SPEECH (By Request) JOS. B. CUMMING AT A MEETING OF AN INSTITUTE OF COLORED TEACHERS AT AUGUSTA, GA. JULY, 1900. Chronicle Job Print, Augusta, Ga. Mr. Chairman and Friends: I recall, when I hear this generous applause, a text of scripture. I am aware I am in the presence of preachers and I may not give it correctly, and I ask their indulgence while I quote it as nearly as I can: “Let not him who putteth on his armor boast himself as he that taketh it off." A public speaker is always gratified by applause ; but its true value and its true meaning depend upon the stage of his remarks when he receives it. At the com- mencement, as now. it is simply a manifestation of your good will and I accept it as such and I accept it with gratification. But it may not come at the end. If it should come at the end, it will be a mark of your approbation. I do not know that I shall get your approbation this evening. I should like to have it; but I would not get it from any assembly at the sacrifice of what I consider right and true. I expect to speak to you plainly. I expect to speak nothing but the truth — or what I believe to be the truth. But uiflortunately, the truth is not always agreeable. Of course I shall speak to you as a friend. When I say “friend” the word has a double meaning in my thoughts. It means that I am your friend, and that I believe that you are my friends — that you are friendly. I hope so. The first proposition I know to be true ; I know that I am your friend. I do not say a friend of every individual member of this assembly for most of you individually are unknown to me; but as I look over this audience I see individuals whom I know as my friends. I say. friends. Why not? Why should not my heart swell with friendship when I look upon an as- sembly of your race? As I stand here tonight my thoughts go back to other days ; for I am an inheritor of old tradi- tions. I have lived under two civilizations — that which passed away in 1865, and that which has existed since. I am the inheritor of the old as well as the possessor of the new. And from the inheritance has come a friendship that grew out of the old relations- — relations that cannot be appreciated by this generation. They were very close. They were very true. There is no language with which we can express them and there is no future generation that will ever know what they were. They are past and gone ; but to me and to you few who remain who lived in the midst of them, they are a beauti- ful memory. Another reason why I should have this sentiment : I recall those four years of war, when the white men of the South had to leave their homes, their property, their wives, 3 their children, their all. They left them in the hands of your ancestors, and in the hands of some of the gray heads I see around me now. They were in your power. But how beau- tiful, how unswerving was the fidelity with which your people stood by my people in those days. I regret to note that that fact is forgotten by the younger generation of the white peo- ple. It ought never to be forgotten. It ought to be blazoned on the pages of history, as it was one of the most remarkable evidences of fidelity to be found in the annals of time. I recall, too, a man who was my friend, a man of your race, a man born in his condition of life in the same family in which I was born in my condition of life. He w r ent with me early in the war, and he came back with me at its close. For weeks at a time there was scarcely a d’ay and never a night when he could not have left me and accepted freedom, but he preferred to stay by me; not merely to serve me, but to protect me, and after the war for thirty-five years he remained my friend, and it was only a few weeks ago when your minis- ter was one of those who officiated at his funeral. He w^as one who had spent a generation of life as a slave. A good man, one whom all had grown to respect, and what was of much less consequence, my friend to the last. Now I say, that under these circumstances, it is not strange that I speak to you as a friend. Whatever I say will be with the deepest friendship, and whatever I may say that may be in itself unpleasant shall be entirely respectful both in word and in spirit. 1 was asked to address you upon the legal status of the teacher. I said to Professor Walker, who brought me the invitation, and with whom I had correspondence and cover- sation, that that was a very narrow subject, that really, if I confined myself to the letter of that subject the best thing I could do would be to take the Acts of the Legislature and read them to you and sit down. But I said I preferred to do, with his permission and with the permission of the Institute, what the preachers sometimes do — take a text, and talk about anything; and I said to him, as I say to you now, that I would take that narrow text and discuss some larger and broader questions. I intend in what little I shall say to you to tell you what the teacher should teach. I will say this in reference to the teachers themselves. They occupy a vantage ground. In the first place, presumably, and actually, they are among the most intelligent of your fellow citizens, the best educated. They are the persons whose calling gives them the opportunity 4 and the leisure to read and to reflect, and especially it gives them the opportunity of inculcating" their views upon those who come in contact with them. They are in a position to wield a great influence, and they ought to do it, if I may presume to instruct other people in their duties. They ought to do it in a broad and wise spirit. When I say that f propose to tell you what the teacher ought to teach, I do not mean to say what he ought to teach out of the books. I look outside of the tex't books, and think of those great practical questions which affect your people and my people, and those are the questions to