FootNote
The new kid on the block, FootNote is known for digitizing historical
documents... many of which are genealogical gems. With naturalizations,
city directories, war records, newspapers, town records, etc... this new
kid is quickly being recognized as an alternative to Ancestry.
While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
The most important gathering of negroes that
probably has ever occurred, was in Macon, Ga., a few weeks
since. Five hundred leading Negro representatives convened
to discuss and adopt "a thorough plan of State
organization." A permanent organization was effected and
named the "United Brotherhood of Georgia," the purpose of
which is "to resist oppression, wrong and injustice." We
note the following resolutions, which were passed by the
convention:
Resolved, That we, in convention assembled, respectfully but
earnestly demand of the powers that be, that the Negro be
given what, and only what, he is entitled to.
Resolved further, That never, until we are in the fullest
enjoyment of our rights at the ballot-box, will we cease to
agitate and work for what justly belongs to us in the shape
of suffrage.
Further resolved, That it shall be the policy of the colored
race to vote so as to bring the greatest division to the
white voters of this country, for in this we believe lies
the boon of our desire.
The last resolution is not entirely plain to us, and we
refrain from comment upon it, but the convention itself, the
fact of leadership taking shape among the Negroes, and the
forth-putting of their purposes, are very significant.
When the Glenn Bill was born, and when the Georgia House of
Representatives stood sponsor for its baptism, we believed
that the enemy of righteousness had made a mistake, and that
this particular piece of artillery would kick. They who
think to thwart the providences of God usually help them
forward. Christianity has had many a help from its opposers.
Upon the incidental question of temperance, the sentiments
of the convention were voiced by one of the speakers in
these words: "The best thing for the Negro is industry,
temperance, virtue, economy, union and courage. Get land,
get money, get education; be sober and be virtuous. We have
drunk enough whiskey since the war to build a railroad from
Atlanta to Savannah. The Negro race cannot be great except
as individuals rise towards greatness." They are rising. A
little more yeast, good friends.
The Rev. Alexander Crummell, D.D., formerly
a missionary in Africa and now Rector of St.
Luke's Church in Washington, D.C., is a
native of Africa, a graduate of one of the
leading Universities of England, who adds to
the strength and graces of a sound
scholarship, the devotion of a noble
Christian character.
From an address made by him upon the "Needs
and Neglects of the Black Woman of the
South," we quote his plea for "Woman's Work
for Woman." Referring to the Negro woman in
slavery days, he says:
"She was a 'hewer of wood and a drawer of
water.' She had to keep her place in the
gang from morn till eve, under the burden of
a heavy task, or under the stimulus or the
fear of a cruel lash. She was a picker of
cotton. She labored at the sugar mill and in
the tobacco factory. When, through weariness
or sickness, she had fallen behind her
allotted task, then came, as punishment, the
fearful stripes upon her shrinking,
lacerated flesh.
"Her home life was of the most degrading
nature. She lived in the rudest huts, and
partook of the coarsest food, and dressed in
the scantiest garb, and slept, in
multitudinous cabins, upon the hardest
boards!
"There was no sanctity of family, no binding
tie of marriage, none of the fine felicities
and the endearing affections of home. Few of
these things were the lot of the Southern
black woman. Instead, thereof, a gross
barbarism, which tended to blunt the tender
sensibilities, to obliterate feminine
delicacy and womanly shame, came down as her
heritage from generation to generation; and
it seems a miracle of providence and grace
that, notwithstanding these terrible
circumstances, so much struggling virtue
lingered amid the rude cabins, that so much
womanly worth and sweetness remained, as
slaveholders themselves have borne witness
to.
"Freed, legally, she has been; but the act
of emancipation had no talismanic influence
to reach to and alter and transform her
degrading social life. The truth is,
'Emancipation Day' found her a prostrate and
degraded being; and, although it has brought
numerous advantages to her sons, it has
produced but the simplest changes in her
social and domestic condition. She is still
the crude, rude, ignorant mother. Remote
from cities, the dweller still in the old
plantation hut, neighboring to the sulky,
disaffected master-class, who still think
her freedom was a personal robbery of
themselves, none of the 'fair humanities'
have visited her humble home. The light of
knowledge has not fallen upon her eyes. The
fine domesticities which give the charm to
family life, and which, by the refinement
and delicacy of womanhood, preserve the
civilization of nations, have not come to
her. She has still the rude, coarse labor of
men. With her rude husband, she still shares
the hard service of a field-hand. Her house,
which shelters, perhaps, some six or eight
children, embraces but two rooms. Her
furniture is of the rudest kind. The
clothing of the household is scant and of
the coarsest material; has oft-times the
garniture of rags, and for herself and
offspring is marked, not seldom, by the
absence of both hats and shoes. She has
rarely been taught to sew, and the
field-labor of slavery times has kept her
ignorant of the habitudes of neatness and
the requirements of order. Indeed, coarse
food, coarse clothes, coarse living, coarse
manners, coarse companions, coarse
surroundings, coarse neighbors, both white
and black, yea, everything coarse, down to
the coarse, ignorant, senseless religion,
which excites her sensibilities and starts
her passions, go to make up the life of the
masses of black women in the hamlets and
villages of the South. This is the state of
black womanhood.
