Colored girls and boys' inspiring United States history / and a heart to heart talk about white folks

THE COLORED RACE IN THE WARS OF THE U. S.

In the Colonial, French and Indian Wars

(1704-1759)

Even farther back than 1704 Colored freemen and slaves showed their braveness and fighting abilities by taking active parts in helping the white plantation owners to protect and preserve their homes from the justly aggrieved Indians. Around the above date and the period between the years 1708 and 1718 a series of Colonial and Indian wars took place. These conflicts stretched from little but dignified Rhode Island (Queen Anne’s War) through the Tuscarora Indian War down to the Yamassee Indian War that for a time threatened to wipe away the rice and indago colony of South Carolina. Included among these military operations were the French and Indian Wars in which many Negroes gave good accounts of themselves, foremost among them being Sam Jenkins and Israel Titus who showed unusual braveness under the commands of General Washington and Braddock.

IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR


(1775-1783)

Crispus Attucks

ALTHOUGH such records cannot be found on the pages of the United States histories used in the American public schools, a trip to cultured Boston will enable one to read on the monuments in public squares and in the public libraries the name and facts about the glorious deeds of that pioneer Negro patriot, Crispus Attucks who fell as the first American martyr in the Boston Massacre of 1770. It is also in the Puritan records of New England where one may learn about Peter Salem, the Colored soldier who avenged the death of the first seven American martyrs at Lexington and Concord by slaying Major Pitcairn, the British officer who in company with his men charged against the Colonists at Bunker Hill. Among the hundreds of other men of color who took parts in those fierce skirmishes were Salem Poor, reported at the Commander’s office for extraordinary bravery at Bunker Hill, and “Black Prince” cited for unexcelled gallantry at Newport. It is understood that among those who received pensions at the close of the war were Cato Howe, A. Ames and T. Coburn.

Few know that it was a Colored man, Jordan Freeman, who timely and mortally received on his ready spear point the British officer, Major Montgomery as he daringly leaped, followed by his soldiers, over the walls of Griswold, an American fort. Later on in that same battle of 1781 the Colonists were over powered and compelled to surrender, whereupon the American leader, Ledyard, courteously handed his sword to the British officer in command. That unfair Englishman upon receiving the sword immediately thrust it up to the hilt through the body of Ledyard. A Colored soldier, Lambo Latham, who was standing near and saw the dastardly act, made one mighty pantherlike leap and loyally avenged the death of his American commander by plunging his bayonet clear through the body of that ungallant Britisher. For that act of fidelity and patriotism, Lambo Latham received over thirty bayonet stabs from the enemy before he stopped fighting and gave his last breath for America and its white people who at that moment were denying their Colored slaves the same sweet freedom for which they were fighting to get from England.

Not only did “John Bull’s” subjects have to face human lions in the forms of fighting Colored men, but they also had to feel the pains and fear the death dealing blows of human tigeresses in the forms of Colored women fighters. And all Americans who are truely proud of their country and its real history should read and remember about one Molly Pitcher, who after her husband had been killed in the battle of Monmouth, bravely took his place at a cannon and nervely upheld America’s cause during the remainder of that fierce and bloody conflict. Then there was the undaunted and resourceful Deborah Gannet, who by assuming the name of “Bob Shurtliff” entered the American army and went through more than one year of actual battlefield fighting and camp life exposure. And during her entire service she successfully kept her moral purity by cleverly hiding from the officials and the soldiers the knowledge of her sex. This in other words read her war record on a pension certificate granted to her after her honorable discharge from the army. And there were doubtless many other unrecognized but noble Negro women who entered numerous conflicts and gave their last drop of blood and lives in order that the white colonists might enjoy the freedom that their Colored brothers and sisters then saw no signs of ever receiving.

In the War of 1812
(1812)

There are few people who know that one of the main causes of The War of 1812 was on account of the British forcibly taking and compelling three Americans (two Negroes and one Caucasian) to sail under the English flag. It was in that same war that a Colored soldier, Jefferys, on seeing a body of American troops retreating under heavy fires from the enemy, dashed to their front, rallied them together, led their steps back and repelled the British soldiers who were about to break through a very important but weak point in General Jackson’s defense at Mobile. That general not only noted that leadership rally but gave full credit and praise where it was due. He also expressed gratefulness to the soldier of color whose ideas first suggested the successful use of bales of cotton for breastworks in fortifications. In the battles around New Orleans he looked with soldierly pride upon the splendid fighting of his black troops.

