Colored girls and boys' inspiring United States history and a heart to heart talk about white folks

By William Henry Harrison

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• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Sep 4, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547239765

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William Henry Harrison

Colored girls and boys' inspiring United States history and a heart to heart talk about white folks

EAN 8596547239765

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

AUTHOR’S PREFACE Not to Boast but to Boost

FIRST AFRICANS VISIT VIRGINIA Invited Guests Detained

Answered Prayers

THE COLORED RACE IN THE WARS OF THE U. S. In the Colonial, French and Indian Wars (1704-1759)

IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR (1775-1783) Crispus Attucks

In the War of 1812 (1812)

In the Mexican War (1845-1847)

THROUGH THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD Every Local Was a Special

IN THE CIVIL WAR (1861-1865) Abraham Lincoln

On the Sea

ON THE PLANTATIONS Broad-Mindedness

FOLK-LORE SONGS OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO Different Emotions

THROUGH RECONSTRUCTION DAYS Frederick Douglass

BOLEY, OKLAHOMA

IN CONGRESS

In The U. S. Diplomatic Service

In State Legislatures

In City Government

IN THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

In the Massacre at Carrizal

IN THE WORLD WAR (1914-1918) James Reese Europe

Special National Guards

ON THE SEA Of The People, By The People, For The People.

THE STEVEDORES

HIGHEST COLORED OFFICERS IN THE UNITED STATES ARMY A Brunette General

IN THE WORLD WAR At Home

At Home Buying Liberty Bonds

IN THE CHURCHES Fresh Air Religion

To Pastor A Large White Church

IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOLS

THE YOUNG WOMEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION The Girl Reserve

THE YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION The Y Men

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COLORED WOMEN National Colored Club Women

National Uplift Organization founded and run by Negroes

The National Negro Business League

Association For The Study of Negro Life and History

The National Equal Rights League

The Lincoln League of America

National Association of Teachers for Colored Schools

Negro Organization Society

THE PAN-AFRICAN CONGRESS

MARCUS GARVEY

ON THE FARM

ON THE FARM Chestnut Hunting

IN THE TRADE SCHOOLS Booker T. Washington

IN THE TRADE SCHOOLS

IN THE RURAL SCHOOLS

IN BUSINESS SCHOOLS The Pen and the Typewriter

IN BUSINESS RACIAL CO-OPERATION

IN BANKING Every Dollar Saved Shows a Little More (Sense) Cents

IN REAL ESTATE.

IN INSURANCE Poverty in Old Age

SECRET AND FRATERNAL ORGANS Helpful Boosts.

AMONG THE LAWYERS A Lawyer in Time Saves Many a Dime.

IN NEWSPAPER WORK Newspapers and Magazines.

Religious Papers

National Negro Press Association

The Associated Negro Press

The Burning Disgrace of ‘Race Riot’ .

In Magazine Writing

IN BOOK WRITING Inspiring Books

Colored Orators and Lecturers

IN HIGHER EDUCATION

IN THE SCIENCES Mat Henson

IN MEDICINE. The Medicine Man

Hospitals and Nurses

IN DENTISTRY The Toothache Man.

IN INVENTIONS New Ideas—new Things.

IN POETRY The Poets

AMONG THE ARTISTS The Artist.

Architects

AMONG THE SCULPTORS Magic Chisels.

IN VOCAL MUSIC Heavens Repast.

IN INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC Music’s Power.

IN ATHLETICS Some Man.

In Football

On The Track and Field

Edward Orval Gourdin

Extra! Extra! Extra! Special Delivery Red Rush Telegram!

By Wilton Vaugh

Amazing Record

Track and Field Records Held by Colored Youths

Track Amateur World Records

Colored Youths Who Have Won Unusual Distinctions in Track and Field Work in White Colleges.

Howard and Lincoln at the University of Pennsylvania

Colored Athletes in Colored Universities and Colleges.

BASEBALL Play Ball.

BASKETBALL George Gilmore.

PRIZE FIGHTING. Jack Johnson.

ROWING To Whom It May Concern

SWIMMING Diving-Treading-Floating.

SKATING. Dutch Roll Figure Eight-Grape-vine Twist

TENNIS It’s All in The Game

GOLFING Tee-Off and Fore

An Athletic Dawn of To-morrow

ON THE STAGE Charles L. Gilpin

REAL WHITE FRIENDS Hopefulness and Gratefulness.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Done in 1920

Program for 1921

National Urban League

CORRECTED FRATERNAL INFORMATION

MASONS

ODD FELLOWS

KNIGHTS OF PYTHIAS OF NORTH AMERICA, SOUTH AMERICA, EUROPE, ASIA, AFRICA, AND AUSTRALIA.

