Part 1 (1/2)
Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading.
by Various.
ANNOUNCEMENT.
If, as Lord Bacon says, ”reading makes a full man,” then it behooves every one who has any aspirations to read.
The negro is just pa.s.sing, as it were, through the gateway that enters upon life's great work, and the publishers of this little volume are anxious to see our ”brother in black” develop, both from an intellectual and a moral standpoint, and are ready to do what they can to stimulate the race on to still greater achievements than they have ever before accomplished. In launching ”Sparkling Gems” we are simply putting forth to the world what we hope may, in some measure, instruct and encourage the colored people. We have compressed a vast amount of valuable race information into a small compa.s.s. The style of the work is good, and its moral tone is excellent. It can scarcely fail to profit every member of the race who will read it, hence it should be in every family, in every office, and in every library.
It has been the earnest aim of the compiler to embody in these pages the latest conclusions of some of the most prominent Afro-American scholars on several of the mooted subjects pertaining to the race.
We owe a debt of lasting grat.i.tude to many of our friends who have so generously furnished us valuable a.s.sistance in the collection of _data_ for this volume, among whom we may mention W. B. Rust and T. B.
Mears as among the most enthusiastic.
Believing that there is a genuine need for such a work as we have produced, we offer it to our colored friends and their white friends, praying G.o.d's blessing upon it. THE PUBLISHERS.
[Ill.u.s.tration: AS IT NOW IS--HOME OF A FREEMAN.
Residence of R. R. Church, Memphis, Tenn., the wealthiest colored man in the state; estimated at $250,000.]
SPARKLING GEMS.
THE NEED OF NEW IDEAS AND NEW AIMS FOR A NEW ERA.
BY ALEX CRUMMELL, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D. C.
This subject divides itself into two heads: (1) The ”Need” suggested; and (2) The ”Aims for a New Era,” which shall meet the need.
It seems to me that there is an irresistible tendency in the Negro mind in this land to dwell morbidly and absorbingly upon the servile past. The urgent needs of the present, the fast-crowding and momentous interests of the future appear to be forgotten. Duty for to-day, hope for to-morrow, are ideas which seem oblivious to even leading minds among us. Enter our schools, and the theme which too generally occupies the youthful mind is some painful memory of servitude. Listen to the voices of the pulpit, and how large a portion of its utterances are pitched in the same doleful strain! Send a Negro to Congress, and observe how seldom possible it is for him to speak upon any other topic than slavery. We are fas.h.i.+oning our life too much after the conduct of the children of Israel. Long after the exodus from bondage, long after the destruction of Pharaoh and his host, they kept turning back, in memory and longings, after Egypt, when they should have kept both eye and aspiration bent toward the land of promise and of freedom.
Now I know, my brethren, that all this is natural to man. G.o.d gave us judgment, fancy, and memory, and we cannot free ourselves from the inheritance of these or of any other faculty of our being; but we were made to live in the future as well as in the past.
Nothing can be more hurtful for any people than to dwell upon repulsive things. To hang upon that which is dark, direful, and saddening tends to degeneracy. There are few things which tend so much to dwarf a people as the constant dwelling upon personal sorrows and interests, whether they be real or imaginary.
The Southern people of this nation have given as evident signs of genius and talent as the people of the North; but for nigh three generations they gave themselves up to morbid and fanatical anxieties upon the subject of slavery. To that one single subject they gave the whole bent and sharpness of their intellect, and history records the result.
For more than two hundred years the misfortune of the black race was the confinement of its mind in the pent-up prison of human bondage.
The morbid, absorbing, and abiding recollection of that condition is but the continuance of that same condition in memory and dark imagination. But some intelligent reader of our race will ask, Would you have us as a people forget that we have been an oppressed race?
No. G.o.d gave us memory, and it is impossible to forget the slavery of our race. The memory of this fact may ofttimes serve as a stimulant to high endeavor. What I would have you guard against is not the memory of slavery, but the constant recollection of it, as the commanding thought of a new people, who should be marching on to the broadest freedom of thought in a new and glorious present, and a still more magnificent future. You will notice here that there is a broad distinction between memory and recollection. Memory is a pa.s.sive act of the mind, while recollection is the actual seeking of the facts, the endeavor of the mind to bring them back again to consciousness.
The fact of slavery is that which cannot be faulted. What I object to is the unnecessary recollection of it. The pernicious habit I protest against as most injurious and degrading. As slavery was a degrading thing, the constant recalling of it to the mind serves by the law of a.s.sociation to degradation. My desire is that we shall, as far as possible, avoid the thought of slavery. As a people, we have had an exodus from it. We have been permitted by a gracious Providence to enter the new and exalted pathways of freedom. We have new conditions of life and new relations in society. These changed circ.u.mstances bring to us thoughts, new ideas, new projects, new purposes, and new ambitions, of which our fathers never thought. We have need, therefore, of new adjustments in life. The law of fitness comes up before us at this point, and we are called upon, as a people, to change the currents of life and to s.h.i.+ft them into new and broader channels. I do not ignore the intellectual evils which have fallen upon us. Neither am I indifferent to the political disasters we are still suffering. But when I take a general survey of our race in the United States I can see that there are evils which lie deeper than intellectual neglect or political injury.
We have three special points of weakness in our race: 1. The Status of the Family. 2. The Conditions of Labor. 3. The Element of Morals.