RENOVATION.
When our great organization has been effected it must proceed to the diligent study of such traits and environing influences as have in the past operated to impair the spirit of co-operation. Locating the weak points, we must proceed to induce in the Negro such mental and moral characteristics, and must so regulate his environments as to insure efficient co-operation for all the future.
It is an evident fact that the spirit of jealousy is more prevalent in some individuals than in others. The like may be asserted with regard to races. Among the Negroes there appears to be an inordinate development of this feeling of jealousy, which makes itself felt among the humblest and among the highest. Success on the part of a Negro would appear to be a standing invitation for the shooting of arrows into his bosom. While a strict surveillance over leaders is highly commendable, the baneful effects of hypercriticism and jealous intrigues are far reaching. Our racial organization must tear up by the roots this extraordinary predisposition toward jealousy and plant in its stead the flower of brotherly love.
During our prolonged existence in a state of individualism, each man working for himself and by himself, there was but little to engender in a man the spirit of sacrifice in the interest of the race as an aggregation. When our racial organization is perfected we must write upon every man's heart the following words, causing each one to feel in his own case: "It is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people."
In the work of further congealing the race, of inducing in it the social instincts so needful for efficient co-operation, we have the aid of the scorching flames of race prejudice which flash in the faces of all Negroes thus driving them closer together.
As the wars of David with surrounding enemies made a nation of the loose aggregation of the twelve tribes of Israel; as the hundred years of fighting with France effected the integration of the people of England; as the war of the Revolution sowed the seed that enabled the American people to form a nation out of the thirteen colonies; as the compact German empire of to-day is the result of outside pressure; just so is American prejudice producing a oneness of sentiment in the Negroes which inevitably leads toward their acting as a unit in matters affecting their salvation.
Having arranged for our organization, we are now to point out the lines along which it is to labor.
