OCCASIONAL PAPERS NO. 20.
American Negro Academy
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Alexander Crummell
An Apostle of Negro Culture
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WILLIAM H. FERRIS
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PUBLISHED BY THE ACADEMY
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Vice Presidents
Robert T. Browne
J. E- Kweggir-Aggrey
John Hust
C. V. Roman
Recording Secretary
T. Montgomery Gregory
Corresponding Secretary
Robert A. Pelham
153 Tea St. N. W. Washington, D. C.
Treasurer
Lafayette M. Hershaw
Executive Committee
Kelly Miller George M. Lightfoot
F. H. M. Murray William Pickens
Tohn E. Bruce
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL
1819-1898
FOUNDER OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO ACADEMY
Accompanying
OCCASIONAL PAPER NO. 20
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OCCASIONAL PAPERS NO. 20.
American Negro Academy
Alexander Crummell
An Apostle of Negro Culture
BY
WILLIAM H. FERRIS
WASHINGTON, D. C.:
PUBLISHED BY THE ACADEMY
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ALEXANDER CRUMMELL
AN APOSTLE OF NEGRO CULTURE.
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL
AN APOSTLE OF NEGRO CULTURE.
A noted English lawyer-author has declared that the twelfth
chapter of Ecclesiastes is the final word of the world's philos¬
ophy ; that no ancient or modern thinker has uttered a profounder
word. And in the seventh verse of that chapter it reads, "Then
shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall
return unto God who gave it."
Metaphysicians tell us that through his five senses, man is in
touch with and in relation to his physical environment and a
physical wrorld, and that through his reason, imagination, con¬
science, aesthetic and religious intuitions, man is in touch with
and in relation to his spiritual environment and a spiritual world.
They also tell us that at death, the soul and body merely part
company and go their respective ways. The oxygen, carbon,
hydrogen and other chemical elements in the body mingle with
the material, elements from which they came. And the soul of
man, the ego, the center of self-consciousness, recognitive mem¬
ory and reflective thought, which has maintained its identity amid
the changes of the physical organism, will survive the destruc¬
tion of that organism and live on and on in the spirit world,
embodied in whatever form and clothed with whatever garments
its Maker so decreed.
Scientists tell us that when you throw a pebble in a stream, it
sets up a series of ever-widening circles until it reaches the shore.
They tell us that when you utter an audible sound, you start in
motion sound waves which travel on for miles and miles. So it
is with the influence of a human personality. It does not end at
the grave. It lives in the lives that have been inspired, in the
example set and the thoughts thrown out.
Twenty years and three months have elapsed since the soul of
Alexander Crummell bid its bodily partner farewell and took its
flight to its spiritual home. But Alexander Crummell's terres-
tial influence did not end thus. It still goes on and will go on for
centuries. We will briefly review his life and career and then
estimate the weight, worth and significance of the ideas which he
advocated, for which he lived and which were incarnated in his
personality.
The Rev. Dr. Alexander Crummell, the Negro apostle of cul¬
ture, was a born autocrat, a man born to command. And men
instinctively bowed before him. Some even trembled before his
wrath,
6
Crummell was born in New York in 1810, nearly a century ago.
He was the son of Boston Crummell, a prince of the warlike
Ternene tribe, who was stolen while a boy playing on the sands
of the seashore. At first, Crummell,with George T. Downing
attended a school in New York taught by the Reverend Peter
Williams, then went to the school in Canaan, New Hampshire,
which was hauled into the pond by those who were angry because
the Negro was taught to read. Crummell with others took refuge
in a barn. They were fired upon; but Henry Highland Garnet
fired a return shot, at which they were allowed to depart in peace.
Then Crummell attended the Oneida Institute, of which Beriah
Green was the President. He became a priest in the Episcopal
Church, was for twenty years a missionary on the west coast of
Africa, during which period he visited seventy tribes. He re¬
turned to this country in the late sixties or the early seventies,
was for a year or two rector of St. Philip's Church, New York,
and for twenty-three years rector of the St. Luke's Church in
Washington, D. C. The last years of his life were spent in
issumg his race tracts and founding the American Negro Acad¬
emy, the first body to bring Negro scholars from all over the
world together. He died at Point Pleasant, N. J., in Dr. Mat¬
thew Anderson's summer home in September, 1898, in his
eightieth year.
