The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial IssueVarious
History
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue
Various
African Americans -- Social conditions -- To 1964; Civil rights movements; Martin Luther King, Jr., Day; United States -- History
trait, they answer that slavery was the arch-crime, and lynching and
lawlessness its twin abortion; that color and race are not crimes, and
yet they it is which in this land receive most unceasing condemnation,
North, East, South, and West.
I will not say such arguments are wholly justified--I will not insist
that there is no other side to the shield; but I do say that of the nine
millions of Negroes in this nation, there is scarcely one out of the
cradle to whom these arguments do not daily present themselves in the
guise of terrible truth. I insist that the question of the future is how
best to keep these millions from brooding over the wrongs of the past
and the difficulties of the present, so that all their energies may
be bent toward a cheerful striving and cooperation with their white
neighbors toward a larger, juster, and fuller future. That one wise
method of doing this lies in the closer knitting of the Negro to the
great industrial possibilities of the South is a great truth. And this
the common schools and the manual training and trade schools are working
to accomplish. But these alone are not enough. The foundations of
knowledge in this race, as in others, must be sunk deep in the college
and university if we would build a solid, permanent structure. Internal
problems of social advance must inevitably come,--problems of work and
wages, of families and homes, of morals and the true valuing of
the things of life; and all these and other inevitable problems of
civilization the Negro must meet and solve largely for himself, by
reason of his isolation; and can there be any possible solution other
than by study and thought and an appeal to the rich experience of the
past? Is there not, with such a group and in such a crisis, infinitely
more danger to be apprehended from half-trained minds and shallow
thinking than from over-education and over-refinement? Surely we have
wit enough to found a Negro college so manned and equipped as to steer
successfully between the dilettante and the fool. We shall hardly induce
black men to believe that if their bellies be full it matters little
about their brains. They already dimly perceive that the paths of peace
winding between honest toil and dignified manhood call for the guidance
of skilled thinkers, the loving, reverent comradeship between the black
lowly and black men emancipated by training and culture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account