This has been the case too often in the South in the past, I am
sure. Men have tried to use, with these simple people just freed from slavery and
with no past, no inherited traditions of learning, the same methods of education
which they have used in New England, with all its inherited traditions and
desires. The Negro is behind the white man because he has not had the same
chance, and not from any inherent difference in his nature and desires. What the
race accomplishes in these first fifty years of freedom will at the end of these
years, in a large measure, constitute its past. It is, indeed, a responsibility that
rests upon this nation,—the foundation laying for a people of its past, present,
and future at one and the same time.

One of the weakest points in connection with the present development of the
race is that so many get the idea that the mere filling of the head with a
knowledge of mathematics, the sciences, and literature, means success in life.
Let it be understood, in every corner of the South, among the Negro youth at
least, that knowledge will benefit little except as it is harnessed, except as its
power is pointed in a direction that will bear upon the present needs and
condition of the race. There is in the heads of the Negro youth of the South
enough general and floating knowledge of chemistry, of botany, of zoölogy, of
geology, of mechanics, of electricity, of mathematics, to reconstruct and develop
a large part of the agricultural, mechanical, and domestic life of the race. But
how much of it is brought to a focus along lines of practical work? In cities of
the South like Atlanta, how many coloured mechanical engineers are there? or
how many machinists? how many civil engineers? how many architects? how
many house decorators? In the whole State of Georgia, where eighty per cent. of
the coloured people depend upon agriculture, how many men are there who are
well grounded in the principles and practices of scientific farming? or dairy
work? or fruit culture? or floriculture?
For example, not very long ago I had a conversation with a young coloured man
who is a graduate of one of the prominent universities of this country. The father
of this man is comparatively ignorant, but by hard work and the exercise of
common sense he has become the owner of two thousand acres of land. He owns
more than a score of horses, cows, and mules and swine in large numbers, and is
considered a prosperous farmer. In college the son of this farmer has studied
chemistry, botany, zoölogy, surveying, and political economy. In my
conversation I asked this young man how many acres his father cultivated in
cotton and how many in corn. With a far-off gaze up into the heavens he
answered that he did not know. When I asked him the classification of the soils
on his father's farm, he did not know. He did not know how many horses or cows
his father owned nor of what breeds they were, and seemed surprised that he
should be asked such questions. It never seemed to have entered his mind that on
his father's farm was the place to make his chemistry, his mathematics, and his
literature penetrate and reflect itself in every acre of land, every bushel of corn,
every cow, and every pig.

Let me give other examples of this mistaken sort of education. When a mere boy,
I saw a young coloured man, who had spent several years in school, sitting in a
common cabin in the South, studying a French grammar. I noted the poverty, the
untidiness, the want of system and thrift, that existed about the cabin,
notwithstanding his knowledge of French and other academic studies.

Again, not long ago I saw a coloured minister preparing his Sunday sermon just
as the New England minister prepares his sermon. But this coloured minister
was in a broken-down, leaky, rented log cabin, with weeds in the yard,
surrounded by evidences of poverty, filth, and want of thrift. This minister had
spent some time in school studying theology. How much better it would have
been to have had this minister taught the dignity of labour, taught theoretical and
practical farming in connection with his theology, so that he could have added to
his meagre salary, and set an example for his people in the matter of living in a
decent house, and having a knowledge of correct farming! In a word, this
minister should have been taught that his condition, and that of his people, was
not that of a New England community; and he should have been so trained as to
meet the actual needs and conditions of the coloured people in this community,
so that a foundation might be laid that would, in the future, make a community
like New England communities.

Since the Civil War, no one object has been more misunderstood than that of the
object and value of industrial education for the Negro. To begin with, it must be
borne in mind that the condition that existed in the South immediately after the
war, and that now exists, is a peculiar one, without a parallel in history. This
being true, it seems to me that the wise and honest thing to do is to make a study
of the actual condition and environment of the Negro, and do that which is best
for him, regardless of whether the same thing has been done for another race in
exactly the same way. There are those among the white race and those among the
black race who assert, with a good deal of earnestness, that there is no difference
between the white man and the black man in this country. This sounds very
pleasant and tickles the fancy; but, when the test of hard, cold logic is applied to
it, it must be acknowledged that there is a difference,—not an inherent one, not a
racial one, but a difference growing out of unequal opportunities in the past.

If I may be permitted to criticise the educational work that has been done in the
South, I would say that the weak point has been in the failure to recognise this
difference.

Negro education, immediately after the war in most cases, was begun too nearly
at the point where New England education had ended. Let me illustrate. One of
the saddest sights I ever saw was the placing of a three hundred dollar rosewood
piano in a country school in the South that was located in the midst of the "Black
Belt." Am I arguing against the teaching of instrumental music to the Negroes in
that community? Not at all; only I should have deferred those music lessons
about twenty-five years. There are numbers of such pianos in thousands of New
England homes. But behind the piano in the New England home there are one
hundred years of toil, sacrifice, and economy; there is the small manufacturing
industry, started several years ago by hand power, now grown into a great
business; there is ownership in land, a comfortable home, free from debt, and a
bank account. In this "Black Belt" community where this piano went, four-fifths
of the people owned no land, many lived in rented one-room cabins, many were
in debt for food supplies, many mortgaged their crops for the food on which to
live, and not one had a bank account. In this case, how much wiser it would have
been to have taught the girls in this community sewing, intelligent and
economical cooking, housekeeping, something of dairying and horticulture? The
boys should have been taught something of farming in connection with their
common-school education, instead of awakening in them a desire for a musical
instrument which resulted in their parents going into debt for a third-rate piano
or organ before a home was purchased. Industrial lessons would have awakened,
in this community, a desire for homes, and would have given the people the
ability to free themselves from industrial slavery to the extent that most of them
would have soon purchased homes. After the home and the necessaries of life
were supplied could come the piano. One piano lesson in a home of one's own is
worth twenty in a rented log cabin.

All that I have just written, and the various examples illustrating it, show the
present helpless condition of my people in the South,—how fearfully they lack
the primary training for good living and good citizenship, how much they stand
in need of a solid foundation on which to build their future success. I believe, as
I have many times said in my various addresses in the North and in the South,
that the main reason for the existence of this curious state of affairs is the lack of
practical training in the ways of life.

There is, too, a great lack of money with which to carry on the educational work
in the South. I was in a county in a Southern State not long ago where there are
some thirty thousand coloured people and about seven thousand whites. In this
county not a single public school for Negroes had been open that year longer
than three months, not a single coloured teacher had been paid more than $15
per month for his teaching. Not one of these schools was taught in a building that
was worthy of the name of school-house. In this county the State or public
authorities do not own a single dollar's worth of school property,—not a school-
house, a blackboard, or a piece of crayon. Each coloured child had had spent on
him that year for his education about fifty cents, while each child in New York or
Massachusetts had had spent on him that year for education not far from $20.
And yet each citizen of this county is expected to share the burdens and
privileges of our democratic form of government just as intelligently and
conscientiously as the citizens of New York or Boston. A vote in this county
means as much to the nation as a vote in the city of Boston. Crime in this county
is as truly an arrow aimed at the heart of the government as a crime committed in
the streets of Boston.

A single school-house built this year in a town near Boston to shelter about three
hundred pupils cost more for building alone than is spent yearly for the
education, including buildings, apparatus, teachers, for the whole coloured
school population of Alabama. The Commissioner of Education for the State of
Georgia not long ago reported to the State legislature that in that State there were
two hundred thousand children that had entered no school the year past and one
hundred thousand more who were at school but a few days, making practically
three hundred thousand children between six and eighteen years of age that are
growing up in ignorance in one Southern State alone. The same report stated that
outside of the cities and towns, while the average number of school-houses in a
county was sixty, all of these sixty school-houses were worth in lump less than
$2,000, and the report further added that many of the school-houses in Georgia
were not fit for horse stables. I am glad to say, however, that vast improvement
over this condition is being made in Georgia under the inspired leadership of
State Commissioner Glenn, and in Alabama under the no less zealous leadership
of Commissioner Abercrombie.

These illustrations, so far as they concern the Gulf States, are not exceptional
cases; nor are they overdrawn.

Until there is industrial independence, it is hardly possible to have good living

and a pure ballot in the country districts. In these States it is safe to say that not
more than one black man in twenty owns the land he cultivates. Where so large a
proportion of a people are dependent, live in other people's houses, eat other
people's food, and wear clothes they have not paid for, it is pretty hard to expect
them to live fairly and vote honestly.

I have thus far referred mainly to the Negro race. But there is another side. The
longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is
not so much a problem as to what the white man will do with the Negro as what
the Negro will do with the white man and his civilisation. In considering this
side of the subject, I thank God that I have grown to the point where I can
sympathise with a white man as much as I can sympathise with a black man. I
have grown to the point where I can sympathise with a Southern white man as
much as I can sympathise with a Northern white man.

As bearing upon the future of our civilisation, I ask of the North what of their
white brethren in the South,—those who have suffered and are still suffering the
consequences of American slavery, for which both North and South were
responsible? Those of the great and prosperous North still owe to their less
fortunate brethren of the Caucasian race in the South, not less than to
themselves, a serious and uncompleted duty. What was the task the North asked
the South to perform? Returning to their destitute homes after years of war to
face blasted hopes, devastation, a shattered industrial system, they asked them to
add to their own burdens that of preparing in education, politics, and economics,
in a few short years, for citizenship, four millions of former slaves. That the
South, staggering under the burden, made blunders, and that in a measure there
has been disappointment, no one need be surprised. The educators, the
statesmen, the philanthropists, have imperfectly comprehended their duty toward
the millions of poor whites in the South who were buffeted for two hundred
years between slavery and freedom, between civilisation and degradation, who
were disregarded by both master and slave. It needs no prophet to tell the
character of our future civilisation when the poor white boy in the country
districts of the South receives one dollar's worth of education and the boy of the
same class in the North twenty dollars' worth, when one never enters a reading-
room or library and the other has reading-rooms and libraries in every ward and
town, when one hears lectures and sermons once in two months and the other
can hear a lecture or a sermon every day in the year.

The time has come, it seems to me, when in this matter we should rise above
party or race or sectionalism into the region of duty of man to man, of citizen to
citizen, of Christian to Christian; and if the Negro, who has been oppressed and
denied his rights in a Christian land, can help the whites of the North and South
to rise, can be the inspiration of their rising, into this atmosphere of generous
Christian brotherhood and self-forgetfulness, he will see in it a recompense for
all that he has suffered in the past.
 CHAPTER III.
IN the heart of the Black Belt of the South in ante-bellum days there was a large
estate, with palatial mansion, surrounded by a beautiful grove, in which grew
flowers and shrubbery of every description. Magnificent specimens of animal
life grazed in the fields, and in grain and all manner of plant growth this estate
was a model. In a word, it was the highest type of the product of slave labor.

Then came the long years of war, then freedom, then the trying years of
reconstruction. The master returned from the war to find the faithful slaves who
had been the bulwark of this household in possession of their freedom. Then
there began that social and industrial revolution in the South which it is hard for
any who was not really a part of it to appreciate or understand. Gradually, day by
day, this ex-master began to realise, with a feeling almost indescribable, to what
an extent he and his family had grown to be dependent upon the activity and
faithfulness of his slaves; began to appreciate to what an extent slavery had
sapped his sinews of strength and independence, how his dependence upon slave
labour had deprived him and his offspring of the benefit of technical and
industrial training, and, worst of all, had unconsciously led him to see in labour
drudgery and degradation instead of beauty, dignity, and civilising power. At
first there was a halt in this man's life. He cursed the North and he cursed the
Negro. Then there was despair, almost utter hopelessness, over his weak and
childlike condition. The temptation was to forget all in drink, and to this
temptation there was a gradual yielding. With the loss of physical vigour came
the loss of mental grasp and pride in surroundings. There was the falling off of a
piece of plaster from the walls of the house which was not replaced, then another
and still another. Gradually, the window-panes began to disappear, then the door-
knobs. Touches of paint and whitewash, which once helped to give life, were no
more to be seen. The hinges disappeared from the gate, then a board from the
fence, then others in quick succession. Weeds and unmown grass covered the
once well-kept lawn. Sometimes there were servants for domestic duties, and
sometimes there were none. In the absence of servants the unsatisfactory
condition of the food told that it was being prepared by hands unschooled to
such duties. As the years passed by, debts accumulated in every direction. The
education of the children was neglected. Lower and lower sank the industrial,
financial, and spiritual condition of the household. For the first time the awful
truth of Scripture, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," seemed to
dawn upon him with a reality that it is hard for mortal to appreciate. Within a
few months the whole mistake of slavery seemed to have concentrated itself
upon this household. And this was one of many.

We have seen how the ending of slavery and the beginning of freedom produced
not only a shock, but a stand-still, and in many cases a collapse, that lasted
several years in the life of many white men. If the sudden change thus affected
the white man, should this not teach us that we should have more sympathy than
has been shown in many cases with the Negro in connection with his new and
changed life? That they made many mistakes, plunged into excesses, undertook
responsibilities for which they were not fitted, in many cases took liberty to
mean license, is not to be wondered at. It is my opinion that the next forty years
are going to show by many per cent. a higher degree of progress in the life of the
Negro along all lines than has been shown during the first thirty years of his life.
Certainly, the first thirty years of the Negro's life was one of experiment; and
consequently, under such conditions, he was not able to settle down to real,
earnest, hard common sense efforts to better his condition. While this was true in
a great many cases, on the other hand a large proportion of the race, even from
the first, saw what was needed for their new life, and began to settle down to
lead an industrious, frugal existence, and to educate their children and in every
way prepare themselves for the responsibilities of American citizenship.

The wonder is that the Negro has made as few mistakes as he has, when we
consider all the surrounding circumstances. Columns of figures have been
gleaned from the census reports within the last quarter of a century to show the
great amount of crime committed by the Negro in excess of that committed by
other races. No one will deny the fact that the proportion of crime by the present
generation of Negroes is seriously large, but I believe that any other race with
the Negro's history and present environment would have shown about the same
criminal record.

Another consideration which we must always bear in mind in considering the

Negro is that he had practically no home life in slavery; that is, the mother and
father did not have the responsibility, and consequently the experience, of
training their own children. The matter of child training was left to the master
and mistress. Consequently, it has only been within the last thirty years that the
Negro parents have had the actual responsibility and experience of training their
own children. That they have made some mistakes in thus training them is not to
be wondered at. Many families scattered over all parts of the United States have
not yet been able to bring themselves together. When the Negro parents shall
have had thirty or forty additional years in which to found homes and get
experience in the training of their children, I believe that we will find that the
amount of crime will be considerably less than it is now shown to be.

In too large a measure the Negro race began its development at the wrong end,
simply because neither white nor black understood the case; and no wonder, for
there had never been such a case in the history of the world.

To show where this primary mistake has led in its evil results, I wish to produce
some examples showing plainly how prone we have been to make our education
formal, superficial, instead of making it meet the needs of conditions.

In order to emphasise the matter more fully, I repeat, at least eighty per cent. of
the coloured people in the South are found in the rural districts, and they are
dependent on agriculture in some form for their support. Notwithstanding that
we have practically a whole race dependent upon agriculture, and
notwithstanding that thirty years have passed since our freedom, aside from what
has been done at Hampton and Tuskegee and one or two other institutions, but
very little has been attempted by State or philanthropy in the way of educating
the race in this one industry upon which its very existence depends. Boys have
been taken from the farms and educated in law, theology, Hebrew and Greek,—
educated in everything else except the very subject that they should know most
about. I question whether among all the educated coloured people in the United
States you can find six, if we except those from the institutions named, who have
received anything like a thorough training in agriculture. It would have seemed
that, since self-support, industrial independence, is the first condition for lifting
up any race, that education in theoretical and practical agriculture, horticulture,
dairying, and stock-raising, should have occupied the first place in our system.

Some time ago, when we decided to make tailoring a part of our training at the
Tuskegee Institute, I was amazed to find that it was almost impossible to find in
the whole country an educated coloured man who could teach the making of
clothing. We could find them by the score who could teach astronomy, theology,
grammar, or Latin, but almost none who could instruct in the making of clothing,
something that has to be used by every one of us every day in the year. How
often has my heart been made to sink as I have gone through the South and into
the homes of people, and found women who could converse intelligently on
Grecian history, who had studied geometry, could analyse the most complex
sentences, and yet could not analyse the poorly cooked and still more poorly
served corn bread and fat meat that they and their families were eating three
times a day! It is little trouble to find girls who can locate Pekin or the Desert of
Sahara on an artificial globe, but seldom can you find one who can locate on an
actual dinner table the proper place for the carving knife and fork or the meat
and vegetables.

A short time ago, in one of the Southern cities, a coloured man died who had
received training as a skilled mechanic during the days of slavery. Later by his
skill and industry he built up a great business as a house contractor and builder.
In this same city there are 35,000 coloured people, among them young men who
have been well educated in the languages and in literature; but not a single one
could be found who had been so trained in mechanical and architectural drawing
that he could carry on the business which this ex-slave had built up, and so it
was soon scattered to the wind. Aside from the work done in the institutions that
I have mentioned, you can find almost no coloured men who have been trained
in the principles of architecture, notwithstanding the fact that a vast majority of
our race are without homes. Here, then, are the three prime conditions for
growth, for civilisation,—food, clothing, shelter; and yet we have been the
slaves of forms and customs to such an extent that we have failed in a large
measure to look matters squarely in the face and meet actual needs.

