AN APPEAL TO THE KING
THE ADDRESS DELIVERED
ON
NEGRO DAY
IX THE
ATLANTA EXPOSITION
OCTOBER 21, 1895
BY THE
REV. J. W. E. BOWEN, Ph. D., D. D.
Professor of Historical Theology,
IN
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ATLANTA, GA.
AN APPEAL TO THE KING
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:
As a representative of the American Negro, I venture to address a
modest statement and an appeal to the king. We realize that, although
the king is invisible, his personality is tangible. . He occupies a front
seat in the halls of legislation; he dictates the political policy of the
nation; his nod of approval is more significant than the mythological
rod of Jupiter, while his disapproving nod spreads fear and consterna¬
tion far and wide amid the ranks of his subjects. He determines what
statutes shall be enacted, and should his subjects in a mad freak enact
any statute contrary to his wishes he annuls them immediately and
relegates the reckless and vituline political Titans to the limbo of
political forgetfulness. He sits in a high chair in the police, the crimi¬
nal, the equity, the appellate and supreme courts of the states and of
the nation and interprets the law. He then prescribes to the police, the
sheriff, the constable, the mayor, the governor and president how these
interpretations shall be canied out. The great body of his laws is
unwritten, but they are executed with scrupulous exactness in the
minutest detail. He sets the pace in the drawing room; the swing of
his baton describes the movement of the foot, the hum of the music and
the color, quality and style of the dress.
RECENT SOCIAL CHANGES
The whirligig of time is merciless and providential—merciless to the
indolent and reckless, but providential to the faithful and honorable.
The poetic truth that "There is a divinity that shapes our lives, rough
hew them as we may," may be rewritten in the prosaic facts of today as
found in the experience of individuals as well as in that of peoples and
of nations. The changes are so rapid and radical in human society,
flitting before our gaze like the fast-unfolding views of a huge pano¬
rama, or like dissolving and charming lines in the kaleidoscope, that we
can scarcely get more than an outline or rightly esteem their far-
reaching effects. The eye grows weary and the brain is overpowered
in contemplating these monotonous and astounding changes. And yet
we have but come to the outskirts of a mighty and harmless cataclysm
in society when the present inequalities and misadjustments will be
remedied and human society become so based that there shall be
equality of opportunity for every human being. In actual illustration
the Greeks are at our doors. We are too near the recent civil and frac-
ticidal strife to appreciate this fact, whereby a new people was born in
a day; a people that to all practical appearance, as well as by anteced¬
ents, were no people at all. And even more marvelous is that other
incomparable fact standing alone in its gracious magnanimity and in
the silence of its untarnished splendor is the revolution in the moral-
and social sentiment toward the Negro on the part of his former master.
This fact alone is a sufficient and an unwitting confirmation of the
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existence of an undertow of righteousness in human society; and
moreover it is a reasonable guarantee that ultimately all the world
will brothers become.
Our eyes have seen strange sights and our ears have heard strange
sounds. When Booker T. Washington delivered his unmatched speech
from this platform, a distinguished citizen of Georgia, the successor to
one of her proudest sons, said : "That man's speech is the beginning of
a moral revolution in America." That utterance is proof in itself that
the revolution has already come, and it only remains for time to crys¬
tallize its various phases and essentials into the component elements of
civilization.
The erection and equipment of the Negro building; the Negro's
place of usefulness and honor, in this most notable of southern exposi¬
tions and the general satisfaction expressed with his accomplishments
are all additional marks of unpreceived but positive changes in society.
And once again the Negro wishes to put himself on record in the most
positive, hearty and unequivocal terms, without the least tinge of
Jesuitical sophistry that he loves the land of his nativity and is ready,
as of yore, to pour out his heart's best blood for the institutions of that
land. The sad and sweet memory of his historic sorrows saturate this
atmosphere and every foot of ground in southern soil is made holy be-
caus it embalms the sacred dust of his faithful sires. The memory of
our deeds is still a fragrant and faithful theme. I appeal to the bronzed
lips of your orator on Marietta street, who stands supremely alone in
painting the devotion of my sable and ignorant sires. Hear him in his
speech before the Merchants'Association of Boston in their annual ban¬
quet, December, 1889 : "I see a slave scuffling through the smoke,winding
his black arms around the fallen form, reckless of the hurtling death,
bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on his stricken
lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that he would lay down his life
for his master's stead. I see him by the weary bedside ministering
with uncomplaining patience, praying with all of his humble heart that
God would lift his master up until death comes in mercy and in honor
to still the soldier's life. I see him by the open grave, mute, motion¬
less, uncovered suffering for the death of him who in life fought
against his freedom. I see him when the mound is heaped and the
great drama of his life is closed, turn away with downcast eyes and
uncertain step starts out in the new and uncertain fields, faltering,
struggling, but moving on until his shambling figuie is lost in the light
of this better and brighter day. And from the grave comes a voice say¬
ing: I'Followhim! Put your arms about him in his need, even as he
puts his arm about me. Be his friends as he was'mine."
