And in this realm Mr. Chestnut tells us of a mulatto boy who marries a woman of Negro type, and who was old enough for the boy's mother, but had, at that time, youth enough left to make the disparity of age at the time of little objection, especially in the times and situation where there was little objection to marriages of any sort. But the youth escapes from slavery and in the far North receives education, development and culture, and in time earns a competence that makes life desirable and opens up vistas to new happiness, for the old life is now only a memory of what the new man once was, and the new man is on the borderland of new love and marriage befitting all his advancements, while the mulatto slave boy, the slave girl, the black slave-wife and the slave connections are left forever behind. But in all these twenty-five years the black slave wife is still living, still ignorant and yielding all the while to age until she is an old woman. But there was one thing that did not yield to age and time, and that was her love for her boy husband, and, what was more, her sublime and unwavering faith in the constancy of her "Yaller Sam," after whom she sends inquiry after inquiry, and year after year tramps from place to place in her search, with faith and love divine ever leading her on, until one day in a Northern city, to which place she had finally traced him, she stopped at his very door to humbly inquire of the strange gentleman she saw for her "Yaller Sam," never dreaming that it was he to whom she spoke, though he knew her and had to face the bitter tragedy of it all. But Mr. Chestnut's art enables him to take care of so sorrowful a case satisfactorily.
"The Wheel of Progress" touches another phase of pathetic situations arising out of the mixture of people and sentiments in the South. The story tells of an ostracized Northern white teacher who, from young womanhood, labors away her life for the Negroes, until her age and health reach that degree of disadvantage that her position as teacher, once her medium of charity, becomes her only means for a living. In the meantime the Negroes whom she and others helped to uplift and develop, and to whom, because of race distinction, most all avenues outside of menial labor are closed, except preaching and teaching, had become her competitors. In the conflict that arose over the reappointment of the white missionary teacher and a young Negro to the place the pitiful situation is again taken care of by Mr. Chestnut's fine art. "The House Behind the Cedars," until his latest, "The Marrow of Tradition," was his most ambitious attempt. In this book the story of an Octoroon family is put forth in all the pathos and tragedy that is the lot of so many Negroes who belong wholly to neither race.
Mr. Chestnut's latest book, "The Marrow of Tradition," is a strong and vigorous presentation of the colored man's case against the South in the form of a dramatic novel. This book especially deserves a wide reading among the Negroes, who have none too many friends to plead their cause. Mr. Chestnut, as one truly high-rank novelist among us, ought to have such a hearing among the eight millions that would give him all the advantages of a successful novelist from a financial standpoint as a return for his labor, which is by no means for himself alone.
In closing, it is but fair to say, while the artists of high rank among us are few in number, in an article discussing the Negro as a writer, in mentioning names at all, it must necessarily follow that there are very many names not here mentioned that would deserve to be if in such an article as this there were any intention or necessity to mention the whole list of Negro writers who write well and with power in every department of letters.
TOPIC XVII.
DID THE AMERICAN NEGRO PROVE, IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, THAT HE IS INTELLECTUALLY EQUAL TO THE WHITE MAN?
BY M. W. GILBERT, D. D.
REV. M. W. GILBERT, D. D.
The subject of this sketch was born July 25, 1862, at Mechanicsville, Sumter County, South Carolina. His parents were slaves and his father, a Baptist minister, is still alive. Mr. Gilbert began his early school life during the reconstruction period, at Mechanicsville, and continued it at Mannville, in an adjoining township, until 1879, when he entered Benedict College (then Benedict Institute) at Columbia, South Carolina. He remained in Benedict till the spring of 1883, when he graduated from a classical course specially designed to fit him for a Northern college. In the fall of 1883, after a searching examination, he entered the freshman class of Colgate University and remained in that institution four years, until his graduation in 1887 with the degree of A. B. During his college course Mr. Gilbert particularly distinguished himself in the languages and oratory. During his sophomore year he won in an oratorical contest the First Kingsford Prize. Although the only colored man in his class, yet he was so highly esteemed by his classmates that he enjoyed the unique distinction of being elected every three months for four years as Class Secretary and Treasurer. In addition to this he was elected Class Historian in his senior year. His alma mater conferred on him the degree of A. M. in 1890. Immediately after his graduation Mr. Gilbert was called to the pastorate of the First Colored Baptist Church at Nashville, Tenn. He remained in this position three years and a half and then he accepted the call of the Bethel Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Fla. He was not permitted by his denomination to remain long in this pastorate; for after one year in it, on the nomination of the American Baptist Home Mission Society of New York, he was elected to lead in the educational work among the colored Baptists of Florida. He presided one year over the Florida Institute at Live Oak, and he led in 1892 in the founding of the Florida Baptist Academy (now college) at Jacksonville, Fla. The cares and anxiety involved in this work threatened his health and in 1894 he resigned this position to accept the pastorate of a young church organization in Savannah, Ga., having in the meantime declined an election to the presidency of State University at Louisville, Ky. In 1894 he was elected Vice-President and Professor of History, Political Science, and Modern Languages, in the Colored State College at Orangeburg, S. C. He served in this capacity two years and after re-election for a third year he resigned to re-enter upon his life-work in the gospel ministry. He served a few months after this in the office of General Missionary and Corresponding Secretary of the Baptist State Convention of South Carolina, but this work militating against his health he gave up to enter upon the pastorate of the Central Baptist Church at Charleston, S. C., where he now is. Mr. Gilbert received three years ago the degree of D. D. from Guadalupe College of Seguin, Tex. In 1883 Dr. Gilbert was married in Columbia, S. C., to Miss Agnes Boozer. Seven children have been born to them, five of whom are still living. Dr. Gilbert is much in demand as a public speaker on great occasions and his services are frequently sought by some of the best churches of his denomination.