He was not as famous a man as Douglass, because in the most
eventful years of the Negro race's history from 1850 to 1870 he
was in Africa. When he died, men like Phillips Brooks and Dr.
Fuller, of Rochester, who were old friends of his and who knew
him intimately, the man and his work, had already crossed the
mystic stream of death and passed over to the other shore. But
he was a power in his own race to the last. Still in the late
forties, he delivered three addresses that attracted considerable
attention. In 1847 he addressed a colored convention at Troy,
N. Y. And in 1848 he visited London and spoke at the annual
meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, with such fire, force, finish
and polish that he made many friends, both for himself and
his race.
He visited Liverpool. He so impressed the Bishop of the
diocese, that he was invited to officiate as minister in the St.
George's Church at Evert on, of which the Reverend Mr. Eubanks
was rector. The audience had never heard a colored man preach
before. And Crummell's dignity and bearing in the pulpit, his
polish and refinement, his lucid exposition of the text, his sub¬
limity of thought, beauty of diction, and fire and force of utter¬
ance for nearly an hour held that cultured audience spellbound.
Crummell made history for the race on that Sunday morning in
1848. And I suppose that Crummell's eulogy on Clarkson, de¬
livered in New York City in 184(5, in its grandeur of thought,
sublimity of sentiment and splendor of style, surpasses any ora¬
torical effort of any colored man in the antebellum days. From
7
that time until his death in 18J)8, Crummell swayed both colored
and white audiences.
I remember in the fall of a Baptist preacher lectured in
Newport, R. I. At the close of the lecture, a tall, slender, ven¬
erable looking man, With an aristocratic air, arose and stirred the
audience with his heroic words. The l>aptist preacher was so
touched that he sought Crummell out. And then an influence
entered his life that made him a new man, a stronger moral force
in the Baptist denomination. I remember, too, when McKinley
was inaugurated in 1897. Men and women, old and young, from
all sections of the country, of varying degrees of culture, of
divers religious creeds, came to Crummell's house as a mecca.
Some had been thrilled by his sermons and commencement ad¬
dresses ; others caught the inspiration of their lives from his
works, "Africa and America," "The Future of Africa," and "The
Greatness of Christ, and Other Sermons." Today his memory is
treasured in Washington, in cities of the north and south, and
along the west coast of Africa. Such was the influence the im¬
perial Crummell wielded.
There you have the historic Alexander Crummell, the finished
scholar, the magnetic preacher, the brave, uncompromising ideal¬
ist, who was dreaded by imposters and fakirs and time-servers
and flunkies. He was one of those rugged, adamantine spirits,
who could stand against the world for a principle, but he was
gracious, courteous, tender and sympathetic withal. Tall, slender,
symmetrical, erect in bearing, with a graceful and elastic walk,
with a refined and aristocratic face that was lighted up by keen
penetrating but kindly eyes, and surrounded by the gray hair and
beard which gave him a venerable appearance, with a rich, ring¬
ing, resonant baritone voice, which had not lost its power even in
old age, with an air of unmistakable good breeding and a con¬
versation that flavored of books and literature and art, Dr. Crum¬
mell was a man that you could never forget, once you met him or
heard him preach. He frequently said that what the race needed
was an educated gentry, and he was himself one of the finest
specimens of that rugged strength, tempered with Christian cul¬
ture and a refined benevolence, which was his ideal, that the race
has yet produced. Sprung from the fierce Timene Tribes, who
on the west coast of Africa cut to pieces a British regiment near
Sierre Leone several years ago, he possessed the tireless energy,
the untamed spirit and the fearless daring that made his warrior
ancestors dreaded. But like the apostle Paul, his native strength
was mellowed by the Christian religion.
There was an ineffable charm in his conversation. He was a
delightful companion, ever ready in wit and repartee, versatile
and resourceful in debate, with the wide knowledge that is gained
by travel and garnered from many fields of study. He reminded
me of Wendell Phillips as an orator, with the impression of hav¬
ing an immense reserve power behind him; he could fill a large
hall by speaking in his natural conversational voice. He pos-
8
sessed the same keen Damascus blade of sarcasm when aroused.
