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Prof. Richard T. Greener’s Splen did Effort Attracting Much Attention. The Old Subject Treated from Uncommon Standpoints and Dressed in New and Attractive Clothes—The Finest Article of the Season is This One by Sawyer Greener. [From St. Joseph's Advocate. (Continued from last week, Mr. Garrison, at Exeter hall, in Lon don, sixty years ago, said: “I am proud to say that the funds for my mission * * * were princi —— made up by the voluntary contrn utions of my free colored brethren at very short notice. * * * Many of their number are in the most affluent circumstances and distinguished for their refinement, enterprise and tal ents. * * * They have flourishing churches, temperance and other so cieties. * * Among them is taken a large number of daily and weekly papers, and of literary and scientific medicals, from the popular month ies up to the grave ae erudite North American and American Quarterly Re views. I have at this moment to my own paper, ‘The Liberator,’ 1,000 sub scribers among this people; and from an occupancy of the editorial chair of more than seven years, I can testify that they are more punctual in their payments than any five hundred white subscribers whose names I ever placed indiscriminately in my subscription book.” _ Not alone William Lloyd Garrison. Long before Frederick Douglass began “to pray with his legs” and look toward the ‘north star,’ the leading colored men of Washington, Cary, Fleet and Cook; of Philadelphia, Forten, Allen, Burr and Purvis; of Baltimore,rrice, Greener and Watkins; of Boston, Paul, Easton, Barbadoes and Walker corre sponded with, aided, lodged and fed the apostle Lundy in his mysterious journeyings through the southern states, and circulated his Genius of Universal Emancipation. R. T. GREENER. My account is from Isaac Cary, who knew “‘the little, pale, thin man,” and he says Lundy never departed empty handed. It was in Master Paul’s church, Belk nap street, that the abolitionists, driven from Tremont Temple in 1860, found refuge, and preserved there free speech for Boston and America. Master Paul, himself a college grad uate, accompanied Mr. Garrison to En oe and won praise from Daniel Connell for his scholarship and elo quence. Before emancipation in New York state, Freedom’s Journal, edited by Cornish and Russwurm, a graduate of Bowdoin, I am told, afterwards presi dent of Liberia, demonstrated the pub lic spirit, intelligence and literary character of the American Negro. If David Walker's Appeal, issued in 1828, had been printed in 1765, or ‘70, and had been about the rights of the colo nies, it would long since have attracted attention. But it was written by one of the ‘told ole’ merchants” of Brattle street—an extinct guild—and is the voice of a black John the Baptist cry ing in the wilderness. It attained the honor of legislative attention, and a reward set for the author's head; but it is an American classic and forever an swers all hints at Negro contentment under oppression. By law of heredity, thanks to Governor Butler, Walker's son became a lawyer and a municipal judge in Boston. These facts taken at random would tend to show that the American Negro has tradition—far more, and more hon orable than many of his traducers; they are of services, ancestry, interests in public affairs, in his own future. Now traditions of blood and training and achievement can never be permanently repressed. Pile Etna upon them, they will break forth, no matter how long or persistently kept down. As a help to the solution of the white problem, this article is to show that they exist, and if they have not hitherto asserted themselves, it is because they could not afford to wait, not because they are not cherished and kept for inspiration. Some eee critics of the Negro, who analyze, weigh, measure him with their little es, discuss his re moval to Africa, debate his admission to trades unions, into the ranks of busi ness, into the literary circle, into social life, would save themselves much unrest if they knew his motto: J’y suis reste. He is a reader of the census. He calmly contemplates either horn of the politico-economic problem—absorption -all he asks to be is an actual American citizen; repression and fifty years of race isolation—one of the ruling forces of this republic, the arbiter of the south. For in fifty years he will be nearly 100,000,000 strong and, judging solely by the advance since 1863, in thrift, in education, in race develo pent, in equipoise, in aspiration, all that tends to consolidate and strength en, he will have no fear of the few white chips which will here and there attempt to stem the rush of this black Niagara. ‘Truly he can afford to wait. One of the worst phases of the white lem is the fatuous clinging to cer tain ideas, especially the good done to the Saar by bringing him to America. As well tell the descendants of Virginia convicts, the progeny of the kidnapped Irish. 