18 - Black Experience in America, 18th-20th Century by Various

Discover a rich tapestry of voices in Black Experience in America, 18th-20th Century. This collection features a diverse range of non-fiction, fiction, poetry, drama, and speeches sourced from Project Gutenberg, highlighting works by and about African Americans. From the poignant epistolary exchanges of late 18th-century black Baptist preachers to the powerful testimonies of ex-slaves from the 1930s, this anthology offers a profound exploration of the African American journey through time. (Summary by BellonaTimes)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Section eighteen of Black Experience in America eighteenth through twentieth century.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. The Sunday School and Church as
a Solution of the Negro Problem by d Webster Davis,

(00:24):
Doctor of Divinity, reading by Matt Perart, Black Experience in
America eighteenth through twentieth century by various Section eighteen delivered
at the International Inter Denominational Sunday School Convention, Massey Hall, Toronto, Canada,

(00:47):
June twenty seventh, nineteen o five. If I were asked
to name the most wonderful and far reaching achievement of
the splendid, all conquering Anglo Saxon Race, I would ignore
the pass of Thermoplay, the immortal six hundred at Balaklava, Trafalgar, Waterloo, Quebec,

(01:11):
Bunker Hill, Yorktown, and Appomatics. I would forget its marvelous
accumulations of wealth, its additions to the literature of the world,
and point to the single fact that it has done
the most to spread the religion of Jesus Christ as
the greatest thing it has accomplished for the betterment of

(01:32):
the human family. The Jews preserved the idea of a
one God and gave the ethics to religion, the Ten Commandments,
the Lord's Prayer, and the Sermon on the Mount. The
Greeks contributed philosophy, the Romans polity, the Teutons liberty and
breadth of thought. But it remained to the Anglo Saxon

(01:56):
implicitly to obey the divine command go ye into all
the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. If
some men would ask me the one act on the
part of my own race that gives to me the
greatest hope for the Negro's ultimate elevation to the heights
of civilization and culture, I would not revel in ancient

(02:19):
lore to prove them the pioneers in civilization, nor would
I point to their marvelous progress since emancipation that has
surprised their most sanguine friends. But I would take the
single idea of their unquestioned acceptance of the dogmas and
tenets the Christian religion as promulgated by the Anglo Saxon,

(02:43):
as the highest evidence of the future possibilities of the
race ours was indeed a wonderful faith that overleaped the
barriers of ecclesiastical juggling to justify from holy writ the
iniquitous trap in human flesh and blood. Forgot the glaring

(03:04):
inconsistencies of a religion that prayed on Sunday our Father,
which art in Heaven, and on Monday sold a brother, who,
though cut in ebony, was yet the image of the Divine.
The Negro had in very truth, the faith that would
not shrink, though pressed by every foe, that would not

(03:27):
tremble on the brink of any earthly woe. That faith
that shone more bright and clear when trials reigned without,
that when in danger, knew no fear in darkness, felt
no doubt. If it is indeed true that by faith
are ye saved, not only is this world, but in

(03:50):
the world to come, then God will vouchsafe to us
a most abundant salvation. It is my blessed privilege to night,
while you are pleading for the winning of a generation,
and at this special session for the relation of the
Sunday School to missions both home and foreign, to plead

(04:12):
for my people. And my prayer is that God may
help me to make my plea effective. For the people
for whom I plead are bone of my bone and
flesh of my flesh. I plead for help for my
own bright eyed boy and girl, and for all the
little black boys and girls in my far off southern home.

