Pointed Paragraphs From Race Newspapers
Many of our young people might profit immensely by the careful and proper employment of their time in the reading and consulting of good books. (Woman’s Messenger, Memphis, Tenn.)
Our girls and women can always render a great service to the race by their ladylike deportment upon the public highways. (The Light, Vicksburg, Miss.)
No race can rise above the morals of its women, and for that reason the women of our race should be careful, and strive to do nothing that will retard our progress. (The Informer, Louisville, Ky.)
We should endeavor to multiply the number of our white friends, in the South especially, because it is to them and to ourselves that we must look for our material advantage and practical welfare. (The Planet, Richmond, Va.)
Our children should know the history of the race. It will instill a spirit of race pride. They should know that the foundations of this republic were made secure by the blood of our fathers as well as that of the Anglo-Saxon race. (Clipper, Athens, Ga.)
The Negro is sadly in need of money. There can be no substitute for it. When a Negro man spends money and becomes important from a commercial point of view, the color of his skin and the fiber of his hair are all lost in the mad rush of the Caucasian to his pocket and its contents. (Texas Baptist Star.)
While man can boast of great physical strength, skill, and bulldog courage, woman carries in her weak frame a moral courage very seldom found among men. If our race is to be a great race in this great nation of races, our women must be largely instrumental in making it so. (American Baptist.)
There is a mistaken idea that “culture” means to paint a little, sing a little, dance a little, put on haughty airs, and to quote passages from popular books. It means nothing of the kind. Culture means politeness, charity, fairness, good temper, and good conduct. Culture is not a thing to make a display of; it is something to use so moderately that people do not discover all at once that you have it. (Colored American, Washington, D. C.)
One of the surest ways to make the average Anglo-Saxon respect you is to have him know that your check will be cashed at the bank or that your name is written in the tax book of the county wherein you have your habitation. He has learned that money talks, so to speak, and he is always ready to give it an audience. The records of the Southern States show up wonderfully well in favor of the Afro-American, and yet not as well as they might. There are arguments and arguments in favor of recognition, and the money argument is one of them. (Southern Age, Atlanta, Ga.)
The Columbian Exposition did not give the Negro a chance to demonstrate to the nations what he could do, but at the Cotton States Exposition he was given a trial, and so well did he succeed that he comes in for another showing at the Tennessee Exposition. Let the Negroes feel that it is important and necessary to make a fine display, and, imbued with this hope, let them press forward to eclipse all former efforts. (The Enterprise, Omaha, Neb.)
We cannot go to Africa and succeed with all our ignorance and poverty. Let our big men set out to break down immorality among Negroes. Get Negroes to have more refinement and race pride, use Negro books and papers, hang Negro pictures on their walls, get up Negro industries, and give deserving colored men and women employment; break down superstition and mistrust. Get Negroes to act decently, both publicly and privately. (Clipper, Athens, Ga.)
Every colored family should point with pride to the deeds of our great men. The walls of our homes should be adorned with the pictures of those of our own race who have proven that we are not deficient in men of noble and towering deeds. The tables should bear books of history and biography which would make our boys and girls acquainted with what has been wrought for and by the race. If we do not look out for these points, the next generation will not be what it should be. (Christian Clipper.)
The colored people of the United States pay taxes on $330,000,000 real property, $50,000,000 personal property, and have about $60,000,000 on deposit in savings banks. These figures are from carefully prepared statistics, and are a wonderful showing for a people the majority of whom have been out of bondage less than half a century. In Alameda County, of this state, colored people are on the assessment roll for upward of $1,000,000. Who says that the race is retrograding? If only one-tenth of this money could be put into manufacturing and commercial enterprises, what a commotion the colored man would make in the country! Talk about the Jew and the Chinaman; why, they would be at a discount! Let us all undertake to infuse a little of our business enterprise into the veins of the race. What do you say? (Elevator, San Francisco, Cal.)
The world is full of young men who want to succeed, but who are too lazy to put forth an effort in the right direction. He is truly an unlucky mortal to whom an opportunity never comes; and remember, the humblest employment is better than none. The man at work is infinitely more likely to get something better than the idler is to fall into an easy “snap.” Do not growl at fate, but bear in mind that every one is the architect of his own fortune. (The Bulletin, Balfour, N. C.)