1645-32; the proud descendants of Dutch, Scotch and English poor houses, shambles and deaths of the benefits which have accrued to them. For the presence of all t hro included, America is a gainer, humanity the debtor. The value of his contribution far outweighs any benefit he may be supposed to have re ceived. He has reaped down the fields, developed new ideas, preserved the ark of the nation’s inheritance, and if Fletcher, of Saltoum, and Dr. Dvorak have any weight, he is to become greater than the lawgiver he is to found the American music of the fu ture. “The future music of thi must be founded upon what Negro melodies. * * * American. They are the folk America, and your compe * country » called turn to them. * * In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and no school whole range of composition That can not find a themetic source’ here.” Dvorak. _ The Negro has no tears togged over that ‘‘wonderful school of slavery, under Providence,” so often quoted. He is no such hypocrite s to go through the pretense of believing that slavery is ever a good, a negessary, or beneficial school. Much Tesh does he grant that any phase of that school, or of music. There is i oney in the any stage, affected him morally, social ly or physically, except adversely, while he does know from bitter experience how utterly pharasaical, absurdly hypocritical, and how thoroughly un christian the entire system was in practice, example and influer Whatever of intelligence, ity, or civilization there today, let it be remembered in spite of slavery, and its rélic, caste. Whatever of honesty or morality, or thrift has survived the chartel-hous comes from that excesse which better than the Indias—Gallen says is no farther behind the bes English brain of to-day than it is be hind the brain of Athens! It is due to a brain that slavery could ag grate, to a happy heart, to Gm faith. I am at a loss to observe@how close the race maintains its heel@ on ortho dox Christianity, when it is remem bered how even the maxims of the common law were set aside at its be hests--partus sequitur par m—how Virginia (Henning Vol. II.1 pp. 356-7) declared that those imported thither, “except Turks and Moors §m amity,” shall be accounted slaves *§* * mot withstanding a conversiongto Chris tianity ‘after their importation.” _ How far from solution Fr oms the white problem, when th 0 re flects how powerless is i idtlanity even to repress race prejudice; how often indifferent to real br@therhood, while affecting deep denomminational interest. Indeed, while an efrascialated religion has been preached@to the Ne gro, each denomination has¢seemed to shirk the main question of, Who is my neighbor? A premium has Wién offered every self-respecting Negro to repu diate Christianity as it is tasgght. a speak of the Christian? Take the cul tured editor, W. H. Page (a Jor h Caro linian),in The Forum, the@molder of public opinion. How desguring the when neigh water mark of culture. Consider him at his best. I cite the case of a manly and accomplished gen tleman of the race. His life has no background. What we mean by an cestry is lacking to him, and not only is it lacking, but its lack is proclaimed by his color and he is always reminded of it. Be who he may and do what he may, when the personal test comes he finds himself a man set apart, a marked man. There is a difference between the discrimination against him in one part of the country (the south) and in another part (the north), but it is a difference in degree only. He is not anywhere in a fellowship in complete equipoise with men of the other race. Nor does this end it. The bound less sweep of opportunity which is the inheritance of every white citizen of the republic, falls to him curtailed, hemmed in, a mere pathway to a few permissible endeav ors. A sublime reliance on the ulti mate coming of justice may give him the philosophic temper! But his life will bring chiefly opportunities to cul tivate it. And for his children what better? To those that solve great so cial problems with professional ease, I commend this remark that Mr. Lowell is said to have made: ‘I am glad I was not born a Jew, but if I had been a Jew, I should be prouder of that fact than any other.’ You can find men who are glad that they were not born Negroes; but can you find a man, who, if he had been born a Negro, would be prouder of that fact than of any other”? When you have found many men of this mind, then this race problem will, owing to some change in human na ture, have become less tough, but till then patience and tolerance. — Here is a paragraph which most peo ple will acquiesce in, which bears the air of hard sense, stern reality, deep philosophic insight, keen analysis and delicate humor. It is already winging its way, and will soon be quoted as solid fact. If it were true then Scho penhauer reigns in America; religion and culture have failed to soften the manners, but have hardened and in tensified the small prejudices of two centuries ago. If the statements were true, acquiescence in such condition would show the utmost callousness, a more than heathen indifference, a heartlessness and inhumanity unwor thy of the century. If character, rep utation, manly accomplishments, the heights reached, the palm won, still find any black hero a “marked man,” because of no fault of his own, and church and society, home and club, united in thus ostracising him and his children, then is it not demonstrated that it is not the black but the white problem, which needs most serious at tention in this country? Mr. Lowell, as always, was wisely terse. No trace of the snob was in him; he was no panderer to caste. Of course he was not anxious to be born a Jew, for he knew unreasoning and unreason able pride of race still pecked often at its superior; but Lowell, knowing the history of the race, and what its sons had accomplished in spite of persecu tion, felt he “‘would be prouder of that fact if he were a Jew than any other.” {Concluded in our next.} Act
Newspaper Details
Cleveland Gazette
Cleveland, Ohio, US
Sat, Sep 29, 1894
Page 1
Full Page
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Anonymous
USA 30 Jan 2026
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