It may well be asked by one who has not carefully considered the matter: "What
has become of all those skilled farm-hands that used to be on the old plantations?
Where are those wonderful cooks we hear about, where those exquisitely trained
house servants, those cabinet makers, and the jacks-of-all-trades that were the
pride of the South?" This is easily answered,—they are mostly dead. The
survivors are too old to work. "But did they not train their children?" is the
natural question. Alas! the answer is "no." Their skill was so commonplace to
them, and to their former masters, that neither thought of it as being a hard-
earned or desirable accomplishment: it was natural, like breathing. Their
children would have it as a matter of course. What their children needed was
education. So they went out into the world, the ambitious ones, and got
education, and forgot the necessity of the ordinary training to live.

God for two hundred and fifty years, in my opinion, prepared the way for the
redemption of the Negro through industrial development. First, he made the
Southern white man do business with the Negro for two hundred and fifty years
in a way that no one else has done business with him. If a Southern white man
wanted a house or a bridge built, he consulted a Negro mechanic about the plan
and about the actual building of the house or bridge. If he wanted a suit of
clothes or a pair of shoes made, it was to the Negro tailor or shoemaker that he
talked. Secondly, every large slave plantation in the South was, in a limited
sense, an industrial school. On these plantations there were scores of young
coloured men and women who were constantly being trained, not alone as
common farmers, but as carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, plasterers, brick
masons, engineers, bridge-builders, cooks, dressmakers, housekeepers, etc. I
would be the last to apologise for the curse of slavery; but I am simply stating
facts. This training was crude and was given for selfish purposes, and did not
answer the highest ends, because there was the absence of brain training in
connection with that of the hand. Nevertheless, this business contact with the
Southern white man, and the industrial training received on these plantations, put
the Negro at the close of the war into possession of all the common and skilled
labour in the South. For nearly twenty years after the war, except in one or two
cases, the value of the industrial training given by the Negroes' former masters
on the plantations and elsewhere was overlooked. Negro men and women were
educated in literature, mathematics, and the sciences, with no thought of what
had taken place on these plantations for two and a half centuries. After twenty
years, those who were trained as mechanics, etc., during slavery began to
disappear by death; and gradually we awoke to the fact that we had no one to
take their places. We had scores of young men learned in Greek, but few in
carpentry or mechanical or architectural drawing. We had trained many in Latin,
but almost none as engineers, bridge-builders, and machinists. Numbers were
taken from the farm and educated, but were educated in everything else except
agriculture. Hence they had no sympathy with farm life, and did not return to it.

This last that I have been saying is practically a repetition of what I have said in
the preceding paragraph; but, to emphasise it,—and this point is one of the most
important I wish to impress on the reader,—it is well to repeat, to say the same
thing twice. Oh, if only more who had the shaping of the education of the Negro
could have, thirty years ago, realised, and made others realise, where the
forgetting of the years of manual training and the sudden acquiring of education
were going to lead the Negro race, what a saving it would have been! How much
less my race would have had to answer for, as well as the white!

But it is too late to cry over what might have been. It is time to make up, as soon
as possible, for this mistake,—time for both races to acknowledge it, and go
forth on the course that, it seems to me, all must now see to be the right one,—
industrial education.

As an example of what a well-trained and educated Negro may now do, and how
ready to acknowledge him a Southern white man may be, let me return once
more to the plantation I spoke of in the first part of this chapter. As the years
went by, the night seemed to grow darker, so that all seemed hopeless and lost.
At this point relief and strength came from an unexpected source. This Southern
white man's idea of Negro education had been that it merely meant a parrot-like
absorption of Anglo-Saxon civilisation, with a special tendency to imitate the
weaker elements of the white man's character; that it meant merely the high hat,
kid gloves, a showy walking cane, patent leather shoes, and all the rest of it. To
this ex-master it seemed impossible that the education of the Negro could
produce any other results. And so, last of all, did he expect help or
encouragement from an educated black man; but it was just from this source that
help came. Soon after the process of decay began in this white man's estate, the
education of a certain black man began, and began on a logical, sensible basis. It
was an education that would fit him to see and appreciate the physical and moral
conditions that existed in his own family and neighbourhood, and, in the present
generation, would fit him to apply himself to their relief. By chance this
educated Negro strayed into the employ of this white man. His employer soon
learned that this Negro not only had a knowledge of science, mathematics, and
literature in his head, but in his hands as well. This black man applied his
knowledge of agricultural chemistry to the redemption of the soil; and soon the
washes and gulleys began to disappear, and the waste places began to bloom.
New and improved machinery in a few months began to rob labour of its toil and
drudgery. The animals were given systematic and kindly attention. Fences were
repaired and rebuilt. Whitewash and paint were made to do duty. Everywhere
order slowly began to replace confusion; hope, despair; and profits, losses. As he
observed, day by day, new life and strength being imparted to every department
of his property, this white son of the South began revising his own creed
regarding the wisdom of educating Negroes.

Hitherto his creed regarding the value of an educated Negro had been rather a
plain and simple one, and read: "The only end that could be accomplished by
educating a black man was to enable him to talk properly to a mule; and the
Negro's education did great injustice to the mule, since the language tended to
confuse him and make him balky."
We need not continue the story, except to add that to-day the grasp of the hand of
this ex-slaveholder, and the listening to his hearty words of gratitude and
commendation for the education of the Negro, are enough to compensate those
who have given and those who have worked and sacrificed for the elevation of
my people through all of these years. If we are patient, wise, unselfish, and
courageous, such examples will multiply as the years go by.

Before closing this chapter,—which, I think, has clearly shown that there is at
present a very distinct lack of industrial training in the South among the
Negroes,—I wish to say a few words in regard to certain objections, or rather
misunderstandings, which have from time to time arisen in regard to the matter.

Many have had the thought that industrial training was meant to make the Negro
work, much as he worked during the days of slavery. This is far from my idea of
it. If this training has any value for the Negro, as it has for the white man, it
consists in teaching the Negro how rather not to work, but how to make the
forces of nature—air, water, horse-power, steam, and electric power—work for
him, how to lift labour up out of toil and drudgery into that which is dignified
and beautiful. The Negro in the South works, and he works hard; but his lack of
skill, coupled with ignorance, causes him too often to do his work in the most
costly and shiftless manner, and this has kept him near the bottom of the ladder
in the business world. I repeat that industrial education teaches the Negro how
not to drudge in his work. Let him who doubts this contrast the Negro in the
South toiling through a field of oats with an old-fashioned reaper with the white
man on a modern farm in the West, sitting upon a modern "harvester," behind
two spirited horses, with an umbrella over him, using a machine that cuts and
binds the oats at the same time,—doing four times as much work as the black
man with one half the labour. Let us give the black man so much skill and brains
that he can cut oats like the white man, then he can compete with him. The
Negro works in cotton, and has no trouble so long as his labour is confined to the
lower forms of work,—the planting, the picking, and the ginning; but, when the
Negro attempts to follow the bale of cotton up through the higher stages, through
the mill where it is made into the finer fabrics, where the larger profit appears, he
is told that he is not wanted.

The Negro can work in wood and iron; and no one objects so long as he confines
his work to the felling of trees and sawing of boards, to the digging of iron ore
and making of pig iron. But, when the Negro attempts to follow this tree into the
factory where it is made into desks and chairs and railway coaches, or when he
attempts to follow the pig iron into the factory where it is made into knife-blades
and watch-springs, the Negro's trouble begins. And what is the objection?
Simply that the Negro lacks the skill, coupled with brains, necessary to compete
with the white man, or that, when white men refuse to work with coloured men,
enough skilled and educated coloured men cannot be found able to superintend
and man every part of any one large industry; and hence, for these reasons, they
are constantly being barred out. The Negro must become, in a larger measure, an
intelligent producer as well as a consumer. There should be a more vital and
practical connection between the Negro's educated brain and his opportunity of
earning his daily living.

A very weak argument often used against pushing industrial training for the
Negro is that the Southern white man favours it, and, therefore, it is not best for
the Negro. Although I was born a slave, I am thankful that I am able so far to rid
myself of prejudice as to be able to accept a good thing, whether it comes from a
black man or a white man, a Southern man or a Northern man. Industrial
education will not only help the Negro directly in the matter of industrial
development, but also in bringing about more satisfactory relations between him
and the Southern white man. For the sake of the Negro and the Southern white
man there are many things in the relation of the two races that must soon be
changed. We cannot depend wholly upon abuse or condemnation of the Southern
white man to bring about these changes. Each race must be educated to see
matters in a broad, high, generous, Christian spirit: we must bring the two races
together, not estrange them. The Negro must live for all time by the side of the
Southern white man. The man is unwise who does not cultivate in every manly
way the friendship and good will of his next-door neighbour, whether he be
black or white. I repeat that industrial training will help cement the friendship of
the two races. The history of the world proves that trade, commerce, is the
forerunner of peace and civilisation as between races and nations. The Jew, who
was once in about the same position that the Negro is to-day, has now
recognition, because he has entwined himself about America in a business and
industrial sense. Say or think what we will, it is the tangible or visible element
that is going to tell largely during the next twenty years in the solution of the
race problem.
 CHAPTER IV.
ONE of the main problems as regards the education of the Negro is how to have
him use his education to the best advantage after he has secured it. In saying this,
I do not want to be understood as implying that the problem of simple ignorance
among the masses has been settled in the South; for this is far from true. The
amount of ignorance still prevailing among the Negroes, especially in the rural
districts, is very large and serious. But I repeat, we must go farther if we would
secure the best results and most gratifying returns in public good for the money
spent than merely to put academic education in the Negro's head with the idea
that this will settle everything.

In his present condition it is important, in seeking after what he terms the ideal,
that the Negro should not neglect to prepare himself to take advantage of the
opportunities that are right about his door. If he lets these opportunities slip, I
fear they will never be his again. In saying this, I mean always that the Negro
should have the most thorough mental and religious training; for without it no
race can succeed. Because of his past history and environment and present
condition it is important that he be carefully guided for years to come in the
proper use of his education. Much valuable time has been lost and money spent
in vain, because too many have not been educated with the idea of fitting them to
do well the things which they could get to do. Because of the lack of proper
direction of the Negro's education, some good friends of his, North and South,
have not taken that interest in it that they otherwise would have taken. In too
many cases where merely literary education alone has been given the Negro
youth, it has resulted in an exaggerated estimate of his importance in the world,
and an increase of wants which his education has not fitted him to supply.

But, in discussing this subject, one is often met with the question, Should not the
Negro be encouraged to prepare himself for any station in life that any other race
fills? I would say, Yes; but the surest way for the Negro to reach the highest
positions is to prepare himself to fill well at the present time the basic
occupations. This will give him a foundation upon which to stand while securing
what is called the more exalted positions. The Negro has the right to study law;
but success will come to the race sooner if it produces intelligent, thrifty farmers,
mechanics, and housekeepers to support the lawyers. The want of proper
direction of the use of the Negro's education results in tempting too many to live
mainly by their wits, without producing anything that is of real value to the
world. Let me quote examples of this.

Hayti, Santo Domingo, and Liberia, although among the richest countries in
natural resources in the world, are discouraging examples of what must happen
to any people who lack industrial or technical training. It is said that in Liberia
there are no wagons, wheelbarrows, or public roads, showing very plainly that
there is a painful absence of public spirit and thrift. What is true of Liberia is
also true in a measure of the republics of Hayti and Santo Domingo. The people
have not yet learned the lesson of turning their education toward the cultivation
of the soil and the making of the simplest implements for agricultural and other
forms of labour.

Much would have been done toward laying a sound foundation for general
prosperity if some attention had been spent in this direction. General education
itself has no bearing on the subject at issue, because, while there is no well-
established public school system in either of these countries, yet large numbers
of men of both Hayti and Santo Domingo have been educated in France for
generations. This is especially true of Hayti. The education has been altogether
in the direction of belles lettres, however, and practically little in the direction of
industrial and scientific education.

It is a matter of common knowledge that Hayti has to send abroad even to secure
engineers for her men-of-war, for plans for her bridges and other work requiring
technical knowledge and skill. I should very much regret to see any such
condition obtain in any large measure as regards the coloured people in the
South, and yet this will be our fate if industrial education is much longer
neglected. We have spent much time in the South in educating men and women
in letters alone, too, and must now turn our attention more than ever toward
educating them so as to supply their wants and needs. It is more lamentable to
see educated people unable to support themselves than to see uneducated people
in the same condition. Ambition all along this line must be stimulated.

If educated men and women of the race will see and acknowledge the necessity
of practical industrial training and go to work with a zeal and determination,
their example will be followed by others, who are now without ambition of any
kind.
The race cannot hope to come into its own until the young coloured men and
women make up their minds to assist in the general development along these
lines. The elder men and women trained in the hard school of slavery, and who
so long possessed all of the labour, skilled and unskilled, of the South, are dying
out; their places must be filled by their children, or we shall lose our hold upon
these occupations. Leaders in these occupations are needed now more than ever.

It is not enough that the idea be inculcated that coloured people should get book
learning; along with it they should be taught that book education and industrial
development must go hand in hand. No race which fails to do this can ever hope
to succeed. Phillips Brooks gave expression to the sentiment: "One generation
gathers the material, and the next generation builds the palaces." As I understand
it, he wished to inculcate the idea that one generation lays the foundation for
succeeding generations. The rough affairs of life very largely fall to the earlier
generation, while the next one has the privilege of dealing with the higher and
more æsthetic things of life. This is true of all generations, of all peoples; and,
unless the foundation is deeply laid, it is impossible for the succeeding one to
have a career in any way approaching success. As regards the coloured men of
the South, as regards the coloured men of the United States, this is the generation
which, in a large measure, must gather the material with which to lay the
foundation for future success.

Some time ago it was my misfortune to see a Negro sixty-five years old living in
poverty and filth. I was disgusted, and said to him, "If you are worthy of your
freedom, you would surely have changed your condition during the thirty years
of freedom which you have enjoyed." He answered: "I do want to change. I want
to do something for my wife and children; but I do not know how,—I do not
know what to do." I looked into his lean and haggard face, and realised more
deeply than ever before the absolute need of captains of industry among the
great masses of the coloured people.

It is possible for a race or an individual to have mental development and yet be

so handicapped by custom, prejudice, and lack of employment as to dwarf and
discourage the whole life. This is the condition that prevails among the race in
many of the large cities of the North; and it is to prevent this same condition in
the South that I plead with all the earnestness of my heart. Mental development
alone will not give us what we want, but mental development tied to hand and
heart training will be the salvation of the Negro.
In many respects the next twenty years are going to be the most serious in the
history of the race. Within this period it will be largely decided whether the
Negro will be able to retain the hold which he now has upon the industries of the
South or whether his place will be filled by white people from a distance. The
only way he can prevent the industrial occupations slipping from him in all parts
of the South, as they have already in certain parts, is for all educators, ministers,
and friends of the race to unite in pushing forward in a whole-souled manner the
industrial or business development of the Negro, whether in school or out of
school. Four times as many young men and women of the race should be
receiving industrial training. Just now the Negro is in a position to feel and
appreciate the need of this in a way that no one else can. No one can fully
appreciate what I am saying who has not walked the streets of a Northern city
day after day seeking employment, only to find every door closed against him on
account of his colour, except in menial service. It is to prevent the same thing
taking place in the South that I plead. We may argue that mental development
will take care of all this. Mental development is a good thing. Gold is also a
good thing, but gold is worthless without an opportunity to make itself touch the
world of trade. Education increases greatly an individual's wants. It is cruel in
many cases to increase the wants of the black youth by mental development
alone without, at the same time, increasing his ability to supply these increased
wants in occupations in which he can find employment.

The place made vacant by the death of the old coloured man who was trained as
a carpenter during slavery, and who since the war had been the leading
contractor and builder in the Southern town, had to be filled. No young coloured
carpenter capable of filling his place could be found. The result was that his
place was filled by a white mechanic from the North, or from Europe, or from
elsewhere. What is true of carpentry and house-building in this case is true, in a
degree, in every skilled occupation; and it is becoming true of common labour. I
do not mean to say that all of the skilled labour has been taken out of the Negro's
hands; but I do mean to say that in no part of the South is he so strong in the
matter of skilled labour as he was twenty years ago, except possibly in the
country districts and the smaller towns. In the more northern of the Southern
cities, such as Richmond and Baltimore, the change is most apparent; and it is
being felt in every Southern city. Wherever the Negro has lost ground
industrially in the South, it is not because there is prejudice against him as a
skilled labourer on the part of the native Southern white man; the Southern white
man generally prefers to do business with the Negro mechanic rather than with a
white one, because he is accustomed to do business with the Negro in this
respect. There is almost no prejudice against the Negro in the South in matters of
business, so far as the native whites are concerned; and here is the entering
wedge for the solution of the race problem. But too often, where the white
mechanic or factory operative from the North gets a hold, the trades-union soon
follows, and the Negro is crowded to the wall.

But what is the remedy for this condition? First, it is most important that the
Negro and his white friends honestly face the facts as they are; otherwise the
time will not be very far distant when the Negro of the South will be crowded to
the ragged edge of industrial life as he is in the North. There is still time to repair
the damage and to reclaim what we have lost.