Undoubtedly he was the Sir Philip Sidney of the Negro race.
In my chapter upon "The American Negro's Contribution to
Literature," I tell how beautifully DuBois in his "Souls of Black
Folk " has drawn the figure of a man, whom I regard in some
respects the grandest character of the Negro race. Read the
chapter and read Crummell's book upon "Africa and America,"
and then you will recognize the greatness of Crummell. Some
people say that great Negroes are jealous of each other. But
read Crummell's chapter upon Henry Highland Garnet and
DuBois's chapter upon Crummell, and you will see how kindred
spirits appreciate each other's worth and value.
Those who are interested in Tuskegee Institute will remember
that in February, 1899, a memorable meeting was held, in the
Hollis Theatre in behalf of that celebrated school. The Hampton
ahd Tuskegee Quartettes sang. Dunbar recited his dialect poems;
Dr. Washington, as usual, spoke in an impressive and eloquent
manner. But the event that interested many thoughtful minds
Was the paper of Dr. Wm. E. Burghardt DuBois upon the "Striv¬
ings of a Negro for the Higher Life."
I. "The Negro Apostle of Culture."
It was for such a delicately drawn portrait, such a halo sur¬
rounded it, that Prof. William James and other Bostonians
doubted that it was the likeness of a real man and believed that
it was the picture of an ideal, an imaginary Negro. But Crum¬
mell was not a dream creation. He was a being who had actually
been clothed in flesh and blood, who had actually trod on these
terrestrial shores and walked on this earth.
He was indeed the Newman of the Negro pulpit. If any one
desires to read the romance of his life, of his struggles to get an
education, of his despair in encountering the hostility of the
Anglo-Saxon and the ingratitude and lack of appreciation of bis
own race, and of his bravely surmounting his difficulties, I refer
him to DuBois' "Souls of Black Folk."
After Alexander Crummell, the first Negro apostle of culture,
had spent a few years as a student in Cambridge University,
England, nearly a quarter of a century as a missionary upon the
west coast of Africa, he returned about the year 1870 to the
United States, the land of his birth, and for twenty-three years
served as rector of the St. Luke's Episcopal Church of Wash¬
ington, D. C. Then he retired from the ministry.
II. History of the American Negro Academy.
He had passed the three score and ten mark. Never strong or
robust physically, he had lived a very active life. It seemed as
if his days of usefulness were over. But, no, this grand old
man of the Negro race, nearly eighty years of age, endeavored
to realize a dream that he had conceived when a student in Cam¬
bridge University, England. He proposed to found and establish
9
the American Negro Academy, an organization composed of
Negro scholars, whose membership should be limited to forty
and whose purpose should be to foster scholarship and culture in
the Negro race and encourage budding Negro genius. He com¬
municated With colored scholars in America, England, Hayti and
Africa. The result was that in March, 1897, when McKinley
was inaugurated, the most celebrated scholars and writers in the
Negro race for the first time assembled together in the Lincoln
Memorial Church and formally organized into a brotherhood of
scholars. Dunbar, the .poet; DuBois, the sociologist; Scarbor¬
ough, the Greek scholar; Kelly Miller, the mathematician; Dr.
Frank J. Grimke, the theologian; Prof.John W. Cromwell, the
historian; President R. R. Wright, Principal Grisham, Prof. Love
and Prof. Walter B. Hayson, noted educators; Prof. C. C. Cook,
the student of English literature, and Bishop J. Albert Johnson,
the brilliant preacher, were among those present. Bishop Tanner,
of the A. M. E. Church, and two or three other bishops were
enrolled as members, and such distinguished foreign Negroes as
Prof. Harper were added as members. The Academy seemed
destined to do for the Negro race what the French Academy did
for France.
But Crummell soon died; DuBois was elected president. The
industrial fad swept over the country and men soon forgot the
Academy. But Prof. John Wesley Cromwell, the secretary, Dr.
Francis J. Grimke, the treasurer, Prof. Kelly Miller, Prof. C. C.
