THE COMING MEN OF THE RACE
Our Young Men Will Be Our Future Leaders
Who are to be our leaders this coming generation?
We have had brilliant and faithful leaders in the past, men who labored under adverse circumstances, but who succeeded in reducing opposition, and brought the race up to a higher standard. They were the pioneers in a great national movement. Their names are honored and will be honored as long as the race exists.
Their preliminary great work done, they passed away leaving its continuation in the hands of other noble men and women, who are still among us.
Remember, we are now in the second generation of uplift, and the mantle of the leaders of the first generation of freedom, passed to those of the second generation, has been spread over a vastly wider field, and shows room for still wider extension.
The history of man shows that in all great human movements for betterment, there have been pioneers who commenced the work, and carried it to a higher point. Then came a succeeding line of leaders who took up the work and carried it higher still.
Neither the pioneers of the Colored people of the United States, nor their successors, the present leaders, could do all or can do all that is to be done in the way of elevation or betterment, because it has grown to enormous proportions.
For this reason we must look about us and see who are to be the future leaders of the Colored Americans.
We now have able leaders, men of great character and ability, men whose loss would be keenly felt, but they know, and we know, that in the course of nature all must pass away, and we have it from their earnest utterances that their great hope is to have successors in the leadership. Many of them are ready to train others to walk in their footsteps. There are thousands of men, children in our schools, youth beginning college life, and young men who have completed their course and are ready to take up a position as commanders in the battle of life.
Here are a few of our present leaders, between whom no invidious comparisons can be made, and to whose number may be added a thousand or more working in more or less conspicuous positions to fit their people to become leaders. They are shining examples of success and merely mentioned to show your own opportunities.
Look at and study this list earnestly, it concerns you:
EXAMPLES OF SUCCESS
Rev. S. G. Atkins, President of the State Normal and Industrial College of North Carolina.
Dr. E. F. Boyd, physician and surgeon, Nashville, Tenn.
Hon. H. P. Cheatham, Recorder of Deeds of the District of Columbia.
Dr. D. W. Culp, A. M., M. D., author of “Twentieth Century Negro Literature.”
W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, editor “The Crisis, A Record of the Darker Races.”
Bishop G. W. Clinton, A. M. E. Zion Church, Charlotte, N. C.
Prof. J. M. Cox, President Philander Smith College, Little Rock.
E. E. Cooper, Editor “Colored American.”
Prof. A. U. Frierson, Professor of Greek, Biddle University.
Prof. N. W. Harllee, Principal High School, Dallas, Texas.
Dr. Lawrence Aldridge Lewis is a rising physician of Indiana, who made the highest record in a competitive examination for the city hospital of Indianapolis against 107 applicants.
Prof. R. S. Lovinggood, President Samuel Houston College, Austin, Texas.
Kelly Miller, Professor Mathematics Howard University.
D. W. Onley, D. D., Dentist, Washington, D. C.
I. L. Purcell, Attorney and Counselor at Law, Pensacola, Fla.
G. T. Robinson, Attorney and Counselor at Law, Nashville, Tenn.
Bishop H. M. Turner, D. D., LL. D., A. M. E. Church, Atlanta, Ga.
Rev. O. M. Waller, Rector Episcopal Church, Washington, D. C.
Prof. H. L. Walker, Principal High School, Augusta, Ga.
Prof. Booker T. Washington, President Tuskegee Institute.
Prof. N. B. Young, President Florida State Normal and Industrial College.
The foregoing are a few leaders in the professions. There are numerous others whose names and deeds have already made history and fame.
The present field of leaders in the professions is large, but there are other fields of leadership in the business world. These men are successful and point the way to others to follow, and they must lay down their leadership with the others:
Charles Banks, Cashier Bank of Mound Bayou, Mound Bayou, Miss.
E. C. Berry, hotel man, Athens, Ohio. Said to keep one of the best hotels in the United States.
Rev. R. H. Boyd, President National Doll Company; also of the National Baptist Publishing House, Nashville, Tenn.
William Washington Brown, Founder of the True Reformers’ Bank, Richmond, Va.
Junius G. Groves, “The Potato King.” Edwardsville, Ky.
Deal Jackson, Albany, Georgia, the great cotton king.