When American school children learn from their United States histories that clean-cut and famous naval battle report, “We have met the enemy and they are ours” ..., such histories do not also inform their readers that the personal pronouns “we” and “ours” so prominent in Commodore Perry’s above message includes the heroic deeds of Colored sailors as well as white. So when in reciting these stirring words their iron-charged bloods suddenly gallop through their veins; their chests expand wide with national pride; their heads jerk erect with proud fighting spirits and their eyes sparkle bright with slumbering fires, such patriotic emotions have been unknowingly and involuntarily aroused in true American youths because of the loss of Colored blood and lives as well as of white in those lake battles. And among those weather-beaten bronze “salts” were Jack Johnson (not our present ex-champion heavyweight prize fighter of the world) and John Davis who were both especially mentioned for distinguished service on the schooner, “George Thompson.” That world known message of 1812 also included many other Negro sailors who pitted their bravery and brawn against the British “tars” in order to help Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to break the backbone of the War of 1812 by opening up a clear passage on the Great Lakes. It was through that same newly made water path that General William Henry Harrison (the hero of Tippicanoe, Log Cabin and Hard Cider) and his seasoned famed Indian fighters were conveyed in order to enter Canada where they completely defeated the artful Proctor and slew the cunning Tecumseh in that savagely fought battle of The Thames. Thus Colored fighters helped to end the foxy and wolfish Proctor-Tecumseh partnership that had annoyed and tormented for so long the American settlers on the Northern frontiers.

In the Mexican War
(1845-1847)

If it were possible for General Santa Anna to bodily slip back to earth, personally mingle amid and chat with those of his soldier friends who are still living; it is more than likely that among the many things talked over they would seriously mention the fact of having caught many hasty glances of dark fighting faces under command of the American Generals Taylor and Scott who kept the Mexicans on a constant hop-step-and-a-jump around Vera Cruz, Buena Vista and other places in that section.

On account of Negroes at that period being greatly removed from the United States Army and State Militias, because of racial questions, it is not likely that many Colored fighters had a chance to get busy in that one and a half year backyard quarrel and fight. There was published in a Western paper a few years ago an account of a Mexican War Colored veteran known as Captain Jackson who died in Chicago, Ill., in 1894. And in order to have received that military title, officially or unofficially he surely must have used some brain power as well as much brawn force in helping to establish America’s boundary line on the Southern frontier.

THROUGH THE “UNDERGROUND RAILROAD”

Every Local Was a Special

Without doubt, among the greatest workers in that society and truest white friends to the freedom seeking slaves were; Calvin Fairbanks who was arrested and kept for over fifteen years in Southern jails where he was daily whipped until blood flowed from his back, just because he helped human beings to get their freedom; Thomas Garrett who was jailed and had to sell all his personal property and real estate to pay the fines imposed upon him by the Southerners for doing the works of Jesus Christ by aiding the weak and comforting the suffering. And when penniless Thomas Garrett got out of jail he continued to help runaway slaves to find their freedom; Samuel May whose Christianity helped thousands of Colored people to enjoy the freedom due all human beings instead of suffering yokes and chains belonging to dumb beasts of burden; and Levi Coffin, who was recognized as the central electrical force that so powerfully and silently drove on, and the chief consulting engineer who so watchfully kept in motion the ever welloiled and frictionless machinery of the underground railroad systems.

The following names are those of some of the leading free Colored people who in every way possible were foremost in helping to liberate from slavery their less fortunate race brothers and sisters in the South:

To the Colored boys and girls who desire to learn more about such mysterious underground railroad trains, that with their nervy and plucky passengers holding on with all their might, were constantly diving into and running under rivers as well as climbing upon and rolling down mountain sides without ever being wrecked or seldom losing a passenger, the writer begs to offer the following suggestion:

Any evening when such boys and girls suddenly get a burning thirst to visit the “movies” and drink in the red-blooded and heroic screen capers of a Wm. S. Hart, a Pearl White or a Douglass Fairbanks; let those boys and girls go to the nearest library instead, secure a copy of William Still’s “Underground Railroad Records”, and return home with it. In its stories they will find just as hair-raising adventures and exciting escapes as are to be found in any of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes detective cases; between its leaves they will find the same kind of serious wit and humor that smile up from a Walt Mason newspaper article; from cover to cover they will find the same kind of heart-rending and flesh-suffering word pictures that Longfellow and other authors have so vividly painted in telling of the expulsions and wanderings of the doomed Arcadians; but, last and most important of all they will find every one of its pages to contain as true and valuable American history as ever appeared in the writings of a Bancroft, a Fiske, a Higginson, a Prescott or a Ridpath.

