Black-belt diamonds; gems from the speeches, addresses, and talks to students of Booker T. Washington ... |
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 | V. | Part V. |
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V. Part V.
What the Negro is Doing
It matters not what is said the black man is
doing, regardless of entanglements and discouragements,
the rank and file of my race is
now giving itself to the acquirement of education
in a way that it has never done since the
dawn of freedom.
Schoolmasters' Club (Massachusetts).
Patience
Our parents, ignorant as they were, taught
us patience. Negro's Advance.
A Truth
In business the Negro has a better field in
the South than in the North. Negro Labor.
Remedy for Lynching
What is the remedy for lynching? Christian
education of the white man and the black
man. Conditions in the South.
Commercial Slavery
While bodily slavery is dead, commercial
slavery is far from dead.
Progress and the Negro.
"The Poor Whites"
So long as the poor whites are ignorant, so
long will there be crime against the Negro and
civilization.
Home Missionary Meeting (New York).
From Foundation to Turret
Within a quarter of a century the young
colored man has been called to learn? and
to teach, and to found colleges; not only
to learn to read, but to write books, edit newspapers;
he has been called to enter commercial
life, and to compete with those who have
back of them generations of training; he has
been called to make laws, and to exercise
every virtue and walk in every avenue of life
ever seen. Were ever young men called to
such work before?
The Negro's Way to Liberty.
One Standard
In the economy of God there is but one
standard by which an individual can succeed,
—there is but one for a race.
Alumni Dinner (Harvard University).
These should be Reached
The seriousness of our condition lies in the
fact that in the States where the colored people
are most numerous, eighty-five per cent of
them are in the country, and but little is being
done for them.
Presbyterian Home Missionary Meeting (New York).
Tuskegee as a Missionary
Tuskegee is sending into numerous communities
model teachers, model farmers, model
masons, model carpenters, model housekeepers.
They are able to transform the locality because
they become object lessons to their own
people. Northfield Conference.
Uses of Education
Education itself is worthless. It is only as
it is used that it is of value.
Tennessee Centennial.
Practice and Teaching
No doubt we might spend hours and days
in the recital of the hardships and wrongs of
our race, but the question is: How shall we
accomplish most good? It seems to me we
can do best by seeing how we can deal with
the evils we can remedy ourselves. Let us talk
simply and to the point, and above all, when
we go home, practise what we learn and say.
Negro Conference.
True Wisdom
It is a mark of intelligence to be willing to
learn even from the most humble person.
Sunday Evening Tuskegee Talks.
Cancer at the Heart
The masses of the colored people in the
South work, and work hard, but too often their
earnings go to pay exorbitant rates of interest
on mortgages.
Broadway Tabernacle (New York).
Country Schools
The schools in the country districts in the
South rarely last over three months and a half
in a year, and are usually held in a church, a
wreck of a log-cabin, or under a bush arbor.
Sunday Evening Tuskegee Talks.
The Great Need
The great need of the Negro to-day is education.
New York Outlook.
Scientific Education
The education that the American Negroes
most need for the next fifty or one hundred
years should be mostly, but not exclusively,
along scientific and industrial lines. When I
say scientific, I mean science so applied that
it will enable the black boy who comes from a
plantation where ten bushels of corn were
being raised, to return to the farm and raise
fifty bushels on the same acre.
Presbyterian Home Missionary Meeting (New York).
Standing Ground
Standing ground for a race, as for an individual,
must be laid in intelligence, industry,
thrift, and property.
Shaw Monument Unveiling (Boston).
Knows he is Down
One of the most encouraging things in connection
with the lifting up of the Negro race
in this country is the fact that he knows that
he is down, and wants to get up,—he knows
that he is ignorant, and wants to get light.
New York Independent.
No Progress without Friction
You have had an unusual number of accounts
of lynching; it seems to indicate a going backward
rather than a going forward. It really
indicates progress. There can be no progress
without friction. The Negro's Way to Liberty.
The Higher Virtues
Says the Great Teacher, "I will draw all
men unto me." How? Not by force, not by
law, not by superficial glitter. Following in
the tracks of the lowly Nazarene, (we shall continue
to work and wait, till,) by the exercise of
the higher virtues, by the product of our brains
and hands, (we make ourselves so important to
the American people that we shall compel them
to recognize us because of our intrinsic worth.)
Century Club (Indianapolis).
Loyalty to Labor
A Person cannot render the best service
unless he enjoys the work in which he is
engaged. You should make an effort to find
work in which you will be happy and contented,
then be perfectly loyal to that work.
Sunday Evening Tuskegee Talks.
