African Americans; United States -- Race relations
In the full congregation were all types of Negroes. The men were
undistinguished, but the women were very striking. One lady wore a
gilded skirt and a broad-brimmed, black straw hat. Two Cleopatras
sat in front of me—tall, elegant, graceful, expensively dressed as
in Mayfair, one in chiffon, the other in soft gray satin, tiny gold
chains about their necks, pearl earrings in their ears. They had
smooth, fruit-like cheeks, curving outward to perfect bell mouths.
When they sang they lifted their full, dusky throats like grand birds.
They were evidently of the élite of Norfolk. On the other hand, there
were numbers of baggy and voluminous ladies with enormous bosoms,
almost visibly perspiring. They thronged and they thronged, and all
the red-cushioned seats filled up. There were men of all types, from
the perfect West African Negro to the polished American Arab, yellow
men, brown men, lots with large tortoise-shell spectacles, all with
close-cropped hair which showed the Runic lines of their hard heads.
Fans were provided for every worshipper, and noisy religious and family
talk filled the whole chapel.
We began with some fine singing—not deep and harmonious and complex
as that of the Russians, but hard, resonant, and breezy, followed by
conventional prayers and the reading of the Scriptures. The pastor then
sent someone to ask me if I would come forward and give them Christian
greeting in a few words. I was much astonished, as I did not know one
ever broke into the midst of Divine Service in that way. However, I
came forward and confronted the strange sea of dusky, eager faces and
the thousand waving paper fans, and I said: “Dear brothers and sisters,
I am an Englishman and a white man, but before these I am a Christian.
In Christ, as you know, there is neither white nor black, neither
inferiority nor superiority of race, unless it is that sometimes the
first shall be last and the last first. We know little about the
American Negro in England, but I have come to find out. I have not been
sent by anybody, but was just prompted by the Spirit to come out here
and make your acquaintance, and so bring tidings home to England. I
hope you will take that as an assurance of loving interest in you, and
a promise for the future. I am glad to see you have made such progress
since slavery days and have in Norfolk fine houses and churches and
banks and a theatre and restaurants and businesses, and that you have
such a large measure of happiness and freedom. I believe you have
great gifts to offer on the altar of American civilization, and so far
from remaining a problem you will prove a treasure.” And I told some
touching words of my friend Hugh Chapman, of the chapel of the Savoy,
in London: “Mankind is saved, not by a white man, or by a black, but by
one who combines both—the little brown Man of Nazareth.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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