DID THE AMERICAN NEGRO PROVE, IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, THAT HE IS INTELLECTUALLY EQUAL TO THE WHITE MAN? M. W. Gilbert, D. D.
The necessity for asserting and maintaining the affirmative of the above question is due to the deep-seated prejudice against the Negro, which prejudice is the unfortunate fruit of the Negro's past enslavement. It is not surprising that those who for centuries held the Negro as a chattel should regard him as a being essentially inferior to themselves, and time is required, in the changed condition of affairs, to completely eradicate this idea. Even now, despite the remarkable development of the Negro since his emancipation, occasionally some Rip Van Winkle, awaking from a long sleep, essays to deny the complete humanity of the Negro race. A true believer in the Scriptures must be equally a believer in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men. For the divine record declares that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." Language, physiology and psychology confirm the truthfulness of Scripture on this issue. The mission of Christianity to preach the gospel over the inhabited world is based upon this great idea. Science and Holy Writ assert the intellectual equality of all men of whatever race or color, so far as real capacity and possibilities are concerned. The position and relative importance of a race or nation in the world's history are determined more by its antecedents and environments than by the original endowments of each individual that constitutes it. Two different races, having the same antecedents and subject to the same environments, will produce the same results. In answering the question as to whether the Negro has demonstrated his intellectual equality with the white man during the century just closed, our inquiry must necessarily be confined to the closing third of that century; for prior to the emancipation of the race the colored people were generally in an enslaved condition. Opportunities for education, citizenship, and the development of manhood, were few, and at best could apply to but few of the race. Although our inquiry is limited to only one-third of the century 1. The Negro has demonstrated in thirty-five years a capacity for education equal to that of the white man. This remark does not apply alone to his primary education, but also to the highest. He has entered already every intellectual field that is open to him, and he is achieving success in every one that he has entered. Within a third of a century one hundred and fifty-six institutions for the higher education of the Negroes have been founded, and from these and Northern colleges there have been more than seventeen thousand graduates. These colleges are located chiefly in the South, and their courses of studies are as high as their neighboring white colleges; in some instances they are higher. Some of these graduates have evinced great ability and brilliancy in mastering the most difficult studies included in the curriculum. The existence of Negro colleges and the successful graduation of Negroes therefrom is a strong argument for his intellectual equality. Nor has the Negro simply demonstrated his ability to master the literary courses of the college, but also his capacity to acquire the knowledge and training to fit him for life in the various professions. Within a third of a century the race has produced thirty thousand teachers, five hundred physicians, two hundred and fifty lawyers, and a large number of others who have entered the ministry, politics, and editorial life. If there is doubt on the demonstration of the Negro's ability to acquire education in his own colleges, we need only to mention the fact that his ambition has led him to some of the leading Northern universities where he studied at the side of white men, and even there he has demonstrated his essential intellectual equality with the white man by winning, in several well-known instances, some of their highest honors for scholarship, proficiency and oratory. 2. The Negro has demonstrated his capacity for imparting an education to others after he has himself received it. He is an essential and established factor in the public school system of the South. It is he that is intrusted with the primary education of his people, and it is due largely to him that his people in thirty-five years have reduced their illiteracy 45 per cent. During those thirty-five years he has become professor of law, medicine, theology, mathematics, the sciences, and languages. In the colleges devoted to the education of the colored men, 3. The Negro has also demonstrated his productivity in the field of authorship. In this particular he has shown a white man's capacity. In calling attention to the Negro's achievement in this particular, it may be well to note the fact that the Negro's white neighbor, although he lives in a clime similar to that which produced in Greece, philosophers like Plato and Aristotle and poets like Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles, and in Italy poets like Virgil and Horace, has not produced a philosopher or a first-class poet, with all the leisure he enjoyed while the Negro has been engaged in enforced labor for him. In the highest field of thought as in philosophy and the works of imagination the South presents a barren field. In the sphere of authorship usually entered by white men the Negro has already worked his way. He has already produced meritorious books on mathematics, sociology, theology, history, poetry, travels, sermons, languages, and biographies. There have been three hundred books written by Negroes. 4. Nor has the Negro's mind followed slavishly in the beaten path of imitation. He has demonstrated that he possesses also a high order of intellect by his inventive genius. The "lubricator" now being used on nearly all the railroad engines in the United States was invented by a colored man, Mr. E. McCoy, of Detroit, Michigan. Eugene Burkins, a Negro, was inventor of the Burkins' Automatic Machine Gun, concerning which Admiral Dewey said it was "by far the best machine gun ever made." Many other useful inventions in the country are credited by the Patent Office to the Negro. 5. The Negro has also demonstrated in thirty-five years his capacity for organizing, controlling, and directing great and diversified interests. Capacity to organize, maintain, and direct presupposes a high order of mind. Executive ability requires accompanying intellectual ability and not mere brilliancy. Unaided and alone the Negro has set on foot great ecclesiastical organizations which he is maintaining and developing with much credit to himself. In all these organizations, leadership to the few has been cheerfully conceded by the masses. As a church builder, with little means at his command, the Negro stands without a peer. Within the last thirty-five years of the nineteenth century the Negro has founded 6. In business and politics the Negro, despite the odds arrayed against him, is succeeding reasonably well. He is constantly undertaking new business enterprises, and wherever the government or state has intrusted him with official position the intelligent Negro has discharged his public functions with credit to the government and glory for himself. Whenever failure is recorded against the Negro it is not due to his lacking the mental endowments equal to that of the white man, but because he was denied the white man's favorable past, and because a white man's opportunity is denied him. Equality of opportunities and equality before the laws should be cheerfully granted him. Criticism against him is savage and un-Christian, if these doors are closed against him. |