I stated in the beginning that industrial education for the Negro has been
misunderstood. This has been chiefly because some have gotten the idea that
industrial development was opposed to the Negro's higher mental development.
This has little or nothing to do with the subject under discussion; we should no
longer permit such an idea to aid in depriving the Negro of the legacy in the
form of skilled labour that was purchased by his forefathers at the price of two
hundred and fifty years of slavery. I would say to the black boy what I would say
to the white boy, Get all the mental development that your time and pocket-book
will allow of,—the more, the better; but the time has come when a larger
proportion—not all, for we need professional men and women—of the educated
coloured men and women should give themselves to industrial or business life.
The professional class will be helped in so far as the rank and file have an
industrial foundation, so that they can pay for professional service. Whether they
receive the training of the hand while pursuing their academic training or after
their academic training is finished, or whether they will get their literary training
in an industrial school or college, are questions which each individual must
decide for himself. No matter how or where educated, the educated men and
women must come to the rescue of the race in the effort to get and hold its
industrial footing. I would not have the standard of mental development lowered
one whit; for, with the Negro, as with all races, mental strength is the basis of all
progress. But I would have a large measure of this mental strength reach the
Negroes' actual needs through the medium of the hand. Just now the need is not
so much for the common carpenters, brick masons, farmers, and laundry women
as for industrial leaders who, in addition to their practical knowledge, can draw
plans, make estimates, take contracts; those who understand the latest methods
of truck-gardening and the science underlying practical agriculture; those who
understand machinery to the extent that they can operate steam and electric
laundries, so that our women can hold on to the laundry work in the South, that
is so fast drifting into the hands of others in the large cities and towns.

Having tried to show in previous chapters to what a condition the lack of

practical training has brought matters in the South, and by the examples in this
chapter where this state of things may go if allowed to run its course, I wish now
to show what practical training, even in its infancy among us, has already
accomplished.

I noticed, when I first went to Tuskegee to start the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute, that some of the white people about there rather looked
doubtfully at me; and I thought I could get their influence by telling them how
much algebra and history and science and all those things I had in my head, but
they treated me about the same as they did before. They didn't seem to care
about the algebra, history, and science that were in my head only. Those people
never even began to have confidence in me until we commenced to build a large
three-story brick building, and then another and another, until now we have forty
buildings which have been erected largely by the labour of our students; and to-
day we have the respect and confidence of all the white people in that section.

There is an unmistakable influence that comes over a white man when he sees a
black man living in a two-story brick house that has been paid for. I need not
stop to explain. It is the tangible evidence of prosperity. You know Thomas
doubted the Saviour after he had risen from the dead; and the Lord said to
Thomas, "Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy
hand, and thrust it into my side." The tangible evidence convinced Thomas.

We began, soon after going to Tuskegee, the manufacture of bricks. We also

started a wheelwright establishment and the manufacture of good wagons and
buggies; and the white people came to our institution for that kind of work. We
also put in a printing plant, and did job printing for the white people as well as
for the blacks.

By having something that these people wanted, we came into contact with them,
and our interest became interlinked with their interest, until to-day we have no
warmer friends anywhere in the country than we have among the white people of
Tuskegee. We have found by experience that the best way to get on well with
people is to have something that they want, and that is why we emphasise this
Christian Industrial Education.
Not long ago I heard a conversation among three white men something like this.
Two of them were berating the Negro, saying the Negro was shiftless and lazy,
and all that sort of thing. The third man listened to their remarks for some time
in silence, and then he said: "I don't know what your experience has been; but
there is a 'nigger' down our way who owns a good house and lot with about fifty
acres of ground. His house is well furnished, and he has got some splendid
horses and cattle. He is intelligent and has a bank account. I don't know how the
'niggers' are in your community, but Tobe Jones is a gentleman. Once, when I
was hard up, I went to Tobe Jones and borrowed fifty dollars; and he hasn't
asked me for it yet. I don't know what kind of 'niggers' you have down your way,
but Tobe Jones is a gentleman."

Now what we want to do is to multiply and place in every community these Tobe
Joneses; and, just in so far as we can place them throughout the South this race
question will disappear.

Suppose there was a black man who had business for the railroads to the amount
of ten thousand dollars a year. Do you suppose that, when that black man takes
his family aboard the train, they are going to put him into a Jim Crow car and
run the risk of losing that ten thousand dollars a year? No, they will put on a
Pullman palace car for him.

Some time ago a certain coloured man was passing through the streets of one of
the little Southern towns, and he chanced to meet two white men on the street. It
happened that this coloured man owns two or three houses and lots, has a good
education and a comfortable bank account. One of the white men turned to the
other, and said: "By Gosh! It is all I can do to keep from calling that 'nigger'
Mister." That's the point we want to get to.

Nothing else so soon brings about right relations between the two races in the
South as the commercial progress of the Negro. Friction between the races will
pass away as the black man, by reason of his skill, intelligence, and character,
can produce something that the white man wants or respects in the commercial
world. This is another reason why at Tuskegee we push industrial training. We
find that as every year we put into a Southern community coloured men who can
start a brickyard, a saw-mill, a tin-shop, or a printing-office,—men who produce
something that makes the white man partly dependent upon the Negro instead of
all the dependence being on the other side,—a change for the better takes place
in the relations of the races. It is through the dairy farm, the truck-garden, the
trades, the commercial life, largely, that the Negro is to find his way to respect
and confidence.

What is the permanent value of the Hampton and Tuskegee system of training to
the South, in a broader sense? In connection with this, it is well to bear in mind
that slavery unconsciously taught the white man that labour with the hands was
something fit for the Negro only, and something for the white man to come into
contact with just as little as possible. It is true that there was a large class of poor
white people who laboured with the hands, but they did it because they were not
able to secure Negroes to work for them; and these poor whites were constantly
trying to imitate the slaveholding class in escaping labour, as they, too, regarded
it as anything but elevating. But the Negro, in turn, looked down upon the poor
whites with a certain contempt because they had to work. The Negro, it is to be
borne in mind, worked under constant protest, because he felt that his labour was
being unjustly requited; and he spent almost as much effort in planning how to
escape work as in learning how to work. Labour with him was a badge of
degradation. The white man was held up before him as the highest type of
civilisation, but the Negro noted that this highest type of civilisation himself did
little labour with the hand. Hence he argued that, the less work he did, the more
nearly he would be like the white man. Then, in addition to these influences, the
slave system discouraged labour-saving machinery. To use labour-saving
machinery, intelligence was required; and intelligence and slavery were not on
friendly terms. Hence the Negro always associated labour with toil, drudgery,
something to be escaped. When the Negro first became free, his idea of
education was that it was something that would soon put him in the same
position as regards work that his recent master had occupied. Out of these
conditions grew the habit of putting off till to-morrow and the day after the duty
that should be done promptly to-day. The leaky house was not repaired while the
sun shone, for then the rain did not come through. While the rain was falling, no
one cared to expose himself to stop the rain. The plough, on the same principle,
was left where the last furrow was run, to rot and rust in the field during the
winter. There was no need to repair the wooden chimney that was exposed to the
fire, because water could be thrown on it when it was on fire. There was no need
to trouble about the payment of a debt to-day, because it could be paid as well
next week or next year. Besides these conditions, the whole South at the close of
the war was without proper food, clothing, and shelter,—was in need of habits of
thrift and economy and of something laid up for a rainy day.

To me it seemed perfectly plain that here was a condition of things that could not
be met by the ordinary process of education. At Tuskegee we became convinced
that the thing to do was to make a careful, systematic study of the condition and
needs of the South, especially the Black Belt, and to bend our efforts in the
direction of meeting these needs, whether we were following a well-beaten track
or were hewing out a new path to meet conditions probably without a parallel in
the world. After eighteen years of experience and observation, what is the result?
Gradually, but surely, we find that all through the South the disposition to look
upon labour as a disgrace is on the wane; and the parents who themselves sought
to escape work are so anxious to give their children training in intelligent labour
that every institution which gives training in the handicrafts is crowded, and
many (among them Tuskegee) have to refuse admission to hundreds of
applicants. The influence of Hampton and Tuskegee is shown again by the fact
that almost every little school at the remotest cross-road is anxious to be known
as an industrial school, or, as some of the coloured people call it, an "industrous"
school.

The social lines that were once sharply drawn between those who laboured with
the hands and those who did not are disappearing. Those who formerly sought to
escape labour, now when they see that brains and skill rob labour of the toil and
drudgery once associated with it, instead of trying to avoid it, are willing to pay
to be taught how to engage in it. The South is beginning to see labour raised up,
dignified and beautified, and in this sees its salvation. In proportion as the love
of labour grows, the large idle class, which has long been one of the curses of the
South, disappears. As people become absorbed in their own affairs, they have
less time to attend to everybody's else business.

The South is still an undeveloped and unsettled country, and for the next half-
century and more the greater part of the energy of the masses will be needed to
develop its material resources. Any force that brings the rank and file of the
people to have a greater love of industry is therefore especially valuable. This
result industrial education is surely bringing about. It stimulates production and
increases trade,—trade between the races; and in this new and engrossing
relation both forget the past. The white man respects the vote of a coloured man
who does ten thousand dollars' worth of business; and, the more business the
coloured man has, the more careful he is how he votes.

Immediately after the war there was a large class of Southern people who feared
that the opening of the free schools to the freedmen and the poor whites—the
education of the head alone—would result merely in increasing the class who
sought to escape labour, and that the South would soon be overrun by the idle
and vicious. But, as the results of industrial combined with academic training
begin to show themselves in hundreds of communities that have been lifted up,
these former prejudices against education are being removed. Many of those
who a few years ago opposed Negro education are now among its warmest
advocates.

This industrial training, emphasising, as it does, the idea of economic

production, is gradually bringing the South to the point where it is feeding itself.
After the war, what profit the South made out of the cotton crop it spent outside
of the South to purchase food supplies,—meat, bread, canned vegetables, and the
like,—but the improved methods of agriculture are fast changing this custom.
With the newer methods of labour, which teach promptness and system and
emphasise the worth of the beautiful, the moral value of the well-painted house,
the fence with every paling and nail in its place, is bringing to bear upon the
South an influence that is making it a new country in industry, education, and
religion.

It seems to me I cannot do better than to close this chapter on the needs of the
Southern Negro than by quoting from a talk given to the students at Tuskegee:—
"I want to be a little more specific in showing you what you have to do and how you must do it.

"One trouble with us is—and the same is true of any young people, no matter of what race or condition
—we have too many stepping-stones. We step all the time, from one thing to another. You find a young
man who is learning to make bricks; and, if you ask him what he intends to do after learning the trade,
in too many cases he will answer, 'Oh, I am simply working at this trade as a stepping-stone to
something higher.' You see a young man working at the brick-mason's trade, and he will be apt to say
the same thing. And young women learning to be milliners and dressmakers will tell you the same. All
are stepping to something higher. And so we always go on, stepping somewhere, never getting hold of
anything thoroughly. Now we must stop this stepping business, having so many stepping-stones.
Instead, we have got to take hold of these important industries, and stick to them until we master them
thoroughly. There is no nation so thorough in their education as the Germans. Why? Simply because
the German takes hold of a thing, and sticks to it until he masters it. Into it he puts brains and thought
from morning to night. He reads all the best books and journals bearing on that particular study, and he
feels that nobody else knows so much about it as he does.

"Take any of the industries I have mentioned, that of brick-making, for example. Any one working at
that trade should determine to learn all there is to be known about making bricks; read all the papers
and journals bearing upon the trade; learn not only to make common hand-bricks, but pressed bricks,
fire-bricks,—in short, the finest and best bricks there are to be made. And, when you have learned all
you can by reading and talking with other people, you should travel from one city to another, and learn
how the best bricks are made. And then, when you go into business for yourself, you will make a
reputation for being the best brick-maker in the community; and in this way you will put yourself on
your feet, and become a helpful and useful citizen. When a young man does this, goes out into one of
these Southern cities and makes a reputation for himself, that person wins a reputation that is going to
give him a standing and position. And, when the children of that successful brick-maker come along,
they will be able to take a higher position in life. The grandchildren will be able to take a still higher
position. And it will be traced back to that grandfather who, by his great success as a brick-maker, laid
a foundation that was of the right kind.

"What I have said about these two trades can be applied with equal force to the trades followed by
women. Take the matter of millinery. There is no good reason why there should not be, in each
principal city in the South, at least three or four competent coloured women in charge of millinery
establishments. But what is the trouble?

"Instead of making the most of our opportunities in this industry, the temptation, in too many cases, is
to be music-teachers, teachers of elocution, or something else that few of the race at present have any
money to pay for, or the opportunity to earn money to pay for, simply because there is no foundation.
But, when more coloured people succeed in the more fundamental occupations, they will then be able
to make better provision for their children in what are termed the higher walks of life.

"And, now, what I have said about these important industries is especially true of the important
industry of agriculture. We are living in a country where, if we are going to succeed at all, we are
going to do so largely by what we raise out of the soil. The people in those backward countries I have
told you about have failed to give attention to the cultivation of the soil, to the invention and use of
improved agricultural implements and machinery. Without this no people can succeed. No race which
fails to put brains into agriculture can succeed; and, if you want to realize the truth of this statement, go
with me into the back districts of some of our Southern States, and you will find many people in
poverty, and yet they are surrounded by a rich country.

"A race, like an individual, has got to have a reputation. Such a reputation goes a long way toward
helping a race or an individual; and, when we have succeeded in getting such a reputation, we shall
find that a great many of the discouraging features of our life will melt away.

"Reputation is what people think we are, and a great deal depends on that. When a race gets a
reputation along certain lines, a great many things which now seem complex, difficult to attain, and are
most discouraging, will disappear.

"When you say that an engine is a Corliss engine, people understand that that engine is a perfect piece
of mechanical work,—perfect as far as human skill and ingenuity can make it perfect. You say a car is
a Pullman car. That is all; but what does it mean? It means that the builder of that car got a reputation
at the outset for thorough, perfect work, for turning out everything in first-class shape. And so with a
race. You cannot keep back very long a race that has the reputation for doing perfect work in
everything that it undertakes. And then we have got to get a reputation for economy. Nobody cares to
associate with an individual in business or otherwise who has a reputation for being a trifling
spendthrift, who spends his money for things that he can very easily get along without, who spends his
money for clothing, gewgaws, superficialities, and other things, when he has not got the necessaries of
life. We want to give the race a reputation for being frugal and saving in everything. Then we want to
get a reputation for being industrious. Now, remember these three things: Get a reputation for being
skilled. It will not do for a few here and there to have it: the race must have the reputation. Get a
reputation for being so skilful, so industrious, that you will not leave a job until it is as nearly perfect
as any one can make it. And then we want to make a reputation for the race for being honest,—honest
at all times and under all circumstances. A few individuals here and there have it, a few communities
have it; but the race as a mass must get it.

"You recall that story of Abraham Lincoln, how, when he was postmaster at a small village, he had left
on his hands $1.50 which the government did not call for. Carefully wrapping up this money in a
handkerchief, he kept it for ten years. Finally, one day, the government agent called for this amount;
and it was promptly handed over to him by Abraham Lincoln, who told him that during all those ten
years he had never touched a cent of that money. He made it a principle of his life never to use other
people's money. That trait of his character helped him along to the Presidency. The race wants to get a
reputation for being strictly honest in all its dealings and transactions,—honest in handling money,
honest in all its dealings with its fellow-men.

"And then we want to get a reputation for being thoughtful. This I want to emphasise more than
anything else. We want to get a reputation for doing things without being told to do them every time. If
you have work to do, think about it so constantly, investigate and read about it so thoroughly, that you
will always be finding ways and means of improving that work. The average person going to work
becomes a regular machine, never giving the matter of improving the methods of his work a thought.
He is never at his work before the appointed time, and is sure to stop the minute the hour is up. The
world is looking for the person who is thoughtful, who will say at the close of work hours: 'Is there not
something else I can do for you? Can I not stay a little later, and help you?'

"Moreover, it is with a race as it is with an individual: it must respect itself if it would win the respect
of others. There must be a certain amount of unity about a race, there must be a great amount of pride
about a race, there must be a great deal of faith on the part of a race in itself. An individual cannot
succeed unless he has about him a certain amount of pride,—enough pride to make him aspire to the
highest and best things in life. An individual cannot succeed unless that individual has a great amount
of faith in himself.

"A person who goes at an undertaking with the feeling that he cannot succeed is likely to fail. On the
other hand, the individual who goes at an undertaking, feeling that he can succeed, is the individual
who in nine cases out of ten does succeed. But, whenever you find an individual that is ashamed of his
race, trying to get away from his race, apologising for being a member of his race, then you find a
weak individual. Where you find a race that is ashamed of itself, that is apologising for itself, there you
will find a weak, vacillating race. Let us no longer have to apologise for our race in these or other
matters. Let us think seriously and work seriously: then, as a race, we shall be thought of seriously,
and, therefore, seriously respected."
 CHAPTER V.
IN this chapter I wish to show how, at Tuskegee, we are trying to work out the
plan of industrial training, and trust I shall be pardoned the seeming egotism if I
preface the sketch with a few words, by way of example, as to the expansion of
my own life and how I came to undertake the work at Tuskegee.

My earliest recollection is of a small one-room log hut on a slave plantation in

Virginia. After the close of the war, while working in the coal mines of West
Virginia for the support of my mother, I heard, in some accidental way, of the
Hampton Institute. When I learned that it was an institution where a black boy
could study, could have a chance to work for his board, and at the same time be
taught how to work and to realise the dignity of labor, I resolved to go there.
Bidding my mother good-by, I started out one morning to find my way to
Hampton, although I was almost penniless and had no definite idea as to where
Hampton was. By walking, begging rides, and paying for a portion of the
journey on the steam-cars, I finally succeeded in reaching the city of Richmond;
Virginia. I was without money or friends. I slept on a sidewalk; and by working
on a vessel the next day I earned money enough to continue my way to the
institute, where I arrived with a capital of fifty cents. At Hampton I found the
opportunity—in the way of buildings, teachers, and industries provided by the
generous—to get training in the classroom and by practical touch with industrial
life,—to learn thrift, economy, and push. I was surrounded by an atmosphere of
business, Christian influence, and spirit of self-help, that seemed to have
awakened every faculty in me, and caused me for the first time to realise what it
meant to be a man instead of a piece of property.