Cook and Prof. John L. Love, of Washington, D. C., did not
despair. In December, 1902, the Academy startled the country
by- a two days' session in which a series of papers were read upon
"The Religion of the Negro." The papers of Prof. Harper, the
Rev. Orishatukeh Faduma and Dr. Matthew Anderson at¬
tracted considerable attention at the time. Later the "Literary
Digest" noticed my paper upon "A Historical and Psychological
Account of the Genius and Development of the Negro's Re¬
ligion." In December, 1903, Archibald H. Grimke was elected as
President. The Academy took a new lease of life and in March,
1905, a brilliant'series of papers were read upon "The Negro and
the Elective Franchise." .They were afterwards published in an
eighty-five page pamphlet and they remain today the best dis¬
cussion upon Negro Suffrage and Southern Disfranchisement.
The session of the Academy in December, 1906, was held in
Howard University, and at that session the audience that assem¬
bled in the small chapel of Howard University listened to an
illuminating discussion upon the "Eco'ir-iic Condition of the
Negro." Kelly Miller's paper upon "Labor Conditions in the
North" attracted some attention in the "Washington Post." I do
hope the scholars of the race will perpetuate the organization,
which was the dream of Crummell's life. I well remember the
Saturday in September, 1898, when I received a card from Walter
B. Hayson, Crummell's protege, announcing that Crummell was
10
dying. I hurried to Point Pleasant, N. J., but Crummell had
breathed his last and his body was carried to New York City.
For two hours on Monday night I walked up and down the beach
at Asbury Park. I looked up at the stars shining so silently in
the immensity of space and heard the distant murmur of the
ocean as it rolled and broke upon the shore. In the silent mid¬
night hour, Nature's calmness and repose seemed to touch my
soul and then from the depth of my being came the cry, "Crum¬
mell is not dead, but he liveth; he is now with his God and
Maker."
No man is bigger than the idea that dominates him, and that
he embodies in his life. If his personality is grand and sublime,
he will live on in the moral world. But if his ideas are not
progressive, he will not live long in the thought world. Dr.
Alexander Crummell believed that the Negro belonged to the
genus vir as well as to the genus homo, that he could be included
in the class aner as well as anthropos, that he had a soul to be
trained as well as a body to be clothed, sheltered and fed. In a
word, he believed that the Negro was made out of the same clay
as the rest of mankind, that he was worthy of the same educa¬
tion and training, and was entitled to the same treatment, con¬
sideration, rights and privileges as other men.
The question is, were the soaring ideals that inspired Dr.
CrummeH's effort dreams of the imagination, or were they
grounded in reality? Did his perspective belong to the class of
mirages in the desert, or did his Weltauschanung belong to that
class of visions, of which it was said in Proverbs, "Where there
is no vision, the people perish ?"
We can only answer those questions by studying the state of
the American mind when the Academy was formed. In 1776,
the high sounding and world resounding Declaration of Inde¬
pendence was signed, which said that all men were created free
and equal and had an inalienable right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. And yet some of the signers of that
Declaration held slaves. Why was it? The late Prof. William
Graham Summer of Yale said that it was because they did not
regard the Negro as a man.
And the whole slavery debate hinged on the question of the
humanity of the Negro, hinged upon the question as to whether
he possessed the intellectual, ethical, aesthetical and religious po¬
tentialities and possibilities which white men possessed, hinged
upon the question as to whether the Negro did or did not possess
a soul. The South said that the Negro was a beast and not a
man, and was not capable di intellectual or moral improvement.
In Georgia and other states, they took particular pains to see that
the Negro had no chance or opportunity for mental improvement.
In Georgia they would fine and imprison a white man and whip
and imprison a colored man who was caught teaching a slave to
read and write.
11
The great Calhoun said that "The Negro race was so inferior
that it had never produced a single individual who could con¬
jugate a Greek verb." Dr. Crummell in his paper before the
American Negro Academy upon "The Attitude of the American
Mind Towards the Negro Intellect," wittily said that Calhoun
must have expected Greek verbs to grow in Negro brains by some
process of spontaneous generation, as he never had tried the
experiment of putting a Greek grammar in the hands of a Negro
student.