Our ears have become familiar with the so-called race problem,
which has been popularly interpreted to mean the Negro race problem.
A truer and larger conception of the subject would speak of the human
race problem, instead of the narrower Negro race problem. This great
problem assumes different name in different parts of the world. We
have nihilism in Russia, socialism in Germany, communism in France,
socialism and the submerged tenth in England, while in the United
States it is as multiform in its elements as the nation is composite in
its blood and physiognomy. In California it is the problem of the
Chinese, in the great middle west it is the Scandinavian and other for¬
eign struggles; in the north, central and eastern states it is the Irish
and Italian problem, while overreaching all of these is the problem of
the battle for bread, and in the south it is the Negro problem. It is,
therefore, no sign of breadth of vision to declare that there is only one
great problem in the United States and that one is the Negro problem.
These problems will require centuries of persistent effort that they may
be solved upon the ethical and equitable basis of the New Testament
teachings. In dealing with all of these the principles of equality and
of brotherhood should obtain.
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THREE FEET MAKE A YARD
It is a basal and sociological truth that, other things being equal,
like treatment and like opportunities produce like results, the breadth
and quality of which will depend upon native power and inherent
ability. What is the condition for the development of the noblest type
among men ? There can be but one answer to this question, namely,
equality of opportunity. The largest struggle of human society is to
attain this concrete reality of civil justice. Under it, each will produce
according to his ability for the good of mankind, and that good will not
be a passive uniformity cast into the stereotyped mold of racial capacity,
but will be complex in its essentials and divinely human in its cast.
The Negro has learned that three feet make a yard in mathematics,
and he believes that they make a yard in politics, economics and ethics;
in Europe, Asia and Africa; among whites and among blacks. It is
noteworthy that inside of one generation the Negro should learn such
valuable lessors. And in cons'equence of which he has begun the study
of himself and is seeking to locate himself as a factor among men. The
Negro has a definite sphere to fill in history, and although his day is a
day of small beginnings, the present results are prophetic of large vic¬
tories in the future. His educational life has just begun and his teach¬
ers, without bias, say that he will some day fill the world with his name.
This belief to the contrary notwithstanding, the old question still lives
and with vital pertinacity challenges the soberest thought of states¬
men, ecclesiastic and political, namely : Has the Negro any place in
American life. If so what is that place to be? But the most encour¬
aging feature about this question is the fact that the Negro himself
has addressedhis best thought to its answer. A certain school of polit¬
ical economists assume to lay down as a maximum to govern the forma¬
tion and development of a nation this theory : Without amalgamation
of blood there can be no national life to those not amalgamated. This
is as crude a notion as the ancient theory of the flatness of the earth.
The present progress of mankind in every clime is its best refutation.
Nevertheless in spite of the fact that the noble Sinbad is almost ridden
to death by this Old Man of the Sea, it must be observed that America
is the only country that is at work upon this problem. England and
Europe have not had the courage nor disposition, if they had the wis¬
dom, so much as to read the problem through once. But the American
people have the disposition and the audacity not only to read it through,
but to begin its wise solution upon the broad basis of humanity, and
please God, the Negro will have sense enough to stay and contribute to
its correct solution until this nation shall become in truth homogeneous
in sentiment though heterogeneous in blood.
The United States is the sphere of nationality and not of raceality;
blood makes a race, but sentiment a nation; and the chief corner stone
of the nation is the first statement in the original charter of the proud
republic: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienahle rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness." The question of the equality of the races as familiarly
understood and as commonly interpreted is a threadbare and musty
saying and is groundless in reason and in the concrete facts of today.
There is no such thing as perfect equality of individuals or
races. This is a figment clung to by minds that are woefully deficient
in rudimentary training or are still wrapped in the swaddling bands of
medieval infancy. The true or native equality of men as stated by the
great Jefferson in the fundamental charter of the republic and as
rationality and biblically interpreted in biology, philosophy, reason,
scripture and common sense is, that all men are natively and equally
endowed with the essentials of humanity and of divinity. And because
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of. this, each and all should be permitted to develop his endowment for
the good of society within the limits of unprejudiced legislation. Such
an interpretation and process of development must lead to the largest
good for the largest number.