IN THE CIVIL WAR

(1861-1865)

Abraham Lincoln

Captain Andre Cailloux was one of the bravest soldiers to fall in the Union charge on Fort Hudson. It is said that his Company charged that fort six times looking point-blank into the red-flaming, fire-spitting, bullet-biting and smoke-breathing mouths of the enemy’s cannons, with a heavy loss among his men in each charge. Feeling sure he was going to his certain death, yet never flynching, a Colored soldier, Anselmas Plancianocis, who was a color sergeant, uttered the following words to his commander before departing to his post of duty within gun range and full view to the enemy; “Colonel, I will bring back these colors in honor, or report to God the reason why.” He never brought back the colors. At another time during the noted battle at Fort Wagner, it was William Carney who upon seeing the colors about to trail on the ground as they slipped from the relaxing grasp of a dying comrade, quickly leaped to his side grabbed the flag staff and planted it on the breastworks. When he in turn was severely wounded and carried to the rear, he had just strength and breath enough to whisper, “Boys, the Old flag never touched the ground.” Both artists and poets have often come forth to paint and sing of the fierce fighting and brave stand made by that famous 54th Massachusetts Colored Regiment and its fearless and beloved white commander, Col. Robert Gould Shaw. He fell in the thickest of the battle surrounded by hundreds of his wounded and dying Colored troops whom he had watched over as a loving father and always led as a fighting officer. Although Col. Shaw and his men were greatly outnumbered by the enemy who repulsed their attack at Fort Wagner, the Colored soldiers, who had marched continually a day and a night without stopping and then pitched right into fighting without rest or food, proved to both the North and South that they were among the bravest of brave soldiers.

Civil War veterans now living, and when meeting each other usually become so excited when tongue fighting their battles over again that they forget for the time being all about their rheumatics and, throw away their canes as they hop about trying to imitate their former military actions in battles. Those who were there take delight in telling how Gen. Fitzhugh Lee and his prancing Old Dominion well trained white soldiers met their “Waterloo” in Fort Powhatan at the hands of the belittled and untrained slave troops. It was at Fort Harrison in Virginia that the Southerners on seeing Negro troops charging on the fort, taunted them with, “Come on darkies, we want your muskets.” Eye witnesses say that the so-called “darkies” being so used to obeying orders really did take the guns to the fort, but several hours afterwards when the smoke had cleared away it was seen that those Rebels who had remained to accept the muskets had received the bayonet ends through their bodies instead of the trigger ends into their hands. Gen. B. F. Butler’s records show that his ten regiments of ex-slave soldiers brought victory and fame all along their fighting lines.

Aside from the chief motive to help free themselves, without doubt one of the main things that spurred the Negro men to fight so valiantly was their constant memory of Fort Pillow. At that fort were stationed 292 Northern white soldiers and 262 Colored troops, all under the command of Major L. F. Booth. On the twelfth of April 1864 that place was surrounded by a much larger Confederate force under Generals Chalmers and Forest and ordered to surrender. Upon the fort refusing to do so, the Rebels closed in with their usual battle cry, “No Quarter”. And then as they broke in the fort and overpowered the handful of Union men, there began a scene of unmentioned butchering and slaughtering of Northern white soldiers and Colored ex-slave men, women and children that far surpassed in horribleness the massacre of Custer and his faithful little band by the Sioux chief, Sitting Bull and his merciless Indian warriors. So after that whenever Colored men entered battles their answer to the Rebel’s “No Quarter” was a challenge “Remember Fort Pillow,” and times too numerous to mention did Negro soldiers fully avenge that awful massacre of their comrades on that April day in Fort Pillow.

By reading the battlefield records of Gen. Thomas at Miliken’s Bend; Gen. Morgan at Nashville; Gen. Blount at Henry Springs; Gen. Smith at Petersburg; Generals S. C. Armstrong, B. F. Butler and O. O. Howard at other vital places, as well as the fighting records made in Virginia at Wilson Wharf, Deep Bottom, Fair Oaks, Hatchers Run and Farmville; full proofs can be found regarding the Colored soldiers’ supreme brave fights made for a twofold purpose—the saving of the Union and the freedom of themselves.

In summing up this part of this very important topic, the writer can think of no better way of strengthening the truth of foregoing assertions relative to Negro battlefield valour and loyalty in the Civil War than by quoting the following: “When the battle test came these regiments justified the hopes entertained by their sanguine friends.” This just and high tribute was paid to Colored Civil War fighters by Comrade John McElroy, a white editor of Washington, D.C., in the editorial correspondence of his National Tribune published April 7, 1921. He had written about General Rufus Saxton of Massachusetts taking military command of St. Helena Island, S. C. and forming the thousands of idle Negro men into regiments during the early stages of the Civil War.