While there, I resolved, when I had finished the course of training, I would go
into the Far South, into the Black Belt of the South, and give my life to
providing the same kind of opportunity for self-reliance, self-awakening, that I
had found provided for me at Hampton.

My work began at Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1881, in a small shanty church, with

one teacher and thirty students, without a dollar's worth of property. The spirit of
work and of industrial thrift, with aid from the State and generosity from the
North, have enabled us to develop an institution which now has about one
thousand students, gathered from twenty-three States, and eighty-eight
instructors. Counting students, instructors, and their families, we have a resident
population upon the school grounds of about twelve hundred persons.

The institution owns two thousand three hundred acres of land, seven hundred of
which are cultivated by student labor. There are six hundred head of live-stock,
including horses, mules, cows, hogs, and sheep. There are over forty vehicles
that have been made, and are now used, by the school. Training is given in
twenty-six industries. There is work in wood, in iron, in leather, in tin; and all
forms of domestic economy are engaged in. Students are taught mechanical and
architectural drawing, receive training as agriculturists, dairymen, masons,
carpenters, contractors, builders, as machinists, electricians, printers,
dressmakers, and milliners, and in other directions.

The value of the property is $300,000. There are forty-two buildings, counting
large and small, all of which, with the exception of four, have been erected by
the labour of the students.

Since this work started, there has been collected and spent for its founding and
support $800,000. The annual expense is now not far from $75,000. In a humble,
simple manner the effort has been to place a great object-lesson in the heart of
the South for the elevation of the coloured people, where there should be, in a
high sense, that union of head, heart, and hand which has been the foundation of
the greatness of all races since the world began.

What is the object of all this outlay? It must be first borne in mind that we have
in the South a peculiar and unprecedented state of things. The cardinal needs
among the eight million coloured people in the South, most of whom are to be
found on the plantations, may be stated as food, clothing, shelter, education,
proper habits, and a settlement of race relations. These millions of coloured
people of the South cannot be reached directly by any missionary agent; but they
can be reached by sending out among them strong, selected young men and
women, with the proper training of head, hand, and heart, who will live among
them and show them how to lift themselves up.

The problem that the Tuskegee Institute keeps before itself constantly is how to
prepare these leaders. From the outset, in connection with religious and
academic training, it has emphasised industrial, or hand, training as a means of
finding the way out of present conditions. First, we have found the industrial
teaching useful in giving the student a chance to work out a portion of his
expenses while in school. Second, the school furnishes labour that has an
economic value and at the same time gives the student a chance to acquire
knowledge and skill while performing the labour. Most of all, we find the
industrial system valuable in teaching economy, thrift, and the dignity of labour
and in giving moral backbone to students. The fact that a student goes into the
world conscious of his power to build a house or a wagon or to make a set of
harness gives him a certain confidence and moral independence that he would
not possess without such training.

A more detailed example of our methods at Tuskegee may be of interest. For

example, we cultivate by student labour seven hundred acres of land. The object
is not only to cultivate the land in a way to make it pay our boarding department,
but at the same time to teach the students, in addition to the practical work,
something of the chemistry of the soil, the best methods of drainage, dairying,
cultivation of fruit, the care of live-stock and tools, and scores of other lessons
needed by people whose main dependence is on agriculture.

Friends some time ago provided means for the erection of a large new chapel at
Tuskegee. Our students made the bricks for this chapel. A large part of the
timber was sawed by the students at our saw-mill, the plans were drawn by our
teacher of architectural and mechanical drawing, and students did the brick-
masonry, the plastering, the painting, the carpentry work, the tinning, the slating,
and made most of the furniture. Practically, the whole chapel was built and
furnished by student labour. Now the school has this building for permanent use,
and the students have a knowledge of the trades employed in its construction.

While the young men do the kinds of work I have mentioned, young women to a
large extent make, mend, and laundry the clothing of the young men. They also
receive instruction in dairying, horticulture, and other valuable industries.

One of the objections sometimes urged against industrial education for the Negro
is that it aims merely to teach him to work on the same plan that he worked on
when in slavery. This is far from being the object at Tuskegee. At the head of
each of the twenty-six industrial divisions we have an intelligent and competent
instructor, just as we have in our history classes, so that the student is taught not
only practical brick-masonry, for example, but also the underlying principles of
that industry, the mathematics and the mechanical and architectural drawing. Or
he is taught how to become master of the forces of nature, so that, instead of
cultivating corn in the old way, he can use a corn cultivator that lays off the
furrows, drops the corn into them, and covers it; and in this way he can do more
work than three men by the old process of corn planting, while at the same time
much of the toil is eliminated and labour is dignified. In a word, the constant aim
is to show the student how to put brains into every process of labour, how to
bring his knowledge of mathematics and the sciences in farming, carpentry,
forging, foundry work, how to dispense as soon as possible with the old form of
ante-bellum labour. In the erection of the chapel referred to, instead of letting the
money which was given to us go into outside hands, we made it accomplish
three objects: first, it provided the chapel; second, it gave the students a chance
to get a practical knowledge of the trades connected with the building; and, third,
it enabled them to earn something toward the payment of their board while
receiving academic and industrial training.

Having been fortified at Tuskegee by education of mind, skill of hand, Christian

character, ideas of thrift, economy, and push, and a spirit of independence, the
student is sent out to become a centre of influence and light in showing the
masses of our people in the Black Belt of the South how to lift themselves up.
Can this be done? I give but one or two examples. Ten years ago a young
coloured man came to the institute from one of the large plantation districts. He
studied in the class-room a portion of the time, and received practical and
theoretical training on the farm the remainder of the time. Having finished his
course at Tuskegee, he returned to his plantation home, which was in a county
where the coloured people outnumbered the whites six to one, as is true of many
of the counties in the Black Belt of the South. He found the Negroes in debt.
Ever since the war they had been mortgaging their crops for the food on which
to live while the crops were growing. The majority of them were living from
hand-to-mouth on rented land, in small one-room log cabins, and attempting to
pay a rate of interest on their advances that ranged from fifteen to forty per cent.
per annum. The school had been taught in a wreck of a log cabin, with no
apparatus, and had never been in session longer than three months out of twelve.
He found the people, as many as eight or ten persons, of all ages and conditions
and of both sexes, huddled together and living in one-room cabins year after
year, and with a minister whose only aim was to work upon the emotions. One
can imagine something of the moral and religious state of the community.

But the remedy! In spite of the evil the Negro got the habit of work from slavery.
The rank and file of the race, especially those on the Southern plantations, work
hard; but the trouble is that what they earn gets away from them in high rents,
crop mortgages, whiskey, snuff, cheap jewelry, and the like. The young man just
referred to had been trained at Tuskegee, as most of our graduates are, to meet
just this condition of things. He took the three months' public school as a nucleus
for his work. Then he organized the older people into a club, or conference, that
held meetings every week. In these meetings he taught the people, in a plain,
simple manner, how to save their money, how to farm in a better way, how to
sacrifice,—to live on bread and potatoes, if necessary, till they could get out of
debt, and begin the buying of lands.

Soon a large proportion of the people were in a condition to make contracts for
the buying of homes (land is very cheap in the South) and to live without
mortgaging their crops. Not only this; under the guidance and leadership of this
teacher, the first year that he was among them they learned how and built, by
contributions in money and labour, a neat, comfortable school-house that
replaced the wreck of a log cabin formerly used. The following year the weekly
meetings were continued, and two months were added to the original three
months of school. The next year two more months were added. The
improvement has gone on until these people have every year an eight months'
school.

I wish my readers could have the chance that I have had of going into this
community. I wish they could look into the faces of the people, and see them
beaming with hope and delight. I wish they could see the two or three room
cottages that have taken the place of the usual one-room cabin, see the well-
cultivated farms and the religious life of the people that now means something
more than the name. The teacher has a good cottage and well-kept farm that
serve as models. In a word, a complete revolution has been wrought in the
industrial, educational, and religious life of this whole community by reason of
the fact that they have had this leader, this guide and object-lesson, to show them
how to take the money and effort that had hitherto been scattered to the wind in
mortgages and high rents, in whiskey and gewgaws, and how to concentrate it in
the direction of their own uplifting. One community on its feet presents an
object-lesson for the adjoining communities, and soon improvements show
themselves in other places.

Another student, who received academic and industrial training at Tuskegee,

established himself, three years ago, as a blacksmith and wheelwright in a
community; and, in addition to the influence of his successful business
enterprise, he is fast making the same kind of changes in the life of the people
about him that I have just recounted. It would be easy for me to fill many pages
describing the influence of the Tuskegee graduates in every part of the South.
We keep it constantly in the minds of our students and graduates that the
industrial or material condition of the masses of our people must be improved, as
well as the intellectual, before there can be any permanent change in their moral
and religious life. We find it a pretty hard thing to make a good Christian of a
hungry man. No matter how much our people "get happy" and "shout" in church,
if they go home at night from church hungry, they are tempted to find something
to eat before morning. This is a principle of human nature, and is not confined
alone to the Negro. The Negro has within him immense power for self-uplifting,
but for years it will be necessary to guide him and stimulate his energies.

The recognition of this power led us to organise, five years ago, what is known
as the Tuskegee Negro Conference,—a gathering that meets every February, and
is composed of about eight hundred representatives, coloured men and women,
from all sections of the Black Belt. They come in ox-carts, mule-carts, buggies,
on muleback and horseback, on foot, by railroad. Some travel all night in order
to be present. The matters considered at the conference are those that the
coloured people have it in their own power to control,—such as the evils of the
mortgage system, the one-room cabin, buying on credit, the importance of
owning a home and of putting money in the bank, how to build school-houses
and prolong the school term, and to improve their moral and religious condition.
As a single example of the results, one delegate reported that since the
conference was started, seven years ago, eleven people in his neighbourhood had
bought homes, fourteen had gotten out of debt, and a number had stopped
mortgaging their crops. Moreover, a school-house had been built by the people
themselves, and the school term had been extended from three to six months;
and, with a look of triumph, he exclaimed, "We's done libin' in de ashes."

Besides this Negro Conference for the masses of the people, we now have a
gathering at the same time known as the Tuskegee Workers' Conference,
composed of the officers and instructors of the leading coloured schools in the
South. After listening to the story of the conditions and needs from the people
themselves, the Workers' Conference finds much food for thought and
discussion. Let me repeat, from its beginning, this institution has kept in mind
the giving of thorough mental and religious training, along with such industrial
training as would enable the student to appreciate the dignity of labour and
become self-supporting and valuable as a producing factor, keeping in mind the
occupations open in the South to the average man of the race.
This institution has now reached the point where it can begin to judge of the
value of its work as seen in its graduates. Some years ago we noted the fact, for
example, that there was quite a movement in many parts of the South to organise
and start dairies. Soon after this, we opened a dairy school where a number of
young men could receive training in the best and most scientific methods of
dairying. At present we have calls, mainly from Southern white men, for twice
as many dairymen as we are able to supply. The reports indicate that our young
men are giving the highest satisfaction, and are fast changing and improving the
dairy product in the communities where they labour. I have used the dairy
industry simply as an example. What I have said of this industry is true in a
larger or less degree of the others.

I cannot but believe, and my daily observation and experience confirm me in it,
that, as we continue placing men and women of intelligence, religion, modesty,
conscience, and skill in every community in the South, who will prove by actual
results their value to the community, this will constitute the solution for many of
the present political and sociological difficulties. It is with this larger and more
comprehensive view of improving present conditions and laying the foundation
wisely that the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute is training men and
women as teachers and industrial leaders.

Over four hundred students have finished the course of training at this
institution, and are now scattered throughout the South, doing good work. A
recent investigation shows that about 3,000 students who have taken only a
partial course are doing commendable work. One young man, who was able to
remain in school but two years, has been teaching in one community for ten
years. During this time he has built a new school-house, extended the school
term from three to seven months, and has bought a nice farm upon which he has
erected a neat cottage. The example of this young man has inspired many of the
coloured people in this community to follow his example in some degree; and
this is one of many such examples.

Wherever our graduates and ex-students go, they teach by precept and example
the necessary lesson of thrift, economy, and property-getting, and friendship
between the races.
 CHAPTER VI.
IT has become apparent that the effort to put the rank and file of the coloured
people into a position to exercise the right of franchise has not been the success
that was expected in those portions of our country where the Negro is found in
large numbers. Either the Negro was not prepared for any such wholesale
exercise of the ballot as our recent amendments to the Constitution contemplated
or the American people were not prepared to assist and encourage him to use the
ballot. In either case the result has been the same.

On an important occasion in the life of the Master, when it fell to him to

pronounce judgment on two courses of action, these memorable words fell from
his lips: "And Mary hath chosen the better part." This was the supreme test in the
case of an individual. It is the highest test in the case of a race or a nation. Let us
apply this test to the American Negro.

In the life of our Republic, when he has had the opportunity to choose, has it
been the better or worse part? When in the childhood of this nation the Negro
was asked to submit to slavery or choose death and extinction, as did the
aborigines, he chose the better part, that which perpetuated the race.

When, in 1776, the Negro was asked to decide between British oppression and
American independence, we find him choosing the better part; and Crispus
Attucks, a Negro, was the first to shed his blood on State Street, Boston, that the
white American might enjoy liberty forever, though his race remained in slavery.
When, in 1814, at New Orleans, the test of patriotism came again, we find the
Negro choosing the better part, General Andrew Jackson himself testifying that
no heart was more loyal and no arm was more strong and useful in defence of
righteousness.

When the long and memorable struggle came between union and separation,
when he knew that victory meant freedom, and defeat his continued
enslavement, although enlisting by the thousands, as opportunity presented itself,
to fight in honourable combat for the cause of the Union and liberty, yet, when
the suggestion and the temptation came to burn the home and massacre wife and
children during the absence of the master in battle, and thus insure his liberty, we
find him choosing the better part, and for four long years protecting and
supporting the helpless, defenceless ones intrusted to his care.

When, during our war with Spain, the safety and honour of the Republic were
threatened by a foreign foe, when the wail and anguish of the oppressed from a
distant isle reached our ears, we find the Negro forgetting his own wrongs,
forgetting the laws and customs that discriminate against him in his own country,
and again choosing the better part. And, if any one would know how he
acquitted himself in the field at Santiago, let him apply for answer to Shafter and
Roosevelt and Wheeler. Let them tell how the Negro faced death and laid down
his life in defence of honour and humanity. When the full story of the heroic
conduct of the Negro in the Spanish-American War has been heard from the lips
of Northern soldier and Southern soldier, from ex-abolitionist and ex-master,
then shall the country decide whether a race that is thus willing to die for its
country should not be given the highest opportunity to live for its country.

In the midst of all the complaints of suffering in the camp and field during the
Spanish-American War, suffering from fever and hunger, where is the official or
citizen that has heard a word of complaint from the lips of a black soldier? The
only request that came from the Negro soldier was that he might be permitted to
replace the white soldier when heat and malaria began to decimate the ranks of
the white regiments, and to occupy at the same time the post of greater danger.

But, when all this is said, it remains true that the efforts on the part of his friends
and the part of himself to share actively in the control of State and local
government in America have not been a success in all sections. What are the
causes of this partial failure, and what lessons has it taught that we may use in
regard to the future treatment of the Negro in America?

In my mind there is no doubt but that we made a mistake at the beginning of our
freedom of putting the emphasis on the wrong end. Politics and the holding of
office were too largely emphasised, almost to the exclusion of every other
interest.

I believe the past and present teach but one lesson,—to the Negro's friends and
to the Negro himself,—that there is but one way out, that there is but one hope of
solution; and that is for the Negro in every part of America to resolve from
henceforth that he will throw aside every non-essential and cling only to
essential,—that his pillar of fire by night and pillar of cloud by day shall be
property, economy, education, and Christian character. To us just now these are
the wheat, all else the chaff. The individual or race that owns the property, pays
the taxes, possesses the intelligence and substantial character, is the one which is
going to exercise the greatest control in government, whether he lives in the
North or whether he lives in the South.

I have often been asked the cause of and the cure for the riots that have taken
place recently in North Carolina and South Carolina.[1] I am not at all sure that
what I shall say will answer these questions in a satisfactory way, nor shall I
attempt to narrow my expressions to a mere recital of what has taken place in
these two States. I prefer to discuss the problem in a broader manner.
 [1] November, 1898.

In the first place, in politics I am a Republican, but have always refrained from
activity in party politics, and expect to pursue this policy in the future. So in this
connection I shall refrain, as I always have done, from entering upon any
discussion of mere party politics. What I shall say of politics will bear upon the
race problem and the civilisation of the South in the larger sense. In no case
would I permit my political relations to stand in the way of my speaking and
acting in the manner that I believe would be for the permanent interest of my
race and the whole South.

In 1873 the Negro in the South had reached the point of greatest activity and
influence in public life, so far as the mere holding of elective office was
concerned. From that date those who have kept up with the history of the South
have noticed that the Negro has steadily lost in the number of elective offices
held. In saying this, I do not mean that the Negro has gone backward in the real
and more fundamental things of life. On the contrary, he has gone forward faster
than has been true of any other race in history, under anything like similar
circumstances.

If we can answer the question as to why the Negro has lost ground in the matter
of holding elective office in the South, perhaps we shall find that our reply will
prove to be our answer also as to the cause of the recent riots in North Carolina
and South Carolina. Before beginning a discussion of the question I have asked,
I wish to say that this change in the political influence of the Negro has
continued from year to year, notwithstanding the fact that for a long time he was
protected, politically, by force of federal arms and the most rigid federal laws,
and still more effectively, perhaps, by the voice and influence in the halls of
legislation of such advocates of the rights of the Negro race as Thaddeus
Stevens, Charles Sumner, Benjamin F. Butler, James M. Ashley, Oliver P.
Morton, Carl Schurz, and Roscoe Conkling, and on the stump and through the
public press by those great and powerful Negroes, Frederick Douglass, John M.
Langston, Blanche K. Bruce, John R. Lynch, P. B. S. Pinchback, Robert Browne
Elliot, T. Thomas Fortune, and many others; but the Negro has continued for
twenty years to have fewer representatives in the State and national legislatures.
The reduction has continued until now it is at the point where, with few
exceptions, he is without representatives in the law-making bodies of the State
and of the nation.
Now let us find, if we can, a cause for this. The Negro is fond of saying that his
present condition is due to the fact that the State and federal courts have not
sustained the laws passed for the protection of the rights of his people; but I
think we shall have to go deeper than this, because I believe that all agree that
court decisions, as a rule, represent the public opinion of the community or
nation creating and sustaining the court.

At the beginning of his freedom it was unfortunate that those of the white race
who won the political confidence of the Negro were not, with few exceptions,
men of such high character as would lead them to assist him in laying a firm
foundation for his development. Their main purpose appears to have been, for
selfish ends in too many instances, merely to control his vote. The history of the
reconstruction era will show that this was unfortunate for all the parties in
interest.

It would have been better, from any point of view, if the native Southern white
man had taken the Negro, at the beginning of his freedom, into his political
confidence, and exercised an influence and control over him before his political
affections were alienated.

The average Southern white man has an idea to-day that, if the Negro were
permitted to get any political power, all the mistakes of the reconstruction period
would be repeated. He forgets or ignores the fact that thirty years of acquiring
education and property and character have produced a higher type of black man
than existed thirty years ago.

But, to be more specific, for all practical purposes, there are two political parties
in the South,—a black man's party and a white man's party. In saying this, I do
not mean that all white men are Democrats; for there are some white men in the
South of the highest character who are Republicans, and there are a few Negroes
in the South of the highest character who are Democrats. It is the general
understanding that all white men are Democrats or the equivalent, and that all
black men are Republicans. So long as the colour line is the dividing line in
politics, so long will there be trouble.

The white man feels that he owns most of the property, furnishes the Negro most
of his employment, thinks he pays most of the taxes, and has had years of
experience in government. There is no mistaking the fact that the feeling which
has heretofore governed the Negro—that, to be manly and stand by his race, he
must oppose the Southern white man with his vote—has had much to do with
intensifying the opposition of the Southern white man to him.

The Southern white man says that it is unreasonable for the Negro to come to
him, in a large measure, for his clothes, board, shelter, and education, and for his
politics to go to men a thousand miles away. He very properly argues that, when
the Negro votes, he should try to consult the interests of his employer, just as the
Pennsylvania employee tries to vote for the interests of his employer. Further,
that much of the education which has been given the Negro has been defective,
in not preparing him to love labour and to earn his living at some special
industry, and has, in too many cases, resulted in tempting him to live by his wits
as a political creature or by trusting to his "influence" as a political time-server.

Then, there is no mistaking the fact, that much opposition to the Negro in
politics is due to the circumstance that the Southern white man has not become
accustomed to seeing the Negro exercise political power either as a voter or as
an office-holder. Again, we want to bear it in mind that the South has not yet
reached the point where there is that strict regard for the enforcement of the law
against either black or white men that there is in many of our Northern and
Western States. This laxity in the enforcement of the laws in general, and
especially of criminal laws, makes such outbreaks as those in North Carolina and
South Carolina of easy occurrence.

Then there is one other consideration which must not be overlooked. It is the
common opinion of almost every black man and almost every white man that
nearly everybody who has had anything to do with the making of laws bearing
upon the protection of the Negro's vote has proceeded on the theory that all the
black men for all time will vote the Republican ticket and that all the white men
in the South will vote the Democratic ticket. In a word, all seem to have taken it
for granted that the two races are always going to oppose each other in their
voting.

In all the foregoing statements I have not attempted to define my own views or
position, but simply to describe conditions as I have observed them, that might
throw light upon the cause of our political troubles. As to my own position, I do
not favour the Negro's giving up anything which is fundamental and which has
been guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the United States. It is not best for
him to relinquish any of his rights; nor would his doing so be best for the
Southern white man. Every law placed in the Constitution of the United States
was placed there to encourage and stimulate the highest citizenship. If the Negro
is not stimulated and encouraged by just State and national laws to become the
highest type of citizen, the result will be worse for the Southern white man than
for the Negro. Take the State of South Carolina, for example, where nearly two-
thirds of the population are Negroes. Unless these Negroes are encouraged by
just election laws to become tax-payers and intelligent producers, the white
people of South Carolina will have an eternal millstone about their necks.

In an open letter to the State Constitutional Convention of Louisiana, I wrote:

"I am no politician. On the other hand, I have always advised my race to give attention to acquiring
property, intelligence, and character, as the necessary bases of good citizenship, rather than to mere
political agitation. But the question upon which I write is out of the region of ordinary politics. It
affects the civilisation of two races, not for to-day alone, but for a very long time to come.

"Since the war, no State has had such an opportunity to settle, for all time, the race question, so far as it
concerns politics, as is now given to Louisiana. Will your convention set an example to the world in
this respect? Will Louisiana take such high and just grounds in respect to the Negro that no one can
doubt that the South is as good a friend to him as he possesses elsewhere? In all this, gentlemen of the
convention, I am not pleading for the Negro alone, but for the morals, the higher life, of the white man
as well.

"The Negro agrees with you that it is necessary to the salvation of the South that restrictions be put
upon the ballot. I know that you have two serious problems before you; ignorant and corrupt
government, on the one hand; and, on the other, a way to restrict the ballot so that control will be in the
hands of the intelligent, without regard to race. With the sincerest sympathy with you in your efforts to
find a good way out of the difficulty, I want to suggest that no State in the South can make a law that
will provide an opportunity or temptation for an ignorant white man to vote, and withhold the
opportunity or temptation from an ignorant coloured man, without injuring both men. No State can
make a law that can thus be executed without dwarfing, for all time, the morals of the white man in the
South. Any law controlling the ballot that is not absolutely just and fair to both races will work more
permanent injury to the whites than to the blacks.

"The Negro does not object to an educational and property test, but let the law be so clear that no one
clothed with State authority will be tempted to perjure and degrade himself by putting one
interpretation upon it for the white man and another for the black man. Study the history of the South,
and you will find that, where there has been the most dishonesty in the matter of voting, there you will
find to-day the lowest moral condition of both races. First, there was the temptation to act wrongly
with the Negro's ballot. From this it was an easy step to act dishonestly with the white man's ballot, to
the carrying of concealed weapons, to the murder of a Negro, and then to the murder of a white man,
and then to lynching. I entreat you not to pass a law that will prove an eternal millstone about the necks
of your children. No man can have respect for the government and officers of the law when he knows,
deep down in his heart, that the exercise of the franchise is tainted with fraud.

"The road that the South has been compelled to travel during the last thirty years has been strewn with
thorns and thistles. It has been as one groping through the long darkness into the light. The time is not
far distant when the world will begin to appreciate the real character of the burden that was imposed
upon the South in giving the franchise to four millions of ignorant and impoverished ex-slaves. No
people was ever before given such a problem to solve. History has blazed no path through the
wilderness that could be followed. For thirty years we have wandered in the wilderness. We are now
 beginning to get out. But there is only one road out; and all makeshifts, expedients, profit and loss
calculations, but lead into swamps, quicksands, quagmires, and jungles. There is a highway that will
lead both races out into the pure, beautiful sunshine, where there will be nothing to hide and nothing to
explain, where both races can grow strong and true and useful in every fibre of their being. I believe
that your convention will find this highway, that it will enact a fundamental law that will be absolutely
just and fair to white and black alike.

"I beg of you, further, that in the degree that you close the ballot-box against the ignorant you will
open the school-house. More than one-half of the population of your State are Negroes. No State can
long prosper when a large part of its citizenship is in ignorance and poverty, and has no interest in the
government. I beg of you that you do not treat us as an alien people. We are not aliens. You know us.
You know that we have cleared your forests, tilled your fields, nursed your children, and protected
your families. There is an attachment between us that few understand. While I do not presume to be
able to advise you, yet it is in my heart to say that, if your convention would do something that would
prevent for all time strained relations between the two races, and would permanently settle the matter
of political relations in one Southern State at least, let the very best educational opportunities be
provided for both races; and add to this an election law that shall be incapable of unjust discrimination,
at the same time providing that, in proportion as the ignorant secure education, property, and character,
they will be given the right of citizenship. Any other course will take from one-half your citizens
interest in the State, and hope and ambition to become intelligent producers and tax-payers, and useful
and virtuous citizens. Any other course will tie the white citizens of Louisiana to a body of death.

"The Negroes are not unmindful of the fact that the poverty of the State prevents it from doing all that
it desires for public education; yet I believe that you will agree with me that ignorance is more costly
to the State than education, that it will cost Louisiana more not to educate the Negroes than it will to
educate them. In connection with a generous provision for public schools, I believe that nothing will so
help my own people in your State as provision at some institution for the highest academic and normal
training, in connection with thorough training in agriculture, mechanics, and domestic economy. First-
class training in agriculture, horticulture, dairying, stock-raising, the mechanical arts, and domestic
economy, would make us intelligent producers, and not only help us to contribute our honest share as
tax-payers, but would result in retaining much money in the State that now goes outside for that which
can be as well produced at home. An institution which will give this training of the hand, along with
the highest mental culture, would soon convince our people that their salvation is largely in the
ownership of property and in industrial and business development, rather than in mere political
agitation.

"The highest test of the civilisation of any race is in its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less
fortunate. A race, like an individual, lifts itself up by lifting others up. Surely, no people ever had a
greater chance to exhibit the highest Christian fortitude and magnanimity than is now presented to the
people of Louisiana. It requires little wisdom or statesmanship to repress, to crush out, to retard the
hopes and aspirations of a people; but the highest and most profound statesmanship is shown in
guiding and stimulating a people, so that every fibre in the body and soul shall be made to contribute in
the highest degree to the usefulness and ability of the State. It is along this line that I pray God the
thoughts and activities of your convention may be guided."

As to such outbreaks as have recently occurred in North Carolina and South

Carolina, the remedy will not be reached by the Southern white man merely
depriving the Negro of his rights and privileges. This method is but superficial,
irritating, and must, in the nature of things, be short-lived. The statesman, to cure
an evil, resorts to enlightenment, to stimulation; the politician, to repression. I
have just remarked that I favour the giving up of nothing that is guaranteed to us
by the Constitution of the United States, or that is fundamental to our
citizenship. While I hold to these views as strongly as any one, I differ with
some as to the method of securing the permanent and peaceful enjoyment of all
the privileges guaranteed to us by our fundamental law.

In finding a remedy, we must recognise the world-wide fact that the Negro must
be led to see and feel that he must make every effort possible, in every way
possible, to secure the friendship, the confidence, the co-operation of his white
neighbour in the South. To do this, it is not necessary for the Negro to become a
truckler or a trimmer. The Southern white man has no respect for a Negro who
does not act from principle. In some way the Southern white man must be led to
see that it is to his interest to turn his attention more and more to the making of
laws that will, in the truest sense, elevate the Negro. At the present moment, in
many cases, when one attempts to get the Negro to co-operate with the Southern
white man, he asks the question, "Can the people who force me to ride in a Jim
Crow car, and pay first-class fare, be my best friends?" In answering such
questions, the Southern white man, as well as the Negro, has a duty to perform.
In the exercise of his political rights I should advise the Negro to be temperate
and modest, and more and more to do his own thinking.

I believe the permanent cure for our present evils will come through a property
and educational test for voting that shall apply honestly and fairly to both races.
This will cut off the large mass of ignorant voters of both races that is now
proving so demoralising a factor in the politics of the Southern States.

But, most of all, it will come through industrial development of the Negro.
Industrial education makes an intelligent producer of the Negro, who becomes of
immediate value to the community rather than one who yields to the temptation
to live merely by politics or other parasitical employments. It will make him
soon become a property-holder; and, when a citizen becomes a holder of
property, he becomes a conservative and thoughtful voter. He will more carefully
consider the measures and individuals to be voted for. In proportion as he
increases his property interests, he becomes important as a tax-payer.

There is little trouble between the Negro and the white man in matters of
education; and, when it comes to his business development, the black man has
implicit faith in the advice of the Southern white man. When he gets into trouble
in the courts, which requires a bond to be given, in nine cases out of ten, he goes
to a Southern white man for advice and assistance. Every one who has lived in
the South knows that, in many of the church troubles among the coloured
people, the ministers and other church officers apply to the nearest white
minister for assistance and instruction. When by reason of mutual concession we
reach the point where we shall consult the Southern white man about our politics
as we now consult him about our business, legal, and religious matters, there will
be a change for the better in the situation.

The object-lesson of a thousand Negroes in every county in the South who own
neat and comfortable homes, possessing skill, industry, and thrift, with money in
the bank, and are large tax-payers co-operating with the white men in the South
in every manly way for the development of their own communities and counties,
will go a long way, in a few years, toward changing the present status of the
Negro as a citizen, as well as the attitude of the whites toward the blacks.

As the Negro grows in industrial and business directions, he will divide in his
politics on economic issues, just as the white man in other parts of the country
now divides his vote. As the South grows in business prosperity it will divide its
vote on economic issues, just as other sections of the country divide their vote.
When we can enact laws that result in honestly cutting off the large ignorant and
non-tax-paying vote, and when we can bring both races to the point where they
will co-operate with each other in politics, as they do now in matters of business,
religion, and education, the problem will be in a large measure solved, and
political outbreaks will cease.
 CHAPTER VII.
ONE of the great questions which Christian education must face in the South is
the proper adjustment of the new relations of the two races. It is a question
which must be faced calmly, quietly, dispassionately; and the time has now come
to rise above party, above race, above colour, above sectionalism, into the region
of duty of man to man, of American to American, of Christian to Christian.

I remember not long ago, when about five hundred coloured people sailed from
the port of Savannah bound for Liberia, that the news was flashed all over the
country, "The Negro has made up his mind to return to his own country," and
that, "in this was the solution of the race problem in the South." But these short-
sighted people forgot the fact that before breakfast that morning about five
hundred more Negro children were born in the South alone.

And then, once in a while, somebody is so bold as to predict that the Negro will
be absorbed by the white race. Let us look at this phase of the question for a
moment. It is a fact that, if a person is known to have one per cent. of African
blood in his veins, he ceases to be a white man. The ninety-nine per cent. of
Caucasian blood does not weigh by the side of the one per cent. of African
blood. The white blood counts for nothing. The person is a Negro every time. So
it will be a very difficult task for the white man to absorb the Negro.

Somebody else conceived the idea of colonising the coloured people, of getting
territory where nobody lived, putting the coloured people there, and letting them
be a nation all by themselves. There are two objections to that. First, you would
have to build one wall to keep the coloured people in, and another wall to keep
the white people out. If you were to build ten walls around Africa to-day you
could not keep the white people out, especially as long as there was a hope of
finding gold there.

I have always had the highest respect for those of our race who, in trying to find
a solution for our Southern problem, advised a return of the race to Africa, and
because of my respect for those who have thus advised, especially Bishop Henry
M. Turner, I have tried to make a careful and unbiassed study of the question,
during a recent sojourn in Europe, to see what opportunities presented
themselves in Africa for self-development and self-government.

I am free to say that I see no way out of the Negro's present condition in the
South by returning to Africa. Aside from other insurmountable obstacles, there is
no place in Africa for him to go where his condition would be improved. All
Europe—especially England, France, and Germany—has been running a mad
race for the last twenty years, to see which could gobble up the greater part of
Africa; and there is practically nothing left. Old King Cetewayo put it pretty well
when he said, "First come missionary, then come rum, then come traders, then
come army"; and Cecil Rhodes has expressed the prevailing sentiment more
recently in these words, "I would rather have land than 'niggers.'" And Cecil
Rhodes is directly responsible for the killing of thousands of black natives in
South Africa, that he might secure their land.

In a talk with Henry M. Stanley, the explorer, he told me that he knew no place
in Africa where the Negroes of the United States might go to advantage; but I
want to be more specific. Let us see how Africa has been divided, and then
decide whether there is a place left for us. On the Mediterranean coast of Africa,
Morocco is an independent State, Algeria is a French possession, Tunis is a
French protectorate, Tripoli is a province of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt is a
province of Turkey. On the Atlantic coast, Sahara is a French protectorate, Adrar
is claimed by Spain, Senegambia is a French trading settlement, Gambia is a
British crown colony, Sierra Leone is a British crown colony. Liberia is a
republic of freed Negroes, Gold Coast and Ashanti are British colonies and
British protectorates, Togoland is a German protectorate, Dahomey is a kingdom
subject to French influence, Slave Coast is a British colony and British
protectorate, Niger Coast is a British protectorate, the Cameroons are trading
settlements protected by Germany, French Congo is a French protectorate,
Congo Free State is an international African Association, Angola and Benguela
are Portuguese protectorates, and the inland countries are controlled as follows:
The Niger States, Masina, etc., are under French protection; Land Gandu is
under British protection, administered by the Royal Haussan Niger Company.

South Africa is controlled as follows: Damara and Namaqua Land are German
protectorates, Cape Colony is a British colony, Basutoland is a Crown colony,
Bechuanaland is a British protectorate, Natal is a British colony, Zululand is a
British protectorate, Orange Free State is independent, the South African
Republic is independent, and the Zambesi is administered by the British South
African Company. Lourence Marques is a Portuguese possession.
East Africa has also been disposed of in the following manner: Mozambique is a
Portuguese possession, British Central Africa is a British protectorate, German
East Africa is in the German sphere of influence, Zanzibar is a sultanate under
British protection, British East Africa is a British protectorate, Somaliland is
under British and Italian protection, Abyssinia is independent. East Soudan
(including Nubia, Kordofan, Darfur, and Wadai) is in the British sphere of
influence. It will be noted that, when one of these European countries cannot get
direct control over any section of Africa, it at once gives it out to the world that
the country wanted is in the "sphere of its influence,"—a very convenient term.
If we are to go to Africa, and be under the control of another government, I think
we should prefer to take our chances in the "sphere of influence" of the United
States.

