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THE NEGRO IN AMERICA*! CIVILIZATION. by 'V. II I'crrls of this city.Thin In a forthcoming now book to Which speda! local Interest attaches 8* It Is by W. II. Ferris, a New Haven a grailunto of Hlllhouke Illgli school, class of l«SI. lie ha* Justto give them such an undcrbolt a up-n til. • 11 of the So ith : 11 t ‘W ; ncannoi.be Utalwlged. Washington u hi Intern caving Hi* Ir Industrie* with the I business Interest* of She white* to- li such mi extent that nothing short of a It general catastrophe and collapse of t great commereiql Interest* would fol- g low their exodus it such a- thing were I h conceivable or practicable. •s't U9 cut out all the politic* and pcraonn.lt- r ties Hint have grown \i| ufottnl Hook- t cr Washington's astute actions, nml j I' adopt the thought of .Hip couplet * quoted liy Sir. Browne In advocacy of n an exodus and the reassembling of the j nice In Africa:One hits to teach that Isibor Is divine i Another Freedom; aod another Mlrffl. 11 and the Washington policy and that of the Niagara Movement, as It Is i cd. headed by Professor Dubois the Atlanta University, cun bo discussed without heal, , In those lenders the American race Is coming to recognize that It has two siring* to Its how, and that it will not bo proilt-abla for It to lay aside either.The most enlightened treatment of the question of late Is the new work by William II. Ferris, a scholarly young negro who a dozen years ago received the degree of A. M. from J both Harvard, and Yale and has since | j pursued the career of peripatetic phll- 1 ( osopher, teaching, preaching, lector- jandIng. writing for the newspapers studying the great Amerlcntt race I problem. He has visited • with anproblem. He has open ntlnd. an Intelligent eye and at unfailingly amiable disposition twen- j ty different States'and sojourned In over two hundred towns, cities, vll-lages and rural communities of the j North. South and West since hi* | graduation, all the while feeling the j pulsn of the public feeling and taking ! note* tus ho went. He regards the rise of Booker Washington to be, as he puts It next to President Itoosevoll, the best known American in the world, n* the •'crowning miracle of human history. But that after thistupleted the hook and Is to give It | phenomenon the Niagara Mlt;Into the hands of the publishers Concerning this production by Mr. Ferris the Boston Transcript has the lug lllumlnuatlng article by K. II C , which Is headed Dovillsatlen of Africa;The ordinarily sober-sided page* of I.Iberia (which It must be understood Is the bulletin of the American Colonisation society, a survival of the nnte-altempu to set a backfire on the sweeping flame* of Abolition and now ler the wing of the American Missionary association I are lighted up by this fantastic new word Devlllxatlnn Is a pun on Civilization. and represents Its antithesis. The word Is a native African product, first seeing the light In the Lagos (Guinea coast I Weekly Record. Invented to describe the veneer of rltlllzaiblt;n Imposed on natives of Africa at the whites’ points of contact with them The Dagos publicist tlnd thnt after a century of trial It Is fitting thnt tho native should nil a halt and In his own Inleri-st take stork of the result of thin foreign system Imposed on him.Through the missionaries' efforts large numbers of male and femalo children have hern taken from their pn:onta f.nd their normal nnd natural tnndo of life to be made Imitation Europeans nnd Inducted to so-called civilized habits with the result that they have b**n left stranded and floundering In th» aggravating haze of a questional' e rlvillzatlon. Family tie* are seve-ed. family groups and substance her me broken up and wasted and •llstppear altogether, and after all tho c- ■ natures of Europeans resulting prnduer nothing that tho European trader wants. The trnde with Europe nnd America, th» activities nnd Industries which tiring fleets of steamers to Africa arc for the produce of natives who havo not lieon tinder European training, either seculnr or religious. Those natives who have been brought under nurh training have lost the productive power of their fathers and have become useless drones. European rlvillzatlon has only served to place the Liberian Europeanized African upon the shoulders of their prlmallve brethren to deal with the white man. Ground thus between the outer and the Inner millstones, or at least tn|-eraled on sufferance, between white and Hi primitive producer, ahd without any sustaining force of thclr own. the civilized native’s morals become adjusted to the exigencies of Ills circumstances. that la, elastic and flox-Ibla of conscience and shifty In shady pursuit*, and the Inevitable end of his truffle In the vims Is extinctionAnd yet th« Liberian movement of American Negroes does not dlo out. but Is Ipereaslng. Thoso who anment” should rise |o promulgate Ideas antipodal to those of Dr Washington ho regards ns the second miracle in Negro hliitnrv. To illustrate tit« mitral course of evolution, compared to which tho divisions between the blacks Rnd while* In this country and nmong the blacks themselves uro but as the flotsam of the surface of the hood, Mr. Ferris gooa Into his own family history far no:ugh to any Hint a hundred year.