On the Sea

In the month of June, 1861, the Union schooner, “S. J. Waring” was captured by the Confederate privateer, “Jeff Davis”. All the crew of the schooner, with the exception of a Colored man, William Tillman and two white men, were taken from the ship and replaced by Rebel sailors. At an opportune moment Tillman killed the Rebel captain and mate, drove all the other Rebels at the point of a gun below deck and took full charge of the ship. After ploughing through a terrific storm, during which time the Rebel sailors were brought up and forced to help man the wave-tossed ship, the Colored sailor safely guided the recaptured “S. J. Waring” into the harbor of New York. For that nervy and patriotic act he received from the Federal Government prize money amounting to six thousand dollars.

It was through the cool-headedness, gamesness and shrewd planning of Robert Small, a man of color, that the Confederate gunboat, “The Planter” was stolen out of Charleston Harbor, running the gauntlet of the Rebel’s watchful forts and barking cannons and safely delivered into the hands of a Northern squadron. In payment for this naval strategy Robert Small was made captain of the gunboat he captured and during his service continued to show marked fearlessness as a fighting sailor and unusual executive ability as a commanding officer.

When the Civil War was finally ended by General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army compelling General Robert E. Lee of the Rebel Army to surrender at Appomattox Court House, Va., on April 9, 1865, the Colored soldiers and sailors laid aside their warfare weapons with proud and thankful feelings that they had been given such great chances to help fight for and secure their own freedom.

ON THE PLANTATIONS

Broad-Mindedness

If those Colored men had wanted to copy the spiteful, revengeful and immoral actions of most of their white owners, they could easily have mistreated or destroyed all of those helpless white women and children in revenge for the two hundred and forty-four years of unspeakable crimes committed against their Colored womanhood by the Southern white slave owners and overseers. Or the slaves could have run away, joined the Union Army in a mass and left alone those destitute white women and children to starve on the untilled plantations. But those men of the Negro race, not then three hundred years from the underbrush of Africa, had under their dark skins too much inborn manhood and brotherhood qualities to stoop down to such beastily acts. They naturally grasped that grand and big opportunity to show to the Southern white people and the rest of the watchful world (that helplessly looked on in silence but with pitiful and admiring glances) that they had in their characters and dispositions and knew when and how to use them, the sterling principles of open-fairness, loyal friendliness, tender feelings, human considerations, moral self-control and Christlike mercy.

It is undeniably true that as early as 1860 there were in the United States over five hundred eighty-eight thousand Mulattoes. (Ref. Work’s Negro Year Book, page 432, 1918-1919 edition). Among that large number many thousands were beautiful and innocent girls who were either retained as their white owners’ immoral mistresses on Southern plantations or sold hither and thither from the Potomac River to the Gulf of Mexico to be forced into shameful and degraded lives a thousand-fold more friendless, unhappy and unprotected than Longfellow’s wandering Evangeline.

As the Civil War did not begin until 1861, it is readily seen that those one half million and more Mulattoes were not the results of slave men forcing immoral attentions upon the white women and girls left under their personal cares during the four years of the Civil War. But those half-Colored, half white people were the undeniable results of the brutal rapings of white plantation owners and overseers upon their helpless and unprotected black slave women for over two hundred years. So is it strange that fair and pure minded white people throughout the world, knowing and seeing all around them today the increased results of those first beastily actions by immoral members of their own race, listen without interest but with shame and impatience whenever, through sheer politeness, they are compelled to remain as audiences before certain classes of Southern men who for centuries (including today) have been talking through mouth and press about keeping their Southern white blood untainted and unstained? Colored boys and girls, therefore, should not become down-hearted and discouraged when they read in newspapers or hear from platforms such Southern white men writing or making such “Jekel-Hyde” talks; because close-observing, sound-reasoning and fair-judging white people in the South, in the North and throughout the world fully understand the whole situation and do not in the least take such Southern false utterances seriously. In fact they usually cannot keep from laughing at the funny side of the whole thing and say among themselves, “How absurd.”

No one but God knows the number of deceived Southern white married women who during slavery days secretly worried themselves sick, slowly pined away and silently died of broken hearts in their richly furnished colonial mansions, because of the ever haunting, taunting and stinging knowledge that their unfaithful, disloyal and immoral husbands as well as being the fathers of their white wives’ children were also the fathers of their slave mistresses’ Mulatto offsprings. So is it surprising that clean-living, clean-thinking and justice-loving white people always exchange knowing winks with their friends and hurriedly put handkerchiefs up to their mouths in order to hide disgusted features and weary yawns whenever they find themselves in places where they have to listen to certain classes of Southern white men who for centuries (including today) have been boasting from platform and press about their unsurpassed and unexcelled fidelity and chivalry to their Southern white womanhood? Instead of losing their ambitions and hopes when hearing and reading such blaspheming words against their race and progress, Colored boys and girls should take on new hope and redouble their efforts in striving to become even more devout Christians, higher learned students, better skilled industrial workers and fuller law-abiding citizens. In reference to the inferiority of their colors, Colored youths should remember that the prettiest thing in the world (the rainbow) is Colored, and yet, no one is able to resist the fascinations of its archful beauty or forget the consolations of its floodless promise, just because Nature with splashing rain drops and flashing sun rays oft ribbons the sky with rainbow hues.

No one but God knows the number of black slave women who moaned their heart strings loose and died of broken spirits either in their one-roomed log cabins or out in fence-cornered fields, because of the ever torturing knowledge that the virtues and womanhoods of themselves and the chaste maidenhoods of their immatured and innocent daughters had been repeatedly and forcibly taken or sold by their white owners and overseers. Yet, not one of those white rapists was lynched, tortured and burned at the stake by Negroes, not even at the close of the Civil War when there were thousands of ex-slave holders living in some Southern districts where the Colored people outnumbered the white people five to one. And surely, after gallantly fighting through the thickest and hottest battles of the war, it was not fear nor cowardice that held those Colored men from avenging the unprintable immoral wrongs forcibly done for over two hundred years to their unprotected and helpless Colored women. But, it was the living up to and the carrying out of a certain high civic principle of their African tribal laws that they had inherited and which prevented the ex-slaves from striking such a revengeful blow upon the Southern whites. For among savage tribes in Africa the universal punishment for raping was certain death; different tribes having different methods of dealing out that penalty. But that punishment was never dealt out by a mob. Those tribes so respected and obeyed the laws under which they lived and were governed that as savage as they appeared to be, they always had enough self-control over their tempers and passions to leave the captures, trials, convictions and executions of such offenders to be carried out by their chiefs and their assistants who had been put in their offices for such purposes. And since America had made laws and appointed officers who should have caught, tried, convicted and punished those Southern white men who raped enough black women to cause the birth of over a half million Mulattoes, the ex-slave men felt that even if those laws had not been enforced by people who had been selected to do so, it was not their rights to take the laws into their own hands by forming themselves into lynching mobs. They felt that just as raping of either black or white women is a most damnable crime; so is lynching either by black or white mobs a most hellish sin. In making comparisons between the ancient laws of Nippur and the modern laws of the United States, relative to slaves, the world-famed journalist, Arthur Brisbane, in the June 22, 1920 issue of the New York American, under the title, “Today”, wrote in part as follows:

“Five thousand years ago some laws were better than those of our day.

“For instance, in those ancient laws, if a slave woman had a child, the father being her owner, the mother and the child were set free. In magnificent America, in Lincoln’s day, thousands of slave children, with slave owners for fathers, were sold in the public markets.”

Now, not for one moment do intelligent and law-abiding Colored citizens uphold or make excuses for the brutish crimes committed by the degenerate members (and there are many) of their own race. For they fully realize that it means a faster and higher progress of all their people to have Colored criminals punished to the fullest extent of the law, after they have been given the same fair trials, convictions and sentences that are handed out to the thousands of white criminals who commit the same kind of crimes. And just as Colored degenerates are disgusting and shameful to up-right living white people, so are white degenerates disgusting and shameful to up-right living Colored people. Thus the broad-minded and law-abiding Colored and white citizens now mutually know that it is for the greater advancement of both races and a closer brotherhood combining of all Americans for them to see to it, as far as possible, that all criminals be rightly protected when arrested, given fair trials, safely guarded after sentenced and fully punished in a confinement where they cannot further morally lower themselves nor longer dilute the purity of human society.

And in thus far carrying out their Christian duties for the elevation of humanity, good Colored and white people are contented in knowing that for those criminals of both races who are shrewd enough to escape the detection and punishment of earthly laws, there is a Heavenly law that never fails to punish them at the proper time. And even while on their death beds those evil doers are twisting and turning in mental and bodily sufferings, they will not on account of their torturing pains be able to truthfully and peacefully chant such consoling lines that are found in Tennyson’s poem “Crossing The Bar”, nor will their names be written in that “Book of Gold” where it is said Abou Ben Adhem had his name inscribed above all of those who loved the Lord, because he (Abou Ben Adhem) loved all his fellowmen.

