Fifty Years of Freedom / with matters of vital importance to both the white and colored people of the United States

by Francis J. Grimké

I. A word to ourselves. There are certain things that we need to thoroughly impress ourselves with.

(1). With the importance of being industrious. A lazy, thriftless, indolent race is bound to go to the wall. The necessity of work on the part of everybody must be fully appreciated ourselves and must be carefully instilled into the young people who are to take our places when we are gone. "The man who will not work," the apostle says, "neither shall he eat." And this should be a fundamental principle with us. The lazy man should be despised, should be driven out, should be shown no consideration. "The idle man's brain is the devil's workshop," is an old saying, but it is a true one; and unless we continue to train the race to the idea of steady, fixed employment as the proper, normal condition for every one to sustain to the social organism of which he is a part, the devil will be sure to get his work in, and use the unemployed hand and brain for evil purposes.

(2). We need to impress ourselves with the importance of being efficient. We must know how to do things; we must know how to do things well. It isn't enough that a thing is done; it must be well done. Quality in work is the thing that tells; and more and more as competition increases we must impress ourselves with that fact. The old adage, "Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well," we cannot too strongly impress ourselves with. Inefficiency puts an individual of a race always at a disadvantage. It is skill; it is the ability to do well what is to be done that will always be preferred. It is the skillful mechanic; the skillful artisan, the skillful stenographer and typewriter that is always preferred, and that always wins out in the struggle of life, other things being equal. It is the fittest that survives in the industrial struggle and in every other avenue of life. In planning for the future we must lay more and more stress therefore upon the work of properly qualifying ourselves for service in all the avenues of life. Carelessness, indifference here, the disposition to be content with shoddy work, will be fatal to our success. We are living in an age when the demand for efficiency, and efficiency of the highest order, is becoming more and more insistent. Unless this fact is recognized by us, and is allowed to shape our course, the struggle in which we are engaged is a hopeless one; we are bound to go to the wall.

(3). We must impress ourselves with the importance of being reliable, trustworthy. However skillful we may become, however efficient, unless we can be depended upon to do what we undertake to do, our efficiency will count for but little. If people can't depend on us; if our word counts for nothing; if we are deficient in a sense of obligation; if responsibilities weigh lightly upon us, we will be sure to lose the confidence of others, and will be sure also to lose their patronage. Even the inefficient man who can be depended upon will be preferred to the efficient man upon whom no dependence can be put. The two things must go together, reliability and efficiency, if efficiency is to be of any real advantage. This is a point which we need particularly to lay to heart, and to keep before us in the training of the young. Unfortunately there is considerable ground for just complaint against a large percentage of the race just here. It is a serious defect, and one that ought to be remedied, that ought to claim our immediate and earnest attention.

(4). It is well for us to impress ourselves with the importance, with the transcendent importance of character. Character is the foundation upon which everything else must rest if it is to endure, if it is to be of any permanent value in the elevation of the race. There must be a sound moral basis. In the heart of the race there must be implanted the great principles of morality. The race must not only be taught, but must accept, must be governed by sentiments of justice, of veracity, of purity, of honesty. It must make up its mind to square its life by the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. There is nothing that can compensate for, or take the place of a sturdy, upright character. It isn't something which it would simply be well for us to possess, which it would be to our advantage to possess; it is absolutely indispensable. There is no future for us, no honorable future for us, without it. This is the way we must feel; this is the way we must make our children feel. Character, high character, is not something which we may or may not set before us as we face the future, as we enter upon the second half of the century of freedom; but something which we must set definitely before us as of transcendent importance. There is no option left us if we have any regard to our highest and best interest, and the best interest of those who are to follow us. If the moral atmosphere in which the race lives and moves and has its being is not kept pure and healthful and invigorating it can never hope to become a strong, virile, self-respecting race, or a race that will be likely to command much respect from others. The race has, be it said to its credit, all along attached some importance to character, but the emphasis which it puts upon it must steadily increase. We must come, more and more, to realize the fact that while knowledge is power, and while there is power in the possession of material things, that the greatest power lies in character, in a strong, sturdy, upright, virtuous manhood and womanhood.