which I would direct the attention of the teach- ers of this Institute. It seems to me that the first, thing that the teacher should understand, thoroughly grasp and take in, is the environment, the surroundings of the race to which he belongs. Now I know that the first and most salient fact in that connection is American citizenship. We are all here tonight, without dis- tinction of race or ancestry or color, American citizens. We are all to that extent upon the same plane. We all have the same rights, at least theoretically before the law, but there is something 'that is deeper and stronger than the law, and that is the race feeling; and lie would be an unwise man, be he teacher or preacher, if he ignored that factor. No law, no con- stitution, can be so levelling, and make things so uniform as to obliterate that which the Father of us all has seen proper to create. It will not down. You cannot ignore it. You cannot overcome it. It is there, and there is no man, who is a wise teacher, that will close his eyes to that great fact. And so you find yourselves in the midst of another race. What is your relation now to that race in seme of the great factors which must control our existence? In numbers, for instance? Your numbers are fewer. I am not prepared to say whether the white race quite doubles your race in the Southern states. You teachers know better than I. But there is, at any rate, a great preponderance of the white race. Not only is there this preponderance of the white race at this time, but it is a preponderance that is bound to grow. There are two ways in which the population of a country in increased — one by the number of births exceeding the deaths, and another by the influx of new people into the country. Both these influences are against you. The white race is increasing more rapidly than your race. You are getting no increase by im- migration and never will. Your brothers at the North are not coming to the South. It is more likely, if certain condi- tions prevail, that you will go to them. Though in that you 5 will make a mistake. But from no foreign parts is any increase coming to your ranks. When it comes to the matter of wealth, the white race is far wealthier than yours, and it is going to remain so. I do not mean that you will not increase in wealth. I believe you will, and hope from the bottom of my heart that you will. But relatively speaking you are going to be outrun in the race for wealth, because wealth increases of itself. The rich be- come richer. I am not prepared to say that the poor get poorer, but it is certainly true that wealth breeds wealth, and as time goes on you will fin'd the disparity in this respect will also increase. When it comes to the question of intelligence and knowl- edge, there is no necessity of discussing which race has the greater natural gifts. But the white man is intellectually better equipped. I know that in some things your race pos- sesses men of superior merit. In all those things in which the imagination plays a great part, such as oratory, and perhaps art, your race is highly gifted. However, with the accumula- tion of knowledge the white man has great advantage of you. We have the accumulation of hundreds of years. You are only beginners. So really all these elements of strength and power are on our side and they are not going to be shifted. They are going to be increased rather than diminished. You teach- ers will make a mistake in guiding the people that are com- mitted to your guidance, if you do not make these most seri- ous and controlling facts clear to their minds. It may not be pleasant to do it. but it is right to do it. It is wise to do it. As 1 have said, 1 did not start out to flatter you. I started out to tell the truth. I started out with the consciousness that I was going to say things that perhaps would not be agree- able, and I am just on the eve of one such announcement. It follows from what I have said that you are at the mercy of the white people of this land. Y\ hen I say at their mercy I do not mean to say that you need cringe; that you need s;o down in the dust ; but I mean that there is always in this race feeling a latent fire, a dormant antagonism, and if that is ever aroused, whatever may be the disasters to both races, you will find that you are in the hands of those that are far more powerful than yourselves. All the elements of power are on the side which in that event will be opposed to you. Now I have said all the disagreeable things I feel called upon to say. I want all who hear me to recognize the truth of what I believe to be the truth, and that is the existence of 6 this radical race feeling, and the fact that it is apt to breed antagonism and that when any such antagonism is aroused, the strength and the power are on one side and the weakness is on the other. Recognizing these facts, to which no wise man will close his eyes, let us see if we can pursue a course which will pre- vent antagonism. I think we can. I should be truly unhappy if I thought we could not. But it is no easy task. I said just now that I believed that I had delivered myself of all the un- pleasant things that I had to say. But I will say one other. Let me tell you that the keynote of your conduct should be conciliation. Avoid aggression. Avoid those things that are likely to arouse passion upon the part of those of the other side. Pursue a course that will confound your enemies, and strengthen the hands of your friends, whom I regret to say are fewer now than at any period in your history. Do not for a moment delude yourselves with the belief that the white men of the North are going to stand up for you against the white men of the South. The day for that is past. You who read the newspapers, you who keep up with the current of events, you know that I simply give utterance to what is in your own hearts, and that is