The American Tower of Babel
or the Confusion of Tongues
Thanksgiving 5ermon by
Rev. Reverdy C. Ransom, D.D.
BETHEL A. M. E. CHURCH, NEW YORK
NOVEMBER 25TH, 1909
The American Tower of Babel or the
Confusion of Tongues
Thanksgiving Sermon by
Rev. Reverdy C. Ransom, D. D., Bethel A. M. E. Church, New York,
Nov. 25th, 1909.
Text: Genesis 11:9. ''Therefore is the name of it called Babel;
because the Lord did there confound the language of all the Earth."
The fruits of the field and the vine, the products of forest, quarry
and mine, the rains of Heaven, freedom from pestilence and disease, lie
in a realm in which the power of man does not enter. They are the gifts
vi God.
It is a long-established custom in this country, when the harvests
have been garnered and all the bounties gathered from the lap of nature
have been safely laid by, to call a solemn assembly to return thanks to the
Giver of all these benefits.
It is also a time of reunion, when children who have gone forth from
.the family roof-tree, some to be wife and mother, others to make their
way in the great world, return and around the family fireside and the
well-provided family board, rehearse old memories and revive the affec¬
tions of the years gone by.
We are assembled here this morning to join with our fellow-country¬
men in thanks to God Almighty, for these and innumerable blessings that
have come to us.
. During the year our nation has enjoyed peace and prosperity. Speak¬
ing broadly, labor has been generally employed and capital has received
its just reward. We have had peace with all the world; no pestilence or
great catastrophe of nature of appalling proportions has visited our
shores. It is our prayer that this nation may, more and more, seek to
stand so firmly upon the foundations of justice and righteousness that it
will merit a continuance of the blessings of God.
Turning from this phase of those considerations which give its chief
emphasis to this day, I, in common with the large majority of clergymen
in this country, have chosen to take up for discussion, a phase or phenom¬
enon of our national life; to discuss a question which is national in its
aspects and vital in its relation to the peace and future well-being of this
nation.
I have chosen for my theme "The American Tower of Babel, or the
Confusion of Tongues Over the Negro."
The Negro and the Negro question have passed through many phases,
dating back nearly three hundred years ago when he first set foot upon
this soil, The Negro question first came up for discussion at the time
2
the foundations of the Government were laid. For in the Constitutional
Convention there were friends of freedom, some of whom were slave¬
holders. As a compromise measure over the adoption of that instrument,
it was agreed that the slave trade should be prohibited after the year
1808. The question next appears in the discussion over the boundary
lines of slavery, that is, as to whether slavery should be confined to the
territory south of Mason and Dixon line and as to whether within such
territory, new States might be formed as slave-holding States, and finally
as to whether new territory north of Mason and Dixon line might be
admitted into the Union as a slave-holding State.
Along with the discussion of these questions come the fugitive slave
law, involving the right of the master to take his slave even from the
boundaries of the free State and carry him into slavery. Another, and
by all odds the most momentous and burning discussion of this question,
arose over the subject of emancipation. Over this the tides of battle
ebbed and flowed for more than a generation. The best statesmanship
of the nation, ministers of religion of the highest standing, reformers,
poets, writers and thinkers of every school, brought their contribution tp
this discussion. It caused great religious bodies to divide asunder; it
separated families; it severed the ties of friendship, and finally brought
on one of the greatest wars of modern times; until more than a million
men stood ;n the field of battle in the awful carnage of war, until in the
red streams of the blood of the slain the question of freedom triumphed.
Abraham Lincoln's immortal Proclamation of Emancipation has been
signed and sealed by one more enduring and omnipotent than the great
seal of the United States—it had upon it the superscription and seal of
Almighty God.
While there was much division, yet speaking in general terms, the
nation was of one speech in the adoption of the 13th, 14th and 15th
Amendments to the Constitution. It was felt that these great amendments
had fixed forever the place of the Negro in this nation, that the awful cost
of treasure and blood was not too great a price to pay for equal freedom
and liberty to all men under our flag.
The South devastated, impoverished, defeated, was for a time help¬
less yet sullen and in a sense defiant and unrepentent. The North was
busy with its work of reconstructing the nation after the awful ravages
of four years of bloody war. There was a brief lull after the conflict and
then confusion began to arise, first over the question of the Negro's civil
rights. Charles Sumner's Civil Rights Bill was an attempt to settle this
matter finally, but the enemies of the Negro were again active and this
bulwark for his protection was ruthlessly set aside by the Supreme Court
of the United States declaring it unconstitutional. This was the entering
wedge, to be followed by all the tides of indecencies, injustices, humilia¬
tions, degradations, insult and outrage that have come in under that form
of legislation known as the Jim Crow laws. There are no Jim Crow laws
in Northern States, yet so powerful does this react, that the Negro meets
at almost every place of public entertainment and in all those phases of
conduct which in the line of business and duty must bring men together,
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the spirit of the same proscription which animates the Jim Crow laws of
the South.
