‘Freedom! or leave to die!’
Ah! and they meant the word,
Not as with us ’tis heard,
Not a mere party-shout:
They gave their spirits out.
Trusted the end to God,
And on the gory sod
Rolled in triumphant blood!”
And thus they paid their debt. “They gave—their spirits out!”
In the heart of what is known as the “Black Belt” of Alabama and within easy reach of the great cotton plantations of Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida, a devoted young colored man ten years ago started a school with about thirty Negro children assembled in a comical looking shanty at Tuskegee. His devotion was contagious and his work grew; an abandoned farm of 100 acres was secured and that gradually grew to 640 acres, largely woodland, on which a busy and prosperous school is located; and besides a supply farm was added, of heavy rich land, 800 acres, from which grain and sugarcane are main products. Since 1881, 2,947 students have been taught here, of whom 102 have graduated, while 200 more have received enough training to fit them to do good work as teachers, intelligent farmers, and mechanics. The latest enrollment shows girls, 247; boys, 264. Of the 102 graduates, 70 percent are teachers, ministers and farmers. They usually combine teaching and farming. Three are printers (learned the trades at school), one is a tinner, one a blacksmith, one a wheelwright, three are merchants, three are carpenters, others in the professions or filling miscellaneous positions.
That man is paying his debt by giving to this country living, working, consecrated men and women!
Now each can give something. It may not be a poem, or marble bust, or fragrant flower even; it may not be ours to place our lives on the altar of country as a loving sacrifice, or even to devote our living activities so extensively as B. T. Washington to supplying the world’s need for strong and willing helpers. But we can at least give ourselves. Each can be one of those strong willing helpers—even though nature has denied him the talent of endlessly multiplying his force. And nothing less can honorably cancel our debt. Each is under a most sacred obligation not to squander the material committed to him, not to sap its strength in folly and vice, and to see at the least that he delivers a product worthy the labor and cost which have been expended on him. A sound manhood, a true womanhood is a fruit which the lowliest can grow. And it is a commodity of which the supply never exceeds the demand. There is no danger of the market being glutted. The world will always want men. The worth of one is infinite. To this value all other values are merely relative. Our money, our schools, our governments, our free institutions, our systems of religion and forms of creeds are all first and last to be judged by this standard: what sort of men and women do they grow? How are men and women being shaped and molded by this system of training, under this or that form of government, by this or that standard of moral action? You propose a new theory of education; what sort of men does it turn out? Does your system make boys and girls superficial and mechanical? Is it a producing of average percentages or a rounding out of manhood—a sound, thorough, and practical development—or a scramble for standing and marks?
We have a notion here in America that our political institutions—the possibilities of a liberal and progressive democracy, founded on universal suffrage and in some hoped-for, providential way compelling universal education and devotion—our peculiar American attainments are richly worth all they have cost in blood and anguish. But our form of government, divinely ordered as we dream it to be, must be brought to the bar to be tested by this standard. It is nothing worth of itself—independently of whether it furnishes a good atmosphere in which to cultivate men. Is it developing a self-respecting freedom, a sound manliness on the part of the individual—or does it put into the power of the wealthy few the opportunity and the temptation to corrupt the many? If our vaunted “rule of the people” does not breed nobler men and women than monarchies have done—it must and will inevitably give place to something better.
I care not for the theoretical symmetry and impregnable logic of your moral code, I care not for the hoary respectability and traditional mysticisms of your theological institutions, I care not for the beauty and solemnity of your rituals and religious ceremonies, I care not even for the reasonableness and unimpeachable fairness of your social ethics—if it does not turn out better, nobler, truer men and women—if it does not add to the world’s stock of valuable souls—if it does not give us a sounder, healthier, more reliable product from this great factory of men—I will have none of it. I shall not try to test your logic, but weigh your results—and that test is the measure of the stature of the fullness of a man. You need not formulate and establish the credibility and authenticity of Christian Evidences, when you can demonstrate and prove the present value of Christian men. And this test for systems of belief, for schools of thought, and for theories of conduct, is also the ultimate and inevitable test of nations, of races and of individuals. What sort of men do you turn out? How are you supplying the great demands of the world’s market? What is your true value? This, we may be sure, will be the final test by which the colored man in America will one day be judged in the cool, calm, unimpassioned, unprejudiced second thought of the American people.
Let us then quietly commend ourselves to this higher court—this final tribunal. Short sighted idiosyncracies are but transient phenomena. It is futile to combat them, and unphilosophical to be depressed by them. To allow such things to overwhelm us, or even to absorb undue thought, is