- ago everyone of his ancestors except two were free people. having secured their freedom soon nfter the War of I sr.,'. and today his relations own J6M0B worth of taxable property In Delaware, and there are hundreds of colored families whoso record Is exactly similar.But this long, natural and steady sort of rising of the Negro, Mr Ferris declares was cheeked by Dr Washington's fnmous Atlanta speech, followed by others In which he ridiculed the higher aspirations and spiritual strivings of his own people, nnd asked his own people to ceas contending for their manhood rights. The spectacle of the Moses of his people saying Ihe things the Georgia while man desired him m say. his minimizing of the Intellectual achievements of the Negro, Imported Into the North the South's estimate of the Negro and rut the foundation from under his civic privileges and political rights. For the North soon began to think and feel under his Instructions that It had forced the higher education and civil and political rights upon the black man before he was ready for It and silently acqttleser-d in the Smith's practically undoing the work of Sumner and Garrison. Mr Ferris attributes the failure of the Niagara Movement to furnish effective opfWfcalon to Booker Washington's pr..grntn to the lack of any equal personality In Its leadership. He believes thnt both Dubois' work and Washington's propngnnda are im portant nnd necessary. He believes that the Negro os n member of the human family belongs to the Genus Vlr as well ns to Ihe Onus Hunt Without Industrial education and economic basis he would bo Inst, but | without tho higher education nnd the ballot, which confers dignity nnd *11-respert upon nn Individual, that form the bulwark nnd prop of pride of ancestry and feminine virtue, he would be equally lost Ferris has fnltli that the Anglo-Saxon. In the very fibres of bis moral nature, stnnds fur Justice nnd that Hist Justice whlrh ha* slumbered for a while will finally assert Itself and welcome tho hlaek man into the brotherhood of the human family. Into the circle of his politiesThe history of the AmerlcBn continent I* os yet hilt a page compared with Ing out at present, taking warning chapters of European history' and by the social phenomena already may wc|j j,r mat with nil the touched upon, are going with Ihe pur- | changes and revolutions to come, if pose of preserving the Negro ns S’e- | our history Is to he annUgous of En gm, anil not as nn Imitation white j th|„ aspiration of the optlmts-mnn The thorough development of | ,,r yoUng Negro scholar may be real-Ihe black man on his own grounds is ] u.-dadopted by a small hut Innuential | _____elm Of e.ln.at-d nnd enterprising The apring ll;t of the C H Olnrk young Americans as a cause to strttg- | n„,i„ .-in unusual-glc for It is nn endeavor to And an h _ comprising the foilow-alternative to the American destiny ntlrnrt|v,, -A r-.wboy fava-of the Negroes—as they ilew it a |(|lt;r. A Tjj1i_ of )h( wh. Harriet steadily receding citizenship, de Jure Mnn|, ^ nf hlimnr, am1and defacto. In the OMM BUte. For ■ n.viu-.ratlng atm.«phem ofi myself. mvs Hugh M. Browne In a „ Wyoming ranch; Climbing I'p to vigorous article In thl« same number N(min, •• hy n„r, J Lewis, full »fof Liberia. I Stand for a developed h,„Uiint hum„p !n,mlUble . hur-Afriesn rave In Africa, nnd to m« the „ctor (k|1((,h#,i -A |{„„,|„m shaft. by Cnlted Slat's t* the greatest of the ju(je MacMlllxr. embodying a atrange srhonls from which the founders and experience In the Island of Luzonh builders of the African nation are to fr((m wh|rh th- author works up tehe graduated With his studies tm.l an |nlrn*cly dramatic climax; l nder observation in America and Europa the Flag the Pro™. b J Hamilton nnd Africa lie Ls enabled In take Ihe , Sodberry. with a vu.-l world war of 'broad outlook: he holds that a cen-|th„ future. a* the central theme; turr tn the hlston' of the race I* but Broken Links. I.v Job T.vbr. dcal-! as a day. and the Negro race in thU )ns. with life ai.d lalmr conditions Incountry have had |e** than half a c«n-| me rrw1 hPi,_ ..In \|oun-I tury of freedom. .a- against two cm- ,aln', Shadow, t.y Mary Rednet, n turles and a half of s la von Hence 'delightful romance .f ranch llf« InI this representative American Negro Idaho; Tho Law of ly.v-. ' t.y Charles 1 looks upon the proscriptions. dls- gt. Morris, a powcrrul -I - n ,iI rdmlnatlons nnd prejudices which w- interest. v.Titten with n serious ptir-are made to feel at every' turn In the p..*..; Paths Pres-mt A Romance f'nlted States of America a* a ,lf ,h„ plains, by Mnttde nark UavJ Chastisement nece.*.-sry to accomplish » masterly novel, With the atturlnB In us what fhe ehnsttsemenl of the ||f„ „( ihe p'..-r... -citing, .mlI wtldernem ccompHehed In the Jew*; ••Hor*»tmn * Kiss, by Mn. l u IVVr-I snd I (J»r that we have u yet but hlgr l^e. a tale n» ta-.vm.ittiig and uu-issted of the bitter waieih of Mara, hackneyed in .. -cene. plot and chnr-the deadly bite of the serpent to yet actmt a* iw title to come.But Booker T Washington haa at- Pliny Deri his f Seymour, author of wa«s withheld hi* countenance fVom Woodhail. ■ da»hlng tal or pioneer , *11 such movements. Ho Insists that day* In ths ftouth. b. * i .feirghtfnl I the Africans Nrn 'n Ameetca belong isummer home in one .•' h.- •. -i come ' bere and. whatever may he aaid I sections of the Adlronda. i.*. .mil re-I Rgvinst his Industrtnl ednestlon nmong centlv regaled a . r ■ of hunting the member* of hto race, it cannot ba ifrtrndx with the foOowing r. i denied that lt» practical effect mutt be I Just at sundown one evening, as I
Newspaper Details
The Morning Journal Courier
New Haven, Connecticut, US
Sat, Mar 07, 1908
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
Cynthia G.
VA, USA 20 May 2025
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