(5). In this connection it is well for us also to remember that the agencies that are most helpful in the development of character are the family, the church, the school. I heard the President of the Board of Education of one of our most important cities say, not long ago, after listening to an address highly eulogistic of the public schools, that in his judgment the greatest asset of the nation is the family. And in this I think he was right. He meant, of course, the family properly constituted, with the right kind of man and woman at the head of it. The importance of the home, as an educational force, is seen in the fact that the children begin life in the home, and that they are under the almost exclusive influence of the home when the young life is most plastic, is most easily moulded. Where this home influence is pure, elevating, ennobling, there is no other agency that is comparable with it. The church and school also, however, are very important agencies. And I have called attention, in this connection, to these three institutions in order that, as we face the future, we may recognize their importance, and may come to feel more and more the necessity of improving them, and of utilizing them in the development of the race. We need better homes and must have them—homes that will not be indifferent to intellectual culture and material comforts, but that will value more highly than either the things that make for purity of heart and life. We need better churches and must have them—churches that will be more concerned about properly instructing the people in the knowledge of the Word of God, with a view to spiritualizing their lives, to lifting them to the high plane of Christian living and thinking, rather than with endless entertainments and schemes for money getting. We need better schools—schools in which the teachers will recognize that their vocation is not simply to train the head, or chiefly to train the head, but the heart also—schools in which the teachers will recognize the opportunities which their calling affords of giving shape and direction to the budding and expanding lives entrusted to their care, and who are gladly availing themselves of these opportunities. There are some teachers, of course, who are doing this, who are making their influence felt in character building; but there are others who are indifferent to these opportunities—who are not making their influence felt and who feel that it is no part of their business to do so. Not long ago I was speaking to a school official in one of our cities about the great opportunities that teachers have for this kind of work; and his reply was, "Yes, but many of our teachers teach only for the money they get, and they want the money simply to decorate their bodies." How far this is true of our teachers as a class I do not know; but that it is true of some of them I have not the slightest doubt. What we need, therefore, as we face the future, is to endeavor to get the active and hearty coöperation of all the teachers in all of our schools in this higher mission of character building in their pupils. The teachers, if they can only be made to see it, hold a place second in importance only to the home in the service which they can render in the stupendous task which confronts us as a race. We must all of us, as we begin this new half century of freedom, be more thoughtful about our homes, more concerned to make them proper habitats for the rearing of children; more concerned about our schools and the character of the men and women who are in charge of them; and more concerned about our churches to see that they are properly manned, properly conducted, properly supported by our presence and by our financial aid. None of these institutions can be allowed to deteriorate, to fall behind, without affecting unfavorably the progress of the race.

(6). It is important that we impress ourselves with the evil of strong drink, and that we set definitely before us the work of educating the race with reference to the poisonous nature of alcohol and its baleful effects. Sobriety, abstinence from all alcoholic liquors as a beverage, we must be at special pains to impress upon all—old and young alike. We must organize temperance societies; we must encourage those that are already in existence; we must gather the children into temperance bands, in our Sabbath schools and in our day schools as far as may be possible. In the new half century upon which we have now entered, we must firmly resolve, and must bend every effort towards lessening the evil of strong drink among us. At the end of the present half century, let us hope that there will be less intemperance among us; that a larger number of homes among us will be definitely committed to total abstinence, than we find to-day. Whatever we can do to lessen this evil; whatever we can do to produce a sober, temperate people we must do, and we must all do our part to secure this result. Every member of the race is interested in, or, at least, ought to be, in saving it from the curse of intemperance, not only because it will help the race economically and morally, but also because it will set it in a better light before its enemies, it will take away one serious ground of complaint against it.

(7). We must not allow ourselves to become discouraged because of the obstacles which our enemies are constantly throwing across our pathway. These obstacles, if we are made of the right stuff, will help to strengthen us, to make us more resolute, more determined. It is in breasting opposition, in overcoming difficulties that we develop strength.

(8). Nor should we allow ourselves to become embittered by the mean and persistent opposition of our enemies; by the studied efforts that they are ever making to insult and humiliate us. Unless we are watchful, unless we are tolerably sane, it is so easy to allow such things to rankle in our breasts, to engender feelings of bitterness and hatred. Natural as it is, however, we must resist it. It is bad business for an individual or a race to allow itself to become embittered against another individual or race. Such a spirit will destroy our own happiness, our own peace of mind, and will not help to win over our enemies. Out of a spirit of mutual hatred no good can possibly come to either race. The result is bound to be evil; and the evil will grow as the hatred grows.

If we are to fight successfully, fight in the most effective way, we must be calm, we must not be spurred on by bitterness, by hatred, but by the consciousness that what we are contending for is right, and, therefore, is best for all, even for those against whom we are contending, who are foolishly trying to obstruct our way. Let us possess our souls in patience; let us be calm, self-possessed. These enemies who are fighting us deserve our pity. The course which they are pursuing, in the long run, will prove more injurious to them than to us. The more they fight us, the more they resist us, the more they seek to insult and humiliate us, the more are they injuring themselves, the more are they sinking to lower levels, the less are they becoming worthy of the respect of decent, right-thinking people. We may suffer in our feelings; we may be deprived of our rights for a time; but they are suffering in a way that is eating away the only thing of real value—the only thing that is worth having—character. We may suffer, but the penalty which we pay is not near so dear, so costly as the penalty which they are paying.