But ere long arose Dr. Blyden, the linguist and Arabic scholar;
Prof. Scarborough, who wrote a Greek text book and "The Bird
of Aristophanes" and the "Thematic Vowel in the Greek Verb;"
Dr. Grimke, the theologian; Prof. Kelly Miller, the mathema¬
tician, arose. Colored students of Harvard like Greener, Grimke,
DuBois, Trotter, Stewart, Bruce, Hill and Locke, and Bouchet,
McGuinn, Faduma, Baker, Crawford and Pickens of Yale arose,
who demonstrated every kind of intellectual capacity. Then
Trumbull of Brown, Forbes and Lewis of Amherst, Wright of the
University of Pennsylvania, and Hoffman and Wilkinson of Ann
Arbor University, also won honors. Dr. Daniel Williams distin¬
guished himself as a surgeon, Dunbar as a poet, Chestnut as a
novelist, Tanner as an artist, and Coleridge Taylor as a musician.
So in the days when the American Negro Academy came into
existence, the Bourbons of the south and their northern sym¬
pathizers realized that the Negro had achieved distinction in in¬
tellectual fields, where they said he would be like fish out of water.
So then they changed their tack. They then said that the
Negro could be educated, but education made him "a builder of
air castles," in the words of their colored spokesman, and made
him useless to his own people. They barred the educated Negro
from employment in keeping with his natural tastes and aptitudes
and previous training and inclination, and then said that he
couldn't make a living. They said the Negro was mentally in¬
ferior to the Anglo-Saxons and then reduced the curriculum in
the state colleges and high schools to keep him mentally inferior.
At the same time,they encouraged the Negro churches and
looked with favor upon laboring men and washerwomen using
their hard earned savings to erect costly churches. Why did
they look cross-eyed at and frown at the higher education of the
Negro, which they said made him impractical, while they smiled
and looked with satisfaction at his religion, which ^iey didn't
take seriously, but regarded as a dope ? Why did they emphasize
education and minimize religion for white men, and on the
other hand minimize education and emphasize religion for black
men? Why did they set up Yale and Harvard Universities as
the white's ideal of education and Hampton and Tuskegee as the
colored man's ideal?
These Bourbons of the south and their northern sympathizers
had a definite propaganda and programme regarding the Negro.
Their plan was to reduce the colored race to a race of hewers ©f
12
wood and drawers of water, to disfranchise the Negro, run him
out of Congress and lucrative political jobs in the south, tt> jim-
crow him and segregate him. They knew that religion would
act as a narcotic and opiate and that it would keep his eyes and
mind centered upon the golden streets, jeweled pavements, sap¬
phire walls and white-robed angels of the New Jerusalem, while
they were robbing him of the civil and political rights which were
won on the battlefields of the Civil War and guaranteed by the
Constitution of the United States.
They knew that to educate him would be to open his eyes, to
cause him to think and to prevent his being camouflaged. They
knew that to educate him would be to make him dissatisfied with
his lot at the bottom of the ladder. They knew that to educate
him would introduce the leaven of divine discontent into his
being. They knew that to educate him would cause him to
aspire to something higher than hard labor or menial service.
They knew that to educate him would cause him to know that
robbing him of the ballot was reducing him to a pariah in Amer¬
ican life and society and making him a political outcast. They
knew that to educate the Negro would cause him to know that,
when he was being jim-crowed and segregated, a caste system
based on the color of the skin was being established in America.
In a word, those Americans who desired to rob the Negro of the
fruits of the Civil War and to reduce him as far as possible to his
previous status as a slave, knew that to educate the Negro was
to open his eyes to the fact that the restrictions which they were
trying to impose upon him were giving him a social, civil, political
and economic status which was lower than that of the illiterate
emigrant from Europe, lower than that of the Japanese, Chinese,
Hindoo, Indian and Filipino. In a word, they knew that to
educate the Negro would open his eyes to the fact that the color
of his skin was a mark of shame and a badge of dishonor and
that a caste prejudice based upon color, was contrary to the
spirit of Christianity and to the democratic principles underlying
this government. In a word, they knew that it would be more
difficult for them to carry out their programme with the Negro
educated. And these are the reasons why twenty years ago, it
was regarded as unwise and dangerous to give the Negro any
higher education above the three R's and a training in the trades.