"And now look at the vastness of this
degradation. If I had been speaking of the
population of a city, or town, or even a
village, the tale would be a sad and
melancholy one. But I have brought before
you the condition of millions of women. And
when you think that the masses of these
women live in the rural districts; that they
grow up in rudeness and ignorance; that
their former masters are using few means to
break up their hereditary degradation, you
can easily take in the pitiful condition of
this population and forecast the inevitable
future to multitudes of females, unless a
mighty special effort is made for the
improvement of the black womanhood of the
South.
"I am anxious for a permanent and uplifting
civilization to be engrafted on the Negro
race in this land. And this can only be
secured through the womanhood of a race. If
you want the civilization of a people to
reach the very best elements of their being,
and then, having reached them, there to
abide as an indigenous principle, you must
imbue the womanhood of that people with all
its elements and qualities. Any movement
which passes by the female sex is an
ephemeral thing. Without them, no true
nationality, patriotism, religion,
cultivation, family life, or true social
status, is a possibility. In this matter it
takes two to make one—mankind is a duality.
The male may bring, as an exotic, a foreign
graft, say, of civilization, to a new
people. But what then! Can a graft live or
thrive of itself? By no manner of means. It
must get vitality from the stock into which
it is put; and it is the women who give the
sap to every human organization which
thrives and flourishes on earth.
"I plead, therefore, for the establishment
of at least one large 'Industrial school' in
every Southern State for the black girls of
the South. I ask for the establishment of
schools which may serve specially the home
life of the rising womanhood of my race.
"I want boarding schools for the industrial
training of one hundred and fifty or two
hundred of the poorest girls, of the ages of
twelve to eighteen years.
"I wish the intellectual training to be
limited to reading, writing, arithmetic and
geography.
"I would have these girls taught to do
accurately all domestic work, such as
sweeping floors, dusting rooms, scrubbing,
bed-making, washing and ironing, sewing,
mending and knitting.
"I would have the trades of dress-making,
millinery, straw-plating, tailoring for men,
and such like, taught them.
"The art of cooking should be made a
specialty, and every girl should be
instructed in it.
"In connection with these schools, garden
plats should be cultivated, and every girl
should be required daily, to spend at least
an hour in learning the cultivation of small
fruits, vegetables and flowers.
"It is hardly possible to exaggerate either
the personal, family or society influence
which would flow from these schools. Every
class, yea, every girl in an out-going
class, would be a missionary of thrift,
industry, common-sense, and practicality.
They would go forth, year by year, a
leavening power into the houses, towns and
villages of the Southern black population;
girls fit to be the wives of the honest
peasantry of the South, the worthy matrons
of their numerous households.
"I am looking after the domestic training of
the masses; for the raising up of women meet
to be the helpers of poor men, the rank and
file of black society, all through the rural
districts of the South.
"A true civilization can only be attained
when the life of woman is reached, her whole
being permeated by noble ideas, her fine
taste enriched by culture, her tendencies to
the beautiful gratified and developed, her
singular and delicate nature lifted up to
its full capacity, and then, when all these
qualities are fully matured, cultivated and
sanctified, all their sacred influences
shall circle around ten thousand firesides,
and the cabins of the humblest freedmen
shall become the homes of Christian
refinement through the influence of the
uplifted and cultivated black woman of the
South."
The above appeal is in the line of our
American Missionary Association work. While
we have higher schools and institutions for
more thorough education, which these Negro
women need as much as any women in the
world, we are increasingly developing this
idea which Dr. Crummell eloquently pleads.
We remind our friends and those Christian
women who are interested in the uplifting of
Negro womanhood, that the American
Missionary Association, the ordained agency
of the Congregational Churches for this
work, could do much more of it if the means
were forthcoming. The marked success of the
domestic training in our schools at Tougaloo,
Miss., Talladega, Ala., Thomasville, Ga.,
Memphis, Tenn., and other points, shows the
advantage gained in the twenty-five years'
experience which the A.M.A. has had in its
work for the Negroes.
We need the co-operation of all Christian
women in carrying on these Industrial
Schools already established, and to enable
us to establish and carry forward many more.
The Immigrant
question challenges attention. Shall
immigrants be welcomed, restricted or
prohibited? In the early days of the
Republic, when the revolutionary war had
welded the people together and our boundless
territory begged for occupancy, we welcomed
the oppressed of all nations. Later, the
welcome has been responded to by such a
rushing, heterogeneous and even dangerous
mass that we are compelled to pause.