From this point and around this point the confusion of tongues has
been increased and multiplied for the last thirty years; it has concerned
itself in the discussion of his place socially. In the South the Negro's
place socially is always interpreted to mean social equality. I have never
believed that the South was sincere in its pretended fear of social equality,
and so far as the Negro is concerned we are quite sure that it is a question
which gives him no concern. He only asks to be permitted, like other
men, to walk unhindered in the paths of men.
The confusion has gathered volume and increasing virulence around
the question of the Negro's sphere industrially and as to the kind of
education he should receive. Some of his opponents justify their attitude
by appealing to Heaven', on the ground that God himself has decreed that
the Negro's place is one of inferiority and that only in the capacity of a
menial should he be permitted to make his contribution to our industrial
life. The trades unions have largely adopted this view by debarring
Negro artisans from membership and excluding them from employment
wherever possible, so that it has come to be that the millions of Negro
toilers in this land have less protection and receive less incentive to pro¬
duce, up to the limits of their capacity, at just reward, than any class of
toilers in this country or the enlightened nations of Europe.
The question of Negro education is one which for twenty years has
divided even the friends of hjs advancement. So persistently and so
skillfully has the view that a special brand of education should be pre¬
scribed for the Negro been propogated, that willing ears in the North, as
well as in the South, have accepted it as just. This view holds that he is
to be trained to constitute a great black peasantry in this land; while there
are others who hold the view that the Negro being a citizen and a man,
should be educated just as the children of the Irish, the German, the
Italian and the Jew are educated, to qualify him tos take his place in any
phase of the nation's life, side by side with his fellow countrymen, and
make the best contribution of which he is capable, according to his capacity
and his powers.
While these are the great vital questions around which the voices of
men are divided, there is still another and persistent note which seriously
vibrates, on the question of deportation or immigration of the Negro to
Africa, or to some other country outside the boundaries of the United
States. Not having the courage to meet and face this question on the
ground of justice and right, white men have adopted this view; not hav¬
ing the courage to stand up and fight, to suffer and endure, Negroes of
prominence have acquiesed, but up to now they have received no sign
from Heaven that Jehovah is crying aloud to the American people to let
the Negro go, as He did in the case of Israel in Egypt in the day of
Pharoah.
The Negro was able to maintain himself for more than two hundred
and fifty years in slavery here. For more than forty years of freedom
he has increased, multiplied, prospered, in the face of obstacles and oppo¬
sition, discouraging and at times almost insuperable. The agitation of
4
this question has not ceased and may not for a long time, but in the midst
of it all, the Negro will continue to root and intrench himself so firmly in
the nation, that he cannot be uprooted without overturning the nation to
its very foundation. He is here to stay.
The confusion of tongues over the Negro question in this country is
illustrated by the attitude of the most intelligent and progressive Negroes.
We have on the one hand Dr. Booker T. Washington and his adherents ;
on the other hand Dr. W. E. B. DuBois and his adherents; while outside'
of these there is a great unclassified host. Now, the adherents of Dr.
Washington speak one language and the adherents of Dr. DuBois speak
another; neither can understand the other. Therefore, like the confused
tower builders of the Plains of Shinar, they go into different camps and
take their separate ways, while the unclassified host to which I have
referred, stand hesitant and halting between the two conflicting'bodies of
opinion.
Mr. Washington says, "Eschew politics," and Mr. Dubois says,
"Vote." Mr. Washington places largest emphasis upon vocational train¬
ing which shall be chiefly industrial, while Mr. Dubois insists upon no
special brand but the largest opportunity for that which is highest and
most liberal.
The attitude of these two champions may be best illustrated by
referring to the National Negro Business League, of which Dr. Wash¬
ington is president, and to the Niagara Movement, of which Dr. Dubois is
president; or by considering the contents of Dr. Washington's chief book;
"Up from Slavery," and of Dr. Dubois' chief book, "The Souls of Black
Folks.'
If we turn to the Government itself, the Constitution of the United
States speaks one tongue and the United States Supreme Court another.
In each instance, thus far, whenever the vital interests of the Negro have
come up before this body, it has seemed to be ujiable to understand, or to
rightly interpret, the express mandates of the Constitution. Or, we may
turn to former President Roosevelt and the present occupant of the White
House, Mr. Taft. President Roosevelt, whatever may be our attitude
as to his conduct with reference to the Brownsville affair, stood unequi¬
vocally for a square deal, for the open door of opportunity, and for an
equal chance for all men; while on the other hand, the present occupant
of the White House has gone out of his way to make public proclamation
of his intention to appoint no Negroes as Federal officers in communities
where such appointments wrere displeasing to the white people of that
community. His attitude in the matter of the taking of the census, now
about to be under way, would seem to indicate that for the first time
since our enfranchisement we are to be practically eliminated from this
important service.
