Strategies for Black advancement, 1890–1925

“We must point to homes, average homes, homes of the rank and file of horny handed toiling men and women of the South (where the masses are) lighted and cheered by the good, the beautiful, and the true,—then and not till then will the whole plateau be lifted into the sunlight.

“Only the BLACK WOMAN can say ‘when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.’”

[Horny handed: with hands hardened by work. Plateau: the whole level of society. Patronage: favor.]

“The appeal to the white man’s pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is to be gained by a further sacrifice of manhood and self-respect. . . .

“The Afro-American papers are the only ones which will print the truth . . . . Nothing is more definitely settled than he must act for himself. I have shown how he may employ the boycott, emigration and the press, and I feel that by a combination of all these agencies can be effectually stamped out lynch law, that last relic of barbarism and slavery.”

[Effectual: effective.]

“Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. . . . In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. . . .

“The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. . . . The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house.”

“Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things,—

“First, political power,

“Second, insistence on civil rights,

“Third, higher education of Negro youth,—and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, and accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South. . . . As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred:

“1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.

“2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.

“3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.”

[Conciliation: making peace. Tender of the palm-branch: peace offering.]

“The Universal Negro Improvement Association seeks to emancipate the Negro everywhere, industrially, educationally, politically and religiously. It also seeks a free and redeemed Africa. . . . We have come to the conclusion that speedily there must be an emancipated Negro race everywhere; and on going back to our respective homes we go with our determination to lay down, if needs be, the last drop of our blood for the defense of Africa and for the emancipation of our race.”