(04:36):
Yet the great race problem is to be settled, and
it is a problem notwithstanding all that has been said
to the contrary. It is to be settled not in
blood and carnage, not by material wealth and accumulation of
lands and houses, not in literary culture, nor on the
college campus, not in industrial education, or in the marks

(05:00):
of trade, but by the religion of him who said,
and I, if I be lifted up, will draw all
men unto me. These things are resultant factors in the problem.
But the problem itself lies far deeper than these. Calhoun

(05:20):
is reported to have said, if I could find a
Negro who could master the Greek syntax, I would believe
in his possibilities of development. A comparatively few years have
passed away, and a Negro not only masters the Greek
its syntax, but writes a Greek grammar accepted as authority
by some of the ablest scholars of the States. But

(05:44):
Abbic Gregory of France published in the fifteenth century Literature
of the Negro, telling of the achievements of Negro writers, scholars, priests, philosophers, painters,
and Roman prelates in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Holland and Turkey,
which prompted Blumenbach to declare, it would be difficult to

(06:07):
meet with such in the French academy. And yet literature
and learning have not settled the problem. No, the religion
of Jesus Christ is the touch stone to settle all
the problems of human life. More than nineteen hundred years ago,
Christ gave solution when he said, ye are brethren. Love

(06:29):
is the fulfilling of the law. And whatsoever ye would
that men should do to you, do ye? Even so
to them? Is the Negro in any measure deserving of
the help for which I plead the universal brotherhood and
common instincts of humanity should be enough. I bring more

(06:53):
Othello in speaking of Desdemono says she loved me for
the dangers I had passed. I loved her that she
did pity me. If pity and suffering can awaken sympathy,
then we boldly claim our right to the fullest measure
of consideration. Two hundred and fifty years of slavery, with

(07:14):
all its attendant evils, is one of our most potent
weapons to enlist sympathy and aid. I come with no
bitterness to North or South for slavery. I acknowledge all
the possible good that came to us from it. The
contact with superior civilization, the knowledge of the true God,

(07:35):
the crude preparation for citizenship, the mastery of some handicraft.
Yet slavery had its side of suffering and degradation. North
and South rejoice that it is gone forever. And yet
many of its evils cling to us, like the old
man of the sea to sendbad the sailor, and like

(07:56):
Banquo's ghost they houghtest. Still, as I stand here to night,
my mind is carried back to a plantation down in
old Virginia. It is the first day of January eighteen
sixty four. Lincoln's immortal proclamation is a year old. And
yet I see an aunt of mine, the unacknowledged offspring

(08:17):
of her white master, being sent away from the old
homestead to be sold. The proud Anglo Saxon blood in
her veins will assert itself as she resists with all
the power of her being the attempts of the overseer
to ply lash to her fair skin, and for this
she must be sold way down south. I see her now.

(08:41):
She comes down from the Great House, chained to twelve others,
to be carried to Lumpkin's Jail in Richmond, to be
put upon the block. She had been united to a
slave of her choice some two years before, and a
little innocent babe had been born to them. The husband

(09:03):
my mother, with a babe in her arms, and other slaves,
watched them from the big gate as they come down
to the road to go to their destination some twenty
miles away. As she saw us, great tears welled up
in her big black eyes. Not a word could she utter.
As she looked her last sad farewell. She thought of

(09:25):
one of the old slave songs we used to sing
in the cabin prayer meetings at night, as we turned
up the pots and kettles and filled them with water
to drown the sound. Being blessed, as is true of
most of my race. With a splendid voice, she raised
her eyes and began to sing, brethren, fare you well, brethren,

(09:49):
fare you well. May God, Almighty, bless you until we
meet again. Singing these touching lines, she passed out of sight.
More than forty years have past, and she and her
loved ones have never met again, unless they have met
in the morning land, where partings are no more. For

(10:10):
the sufferings we have endured, leaving their traces indelibly stamped
upon us, I claim your aid that we may have
for our children, this blessed Gospel, the panacea for all
human ills. The Negro has elements in his nature that
make him peculiarly susceptible to religious training. He stands as

(10:33):
a monument to faithfulness, to humble duty, one of the
highest marks of the Christ's life. He is humble and faithful,
but not from cowardice, in evidence of which I recall
his achievements at Boston, Bunker Hill, New Orleans, Milliken's Bend,
Wilson's Landing, and San Juan Hill. He fought when a slave,

(10:56):
some would say from compulsion, But would he fight for
love of the flag of the Union. God gave him
a chance to answer the question at San Lan Hill.
The story is best understood as told to me by
one of the Brave Ninth Cavalry as he lay wounded
at Old Point, Comfort, Virginia. Up go the splendid rough riders,

(11:19):
amid shot and shell from enemies, concealed in fields, trees,
ditches in the block house on the hill. The galling
fire proves too much for them, and back they come.
A second and third assault proves equally unavailing. They must
have help. Help arrives in the form of a colored regiment.

