The Negro Problem | Page 6

away from the
contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of
men is a difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for educational experts, but
its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the object of man-training, we shall
develop money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of
education, we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we
make manhood the object of the work of the schools--intelligence, broad sympathy,
knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it--this is the
curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life. On this foundation we
may build bread winning, skill of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the
child and man mistake the means of living for the object of life.
* * * * *
If this be true--and who can deny it--three tasks lay before me; first to show from the past
that the Talented Tenth as they have risen among American Negroes have been worthy of
leadership; secondly, to show how these men may be educated and developed; and thirdly,
to show their relation to the Negro problem.
* * * * *
You misjudge us because you do not know us. From the very first it has been the

educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and elevated the mass, and the
sole obstacles that nullified and retarded their efforts were slavery and race prejudice; for
what is slavery but the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the work of
natural internal leadership? Negro leadership, therefore, sought from the first to rid the
race of this awful incubus that it might make way for natural selection and the survival of
the fittest. In colonial days came Phillis Wheatley and Paul Cuffe striving against the bars
of prejudice; and Benjamin Banneker, the almanac maker, voiced their longings when he
said to Thomas Jefferson, "I freely and cheerfully acknowledge that I am of the African
race, and in colour which is natural to them, of the deepest dye; and it is under a sense of
the most profound gratitude to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, that I now confess to
you that I am not under that state of tyrannical thraldom and inhuman captivity to which
too many of my brethren are doomed, but that I have abundantly tasted of the fruition of
those blessings which proceed from that free and unequalled liberty with which you are
favored, and which I hope you will willingly allow, you have mercifully received from
the immediate hand of that Being from whom proceedeth every good and perfect gift.
"Suffer me to recall to your mind that time, in which the arms of the British crown were
exerted with every powerful effort, in order to reduce you to a state of servitude; look
back, I entreat you, on the variety of dangers to which you were exposed; reflect on that
period in which every human aid appeared unavailable, and in which even hope and
fortitude wore the aspect of inability to the conflict, and you cannot but be led to a serious
and grateful sense of your miraculous and providential preservation, you cannot but
acknowledge, that the present freedom and tranquility which you enjoy, you have
mercifully received, and that a peculiar blessing of heaven.
"This, sir, was a time when you clearly saw into the injustice of a state of Slavery, and in
which you had just apprehensions of the horrors of its condition. It was then that your
abhorrence thereof was so excited, that you publicly held forth this true and invaluable
doctrine, which is worthy to be recorded and remembered in all succeeding ages: 'We
hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed
with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.'"
Then came Dr. James Derham, who could tell even the learned Dr. Rush something of
medicine, and Lemuel Haynes, to whom Middlebury College gave an honorary A.M. in
1804. These and others we may call the Revolutionary group of distinguished
Negroes--they were persons of marked ability, leaders of a Talented Tenth, standing
conspicuously among the best of their time. They strove by word and deed to save the
color line from becoming the line between the bond and free, but all they could do was
nullified by Eli Whitney and the Curse of Gold. So they passed into forgetfulness.
But their spirit did not wholly die; here and there in the early part of the century came
other