Mrs. Annie E. Walker, a graduate of the New York Art School, who went to Paris to further perfect herself in the art of painting, has returned to her home in this city after a most successful course in one of the highest art schools in all Europe. After Mrs. Walker had studied in Paris only four months she painted a picture from life which was accepted by the French Salon, where it was put on exhibition. When it is remembered that an art student is considered fortunate and proficient if she can get a pastel into the Salon after she has studied for years, it is most remarkable that an American lady, and that, too, identified with the depraved race, should have gone to France and broken all previous records. The painting which was readily accepted by the Salon is now at the residence of Mrs. Walker, in this city, and fortunate is the lady or gentleman who shall have an opportunity to see it, for it indeed has life in it, and evinces the fact that the artist is a genius of the highest order. (Colored American, Washington, D. C.)
If we are to have a literature peculiar to our necessities, then our men and women are to produce it. If they are to produce it, then our leaders are to encourage it. Kind words may go a long way, a little assistance in the amassing of data will prove invaluable, and helping to make a market for the literature will act as a stimulus. Let us encourage our men and women to write, and in a few years we shall have a literature of which we need not be ashamed. (Christian Index, Jackson, Tenn.)
When contemplating the race as a mass it is usual to judge its members by its worst representatives, a method both unjust and untrue. The colored people of the South, as a class, should not be judged by the criminals among them who become conspicuous in the newspapers from evil deeds that are often visited with swift and terrible justice. They should rather be judged from the honest, hard-working men and women who, beginning with nothing, have in the course of one generation accumulated an amount of property that forms no inconspicuous portion even of our magnificent national wealth. (St. Louis Christian Advocate.)
When we have a task to perform we should go about it with a cheerful heart, with an eye single to doing our best. Then duty becomes a pleasure. Let us aim to be first in the pursuit of our life’s work. We cannot reach the topmost round at once, and if we get there at all there must be something in us worthy of the upper rounds. Can we ask Him to be our guide who noticed the falling of a sparrow to the ground? Do so; then we will not choose the wrong path, we will not stumble in our darkest hours. We will not think solely of our slavery, of our closing hour, or how we will spend the evening, but will put our mind on our duties and resolve that they shall have the best that is in us; and by and by we shall enjoy the reward which is laid up for the finally faithful. (Woman’s World, Rome, Ga.)
Every law-abiding, self-respecting, hard-working colored citizen of the United States should denounce in unmeasured terms those young men of the race who do not work, but loaf; who do nothing to elevate, but everything to degrade, the race; who choose the sunny side of the street corners in winter and the shady side in summer; who use all kinds of vulgar and indecent language, insulting ladies as they pass. It is this loafing, nomadic young class that drifts to crime, caused by idleness, evil associations, and the fact that this class does not know the value of a dollar or the enormity of a crime. These young men are millstones welded by chains around the necks of those of us who are trying to be something and do something in the world. There are no palliating circumstances, no mitigating conditions—nothing on God’s green earth—that will even to the slightest degree excuse this worthless class. (The Herald, Leavenworth, Kans.)
It is the “Item’s” opinion that industrial schools for colored youths are, in a great measure, useless institutions. They can never become serviceable until there is a spirit among colored men to establish, own, and operate great industrial enterprises, and in that case youths can be given a practical training in the work, which is better than he could ever get in a school. Put forward the same amount of energy to build a factory of some kind that is put in endeavors to get industrial schools in working order, and more young men can learn trades and draw mechanics’ salaries immediately after serving an apprenticeship; the owners will be making a profit and the commercial importance of the city, county, and state will be enhanced. We never hear of an industrial school for whites, and yet their youths are becoming artisans all the while. In the slavery days Negroes carried on all the skilled labor of the South, and no industrial schools existed; they applied themselves to the work, and were first-class workmen in every branch. (The Item, Fort Worth, Tex.)
The Bible upon which Maj. McKinley took his oath of office as President of the United States on March 4, 1897, was donated to him for this purpose by the A. M. E. Church. It was printed in Cincinnati, O., by the Methodist Book Concern. It was bound and lined, front and back, with silk, with a suitable dedicatory inscription upon the inside. On the outside was a gold plate in the form of a shield, on which the name of the President, the date, the name of the donor, etc., were engraved. The Bible was inclosed in a box made of native Ohio wood and gold mounted. It cost eighty-six dollars. The honor of presentation was conferred upon Bishop Benjamin W. Arnett, of Wilberforce, O. (Christian Recorder, Philadelphia, Pa.)