(11:40):
See them as they come, black as the sable plum
of midnight, yet irresistible as a terrible cyclone, as is
the custom of my race, under excitement of any kind,
they are singing. Not my country tis of the sweet
land of liberty, of thee. I sing the fighting willingly

(12:01):
for the land that gave them birth, Not the bonny
blue flag, though they were willing to die for the
flag they loved. They sing a song never heard on
battlefield before. There's a hot time in the old town
tonight on they come, trampling on the dead bodies of
their comrades. They climbed the hill. To the rear is

(12:25):
the command to the front, they cry, and leaderless, with
officers far in the rear, they plant the flag on
San Juan Hill and prove to the world that Negroes
can fight for love of country. They were faithful to
humble duty in the dark days of the South from
eighteen sixty one to eighteen sixty five, when Jefferson Davis

(12:47):
had called for troops until he had well nigh decimated
the fair Southland, and even boys, in their devotion to
the cause they loved dearly, were willing to go to
the front. My young master came to my old mistress
and asked to be allowed to go, calling my uncle Isaac.
My old mistress said to him, Isaac, go along with

(13:10):
your young mars Edmund, take good care of him, and
bring him home to me. Agua du di besak kin
was his reply. Off these two went amid the tears
of the whole plantation, and we heard no more of
them for some time. One night we were startled to
hear the dogs howling down in the pasture lot, always

(13:33):
to the southern heart, a forewarning of death. A few
nights thereafter, my mother heard a tapping on the kitchen window,
and on going to the door, saw Uncle Isaac standing
there alone. What in the world are you doing here,
was the question of my mother. What's mistress was the

(13:54):
interrogative answer. My mother went to call the mistress, who
white as a sheet, repeated the question. Mistus adn de
bess accout. Going a few paces from the door, while
the soft southern moon shone pitilessly through the solemn pines,
he brought the dead body of his young master and

(14:17):
laid it tenderly at his mother's feet. He had brought
his dead massle on his back a distance of more
than twenty miles from the battlefield, thus faithfully keeping his promise.
Such an act of devotion can never be forgotten. While
memory holds its sacred office. Not one case of nameless

(14:37):
crime was ever heard in those days, though the flower
of the womanhood of the South was left practically helpless
in the hands of black men in southern plantations. But
as a faithful watch dog stands and guards with jealous eye.
He cared for master's wife and child, and at the
door would lie to shed his blood in their defense

(14:59):
against tree gater, thieves and knaves, although those masters want
to fight to keep them helpless slaves. Some have claimed
that instead of putting so much money in churches, the
negro after the war should have built mills and factories
and thus would have advanced more rapidly in civilization. But

(15:20):
I rejoice that he did build churches, and to day
I can say that of the three hundred millions he
has accumulated, more than forty millions are in church property
in the sixteen southern States. This shows his fidelity and
gratitude to God, and that by intuition he had grasped
the fundamental fact that faith and love and morality are

(15:43):
greater bulwarks for the perpetuity of a nation than material wealth.
That somehow he was in accord with God's holy mandate,
that man does not live by bread alone, guided by
a superior wisdom. He first sought the kingdom of heaven,
and it does seem that all these things are slowly

(16:03):
being added to him. Education and wealth, unsanctified by the
grace of God, are after all curses rather than a blessing.
We are to rise not by our strong bodies, our
intellectual powers, or material wealth, although these are necessary concomitants,