THE NEGRO'S PLACE IN HISTOHV
With regard to the Negro's place in American life, it was formerly
stated that he was only fit for servitude; that the best part of him was
his faithful muscle; that even today and forevermore he must remain a
serf or a hewer of wood and a drawer of water to the vast revolving
machinery of civilization; he must be the ignorant workman and the
unassimilated pariah of Americam society. It is to his credit that in
his early days he had brawn; that it drove the ax that rang through
the forest of the Old Dominion and the plow that upturned the sod of
Louisiana and Mississippi for the cane and cotton, while his voice
endowed their leaves with a tongue never before heard. With his
powerful right he scattered the silver grain in the Carolinas, and the
golden grain in Maryland and Georgia and disemboweled the moun¬
tains of Tennessee of their ancient black treasury, and from his earliest
days in this country unto a very recent day, his sweat was almost the
only oil for the machinery of southern industry and his arm the driving
wheel of its trade. And when we shall be removed from the struggles
of recent times in the social and political world to the centuries beyond
in which the prejudices engendered in the participants of the strife
shall be known only through the cold type of history, then under the
unblurred eye and the cold and unsympathetic logic of the patient
historian the period of the servitude of the Negro will shine forth with
a luster unapproachable in American history.
When it is asserted that he must be a worker, all sensible Negroes
answer yea and amen? A worker in clay wrenching from nature her
hidden stores; a worker in wood, iron, brass, steel and glass turning the
world into an habitation fit for the Gods; a worker in the subtile ele¬
ments of nature in obedience to the original command to subdue and
conquer it; a worker in the realm of mind contributing to the thought
products of mankind, thereby vindicating for himself a birthright to
the citizenship of the republic of thought; a statesman in church and
instate; a publicist and a political economist; in short, he must be a
man among men, not so much a Black man but a MAN though
black. And for the attainment of all the possibilities of his rich, unex¬
plored African nature of docility and tractability; of enthusiasm and
perseverance with his burning African fervor, there must be measured
to him as well as to the white man three feet to make a yard. Such an
equality of opportunity not only establishes an equality of responsi¬
bility, but must be reached before human society shall prosper under
the normal laws of true development. The Negro does not shrink
nor ask to be exempted from the working of the latter half of this
statement, namely, equality of responsibility; but simply prays
to the American sentiment, who is'the King, for equality of oppor¬
tunity in all matters that effect the welfare of the state. In all matters
relating to the security of the homes of the people and the institutions
of the republic, we say to the king that the story of our past fealty is the
best answer we can make touching our future devotion and interest.
It is on record for us, written by one of the greatest of democratic
presidents, Andrew Jackson, that we may be actuated by lofty purposes
as seen in the noble defense made by Negro soldiers of the city of New
Orleans in the second British war. It is on record for us that in all of
the social upheavals between capital and lahor the Negro has never
been found with fire brand in hand. We point with pride to our loving
and lucid history that we are humane as well as human.
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A l'l.EA l'"OR THK HIGHER EDUCATION OK THE NEGRO
Before asking now what is the Negro's place in American civiliza¬
tion, a larger question comes into notice that effects all men, namely,
what is the place of any branch or family of the human race in the
sum total of humanity? The man who attempts to answer this question
will risk his wit. The Negro's place will be what he makes for him¬
self, just as the place of every people is what that people makes for itself,
and he will be no exception to the rule. The method whereby he shall
make that place is under consideration. One class contends that he
must make it by staying in the-three "R's" and they are specially
at pains in ridiculing the higher education of the Negro's, even for
leaders in church or state. Yea, he must Jearn the three "R's;" he must
master the king's of English and then he must plume his pinions of
thought for a flight with Copernicus, Keppler and Herschel; he must
sharpen his logic for a walk with Plato, Emanuel Kant and Herbert
Spencer; he must clarify his vision for investigations with Yirchow,
Huxley and Gray; he must be able to deal in the abtruse questions of
law as do Gladstone, Judge Story and Judge Speer; he must fortify
himself to divide rightly the Word as do Cannon Farrar, Bishop Fos¬
ter, Bishop HaygoOd, Dr. John Hall and Dr. H. L. Wayland. In short,
the education of the Negro must be on par with the education of the
white man. It must begin in the kindergarten as that of the white
child and end in the university as that of the white man. Anything
short of this thorough preparation for all of the stages of life for the
Negro would be unfair to a large part of humanity. We ask that noth¬
ing be done that would spoil his nature or masculate his personality, but
let everything be done that would fit him to fill every situation in life
that man may fill from the blacksmith and hod carrier to the statesman
and philosopher. And if such preparation require a knowledge of the
old blue black spelling book or of Aristotle's logic; a knowledge of the
plow or the trip hammer or of the spade or of the driving wheel; or of
simple addition or integral calculus; or the first reader or Kant's
"Critique," simple justice and common sense require that he be ac¬
quainted with whatever shall fit him to fill his station in life. Does
this mean that the Negro be turned into a white man? Is he to be so
educated that he will cease to be what God meant that he should be?
