The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers

by Various

  To-day, with holy awe and reverence, we are to consider the gospel message which says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Emerging from this state of chaos and darkness, God presented man, for his habitation, a beautiful garden fragrant with the perfume of flowers; resonant with the carol of birds, and supplied with all that was necessary for the well-being of man, and then said: “It is not good that the man be alone, I will make an help-meet for him.” Beginning with creation we find that woman has figured conspicuously, by proving herself a desirable help to man in every important dispensation of God’s providence. As woman was instrumental in the fall, God also used her in redeeming fallen humanity. He gave us this, assurance in the first promise—“The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.”

  When God called out a peculiar people for himself, he made CHOICE of the MOTHER of Israel; thereby instituting the holy ordinance of matrimony and directing his children how to enter into it. But alas! as in other things, so in this all-important matter, we’ve left the commandment of God, and followed the doctrines of men—to the ruin and havoc of social blessedness. The following poetical strain applies to matrimonial bliss, as well as our Christian relation; in fact, Christ likens his love for his church to that which should exist between husband and wife:

  “Blest be the tie that binds

  Our hearts in mutual love,

  The fellowship of kindred minds

  Is like to that above.”

  No union, based upon anything than true love, as a result of real worth of character of the contracting parties, can be happy and productive of the great good God destined by the holy ordinance. In the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage, it was the love and wisdom of woman that preserved, nourished and trained the man child that God called to be the leader, judge and priest for his people. Just here, as the care and training of children is preeminently the work of woman, we pause to say a few words concerning the influence and duty of women to children.

  The fondest love and strongest ties of earth exist between mother and child.

  “At home or away, in alley or street,

  Wherever I chance in this wide world to meet

  A girl that is thoughtless or boy that is wild,

  My heart echoes softly, ‘t’is somebody’s child.’

  No matter how far from the right she has strayed;

  No matter what inroads dishonor has made;

  No matter that sin and pain has tarnished the pearl;

  Though tarnished and sullied, she is some mother’s girl.

  No matter how wayward his footsteps have been;

  No matter how deeply he has sunken in sin;

  No matter how low is his standard of joy;

  Though guilty and loathsome, he is some mother’s boy.”

  The mother transmits her virtues or her vices to her children; in fact, she reproduces herself in her children, and she is exerting an influence for good or ill, in spite of her will, from the time the child is sensible of anything until it leaves the world. Oh, how careful ought she to be to make the most of herself, physically, mentally and morally, that her children might be a power in the world for good, and rise up and call her blessed! If there was no other reason favoring the higher education of women than the fact that they are to be the mothers of the nation, that one alone is all-sufficient; for the mother has almost the entire care of the child in early life. She is its first God-given teacher, and wields an influence no one else can. Let women see to it that they use every opportunity for development of all their powers.

  A more important position is filled by no one than that held by the mothers of our country, not even the executive head of the government, for it is what the mothers make the boys that will give us a good or bad government; and the mothers control their children, while the executive head of this government is the servant of the people, since it is a government of the people, for the people and by the people.

  We are learning now that we are responsible for the well-being of our children, and our neighbors’ children, as to their bodies, minds and spirits, and feel the weight of this responsibility to the extent that we are trying by organized effort to prepare ourselves to meet it; that we may help on the onward march of all that is grand and glorious.

  The story of Hannah leads us to understand how soon we should begin the training of our children. When the child was weaned, she carried him to the temple and gave him to the Lord, and God used Samuel as a powerful agency to reprove the wrong and defend the right.

  In union there is strength, so the organizations of Christian women are giving them strength of character, and preparing them for effective service—such organization as the W. C. T. U., Missionary Circles, King’s Daughters, Bible Bands and Fireside Schools—the last named organization is a plan God has recently given our beloved sister J. P. Moore. It is so comprehensive that every woman in the land can enjoy its blessings. It is an organization for the improvement of the home life; the development of the women and the training of children. As the name indicates, it is a school around the fireside, and though it is of recent birth, God has wondrously blessed it, and there is already a host of women in the South-land as witnesses of its effectiveness in the elevation of our homes. Brethren and sisters, let me entreat you to encourage and foster the Fireside School, and as this sainted mother of Israel, who has given her life for our people, declines in strength, and step by step walks out of labor to reward, a halo of glory may crown her efforts, and she may go home rejoicing with the laurels of a victorious conqueror.

  We believe that God meant what he said in Gen. ii. 18, as in Mark xvi. 16; and I’m sure you all agree that woman is a help along the line I’ve spoken; but we advance further, and affirm that it is not good for man to be alone anywhere. Those places to which he goes, to the exclusion of women, such as saloons, club-rooms and legislative halls, are not suitable for him, and he is not safe, and we are sure it is not good for him, because God says that it is not good for man to be alone; and the wreck and ruin that result from his frequenting places of ill-repute, and the unjust and imperfect laws he makes are substantial proof that danger and death await those who disobey God’s word. But what about man going alone to war? We answer by asking who was it that drove the nail into Sisera’s temple? and what of the heroism of Joan of Arc? War is one of man’s inventions; it is not good in itself, neither is it good for man to go to war alone, most especially in the Lord’s work. “Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man in the Lord.” I Cor. xi. II. In the Lord we must be together. Esther and her people laboring together with God saved her nation. Anna and Simeon together welcomed Jesus when he was brought to the temple for the first time after his birth. In these perilous times, when our men’s hearts are failing, and there are distress and perplexities of various kinds, there is the same need of the prayers of earnest Christian women that there was when Peter was in prison.

