The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers

by Various

  In organization is found all the elements of success in any enterprise, and by this method alone are developed the force and ability that have reared the grand structure of human society. God intended that man should be a social being, for he has given to no one individual the genius to construct by his efforts alone the complex edifice.

  Step by step, as the dark cloud of ignorance and superstition is dispelled by the penetrating rays of the light of eternal truth, men begin to think, and thought brings revolution, and revolution changes the condition of men and leads them into a happier and brighter existence. So have the great revolutions of the age affected the condition of the colored people of the Southern States, and brought them into a more hopeful relation to the world. When they emerged from the long night of oppression, which shrouded their minds in darkness, crushed the energies of their soul, robbed them of every inheritance save their trust in God, they found themselves penniless, homeless, destitute, with thousands of aged and infirm and helpless left on their hands to support, and poverty and inexperience prevailing everywhere. To improve their social condition was the first impulse of their nature. For this purpose they began immediately to organize themselves into mutual aid societies, the object of which was to assist the more destitute, to provide for the sick, to bury the dead, to provide a fund for orphans and widows. These societies were the beginning of their strength, the groundwork of their future advancement and permanent elevation. They were constructed with admirable skill and harmony. Excellent charters were secured, and the constitution and by-laws were adhered to with remarkable fidelity. The membership increased rapidly, and the funds in the treasuries grew daily. The women, being organized separately, conducted their societies with wonderful wisdom and forethought. Their influence for good was felt in every community, and they found themselves drawn together by a friendly interest which greatly enhanced the blessings of life. Their sick and dead and orphans have been properly cared for. Thus our people have shown a self-dependence scarcely equaled by any other people, a refined sensibility in denying themselves the necessities of life to save thousands of children from want and adults from public charity; in screening them from the stinging arrows of the tongue of slander and the carping criticisms of a relentless foe.

  These organizations number at least five thousand and carry a membership of at least a half-million women. They have widened into State societies, and some of the stronger bodies into national organizations, meeting in annual assemblies to transact business and to discuss their future well-being. They have in some States built and sustained orphans’ homes, and in others purchased their own cemeteries. They have built commodious halls for renting purposes; they have assisted in building churches and other benevolent institutions. They have granted large death benefits, and thus provided homes for many orphan children, and have deposited large sums in savings banks for future use. Should the question be asked what benefit has accrued from these organized efforts, we answer, much in every way. Their organizations have bound the women together in a common interest so strong that no earthly force can sever it. Organization has taught them the art of self-government, and has prepared the way for future and grander organizations. By their frequent convocations and discussions their intellectual powers have been expanded and their judgment has been enlightened. Organization has given hope for a better future by revealing to colored women their own executive ability. It has stimulated them to acquire wealth by teaching them to husband their means properly. It has intensified their religion by giving them a more exalted idea of God through a constant survey of his goodness and mercies toward them. It has refined their morality through adherence to their most excellent constitutions and by-laws. It has assisted in raising them from a condition of helplessness and destitution to a state of self-dependence and prosperity; and now they stand a grand sisterhood, nearly one million strong, bound together by the strongest ties of which the human mind can conceive, being loyal to their race, loyal to the government, and loyal to their God.

  Having thus provided for their future well-being, their attention was turned to the spread of the gospel. With hearts glowing with the love of God, they longed to assist in building up his kingdom on earth. Many devout women joined themselves into missionary societies to obtain means with which to send the gospel to other parts of the world more destitute than their own. They were auxiliary to the churches of various denominations, and multiplied until their scanty donations amounted to sums sufficient to accomplish much good in the Master’s cause. On the women’s part in the African Methodist Episcopal church they have donated the sum of thirty thousand dollars, and a like amount in each of the five other leading denominations. The Presbyterian Home and Foreign Missionary Society sustains missions in West Africa, the West Indies, the Bermuda Islands, South America, and the islands of Hayti and St. Thomas. The home missions of the various denominations occupy the time of more than one thousand ministers. About the year 1890 the women of the African Methodist Episcopal church formed a mite missionary society, which has its auxiliary branches all over the Union. They now labor assiduously for the advancement of the foreign missions they had prayed for. They believe in him who blessed the widow’s mite, and who pronounced a divine benediction on the modest disciple who had done what she could.

  This organization raises two thousand dollars annually, sustaining two or three missionaries in Hayti, and assists in the Bermuda and West African missions. The aggregate of all the money raised annually by the colored churches amounts to over half a million of dollars, and by far the greater share is raised by the women.

  Many a benighted heathen has heard the gospel through their instrumentalities. By their efforts they themselves have become better informed concerning the gospel, and better acquainted with the world and its inhabitants. In trying to raise others they have learned to look up from their toilsome and abject present to a brighter and more glorious future. They have learned to exalt the goodness of God as manifest in the sanctification of their work to his honor and glory. This has raised in them a holy ambition to accomplish greater good for their fellow-men.