that you are more friendless to- day than at any period in your existence. There was a time when it was different, and a great wrong was done to you at that time. I do not think there was any wrong in abolishing slavery. I rejoice in it, and I do not believe that there is a man of my race, who has any sense, who does not. I need not say there was a wrong committed 1 when you were made equal, politically, with the white man. The wrong that has been done to you since in this respect, has been done by yourselves. But the wrong done then was that you were made to believe not only that you were the equal of the white man, but that you were better. You were taught then that you were in every respect equal to the people of the South, and what turned the scale in your favor and made you even better was your loyalty to the Union, and there was an attempt to invert the cone and stand it upon its apex, and that aroused resent- ment that has not altogether subsided even yet. But there has been a revulsion of sentiment in the North since that time, and now they are less your friends than we of the South. I will not take up the time to discuss these matters further. Read what is said even in Boston papers about you. Things that would never be said in a True Southern newspaper. Now you may say I have presented a gloomy outlook for your people. I am rather endeavoring to save you from 7 a gloomy experience. The outlook need not be gloomy except as you yourselves make it so. 1 think that your destiny is largely in your own hands, if you will recognize those fun- damental facts, which I have endeavored to present to you, and shape your course accordingly. It is in your power by your own wise and prudent conduct to confound your enemies and strengthen the hands of your friends. ■But why call the picture gloomy at all? The effect of every picture depends greatly on the point of view and th» light, in which one regards it. Do not, therefore, dwell so much on what you aspire to be in future generations, but think more on what you have been in a comparative recent past, and what you are in this wonderful present. There never has been in the history of the World such rapid progress from savagery to a high civilization as your people have made. But a short time ago, as we measure time in the history of races, your ancestors were superstitious savages in the wilds of the cradle of your race. For several generations they went, in the course of their progress from that estate to civilization, through the hard bitter school of slavery. But we must all admit that there was no other school, in which such vast numbers could be taught and such rapid progress be made. Above all we must admit that it was the school, which the Providence that rules over us all permitted to stay open till it had accomplished its work. And all because you are not absolutely abreast with the white race, which has had its hard and bitter and bloody struggles of two thousand years to reach its present position, you are to become gloomy and discontented ! Let your thoughts dwell upon the present. How much it holds for you ! There is your absolute freedom, which you prize so much. This fine church edifice with its educated and enlightened pastor — types each of so many others. Your numberless schools with their efficient teachers, in whose support the money of the State, collected mainly from its white people, is freely given. The enjoyment of the same property rights as the freest people in the World — and no one who hears me can say that your property rigths are not protected by the courts as sacredly as the white man’s. Your personal liberty is the theoritically at least, and almost practically, as secure as his. I know that colored criminals are convicted oftener that white criminals, but that does not mean injustice to you, but shame to us white people. There is no wrong done in convicting a colored man who is guilty ; but there in disgrace in letting a guilty white man escape. Your homes are in a climate which suits you. The soil, in 8 which you can have as sacred an ownership as the richest and the highest, responds generously to your industry. Into the homes at least of the chosen and educated members of your race come many of the comforts and refinements, and into your lives an almost equal share of the material progress of this wonderful age — and 1 to all, educated and uneducated, a fair reward for industry — I fail to see the gloom of this pic- ture. On the contrary to me, endeavoring to look at it from your standpoint, it looks cheerful and smiling. And now, my friends, let us all try to keep it so, or to make it better. I think we can do it. Much, if not most, of the task is yours. Let there be no excesses of conduct or of speech. Discounte- nance disturbing elements. Put down your Thomas T. For- tunes and your Bee editors — these “Long Toms” who at a safe distance fire shots, which can hurt no one but yourselves. If, in your newspapers, you will discuss politics, civil rights and social questions, do so with moderation and reason and without passion, avoiding the angry and bitter word. In your pulpits preach the Gospel ; that is a big enough theme to claim all the efforts of the greatest orator of any race. In your schools teach the curriculum and all other things which make for peace and good and reputable living. In your every day life be sober, be honest, be industrious. But why should I go into details on this point in address- ing this intelligent assemblage of teachers? You understand what the problem is, and how light is the slumber of this terrible Race Spirit. Let your course, as far as in you lies, be such as to con- found those, who are unreasonably your enemies, and to strengthen the hands of those who are sincerely your friends. 9 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/speechbyrequestoOOcumm %- «*• V