FOLK-LORE SONGS OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO

Different Emotions

For many years after their freedom great number of ex-slaves harbored bitter dislikes toward these songs because they so clearly and painfully reminded them of their past ill-treatment and sufferings during slave days. Most of their children caught this feeling direct from their parents or indirectly through their own vivid imaginations formed from what they had heard about slavery. But quick and deep understanding people of both races soon found in these crude tuneful words something far more interesting and touching than mere memories of slavery sins and sufferings—they saw and felt in such weird and original chants the most beautiful and truest life pictures of the true soul that it is possible for human being to paint with colorful and verbal expressions of tear moistened sorrows and smile dried joys. Thus music lovers and masters began at once to value this music as among the most precious finds to be added to their treasuries of folk-lore songs.

World recognized Negro music transposers and composers are today taking these rough, crude and half-savage chants and, without destroying their originalities of construction or pureness of quality, lifting them from the lowest depths of ignorant fun-making burlesquers to the highest level of intelligent and serious-minded music admirers. And throughout the musical world today celebrated chorus leaders, conductors, etc., of both races in giving even operatic recitals indicate by their programs rendered that they consider no first-class recital complete unless one or more of its numbers are expressions of Negro folk-lore music as Burleigh, Dett, Diton, Work and others have so classically elevated them. These broad-minded and just manifestations are gradually causing the general public to become more interested in, give more serious thought to, and show more appreciation of the true dignity and value of these melodies. They are also rapidly educating the American Colored people as a mass not to hate and cast aside but to love and preserve this music as a race pride heritage so costly purchased and handed down by their fore-parents and as one of the most valuable and rare features of American history.

Among the foremost composers, singers and lecturers in the Negro race who are giving tremendous aid and are largely responsible for the development of the above favorable sentiments are Cleveland G. Allen, New York, N. Y., Harry Burleigh, New York, N. Y., R. Nathaniel Dett, Hampton, Va., Carl Ditson, Phila., Pa., E. Azalia Hackley, Detroit, Mich., Kathleen P. Howard, Birmingham, Ala., J. Wesley Jones, Chicago, Ill., Jennie C. Lee, Tuskegee, Ala., Nellie M. Mundy, New York, N. Y., Jas. A. Mundy, Chicago, Ill., F. J. and J. W. Work.

THROUGH RECONSTRUCTION DAYS

Frederick Douglass

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.

BOLEY, OKLAHOMA

Boley, Oklahoma, was founded on September 22, 1904 by two Colored men, T. M. Haynes and James Barnett, and since then has enjoyed the greatest growth of any exclusive Negro community in the United States. There is a population of 2,500 in the city and 1,200 in the adjoining district. There are no white people living in the city and all of the farms within a distance of 8 to 10 miles are owned, with but few exceptions, by Colored farmers who possess as much as 900 acres individually. Farming is the chief industry of the community and about 90 per cent of the population own modern homes, many of them costing $5,000 and more.

All of the city offices, telephone exchange, telegraph office, depot agency, Post Office (only Third Class one in the world totally run by Negroes) are conducted by Colored people. All the business establishments and industries, that are of nearly every kind including several cotton gins are owned and carried on by Negro business men and women, one merchant being worth $100,000.00. The city has its own paved streets, electric light plant, ice plant, water system, and modern city High School costing $20,000, two private newspapers and a private Bank.

Some of the important buildings and institutions in the city are the State School of the C. M. E. Church that has a modern three-story $20,000 building; the Masonic three-story Temple; The Widow and Orphan Home of the U. B. F. Grand Lodge; the $150,000 State Tubercular Sanitarium for Negroes; and seven churches with creditable buildings. Prospects are so promising that the community is expecting to have oil wells within the next two or three years.

This is not a bad record for such a handicapped life swimmer as the Negro Race is compelled to be in the United States and certainly proves that, when it comes to keeping a lead-weighted body above the water surface and at the same time make progress up a rough stream against a strong down-flowing prejudiced current, the Negro, if he really is a fifth cousin to the foolish, noisy, frolicsome and “Call Of The Wild” goose family, he is also a first cousin to the sensible, industrious, frugal, quiet, dignified and home-loving swan family.