  The colored women of the Southern States have not been indifferent to the necessity of guarding their homes against the pernicious influences of the drinking system. They have begun to fortify themselves against the most powerful of all enemies—strong drink. Woman’s Christian temperance unions have been formed in all Southern States, into which many hundreds have gathered, who work with much patience and diligence. Hospital work, prison work, social purity, and flower mission work, and the distribution of literature among all classes of persons have been performed faithfully, and many erring and destitute souls have felt the tenderness and shared the bounty of the benevolent hearts and ready hands of the colored women of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Unions.

  These organizations have accomplished much in forming temperance sentiment among the people and in the churches, and have helped materially in changing votes at the polls for prohibition.

  Again, when this fair land was distracted by contending factions, and military forces left desolation and ruin in their pathway, while enemies met in deadly conflict on the fields of battle, the expiring soldier longed for the soothing touch of woman’s hand, and his heart yearned for the consoling words of woman’s prayer. It was then on the blood-drenched field that the colored women showed the deepest sympathy for suffering humanity and the highest valor and loyalty by stanching the bleeding wounds, and cooling the parched lips with water, and raising the fainting head, and fanning the fevered brow, and with tender solicitude watching by the dying couch, and breathing the last prayer with him who had laid down his life for his country. The colored men often endangered their lives by passing the line of the enemy to carry messages to the officers of the Union army, so that a part of the army was saved not once nor twice but often by their daring valor. And when her loyal and chivalric brothers, of whose loyalty and valor she was justly proud, returned from
the conflict with halting limbs and shattered frames, and victory perched on their banners, they were content to lie down and die, and leave their widows and orphans to the care of a merciful God and their brave comrades. When the women of the nation proposed to form relief corps to assist the needy comrades of the Grand Army of the Republic and care for their orphans and widows, the colored women did not hesitate, but when opportunity offered they organized, and they have many active and industrious corps accomplishing much noble work, in assisting the needy, decorating graves, presenting flags to schools, and in many ways instilling patriotism.

  If we compare the present condition of the colored people of the South with their condition twenty-eight years ago, we shall see how the organized efforts of their women have contributed to the elevation of the race and their marvelous advancement in so short a time. When they emerged from oppression they were homeless and destitute; now they are legal owners of real estate to the value of two hundred and sixty-three millions of dollars. Then they were penniless, but now they have more than two millions in bank. In several States they have banks of their own in successful operation, in which the women furnish the greater number of deposits. Then they had no schools, and but few of the people were able to read; now more than four millions of their women can read. Then they had no high schools, but now they have two hundred colleges, twenty-seven of which are owned and conducted by their own race.

  These feeble efforts at organization to improve our condition seem insignificant to the world, but this beginning, insignificant as it may seem, portends a brighter and nobler future. If we in the midst of poverty and proscription can aspire to a noble destiny to which God is leading all his rational creatures, what may we not accomplish in the day of prosperity?

  Hark! I hear the tramp of a million feet, and the sound of a million voices answer, we are coming to the front ranks of civilization and refinement.

  Five hundred thousand girls and young women are now crowding our schools and colleges; they are forming literary societies, Young Women’s Christian Associations, Christian Endeavor Societies, bands of King’s Daughters, and with all the appliances of modern civilization which have a tendency to enlighten the mind and cultivate the heart, they will emerge into society, with all their acquired ability, to perfect that system of organization among their race of which they themselves are the first fruits.

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  LUCY CRAFT LANEY

  (1854–1933)

  Lucy Craft Laney was born in Macon, Georgia. After graduating from the Normal School at Atlanta University, she taught in several Georgia towns before founding the Haines Institute in Augusta where she served as principal for fifty years. Laney, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Reverend Henry McNeal Turner were the first African Americans to have their pictures hung in the Georgia State Capitol.

  In the following piece, Laney cites familial instability during slavery, poverty, and high levels of incarceration as causes of black women’s low social and economic standing. She encourages women to pursue work and education as a means of gaining status and influence. Laney hews to the practical. She claims cash as a force that can uplift, and she turns to numbers and statistics while making her argument. As educators, Laney states, black women can make a dramatic impact on the world. Her view of education is holistic, reaching beyond the schoolhouse to the home and the public lectern.

  “The Burden of the Educated Colored Woman” (1899)

  SOURCE: Lucy Craft Laney, “The Burden of the Educated Colored Woman,” Report of the Hampton Negro Conference, no. 111 (1899): 37–42.

  If the educated colored woman has a burden—and we believe she has—what is that burden? How can it be lightened, how may it be lifted? What it is can be readily seen perhaps better than told, for it constantly annoys to irritation; it bulges out as did the load of Bunyan’s Christian—ignorance—with its inseparable companions, shame and crime and prejudice.

