DR. W. E. BURGHARDT DUBOIS
Dr. W. E. Burghardt DuBois is the most scholarly speaker and writer of the Afro-American race. He is the author of the book “Souls of Black Folk,” which is a marvellous book. On the following page are some of the phrases from his famous address to the Social Study Clubs of Chicago University.
February 13th, 1907, on Education and Civilization:
“The doing of the world’s work is a great duty and a great privilege. It is a thing not to be aimed at but to be aimed beyond. Just so soon as a nation or a country can put its foot upon this satisfaction of the lower wants and step upward to the greater aspirations of human brotherhood and the broader ideals of civilization, just so soon the real building of civilization begins. It seems to me, therefore, that the students of Chicago University and they that teach them, ought especially, on every occasion to impress this broader aspect of the race problem. That instead of putting it in its narrower, nastier channel, instead of stooping to listen to men, who themselves represent what is lowest and least in our national organization, that you should strive in every way to realize yourselves and to show others that this great broad question of humanity is not a question of petty crime, not a question of so many bales of cotton, not a question even of mere industrial development, but is a question of human aspiration, and that if here in America, on the very fore front of present advance, it is possible to murder the aspiration of 10,000,000 of men, then America is not yet civilized.”
THIRD CHAPTER.
HIS RULE IN EGYPT
Dr. Leonhard Schmitz, Ph. D., LL. D., F. R., S. E., says in his work on ancient Egyptian history, that these Hyksos or Shepherd Kings were Semite people. “White,” of course, and they comprised the 15th, 16th and 17th dynasties, which covered 511 years. Now, during this period, Jacob and his twelve sons and their families moved from Canaan to Egypt, and other Semite or whites from Asia did likewise, because the white man had begun to rule Egypt. At the 18th Dynasty, however, fortune turned against the white rulers of Egypt, and the black men or the Negroes regained possession of their country, and banished the whites from their land, except the Jews, whom they held as slaves. They reorganized the Kingdom with their own blood, “the blood of the Negro.” Aahmas was the first King after the whites were driven out, and his wife was Nefruari, the Ethiopian Princess, greatly celebrated for her dusky charms, her wealth and her accomplishments. The beginning of this reorganization of a period is recorded in the 1st Chapter of the Book of Exodus, which shows that at the beginning of the slavery of the Jews, God told Abraham that his people would be held in bondage in Egypt for 400 years (Genesis 15th Chapter, 13th verse). Those 400 years marked the period of Egypt’s most rapid and substantial progress, as Dr. Schmitz says in writing on ancient Egyptian history, those years were the most brilliant in Egypt’s record, and the period at which her art reached its highest point. It is but reasonable to suppose this to have been so, for the Shepherd, or “white Kings” had destroyed all of the former brilliancy of Egypt, and did not because they could not do anything to replace or imitate its grandeur or beauty. The black people when they regained possession of their Kingdom and again began to rule, made slaves of the Jews and compelled them to do all the heavy, dirty, unskilled labor, such as carrying bricks and mortar and working in the field (Exodus 1st Chapter, 13th and 14th verses). While the Egyptians turned their attention to science and art and reorganizing and drilling their army, so as to be able to protect their country against all nations. As Dr. Schmitz says, the Eastern boundaries of Egypt were well protected by strong fortresses. This is but natural, because on the East, the Semitic or white races reigned, and no doubt they were unfriendly to the Egyptians, or “black” people, because they had expelled the Shepherd or “white” Kings from their land. Now, when the Egyptians had attained “in that Age” to the highest degree of intelligence and wisdom, and were possessed of the greatest human power, God deemed it wise to make His own Infinite wisdom and power felt over that of human wisdom and power, by using Moses as an instrument to knock at the door of the Egyptian government and ask for the release of the enslaved Jews. Moses did not appear in Egypt by any human authority, or power, but by the authority and the power of God, for it would have been useless for not only Moses, but for any nation or number of nations to approach Egypt with hostile intentions, without God, because Egypt with her wisdom and power had the world at her mercy. There it required God with His immeasurable wisdom and power to overcome the wisdom and power of these black Egyptians. The evidence of God’s power was displayed to the “Pharoah Meneptah,” who is generally conceded to be the “Pharoah of the Exodus,” by His, “God’s” instruments, Moses and Aaron who were to appear before the Pharoah and cast down their rods which turned to serpents (Exodus 7th Chapter, 10th verse). When they had cast down their rods before Pharoah, and they turned to serpents, Pharoah called the wise men, or magicians of Egypt with their enchantments, and they cast down their rods which also became serpents (Exodus 7th Chapter, 11th and 12th verses). This was the performing of two miracles, one by God’s power, and one by human power. This vieing with God, though only for an instance of time is what no white man has had the power to do since his creation. But, however, God, in order to demonstrate His supreme power, caused the serpents transformed from the rods of Moses and Aaron to swallow the serpents transformed from the rods of Pharoah’s or Egypt’s wise men (Exodus 7-12). This rod and serpent incident was the beginning of a series of plague miracles (read the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th Chapters of Exodus), which wrecked the Egyptians’ or black man’s kingdom, and also destroyed that great power which he had over all other nations and released the Jews from slavery.
The black man’s power, as the first power among the nations had now begun to decay, and as the black race began to die, as a power among nations, the white race began to rise to where it had never been before, but this was 2,500 years after the black man had worked out all the problems of civilization.
In reading Revelation, 13th Chapter, 11th verse, of St. John, the Divine, I am very much impressed by the description of one of his revelations which God unfolded to him, and which he describes as follows: