Read Ebook: Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading A compendium of valuable information and wise suggestions that will inspire noble effort at the hands of every race-loving man woman and child. by Haley James T Editor

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Ebook has 521 lines and 44582 words, and 11 pages

PROF. W. H. COUNCIL, NORMAL, ALA. 24

NEGRO BUILDING, TENNESSEE CENTENNIAL 28

RICHARD HILL, CHIEF, NASHVILLE, TENN. 32

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 36

CHAIRMEN OF COMMITTEES 38

CHAIRMEN OF COMMITTEES 40

OFFICERS OF THE WOMAN'S BOARD 42

CHAIRMEN OF COMMITTEES, WOMAN'S BOARD 44

NEGRO BUILDING, ATLANTA, GA. 46

A. MEANS, MEMPHIS, TENN. 48

E. W. JACKSON, ORLANDO, FLA. 52

EMMA O. KENNEDY, MEMPHIS, TENN. 56

IDA B. WELLS BARNETT 60

L. J. BROWN, WASHINGTON, D. C. 68

DR. GEORGIA E. L. PATTON, MEMPHIS, TENN. 71

MRS. GEORGIA GORDON TAYLOR 75

FREDERICK DOUGLASS 77

MADAM SISSIRETTA JONES 88

HALLIE Q. BROWN 92

HENRIETTA VINTON DAVIS 96

CANE FIELD IN LOUISIANA 102

F. A. STEWART, M.D., NASHVILLE, TENN. 112

CHARLIE JOHNSON, LOUISIANA 120

J. P. NEWTON, MEMPHIS, TENN. 129

PROF. B. T. WASHINGTON, TUSKEGEE, ALA. 132

PROF. DENNIS S. THOMPSON, KANSAS CITY, MO. 140

GEN. ANTONIO MACEO 148

MRS. M. A. MCCURDY, ROME, GA. 162

EDWARD SEABROOK, SAVANNAH, GA. 166

JOHN Q. ADAMS, CHICAGO, ILL. 189

JOHN G. JONES, CHICAGO, ILL. 191

DR. WILLIAM KEY, SHELBYVILLE, TENN. 195

JIM KEY, SHELBYVILLE, TENN. 197

SPARKLING GEMS.

THE NEED OF NEW IDEAS AND NEW AIMS FOR A NEW ERA.

BY ALEX CRUMMELL, WASHINGTON, D. C.

This subject divides itself into two heads: The "Need" suggested; and 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 fashioning 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. God 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. God 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 passive 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 association 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 circumstances 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 shift 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.

It is my firm conviction that it is our duty to address ourselves more earnestly to the duties involved in these considerations than to any and all other considerations. Let us notice first

THE STATUS OF THE FAMILY.

I shall not pause to detail the calamities which slavery has entailed upon our race in the domain of the family. Every one knows how it has pulled down every pillar and shattered every priceless fabric. But now that we have begun the life of freedom we should attempt the repair of this, the noblest of all the structures of human life. The basis of all human progress and of all civilization is the family. Despoil the idea of family, assail rudely its elements, its framework, and its essential principles, and nothing but degradation and barbarism can come to any people. If you will think but for a moment of all that is included in this word "family," you will see at once that it is the root idea of all civility, of all the humanities, of all organized society. In the family are included all the loves, the cares, the sympathies, the solicitudes of parents and wives and husbands; all the active industries, the prudent economies, and the painful self-sacrifices of households; all the sweet memories, the gentle refinements, the pure speech, and the godly anxieties of womanhood; all the endurance, the courage, and the hardy toil of men; all these have their roots in the family.

Alas! how widely have these traits and qualities been lost to our race in this land! How numerous are the households where they have never been known or recognized! The beginning of all organized society is in the family. The school, the college, the professions, suffrage, civil office, are all valuable things; but what are they compared to the family? Here, then, where we have suffered the greatest, is a world-wide field for our intellectual anxieties and our most intelligent effort.

Secondly we will consider

THE CONDITIONS OF LABOR.

I refer to the industrial conditions of our race. No topic is exciting more interest and anxiety than the labor question. Almost an angry contest is going on upon the relations of capital to labor. Into this topic all the other kindred questions of wages, hours of labor, co-operation, distribution of wealth--all are canvassed in behalf of the labor element of the country, but all, I may say exclusively, for the white labor of this great nation. The white labor is organized labor; it is intelligent labor; it is skilled labor; it is protected labor. It is labor nourished, guarded, shielded, rooted in national institutions, propped up by the suffrage of the laboring population, and needs no extraordinary succors. But, my friends, just look at the black labor of this country, and consider its sad conditions, its disorganized and rude characteristics, its almost servile status.

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