If we turn to the domain of science we find the same confusion here.
We would expect that here there would be nothing but unbiased search
for truth and for the pure deductions of logic, the collection of data and
the classification of facts without regard to where they led, but not so.
Science on the one hand is lending its high authority to the doctrine of
Negro inferiority, by seeking to prove that, because of the shapd of the
5
skull/the convolutions, weight and size of the brain, the Negro is naturally
inferior, and that therefore treating him as an inferior, is treating him
according to nature and setting .him in his proper place.. But on the other
hand science declares that the shape of the skull, the convolutions and
weight of the brain, have nothing to do with intellectual capacity—that
the Negro's brain is no smaller than that of the Swiss, Italian and others,
and that his cranial capacity is no less, that there is absolutely no differ¬
ence between the brain of the Negro and that of any other man.
If we turn to the halls of legislation, the confusion increases.
Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina advocate one set of laws; New
York, Massachusetts and Ohio another. Senator Tillman speaks one
tongue and Senator Foraker quite another.
In literature confusion reigns. In the editorial rooms of the great
newspapers and magazines there is no agreement of opinion.
If we turn to the realm of religion the confusion increases. When
the •pulpit is not hesitant or incoherent—it is absolutely dumb. What has
religion to say to the lynchers, to the disfranchisers, the despoilers of
womanhood when it is black, and to the degradation of manhood by humil¬
iations and ostracisms. There is no speech or language which is common
to the different denominations, or even to the various pulpits of the same
denomination.
At the Tower of Babel those who spoke the same language traveled
in the same path as they took their way. So to-day, those who hold the
same views on the Negro question camp together.
But admittedly, the number of those who differ over the Negro ques¬
tion is growing less and less. There is forming in this country a large
bodjr of opinion unfriendly to the Negro; the various groups are more and
more coming to a better understanding.
The lynching of Negroes, or their burning at the stake, no longer fills
the country with horror; now great crowds of women participate in this
human holocaust. There are no protests in Congress against disen-
franchisement. The Supreme Court of the United States, as in the case
of Berea College, may declare that the State has a right to prohibit white
and colored youth from being educated in the same school, and, as Jus¬
tice Harlan declares, that according to this opinion, they have the right, to
prohibit them from going to the public market at the same hour, or from
walking upon the same side of the street.
The North, if we are to take the recreant Senator Cullom as author¬
ity, is coming over to the view, that we are to acquiese in the complete
nullification of the Fifteenth Amendment, in order that the financial inter¬
ests of the South and the tenure of power to the Republican party may
find a basis of union, and, be it remembered, that Senator Cullom resem¬
bles Abraham Lincoln in features, that he comes from the home of Lin¬
coln, and was the friend of Lincoln.
Nothing could be more disastrous to the Negro at this time than the
harmonizing of the divergent and conflicting views in regard to his
status, if thereby his manhood is compromised, or his citizenship cir¬
cumscribed.
Amid the babel of tongues over the Negro question in this country,
6
the latest comes from an'article in a recent number of Leslie's Weekly,
in which the writer claims to quote from a man who was a Government
official under former.President Roosevelt, and who claims to have been in
Mr, Roosevelt's confidence.
He says that the real object of Mr. Roosevelt's trip to Africa, is not
to hunt lions, or to gather specimens for the Smithsonian Institute, but
to find what he believes to be the true and only solution of the Negro
problem. He quotes Mr. Roosevelt as saying, that he has been convinced
ever since he lunched Dr. Booker Washington at the White House, that
no amount of education, or other qualification, could lift the Negro high
enough in this country to cause him to be recognized as an equal, and
that after thinking long and deeply over this question, the President had
gone to Africa in an effort to work out a solution there. He said the
President took a large quantity of trinklets with him, to be distributed
among the native tribes in the heart of Africa, in order to get on friendly
terms with them, and that he President hopes to be able to get permission
to take over a large section of the northern Soudan, east of the German
sphere of influence, as this is one of the largest and most desirable por¬
tions of Africa not yet seized upon, as sphere of influence, by the nations
of Europe. When Mr. Roosevelt bursts from the heart of Africa next
April he will declare his solution to the world. His plan will be, as an
entering wedge, to persuade this country to repeal the Fifteenth Amend¬
ment ; then he will propose that the States issue bonds, which are to be
guaranteed by the National Government, and that these bonds are to be
used to pay the Negroes for the property they own in this country, and
to pay the cost of their deportation to Africa, giving them 160 acres of
land and all the necessary tools of industry. He claims that with the
Fifteenth Amendment repealed, the property of the Negro may be taken,
just as the land of the Indians was taken, and as the Indians were pushed
back, so the property of the Negroes may be thus taken and the Negroes
deported to Africa. The Negro in Africa, with the flag of this country
over him, would furnish a check to the further aggression of Germany and
other European nations and also give the United States greater power as
a factor in the partition of Africa, aside from settling for all time our
race problem.
