For we have been present, not only as spectators, but as active participants in every trying crisis in the history of this nation. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, when labor troubles threatened the very life of the infant colony and continuing to the founding of the Republic—when white men were held in peonage or actual bondage for the uncanceled financial obligations due to the nobility of Great Britain—who furnished the labor which solved the vexed problem? Who furnished the brawn and muscle which cleared the forests, leveled the hills, tunneled the mountains, bridged the rivers, laid the tracks and cultivated the fields, until this broad land had become as beautiful as the lily of the valley and as fragrant as the rose of Sharon?
In 1776, when despotism was enthroned and liberty languished in the streets of Boston, was it not the blood of a Negro—Crispus Attucks—which animated the sinking spirit of the Goddess, who was almost ready to die under the oppression of King George and the despotism of Cornwallis?
In the Sixties—when Lincoln, despairing of the outcome of the Civil War, on account of the treachery in his own ranks and repeated reverses on the battle-field, called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the Rebellion in the South—who came to the rescue of the Union? In spite of the effort of McClellan and his company of 50,000 soldiers, who went to Richmond to prevent "niggers," as they were called, from enlisting, who came to the rescue of the Union? Whose blood helped to render the testament of liberty valid? Ask Port Hudson and Milligan's Bend, and Fort Wagner, and Fort Pillow, and Pittsburg Landing, how the nearly 200,000 Negro soldiers behaved themselves under the fire of the enemy on these memorable battlefields—rendered sacred by their patriotic blood.
Who saved the Rough Riders and Colonel Roosevelt in the late Spanish-American War, when San Juan was illuminated with the fire of Spanish cannonading? Hark! Methinks I hear the tramp of the black boys of the 24th and the 25th Cavalry, chanting to the strains of martial music,—"Glory Hallelujah, we are going to have a hot time in the old town to-night," as they dashed up the dangerous parapet to defend the honor of their country, and to keep "Old Glory" from trailing in the dust.
At the close of the Civil War we were without homes, lands, or money. To-day, according to the last census of the United States, we own 600,000 homes, 20,000,000 acres of farm land, covering an area equal to the political dominions of the kingdoms of Belgium and Holland. We have under cultivation 40,000,000 acres of farm lands, including those farms rented by our people and those owned in fee-simple, and worth $500,000,000. The gross incomes from the farms conducted by Negroes amount to $250,000,000 annually. We own 10,000 business establishments, 300 drug stores, and 57 banks.
At the close of the Civil War we were without schools, without men of letters, without men in the various professions and lucrative avocations of life. To-day, we have 200 universities, colleges, and schools of lower grade supported by the race. We have 3,000,000 Negro children attending these schools and the public schools of the land. We have written 2,000 books. We edit and conduct 200 periodicals and magazines. In forty years we have contributed, as levies for school purposes, $45,000,000. With a membership of 4,000,000 we have 35,000 churches, valued at $56,000,000, and contribute annually $7,500,000 to their support. We contribute annually $6,000,000 to secret and benevolent societies. We have about 40,000 teachers, 1,500 lawyers, 2,500 doctors, 20,000 preachers, and 80,000 business men—Marvellous!—Marvellous!
A race that can produce in fifty years, beginning with nothing, such a report as this, whose minutest detail is supported by official statistics, needs no pity, Mr. Chairman. A race that can produce a Douglass, a Langston, a Hood, a Scott, a Turner, a Harvey Johnson, a Bruce, a Payne, an Arnett, a Revells, a Price, an Elliott, a Montgomery, a Bowen, a Mason, a Dunbar, a Du Bois, and last but not least, a Booker T. Washington—the foremost genius of our vocational and industrial training—asks not for pity. It only asks for an equal opportunity in the race of life; it asks not for special legislation to accommodate any necessity; it simply asks for a just application of existing laws to all citizens alike, without any reference to race or color or previous condition of servitude. The representatives of this race, in this year of Our Lord, 1913, ask the American people to judge them upon the record of their great and useful men and women which the race has produced in less than a half century—and upon the average merit of the mass of the race since the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by the immortal Lincoln.
In concluding this brief summary—for at best it can only be regarded as a brief summary of the doings of the race—and standing on the threshold of a new era in politics, in commerce, in religion and in ethics—a new era in the feeling and temper of the white American towards the Afro-American, I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, what shall be our conduct in the future? Watchman, what shall be the forecast?
Mr. Chairman, the forecast is bright—brighter than it has ever been in any previous period of the race's history in this nation—and I make this statement in the fullest appreciation of the efforts which are being made all over this land, by adverse legislation, to weed us out of politics and other public preferments; to push us into a corner to ourselves, in both Church and State—a propaganda which has brought gloom to many of our leaders, producing a pessimism inimical to progress.
But why a pessimistic outlook, Mr. Chairman? Is it possible to deprive ten million native-born American citizens from the enjoyment of their rights and privileges, guaranteed alike to all by the Constitution of the United States? I think not. Such a condition, Mr. Chairman, would be like an established government with no diplomatic representative at court. No matter what methods are adopted, some of the representative men of our race, unexpectedly or otherwise, in the final analysis, will slip in; if not in the Congress of the United States, then in the legislatures and in the municipal governments of the State—such, for example, as Lawyer Bass in Philadelphia, Pa.; Councilman Cummings in Baltimore; Smith in the legislature of Ohio; Fitzgerald in New Jersey, and Jackson in Illinois. No arrangement, no matter how planned, can ultimately defeat this logical result which patience alone will produce.