Henry Theodore Johnson--The Black Man's Burden (1899)

8/3/2019 Henry Theodore Johnson--The Black Man's Burden (1899)

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"TheBlackMan'sBurden.

By H. T. Johnson, D.D., Ph.D.'.

VJjjL. (Pa.-


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The bequest ofDaniel Murray,

Washington, D. C1925.


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INTRODUCTION.The "Black Man's Burden" was delivered at my re-

quest to a large and appreciative audience on the closingevening of my Nova Scotia Conference, in Halifax,August 21, 1899. For an hour the rapt attention ol theintelligent audience, punctuated with frequent outburstsof applause, was a sufficient testimonial to Dr. Johnson'smastery of the subject, and the occasion. The action ofthe audience in requesting its publication, after anunanimous vote of thanks to the lecturer, bespeak morefor the value of the lecture than any word 1 may furth-er add.

( )ne of the Bishops A. M. E. Church.


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PREFACE.The appearance of this lecture in its present form is

due to the unanimous action of the audience in Hali-fax, Nova Scotia, before whom it was first delivered.By rising, unanimous vote it was Resolved That the lec-turer be tendered an expression of gratitude and appro-bation for his able, instructive, and valuable address on"The Black Man's Burden." In view of its wholesometruths and practical data, touching the history, achieve-ments and prospects of the colored people of America,it was a united request that the lecture be publishedand placed within the reach of thousands who couldnot be present to hear it.


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PILE ON THE BLACK .MAX'S BURDEN.Pile on the Black Man's Burden,

'Tis nearest at your door,Why heed long bleeding CubaOr dark Hawai's shore;Halt ye your fearless armiesWhich menace feeble folks,Who fight with clubs and arrowsAnd brook your rifles' smoke.Pile on the Black Man's burden,His wail with laughter drown,You've sealed the Red Man's problemAnd now deal with the Brown.In vain you seek to end itWith bullet, blood or death,Better by far defend itWith honor's holy breath.Pile on the Black Man's Burden,His back is broad though sore,What though the weight oppress him,He's borne the like before,"V our Jim crow laws and customs,And fiendish midnight deed,Though winked at by the nation

Will some day trouble breed.Pile on the Black Man's Burden,At length 'twill heaven pierce,Then on you or your children

Will reign God's judgments fierce:Your battleships and armiesMay weaker ones appall,But God Almighty's justiceThey'll not disturb at all, By H. T. Johnson.


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"The Black Man's Burden."[Delivered in Halifax. N. S. Aug. 21, 1899.]

Ladies and Gentlemen :cJj|x selecting ''The Black Man's Burden" as ourf*- topic, let it be understood that it is not ourl|l purpose to don the mantle of a crape prophet or((I assume the role of a philosopher of disenchantment.

The crabbed critics of other races, and the ca-lamity howlers of our own who constantly gloatover our misfortunes as a people, and who tell us that

our condition is the result of an irreversible decree fromheaven, seem not to know that "there's a divinity whichshapes the end" of races and individuals alike, and thatthe law of natural selection or that of the survival ofthe fittest operate no less among the various race-mem-bers of the human family than in the various depart-ments of the mineral, vegetable and animal realms.The classic injunction "Know thyself," so current amongthe Greeks, was no less incumbent upon the individualthan upon the national or racial unit which representa larger scope of endeavor and possibilities both as re-lates to form and content as well. The raw material ofintellectual and moral endowment embodied in intelli-gent humanity represent a range of possibilities extend-


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I he I'.I.m k Man' I'.urden.

ing from savage sentiency to the exalted status oi heav-en crowned characters a little lower than the angels.That the child is father of the man is a universal tru-ism, but not more so than that the baby or interior raceol to-day may become the full-grown and superior peo-ple oi to-morrow. There is no royal road to greatnessin the Life oi any man and the same rule holds good inthe case oi all nations and race-varieties that have madeany headway from the earliest recorded time to thepresent. If every man is the architect oi his own for-tune, every race is the maker oi its own destiny. A- ageneral thing those world-favored mortal- who enterinto ready-made fortunes and who have no burden tocarry hut that of pursuing lives ot expensive pleasure,either become hopeless bankrupts in health, or posses-sions, oi - -non find themselves exhausted drones in thegreat hive of human activity. The race basking in thesplendor of its career has less to stimulate it to higherexertion than its humbler and perhaps despised neigh-bor race. who. though beginning in obscurity and en-countering adversity at every step, from the stimulus ofit- own peculiar endowments and the incentive furnishedby the enviable standard set by its boastful and dom-inant pioneer, may yet eclipse its proud record by morelustrous achievements and a more towering grandeur.1 1 is no more true that "every dog will have its day" thanthat every race has had its day or will have its day. Ifthe Red man has flourished and pioneered the world,il the Yellow Man has played his part in the drama of


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The Black Man's Burden.

nations, if the white man shakes the world beneath thetread of his masterly sway to-day, it stands to reasonthat the Black Man's inning is next in order and thathis will be a winning game should he play well andtruly Ills part. Let no race or individual of any racefeel that the golden highway of excellence or pre-emi-nence is closed against him because of birth, habitat orenvironment, or because of race, color, or previous con-dition of servitude; for

To all, the prize is open,But he alone will take it,Who says with Roman firmnessI'll find a way or make it.