All this shows pretty conclusively that a return to Africa for the Negro is out of
the question, even provided that a majority of the Negroes wished to go back,
which they do not. The adjustment of the relations of the two races must take
place here; and it is taking place slowly, but surely. As the Negro is educated to
make homes and to respect himself, the white man will in turn respect him.

It has been urged that the Negro has inherent in him certain traits of character
that will prevent his ever reaching the standard of civilisation set by the whites,
and taking his place among them as an equal. It may be some time before the
Negro race as a whole can stand comparison with the white in all respects,—it
would be most remarkable, considering the past, if it were not so; but the idea
that his objectionable traits and weaknesses are fundamental, I think, is a
mistake. For, although there are elements of weakness about the Negro race,
there are also many evidences of strength.

It is an encouraging sign, however, when an individual grows to the point where

he can hold himself up for personal analysis and study. It is equally encouraging
for a race to be able to study itself,—to measure its weakness and strength. It is
not helpful to a race to be continually praised and have its weakness overlooked,
neither is it the most helpful thing to have its faults alone continually dwelt
upon. What is needed is downright, straightforward honesty in both directions;
and this is not always to be obtained.

There is little question that one of the Negroes' weak points is physical.
Especially is this true regarding those who live in the large cities, North and
South. But in almost every case this physical weakness can be traced to ignorant
violation of the laws of health or to vicious habits. The Negro, who during
slavery lived on the large plantations in the South, surrounded by restraints, at
the close of the war came to the cities, and in many cases found the freedom and
temptations of the city too much for him. The transition was too sudden.

When we consider what it meant to have four millions of people slaves to-day
and freemen to-morrow, the wonder is that the race has not suffered more
physically than it has. I do not believe that statistics can be so marshalled as to
prove that the Negro as a race is physically or numerically on the decline. On the
other hand, the Negro as a race is increasing in numbers by a larger percentage
than is true of the French nation. While the death-rate is large in the cities, the
birth-rate is also large; and it is to be borne in mind that eighty-five per cent. of
these people in the Gulf States are in the country districts and smaller towns, and
there the increase is along healthy and normal lines. As the Negro becomes
educated, the high death-rate in the cities will disappear. For proof of this, I have
only to mention that a few years ago no coloured man could get insurance in the
large first-class insurance companies. Now there are few of these companies
which do not seek the insurance of educated coloured men. In the North and
South the physical intoxication that was the result of sudden freedom is giving
way to an encouraging, sobering process; and, as this continues, the high death-
rate will disappear even, in the large cities.

Another element of weakness which shows itself in the present stage of the
civilisation of the Negro is his lack of ability to form a purpose and stick to it
through a series of years, if need be,—years that involve discouragement as well
as encouragement,—till the end shall be reached. Of course there are brilliant
exceptions to this rule; but there is no question that here is an element of
weakness, and the same, I think, would be true of any race with the Negro's
history.

Few of the resolutions which are made in conventions, etc., are remembered and
put into practice six months after the warmth and enthusiasm of the debating hall
have disappeared. This, I know, is an element of the white man's weakness, but it
is the Negro I am discussing, not the white man. Individually, the Negro is
strong. Collectively, he is weak. This is not to be wondered at. The ability to
succeed in organised bodies is one of the highest points in civilisation. There are
scores of coloured men who can succeed in any line of business as individuals,
or will discuss any subject in a most intelligent manner, yet who, when they
attempt to act in an organised body, are utter failures.
But the weakness of the Negro which is most frequently held up to the public
gaze is that of his moral character. No one who wants to be honest and at the
same time benefit the race will deny that here is where the strengthening is to be
done. It has become universally accepted that the family is the foundation, the
bulwark, of any race. It should be remembered, sorrowfully withal, that it was
the constant tendency of slavery to destroy the family life. All through two
hundred and fifty years of slavery, one of the chief objects was to increase the
number of slaves; and to this end almost all thought of morality was lost sight of,
so that the Negro has had only about thirty years in which to develop a family
life; while the Anglo-Saxon rate, with which he is constantly being compared,
has had thousands of years of training in home life. The Negro felt all through
the years of bondage that he was being forcibly and unjustly deprived of the
fruits of his labour. Hence he felt that anything he could get from the white man
in return for this labour justly belonged to him. Since this was true, we must be
patient in trying to teach him a different code of morals.

From the nature of things, all through slavery it was life in the future world that
was emphasised in religious teaching rather than life in this world. In his
religious meetings in ante-bellum days the Negro was prevented from discussing
many points of practical religion which related to this world; and the white
minister, who was his spiritual guide, found it more convenient to talk about
heaven than earth, so very naturally that to-day in his religious meeting it is the
Negro's feelings which are worked upon mostly, and it is description of the
glories of heaven that occupy most of the time of his sermon.

Having touched upon some of the weak points of the Negro, what are his strong
characteristics? The Negro in America is different from most people for whom
missionary effort is made, in that he works. He is not ashamed or afraid of work.
When hard, constant work is required, ask any Southern white man, and he will
tell you that in this the Negro has no superior. He is not given to strikes or to
lockouts. He not only works himself, but he is unwilling to prevent other people
from working.

Of the forty buildings of various kinds and sizes on the grounds of the Tuskegee
Normal and Industrial Institute, in Alabama, as I have stated before, almost all of
them are the results of the labour performed by the students while securing their
academic education. One day the student is in his history class. The next day the
same student, equally happy, with his trowel and in overalls, is working on a
brick wall.
While at present the Negro may lack that tenacious mental grasp which enables
one to pursue a scientific or mathematical investigation through a series of years,
he has that delicate, mental feeling which enables him to succeed in oratory,
music, etc.

While I have spoken of the Negro's moral weakness, I hope it will be kept in
mind that in his original state his is an honest race. It was slavery that corrupted
him in this respect. But in morals he also has his strong points.

Few have ever found the Negro guilty of betraying a trust. There are almost no
instances in which the Negro betrayed either a Federal or a Confederate soldier
who confided in him. There are few instances where the Negro has been
entrusted with valuables when he has not been faithful. This country has never
had a more loyal citizen. He has never proven himself a rebel. Should the
Southern States, which so long held him in slavery, be invaded by a foreign foe,
the Negro would be among the first to come to the rescue.

Perhaps the most encouraging thing in connection with the lifting up of the
Negro in this country is the fact that he knows that he is down and wants to get
up, he knows that he is ignorant and wants to get light. He fills every school-
house and every church which is opened for him. He is willing to follow leaders,
when he is once convinced that the leaders have his best interest at heart.

Under the constant influence of the Christian education which began thirty-five
years ago, his religion is every year becoming less emotional and more rational
and practical, though I, for one, hope that he will always retain in a large degree
the emotional element in religion.

During the two hundred and fifty years that the Negro spent in slavery he had
little cause or incentive to accumulate money or property. Thirty-five years ago
this was something which he had to begin to learn. While the great bulk of the
race is still without money and property, yet the signs of thrift are evident on
every hand. Especially is this noticeable in the large number of neat little homes
which are owned by these people on the outer edges of the towns and cities in
the South.

I wish to give an example of the sort of thing the Negro has to contend with,
however, in his efforts to lift himself up.

Not long ago a mother, a black mother, who lived in one of our Northern States,
had heard it whispered around in her community for years that the Negro was
lazy, shiftless, and would not work. So, when her only boy grew to sufficient
size, at considerable expense and great self-sacrifice, she had her boy thoroughly
taught the machinist's trade. A job was secured in a neighbouring shop. With
dinner bucket in hand and spurred on by the prayers of the now happy-hearted
mother, the boy entered the shop to begin his first day's work. What happened?
Every one of the twenty white men threw down his tools, and deliberately
walked out, swearing that he would not give a black man an opportunity to earn
an honest living. Another shop was tried with the same result, and still another,
the result ever the same. To-day this once promising, ambitious black man is a
wreck,—a confirmed drunkard,—with no hope, no ambition. I ask, Who blasted
the life of this young man? On whose hands does his lifeblood rest? The present
system of education, or rather want of education, is responsible.

Public schools and colleges should turn out men who will throw open the doors
of industry, so that all men, everywhere, regardless of colour, shall have the
same opportunity to earn a dollar that they now have to spend it. I know of a
good many kinds of cowardice and prejudice, but I know none equal to this. I
know not which is the worst,—the slaveholder who perforce compelled his slave
to work without compensation or the man who, by force and strikes, compels his
neighbour to refrain from working for compensation.

The Negro will be on a different footing in this country when it becomes

common to associate the possession of wealth with a black skin. It is not within
the province of human nature that the man who is intelligent and virtuous, and
owns and cultivates the best farm in his county, is the largest tax-payer, shall
very long be denied proper respect and consideration. Those who would help the
Negro most effectually during the next fifty years can do so by assisting in his
development along scientific and industrial lines in connection with the broadest
mental and religious culture.

From the results of the war with Spain let us learn this, that God has been
teaching the Spanish nation a terrible lesson. What is it? Simply this, that no
nation can disregard the interest of any portion of its members without that
nation becoming weak and corrupt. The penalty may be long delayed. God has
been teaching Spain that for every one of her subjects that she has left in
ignorance, poverty, and crime the price must be paid; and, if it has not been paid
with the very heart of the nation, it must be paid with the proudest and bluest
blood of her sons and with treasure that is beyond computation. From this
spectacle I pray God that America will learn a lesson in respect to the ten million
Negroes in this country.

The Negroes in the United States are, in most of the elements of civilisation,
weak. Providence has placed them here not without a purpose. One object, in my
opinion, is that the stronger race may imbibe a lesson from the weaker in
patience, forbearance, and childlike yet supreme trust in the God of the
Universe. This race has been placed here that the white man might have a great
opportunity of lifting himself by lifting it up.

Out from the Negro colleges and industrial schools in the South there are going
forth each year thousands of young men and women into dark and secluded
corners, into lonely log school-houses, amidst poverty and ignorance; and
though, when they go forth, no drums beat, no banners fly, no friends cheer, yet
they are fighting the battles of this country just as truly and bravely as those who
go forth to do battle against a foreign enemy.

If they are encouraged and properly supported in their work of educating the
masses in the industries, in economy, and in morals, as well as mentally, they
will, before many years, get the race upon such an intellectual, industrial, and
financial footing that it will be able to enjoy without much trouble all the rights
inherent in American citizenship.

Now, if we wish to bring the race to a point where it should be, where it will be
strong, and grow and prosper, we have got to, in every way possible, encourage
it. We can do this in no better way than by cultivating that amount of faith in the
race which will make us patronise its own enterprises wherever those enterprises
are worth patronising. I do not believe much in the advice that is often given that
we should patronise the enterprises of our race without regard to the worth of
those enterprises. I believe that the best way to bring the race to the point where
it will compare with other races is to let it understand that, whenever it enters
into any line of business, it will be patronised just in proportion as it makes that
business as successful, as useful, as is true of any business enterprise conducted
by any other race. The race that would grow strong and powerful must have the
element of hero-worship in it that will, in the largest degree, make it honour its
great men, the men who have succeeded in that race. I think we should be
ashamed of the coloured man or woman who would not venerate the name of
Frederick Douglass. No race that would not look upon such a man with honour
and respect and pride could ever hope to enjoy the respect of any other race. I
speak of this, not that I want my people to regard themselves in a narrow,
bigoted sense, because there is nothing so hurtful to an individual or to a race as
to get into the habit of feeling that there is no good except in its own race, but
because I wish that it may have reasonable pride in all that is honourable in its
history. Whenever you hear a coloured man say that he hates the people of the
other race, there, in most instances, you will find a weak, narrow-minded
coloured man. And, whenever you find a white man who expresses the same
sentiment toward the people of other races, there, too, in almost every case, you
will find a narrow-minded, prejudiced white man.

That person is the broadest, strongest, and most useful who sees something to
love and admire in all races, no matter what their colour.

If the Negro race wishes to grow strong, it must learn to respect itself, not to be
ashamed. It must learn that it will only grow in proportion as its members have
confidence in it, in proportion as they believe that it is a coming race.

We have reached a period when educated Negroes should give more attention to
the history of their race; should devote more time to finding out the true history
of the race, and in collecting in some museum the relics that mark its progress. It
is true of all races of culture and refinement and civilisation that they have
gathered in some place the relics which mark the progress of their civilisation,
which show how they lived from period to period. We should have so much
pride that we would spend more time in looking into the history of the race,
more effort and money in perpetuating in some durable form its achievements,
so that from year to year, instead of looking back with regret, we can point to our
children the rough path through which we grew strong and great.

We have a very bright and striking example in the history of the Jews in this and
other countries. There is, perhaps, no race that has suffered so much, not so
much in America as in some of the countries in Europe. But these people have
clung together. They have had a certain amount of unity, pride, and love of race;
and, as the years go on, they will be more and more influential in this country,—
a country where they were once despised, and looked upon with scorn and
derision. It is largely because the Jewish race has had faith in itself. Unless the
Negro learns more and more to imitate the Jew in these matters, to have faith in
himself, he cannot expect to have any high degree of success.

I wish to speak upon another subject which largely concerns the welfare of both
races, especially in the South,—lynching. It is an unpleasant subject; but I feel
that I should be omitting some part of my duty to both races did I not say
something on the subject.

For a number of years the South has appealed to the North and to federal
authorities, through the public press, from the public platform, and most
eloquently through the late Henry W. Grady, to leave the whole matter of the
rights and protection of the Negro to the South, declaring that it would see to it
that the Negro would be made secure in his citizenship. During the last half-
dozen years the whole country, from the President down, has been inclined more
than ever to pursue this policy, leaving the whole matter of the destiny of the
Negro to the Negro himself and to the Southern white people, among whom the
great bulk of Negroes live.

By the present policy of non-interference on the part of the North and the federal
government the South is given a sacred trust. How will she execute this trust?
The world is waiting and watching to see. The question must be answered
largely by the protection it gives to the life of the Negro and the provisions that
are made for his development in the organic laws of the State. I fear that but few
people in the South realise to what an extent the habit of lynching, or the taking
of life without due process of law, has taken hold of us, and is hurting us, not
only in the eyes of the world, but in our own moral and material growth.

Lynching was instituted some years ago with the idea of punishing and checking
criminal assaults upon women. Let us examine the facts, and see where it has
already led us and is likely further to carry us, if we do not rid ourselves of the
evil. Many good people in the South, and also out of the South, have gotten the
idea that lynching is resorted to for one crime only. I have the facts from an
authoritative source. During last year one hundred and twenty-seven persons
were lynched in the United States. Of this number, one hundred and eighteen
were executed in the South and nine in the North and West. Of the total number
lynched, one hundred and two were Negroes, twenty-three were whites, and two
Indians. Now, let every one interested in the South, his country, and the cause of
humanity, note this fact,—that only twenty-four of the entire number were
charged in any way with the crime of rape; that is, twenty-four out of one
hundred and twenty-seven cases of lynching. Sixty-one of the remaining cases
were for murder, thirteen for being suspected of murder, six for theft, etc. During
one week last spring, when I kept a careful record, thirteen Negroes were
lynched in three of our Southern States; and not one was even charged with rape.
All of these thirteen were accused of murder or house-burning; but in neither
case were the men allowed to go before a court, so that their innocence or guilt
might be proven.

When we get to the point where four-fifths of the people lynched in our country
in one year are for some crime other than rape, we can no longer plead and
explain that we lynch for one crime alone.

Let us take another year, that of 1892, for example, when 241 persons were
lynched in the whole United States. Of this number 36 were lynched in Northern
and Western States, and 205 in our Southern States; 160 were Negroes, 5 of
these being women. The facts show that, out of the 241 lynched, only 57 were
even charged with rape or attempted rape, leaving in this year alone 184 persons
who were lynched for other causes than that of rape.

If it were necessary, I could produce figures for other years. Within a period of
six years about 900 persons have been lynched in our Southern States. This is
but a few hundred short of the total number of soldiers who lost their lives in
Cuba during the Spanish-American War. If we would realise still more fully how
far this unfortunate evil is leading us on, note the classes of crime during a few
months for which the local papers and the Associated Press say that lynching has
been inflicted. They include "murder," "rioting," "incendiarism," "robbery,"
"larceny," "self-defence," "insulting women," "alleged stock-poisoning,"
"malpractice," "alleged barn-burning," "suspected robbery," "race prejudice,"
"attempted murder," "horse-stealing," "mistaken identity," etc.

The evil has so grown that we are now at the point where not only blacks are
lynched in the South, but white men as well. Not only this, but within the last six
years at least a half-dozen coloured women have been lynched. And there are a
few cases where Negroes have lynched members of their own race. What is to be
the end of all this? Furthermore, every lynching drives hundreds of Negroes out
of the farming districts of the South, where they make the best living and where
their services are of greatest value to the country, into the already over-crowded
cities.

I know that some argue that the crime of lynching Negroes is not confined to the
South. This is true; and no one can excuse such a crime as the shooting of
innocent black men in Illinois, who were guilty of nothing, except seeking
labour. But my words just now are to the South, where my home is and a part of
which I am. Let other sections act as they will; I want to see our beautiful
Southland free from this terrible evil of lynching. Lynching does not stop crime.
In the vicinity in the South where a coloured man was alleged recently to have
committed the most terrible crime ever charged against a member of my race,
but a few weeks previously five coloured men had been lynched for supposed
incendiarism. If lynching was a cure for crime, surely the lynching of those five
would have prevented another Negro from committing a most heinous crime a
few weeks later.

