Kitabı oku: «The American Missionary. Volume 44, No. 04, April, 1890», sayfa 6

A Colored Man Speaks For His Race

Address at the Annual Meeting in Chicago,

By The Rev. Geo. M. McClellan.

About eleven years ago, out in the country, near Louisville, there was born a little colored girl. She was her father's first child, and he was justly proud of her, and calculated that there must be some fitting name for her somewhere, and that he must get it out of a book. He could not read, but he could spell a little, and therefore he got him a copy of Webster's blue-backed speller, and spelled the book half way through until he found the word "heterogeneous;" therefore that little girl was christened "Heterogeneous." This morning this programme was handed to me, and I saw on it "Chinese, Indian, Negro, White;" and I couldn't help thinking of Heterogeneous. As I looked over the subjects, and thought that I would have to speak about something, I thought that "Chinese, Indian, White man and Negro," was quite a subject for a speech. But I was inclined to be fair, like a certain minister, who was always preaching on infant baptism. He preached on infant baptism, no matter what the text was. The deacons and the people of the church got tired of it, and they concluded to give him some text that would relate to facts, before there were any infants. So they turned to the Book of Genesis, and found the text "Adam, where art thou?" And when the minister came to the pulpit Sunday morning, the deacons gave this text to him and told him, "Here is a text we want you to preach upon." He demurred a little and wondered why they had not given him more time, but finally concluded to preach on this text. He got up and said: "There are three points in this text: First, that men are always somewhere; second, that they are very often where they ought not to be; third, the text is dead set against infant baptism; and as the time is short, I will speak on point third." Now, I said to myself that either of these themes was a worthy one; but as Chinese comes first, Indian second, and Negro third, and, as the time is brief, I will speak on point third.

Not long ago I saw in an illustrated paper President Harrison with his Cabinet, represented as all lolling over asleep; and in the group there stood a Negro, his mouth open, his collar open, his teeth showing, and with a large scroll in his hand. Beneath this picture was this remark: "Wake up to the question of the day," and on that scroll which the Negro had in his hand were the words: "What are you gwine to do with the black man?"

Now, that question has been asked here indirectly to-day: and, my friends, do you know that sometimes, as we have heard this question discussed, we wonder just exactly how people do consider us in this country. There have been some who have advocated colonization. Some have said that we would have to be sent back to Africa or out West, or to South America. One man thinks that extermination will be the final thing to be resorted to. It may be a fault in my education, it may be that this American Missionary Association has not educated me all right—for I am a product of the Association,—but I have been taught to suppose that we Negroes were free, independent, American citizens, at liberty to choose where we will stay and how long we will stay. It seems that very eminent men are discussing the feasibility of sending us to Africa, and whether it is wise to go to the expense if it is thought best to send us there. Now, my friends, it does not seem to me that there is any question about it so far as we are concerned. The whites may go if they want to, but we are not going to budge! So long as this is a free country we are going to stay here; it satisfies us. It seems to me God has so settled it.

The question is not, what are you going to do with the colored man, but what are you going to do for him? A great deal has been done, and it has been said that more has been done for the Negroes than for any other people. That is true: and the Negro has done more in these last twenty-five years than any other people on whom money and time and labor has been expended. The American Missionary Association found out long ago what the Negro problem was. They established schools and sent teachers among us, and when they came to us, they came at once, assuming—not as Senator Eustis has done, that the Negroes have an inherent sense of inferiority, and that they should take an assigned place; not as Governor Lee has insisted, that the all-important thing for the white man to do is to keep the Negro down; and not as Senator Gibbs of Georgia, who a few weeks ago insisted that the white people are in imminent peril, and even went so far as to bring a bill before the Legislature as to whether the Negroes should be driven out of that State. That is not the way these teachers have come down to us. They have assumed that we are as capable as other people, that we have the same needs; and because they have come to us with this assumption to begin with, because they have received us in this way, we have made the progress that we have.

