Twentieth century Negro literature : $b or, A cyclopedia of thought on the vital topics relating to the American Negro
History
Twentieth century Negro literature : $b or, A cyclopedia of thought on the vital topics relating to the American Negro
African Americans -- History
Now, what achievements did he make? First, as to wealth: According to
the census of 1900 he has forty million dollars in church property,
and twelve millions in school property. He has 140,000 farms, worth
$750,000,000, and 170 million dollars in personal property. This is
the result of thirty-six years of freedom. One noticeable feature is
that the great bulk of his wealth has been accumulated in the South,
where the large majority of the American Negroes live. No one fact is
more startling in history, than that a people, once held as slaves,
have been able to live and thrive among the very people by whom they
were held. This accentuates the fact that, after all, nowhere has the
Negro better friends than can be found among the white people of the
Southland. His property aggregates $75 per capita for every man, woman
and child in this country, which is certainly no mean showing for
thirty-six years of freedom.
As to education, he has reduced his illiteracy forty-five per cent,
he has written more than 500 books, publishes 300 newspapers, three
of them dailies; he has produced 2,000 lawyers, a still larger number
of doctors and 32,000 teachers. He supports several colleges,
seventeen academies, fifty high schools, five law schools, five
medical schools and twenty-five theological seminaries. It is true
that all of the education he is obtaining is not practical; and also
true that many so-called educated ones are shiftless and trifling; but
this is no more than was to be expected under the circumstances.
He has built 29,000 churches, and this must mean something. It is true
that in the past, his ministers have in many cases appealed to the
passions, rather than to the intellect; and yet, under these old
preachers, many of them honest, earnest and Godly men, the Negro has
made gigantic strides in morality. He is yet far, very far below what
we would like to see him, but he is coming. The new gospel of work is
striking a responsive chord in the American Negro's heart, and he is
beginning to see that he must be able to _do_ something if he would
_be_ something.
Happily for him he learned to work, during the dark days of the past,
it only remained for him to learn to put brains in his work. This he
is fast learning under the apostles of industrial training. Since the
fiat went forth, amid the groves of Eden, when man lost his first
estate, "by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread," God has never
reversed his edict. Work must be his salvation, as it has been the
salvation of all other races. To put into poetry the words of an old
friend:
I ain't got no edikashun,
But dis, kno', is true:
Dat raisin' gals too good to wuch
Ain't nebber gwine to do;
Dese boys, dat look good nuf to eat,
But too good to saw de logs,
Am cay'in us, ez, fas' ez smok'
To lan' us at de dogs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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