It is difficult to see how anybody can trace the life and work of the comparatively small band of negro leaders, during these forty years past, without a profound feeling of admiration for their Christian character, their patience, their wisdom, and their fine sense of Christian delicacy, exhibited under trying conditions. Think of the men upon whom God has placed this most difficult and delicate task of laying the foundation for a totally new relation toward a more numerous and powerful race, and then try to remember how very few have seriously blundered! Think of their task of remaking their relations with a people who were recently their masters! Think of their task of teaching themselves (and in such true way that the members of the other race will also accept the lesson) to live as free black men with white men, on the same soil, and amid the same surroundings, as of yore! Then say whether you can withhold your chivalrous sympathy, or your resolve to help on the learning of the lesson so utterly essential to the peace of both races.
The Negro has had, and still has, this tremendous task laid upon him of making the place which is his in life; and of taking it, not because he demands it, but because he has successfully made that place. In general, he who has to demand his place, has never earned it. In general, too, he who has made a place has deserved it, and, in the long run, it will be accorded him. The Negroes of education, of refinement, of gifts and of culture, are, too generally, held back from the place they have made. This is partly because of ignorance on the part of white people that such Negroes exist, while the only ones they know are the great majority of ignorant farm hands; partly because of the strange anachronism, “social equality,” which cuts straight across race integrity, and nowhere exists even within the single bounds of any race.
The negro people are not standing for social equality among themselves, even though some of their extremists, along with the Japanese, are muddying the stream of concord with a cry of “equality of races.” No one can doubt but that sane people of every race will continue to stand for that which God made them—white, yellow, brown, red and black—and will try to keep themselves so. In the long run, all will learn to value most the respect that righteous living and service to mankind merit, and to contend least for that which has not been earned. Whatever the future may bring, whether return to Africa in large numbers, or migration to Haiti as some of their leaders contend, or permanence in America, the duty of each day is to help the Negro to help himself in attaining the fullest preparation for the destiny which God’s providence has surely in store for him.
So much for political and social relationships, as between the two races. The Negroes have asked the momentous question, “What is our status?”
So too, in matters concerning the Church, they are asking the same question; not, indeed, as involving membership, but as regards organization. The proposal, made in 1874, to create separate Missionary Jurisdictions, resulted in separate Convocations, in a few Dioceses, some fourteen years later. Its renewal, in 1904, in the form of a Memorial, nearly unanimous, from the colored clergy, resulted, in 1918, in the application of the Canon on the Suffragan Episcopate to those Dioceses which should desire to adopt its provisions. The two Bishops elected by Arkansas and North Carolina have been given all the authority and personal initiative possible under the Canon. That it did not, and does not now, satisfy the full desire of the Memorialists is well known. That the conditions obtaining in the South and not now felt to be needful in the North, constitute ground for local adaptation of the Historic Episcopate, is the judgment of the Memorialists.
The reasons for the petition as “the result of many years of patient observation, study and prayer,” are clearly set forth, and may be found in the successive Journals of General Convention from 1904 to 1918. Meanwhile, there are no negro delegates in the House of Deputies, save one from Liberia and no direct voice, from the more than thirty thousand lay members, to represent their interests in the national body. This does not mean that the race is nowhere heard, or its interest never sought. But it does mean that, in national Conferences and Boards, to which the Negro has sought entrance, the Church is still slow to grant his request.
The picture is not wholly dark. What are the results which, in the midst of confusion and difficulties, the Negro has been able to achieve?
The statistics for the whole race, here given, are taken from the Negro Year Book of 1919. In 1866, the Negroes owned 12,000 homes; in 1919, 600,000. Farms owned in 1866, 20,000; in 1919, 50,000. The wealth, for the two contrasted years, is represented as $20,000,000 and $1,110,000,000.
These figures are very eloquent in their announcement. They do not, and cannot, even begin to tell the story of the supreme devotion, the untiring labor, the self-abasement, the sacrifice, the consummate wisdom, of most of that small company of real negro leaders, who, from the ’80s down to now, have accepted the responsibility, and performed the tremendous task, of retrieving the losses of reconstruction and inspiring the race with an indomitable will to move forward. For this company of leaders was from among the 3.6% of those in professional service, as teachers, doctors, lawyers and the like. Upon them fell the sacred task of guiding the remaining 96.4%, less than 10% of whom were literate. There is no more interesting reading than that which the story of these leaders presents; and that of the trade-schools, farmers’ conferences, educational rallies, and religious institutes.