SECOND PAPER.
HOW CAN THE NEGROES BE INDUCED TO RALLY MORE TO NEGRO ENTERPRISES AND TO THEIR PROFESSIONAL MEN?
BY PROF. J. W. GILBERT.
PROF. JOHN W. GILBERT, M. A.
Prof. John Wesley Gilbert, A. B., A. M., was born at Hephzibah, Ga., July 6, 1864. Young Gilbert was left to the care of his widowed mother and his uncle John, for whom he had been named. He usually spent half the year on the farm and the other half in the public schools of the city of Augusta. After finishing the public grammar school course, he spent twelve months, all told, in the Atlanta Baptist College (then Seminary).
In January, 1884, Paine College opened in Augusta. He attended this institution eighteen months and graduated from it in June, 1886. In September of the same year he entered the Junior Class of Brown University, Providence, R. I. He graduated from this historic institution with honor in June, 1888. For excellence in Greek a scholarship in the American College, Athens, Greece, was conferred upon him at the end of his Senior year. In the spring of 1889, he married Miss Osceola Pleasant of Augusta, Ga. He attended the American College, Athens, Greece, during 1890-91. Under his supervision the site of Ancient Eretria, now Nea Psara, on the island of Enbola, was excavated and in collaboration with Prof. John Pickard, the only extant map of this ancient city was made by him. All the places of classic note in Greece were visited and studied by him. His M. A. degree was conferred upon him by Brown University upon the presentation of his thesis, "The Demes of Attica." He also took one semester of lectures in the University of Berlin, in 1891. He is author of several archaeological productions and has contributed articles on this subject to the New York Independent and other journals of like standing. He is at present a member of the Philological Association of America, and membership, which he accepts, in the Archaeological Institute, has also been tendered him. Ever since the fall of 1891, he has held the chair of Greek and German in Paine College, Augusta, Ga. Besides, he is a preacher of the order of Elder in the C. M. E. Church in America. As representative of that church, he was a delegate to the Ecumenical Conference, held in London, England, September, 1901. During the session he preached and lectured for a number of the largest and most intelligent audiences in England.
By proper education of the patrons, and merit on the part of Negro business enterprises and professional men, is a summary answer to the above question. It will be well for our present purposes to investigate this answer in detail. The natural inference therefrom—an inference whose justness is easily demonstrable—is that the education of the Negro race, so far and in such manner as it has already proceeded, is defective, when it comes to the question of training Negroes to support their own business enterprises and professional men. The very text books, not to mention the living teachers, in every department of education, whether professional or otherwise, are written by authors and for students other than Negroes. For every public, and well nigh every private educational institution of the land, the trustees of education have prescribed books which, besides suppressing whatever praiseworthy associations the race has had with the history and literature of our common country, never call the words of a Negro wise; nor his deeds noble. It is neither a sufficient nor true answer to the question, to say that Negroes have contributed nothing of educational or civic value to the literature or history of this country. Manifestly, then, our young people come out of school without confidence in the ability of their race to do what members of other races can do. This, I take it, is the reason why we find educated Negroes, as a rule, bestowing their patronage upon business enterprises and professional men of other races rather than upon their own representatives in the same vocation. This lack of confidence and race pride, characteristic of the educated as well as of the uneducated Negro, is the most destructive heritage bequeathed by slavery days to any once enslaved race in the history of the world. Hence, as a race, we need a thorough revision of our system of education which shall encourage the production of Negro authorship, on the one hand, and the confidence-and-pride-inspiring study of the worthfulness of the Negro's enviable record, on the other.
The schools are, however, only one of the agencies of education in the broadest acceptation of that term. Equally potent with scholastic training, if not more so, is the cultivation of social sentiment in the community. Sentiment is higher than law, and the endeavor of all honest legislation should be to make laws expressive of the mandates of the highest and best sentiment. Any given community can almost always be trusted to act upon the impulse of sentiment, whether this comports with the law or not. Whether expressed or unexpressed, the social sentiment among Negroes—and it is seemingly often innate—is not favorable to the support of their own enterprises and professional men. Were it otherwise, we should now have prosperous wholesale and retail merchants, successful factories, large real estate agencies, considerable banks, solid insurance companies, better institutions of learning, well-paid lawyers, physicians, dentists, etc., and the reaction on the whole race would have been to change our status in the nation from that of mendicant denizens, as at present, to that of influential well-to-do citizens. This mutual helping of each other is expected of us, if we are to judge from the evidences given us from time to time by our white fellow citizens. For example, the white undertakers in Augusta, Georgia, have given up to the colored undertakers all their Negro patronage. The best white physicians do not seek Negro patients. Although greed for "the almighty dollar" keeps most white business men seeking Negro patronage, they do not, as a rule, try to prevent Negroes from patronizing Negroes except by striving to make it to their pecuniary advantage to patronize white men. In a word, it is natural, they allow, for birds of a feather to flock together. And this is true of the Jew, the German, the Irishman, of all except the Negro. As it is, the average Negro chooses rather to be discourteously and carelessly treated by a white professional or business man, often of inferior ability, than to be properly treated by a man of superior ability of his own race. Hence, to induce Negro patronage of Negro enterprises and professional men, there must be cultivation of the social sentiment of the Negro community by all possible means.
From every view-point the pulpit is the strongest factor in the cultivation of social sentiment. Some few preachers occasionally "talk on this line," but unfortunately for the influence of their admonitions, they themselves purchase their groceries and drugs, employ their physician and undertaker from members of another race. "A house divided against itself cannot stand," like many another passage and teaching from the "Book of God and the god of books," might as applicably be preached to a large number of Negro preachers as to their congregations. It is no "unholy compromise" of the gospel of saving grace to teach that the "Man of Galilee" came first unto his "own," and that to "follow after him" and his apostles in their doctrine of "first to the Jew," our religion should exemplify Christ by our acting on the principle, "first to the Negro." I would have this doctrine promulgated persistently, earnestly, constantly, from every Negro pulpit as the only hope of the Negro race, as such, and, therefore, of the perpetuity and progress of their churches. Nor should the publishing of the doctrine find place only in the congregations of the laity, but it should be proclaimed in the clerical conferences, conventions, associations, synods, assemblies, etc., for I recognize it as a case of "Physician, heal thyself."