  The power of prayer can not be over-estimated. “If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” Many a husband, father, brother and son have been saved in answer to the faithful prayer of woman, and God has given you this evidence of woman’s worth, that you might encourage her, and recognize her as your help-meet in evangelizing the world. We still have the poor and neglected, the widows and orphans, and hence Dorcas’ work needs to be continued; the traveling servant of God are to be administered unto, and Lydias are in demand to entertain them, especially at such times as this; and since others need to be instructed in the way of the Lord more perfectly, Pricillas can find work to do.

  We praise God that we all have the same blessed Savior, and M
aster, who has given us all the same blessed Gospel that he gave the Samaritan woman at the well, and Mary at the Sepulchre; and he is calling now; loudly calling you and me; calling by the lightning; by the storm and tempest; by persecution, famine, pestilence and death, and by the Gospel of his dear Son, ever from the mouths of women and children, do we hear this pleading voice, take the Cross and follow on.

  We claim for woman her God-given name, help-meet, and insist that man needs her help in every department of life. He cannot be right to put woman in one corner and man in another. All of our church work stands greatly in need of the united effort of its members, and since the majority of the membership is women, unless they work, very little can be accomplished.

  Isn’t it strange, men will suffer women to do all the drudgery work, plow, plant, cultivate and gather the crop, draw water and split rails, and all other kinds of drudgery; but when it comes to mental or spiritual work, men wish to exclude women; as if they thought women had all the muscular strength and they had the brains and thinking powers.

  Friends, we must come to the acknowledgment of this truth, “That it is not good for man to be alone,” and our church work needs the wisdom of both sexes to carry it on as God ordains it.

  The President has a Cabinet and an errand boy that stands by his side; both are his helpers; he needs both, but could better dispense with his errand boy than with his Cabinet. Now, we would like to whisper to man that he needs woman’s help more in his cabinet than as an errand girl.

  Did I say woman more needed in your cabinet than as an errand girl? Yes, brethren, you will find her of service upon your Executive Boards, both State and National. She’ll do you good everywhere, all the days of your life; for God has said, “It is not good that man should be alone.”

  God help us to examine this subject in the light of his Word! Do it for the sake of the children, who need the united wisdom of men and women to guard their wayward feet in the path of righteousness; do it for the sake of our homes, where we want love, order, peace and purity; but know we cannot have them unless husband and wife work and plan together. Let us do it for the sake of our country, where good and just laws are so much needed for the protection and encouragement of both man and woman; and above all for the sake of the Lord Jesus, who has prayed the Father that we might be one even as he and his Father were one; that the World might believe he was sent of the Father.

  What a glory shall follow in the wake of the acceptance of this glorious truth. God’s Church will awake, Jews and Greeks; bond and free, male and female, and when awakened, a mighty host will be in action—stalwart men, women and children—and the Gospel Message shall soon extend throughout the earth, and we shall say no longer, one to the other, “know ye the Lord,” but all shall know him, and

  “From Greenland’s icy mountains,

  From India’s coral stand;

  And Afric’s sunny fountains,”

  shall ascend songs of praise to the Lamb that was slain.

  “And Jesus shall reign, where’er the sun

  Doth his successive journeys run;

  His kingdom, spread from shore to shore,

  Till moons shall wax and wane no more.”

  In closing my thoughts on woman’s work, as presented in God’s word, Mr. Moody’s four words necessary to the study of God’s word are very suggestive, “ADMIT, SUBMIT, COMMIT, TRANSMIT.” Admit—believe it all, from Genesis to Revelation; don’t stop at the Jordan, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Submit—yield to its requirements. Commit—learn it, treasure it—“Thy words have I hid in my heart.” Transmit—“give it to others,” (Deut. vi. 6–9.)—that we may all take heed thereto, and go forward as laborers together with God, seeking to save this lost world!

  41

  ANNA JULIA COOPER

  (1860–1964)

  Anna Julia Cooper was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, to Hannah Stanley, a slave, and most likely her master, Dr. Fabius J. Haywood, or his brother, George Washington Haywood. Both Anna and her mother were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1868, Anna enrolled in St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute where she soon demanded to take courses available only to men. In 1877 she married George Cooper, an Episcopal priest from the West Indies, who died within two years. She enrolled at Oberlin College and graduated in 1884 along with Mary Church Terrell and another African American woman, Ida Gibbs Hunt. Cooper received her MA in mathematics from Oberlin three years later and began teaching at Wilberforce University, St. Augustine’s, and the M Street High School. She enrolled at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and received her PhD in 1925, becoming the fourth black woman in American history to earn a doctorate (the first three were Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, niece of Nathaniel Mosell; Eva B. Dykes; and Georgiana Rose Simpson).