And most of the leaders of the Negro race were asleep at the
switch twenty years ago. They eagerly swallowed the sugar-
coated and chocolate-coated pills. They took the medicine which
their Anglo-Saxon friends offered because it was honeyed and
sugared with a few fat jobs and contributions to churches and
schools. And while they slept, as Samson slept on the lap of
Delilah, they were shorn of their political and civil locks, and
awoke one bright morning to find that their strength was gone.
It was a rude awakening that they experienced in the summer
of 1917, when the edict went forth that all American citizens,
*3
black as well as white men, were subject to the selective draft.
It was a rude awakening that they experienced, when they dis¬
covered that their sons must cross the ocean and give their lives
to bring a freedom to war-ridden Europe, which was denied their
race in. this country. It was a rude awakening that they expe¬
rienced when they realized that they who only experienced par¬
tial citizenship in this country were called upon to make the same
sacrifice in blood and treasure as their fairer-skinned brothers,
who had experienced the full blessings of citizenship.
A Baptist preacher whom I met in St. Louis a year ago voiced
the thought of the entire colored race when he said, "Ferris,
what a mighty big price we have to pay for a little freedom."
It was a rude awakening, when Hog Island was calling for
riveters and the Remington Company at Eddy stone for machin¬
ists, and yet would turn down colored men who were capable.
It was a rude awakening, when colored men and women who
passed the Civil Service in Washington, D. C., during war times
and were certified, were turned down because of their color. It
was a rude awakening, when colored soldiers could fight and die
side by side with white soldiers in France, and yet couldn't visit
the same service camps in America. And it was a still ruder
awakening, when the Y. M. C. A. carried color prejudice to
France where it had never existed before and attempted to
jim-crow and segregate the very colored soldiers who were fight¬
ing to save France and to make the world safe for democracy.
Such was the state of the American mind twenty-two years,
when Dr. Alexander Crummell gathered his colored friends
around him and formed the Academy. The same reason that
led the American mind to discountenance the Negro's higher
aspirations and strivings and longings caused Dr. Crummell to
encourage them. He realized that living in the same country
with the American white man, facing the same problems and con¬
ditions, the Negro needed the same kind of education and train¬
ing that the white man needed, or he would lag hopelessly behind
in the race of life. General Armstrong once triumphantly told
a class of colored students at Hampton, "Hampton will give you
enough education to cope with any colored men you may meet."
But Dr. Alexander Crummell saw deeper. He saw that the
Negro needed also an education that would enable him to cope
on equal intellectual terms with any white men that he might
meet. For that reason the Negro needed to dip into literature,
history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, sciences, anthropology
and ethnology; needed in a word to be kept in touch with the
trend of modern science and the tendencies of modern thought.
Dr. Crummell was right. If there ever was a time in the
Negro's history when he needed trained and well-equipped leader¬
ship, it is now, when the recent world war has brought about a
new earth, when new problems affecting Europe, America and
Africa #re pressing for solution, and when a readjustment of
*4
social, political and industrial conditions will be made, not only
in Europe and Africa but in America. If there was ever a time
in the Negro's history when he needed trained and well-equipped
leadership, it is now when tens of thousands of black Africans
and black Americans have demonstrated on scores of blood¬
stained battlefields in France that heroism can wear a sable hue
and be clothed in ebony; when the American Negro proved his
patriotism and loyalty by subscribing to the Liberty Loan, the
War Chest, War Savings Stamps and by Red Cross service, and
when by reason of his helping to lay low the Prussian menace to
civilization, he has established his title clear to recognition and
respectful consideration.
At a time, when the humanitarian plums will be handed out at
the Peace Table at Versailles, at a time when the small and weak
nations of Europe will have their day in court, at a time when the
oppressed and suppressed peoples of Europe, Palestine and Ar¬
menia will have their innings, now is the time for the Negro to
make his appeal, present his plea and submit his case.
