A JUBILEE SHALL THAT FIFTIETH YEAR BE UNTO
YOU.
On the twenty-second of September, 1862, President Lincoln issued his Preliminary Proclamation, which was in the nature of a notice to the states in rebellion, that unless they returned to their allegiance within a specified time the slaves within their borders would be declared free. The time expired without accomplishing the desired result. Accordingly on January 1, 1863, the President issued his Supplemental Proclamation manumitting the slaves within the rebellious states. This did not, of course, set them free. They were still slaves and continued to be as long as the war lasted. Freedom did not come, as a matter of fact, until the surrender of Lee at Appomattox Courthouse April 9, 1865. The effectiveness of the Proclamation depended upon crushing the rebellion. It was the victorious army of the North, under the leadership of General Grant, that gave efficacy to the Proclamation. For all practical purposes, however, we may assume that fifty years have elapsed since freedom came to us as a race. Fifty years is a long time in the history of an individual, but not very long in that of a race. It is sufficiently long, however, to make it worth while for us to stop and think a little about what these fifty years have meant to us, and to see if there are any lessons in them that may be helpful to us as we enter upon the second half of a century of freedom.
At the end of these fifty years we find:
I. That we have made considerable progress. We are not now where we were fifty years ago. We are not as poor; we are not as ignorant; we are not as morally debased. The plane upon which we stand now is higher. This progress, in some respects, has been unparalleled. It is not necessary for me to speak in detail of what has been accomplished along educational lines. The record is before the whole country. No one can read the last report of the Commissioner of Education of the National Government without realizing that very marvelous changes for the better have taken place in the condition of the colored people. The facts as presented there, touching the number of public schools and public school teachers ministering to the intellectual wants of this race, as well as the large number of higher educational institutions having the same end in view, show conclusively that conditions now are very different and very much superior to what they were fifty years ago. The large number of teachers, lawyers, doctors, ministers, now to be found among us, as compared with fifty years ago, show the same thing.
Nor need I speak of the changed condition that these fifty years have wrought in our economic condition. We are still poor; we still have to struggle to make ends meet, to keep the wolf from the door; but there can be no doubt that we are very much better off now than we were fifty years ago. We live in better houses; we dress better; we eat better food; we own more property; we have more on deposit in banks and other saving institutions; we have more invested in business; we travel more; we give more to religion, to charity, to education. Even our worst enemies, however, they might wish it were otherwise, will hardly be found affirming that we are no farther on materially than we were fifty years ago, that no substantial progress has been made by the race. In every direction the evidences are too plainly apparent to be denied. The following statement, taken from the declarations of the National Business League at its recent session in Philadelphia, tells in a word the simple story of what has been accomplished during these fifty years: "Starting half a century ago, without experience, without education, and without property, we to-day own and pay taxes on 20,000,000 acres of land, an area as large as the State of South Carolina; we own and control 100 insurance companies, 300 drug stores, 64 banks, 450 newspapers, and more than 20,000 other businesses of various kinds, and the total wealth of American Negroes in land, homes, schools, churches, and other forms of property, amounts to more than $700,000,000.
"In submitting this brief record of material progress, we do not overlook the advance made in other directions. Fifty years ago more than 90 per cent of the race was wholly illiterate. To-day more than 70 per cent can both read and write."
II. At the end of these fifty years we find the race still aspiring, still wishing to go forward. The progress that has been made is not something that has been forced upon the race against its will, as members of it are forced to ride in "Jim Crow" cars in the South; it is what the race has wished to do. It is not now, and never has been willing to remain in the condition in which slavery left it. From the very beginning there has been the desire for better things, for enlarged opportunities. And it still has dreams and visions of larger and better things which it hopes some day to realize and towards which it is still pressing. Any one who is calculating upon a retrograde movement on the part of the race will be sadly disappointed, if we may judge from what these last fifty years have revealed of capacity and aspiration on its part. The outlook, in some respects, may be dark, but it is not because of any lack of interest in matters material and educational, or because of any evidence of decay, of the growth of demoralizing tendencies in the race as a whole. There is, of course, in all races an idle, vicious, lawless, dare-devil, reprobate element. And such an element we find among us, especially in the urban population; but the existence of such an element in the Negro race is no more evidence of a retrograde tendency on the part of the race as a whole, than the presence of such an element among the whites is an evidence of a retrograde movement on the part of the white race as a whole. The Negro race makes no claim to superiority over other races. It is simply human like other races. The same evidences of depravity exhibited by other races it also exhibits, neither more nor less. As bad as is a certain element among us, it is no worse than the same element in other races. The trend of the race is not downward, but upward; is not backward, but forward. Moral progress, of course, is always slower than any other kind of progress. It is very much easier to train the head than to train the heart; it is very much easier to develop brain power than moral power. The most difficult thing in the world is to keep men straight morally, is to build up, to develop a strong, upright, virtuous character in men of all races. And this must be borne in mind in estimating the moral progress of the race as compared with its intellectual and material advancement. If progress here has been slower, it is simply because that kind of progress is slower among all races. That the race is responding, in a measure, to the many agencies that are at work for its moral and spiritual uplift can hardly be doubted; nor can there be any doubt that there is an element, and a steadily increasing element among us, that is laying more and more emphasis upon character, upon upright living.
III. At the end of these fifty years, we find, and very naturally, as the result of the progress that has been made in knowledge, in material resources, in social advancement—a growing self-respect on the part of the race, which makes it very much more sensitive as to the deprivation of its rights, very much more restive under injustice, oppression, and all invidious distinctions. It would be strange if it were not so. You cannot surround a man with conditions which tend to develop his manhood, his self-respect, and expect him to quietly acquiesce in any line of conduct which aims to humiliate him, to force him down beneath the level of what he feels to be his due. The oppressive measures which the slave-holders took to keep the slaves in an attitude of subserviency by shutting all light, by keeping them in darkness, by depriving them of all opportunities of improvement, was the only safe, the only wise course to pursue. And even under such circumstances, under such rigid enforcement of repressive measures, the spirit of resistance was not entirely extinguished. How much less is it to be expected now that we should quietly submit to unjust treatment, to invidious distinctions! The race is becoming more and more alive to its rights, and, as it advances, this sense of what belongs to it, of what it is entitled to will increase rather than diminish. There is no way by which this growing insistent demand for its rights on its part can be arrested except by recognizing these rights, or, by forcing the race back into the condition of intellectual and moral darkness in which it was before the great era of freedom, or, by killing it off, either slowly by shutting it out of all productive industries, or by the wholesale massacre of it.
The last two lines of action, on the part of the dominant race, are among the possibilities, but scarcely among the probabilities of the future. The Negro in this country can never, never again be forced back into the condition in which he was before the War. Nor is there any likelihood of a wholesale slaughter of the race. There is very little hesitancy or compunction about killing an individual or a small group of individuals, but when it comes to making war on the race as a whole, with a view to exterminating it, even our worst enemies will hesitate, will hardly venture upon so violent a measure; if not from a sense of right, at least, from fear of arousing the moral sentiment of the civilized world. The race is not likely to be less insistent in the future in demanding its rights than it is now at the end of the first half century of growth, of development.