LEADERS OF AMERICA WHOSE EARS ARE CLOSE TO THE GROUND
Americans, Regardless of Color, Who are Leading the People out of the Wilderness and Teaching the Brotherhood of Man.
We have at the present time in the United States certain persons regarded as eminent in progress and advanced thought, who must be reckoned with when it comes to human improvement, and the removal of obstacles to man’s intellectual life and physical welfare.
There have been numberless proofs in the years gone by, in fact, we have only to survey the pages of all history, to learn that it is a law of human nature, that there is no distinction between color and race, and that brains, intellect, soul, are and always will be the test, the criterion, the standard of human excellence.
To review the past would be to open the door to endless pages of history, and require pages of illustrious names that have shone like stars in the human firmament.
Those who are engaged in the development of the human family, and apparently unconsciously working out the designs of God in their persistent advocacy of human betterment, the destruction of inefficient environments, and the promotion of peace and good will, as well as the preservation of health, are numerous. Strikingly prominent are many of our Americans who seem to be blessed with an almost prophetic insight, and the ability to bring about changes in unpleasant conditions.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
We have in Theodore Roosevelt, a man of many parts, none of which is unimportant but all of them vital. When he speaks upon any subject he not only speaks with determination but with an absolute knowledge of the subjects he treats.
“Col.” Roosevelt, as he delights to be called, began in the New York legislature, then became President of the New York City Police Commission, where he did some powerful work in suppressing vice and the saloon evil. Becoming too powerful a factor in American affairs after his brilliant career as Governor of New York, he was nominated as Vice-President of the United States, the politicians thinking thus to close his career.
But he became President of the United States, succeeding to that high office through the deplorable assassination of President McKinley, and received the suffrages of the people for a second term because of his energetic Americanism, and as an exponent of “Fair Play.”
He is now a private citizen, but as distinguished and as influential as if he were filling the Presidential office. He is all energy, persistence and force of character. He will fight, talk, or argue his points, as long as he can stand on his feet, and then he will write them to the world. No such man ever before lived in the United States.
On the other hand, among our Colored Americans, there stand at the top two great leaders, Dr. Washington and Prof. Du Bois. Both of these men represent different schools of thought and each of them has an equally large following. This is encouraging, because working along different lines, as is the case with diverse national parties, one serves as a check upon the other, and without going to extremes they may follow a happy medium.
PROF. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
Professor Booker T. Washington, whose aims, exertions and success tends to advance his race along the same lines as other races, is meeting with tremendous results, bringing about a more decided respect for the intelligence of Colored Americans.
Mr. Washington, born in 1857, has, by grit and determination, reached the leadership of his race, and become one of the great men of the nation.
After a life spent in struggles to acquire an education, he was recognized as a great teacher, and called upon to take charge of a normal school at Tuskegee, Alabama, established by the legislature. He organized the school on July 4th, the anniversary of American Independence, an idea that denotes the character of the man.
Since that period, the widely known Tuskegee Institute has made such progress that, today, the site of the institution is a city of itself.
Mr. Washington worked his way to pay for his education at the Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia. What he did and how he did it is best described by himself in giving his experiences at Hampton:
SELF HELP FOR YOUTH
“While at Hampton I resolved, if God permitted me to finish the course of study, I would enter the far South, the black belt of the Gulf States, and give my life in providing as best I could the same kind of chance or self-help for the youth of my race that I found ready for me when I went to Hampton, and, so, in 1881, I left Hampton and went to Tuskegee and started the Normal and Industrial Institute.”
Mr. Washington literally worked his way through college. He helped unload a vessel to get money to reach Hampton, and while there did odd jobs of manual work, and acted as janitor.
Referring to another American of another race, President Woodrow Wilson stands first, in reality he is the first gentleman in the land.
PRESIDENT WILSON
President Wilson is an uplifter rather than a reformer. When he sees things to be done to better the people, or to better anybody, for that matter, he does them and lets the reform take care of itself.
He has always been a student, and a worker at fashioning brains as a teacher, professor, college president and at the head of a great university—Princeton, New Jersey.
Having a trained, enlightened mind, and not buried beneath books, he expressed his views about public matters and public men who did not perform their duty to the people, so vigorously and so truthfully, that he was believed, and the people made him governor of New Jersey.
In this office he did so much in altering distasteful political conditions, that he was considered a proper candidate for the presidency of the United States where the same untoward conditions existed as in New Jersey. He was elected, and is doing things all the time to better conditions, and although he has many enemies who fancy only a settled condition of things where they will not be disturbed in the management of them, the President is driving them to cover and will undoubtedly be successful in his endeavors.
Woodrow Wilson is a man of action and has a large background of learning to fortify himself. Fortified in every direction and from every point of attack, he is not an easy man to tackle or to find fault with. The opposition to him was that he was a university man, and therefore he did not know enough about politics to carry the country safely through a four years’ term. But the people are finding out that it does not require as much politics to run the country as it does education and intelligence combined with energy and persistence. He is beating down petty statesmanship and establishing the government along the lines of benefit to the people. He may be considered as an instrument in the improvement of a nation, and as giving it a long start back to first principles which mean progress.
DR. W. E. BURGHARDT DUBOIS
A noted man who is doing a great work along the line of betterment of the Colored Americans and directing their thoughts into high altitudes, is W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, known as the editor of “The Crisis,” A Record of the Darker Races.
Dr. Du Bois stands on the principle that intellectual emancipation should proceed hand in hand with economic independence, and he is making himself felt by the earnest advocacy of a truth that must impress the people for whose interests he is laboring.
It may not be known to everybody that Dr. Du Bois is one of the Directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The movement of nations toward the accomplishment of the designs of the Almighty to make all nations one, and in the supremacy of the intellectual over physical force, is well understood by Dr. Du Bois, and he is working along that line with other ardent humanitarians. He aims to accomplish a world peace and a realization of human brotherhood.
To turn our attention to another race, William Jennings Bryan looms up conspicuously with the others in his struggle to bridge the chasm of prejudice and place all men upon the road toward human betterment and universal peace.
WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
For nearly twenty years William Jennings Bryan has fought the battle of human rights, and his name has become a household word in many ways. His versatility has no limit, and to say that he is an extraordinary man and friend of the human race, is saying one-half the truth.
Rising from the humble position of an attorney in Lincoln, Nebraska, Mr. Bryan in an hour became the leader of the great masses of the American people, and he has held his ground ever since. He had aspirations and ambitions, but they were denied him through adverse circumstances, but he never wavered in his love for the people and his desire to benefit them in their onward movement toward betterment. As Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Wilson, he stands for everything that is admirable in a man of honor, virtue and probity, and is in line with the great movement toward universal peace.
Miss Jane Addams is a lady that causes one to believe in the human race along humanitarian lines. Miss Addams in her settlement work at the celebrated “Hull House” on Halsted Street, has incited others to copy and others have taken up the great work of bringing the homeless workers into social contact for mutual benefit. The lady is not only a worker among the people, but an author and a lecturer, whose example may be followed to advantage.