We might as well face the facts bravely and wisely. Since the beginning of the
world crime has been committed in all civilised and uncivilised countries, and a
certain percentage of it will always be committed both in the North and in the
South; but I believe that the crime of rape can be stopped. In proportion to the
numbers and intelligence of the population of the South, there exists little more
crime than in several other sections of the country; but, because of the lynching
evil, we are constantly advertising ourselves to the world as a lawless people. We
cannot disregard the teachings of the civilised world for eighteen hundred years,
that the only way to punish crime is by law. When we leave this anchorage chaos
begins.

I am not pleading for the Negro alone. Lynching injures, hardens, and blunts the
moral sensibilities of the young and tender manhood of the South. Never shall I
forget the remark by a little nine-year-old white boy, with blue eyes and flaxen
hair. The little fellow said to his mother, after he had returned from a lynching: "I
have seen a man hanged; now I wish I could see one burned." Rather than hear
such a remark from one of my little boys, I would prefer to see him in his grave.
This is not all. Every community guilty of lynching says in so many words to the
governor, to the legislature, to the sheriff, to the jury, and to the judge: "We have
no faith in you and no respect for you. We have no respect for the law which we
helped to make."

In the South, at the present time, there is less excuse for not permitting the law to
take its course where a Negro is to be tried than anywhere else in the world; for,
almost without exception, the governors, the sheriffs, the judges, the juries, and
the lawyers are all white men, and they can be trusted, as a rule, to do their duty.
Otherwise, it is needless to tax the people to support these officers. If our present
laws are not sufficient properly to punish crime, let the laws be changed; but that
the punishment may be by lawfully constituted authorities is the plea I make.
The history of the world proves that where the law is most strictly enforced there
is the least crime: where people take the administration of the law into their own
hands there is the most crime.

But there is still another side. The white man in the South has not only a serious
duty and responsibility, but the Negro has a duty and responsibility in this
matter. In speaking of my own people, I want to be equally frank; but I speak
with the greatest kindness. There is too much crime among them. The figures for
a given period show that in the United States thirty per cent. of the crime
committed is by Negroes, while we constitute only about twelve per cent. of the
entire population. This proportion holds good not only in the South, but also in
Northern States and cities.

No race that is so largely ignorant and so recently out of slavery could, perhaps,
show a better record, but we must face these plain facts. He is most kind to the
Negro who tells him of his faults as well as of his virtues. A large percentage of
the crime among us grows out of the idleness of our young men and women. It is
for this reason that I have tried to insist upon some industry being taught in
connection with their course of literary training. It is vitally important now that
every parent, every teacher and minister of the gospel, should teach with unusual
emphasis morality and obedience to the law. At the fireside, in the school-room,
in the Sunday-school, from the pulpit, and in the Negro press, there should be
such a sentiment created regarding the committing of crime against women that
no such crime could be charged against any member of the race. Let it be
understood, for all time, that no one guilty of rape can find sympathy or shelter
with us, and that none will be more active than we in bringing to justice, through
the proper authorities, those guilty of crime. Let the criminal and vicious element
of the race have, at all times, our most severe condemnation. Let a strict line be
drawn between the virtuous and the criminal. I condemn, with all the indignation
of my soul, any beast in human form guilty of assaulting a woman. I am sure I
voice the sentiment of the thoughtful of my race in this condemnation.

We should not, as a race, become discouraged. We are making progress. No race

has ever gotten upon its feet without discouragements and struggles.

I should be a great hypocrite and a coward if I did not add that which my daily
experience has taught me to be true; namely, that the Negro has among many of
the Southern whites as good friends as he has anywhere in the world. These
friends have not forsaken us. They will not do so. Neither will our friends in the
North. If we make ourselves intelligent, industrious, economical, and virtuous,
of value to the community in which we live, we can and will work out our
salvation right here in the South. In every community, by means of organised
effort, we should seek, in a manly and honourable way, the confidence, the co-
operation, the sympathy, of the best white people in the South and in our
respective communities. With the best white people and the best black people
standing together, in favour of law and order and justice, I believe that the safety
and happiness of both races will be made secure.

We are one in this country. The question of the highest citizenship and the
complete education of all concerns nearly ten millions of my people and sixty
millions of the white race. When one race is strong, the other is strong; when one
is weak, the other is weak. There is no power that can separate our destiny.
Unjust laws and customs which exist in many places injure the white man and
inconvenience the Negro. No race can wrong another race, simply because it has
the power to do so, without being permanently injured in its own morals. The
Negro can endure the temporary inconvenience, but the injury to the white man
is permanent. It is for the white man to save himself from this degradation that I
plead. If a white man steals a Negro's ballot, it is the white man who is
permanently injured. Physical death comes to the one Negro lynched in a
county; but death of the morals—death of the soul—comes to those responsible
for the lynching.

Those who fought and died on the battlefield for the freedom of the slaves
performed their duty heroically and well, but a duty remains to those left. The
mere fiat of law cannot make an ignorant voter an intelligent voter, cannot make
a dependent man an independent man, cannot make one citizen respect another.
These results will come to the Negro, as to all races, by beginning at the bottom
and gradually working up to the highest possibilities of his nature.

In the economy of God there is but one standard by which an individual can
succeed: there is but one for a race. This country expects that every race shall
measure itself by the American standard. During the next half-century, and more,
the Negro must continue passing through the severe American crucible. He is to
be tested in his patience, his forbearance, his perseverance, his power to endure
wrong,—to withstand temptations, to economise, to acquire and use skill,—his
ability to compete, to succeed in commerce, to disregard the superficial for the
real, the appearance for the substance, to be great and yet small, learned and yet
simple, high and yet the servant of all. This,—this is the passport to all that is
best in the life of our Republic; and the Negro must possess it or be barred out.
In working out his own destiny, while the main burden of activity must be with
the Negro, he will need in the years to come, as he has needed in the past, the
help, the encouragement, the guidance, that the strong can give the weak. Thus
helped, those of both races in the South will soon throw off the shackles of racial
and sectional prejudice, and rise above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and
selfishness into that atmosphere, that pure sunshine, where it will be the highest
ambition to serve man, our brother, regardless of race or previous condition.
 CHAPTER VIII.
BEFORE ending this volume, I have deemed it wise and fitting to sum up in the
following chapter all that I have attempted to say in the previous chapters, and to
speak at the same time a little more definitely about the Negro's future and his
relation to the white race.

All attempts to settle the question of the Negro in the South by his removal from
this country have so far failed, and I think that they are likely to fail. The next
census will probably show that we have about ten millions of Negroes in the
United States. About eight millions of these are in the Southern States. We have
almost a nation within a nation. The Negro population within the United States
lacks but two millions of being as large as the whole population of Mexico. It is
nearly twice as large as the population of the Dominion of Canada. It is equal to
the combined population of Switzerland, Greece, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba,
Uruguay, Santo Domingo, Paraguay, and Costa Rica. When we consider, in
connection with these facts, that the race has doubled itself since its freedom,
and is still increasing, it hardly seems possible for any one to consider seriously
any scheme of emigration from America as a method of solution of our vexed
race problem. At most, even if the government were to provide the means, but a
few hundred thousand could be transported each year. The yearly increase in
population would more than overbalance the number transplanted. Even if it did
not, the time required to get rid of the Negro by this method would perhaps be
fifty or seventy-five years. The idea is chimerical.

Some have advised that the Negro leave the South and take up his residence in
the Northern States. I question whether this would leave him any better off than
he is in the South, when all things are considered. It has been my privilege to
study the condition of our people in nearly every part of America; and I say,
without hesitation, that, with some exceptional cases, the Negro is at his best in
the Southern States. While he enjoys certain privileges in the North that he does
not have in the South, when it comes to the matter of securing property, enjoying
business opportunities and employment, the South presents a far better
opportunity than the North. Few coloured men from the South are as yet able to
stand up against the severe and increasing competition that exists in the North, to
say nothing of the unfriendly influence of labour organisations, which in some
way prevents black men in the North, as a rule, from securing employment in
skilled labour occupations.

Another point of great danger for the coloured man who goes North is in the
matter of morals, owing to the numerous temptations by which he finds himself
surrounded. He has more ways in which he can spend money than in the South,
but fewer avenues of employment are open to him. The fact that at the North the
Negro is confined to almost one line of employment often tends to discourage
and demoralise the strongest who go from the South, and to make them an easy
prey to temptation. A few years ago I made an examination into the condition of
a settlement of Negroes who left the South and went to Kansas about twenty
years ago, when there was a good deal of excitement in the South concerning
emigration to the West. This settlement, I found, was much below the standard
of that of a similar number of our people in the South. The only conclusion,
therefore, it seems to me, which any one can reach, is that the Negroes, as a
mass, are to remain in the Southern States. As a race, they do not want to leave
the South, and the Southern white people do not want them to leave. We must
therefore find some basis of settlement that will be constitutional, just, manly,
that will be fair to both races in the South and to the whole country. This cannot
be done in a day, a year, or any short period of time. We can, it seems to me,
with the present light, decide upon a reasonably safe method of solving the
problem, and turn our strength and effort in that direction. In doing this, I would
not have the Negro deprived of any privilege guaranteed to him by the
Constitution of the United States. It is not best for the Negro that he relinquish
any of his constitutional rights. It is not best for the Southern white man that he
should.

In order that we may, without loss of time or effort, concentrate our forces in a
wise direction, I suggest what seems to me and many others the wisest policy to
be pursued. I have reached these conclusions by reason of my own observations
and experience, after eighteen years of direct contact with the leading and
influential coloured and white men in most parts of our country. But I wish first
to mention some elements of danger in the present situation, which all who
desire the permanent welfare of both races in the South should carefully
consider.

First.—There is danger that a certain class of impatient extremists among the

Negroes, who have little knowledge of the actual conditions in the South, may
do the entire race injury by attempting to advise their brethren in the South to
resort to armed resistance or the use of the torch, in order to secure justice. All
intelligent and well-considered discussion of any important question or
condemnation of any wrong, both in the North and the South, from the public
platform and through the press, is to be commended and encouraged; but ill-
considered, incendiary utterances from black men in the North will tend to add
to the burdens of our people in the South rather than relieve them.

Second.—Another danger in the South, which should be guarded against, is that

the whole white South, including the wide, conservative, law-abiding element,
may find itself represented before the bar of public opinion by the mob, or
lawless element, which gives expression to its feelings and tendency in a manner
that advertises the South throughout the world. Too often those who have no
sympathy with such disregard of law are either silent or fail to speak in a
sufficiently emphatic manner to offset, in any large degree, the unfortunate
reputation which the lawless have too often made for many portions of the
South.

Third.—No race or people ever got upon its feet without severe and constant
struggle, often in the face of the greatest discouragement. While passing through
the present trying period of its history, there is danger that a large and valuable
element of the Negro race may become discouraged in the effort to better its
condition. Every possible influence should be exerted to prevent this.

Fourth.—There is a possibility that harm may be done to the South and to the
Negro by exaggerated newspaper articles which are written near the scene or in
the midst of specially aggravating occurrences. Often these reports are written by
newspaper men, who give the impression that there is a race conflict throughout
the South, and that all Southern white people are opposed to the Negro's
progress, overlooking the fact that, while in some sections there is trouble, in
most parts of the South there is, nevertheless, a very large measure of peace,
good will, and mutual helpfulness. In this same relation much can be done to
retard the progress of the Negro by a certain class of Southern white people,
who, in the midst of excitement, speak or write in a manner that gives the
impression that all Negroes are lawless, untrustworthy, and shiftless. As an
example, a Southern writer said not long ago, in a communication to the New
York Independent: "Even in small towns the husband cannot venture to leave his
wife alone for an hour at night. At no time, in no place, is the white woman safe
from insults and assaults of these creatures." These statements, I presume,
represented the feelings and the conditions that existed at the time they were
written in one community or county in the South. But thousands of Southern
white men and women would be ready to testify that this is not the condition
throughout the South, nor throughout any one State.

Fifth.—Under the next head I would mention that, owing to the lack of school
opportunities for the Negro in the rural districts of the South, there is danger that
ignorance and idleness may increase to the extent of giving the Negro race a
reputation for crime, and that immorality may eat its way into the moral fibre of
the race, so as to retard its progress for many years. In judging the Negro in this
regard, we must not be too harsh. We must remember that it has only been within
the last thirty-four years that the black father and mother have had the
responsibility, and consequently the experience, of training their own children.
That they have not reached perfection in one generation, with the obstacles that
the parents have been compelled to overcome, is not to be wondered at.

Sixth.—As a final source of danger to be guarded against, I would mention my

fear that some of the white people of the South may be led to feel that the way to
settle the race problem is to repress the aspirations of the Negro by legislation of
a kind that confers certain legal or political privileges upon an ignorant and poor
white man and withholds the same privileges from a black man in the same
condition. Such legislation injures and retards the progress of both races. It is an
injustice to the poor white man, because it takes from him incentive to secure
education and property as prerequisites for voting. He feels that, because he is a
white man, regardless of his possessions, a way will be found for him to vote. I
would label all such measures, "Laws to keep the poor white man in ignorance
and poverty."

As the Talladega News Reporter, a Democratic newspaper of Alabama, recently

said: "But it is a weak cry when the white man asks odds on intelligence over the
Negro. When nature has already so handicapped the African in the race for
knowledge, the cry of the boasted Anglo-Saxon for still further odds seems
babyish. What wonder that the world looks on in surprise, if not disgust. It
cannot help but say, if our contention be true that the Negro is an inferior race,
that the odds ought to be on the other side, if any are to be given. And why not?
No, the thing to do—the only thing that will stand the test of time—is to do
right, exactly right, let come what will. And that right thing, as it seems to me, is
to place a fair educational qualification before every citizen,—one that is self-
testing, and not dependent on the wishes of weak men, letting all who pass the
test stand in the proud ranks of American voters, whose votes shall be counted as
cast, and whose sovereign will shall be maintained as law by all the powers that
be. Nothing short of this will do. Every exemption, on whatsoever ground, is an
outrage that can only rob some legitimate voter of his rights."

Such laws as have been made—as an example, in Mississippi—with the

"understanding" clause hold out a temptation for the election officer to perjure
and degrade himself by too often deciding that the ignorant white man does
understand the Constitution when it is read to him and that the ignorant black
man does not. By such a law the State not only commits a wrong against its
black citizens; it injures the morals of its white citizens by conferring such a
power upon any white man who may happen to be a judge of elections.

Such laws are hurtful, again, because they keep alive in the heart of the black
man the feeling that the white man means to oppress him. The only safe way out
is to set a high standard as a test of citizenship, and require blacks and whites
alike to come up to it. When this is done, both will have a higher respect for the
election laws and those who make them. I do not believe that, with his centuries
of advantage over the Negro in the opportunity to acquire property and education
as prerequisites for voting, the average white man in the South desires that any
special law be passed to give him advantage over the Negro, who has had only a
little more than thirty years in which to prepare himself for citizenship. In this
relation another point of danger is that the Negro has been made to feel that it is
his duty to oppose continually the Southern white man in politics, even in
matters where no principle is involved, and that he is only loyal to his own race
and acting in a manly way when he is opposing him. Such a policy has proved
most hurtful to both races. Where it is a matter of principle, where a question of
right or wrong is involved, I would advise the Negro to stand by principle at all
hazards. A Southern white man has no respect for or confidence in a Negro who
acts merely for policy's sake; but there are many cases—and the number is
growing—where the Negro has nothing to gain and much to lose by opposing
the Southern white man in many matters that relate to government.

Under these six heads I believe I have stated some of the main points which all
high-minded white men and black men, North and South, will agree need our
most earnest and thoughtful consideration, if we would hasten, and not hinder,
the progress of our country.
As to the policy that should be pursued in a larger sense,—on this subject I claim
to possess no superior wisdom or unusual insight. I may be wrong; I may be in
some degree right.

In the future, more than in the past, we want to impress upon the Negro the
importance of identifying himself more closely with the interests of the South,—
the importance of making himself part of the South and at home in it.
Heretofore, for reasons which were natural and for which no one is especially to
blame, the coloured people have been too much like a foreign nation residing in
the midst of another nation. If William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and
George L. Stearns were alive to-day, I feel sure that each one of them would
advise the Negroes to identify their interests as far as possible with those of the
Southern white man, always with the understanding that this should be done
where no question of right and wrong is involved. In no other way, it seems to
me, can we get a foundation for peace and progress. He who advises against this
policy will advise the Negro to do that which no people in history who have
succeeded have done. The white man, North or South, who advises the Negro
against it advises him to do that which he himself has not done. The bed-rock
upon which every individual rests his chances of success in life is securing the
friendship, the confidence, the respect, of his next-door neighbour of the little
community in which he lives. Almost the whole problem of the Negro in the
South rests itself upon the fact as to whether the Negro can make himself of such
indispensable service to his neighbour and the community that no one can fill his
place better in the body politic. There is at present no other safe course for the
black man to pursue. If the Negro in the South has a friend in his white
neighbour and a still larger number of friends in his community, he has a
protection and a guarantee of his rights that will be more potent and more lasting
than any our Federal Congress or any outside power can confer.