KNIGHTS OF PYTHIAS (EASTERN AND WESTERN HEMISPHERE.)

I MUST PROCLAIM YOUR ABSENT NAME IS NOT MY BLAME

ADVERTISEMENT

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Not to Boast but to Boost

Table of Contents

Negroes should find great pride indeed

In Race progress herein they read;

But to such readers let me tell

This book means not our heads to swell;

For five of the greatest rich white men

Could buy the wealth of our Race: and then!

So this book is neither a brag nor boast

But just to inspire our younger host

To elevate their racial name

From poisoned stains of slavery shame,

By climbing to the highest heights

Thro aid of friends who are real whites.

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, when a lad fifteen years old attending the public schools of Pennsylvania, in which State I was born and reared, certain ideas and sentiments caused me to secretly resolve that some day, when I had gotten together the necessary data, I would write just such a book as is contained herein. At the time that resolution was formed, I was attending the Darlington School in Middletown District, Delaware County over which Prof. A. G. C. Smith was Superintendent. And I remember with much gratefulness my first and last public school teachers, Misses Carrie V. Hamilton and Rebecca R. Crumley and Prof. Smith for their kind and frequent words to me as encouragement to continue my education after graduating from the public schools.

My favorite study was the United States History, and even at the tender age of fifteen years, I was greatly surprised and Race pridely hurt not to find any history, except about slavery, in such books concerning the American Negro. I had such childish confidence in my school books and their authors that I felt sure if Negroes had fought and died in the several American wars; had become great poets, orators, artists, sculptors, etc., the histories I was studying would have mentioned such. I thought in doing that they would have been preserving United States valuable history more so than merely giving just credit to the Colored people who had made such history. I did not know that right then the attentions of many public school children in far away Europe were often called to the histories of such distinguished Colored Americans as Phyllis Wheatley, the poetess; Frederick Douglas, the orator; Henry O. Tanner, the artist; Edmonia Lewis, the sculptoress—all of them having won recognition and fame in Europe as well as in America.

My youthful ignorance, regarding the achievements of my race, is easily explained when it is taken into consideration that I was a farmer boy living far from libraries I had never seen and Negro histories I had never heard about. And the United States histories then used in the public schools had nothing in them to enlighten me on that subject. They misled and kept me, along with thousands of other Colored school children, in absolute ignorance relative to the progress and attainments of the American Colored people. So whenever our history classes went up to recite and my white classmates proudly went through the lessons about General George Washington, Noah Webster, Benjamin Franklin, Eli Whitney, Longfellow, etc., while I knew and could just as easily recite such history, nevertheless, my feelings of crushed race pride and mortification were beyond expression because not one thing could I proudly recite from my lessons about great things my people had accomplished in America.

It is the same with the United States histories used in our public schools of today. They do not relate about Crispus Attucks, a Negro soldier and the first Colonist martyr to give his life for America in the Revolutionary War; nor about the Colored sailor, William Tillman, who received six thousand dollars from the Federal Government for recapturing a stolen schooner from the Rebels in the Civil War; nor about the Colored Registrars of the United States Treasury, B. K. Bruce, J. W. Lyons, W. T. Vernon and J. C. Napier, whose names, during different administrations covering a period of more than thirty years, appeared on all the United States paper money made and issued during that period; nor about Matthew A. Henson, who was with Commodore Peary when he (Peary) discovered the North Pole; nor about Booker T. Washington, one of the greatest orators America has ever produced and also builder of one of the most famous institutions of learning not only in America but in the world.

As I said before, I knew nothing about such Negro history while I was a farmer’s boy, but I could never quite rid myself of a feeling that the Colored people in the United States did have a worthy history. I studied the white man’s U. S. History from cover to cover and learned all I could from it, but I got no more racial inspiration from it than a white boy would get from studying only a Negro history in which nothing was written about his own racial achievements. So I secretly resolved to immediately begin to quietly and patiently research for American Negro data in order to some day publish a book so that future Colored school children would not be kept in ignorance about their own race history. I felt it was perfectly right and necessary to study the white man’s history at the school desks, but if Colored children were not permitted to study the history of their own race at the same desks, it was perfectly right and necessary that Colored children learn about the achievements of their great men and women at their home firesides within their family circles.

So for the benefit mostly of Colored youths, here are the crude results of my boyhood resolutions and manhood efforts after twenty-five years filled with trying discouragements, and bitter disappointments, but also just as full of unswerving determinations, constant hopefulness, upward climbs, ceaseless works and fervent prayers to God to succeed.