Now, of all things that are most needed to be done for us, we need a good theological seminary in the South, where the ministry can be educated among us. It is only an elevated Christian citizenship that will save us, and make us what other people are; and we must have a theological seminary to aid us toward that end. You have given us colleges, normal schools, industrial training schools, and schools of common branches, and we have now young men and young women filling all the schools through the South. We can get good teachers for our schools in the remotest places, in Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi, or anywhere else. So it is not a question as to what kind of teachers we will have. But the churches have not in their pulpits ministers well prepared to preach the gospel of Christ. They have not kept up with the young people in the work done by the schools. In the North, one of the pleasant things we find wherever we go, is that in all your churches there is something for the young people to do. You have Christian Endeavor Societies, and various organizations by which the young people may be reached. Therefore, you gather them in from the beginning and have them trained so that they can take your places as soon as you are ready to step out of the work. It is not so with our churches. Our ministers have not advanced to that degree where they can take up such work. In these little Congregational churches that have been planted, we have educated ministers, who are able thus to work, especially among young people. We do not have people at our hand as other churches have, but we are trying to get hold of them. In Fisk University there were last year, I believe, 510 students, of whom, perhaps, there were 100 Congregationalists. So, after all, it is Methodists and Baptists that you are educating there. This is all right, because the great masses of the people are found in those churches. If we had a Congregational Theological School we could reach these people just as well through the pulpit as we reach them in the schools.

I was asked to give a little of my personal experience. I dislike to do this: but if narrating any of my personal experience will give an insight into the work that the American Missionary Association is doing, I will gladly consent. My story is the story of hundreds of young men in the South. Only in the larger cities can we get a good English education, except we go to schools established for us by this Association. I went eight years to Fisk University. I have a brother there now in the senior college class. This is his tenth year, and I have a sister who is also in her tenth year there. It takes a long while to get through. My father had no money to send me to school. In his slavery days he had stolen a little bit of learning, and had learned how to write and read and a little arithmetic. I was about four years old when the stroke for freedom was made. My father began to teach me arithmetic, and many a day in his shoemaker's shop, as I sat and kept the fire going, he would teach me and carry me as far as he could; and he put into me the idea of getting an education. At fifteen he told me I might have my own time. At that age I had advanced far enough to pass the examination of the district school, and, having passed, I made my way to Fisk University. I had not known that there was such an institution in the land, or such a thing as the Missionary Association; but going once into an adjoining county, I happened to fall in with some Christian young men from Fisk, and they told me about that school. I had always had a great desire to be educated, and so I went down there. When I arrived there, I thought it was a strange place. I was familiar with white people, but I think I had never up to that time had one of them shake hands with me. When I found what they were doing there, and that it was an earnest Christian school, my whole soul was uplifted, and I determined to seek for better things. I thought I was pretty well educated, but when I found myself down stairs among those learning grammar and arithmetic, and that there were nine years before me, I concluded that after all I was not very well educated, but I set out to go through that long course of study.

During all those years of study I taught school every summer. For nine years I was not out of the school room a month in the year. I was either a pupil or a teacher. Wherever I was teaching, I would try to set up a little Fisk University of my own. You know that the school teacher who goes out into these country places is everybody and everything. He is law and gospel, and he must know everything—at least, he must not let people know that he does not know everything. So I was not only school teacher, but I organized a Sunday-school, and preached, also. Especially in Mississippi I did that kind of work, where there was much need of it. This is the way that hundreds of young men have gone through Fisk University and other institutions. We get our education sometimes at great cost, and at great hardships. Sometimes we break down under this constant strain of teaching. Many a time in Mississippi swamps I have waded up to my knees in water going to school, and many a time have I taught lying sick on my back; but the money had to be made. This is the way we get through, and not only the young men but the girls. There are two things which it teaches us: It teaches us how to be men, and it teaches us how to work. We are forced to do it for the money's sake, and it is not only for the money's sake, because we are sure that these young men and young ladies go out with a Christian desire to do good, and a young man, whether he is a Christian or not, feels that he must do Christian work when he is teaching in the summer. He is hardly respectable if he does not do that sort of thing during his service as a teacher. In that way the great masses of the people are being reached by Christian students going out among them.

So it seems to me as though the problem were being slowly yet truly solved, and by and by the Negroes will be lifted up on the same footing with other people. That is the only thing we want. We are not fighting for social equality, or this or that thing. No intelligent Negro has any desire to put the South into the hands of the Negroes for rule. No man who is intelligent could wish the government of the South to come into the hands of any ignorant and inexperienced people, whether white or black, and that is what we are as a mass. But we do want recognition, so far as we have those qualities that would cause the same thing to be granted to us if we were not Negroes. This is the only thing that we ask for, and this is what is withheld from us. There are those even in the South who are willing to give us this recognition, and little by little they are getting over some of their prejudice and are inclined to recognize us so far as we have a right to their respect. Of course there are those who are determined to keep the Negro down; but these are coming over slowly but surely, and by and by there will be in this land no Negro problem.