IN CONGRESS

J. R. Lynch was elected from Mississippi to the U. S. House of Representatives. Other Colored men who have been members in the House were as follows: Louisiana sent J. H. Menard and C. E. Nash; Georgia sent J. T. Long; Alabama sent B. S. Turner, J. T. Rapier, and J. Harlson; Virginia sent J. M. Langston; Florida sent J. T. Walls; South Carolina took the lead in numbers by sending R. B. Elliott, R. C. DeLarge, R. H. Cain, A. J. Ransier, Robert Small, T. E. Miller, G. W. Murray, and J. H. Rainey who by being elected five times exceeded any other Negro in length of service (ten years) in the House. But it was left for North Carolina to “Tar Heel” in the rear of that Congressional noble march by sending the latest Colored member to Congress in the person of the late George H. White, who as a Representative had been proceeded from that same state in the same branch of the U. S. Legislature by J. Hyman, J. E. O’Harra and H. P. Cheatham. (extracts from Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, pg. 207.)

In The U. S. Diplomatic Service

While a U. S. Senator or Representative acts in the Legislature at Washington, D.C. as spokesman for a few thousand people living in a certain section of the state that elects him; a Minister or Consul to foreign countries acts as a spokesman for all the millions of American citizens living in all the United States of America. Thus, while the Colored Congressman held a very honorable and influential federal position; the Colored man who had served either as a minister or consul to foreign lands was the one who really shouldered the highest and most responsible Government position ever accorded to an American Colored person.

Some of those of the Race who have served in this last named branch of the Government are: A. H. Grimke, Minister to San Domingo, E. D. Bassett, Frederick Douglas, J. S. Durham, S. A. Furness, and L. W. Livingston, Ministers and Consuls to Haiti; T. M. Chester, Dr. J. R. Grossland, J. L. Johnson and E. W. Lyons, Consul and Ministers to Liberia; Jas. Weldon Johnson, Consul to Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, to Corinto, Nicaragua and to the Azores; J. C. Carter, and M. Wistar Gibbs, Consuls to Madagascar; Wm. H. Hunt and W. A. Jackson, Consuls to France; R. T. Greener, Consul to Vladivostok; W. J. Yerb, Consul to Dakar, West Africa. (some of above extracts from Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, pg. 208).

Others of the Race who have in the past or are at present holding important Federal positions are Chas. W. Anderson, Collector of Internal Revenue, New York City; E. T. Attwell, Director of Negro Industries during the World War; Dr. Bozerman, Postmaster of Charleston, S. C.; R. W. Bundy, Secretary to Legation in Liberia; Phil H. Brown, Commissioner of Conciliation in the U. S. Labor Dept.; J. E. Bush, Receiver of Public Money, Kansas; B. K. Bruce, Register of Treasury, Washington, D.C.; J. A. Cobb, Ass’t U. S. District Attorney, Washington, D.C.; C. S. Cottrell, Collector of Internal Revenue, Honolulu; W. S. Cohen, Land Office Commissioner, La.; Wm. Crum, Collector of Customs, Charleston, S. C.; J. C. Dancy, Recorder of Deeds, Washington, D.C.; J. H. Deveaux, Collector of Customs, Savannah, Ga.; Frederick Douglas, Recorder of Deeds and U. S. Marshall of the District of Columbia; Miss Helen Erwin, Director of Colored Industrial Housing, during World War; H. O. Flipper, Special Ass’t to the Alaska R. R. Commissioner; Geo. E. Haynes, U. S. Director of Negro Economies, during the World War; Perry W. Howard, Special Ass’t U. S. Attorney General; E. H. Hewlett, Judge, Municipal Court, Washington, D.C.; Henry Lincoln Johnson, Recorder of Deeds and Republican National Committeeman, Washington, D.C.; J. E. Lee, Collector Internal Revenue, Florida; Wm. H. Lewis, Ass’t U. S. Attorney General, Boston, Mass.; Jas Lewis, Collector of Port, La.; Judson W. Lyons, Register of U. S. Treasury, Washington, D.C.; Wm. Matthews, Ass’t U. S. District Attorney, Boston, Mass.; Whitfield McKinley, Collector of Port, Georgetown, D.C.; J. C. Napier, Register of U. S. Treasury, Washington, D.C.; J. B. Peterson, Chief Deputy Collector, Internal Revenue, Porto Rico; ex-Lieut. Gov. P. B. S. Pinchback, Special Agent Internal Revenue, New York; Dr. C. V. Roman, Field Secretary in Venereal Medical Division of U. S. Army, during World War; H. E. Rucker, Collector Internal Revenue, Ga.; Emmett J. Scott, Special Commissioner to Liberia, and Special Ass’t Secretary to Secretary of War, during World War; Robert Small, Collector of Port, Beaufort, S. C.; R. L. Smith, Deputy U.S. Marshall, Texas; Robert H. Terrell, Judge, Municipal Court, Washington, D.C.; Ralph W. Tyler, Auditor of Navy, and Foreign War Correspondent, during World War; W. T. Vernon, Register of U. S. Treasury, Washington, D.C.; and S. Laing Williams, Ass’t U. S. District Attorney, Chicago, Ill.