Nay I verily, for any education that makes a people dissatisfied with
their racial personality is a farce and a reproach.
PROTECT EVERY WOMAN
Gentlemen of the south, and of the north, may I speak for myself.
If so, 'Hear me for my cause and be silent that ye may hear.' You are
the representatives of the noblest civilization that ever leaped from the
brain of man. In the earliest days of Puritan discipline in this coun¬
try, and even in England, your fathers were giants in the land, and in
many parts their sons are worthy successors. Your indomitable cour¬
age and resistless power have won for you victories upon battlefields
that reduce the victories of Xerxes and Alexander to the achieve¬
ments of novices. Your triumph in the world of mind, in science,
philosophy, history and ethics are unparalleled in history. Your
ethical and political conceptions have honeycombed the world, and
although your record is stained with spots unworthy your training and
privileges, still like the sun, though spotted, it is glorious. Your
conception of the sacredness of the family relation and the value of
personal chastity and of the paramount necessity for the protection of
womanly virtues is the crown and glory of your splendid history. We
cannot but bow to you for these magnificent achievements. As a
representative of the thinking people of my race I take off my hat to
the white man of this country, north and south, when he swears by all
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that liveth that the sanctity of his home and the purity of his family
shall be maintained inviolate at every hazard. Our noblest nature
affirms this. We to<?have come to learn that the purity of woman means
the purity of the family and the purity of the family the purity of
the race and nation, and whosoever insults that purity is an enemy to
society and in league with hell. And when it is said that we have no
conception of the value of purity or the sacredness of the marriage
relation we simply ask that the sins of the vicious be not charged to
the whole race. We confess with shamed face that our notions of these
relations, on the whole, are not what they should be. With this
confession it ought to be stated that our training on the whole has not
been what it should have been. But the race is making a heroic effort to
expel from its system all the virus of degrading sin and thus far we
have made progress. We pray thee to deal gently with thy servants in
this respect, seeing that we are struggling to make our race a race of
purity, sobriety and christian power. We do not ask that the criminal
escape, but we plead that the court shall ferret out his crime by due
process of law and that he receive the full measure of punishment
according to law. We ask that justice, sure, unbiased and remorseless
be meted out to all criminals, black and white, who violate the purity
of any woman, white or black, south 01* north, and we here would join
hands with you around our common altar and swear allegiance to those
principles to aid you in finding and punishing the criminals wherever
found. Thus the education that the negro needs is the education that
the white man needs to make him honorable, virtuous, industrious and
to fit him to fill his place whatever it may be.
A TRIBTTTK TO NORTHERN PHILANTHROPISTS
We have come today to present to you and to the country a lew
products of our brain and skill wrought out under adverse and trying
circumstances. We present them humbly and modestly, not as com¬
pleted products, but as the earnest of our undeveloped power and the
prophecy of our possible future. We record with grateful recognition
the magnanimity of our southern friends in this opportunity given us
to come before the country in a new light. This act in itself is a clear
indication of future developments. By observation it will be seen that
the exhibits from the schools among the American Negro are by far in
excess of that of a promiscuous character, and this is as is should be,
for the largest life of the Negro since emancipation has been a school
life. These results are due to our philanthropic friends. The Negro
would be unworthy of the confidence of his southern white friends and
prove himself a sordid ingrate did he not hold in grateful memory the
unstinted deeds of his philanthropic northern friends. When the
smoking throat of the angry gun ceased to belch forth death and des¬
truction and when the shotted cannon ceased in its carnage of death
and the thunders were 'hushed on the moor,' suddenly there leaped
upon the stage of action a people crude, rude, ignorant, superstitious,
with only a few marks of divinity left, but enough to be identified as
human. Then it was that the messengers of love came into our bleeding
and sorely distressed south and with a patience and cheerful generos¬
ity that would make the angels hush their heavenly harps to watch and
admire, they begun their tedious, discouraging and seemingly fruitless,
but self-imposed task to teach the Negro the elements of civilized life
in a state of freedom. The philanthropists in the north of every
church and of no church poured out their millions for the work. Their
monuments and those of the workers are in every southern state in
brick and mortar, the lighthouses of civilization, the fortresses of
American patriotism and the institutes of religion. Their names are
legion, but among them stand out prominently John F. Slater, Daniel
Hand, Alexander Meharray, Clinton B. Fisk, Mr. Fayerweather, Elijah
H. Gammon, William F. Stewart and others. And moreover the sacred
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dust of somaof these heroes and heroines lie sleeping in southern soil.