The thing which, perhaps, more than any other, is undermining the
foundations of individual and national character is America's double
standard of morals. It has one moral standard for the white people and
another moral standard for the colored people. This is aptly illustrated
in the case of Senator Stone, of Missouri, who not long ago assaulted a
colored waiter on a dining-car. In court Senator Stone pleaded in jus¬
tification of his act that "he did not strike a man, he only slapped a
nigger."
When a Negro is accused of crime, the presumption is always in
favor of guilt, thus reversing the very fundamental principle of our legal
structure, that a man is presumed to be innocent until he is proven guilty.
Severe sentences for misdemeanors visited upon Negroes in the South
are far more excessive than those which would be imposed upon a white
man who had actually been proven guilty of a crime.
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Or take the question of the division of the^chool funds in the South¬
ern States, with perhaps two or three exceptions. They will apportion
anywhere from 60% to 90% per capita more for the education of the
white children than for the black.
But the application of the double standard of morals for the two
races accomplishes its most destructive and degrading work in the rela¬
tion of white men to colored women and of colored men to white women.
If a colored man is accused or even suspected of a crime against a white
women, the vengeance with which he is put to death, without due process
of law, reaches the height of madness and ferocity. If a colored man and
a white woman are suspected or known to have relations which are entirely
mutual, the very best that the Negro may hope is to be permitted to leave
the community on pain of death.
In the South, if a colored girl is seduced by a white man, she has no
redress at law; even if they were willing, they could not legitimatize their
offspring, because it is a penitentiary offence for the two races to marry.
She could not sue him for support, because this would be both against the
law and public sentiment.
The white people of the South acquiese in the immoral relations
between young white men and colored girls, on the ground that it is a pro¬
tection of the virtue of the young white women of the South.
It is in this relation that the whole fabric of Southern chivalry falls
to the ground, their boasted reverence for womanhood, for virtue; yet
they regard with absolute indifference and contempt all womanhood,
except in the person of their fair sister, and make it a boast that the virtue
of their black sister is their legitimate and proper prey.
Our confusion will grow more confusing, until we as a nation com¬
prehend the fact that the ethics of Jesus, as set down in the New Testa¬
ment, is not an irridescent dream; that foundation stones of this nation
have their last resting place upon the ethics of Jesus Christ; that of
brotherhood based upon the fatherhood of God. Out of this, through all
the struggles of our national life, we have been seeking to realize liberty,
fraternity and equality.
America is based not only upon the ethics of Jesus, but upon demo-
racy, as set forth in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. This
means all men should be permitted here to achieve the highest possibilities
of which they are capable.
The American Negro does not ask his white brother to take him on
faith, but on sight, and to recognize his worth as it is proven; his man¬
hood, his industry, his skill, his patriotism, his ability, as they are demon¬
strated day by day right before his eyes.
The Negro himself can perhaps do more than any other to silence
confusion, by proving for himself, and for the blacks throughout the
world, that he is capable of attaining to the very highest and best within
this civilization. For the Negro here is the only Negro on the face of the
earth in vital, daily contact with the white man within the same govern¬
ment on terms of equality. If he fail through ignorance, incapacity, lazi¬
ness, shiftlessness, courage, in a sense, the black race throughout the world
has failed.
8
We are to prove tlut the indifference of color which divides lis is only
superficial and entirely non-essential. We are here to prove our common
humanity and manhood. From the shores of this country the Negro and
the white man should go forth, hand in hand, to teach Russia, Japan, Eng¬
land, India, Europe and Africa, how men of different races may live
together upon terms of equality, of fraternity and of peace.
I see, as from the Tower of Babel, the scattered groups returning
from the confusion that has so long kept them separated and divided.
They have learned that despite all differences of speech, they have at all
times had one word in common—that word is MAN. Now we have
learned to articulate in unison another word—that word is BROTHER.
Now standing face to face, they say—"MAN AND BROTHER." The
recognition is instant. Barriers are broken down; the confusion is
silenced, and in brotherly co-operation they set themselves to the task of
building their civilization a tower of strength, because all the men who
toil and strive, who hope and aspire, are animated by a common purpose,
that is the peace, happiness and the common good of all.
N.Y. AGE PUB. CO.
247 W. 46TM ST.