John Merrick, founder of the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association, the strongest Negro insurance company in the world; North Carolina.
W. E. Pettiford, founder of the Alabama Penny Savings Bank, Birmingham, Alabama.
The following condition of the Colored American opportunities will be of assistance in suggesting fields of leadership:
The number of colored men now engaged in business and professions are as follows:
| Agricultural pursuits | 2,143,176 |
| Professional occupations | 47,324 |
| Domestic and personal service | 1,324,160 |
| Trade and transportation | 209,154 |
| Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits | 275,149 |
This is close to 25 percent of the entire colored population of the United States.
But this enormous field of opportunity, is not the limit. You have aspirations toward music and the fine arts—singers, painters, sculptors, actors and poets. Here are a few leaders to be followed by you or your children, relatives or friends:
MUSIC COMPOSERS AND PIANISTS
Harry T. Burleigh, New York, composer of “Jean,” “Perhaps.”
Robert Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson, New York, musical setting to Longfellow’s “Hiawatha,” “Idyll for Orchestra,” “Dream Lovers,” (operetta).
William H. Tyers, composer of “Trocha,” a Cuban dance and other noted compositions.
Will Marion Cook, New York, “The Casino Girl,” “Bandana Land,” etc.
De Koven Thompson, Chicago, composer of “Dear Lord, Remember Me,” “If I Forget,” etc.
James Reese Europe, founder of the Clef Club Symphony Orchestra.
Among pianists is Miss Hazel Harrison, of La Porte, Indiana, who is making her mark as a student of the piano under the celebrated greatest living pianist, Ferrucco Buconi, of Berlin.
These and other leaders in their art succeeded many illustrious composers. And you are called upon to prepare to follow the present leaders.
VOCAL ARTISTS AND PRIMA DONNAS
Remember the Black Swan, that wonderful prima donna whose voice had a range of three octaves and was frequently compared with Jenny Lind at the height of her fame.
Madam Marie Selika, of Chicago, achieved enormous success in Europe, a marvelous singer whose voice “trilled like a feathered songster,” and whose “Echo Song” has not yet been surpassed.
You have heard the “Black Patti” (Madame Sisseretta Jones) who was a success in Europe, and has her own company of which she is the head, “The Black Patti Troubadours.”
There is Mrs. E. Azalia Hackley, of Detroit. This lady has been a prominent singer for years. She studied in Europe, and is the author of “Guide to Voice Culture.”
PAINTERS
William Edward Scott, of Chicago, should be noted for his extraordinary works in America and Europe. Born in Indianapolis in 1884, he graduated from the high school in 1903. From 1904, when he entered the Chicago Art Institute, until the present time, he has been prolific in paintings, three of which were accepted at the Salon des Beaux Arts at Toquet, and others elsewhere. His work may be seen in three mural paintings which decorate the Felsenthal School in Chicago.
This field is rich in artists of the colored people:
E. M. Bannister, the first Negro in America to achieve distinction as a painter. One of his pictures was awarded a medal at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 (Philadelphia).
Henry O. Tanner, the son of Benjamin T. Tanner, Bishop of the A. M. E. Church, is one of the most distinguished artists of the present day. He resides in Paris but is a native born American. During the past three years his paintings have been on exhibition in the leading art galleries of the United States.
A rising young artist is to be found in Richard Lonsdale Brown, a native of Indiana, but who spent many years of his life among the hills of West Virginia. Not yet twenty years of age, he is on the road to fame and has received the encomiums of artists as a young artist of rare qualities with the precious gift of vision which indicates artistic instinct.
SCULPTORS
The two great sculptors of the colored people are women:
Edmonia Lewis, of New York, now a resident of Rome, where she turns out noted sculptures sought for in the great art galleries of the world.
Meta Vaux Warrick (Mrs. Fuller, wife of Dr. Solomon C. Fuller of South Framingham, Mass.). She first attracted attention by her exquisite modeling in clay in the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art. Rodin, the great French sculptor, took her under his charge, and her work is the admiration of the art galleries of the world.
Mrs. Mary Howard Jackson may also be mentioned as a rising sculptress.
ACTORS AND POETS
Ira Frederick Aldridge, of Baltimore, was a pupil of the great artist Edmund Kean. Aldridge appeared as Othello and other characters, and received a decoration from the Emperor of Russia.
