To help the good work along we append the following list of books that are essential. When you master these you will have a better “education” than is found in nine-tenths of the graduates of the average American college.
“Modern Science and Modern Thought,” by Samuel Laing; “The Origin of Species” and “The Descent of Man,” by Charles Darwin; “The Principles of Sociology” and “First Principles,” by Herbert Spencer; “The Childhood of the World” and “The Childhood of Religion,” by Edward Clodd; “Anthropology,” by E. B. Tylor (very easy to read and a work of standard information on Races, Culture and the origins of Religion, Art and Science); Buckle’s “History of Civilization”; Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”; “The Martyrdom of Man,” by Winwood Reade; the books on Africa by Livingstone and Mungo Park, and “The Mind of Primitive Man,” by Franz Boas. —Sept., 1918.
Education and the Race
In the dark days of Russia, when the iron heel of Czarist despotism was heaviest on the necks of the people, those who wished to rule decreed that the people should remain ignorant. Loyalty to interests that were opposed to theirs was the prevailing public sentiment of the masses. In vain did the pioneers of freedom for the masses perish under the knout and the rigors of Siberia. They sacrificed to move the masses, but the masses, strong in their love of liberty, lacked the head to guide the moving feet to any successful issue. It was then that Leo Tolstoi and the other intelligentsia began to carry knowledge to the masses. Not only in the province of Tula, but in every large city, young men of university experience would assemble in secret classes of instruction, teaching them to read, to write, to know, to think and to love knowledge. Most of this work was underground at first. But it took. Thousands of educated persons gave themselves to this work-without pay: their only hope of reward lay in the future effectiveness of an instructed mass movement.
What were the results? As knowledge spread, enthusiasm was backed by brains. The Russian revolution began to be sure of itself. The workingmen of the cities studied the thing that they were “up against,” gauged their own weakness and strength as well as their opponents’. The despotism of the Czar could not provoke them to a mass movement before they were ready and had the means; and when at last they moved, they swept not only the Czar’s regime but the whole exploiting system upon which it stood into utter oblivion.
What does this mean to the Negro of the Western world? It may mean much, or little: that depends on him. If other men’s experiences have value for the New Negro Manhood Movement it will seek now to profit by them and to bottom the new fervor of faith in itself with the solid support of knowledge. The chains snap from the limbs of the young giant as he rises, stretches himself, and sits up to take notice. But let him, for his future’s sake, insist on taking notice. To drop the figure of speech, we Negroes who have shown our manhood must back it by our mind. This world, at present, is a white man’s world—even in Africa. We, being what we are, want to shake loose the chains of his control from our corner of it. We must either accept his domination and our inferiority, or we must contend against it. But we go up to win; and whether we carry on that contest with ballots, bullets or business, we can not win from the white man unless we know at least as much as the white man knows. For, after all, knowledge is power.
But that isn’t all. What kind of knowledge is it that enables white men to rule black men’s lands? Is it the knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, philosophy or literature? It isn’t. It is the knowledge of explosives and deadly compounds: that is chemistry. It is the knowledge which can build ships, bridges, railroads and factories: that is engineering. It is the knowledge which harnesses the visible and invisible forces of the earth and air and water: that is science, modern science. And that is what the New Negro must enlist upon his side. Let us, like the Japanese, become a race of knowledge-getters, preserving our racial soul, but digesting into it all that we can glean or grasp, so that when Israel goes up out of bondage he will be “skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians” and competent to control his destiny.
Those who have knowledge must come down from their Sinais and give it to the common people. Theirs is the great duty to simplify and make clear, to light the lamps of knowledge that the eyes of their race may see; that the feet of their people may not stumble. This is the task of the Talented Tenth.
To the masses of our people we say: Read! Get the reading habit; spend your spare time not so much in training the feet to dance, as in training the head to think. And, at the very outset, draw the line between books of opinion and books of information. Saturate your minds with the latter and you will be forming your own opinions, which will be worth ten times more to you than the opinions of the greatest minds on earth. Go to school whenever you can. If you can’t go in the day, go at night. But remember always that the best college is that on your bookshelf: the best education is that on the inside of your own head. For in this work-a-day world people ask first, not “Where were you educated?” but “What do you know?” and next, “What can you do with it?” And if we of the Negro race can master modern knowledge—the kind that counts—we will be able to win for ourselves the priceless gifts of freedom and power, and we will be able to hold them against the world.