The object of this lecture will be to consider theBlack Man's Burden in a few of the shapes it has taken,not that we may magnify or gloat over them, but thatunder God we may see in them ministering angels toour advancement, and stepping-stones to higher bless-ings within our reach as a people. I shall first considerthe subject in its historic setting, and note the teachingof the past with reference to the Black Man's Burden.The subject is susceptible of universal discussion, forthe Black Man has a burden wherever you find him ;but on this occasion we shall consider it in the light ofhis origin, career and destiny on the American con-tinent.

It is remarkable to note that while others sought torid themselves of the burdens which fettered them indistant lands by seeking the asylum of this newly-foundcountry, the Black Man came only to find the yoke of


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6 The Black Man's Uunlcn.

oppression and weight of bondage more firmly rivetedupon him. The Pilgrims who brought their Bibles withthem, in the hope of enjoying in New England thatreligious liberty which they did not enjoy in the MotherCountry, in their blind devotion to their own welfarefailed to recognize in the less fortunate subjects of ad-versity, the same inherent love of justice, the samefondness for freedom in any form. In the introductionof slavery in the virgin country, by the Christians whofled from the lash of civil and religious persecution inEngland, the Church was dealt a blow and given a set-hack which has made it lame for centuries, and whichwill send it limping through ages to come. .Men likeGarrison and Phillips, of anti-slavery fame, were notskeptics or atheists because they spurned connection witha church whose chief corner-stone was the dogma thatslavery was a divine institution, or who. if it did not be-lieve it was right to barter in human flesh, yet signallyfailed to lift up its voice like a trumpet' against themonstrous wrong.

With the form, character and contents of Americanslavery you are too familiar for me to dwell upon itsharrowing and barbarous details. Perhaps you shrinkfrom its ghostlike recollection with such intolerance thatyou would have its ghastly skeleton buried beyondresurrection forever. The echo of its driver's lash andbloodhound bays, the shrieks of broken-hearted mothersparted by the auctioneer's block from ties dearer thanlife and stronger than death, you would have hushed


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The Black Man's Burden.

and cast into the sea of everlasting forgetfillness. Yea,you would have these and all the infernal relics of thatcreation of the lower pit killed from the consciousnessof memory and buried, face downwardas the enthusi-astic brother prayed that the Devil would be, so thatthe more he scratched the deeper he'd get. But whyforget the fact and teachings of this dark and bloodychapter in the history of the race?Turning from that dark chapter our eyes greet with

gladness the dawn of that era of freedom described bythe muse-inspired writer when:

The African catches a gleam of lightFrom his lair of a thousand years of night;And the long lost signet shines once moreOn his swarthy brow as in days of yore,And the red blood sweeps through his knotted veins , Is. HI 0,545Vermont 1.100,371Washington 575,000Wyoming 231,115

The total amount oi church property owned by Ne-groes in the United States is $16,310,441. The totaJamount oi property owned by them is $263,000,000.


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The Black Man's Burden. 15

THE BURDEN OF ILLITERACY.However weighty or numerous the other burdens

slavery may have entailed upon the Black Man, theburden of intellectual blindness was the most grieviousof all. There was but one direction in which his man-hood was allowed to develope and assert itself, andthat was in the direction of animal vigor and robust-ness. He was schooled in a system which placed stressupon the development of the muscle to the total neglectof the mind and its possible evolution. A good work-man, a good fighter, a tower of herculean strength hewas encouraged to be, but a man of ideas, never! If hewere a giant in body, the more covetable a prize was heon the auction-block in proportion as he betrayed him-self to be only a pigmy in mind. Let him be able tofell a mule with his fist or lift an ox on his shoulderand his master would place great stress upon his excel-lence and prowess. Not so if he were known to own abook, or could master the alphabet. In either case hewas a worthless dangerous chattel and was legally de-serving of being physically dismembered or of being-sold out of harm's way to some more rigid region of en-slavement. Under such conditions, is it any wonderthat freedom's dawn should find the Black Man an in-


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16 The Black Man's Burden.