Phillis Wheatley, the first woman white or black to attain literary distinction in this country. While a child she began to write verses, and received the endorsement of the most distinguished men of her time, including General Washington.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, a noted poet born in Dayton, Ohio. He showed poetic ability while at school, and soon became known as a writer of ability.
All the foregoing actors and poets have passed away, but there are many treading and to tread in their footsteps. Success and fame must come to them by utilizing their gifts to the best advantage.
We give you merely the edge of the field to be filled by you or some one you know and hope to see attain it. It is a thickly sown field, and if you cultivate it, you will be rewarded with an astonishing harvest.
INVENTORS
The evidence is accumulating every day that the Colored citizen, under favorable environments, has performed his whole duty in the work of benefiting mankind, whether in arduous labor or advancing the world by his thought.
The records of the United States Patent office show more than four hundred inventors and inventions among the Colored people. Many of these inventions are of the highest value and utility. These inventions are for devices of every conceivable use, from a rapid fire gun, invented by Eugene Burkins, a young colored man of Chicago, down to a pencil sharpener in common use today. In the line of humanity, life saving guards for locomotives and street cars have been invented. All of this goes to show the trend of the Colored man’s mind, and what he can do by thinking and the proper use of his brain.
As an inventor Mr. James Marshall, of Macon, Georgia, has attracted national notice through his novel flying machine which he has had patented. Mr. Marshall has introduced what is called a “Circumplanoscope,” which renders the flying machine non-capsizable, and which will enable it to stand still in the air.
R. W. Overton, a sixteen-year-old student of the Stuyvesant High School, within the past year won the long distance record for model aeroplanes against more than twenty competitors from all the high schools of Greater New York and vicinity.
It was said that the pioneer leaders of our Colored Americans struggled up and carried their people up with them. The questions presented them, the problems they were called upon to solve were new and the lights given them to solve them was somewhat dim. They worked for betterment by this dim light, but the light grew stronger as they advanced, and when they came to lay down the lamp of leadership, it was taken up by their successors burning brightly, and with added wisdom to carry on the great work.
Who can tell then, the names of the leaders to succeed them? They were in process of training, however, just as there are other leaders being trained or growing up to follow in the footsteps of the present leaders. They appeared and have expended and are expending their labors in elevating their fellow citizens, but they will eventually be obliged to lay down their mantle of leadership for others to take up. This means that in the present Colored Americans there are those destined, or who will make themselves fit to become great leaders in every department of uplift.
Conditions have improved during the past generation, and the new generation looks upon an enlarged field, with more varied prospects, greater development, and opportunities that did not exist before, and which have naturally sprung from the gradual progress of the race.
GREAT DEMAND FOR WISE LEADERS
There is a greater demand for a skilled and wise leader now than ever before, and in preparing for that leadership, let each man of the race look to himself as a possible aspirant and successor to the present leaders. The very thought of such a possibility, based upon the necessity for such leadership, is an inspiration, an incentive to action, and a motive to take advantage of the opportunities. The path has been cleared and you can not lose your course.
Let us revert to the question: “Who are the coming men?” Who will take the places of the men now leading the race, when they have done their work, fulfilled their mission loaded with honors and fame? They can not go on forever, for they are human and must yield to the inevitable.
Perhaps you are one of the possible leaders to reach honor and fame. Why not? Many a man living in apparent obscurity has suddenly come forth out of his retirement at the call of demand following opportunity. This is life and the natural progress of the world. You are living under auspicious circumstances, surrounded by events that must cause you to think, and know just what is required to advance along the lines of human betterment.
Every man thinks he knows just what he would do under certain circumstances if he had the opportunity, and that he has the power to do it. Very well, here are the opportunities, and if you develop your natural ability and capacity and take hold with a firm hand, you will attain the power. It is characteristic among all men, an attribute of modern affairs, that to obtain anything an effort must be made to get it. Everybody knows this by experience. It has been the experience of all men, and of all nations. A man must reach out and take what is before him within his reach. A wise man never attempts to try to take what is beyond his reach. Children do that, but a modern man is no child. There is an old maxim which says: “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Wherefore, take the bird in hand and hold on to it, and you will get the two in the bush by and by.