Twenty years ago we did not fully realize that the treatment
and consideration that an individual, a race or a nation received,
is determined by the estimate in which the world holds the indi¬
vidual or race, and that this estimate is largely determined by the
estimate in which the individual or race holds itself. And at this
golden moment and rare opportunity, we need far-sighted pilots,
wise guides, who can seize and utilize the civic, political, economic
and industrial opportunities, which may present themselves.
We have had too many leaders who have pursued the Fabian
policy of watchful waiting, who have been the creatures of cir¬
cumstance, who have been the sport of chance, who have been
determined by their environment, and who have been dependent
upon the turn or course that events would take.
We need a Scipio Africanus, who saw with an eagle eye that
Rome must carry the war into Africa and forthwith proceeded
to take the initiative, made himself the compeller of circum¬
stances, himself determined the course that events v^ould take,
and made himself the master of Rome's fate and the architect of
her destiny.
In the past we have been dependent upon what our Anglo-
Saxon friends have thought of us and have blindly worshipped
the hand-picked leaders our Anglo-Saxon godfathers have set up
for us, to bow down to. The time has now arrived for us to
mold the opinion of our Anglo-Saxon friends by what we think
of ourselves, and to select and follow our own leaders. The time
has now arrived for us to take a hand in shaping our destiny.
'5
CONCLUSION.
^ But there are other motives for education, besides bread win¬
ning and bettering one's material condition. I remember at Har¬
vard how Charles Eliot Norton, Prof. Thayer, the New Testa¬
ment Greek scholar, and Dean C. C. Everett, of the Harvard
Divinity School, impressed students by the grandeur and nobility
of their character. And one, knowing them instinctively, felt
that they realized our ideal of personality. I can see again the
cultured Norton, whom Ruskin said was the only American he
met who was a gentleman. I can see the tall, handsome, erect
Thayer, wTith musical voice, gracious manners and buoyant walk,
wrhom the boys called "the captain." I can see again Dean
Everett, who blended the wisdom of a Nestor with a transparent
simplicity who blended granite strength of character with a
Christ-like tenderness. And I can see again that trio of famous
Harvard professors, James, Royce and Palmer—the first distin¬
guished by his buoyancy of spirit, the second by his serenity and
the third by his refinement. And then I' can see that famous
Yale philosopher, George Trumbull Ladd, a descendant of Elder
Brewster and Governor Bradford, who came over in the May¬
flower, and who himself was a splendid representative of modern
puritanism. These and a score of other professors in my college
days were what ex-President Timothy Dwight of Yale would
call men of high character, and they made the students feel that
merely to achieve character was something worth the effort and
striving. And Dr. Alexander Crummell thought so too. One of
the blessings which this terrible war brought to the world was the
lesson that there are other values in life besides the piling up and
the hoarding of money.
I realize that this is a materialistic age. But I am an optimist,
not so much because I believe in the Englishman or the Amer¬
ican, as because I believe in God. I do not believe that the
universe is the product of the blind play of atoms or the chance
concourse of electrons. But I believe that the intricacy of the
structure of the atoms, the law and order that is enthroned in
the heavens above from farthest star across the milky way to
farthest star are silent but patent witnesses to the fact that a
Universal Mind is back of and behind and manifests Himself in
the universe. I believe that this Universal Mind works in the
hearts and consciences of men and that He is the ground and
source and fount of their noble impulses and higher aspirations.
And I believe that "Eternal Power, not ourselves, that makes for
righteousness," will continue to stir in the hearts and minds of
men until they see the sin of damning a man because of the color
of his skin.
i6
If we believe in God and believe as Crummell believed that the
black man can scale the heights of human achievement and gain
the summit, if we believe that we do not represent a stage in the
evolution from the monkey to man, but that, in the language of
Terence, Rome's tawny-colored poet, we are men and that noth¬
ing that is common to humanity is foreign to us, a spirit wTill be
generated in us that no oppression can crush, no obstacles can
daunt and no difficulties can overpower. Quicken in the Negro
youth of the land a belief in the mighty hopes that make us men
and we will write deeds upon the pages of history, as our black
brothers wrote theirs in letters of blood upon the sunlit plains
of fair France, that will command the attention and compel the
recognition of a hostile world.
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