On yon hill, beneath the classic shade of Atlanta University, is laid in
perpetual peace the remains of the late Dr. Ware, whose very life is a
constant source of inspiration to all who knew him and there is an
atmosphere of holy awe that surrounds that solitary grave. The
monuments of these heroic laborers and generous givers is in more
than brick and stone. It is in flesh and blood, in the multitudes of
broadly educated and scholarly and cultured men and women who are
working out a magnificent destiny in the South, in the leaders of the
race, in the pulpit, at the bar, in the medical profession, in the school
room, in the work shop, at the bench and in every trade and calling, to
bless mandkind and advance civilization. Their work has begun to
show what the possibilities of the Negro mind are. And ever true to
our proverbial and African instinct and the warm blood that circulates
in our veins, we place upon the brow of these, our noble friends,
the garland of our heart's divinest gratitude.
THE NEW NEGRO
These simple results that may be seen in the Negro building are
from a people just thirty years in freedom. They represent many
spheres of labor and enterprise and show what may be accomplished
under a more perfect system of life and labor. They show, moreover,
that the Negro has been an apt and faithful student of his teachers in
the mechanism of his skill as well as in the intellectual product of his
brain. Thirty years of freedom is scarcely enough to take the first steps
in the arts of peace. It required centuries for the Anglo-Saxons
to reach his present commanding position. The Negro's present days
of infancy and of small beginnings are no criterion to measure his
future by. The depths from which he has come and the obstacles sur¬
rounding him must be remembered when expressing judgment of him;
and when superficial writers on the other side of the water, as well as
on this side, declare that the Negro can never assimilate a high civiliza¬
tion nor approach the present attainments of the Anglo-Saxons, they
discover an immaturity of thought worthy of the schoolboy's effort.
This proves that the social problems of any country are to be learned
only by long years of contact and of unprejudiced study. A railroad
observation in sociology may make fascinating reading, but it lacks the
elements of endurance and accuracy and cannot command the respect¬
ful notice of more than novelistic readers for one decade. To under¬
stand thr rapid strides that the Negro has taken one must know the
pit from which he was digged, and the rock from which he was hewn.
The cold facts of his present standing press out in bold relief with the
distinctness of a mosaic and declare that there is a wealth unmeasured
in that hidden mine. The first step has been taken and if the south
and the north will measure to him an equality of opportunity there will
come as the result splendid achievements for society. He longs to have
a full chance; he longs to do nobly.
Finally, oh king! a new Negro has come upon the stage of action.
As you enter the main entrance of the Negro building you will observe
the statue of a Negro with broken manacles upon his wrists. This
statue was born in the fruftful brain of a Negro, Mr. Hill of Washington.
His frame is muscular and powerful; his eye is fixed upon his broken
but hanging chain; his brow is knit in deep thought. This is the new
Negro. What is he doing? He is thinking! And by the power of
thought he will think off those chains and have both hands free to help
you to build this country and make a grand destiny of himself. In
generous affection for our native soil, in fealty to our institutions and
in a universal love for all men, his spirit is that of his fathers made
over. Being to the manor born, he cannot be alienated in sentiment
and patriotic devotion to the institutions of the south and the whole
7
oountry. It must be, remembered however, that this Negro has had born
in him the consciousness of a racial personality under the blaze of a new
civilization. With this new birth of the soul, he longs for an opportu¬
nity to grow into the proportions of a new and diviner manhood that
shall take its place in the ranks of one common humanity. This Negro,
when educated in all of the disciplines of civilization and thoroughly
trained in the arts of civil and moral life, cannot fail to be an invalua¬
ble help to our American life. It is his deepest desire to rise and work
manfully and he is willing to bide his time until the American white
man shall have that element conquer in him which always conquers,
namely, the love of fair play. Having been so generously treated by our
southern friends in this exposition, we shall go forth to prove to them
that, in the development of the south and in the protection of our institu¬
tions, we are at heart one with them. And in the classic words of Edmund
Burke before his constituents in Bristol, England, we pray; "Ap¬
plaud us when we run; console us when we fall; cheer us when we
recover; but let us pass on, for God's sake, let us pass on."