In a recent editorial the London Times, in discussing affairs in the Transvaal,

South Africa, where Englishmen have been denied certain privileges by the
Boers, says: "England is too sagacious not to prefer a gradual reform from
within, even should it be less rapid than most of us might wish, to the most
sweeping redress of grievances imposed from without. Our object is to obtain
fair play for the outlanders, but the best way to do it is to enable them to help
themselves." This policy, I think, is equally safe when applied to conditions in
the South. The foreigner who comes to America, as soon as possible, identifies
himself in business, education, politics, and sympathy with the community in
which he settles. As I have said, we have a conspicuous example of this in the
case of the Jews. Also, the Negro in Cuba has practically settled the race
question there, because he has made himself a part of Cuba in thought and
action.

What I have tried to indicate cannot be accomplished by any sudden revolution

of methods, but it does seem that the tendency more and more should be in this
direction. If a practical example is wanted in the direction that I favour, I will
mention one. The North sends thousands of dollars into the South each year, for
the education of the Negro. The teachers in most of the academic schools of the
South are supported by the North, or Northern men and women of the highest
Christian culture and most unselfish devotion. The Negro owes them a debt of
gratitude which can never be paid. The various missionary societies in the North
have done a work which, in a large degree, has been the salvation of the South;
and the result will appear in future generations more than in this. We have now
reached the point in the South where, I believe, great good could be
accomplished by changing the attitude of the white people toward the Negro and
of the Negro toward the whites, if a few white teachers of high character would
take an active interest in the work of these high schools. Can this be done? Yes.
The medical school connected with Shaw University at Raleigh, North Carolina,
has from the first had as instructors and professors, almost exclusively, Southern
white doctors, who reside in Raleigh; and they have given the highest
satisfaction. This gives the people of Raleigh the feeling that this is their school,
and not something located in, but not a part of, the South. In Augusta, Georgia,
the Payne Institute, one of the best colleges for our people, is officered and
taught almost wholly by Southern white men and women. The Presbyterian
Theological School at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has all Southern white men as
instructors. Some time ago, at the Calhoun School in Alabama, one of the
leading white men in the county was given an important position in the school.
Since then the feeling of the white people in the county has greatly changed
toward the school.

We must admit the stern fact that at present the Negro, through no choice of his
own, is living among another race which is far ahead of him in education,
property, experience, and favourable condition; further, that the Negro's present
condition makes him dependent upon the white people for most of the things
necessary to sustain life, as well as for his common school education. In all
history, those who have possessed the property and intelligence have exercised
the greatest control in government, regardless of colour, race, or geographical
location. This being the case, how can the black man in the South improve his
present condition? And does the Southern white man want him to improve it?

The Negro in the South has it within his power, if he properly utilises the forces
at hand, to make of himself such a valuable factor in the life of the South that he
will not have to seek privileges, they will be freely conferred upon him. To bring
this about, the Negro must begin at the bottom and lay a sure foundation, and not
be lured by any temptation into trying to rise on a false foundation. While the
Negro is laying this foundation he will need help, sympathy, and simple justice.
Progress by any other method will be but temporary and superficial, and the
latter end of it will be worse than the beginning. American slavery was a great
curse to both races, and I would be the last to apologise for it; but, in the
presence of God, I believe that slavery laid the foundation for the solution of the
problem that is now before us in the South. During slavery the Negro was taught
every trade, every industry, that constitutes the foundation for making a living.
Now, if on this foundation—laid in rather a crude way, it is true, but a
foundation, nevertheless—we can gradually build and improve, the future for us
is bright. Let me be more specific. Agriculture is, or has been, the basic industry
of nearly every race or nation that has succeeded. The Negro got a knowledge of
this during slavery. Hence, in a large measure, he is in possession of this industry
in the South to-day. The Negro can buy land in the South, as a rule, wherever the
white man can buy it, and at very low prices. Now, since the bulk of our people
already have a foundation in agriculture, they are at their best when living in the
country, engaged in agricultural pursuits. Plainly, then, the best thing, the logical
thing, is to turn the larger part of our strength in a direction that will make the
Negro among the most skilled agricultural people in the world. The man who has
learned to do something better than any one else, has learned to do a common
thing in an uncommon manner, is the man who has a power and influence that no
adverse circumstances can take from him. The Negro who can make himself so
conspicuous as a successful farmer, a large tax-payer, a wise helper of his
fellow-men, as to be placed in a position of trust and honour, whether the
position be political or otherwise, by natural selection, is a hundred-fold more
secure in that position than one placed there by mere outside force or pressure. I
know a Negro, Hon. Isaiah T. Montgomery, in Mississippi, who is mayor of a
town. It is true that this town, at present, is composed almost wholly of Negroes.
Mr. Montgomery is mayor of this town because his genius, thrift, and foresight
have created the town; and he is held and supported in his office by a charter,
granted by the State of Mississippi, and by the vote and public sentiment of the
community in which he lives.
Let us help the Negro by every means possible to acquire such an education in
farming, dairying, stock-raising, horticulture, etc., as will enable him to become
a model in these respects and place him near the top in these industries, and the
race problem would in a large part be settled, or at least stripped of many of its
most perplexing elements. This policy would also tend to keep the Negro in the
country and smaller towns, where he succeeds best, and stop the influx into the
large cities, where he does not succeed so well. The race, like the individual, that
produces something of superior worth that has a common human interest, makes
a permanent place for itself, and is bound to be recognised.

At a county fair in the South not long ago I saw a Negro awarded the first prize
by a jury of white men, over white competitors, for the production of the best
specimen of Indian corn. Every white man at this fair seemed to be pleased and
proud of the achievement of this Negro, because it was apparent that he had
done something that would add to the wealth and comfort of the people of both
races in that county. At the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama
we have a department devoted to training men in the science of agriculture; but
what we are doing is small when compared with what should be done at
Tuskegee and at other educational centres. In a material sense the South is still
an undeveloped country. While race prejudice is strongly exhibited in many
directions, in the matter of business, of commercial and industrial development,
there is very little obstacle in the Negro's way. A Negro who produces or has for
sale something that the community wants finds customers among white people
as well as black people. A Negro can borrow money at the bank with equal
security as readily as a white man can. A bank in Birmingham, Alabama, that
has now existed ten years, is officered and controlled wholly by Negroes. This
bank has white borrowers and white depositors. A graduate of the Tuskegee
Institute keeps a well-appointed grocery store in Tuskegee, and he tells me that
he sells about as many goods to the one race as to the other. What I have said of
the opening that awaits the Negro in the direction of agriculture is almost equally
true of mechanics, manufacturing, and all the domestic arts. The field is before
him and right about him. Will he occupy it? Will he "cast down his bucket where
he is"? Will his friends North and South encourage him and prepare him to
occupy it? Every city in the South, for example, would give support to a first-
class architect or house-builder or contractor of our race. The architect and
contractor would not only receive support, but, through his example, numbers of
young coloured men would learn such trades as carpentry, brick-masonry,
plastering, painting, etc., and the race would be put into a position to hold on to
many of the industries which it is now in danger of losing, because in too many
cases brains, skill, and dignity are not imparted to the common occupations of
life that are about his very door. Any individual or race that does not fit itself to
occupy in the best manner the field or service that is right about it will sooner or
later be asked to move on, and let some one else occupy it.

But it is asked, Would you confine the Negro to agriculture, mechanics, and
domestic arts, etc.? Not at all; but along the lines that I have mentioned is where
the stress should be laid just now and for many years to come. We will need and
must have many teachers and ministers, some doctors and lawyers and
statesmen; but these professional men will have a constituency or a foundation
from which to draw support just in proportion as the race prospers along the
economic lines that I have mentioned. During the first fifty or one hundred years
of the life of any people are not the economic occupations always given the
greater attention? This is not only the historic, but, I think, the common-sense
view. If this generation will lay the material foundation, it will be the quickest
and surest way for the succeeding generation to succeed in the cultivation of the
fine arts, and to surround itself even with some of the luxuries of life, if desired.
What the race now most needs, in my opinion, is a whole army of men and
women well trained to lead and at the same time infuse themselves into
agriculture, mechanics, domestic employment, and business. As to the mental
training that these educated leaders should be equipped with, I should say, Give
them all the mental training and culture that the circumstances of individuals will
allow,—the more, the better. No race can permanently succeed until its mind is
awakened and strengthened by the ripest thought. But I would constantly have it
kept in the thoughts of those who are educated in books that a large proportion of
those who are educated should be so trained in hand that they can bring this
mental strength and knowledge to bear upon the physical conditions in the South
which I have tried to emphasise.

Frederick Douglass, of sainted memory, once, in addressing his race, used these
words: "We are to prove that we can better our own condition. One way to do
this is to accumulate property. This may sound to you like a new gospel. You
have been accustomed to hear that money is the root of all evil, etc. On the other
hand, property—money, if you please—will purchase for us the only condition
by which any people can rise to the dignity of genuine manhood; for without
property there can be no leisure, without leisure there can be no thought, without
thought there can be no invention, without invention there can be no progress."

The Negro should be taught that material development is not an end, but simply
a means to an end. As Professor W. E. B. DuBois puts it, "The idea should not be
simply to make men carpenters, but to make carpenters men." The Negro has a
highly religious temperament; but what he needs more and more is to be
convinced of the importance of weaving his religion and morality into the
practical affairs of daily life. Equally as much does he need to be taught to put so
much intelligence into his labour that he will see dignity and beauty in the
occupation, and love it for its own sake. The Negro needs to be taught that more
of the religion that manifests itself in his happiness in the prayer-meeting should
be made practical in the performance of his daily task. The man who owns a
home and is in the possession of the elements by which he is sure of making a
daily living has a great aid to a moral and religious life. What bearing will all
this have upon the Negro's place in the South as a citizen and in the enjoyment of
the privileges which our government confers?

To state in detail just what place the black man will occupy in the South as a
citizen, when he has developed in the direction named, is beyond the wisdom of
any one. Much will depend upon the sense of justice which can be kept alive in
the breast of the American people. Almost as much will depend upon the good
sense of the Negro himself. That question, I confess, does not give me the most
concern just now. The important and pressing question is, Will the Negro with
his own help and that of his friends take advantage of the opportunities that now
surround him? When he has done this, I believe that, speaking of his future in
general terms, he will be treated with justice, will be given the protection of the
law, and will be given the recognition in a large measure which his usefulness
and ability warrant. If, fifty years ago, any one had predicted that the Negro
would have received the recognition and honour which individuals have already
received, he would have been laughed at as an idle dreamer. Time, patience, and
constant achievement are great factors in the rise of a race.

I do not believe that the world ever takes a race seriously, in its desire to enter
into the control of the government of a nation in any large degree, until a large
number of individuals, members of that race, have demonstrated, beyond
question, their ability to control and develop individual business enterprises.
When a number of Negroes rise to the point where they own and operate the
most successful farms, are among the largest tax-payers in their county, are
moral and intelligent, I do not believe that in many portions of the South such
men need long be denied the right of saying by their votes how they prefer their
property to be taxed and in choosing those who are to make and administer the
laws.
In a certain town in the South, recently, I was on the street in company with the
most prominent Negro in the town. While we were together, the mayor of the
town sought out the black man, and said, "Next week we are going to vote on the
question of issuing bonds to secure water-works for this town; you must be sure
to vote on the day of election." The mayor did not suggest whether he must vote
"yes" or "no"; he knew from the very fact that this Negro man owned nearly a
block of the most valuable property in the town that he would cast a safe, wise
vote on this important proposition. This white man knew that, because of this
Negro's property interests in the city, he would cast his vote in the way he
thought would benefit every white and black citizen in the town, and not be
controlled by influences a thousand miles away. But a short time ago I read
letters from nearly every prominent white man in Birmingham, Alabama, asking
that the Rev. W. R. Pettiford, a Negro, be appointed to a certain important federal
office. What is the explanation of this? Mr. Pettiford for nine years has been the
president of the Negro bank in Birmingham to which I have alluded. During
these nine years these white citizens have had the opportunity of seeing that Mr.
Pettiford could manage successfully a private business, and that he had proven
himself a conservative, thoughtful citizen; and they were willing to trust him in a
public office. Such individual examples will have to be multiplied until they
become the rule rather than the exception. While we are multiplying these
examples, the Negro must keep a strong and courageous heart. He cannot
improve his condition by any short-cut course or by artificial methods. Above
all, he must not be deluded into the temptation of believing that his condition can
be permanently improved by a mere battledore and shuttlecock of words or by
any process of mere mental gymnastics or oratory alone. What is desired, along
with a logical defence of his cause, are deeds, results,—multiplied results,—in
the direction of building himself up, so as to leave no doubt in the minds of any
one of his ability to succeed.

An important question often asked is, Does the white man in the South want the
Negro to improve his present condition? I say, "Yes." From the Montgomery
(Alabama) Daily Advertiser I clip the following in reference to the closing of a
coloured school in a town in Alabama:—
"EUFAULA, May 25, 1899.
"The closing exercises of the city coloured public school were held at St. Luke's A. M. E. Church last
night, and were witnessed by a large gathering, including many white. The recitations by the pupils
were excellent, and the music was also an interesting feature. Rev. R. T. Pollard delivered the address,
which was quite an able one; and the certificates were presented by Professor T. L. McCoy, white, of
the Sanford Street School. The success of the exercises reflects great credit on Professor S. M.
Murphy, the principal, who enjoys a deservedly good reputation as a capable and efficient educator."
I quote this report, not because it is the exception, but because such marks of
interest in the education of the Negro on the part of the Southern white people
can be seen almost every day in the local papers. Why should white people, by
their presence, words, and many other things, encourage the black man to get
education, if they do not desire him to improve his condition?

The Payne Institute in Augusta, Georgia, an excellent institution, to which I have

already referred, is supported almost wholly by the Southern white Methodist
church. The Southern white Presbyterians support a theological school at
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for Negroes. For a number of years the Southern white
Baptists have contributed toward Negro education. Other denominations have
done the same. If these people do not want the Negro educated to a high
standard, there is no reason why they should act the hypocrite in these matters.

As barbarous as some of the lynchings in the South have been, Southern white
men here and there, as well as newspapers, have spoken out strongly against
lynching. I quote from the address of the Rev. Mr. Vance, of Nashville,
Tennessee, delivered before the National Sunday School Union in Atlanta, not
long since, as an example:—
"And yet, as I stand here to-night, a Southerner speaking for my section, and addressing an audience
from all sections, there is one foul blot upon the fair fame of the South, at the bare mention of which
the heart turns sick and the cheek is crimsoned with shame. I want to lift my voice to-night in loud and
long and indignant protest against the awful horror of mob violence, which the other day reached the
climax of its madness and infamy in a deed as black and brutal and barbarous as can be found in the
annals of human crime.

"I have a right to speak on the subject, and I propose to be heard. The time has come for every lover of
the South to set the might of an angered and resolute manhood against the shame and peril of the lynch
demon. These people, whose fiendish glee taunts their victim as his flesh crackles in the flames, do not
represent the South. I have not a syllable of apology for the sickening crime they meant to avenge. But
it is high time we were learning that lawlessness is no remedy for crime. For one, I dare to believe that
the people of my section are able to cope with crime, however treacherous and defiant, through their
courts of justice; and I plead for the masterful sway of a righteous and exalted public sentiment that
shall class lynch law in the category with crime."

It is a notable and praiseworthy fact that no Negro educated in any of our larger
institutions of learning in the South has been charged with any of the recent
crimes connected with assaults upon females.

If we go on making progress in the directions that I have tried to indicate, more

and more the South will be drawn to one course. As I have already said, it is not
for the best interests of the white race of the South that the Negro be deprived of
any privilege guaranteed him by the Constitution of the United States. This
would put upon the South a burden under which no government could stand and
prosper. Every article in our federal Constitution was placed there with a view of
stimulating and encouraging the highest type of citizenship. To permanently tax
the Negro without giving him the right to vote as fast as he qualifies himself in
education and property for voting would work the alienation of the affections of
the Negro from the States in which he lives, and would be the reversal of the
fundamental principles of government for which our States have stood. In other
ways than this the injury would be as great to the white man as to the Negro.
Taxation without the hope of becoming a voter would take away from one-third
the citizens of the Gulf States their interest in government and their stimulant to
become tax-payers or to secure education, and thus be able and willing to bear
their share of the cost of education and government, which now weighs so
heavily upon the white tax-payers of the South. The more the Negro is
stimulated and encouraged, the sooner will he be able to bear a larger share of
the burdens of the South. We have recently had before us an example, in the case
of Spain, of a government that left a large portion of its citizens in ignorance,
and neglected their highest interests.

As I have said elsewhere, there is no escape through law of man or God from the
inevitable:—
"The laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with opprest;
And, close as sin and suffering joined,
We march to fate abreast."

"Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward or they will pull against you
the load downward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South or
one-third its intelligence and progress. We shall contribute one-third to the business and industrial
prosperity of the South or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding,
every effort to advance the body politic."

My own feeling is that the South will gradually reach the point where it will see
the wisdom and the justice of enacting an educational or property qualification,
or both, for voting, that shall be made to apply honestly to both races. The
industrial development of the Negro in connection with education and Christian
character will help to hasten this end. When this is done, we shall have a
foundation, in my opinion, upon which to build a government that is honest and
that will be in a high degree satisfactory to both races.

I do not suffer myself to take too optimistic a view of the conditions in the
South. The problem is a large and serious one, and will require the patient help,
sympathy, and advice of our most patriotic citizens, North and South, for years
to come. But I believe that, if the principles which I have tried to indicate are
followed, a solution of the question will come. So long as the Negro is permitted
to get education, acquire property, and secure employment, and is treated with
respect in the business or commercial world,—as is now true in the greater part
of the South,—I shall have the greatest faith in his working out his own destiny
in our Southern States. The education and preparing for citizenship of nearly
eight millions of people is a tremendous task, and every lover of humanity
should count it a privilege to help in the solution of a great problem for which
our whole country is responsible.

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