The author wishes to use this place and opportunity to express his deepest thanks to the more than one hundred prominent Colored men and women, living in as many large cities in all parts of the United States, who so friendly sent to him up-to-date information regarding the progress and success of Colored people in those cities.

For the unusual generosity and kindness in giving of their valuable time to personally and helpfully send to him exceptionally fitting and authentic Negro data, the writer most courteously acknowledges and gratefully names the following distinguished Colored and white contributors;

Mr. Cleveland G. Allen, New York City, N. Y., Associate Editor of the New York Home News, and Lecturer on Negro Music in the Public Schools of New York City.

Rev. G. W. Allen, D. D., Editor & Manager of Southern Christian Recorder, Nashville, Tenn.

Attorney Violette N. Anderson, foremost woman lawyer in Chicago, Ill., and one of the most prominent Colored women in her profession in America.

Rev. F. P. Baker, prominent minister in Evansville, Ind.

Miss Eva D. Bowles, New York City, N. Y., Executive Secretary in charge of Colored Work of the Young Women’s Christian Association.

Mr. Thomas F. Blue, Head of Colored Library, Louisville, Ky.

Miss Mabel S. Brady, Branch Y. W. C. A. Secretary, Kansas City, Mo.

Rev. Geo. F. Bragg, prominent minister and author of Baltimore, Md.

Mr. Chas. H. Brooks, Phila., Pa., Sec’y of Cherry Bldg. & Loan Ass’n, and prominent in insurance business.

Captain Walter R. Brown, Assistant Commandant, Hampton Institute, Va.

Rev. Russell S. Brown, prominent minister in Atlanta, Ga.

Mr. Walter A. Butler, San Francisco, Cal., Financier and President of the Northern California Branch of the N. A. A. C. P.

Rev. H. W. Childs, D. D., LL. D., prominent minister in Pittsburgh, Pa., and member of the Executive Board of New England Baptist Convention.

Dr. J. B. Claytor, prominent physician in Roanoke, Va.

Mr. M. L. Collins, Editor of Shreveport Sun, Shreveport, La.

Prof. J. W. Cromwell, Historian, and instructor of higher education in Washington, D.C.

Mr. A. G. Dill, New York City, Editor of The Brownies’ Book and Business Manager of The Crisis Magazine.

Prof. Carl Diton, Phila., Pa., noted composer, organist and pianist.

Mr. James E. Gayle, New Orleans, La., Editor of The Vindicator, and Manager of the Pythian two hundred thousand dollar Temple in that city.

F. Grant Gilmore, Author, Playwright and Producer, Philadelphia, Pa.

Bishop Robert E. Jones, Editor of Southwestern Christian Advocate, New Orleans, La., first and only Negro elected Presiding Bishop over the Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas Diocese of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Mr. Joseph L. Jones, Founder & President of the Central Regalia Co., Cincinnati, Ohio.

Rev. D. J. Jenkins, D. D., Editor of Charleston Messenger, Founder and President of The Orphan Aid Society, Charleston, S. C.

Hon. Jas. Weldon Johnson, New York City, N. Y., United States ex-Consul to several foreign countries, Associate Editor of The New York Age, Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Mr. Tony Langston, Chicago, Ill., Advertising Manager of Chicago Defender and eight theaters, President of Langston’s Slide and Advertising Company.

Mr. Matt. N. Lewis, Editor of The Star, Newport News, Va.

Principal Isaac H. Miller, A. B., Cookman Institute, Jacksonville, Fla.

Mr. J. E. Mitchell, Editor of The Argus, St. Louis, Mo.

Dr. J. E. Mooreland, New York City, N. Y., International Secretary and Head of the Colored Department of the Young Men’s Christian Association.

Mr. Daniel Murray, Assistant Librarian, Congressional Library, Washington, D.C.

Dr. Harvey Murray, M. D., prominent physician, Wilmington, Del.

Mrs. Mary F. Parker, Chester, Pa., Undertaker and Embalmer, and Fraternal worker.

The late Mr. Chris Perry, who until his death was Editor of The Philadelphia Tribune and President of National Negro Press Association.

Attorney T. Gillis Nutter, Charleston, W. Va., Representative in the West Virginia Legislature.

Mr. Geo. W. Perry, Boley, Oka., Editor of Boley Progress and prosperous farmer.

Mr. Jos. L. Ray, Bethlehem, Pa., Confidential Man of Mr. Charles M. Schwab.

Mr. John H. Rives, Dayton, Ohio, Editor of The Dayton Forum.

Hon. F. M. Roberts, Sacramento, Cal., Assemblyman in the California State Legislature.