(16:24):
but by the virtue, character, and honesty of our men
and women. We are proud of our thirty thousand teachers,
two thousand graduated doctors, one thousand lawyers, twenty thousand ordained ministers,
seventy five thousand businessmen, four hundred patentees, and two hundred
and fifty thousand farms, all paid for as evidences of

(16:48):
our possibilities, but proudest of the fact that nearly three
millions of our almost ten millions of Negroes are professing Christians.
It is true that the black man is not always
the best kind of a Christian. He is often rather
crude in worship, with a rather hazy idea of the

(17:08):
connection between religion and morality. A colored man, on making
a loud profession of religion, was asked if he were
going to pay a certain debt he had contracted, remarked,
religion is religion, and business is business, and an inkwa mixum.
Yet I am afraid ours is not the only race

(17:29):
that fails to mixim. And he does not have to
go far to find others with advantages far superior to his,
who have not reached the delectable mountain. We, like others,
are seeking higher ground, and some have almost reached it.
Thank God, we can point to thousands of Negro Christians

(17:50):
whose faith is as strong as that of the prophets
of old, and whose lives are as pure and sweet
as the morning do. Our greatest curse today is the
rum shop, kept far too often by men of the
developed and forward race to filch from us our heart
earnings and give us shame and misery in return. And

(18:12):
a man who would deliberately debauch and hinder a backward
race struggling for the light would rob the dead still
the orphan's bread, pellage the palace of the King of Kings,
and clicked the angel's pinions while they sing. Right by
the side of this hindrance, especially in the country districts,
is our ignorant, and in too many cases venial ministry,

(18:38):
for ignorance is the greatest curse on earth save sin.
The Sunday School is destined to be the most potent
factor in the removal of this evil. As our children
see the light as revealed in the Sunday School by
the teachers of God's Word, they will demand an intelligent
and moral ministry and will support no other. Let me

(19:01):
say to you that there is no agency doing more
in that absolutely necessary and fundamental line than this God
sent association. Wherever your missionaries have gone, there have been
magical and positive changes for good and the elevating power
of this work for us can never be told. God

(19:23):
bless the thousands of Sunday school teachers, whose names may
never be known outside their immediate circles, and yet are
doing a work so grand and noble that angels would
delight to come down and bear them company. There is
a beautiful story told in Greek mythology that when Ulysses
was passing in his ship by the isle of the Sirens,

(19:44):
the beautiful sirens began to play their sweetest music to
learn the sailors from their posts of duty. Ulysses and
his sailors stucked wax in their ears and lashed themselves
to the masts that they might not be lured away.
But when Orpheus passed by in the search of the
golden fleece and heard the same sweet songs, he simply

(20:06):
took out his harp and played sweeter music, and not
a sailor desired to leave the vessel. The sirens of
sin and crime are doing all in their power to
lure us from the highest and best things in life. Wealth, education,
political power are, after all, but wax in the ears,

(20:28):
the ropes that may or may not hold us to
the masts of safety. But that sweeter music of the
heart played on the harp of Love by the Great
Sunday School Movement, continue to play for us. This sweeter
music and no sirens can lure us away from truth
and right and heaven. The mission that will be of

(20:49):
real help to us will be the mission dictated by love.
For no race is more susceptible to kindness than ours.
It must be undertaken in the spirit of the Master,
who said, I call ye not servants, for the servant
knoweth not what his lord doeth. But I have called
you friends. The negro loves his own and is satisfied

(21:12):
to be with them. And yet the man who would
really help him must be a man who has seen
the vision. Peter was unwilling to go to the Gentiles,
being an Orthodox Jew, until God put him in a
trance upon the housetop, let down the sheet from heaven
with all manner of beasts, and bid him rise up,

(21:34):
slay and eat. Peter strenuously objected, saying, Lord, I have
touched nothing unclean. But God said, what I have cleansed,
call thou not unclean. Then Peter said, I see of
thy truth that God is no respector of persons, but

