And how was the progress accomplished? It began with the veritable crusade of constructive service preached by the leaders.
“If educated men and women of the race will see and acknowledge the necessity of practical industrial training, and go to work with a zeal and determination, their example will be followed by others who are now without ambition of any kind. The race cannot hope to come into its own until the young colored men and women make up their minds to assist in the general development along these lines. The elder men and women trained in the hard school of slavery, and who so long possessed all the labor—skilled and unskilled—of the South, are dying out; their places must be filled by their children, or we shall lose our hold upon these occupations. Again, Phillips Brooks gave expression to the sentiment: ‘One generation gathers the material, and the next builds the palaces.’ As I understand it, he wished to inculcate the idea that one generation lays the foundation for succeeding generations.”
This is a sample of the messages of these crusaders, borne in varying cadences throughout the race. The appeal was to the cultured, by precept and even more by example, to stimulate the ambition of the whole race; to realize that foundation-building is the task of each generation, and that the neglect of one generation means loss to itself and the next.
But they were not preaching only. They did what they exhorted others to do. With the help of white friends, they began to build schools, and to teach those who could teach others the value of industry and thrift, and the blessings of the self-respect that is unafraid to face life and contribute to its needs. And thus the army of teachers began to go forth. Most of them were not well prepared, and are not at this day, for the calls have been so hurried that the preparation has been equally so.
Today there are 38,000 teachers, against the 600 in 1866; most of them in the little country schools; many under most difficult conditions and impossible surroundings, both of which are rapidly improving under the kindly interest of the dominant whites. And, too, there are many thousands, trained to a degree in the various trades, and taking their places in the industrial life of their homes. The fact that, in 1866, 95% were illiterate, and now only 20%, stands as a living monument to the devoted leaders of these forty years past.
What then is the status of the Negro in American life? Our forefathers fought for liberty to bestow it on all when the time came that the humblest members were prepared to assume its responsibilities. A later generation fought for Democracy—that crowning and pervading principle of liberty. Our great leaders have been as wise, as clear, as simple in the interpretation of democracy as their forefathers were in that of liberty. Shall the Church of God be wise enough, and devoted enough, and fearless enough, to lead the people of God to realize what has been purchased with blood and consecrated by sacrifice?
Now, as then, self-interest engenders prejudice; prejudice of class towards other classes, of crafts towards other crafts, of race towards other races. All the prejudice is not on one side; but no white man, with an eye to justice, can fail to admit the Negro has far the greater cause for his prejudice.
The very existence of different crafts and classes, and still more of different races occupying the same national home, makes problems. The only solution that really solves is Justice, with its accompanying weight in the balance—Mercy. Without the exercise of these, no class or race could hope for continuous life or persistent growth. Where truth and justice meet together, righteousness and peace will kiss each other in a brotherly, harmonious relation, that only the devil’s lies and cruel injustice ever mar and distort.
The Negro has been free for sixty years and more. Building upon the wonderfully fine foundation of the past (in spite of manifold and manifest flaws in its making), he has reared racial structures of social, commercial, industrial and religious life, that command respect and admiration. The credit belongs to both races—to the Negro himself, but no less to the race which was once his owner, and whose hand is clearly seen in the building.
The Negro knows even better than his white critics how faulty a living building is in which the majority of the living stones are still rough, unpolished, unsquared. He asks, and he has the right which God gives to His people to ask, that, as a free man, he be treated as a man; that, as justice is the right of life, he be accorded it; that, as a citizen, he be granted the rights of citizenship—the equal right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that laws governing citizenship be applied with equal justice to Negroes and to Whites.