Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of; Slavery to the Present Time
History
Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of; Slavery to the Present Time
African American orators; African Americans -- History -- Sources; Speeches, addresses, etc., American -- African American authors
He may be ignorant or poor or vicious; yet he never
forgets that he is a man. But every feature of our civilization is
calculated to impress upon the Negro a sense of his inferiority and to
make him feel and believe that he is good for nothing but to be cast out
and trodden under foot of other men. A race, like an individual, that
compromises its own self-respect, paralyzes and enfeebles its own
energies. The motto which should be engraved upon the conscience of
every American Negro is that which Milton places in the mouth of His
Satanic Majesty: "The mind is its own place and of itself can make a
heaven of hell; a hell of heaven." To inculcate this principle is the
highest mission of the higher education. The old theologians used to
insist upon the freedom of the will, but the demand of the Negro to-day
is for the freedom and independence of his own spirit. Destroy this and
all is lost; preserve it, and though political rights, civil privileges,
industrial opportunities be taken away for the time, they will all be
regained.
By the development of manhood on the part of the Negro nothing is
farther from my thought than the inculcation of that pugnacious, defiant
disposition which vents itself in wild ejaculations and impotent
screaming against the evils of society. I mean the full appreciation of
essential human qualities and claims, and the firm, unyielding
determination to press forward to the mark of this calling, and not to
be swerved from its pursuit by doubt, denial, danger, rebuff, ridicule,
insult, and contemptuous treatment. While the Negro may not have it
within his power to resist or overcome these things, he must preserve
the integrity of his own soul.
The higher education of the Negro up to this point has been very largely
under the direction and control of philanthropy. The support has come
almost wholly from that source. The development of this sense of manhood
should be the highest concern of a wise, discriminating philanthropy,
for if this is once developed the Negro will be able to handle his own
situation and relieve his philanthropic friends from further
consideration or concern; but, if he fails to develop this spirit of
manhood, he will be but a drag upon the resources of philanthropy for
all times to come.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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