Tested by Patience
We are to be tested in our patience, in our
forbearance, in our perseverance, in our power
economize, to acquire and use skill; in our
ability to succeed in commerce, to disregard
the superficial for the real, the appearance for
the substance. To be great, and yet the servant
of all,—this, this is the passport to all
that is best in the life of our republic, and the
Negro must possess it or be debarred.
Alumni Dinner (Harvard University).
Needs Guidance
The Negro has within himself immense
power for self-uplifting, but for years it will be
necessary to guide and stimulate him.
Awakening of the Negro.
Right will Conquer
Just as sure as right in all ages and among
all races has conquered wrong, so sure will the
time come, and at no distant day, when the
Negro in the South shall be triumphant over
the last lingering vestige of prejudice.
Centennial of A. M. E. Zion Church.
Work for the Ministry
What are some of the problems that the
ministry is to help us work out? Our religion
must not alone be the concern of the emotions,
but must be woven into the warp and woof of
our every-day life. Besides, the ministry, the
such a change in the education of the black
man that there will be a more vital and practical
connection between the Negro's educated
brain and his means of earning a living.
Centennial of A.M. E. Zion Church.
Can the White Man Accept?
I propose in everything that the black man
take his place upon the high and undisputed
ground of usefulness, honesty, and generosity
in all things, and that he invite the white man
everywhere to step up and occupy this place
with him; and if the white man in all parts of
the country cannot accept this invitation, he
will thus prove that this is a white man's
problem rather than a Negro problem.
Industrial Education.
Unreasonable Whims
There should be no unmanly cowering or
stooping to satisfy unreasonable whims of
Southern white men. Southern Prejudices.
"A Light Set upon a Hill"
Go out and be a centre, a life-giving power,
as it were, to a whole community, when an
opportunity comes, when you may give life
where there is no life, hope where there is no
hope, power where there is no power. Begin
up institutions that will put people on their
feet. It is that kind of life that tells.
Sunday Evening Tuskegee Talks.
"Injury to One, Injury to All"
No State in the South can make a law that
will provide an opportunity for an ignorant
white man to vote and withhold the same
opportunity from an ignorant colored man without
injuring both.
Constitutional Convention (Louisiana).
Successful and Unsuccessful
Two boys start out in the world at the same
time; both have the same amount of education.
After twenty years have passed by, we
find one wealthy, independent. We find him
at the head of a large commercial establishment,
employing from one to a hundred men.
We find the second boy working for, perhaps,
a dollar or a dollar and a half a day, living in a
rented house. When we remember that both
started out in life equal-handed, we remark
that the first boy was fortunate, that fortune
smiled on him; that the second was "unfortunate"
and "unlucky." There is no such
nonsense as that. The first saw how he could
put himself in demand, and he kept rising
independent. The second was an eye-servant
who was afraid he would do more than he was
paid to do,—he was afraid that he would give
forty cents' labor for twenty-five cents. He was
afraid he would work, perchance, one minute
past six o'clock. The first boy did a dollar's
worth of work for fifty cents. He was always
ready to be at the store before time; and then,
when the bell rang to quit work, he would go
to his employer and ask was there not something
he could do that should be done. Thus
the first boy became valuable, and thus
he rose higher. We call him "lucky"
"fortunate." Sunday Evening Tuskegce Talks.
His Salvation
The salvation of the black man in the
South is in his owning the soil he cultivates.
Negro Conference.
Engine and Grammar
It requires as much brain power to build a
Corliss engine as to write a Greek grammar.
I would say to the Negro boy, Get all the
mental development possible. But I would
also say to a large proportion of black boys
and girls, and would emphasize it for the next
fifty years or longer, that either at the same
time that the literary training is being gotten
to the mastery of some industry.
Why Push Industrial Education in the South.
Light Penetrating
The Southern white people are beginning
to see, and the business success of individual
colored men is teaching them, that if we turn
the colored people loose in the race of life
with an equal start with other members of the
human family, and the devil is told to catch
the hindermost one, he will not catch a Negro
every time.
Unitarian Association (Saratoga, N. Y.).
Which is the more Costly?
Does ignorance produce more taxable property
than intelligence? Are jails and courts
and chain-gangs less costly than schoolhouses?
Is an ignorant citizen more valuable than an
intelligent citizen? Will ignorance attract more
capital to the State than intelligence?
Address (Thomasville, Ga.).
Make no Excuses
If you want to put yourself in demand,
make up your mind that you are going to give
as few excuses as possible, and always feel
ashamed to give excuses.
Sunday Evening Tuskegee Talks.
Treating Him as a Man
He who would succeed with Negro labor
must let the Negro see that he is treated as a
man, not as a brute.
Southern States Farm Magazine.