In State Legislatures

Upon being elected in 1866 to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, C. L. Mitchell and E. G. Walker, became the first Colored men to serve in any state legislature in America. Since that time up to the present day nearly a thousand men of the Race have served as Representatives in different state legislatures. Some of those having been elected within the past few years as members of state congressional bodies are as follows:

W. G. Alexander, New Jersey; J. C. Asbury, H. W. Bass and A. F. Stevens, Pennsylvania; J. A. Brown, H. E. Davis and H. C. Smith, Ohio; J. C. Coleman, H. J. Copehart, J. M. Ellis, E. H. Harper, T. G. Nutter, C. Payne and H. H. Railey, West Virginia; W. R. Douglass, A. H. Roberts and S. B. Turner, and Robt. R. Jackson, Illinois; J. C. Hawkins, New York; E. A. Johnson, N. Y.; W. M. Moore, Missouri; F. M. Roberts, California and J. M. Ryan, District of Columbia.

In City Government

The following names are those of a few of the many Colored politicians scattered throughout the country who are earnestly and intelligently helping their city governments to direct old and make new laws for the welfare of all races in their represented districts:

Councilman J. A. Adams, Annapolis, Md.; Alderman L. B. Anderson, Chicago, Ill.; Councilman J. Brown, Urbana, Ohio; Councilman V. Chambliss, Mounds, Ill.; Councilman R. A. Cooper, Philadelphia; ex-Alderman Oscar De Priest, Chicago, Ill.; Councilmen T. W. Fleming, Cleveland, Ohio, S. A. Furniss, Indianapolis, Ind., W. M. Fitzgerald, Baltimore, Md.; Alderman, G. W. Harris, and Assemblyman J. C. Hawkins, New York City, N. Y.; Alderman J. H. Hopkins, Wilmington, Del.; Alderman H. R. Jackson, Chicago, Ill.; Councilman Robt. R. Jackson, Chicago, Ill.; Assemblyman E. A. Johnson, New York City, N. Y.; Councilman W. T. McQuinn, Baltimore, Md.; C. Scott, Worcester, Mass, and H. St. Clair, Cambridge, Md.; Alderman T. E. Stevens, Cleveland, Tenn.; Councilmen H. Ward, Nicholasville, Ky. and F. F. Wright, Boston, Mass.; Committeeman E. H. Wright, Chicago, Ill. (some of the above names are extracts from Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, page 54.) Milton White and Amos Scott are very prominent in Phila., Pa. politics as well as unusually successful businessmen.

IN THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

When Hobson made his dare-devil and world-famed sea trip through a gauntlet of Spanish frowning guns, there were more than twenty-five Colored sailors with him who then shared all of his dangers and later a little of his fame. Another most important naval action centered around a Colored sailor, John C. Jordan, Chief Gunner’s Mate, who on May 1, 1898 during the battle of Manilla fired the first shot from the crusier, “Olympia,” flag ship of the late Admiral Dewey. That was the shot that opened the first decisive battle of the Spanish-American War as well as starting the destruction of the modern Spanish Armada. It is surely in place to mention here that Jordan entered the Navy as a third-class apprentice and was honorably retired as a Chief Petty Officer after spending thirty of his best years in the Navy working and waiting for “Uncle Sammy” to give him his just recognition and “Aunt Liberty” to give him a fuller caress of citizenship privileges.

In the Massacre at Carrizal

Another backyard quarrel and fight occured 1916 between the United States and Mexico. The famous 10th Colored Cavalry, 24th and 25th Colored Infantries were sent with Chicago National Guards to help watch the American border. On the morning of June 21, 1916, two divisions of the 10th Cavalry, Companies C and K, wished to pass through Carrizal to reach Villa Alunado. They were invited to come nearer for a friendly parley with the Mexicans. As the American soldiers drew closer to the place many of the Mexicans slyly, slowly and seemingly unconcerned quietly fell back, spread out and in Indian style rapidly formed a circle around the little band of unsuspecting Americans before they had really noticed what had been done. At an unseen given signal the Colored troops were suddenly attacked. They were outnumbered eight to one and in the engagement lost fifteen killed, had nine wounded and twenty-three captured, who received much inhuman treatment from the hands of their captors. Among the many brave acts of heroism during the day’s fighting was the one of Peter Bagstaff, a trooper of the 10th Cavalry, who in the very face of the Mexicans’ hailing shots staid by the side of his mortally wounded Lieut. H. F. Adair, giving that officer physical aid until death ended his sufferings.