  That our position may be more readily understood, let us refer to the past; and it will suffice for our purpose to begin with our coming to America in 1620, since prior to that time, we claim only heathenism. During the days of training in our first mission school—slavery—that which is the foundation of right training and good government, the basic rock of all true culture—the home, with its fire side training, mother’s molding, woman’s care, was not only neglected but utterly disregarded. There was no time in the institution for such teaching. We know that there were, even in the first days of that school, isolated cases of men and women of high moral character and great intellectual worth, as Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, and John Chavis, whose work and lives should have taught, or at least suggested to their instructors, the capabilities and possibilities of their dusky slave pupils. The progress and the struggles of these for noble things should have led their instructors to see how the souls and minds of this people then yearned for light—the real life. But alas! these dull teachers, like many modern pedagogues and school keepers, failed to know their pupils—to find out their real needs, and hence had no cause to study methods of better and best development of the boys and girls under their care. What other result could come from such training or want of training than a conditioned race such as we now have?

  For two hundred and fifty years they married, or were given in marriage. Oft times marriage ceremonies were performed for them by the learned minister of the master’s church; more often there was simply a consorting by the master’s consent, but it was always understood that these unions for cause, or without cause, might be more easily broken, than a divorce can be obtained in Indiana or Dakota. Without going so long a distance as from New York to Connecticut, the separated could take other companions for life, for a long or short time; for during those two hundred and fifty years there was not a single marriage legalized in a single southern state, where dwelt the mass of this people. There was something of the philosopher in the plantation preacher, who, at the close of the marriage ceremony, had the dusky couple join their right hands, and then called upon the assembled congregation to sing, as he lined it out, “Plunged in a gulf of dark despair,” for well he knew the sequel of many such unions. If it so happened that a husband and wife were parted by those who owned them, such owners often consoled those thus parted with the fact that he could get another wife; she, another husband. Such was the sanctity of the marriage vow that was taught and held for over two hundred and fifty years.

  Habit is indeed second nature. This is the race inheritance. I thank God not of all, for we know, each of us, of instances, of holding most sacred the plighted love and keeping faithfully and sacredly the marriage vows. We know of pure homes and of growing old together. Blessed heritage! If we only had the gold there might be many “Golden Weddings.” Despair not; the crushing burden of immorality which has its root in the disregard of the marriage vow, can be lightened. It must be, and the educated colored woman can and will do her part in lifting this burden.

  In the old institution there was no attention given to homes and to home making. Homes were only places in which to sleep, father had neither responsibility nor authority; mother, neither cares nor duties. She wielded no gentle sway nor influence. The character of their children was a matter of no concern to them; surroundings were not considered. It is true, house cleaning was sometimes enforced as a protection to property, but this was done at stated times and when ordered. There is no greater enemy of the race than these untidy and filthy homes; they bring not only physical disease and death, but they are very incubators of sin; they bring intellectual and moral death. The burden of giving knowledge and bringing about the practice of the laws of hygiene among a people ignorant of the laws of nature and common decency, is not a slight one. But this, too, the intelligent women can and must help to carry.

  The large number of young men in the state prison is by no means the least of the heavy burdens. It is true that many of these are unjustly sentenced; that longer terms of imprisonment are g
iven Negroes than white persons for the same offences; it is true that white criminals by the help of attorneys, money, and influence, oftener escape the prison, thus keeping small the number of prisoners recorded, for figures never lie. It is true that many are tried and imprisoned for trivial causes, such as the following, clipped from the Tribune, of Elberton, Ga.: “Seven or eight Negroes were arrested and tried for stealing two fish hooks last week. When the time of our courts is wasted in such a manner as this, it is high time to stop and consider whither we are driving. Such picayunish cases reflect on the intelligence of a community. It is fair to say the courts are not to blame in this matter.” Commenting on this The South Daily says: “We are glad to note that the sentiment of the paper is against the injustice. Nevertheless these statistics will form the basis of some lecturer’s discourse.”

  This fact remains, that many of our youth are in prison, that large numbers of our young men are serving out long terms of imprisonment, and this is a very sore burden. Five years ago while attending a Teacher’s Institute at Thomasville, Ga., I saw working on the streets in the chain gang, with rude men and ruder women, with ignorant, wicked, almost naked men, criminals, guilty of all the sins named in the decalogue, a large number of boys from ten to fifteen years of age, and two young girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen. It is not necessary that prison statistics be quoted, for we know too well the story, and we feel most sensibly this burden, the weight of which will sink us unless it is at once made lighter and finally lifted.

  Last, but not least, is the burden of prejudice, heavier in that it is imposed by the strong, those from whom help, not hindrance, should come. They are making the already heavy burden of their victims heavier to bear, and yet they are commanded by One who is even the Master of all: “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and thus fulfill the law.” This is met with and must be borne everywhere. In the South, in public conveyances, and at all points of race contact; in the North, in hotels, at the baptismal pool, in cemeteries; everywhere, in some shape or form, it is to be borne. No one suffers under the weight of this burden as the educated Negro woman does; and she must help to lift it.