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Evidences of Progress Among Colored People

Chapter 40: CHAPTER XXXVIII.
By G. F. Richings
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History - American

About This Book

The author compiles observations and illustrated lectures documenting social, educational, and economic advances among formerly enslaved people and their descendants since emancipation. It surveys schools, churches, businesses, and vocational institutions, profiles educators, community leaders, and successful professionals, and describes institutions founded both by allies and by the community itself. The work challenges common northern misconceptions, highlights examples of self-help, institutional building, and teacher training, and argues for continued philanthropic support while celebrating achievements that demonstrate capacity for self-improvement, civic participation, and cultural uplift.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

CONCLUSION.

I have now come to the most difficult part of this work. The conclusion to a book is rarely perfectly satisfactory to all readers, and I think rarely satisfactory to the author. I can only offer this apology: I did not at the beginning attempt a "literary" work. I have only aimed to set forth a few facts, which are incontrovertible evidences of the progress made by colored people, and these facts I have stated in the simplest form of English so that every person who reads the book may understand. I have indicated, I think, that the colored people have the same ambitions and aspirations which characterize all progressive races; and that when they are given equal opportunity and a fair chance in the various industrial and professional walks of life, they measure up to the white man in point of excellence, proficiency and ultimate success.

I have not exhausted my subject, for there are hundreds of men and women of the race not mentioned in this book, who are just as successful, just as remarkable in their careers as those mentioned. It would require a book many times the size of this one to give anything like a passing mention of these progressive, intelligent people. I have, as I stated in my preface, only pointed out a few of the evidences of progress. I have only given a few brief sketches.

These glowing facts, thus presented to the world, are the results of my personal contact, association and experience of sixteen years among colored people, both North and South, and it is my earnest hope that I have succeeded in presenting to my readers food for thought on the Negro question in the United States.

I have devoted a great deal of space to Wilberforce University, Livingstone College, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Normal and other independent and State schools managed by colored people, because these institutions typify the ability of the colored man to govern and control enterprises for himself.

I have not mentioned the political leaders of the race, such as Messrs. Douglass, Bruce, Lynch and others, simply because I am not giving a history of the race, and it has been more my purpose to deal with the educators and business men.