Mr. C. K. Robinson, Editor of Independent Clarion, St. Louis, Mo.

Mr. R. H. Rutherford, President & Treasurer of The National Benefit Life Insurance Co., Washington, D.C.

Miss Myrtilla J. Sherman, In Charge of Negro Record Department, The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hampton, Va.

Mr. John A. Simms, Jacksonville, Fla., Editor of The Florida Sentinel.

Attorney Harry C. Smith, Cleveland, Ohio, Editor of Cleveland Gazette, ex-Member of the Ohio State Legislature where he introduced as Bills and had enacted as Laws, The Ohio Anti-Lynching Law and The Ohio Civil Rights Law.

Mr. C. C. Spaulding, Durham, N. C., Vice-President & Gen’l Manager of The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company.

Mrs. Maggie L. Walker, Richmond, Va., R. W. G. Secretary & Treasurer of the I. O. of St. Luke, and President of the St. Luke Bank.

Miss H. Georgiana Whyte, Chicago, Ill., Editor of the Women’s Department, The Favorite Magazine.

Mr. J. Finley Wilson, Washington, D.C., Editor of The Washington Eagle, and President of The National Negro Press Association.

Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Washington, D.C., Editor of The Journal of Negro History, and Director of Research for The Association For The Study of Negro Life and History, Incorporated.

Mr. P. B. Young, Norfolk, Va., Capitalist and Editor of The Journal and Guide.

But the full credit, due for most of the Negro data references contained in this book, the author takes great pleasure in justly acknowledging and gratefully extending, through the Negro Year Book, to its Editor, Prof. Monroe N. Work, Director, Department of Records and Research, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Ala., whose personal consent was obtained by the writer to take extracts from the Negro Year Book.

William Henry Harrison, Jr.

FIRST AFRICANS VISIT VIRGINIA

Invited Guests Detained

Table of Contents

White settlers came invitedless

And made this land their home so real;

So Negroes to, have right to feel

This is their home without appeal;

For they were brought invited guests

And told that they must always stay;

So this is why they are here today

Most loyal citizens every way.

—Harrison.

OVER three hundred years ago (1619) Africans were first brought as Negro Servants (Ref. Prof. Monroe N. Work’s Negro Year Book; page 153, 1918-1919 edition) to the early colonies of the United States by the captain of a Dutch ship who sold twenty Negroes to white plantation owners at Jamestown, Virginia. As the results of those and many other native Africans being later captured and forcibly brought to America, real slavery was finally started and spread so rapidly that there were about four million slaves in the United States by January 1, 1863. At that time all the slaves in the Rebel states were set free by the Emancipation Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, who was later murdered for that Godly act by one of his own race. But today Abraham Lincoln is remembered in all civilized countries as one of the greatest among the greatest men the world has ever known; as the noblest president who has ever governed the United States and as the truest and most fair-minded white friend the Negro race has ever had. On December 18, 1865 the adoption of the 13th Amendment to The Constitution of the United States gave freedom to the remaining slaves who lived in the states that had not rebelled against the Union. Thus in these two legal ways, that were made possible by the Northern States winning the Civil War, were all the slaves in the United States of America set free.

When the few broad-minded white people in the early colonies stopped to realize that the first African people who arrived were not used to America’s new foods, unusual hard work, cold changeable climates and were without a knowledge of the white man’s language, habits and religion; it is no great wonder why that small portion of justice thinking white people so readily saw unusual good qualities and latent talents in a group of supposed brainless heathens who so quickly, peacefully and profitably stepped from the narrow paths of African savagery into the broad avenues of American civilization. But the large numbers of narrow-minded people, who then (as now) tried so hard to make themselves and others believe that Negroes were inferior human beings to themselves, put forth the explanation that the remarkable and rapid adjustments of the slaves to American surroundings were due to their childlike dispositions to imitate actions, to humbly obey orders and their great physical strength to do all kinds of hard work at all times under all conditions. Such people were entirely wrong in such ideas, just as all ill-meaning prejudiced ideas keep their owners wrong, mean and in the lowest stages of human society. When men and women allow their minds to become poisoned with hateful, envious and jealous prejudice toward other people and refuse to have anything to do with them because they are Colored, they have and show just about as much greatness in good taste and good common-sense as if they were to refuse to puff on their favorite brand of Havana cigars or to nibble on one of Mr. Huyler’s famed chocolate bon-bons just because the cigar and bon-bon are of rich brown colors. Such narrow-minded actions do not make people great except in their own home-town little social circles. And when they leave home and go out into the world to mingle among well-cultured, highly educated and broad-minded people, prejudiced men and women soon find that their supposed greatness along side of, for instance, an Abraham Lincoln or a Harriet Beecher Stowe[A] is as large as a grain of sand is along side of a mountain. If President Lincoln had not preserved the Union and signed the Emancipation Proclamation, or if Mrs. Stowe had not written Uncle Tom’s Cabin,[A] but instead, both had turned up their noses in disdain, tossed their heads in haughty proudness and snobbishly spurned well-behaved, well-dressed and intelligent people just because of their colors; the names of Lincoln and Stowe (in stead of now being enshrined in the Hall Of Fame and written in the world’s history ever to be remembered and beloved by all nations) would have been buried and forgotten a few years after their owners had died as is the case with the names of all race prejudiced people. But this point regarding the utter foolishness and ignorance of people showing race prejudice was much more ably and vividly brought out in one of Mr. McKay’s bull’s-eye-shot and soul-stirring pictures that appear in the Sunday issues of the New York American—one among several such big white journals from which the writer derives new inspiration and increased knowledge every Sunday. This picture and editorial in question, that described the Namaqua savage tribe of Negroes living in the African jungles, were printed in the March 6, 1921 issue of the New York American, and the following is an extract from that article titled Shooting At The Storm.