FUTURE LEADERS NOW UNKNOWN YOUTH
Even now in some humble home, there is a youth, a mere child with possibilities unknown to him or to you, who may develop into a leader. Many great men have sprung from such sources, and made the world ring with their exploits. What has been done can be and will be done again. It is not fate, nor is it perhaps destiny as some may think, it is opportunity.
Do you suppose that the poor child who looks on at the amazing things of life, the things going on around him, does not think about them and feel ambitious to be or do something that will make as good a showing?
It may be that he plods back and forth after his morning chores, to some little elementary school with his few books under his arm, and which he has pored over the night before or in the early morning. He knows that he is learning, and his small ambition leads him to learn more. His interest is aroused and he represents the seed, the foundation of a leader or of some of our leaders who will make their mark, an advanced man to take the place of some who will soon pass away.
He may have left the plow and the little elementary school to go to college; there are opportunities for this, and when he gets to this college, his mind expands, and he becomes fertile in resources to embrace opportunities before him. The more he learns, the more rapidly does his mind quicken, and the more his mind quickens the more he advances along the goal.
PERHAPS YOUR BOY WILL LEAD THE RACE
He is your boy, perhaps, your son for whom you have the highest ambitions, and your bosom swells with pride at the thought that he is your boy, and that you have opened the door to opportunity for him.
Some young man just out of college, just out of the refining process, is on the high road to position and honor, and is already making a name for himself, may become the leader or some leader along the many fields open to him.
Can you say that it will not be yourself? Who knows that it may not be you, your brother, nephew, cousin, or some valued friend? Give yourself the benefit of the doubt if there be any doubt, and there need not be, and take hold of the intellectual plow, and till the field of opportunity. It is waiting for you and for yours.
Do not throw straws in your own and in the way of those you know and to whom you may be related by the ties of blood or friendship. Why not put them and yourself in the way of opportunities? Give yourself and them a chance to prepare for opportunity, every one possesses the chance, and he must prepare for it, it is in the future, perhaps it is waiting now, are you ready for it? Do you think you will be ready when it calls? If not get ready by keeping your ear close to the ground and watch for the signal. Keep in touch with the people, their needs, necessities and demands; observe the signs of the times and study the shaping of events.
These are progressive times, and age of hustle, and the man who stands out in front will win the race, for he has the advantage of place and position, also readiness to start at the first sound of the signal.
THE CHURCH OFFERS HIGH INDUCEMENTS
The Church offers the highest inducements to a life of usefulness and honor. It is guided by men of distinguished ability and humanity. The Bishops and clergy of the various denominations have taken advantage of the new lights of the twentieth century, and are striving to bring their fellow men of the same race, up to the highest standard of right living.
The heights they have attained must be maintained like a protective rampart in a great battle. Their successors are the ones to continue the work of defence, and advance the lines still farther into the country of the enemy of humanity and morality.
The army and navy have had their share of brave Colored men, and has opened its ranks to more of them who are distinguishing themselves and ennobling their race. In the school of army and navy discipline, the Colored man has proven himself to be a man in every sense of the word. Faithful and true to his duty, he honors and loves the country under whose flag he is ready to draw his sword, and lay down his life.
YOUR CHILDREN MAY BECOME DISTINGUISHED
You or your children may be the fortunate ones to be offered an opportunity to become distinguished for bravery and generalship, for the way has been prepared and those now striving to uphold peace will have successors. Remember this point, that the longer the test and the greater the perseverance, the more and the higher facilities will be given you to reach the leadership.
It must be plain from the mere birdseye view that has been given that many leaders will be needed in the near future. Indeed, some of our present leaders as they grow older will lay down their armor, and others must be ready to take it up and wear it.
The filling of the ranks is almost imperceptible because it is so gradual, but it goes on continually, and the time to prepare for stepping into a vacancy is now. There is always a leader, and the coming men, it is plain, are those who make themselves ready, and prepare for immediate and future emergencies.
Have no fear that there will be no place for the lowly boy in the humble home; the lad with his school books plodding his way to the elementary school; the youth at college, or the newly made graduate. The wheels of life are not going to stop, they are ever turning, and there is a vast upward tendency which comes with every succeeding generation, the last an improvement upon its predecessor, and the next one a still greater improvement. So will go the world until the last whisper of time shall beat against the gates of eternity.