tellectual dwarf, a child as to mind, though a man inbodily organization.No wonder that he should have been caricatured as

he winked his eyes to the light oi knowledge for thefirst time. They saw him (altering the hall of Learningwith shuffling gait fresh from the haunts of ignorance.His clumsy movements they said suggested the pres-ence oi an elephant in a crockery shop. A.s he poredover the problems given in his arithmetic, his criticslaughed, ha! ha!! ha!!! They said his skull was sothick that ii would be difficult 'for a tenpenny nail todent it. much less for it to grapple with a "rule of three/'oi- conduct its subject across the labyrinthian stages of apons assinorum. They were willing to occupy commongrounds ol judgment with Ariel and Calhoun and saythat the Black Man had no soul of intellect and thatthey would believe it when he was known to extract asquare root in mathematics, or accurately pursue aMi verb in all its hide and seek movements of Creekinflection. Crossing the Rubicon ol his own inexperi-ence and scaling the Alps of* his critics' prejudice andill prophecies, the Black Man grappled manfully withthe burden of intellectual blindness and the result is by|| ( means to he laughed at. Let us note a tew tacts inconnection with the consideration before us

In less than the first five years after emancipation, theilliteracy of the race was reduced to the extent thatone-tenth of our people ten years of age and over couldread and writ.'. In 1870, or five years after emaneipa-


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The Black Man's Burden. i 7tioii, the records of the census show that only 20 percent, of us ten years and over could read and write.Ten years later, or 1880, the population had increasedto 30 per cent. In 1800, only a generation after eman-cipation, forty-three out of every one hundred coloredpersons ten years of age and over were able to read andwrite. These figures show our rapid progress in the ac-quisition of elementary education.When we remember that in the three decades since

freedom the colored race has reduced its illiteracy 35per cent., only the most sanguine hopes need be in-dulged as to the ability of the Black Man to bear hisintellectual burden in the future. Those who doubtthe ability of the race to take in the higher branches oflearning or who insist that Negro education should berestricted to the elementary or industrial channel woulddo well to remember that there are 160 institutionsof the race devoted to advanced learning; that 38,000Negro youths are in these institutions, and that 28,000Negro instructors are in charge of the mental and moraltraining of these youths.Our career and accomplishments in the republic of

letters also score greatly to our credit in the direction ofmeeting the educational demands upon us. The Negroauthor is no longer a rarity, for our bookmakers are al-most as periodical as the days, and are as good, bad orindifferent as the capacity or caprice of their writers mayelect to decree. Whether in the realm of the classics asa Scarborough, or in the world of romance and poetry as


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The Bla< k Man's Burden.

a Dunbar, the geniua of the Negro as an investigator orentertainer ranks high and measures up to the standardof universal endorsement.

Forty years ago had any one prophesied that the racewould control an institution in a state whose Governorwould stand side by side with the leading Negro oi theage, and be crowded with literary honors by that insti-tution, thai prophet would have been taken for a mad-man; and yet, such an unlikely occurrence has passedinto history, and Wilberforce not only records the ( rov-ernor oi < mio, but the President oi the United States inthe person 'ol Win. McKinley, as among its most hon-ored alumni.


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The Black Man's Burden. ig

BURDEN OF RACE PREJUDICE.It would be well for us to allow charity to begin at

home in the matter of considering the obstacles whichretard our more rapid advancement. No one willdoubt the wrong, the injustice, the inhumanities we suf-fer from others, but it were well for us to turn our eyeswithin our own ranks, and detect the presence of trait-ors who undermine and damage our stronghold morethan the multitudinous adversaries seen and unseen thatare without. There are many such internal foes, butthere is one gigantic enemy which we would do well toarrest and expel as soon as possible.

Race prejudice is the monstrous bane which ever re-tards ourelevation, but it might be well to remember thatrace prejudice of black men against black men is just asheinous, and far more fatal than race prejudice of whitemen against black men. Some of you will, doubtless,be startled when I tell you that we keep our own selvesdown by this prejudice more than others are able tokeep us down. Whether you believe it or not, the factremains, and is confirmed by illustrations and demon-strations without number. You may say that our lackof faith in each other, our habit of opposing the wel-fare of one another, or of viewing our brother's pros-perity with an envious eye, is due to our ignorance o*


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The Filai k Man's Burden.

the false teaching of centuries. I care not whether youimpute the shortcomings to slavery, to lack of race pride,(o a failure to realize its disastrous results upon ourpresent prosperity, or upon our posterity unborn, I wantto warn the race that until we rid ourselves oi this sink-ing iniquity oi race prejudice against ourselves, therecan be no permanent progress lor us in this land, nor inany othe] under the broad dome of the starry heavensanywhere. Whether this spirit is considered in themanv who seem happy in obstructing the pathway ofthose who endeavor to rise, or in the purse-proud color-phobia tendency oi the few who enjoy the smiles oifortune, the danger is none the less serious to our futurewelfare as a people.

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Henry Theodore Johnson--The Black Man's Burden (1899)

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