The savages of Africa had first of all to fight and conquer the burning sun, hence the black skin that keeps off the deadly actinic rays" that would quickly destroy any white race in their climate, and the thick woolly hair, saturated with grease, protecting the skull from the heat and the deadly effect of those same rays.

"As we think of different kinds of human beings, let us judge them by the conditions under which they live, whether they be Eskimos near the North Pole or men like these Namaquas at the Equator.

"Self-satisfied ignorance is horrified at the Eskimo eating enormous quantities of rank, fat whale blubber. Any race transferred to the Arctic Circle would do that or die. Ignorance despises the black skin and woolly hair of the African. Any white race transferred to the African tropics would develop such skin and hair, or it would die.

UNDERSTAND what you are discussing, as far as possible, before discussing it. An eagle cannot understand a turtle, or a turtle an eagle. And a cow, mildly grazing, cannot understand either. Every human being that despises another, no matter what the other may be, simply represents the animal expression of prejudice based on ignorance.

Now the real truth, as to how those strange and friendless slaves were able to so readily adapt themselves to this country and so aptly adopt the methods and customs of the colonists, is that from mere force of habits they put into their everyday lives their inherited qualities of open-friendliness, big-heartedness, broad-mindedness, trustworthiness, constant-loyalty, quick-alertness, unbounded-patience, everready-forgivefulness and undying hopefulness. These qualities (in which all civilized countries of today stand badly in need of a much broader growth and a higher culture) had been handed down to the American slaves by their African forefathers who had for centuries dwelt in the darkest and wildest torrid jungles without a knowledge of the white man’s civilization. And those black ancestors had passed to their suffering offsprings such full portions of the above named manhood and brotherhood principles that the slaves were able, as they pitifully and tearfully went back and forth to their body-torturing and spirit-crushing tasks, to shame, by their unspiteful and unrevengeful actions under such cruel treatments, just a little measure of their inherited virtues into the so-called civilized, educated and Christian white people who held them in bondage. It must be granted that their owners did teach the slaves (whose foreparents had lived in a very hot country where little clothing was needed and food was plentiful without working for it) how to properly dress and how to regularly work. And although those enslaved people were taught those good habits only as means for their selfish and greedy owners to enable themselves to get richer, nevertheless, the Colored people of to-day are glad and thankful that they are now able to turn to their own personal and racial advantages the industrial habits learned by their people in slavery. On the other hand, Colored people will always be sorry and unthankful to those brute overseers and raping slave owners who so sinfully and beastfully forced upon and taught numerous and most harmful immoral vices to their slaves. And those soul-damning and life-sapping vices are still clinging to and leaving their marks on the rapidly advancing Colored people, just as the poison ivy clings to and mars the health and beauty of the young and tender acorn sprouts as they struggle upward to become future majestic oaks in the densely foliaged forests.

However, all of the white people in America at that time did not approve of or own slaves (just as all of the white people in the United States today do not approve of nor take part in discriminating against respectable Colored people) because they knew it was not right. They had the kind of Christianity that was real and pure enough to make their minds fully understand and their hearts to tenderly feel that slavery in its kindest manner is the worse sin against God and the greatest crime against humanity. And it was this class of God-serving and fellowman-loving white men and women who secretly and in great danger of being caught and punished (for the laws of the country forbid the educating of slaves) taught the otherwise friendless people in bondage their first knowledge of God and Jesus Christ. When it is