The Educated White Man
As the white man in all parts of America
becomes more educated, cultured, and more
truly a Christian, in that same proportion will
the white man be less willing to withhold
justice from the Negro.
Future of the Negro Race.
Living on Skimmed Milk
Show me a race that is living on the outer
edges of the industrial world, or on the
skimmed milk of business, and is the football
of political parties, and I will show you a race
that cannot be what it should be in morals
and religion. Centennial of A. M. E. Zion Church.
What the World Expects
The world is looking for that man or woman
who can tell you why "I can do this or that,"
—why this was done, how this difficulty was
surmounted, and how that obstacle was removed;
but the world has little patience
with him or her who runs against a snag and
and gives excuses instead of results.
Sunday Evening Tuskegee Talks.
Universal Brotherhood
I do not attempt to deny the fact that I
take a liberal position towards the South, because
I believe in the principles of the universal
brotherhood of man. If the Southern
whites deny this principle, then there is a
magnificent opportunity for the Negro to show
himself greater than the white man.
Open Letter to T. Thomas Fortune.
Chickens from Miscellaneous Sources
Starting thirty years ago with ownership
here and there in a few quilts and pumpkins
and chickens (gathered from miscellaneous
sources), remember the path that has led from
these to the invention and production of agricultural
instruments, buggies, steam-engines,
newspapers, books, statuary, carving, painting,
the management of drug-stores and banks,
has not been without thorns and thistles.
Atlanta Speech.
This Man Half Free
The white man who would close the shop
or factory against the black man seeking an
opportunity to earn an honest living is but
half free. Shaw Monument Unveiling (Boston).
Passing of the Whitewasher
A Few years ago one of the best paying
positions that a large number of colored men
were doing was that of whitewashing. A few
years ago it would not have been hard to see
colored men around Philadelphia, Washington,
and Boston, carrying whitewash tubs and
a long pole into somebody's house to whitewash
the walls. They very often not only
whitewashed the walls, but the carpets and
pictures as well. You go into the North
to-day and you will find a very few colored
men whitewashing. White men learned that
they could dignify that work, and so began to
study the work in schools. They became acquainted
with the chemistry composing the
various ingredients, learned decorating and
frescoing. Now they call themselves House
Decorators. Now that's gone to come no
more, perhaps. Now that these men have
elevated this work and added more intelligent
skill to it, do you suppose that any one is
going to allow some old man with a pole and
bucket to come into his house?
Future of the Negro.
Bootblacking as an Art
Still another opportunity is going, and we
laugh when we mention it. When we think
the same way that white persons have elevated
it, we realize that after all it was an opportunity;
and that was boot-blacking. Of course,
here in the South we have that to a large extent,
because the competition is not quite so sharp
as in the North. You go into Montgomery,
and want to get your shoes blacked. Very
soon you will meet a boy with a box thrown
over his shoulders. When he begins to polish
your shoes, you will very likely see that he
uses a very worn shoe-brush, and unless you
watch him very closely, the chances are
he will polish your shoes with stove-polish.
But you go into any Northern city, and you will
find that such a boot-black as you meet in
Montgomery does not stand any chance of
making a living.
Sunday Evening Tuskegee Talks.
Lincoln's Pen
With one stroke of the pen the industrial
system by which a race of people had been
supported for two hundred and fifty years was
torn to pieces. The Emancipator.
Wrongs of a Race
Never for a single moment have I been
blind to the wrongs perpetrated upon our
people, nor have I failed to show my interest
while being conscious of the existence of these
wrongs, and earnest in my desire to have them
righted, I cannot overlook the fact that we
have shortcomings of our own which are often
made the basis of the wrongs, and which it is
not only our duty but to our best interest, from
every point of view, to recognize and labor
prayerfully to overcome.
Open Letter to T. Thomas Fortune.
His Sainted Mother
My first acquaintance with our hero was this:
Night after night, before the dawn of day, on
an old slave plantation in Virginia, I recall the
form of my sainted mother, bending over a
bundle of rags that enveloped my body, on a
dirt floor, breathing a fervent prayer to Heaven
that "Massa Lincoln" might succeed, and that
one day she and I might be free.
Twentieth Century Club.
The Crucial Test
The crucial test for a race, as for an individual,
is its ability to stand upon its own feet
and make progress. In demonstrating to the
world that the Negro has legislative and executive
ability of a high order, this great Christian
body has helped the entire race.
Centennial of A. M. E. Zion Church.
Weakness Changed to Power
Lincoln gave freedom to change sympathies
that were local and narrow into love and goodwill
to all mankind; freedom to change stagnation
into growth, weakness into power.
The Emancipator.
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