Читать книгу Colored girls and boys' inspiring United States history and a heart to heart talk about white folks - William Henry Harrison - Страница 16

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Oft in the past has his life been told,

And others again should it oft unfold

To learn of the greatness he did reap,

As orator, editor, statesman deep.

The following lines of marginal flight

Show a Negro’s rise from depth to height:

Fred Douglas unknown in slavery shame

Elevated his name to the Hall of Fame.

—Harrison.

IN taking a swift but careful glance back to that historical and red-letter year of 1863, it will be noted that there was born at that time into these United States a form of whole liberty that had been fathered and nourished by the world-beloved Abraham Lincoln. Before the above date this country had existed under only a one-sided liberty that had been won from the English for the white Americans by the illustrious George Washington. But it was left for Abraham Lincoln to win for the United States a two-sided liberty by cutting the chains of slavery from the wrists and ankles of the black Americans and also refreeing the white Americans by unchaining from their souls the slave-holding temptations they had become too weak-minded to resist and too selfish to give up of their own accord.

As soon as the Colored people had passed out from the sufferings of slavery, they were at once compelled as free, but ignorant, homeless and penniless, people to begin their upward struggles and progress through a reign of terror. This reign of terror was caused by the brutal treatment and murdering of thousands of innocent Colored people and the destruction of their properties by an uneducated, uncivilized and unchristianized element of Southern white people who were known as “Night Riders”, “Ku Klux Klan”, etc., of whom the best minded white people even in the South were ashamed.

But the sturdy and hopeful Colored people came through that awful ordeal as they had come through slavery, with increasing determination and greater efforts to push forward and upward to the best and highest things in life. However, it was only their unfaltering trust in God that gave them enough hopeful vision in the future; it was only their gratitude to and appreciation of their Northern and Southern white aiding friends that retained them enough patience and faith in mankind; it was only their keenness to see the funny side of life’s happenings that enabled them to laugh and keep cheerful; it was only their ability and willingness to do any and all kinds of hard work that enabled them to sleep through the whole nights with peaceful minds; and it was only their great big healthy (everlasting-non-fasting) appetites that gave them enough vitality, stamina, physical strength and energy-plus to pass through those years of body sufferings and spirit crushings and safely reach their present stages of upward progress and onward success.

Thus the Negro race has proven that just as a red-blooded, self-confident, self-reliant and resourceful individual cannot rest with a peaceful and happy mind as long as staying in the easygoing, smoothly-worn and narrow “rut” of a least-resistance, non-progressive position, but fearlessly steps out with a determined mind, hopeful heart and unbounded enthusiasm to face and overcome the ups-and-down of this rough-and-ready world that finally yields up to that individual his or her well-earned and genuine success; so will a race of people of similar qualities and aspirations be restless until it wades and crawls out of a miry and stagnant pool of ignorance and poverty and enters a channel of freshly flowing active thoughts where it can freely swim abreast in fair competition with other races in order to reach those distant ports of Christian service, citizenship usefulness, financial independence, self culture and human helpfulness.

While the Negro race in the United States succeeded in swimming into that channel in 1861, it has never been allowed, like other races therein, to use either a rapid-lunging and noisy over-head double-arm stroke or a swift-gliding and noiseless under-water crawl-stroke; but, has been compelled to paddle along using a one-arm bull-frog stroke, having one leg and arm tied together with strings of race discriminations, the entire racing course clogged with floating debris of public decayed sentiments and a plaited cord of race jealousy-envy-spite tied to the big toe of the free leg that has been roughly and constantly yanked back throughout the swim. With all that prejudiced and unsportsmanlike handicap, the American Colored people have increased their ownership of homes from twelve thousand in 1866 to six hundred thousand in 1919; they owned in 1910 over two hundred thousand farms that with other real estate holdings comprised twenty-one million acres of land; in 1866 they ran a little over two thousand business enterprises and in 1919 they had increased that number to fifty thousand business concerns doing a volume of business amounting to about one billion two hundred million dollars; in 1919 there were annually being spent for their education fifteen million dollars; starting out in 1866 with seven hundred churches they kept on building and buying Houses of God until in 1919 they owned forty-three thousand such buildings valued at more than eighty-four million dollars; and while the American Colored people in 1866 were worth twenty million dollars, they continued to earn and save money until in 1919 they had accumulated a wealth of one billion one hundred million dollars. (above figures extracted from Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, pgs. 1-2-345.)

There are located in over 25 States throughout the Union nearly a hundred towns and villages that are inhabited and governed wholly by Colored people. The largest of these settlements is described below.