  In her paper “Womanhood a Vital Element,” Cooper urges the black clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church to expand their perceptions of black prosperity. The average black American woman, Cooper argues, should serve as the barometer of her race’s well-being, not the highest achieving black men. We note Cooper’s knowledge of Islam was somewhat limited. In 1894, Cooper, representing the Washington Negro Folk-Lore Society, delivered a paper to the Folklore Conference at Hampton Normal School, arguing that artists need to free themselves from white aesthetic models.

  “Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race” (1886)

  SOURCE: Anna Julia Cooper, “Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race” (read before the convocation of colored clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Washington D.C., 1886), A Voice from the South: By A Woman from the South (Xenia, Oh.: Aldine Printing House, 1892).

  The two sources from which, perhaps, modern civilization has derived its noble and ennobling ideal of woman are Christianity and the Feudal System.

  In Oriental countries woman has been uniformly devoted to a life of ignorance, infamy, and complete stagnation. The Chinese shoe of to-day does not more entirely dwarf, cramp, and destroy her physical powers, than have the customs, laws, and social instincts, which from remotest ages have governed our Sister of the East, enervated and blighted her mental and moral life.

  Mahomet makes no account of woman whatever in his polity. The Koran, which, unlike our Bible, was a product and not a growth, tried to address itself to the needs of Arabian civilization as Mahomet with his circumscribed powers saw them. The Arab was a nomad. Home to him meant his present camping place. That deity who, according to our western ideals, makes and sanctifies the home, was to him a transient bauble to be toyed with so long as it gave pleasure and then to be thrown aside for a new one. As a personality, an individual soul, capable of eternal growth and unlimited development, and destined to mould and shape the civilization of the future to an incalculable extent, Mahomet did not know woman. There was no hereafter, no paradise for her. The heaven of the Mussulman is peopled and made gladsome not by the departed wife, or sister, or mother, but by houri—a figment of Mahomet’s brain, partaking of the ethereal qualities of angels, yet imbued with all the vices and inanity of Oriental women. The harem here, and—“dust to dust” hereafter, this was the hope, the inspiration, the summum bonum of the Eastern woman’s life! With what result on the life of the nation, the “Unspeakable Turk,” the “sick man” of modern Europe can to-day exemplify.

  Says a certain writer: “The private life of the Turk is vilest of the vile, unprogressive, unambitious, and inconceivably low.” And yet Turkey is not without her great men. She has produced most brilliant minds; men skilled in all the intricacies of diplomacy and statesmanship; men whose intellects could grapple with the deep problems of empire and manipulate the subtle agencies which check-mate kings. But these minds were not the normal outgrowth of a healthy trunk. They seemed rather ephemeral excrescencies which shoot far out with all the vigor and promise, apparently, of strong branches; but s
oon alas fall into decay and ugliness because there is no soundness in the root, no life-giving sap, permeating, strengthening and perpetuating the whole. There is a worm at the core! The homelife is impure! and when we look for fruit, like apples of Sodom, it crumbles within our grasp into dust and ashes.

  It is pleasing to turn from this effete and immobile civilization to a society still fresh and vigorous, whose seed is in itself, and whose very name is synonymous with all that is progressive, elevating and inspiring, viz., the European bud and the American flower of modern civilization.

  And here let me say parenthetically that our satisfaction in American institutions rests not on the fruition we now enjoy, but springs rather from the possibilities and promise that are inherent in the system, though as yet, perhaps, far in the future.

  “Happiness,” says Madame de Stael, “consists not in perfections attained, but in a sense of progress, the result of our own endeavor under conspiring circumstances toward a goal which continually advances and broadens and deepens till it is swallowed up in the Infinite.” Such conditions in embryo are all that we claim for the land of the West. We have not yet reached our ideal in American civilization. The pessimists even declare that we are not marching in that direction. But there can be no doubt that here in America is the arena in which the next triumph of civilization is to be won; and here too we find promise abundant and possibilities infinite.

  Now let us see on what basis this hope for our country primarily and fundamentally rests. Can any one doubt that it is chiefly on the homelife and on the influence of good women in those homes? Says Macaulay: “You may judge a nation’s rank in the scale of civilization from the way they treat their women.” And Emerson, “I have thought that a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.” Now this high regard for woman, this germ of a prolific idea which in our own day is bearing such rich and varied fruit, was ingrafted into European civilization, we have said, from two sources, the Christian Church and the Feudal System. For although the Feudal System can in no sense be said to have originated the idea, yet there can be no doubt that the habits of life and modes of thought to which Feudalism gave rise, materially fostered and developed it; for they gave us chivalry, than which no institution has more sensibly magnified and elevated woman’s position in society.