Restriction is talked of, but the line of
discrimination is hard to be fixed. No
committee at Castle Garden can detect
anarchists, criminals, or even the poor, if
that line should be chosen.
Prohibition—exclusion is talked of—nay, is
enacted stringently against the Chinese. If
need be, it may extend to all. So there is a
way of averting this evil.
But the Negro question cannot be put away.
The Negroes are here. They outnumber the
immigrants that have come to our shores in
the last thirty years, and have a foothold
upon the soil as valid as the Aryan race,
whether we consider the date of their coming
or the labor they have put upon the land.
There is a strange disposition to shrink
from the Negro question. Some avoid it by
flippantly denying the danger; others turn
from it because they are appalled by it.
Thus an able writer on Immigration in a
recent number of the Century passes the
topic with this awe-stricken remark: "This
problem (of the Negro) cannot be touched
practically; ancient wrongs bind the nation
hand and foot, and its outcome must be
awaited as we await the gathering of the
tempest—powerless to avert, and trembling
over the steady approach" (The italics are
ours.) This is not wise; it is not manly.
Why try to avert the evils of immigration,
or any other, if we are meanwhile only to
await tremblingly the doom that is to come
on us from the conflict with the Negro?
There is a strong disposition to gather hope
from the newly-developed manufacturing
interests in the South. But this is
delusive. The South is essentially a rural
population; the new industries will
necessarily be confined to a few localities,
and will reach but slightly the wide
agricultural region, and will scarcely touch
the Negroes. And more than all this, these
industries will only be importing into the
South the struggle between labor and
capital, which so vexes us at the North.
Instead, therefore, of solving the old
difficulties at the South, they will add a
new one.
The danger of a war of races is scouted at
the North; it is not at the South. This is
natural. The North is not in immediate
contact with the danger; the South is. When
the war of the rebellion was impending, the
North refused to believe in its coming; and
when it came, one of the wisest statesmen of
the North, Mr. Seward, predicted that it
would "not last sixty days." No such
delusion prevailed in the South. Many of the
best men there, nay, nearly all the border
States, dreaded its coming and held back as
long as possible, but they were swept into
the flood they foresaw and could not avert.
Thoughtful men at the South now have no
rose-colored views about the Negro problem.
They fear the impending conflict. With them
the supremacy of the white race is the
settled point, but they see in the growing
numbers, intelligence and restlessness of
the Negroes an increasing danger that will
only be aggravated by delay. Why should not
the North and South alike manfully face the
question of a war of races? What will it
mean? What will be its end? If the whites
and the blacks of the South alone engage in
it, the blacks will be exterminated. Nothing
less will meet the case. If the North mingle
in the struggle, it must be to help the
whites or the blacks. If to help the whites,
that will mean the more rapid defeat and
slaughter of the blacks; if the North help
the blacks and save them from destruction,
then we shall be worse off than we are now,
the two races will be together with enmities
aroused a thousand fold!
But why not face the more hopeful question:
Is there a remedy? There is! The teacher and
the preacher, the spelling-book and the
Bible, the saviors of men, the reformers of
society, the uplifters of races, are
spreading over the South. They go to the
manufacturing towns—the Birmingham's and the
Annistons—they go to the large cities with
their common and normal schools, their
medical, law and theological seminaries.
When the pupils become teachers, they go
into the smaller towns, they go into the
rural districts, on the small farms,
everywhere instructing, encouraging and
stimulating the people, leading them to more
intelligent industries, to economy, to the
purchase of land, the erection of better
houses, to a higher aim in life, and to the
formation of a right character. Of such
stuff men are made, citizens, Christians;
men who can use the ballot, who own property
that must be protected by the ballot; men
who have homes that must be refined and
pure, churches where God is worshipped
intelligently and where a practical morality
is taught and attained. Such a people will
be safe, for they will be bone and muscle of
the South, they will be needed in its wide
expanse of fertile soil, needed in its
practical trades, needed for the accumulated
wealth, intelligence and cultivated piety
they will bring into all the walks and
avocations of life.
But it will be some time before these
educational and religious means reach all
the blacks, and in the meantime much
patience and toil will be needed. To the
blacks we would say: You won the admiration
of men and the blessing of God by your
patience under the yoke of slavery when
there seemed to be no hope; now win both
again by bearing in like spirit your lesser
present ills, while hope dawns and help is
near.
To thoughtful men North and South we urge:
Take hold of this work like men. If a
thousandth part of the self-sacrifice and
money spent in the war were devoted to this
work, the evil might be averted. Why stand
over-awed at a threatened flood that if met
in time may not only be averted but be
turned into fertilizing waters over the
broad lands?
This site includes some historical
materials that may imply negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or
language of a particular period or place. These items are presented as
part of the historical record and should not be interpreted to mean that
the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes implied
.