(21:55):
has made of one blood all men to dwell upon
all the face of the earth. I pray, I believe
that you have seen this vision, and in the spirit
have come to help us. Sir l'mfal in searching for
the Holy Grail, bounded in ministering to the suffering and
diseased at his own door, Ye who are in search

(22:17):
of God's best gift can find it to day in
lifting up these ten millions of people at your door,
broken by slavery, bound by ignorance, yet groping for the light.
If we go down in sin and ignorance, we cannot
go alone, but must contaminate and curse millions unborn. If

(22:39):
we go up, as in God's name we will, we
will constitute the brightest star in your crown. What religion
has done for others, it will do for us. See
the triumphs of King Emmanuel in Africa, Burma, China, and
the isles of the Sea. It was Christianity that liberated

(23:00):
four millions of slaves and brought them to their better position.
Christian men north and south are helping them to day.
We could not rise alone. Has the Negro made improvement
commensurate with the help he has received from north and south.
I believe he has, and that each year binds him

(23:21):
better than the last. Good Doctor Talmage was visiting a
parishioner when a little girl sat on his knee. Seeing
his seamed and wrinkled face, she asked, doctor, did God
make you? Yes? Was the reply. Then, looking at her
own sweet, rosy face in a glass opposite, she asked,

(23:43):
did God make me too? Yes? Did God make me
after he made you? Yes? My child? Why? Looking again
at his face and hers, she said, well, doctor, God
is doing better work these days. God bless our mothers

(24:04):
and fathers. No nobler souls ever lived under such circumstances,
but God has answered their prayers, and with the young
folks will do better work. The Convention helps us to
help ourselves, the only true help, and in this the
conveners are investing in soul power that pays the biggest dividends,

(24:26):
and its bonds are always redeemable. At the Bank of Heaven.
In a terrible storm at sea, when all the passengers
were trembling with fear, one little boy stood calm and serene.
Why so calm, my little man, asked one my father
runs the ship was the reply, I have too much

(24:47):
confidence in what religion has done, and too much faith
in what it can do to be afraid. God's in
his heaven all's right with the world. Led each to
his part to help on the cause. There is never
a rose in all the world, but makes some green
spray sweeter. There is never a wind in all the sky,

(25:08):
but makes some birds wing fleeter. There is never a star,
but brings to earth some silvery radiance tender. And never
a sunset cloud, but helps to cheer the sunset splendor,
no robin, but may cheer some heart its dawnlight, gladness voicing.
God gives us all some small sweet way to set

(25:31):
the world rejoicing. America I believe is destined of God
to be the land that shall flow with milk and honey,
the King's Highway. When the ransomed of the Lord shall
return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy
upon their heads, they shall obtain joy and gladness, and

(25:52):
sorrow and mourning shall flee away icee gathered upon our
fair western plain nations of all the earth. The Italian
is there and thinks of Italian, fair Italian. The Frenchman
sings his marcellas. The solid phlegmatic Germans sings as divacht

(26:13):
am Rhine, the Irish sing Killarney and wearing the green,
the Scotchman his bluebells, the Englishman God saved the King,
the American the star spangled banner, God bless the Patriot.
But the ultimate end of all governments is that the
Kingdom of Christ may prevail. One towering Christian man thinks

(26:37):
of this, and seeing a black man standing by without
home or country, remembers that all are Christ's, and Christ's
is God's. He swings a baton high in air and
starts a grand Hallelujah chorus for God is all else
as the grand chorus, white and black of every age,

(26:58):
in every clime, saying till Heaven's arches ring again, while
angels from the battlements of Heaven listen and wave anew.
The palm branches from the trees of Paradise, and the
angel's choir that sang on the plains of Bethlehem more
than nineteen hundred years ago join in the grand refrain,

(27:19):
All hail the power of Jesus Name, Let angels prostrate fall,
bring forth the Royal Diadem and crown him lord of
all into Section eighteen