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XXVIII

JOSEPH C. PRICE

IT is doubtful if the nineteenth century produced a superior or more popular orator of the type that enlists the sympathies, entertains and compels conviction than Joseph C. Price. In little more than a brief decade he was known in Great Britain and the United States, both on the Pacific and the Atlantic, as a peerless orator. In 1881 he first rose to eminence as a platform speaker; in 1893 his star sank below the horizon. Yet he was more than orator: he was a recognized race leader; a most potential force in politics, though not a politician; a builder of a great school-a most conspicuous object lesson of "Negro Capabilities."

His fame rests not alone upon his popularity within his own church or his own race, for the evidence is conclusive that though unmistakably identified with the Negro, Democratic whites and whole communities recognized his worth, highly esteemed him, honored him in life and mourned him in death.

Joseph C. Price was born February 10, 1854, in one of the darkest decades of the nineteenth century, at Elizabeth City, North Carolina, while the law of the land and its administration were in the complete control of the Slave Power. Webster and Clay who had largely influenced the politics of the country, had passed off the stage of action. Stephen A. Douglas and Jefferson Davis were molding the pro-slavery sentiment of the Nation.

The father of Price was a slave, and though the son followed the legal status of the mother, a free woman, yet his lot was that of the average slave child of this period. The Emancipation

Proclamation had not been issued when Price accompanied his parents to Newbern, the rendezvous of thousands of freedmen. Reverend Thomas H. Battle says: "It was in the year 1862, when I was superintendent of the Sunday school of St. Andrew's Chapel that I was led by Providence on a bright Sunday morning to the church door. There I stood for several minutes, and while standing there I saw a little black barefooted boy coming stepping along on the railroad track. When he got opposite the church door I halted him and invited him in the Sabbath school. He liked the services so well that he was constrained to come again. At last he joined the Sabbath school and became a punctual scholar. From his stern, yet pleasant looks, his nice behavior, and other virtuous elements that were maintained in him, Sunday after Sunday, he attracted my attention more than any other scholar. While other scholars would laugh at him because of his boldness of speech and his eagerness to answer the questions that were put forth.

"One Sunday in the midst of these abuses which he received, I was compelled to lay my hand upon his head and exclaim these words: 'The day will come, my dear scholars, when this boy Price will shake the whole civilized world, and some of you will be glad to get a chance to black his boots.' Little did I think my prediction would come to pass so exact, but so it did."

In 1866 he attended the St. Cyprian Episcopal School under the control of a Boston philanthropic society, as all schools in the South for colored children then were. Here he advanced so rapidly that in 1871 he became a teacher at Wilson, North Carolina. At the end of four years he entered the Shaw University at Raleigh, remaining there only a short time, during which he made an open profession of religion, joined the A. M. E. Zion Church, and entered the Lincoln University at Oxford, Pennsylvania. While at Lincoln Congressman John A. Hyman who then represented the Newbern district offered Mr. Price a $1200 clerkship in the Treasury Department at Washington. Nine hun

dred and ninety-nine out of a thousand would have accepted the position and left college, but Price refused the offer without hesitation. He entered upon his studies with assiduity. His abilities were promptly recognized. He took the first medal in an oratorical contest in his freshman year, was also first in the junior prize oration contest and graduated with the valedictory in 1879. During his senior year in college he took the studies of the junior theological department and graduated from this course in 1881. He was a delegate to the A. M. E. Zion general conference that met in Montgomery in 1880, in which, because of his rare oratorical gifts and his promise of distinguished service, he was ordained an elder before he had received his degree in theology. He was also chosen a delegate to the Ecumenical Conference of Methodism, held in London in 1881. Here he was brought in touch with the representatives of all the branches of Methodism, attracting attention to himself as one of the most popular orators and exponents of Negro Methodism. On the adjournment of the Conference he was induced to lecture throughout the British Isles on the condition of the American Negro and in the behalf of the interests of his church. By this means he raised $10,000, from the proceeds of which, with the assistance of $1,000 donated by the white merchants of Salisbury, the present site of Livingstone College was purchased.

On his return to America he was no longer Rev. Joseph C. Price, the popular orator of his denomination, but he was hailed as a new leader, verifying the prophecy of Frederick Douglass made in 1867, of "men rising up under the fostering wings of freedom and education all over the South, surpassing in eloquence and oratorical power" himself who "had been complimented as the great black man of the North.”

During the remaining twelve years of his life no other Negro enjoyed greater popularity nor seemed destined by the consent of the people to be their acknowledged leader.

In the winter of 1883 the Bethel Literary of Washington,

D. C., then at the height of its fame, arranged a symposium which included among others Frederick Douglass, Fanny Jackson Coppin, Isaiah C. Wears and Mr. Price, at that time unknown except to a few personal friends from North Carolina or former students of Lincoln University. Lincoln Hall, now the Academy of Music, at which the exercises were held was thronged. For an hour and a half the audience had been held spellbound by the eloquence of Douglass, the glowing rhetoric of Mrs. Coppin and the pungent wit and irony of Wears.

As the hour of ten approached interest flagged, and although in expectancy very many remained, it was with difficulty that they were held in their seats to hear Price, the next and last speaker. His friends had grown restive and were solicitous at the outcome of this severe test. When he arose and uttered his first sentence the effect was electrical. As he developed his subject, illustrating first by jest then by anecdote, swaying his audience to laughter and to tears at will, he completely captured as well as captivated them. No one left the hall, although it was nearly eleven o'clock when he stopped speaking. The following Sunday he preached to the Plymouth congregation and many were unable to gain admittance. On the following Tuesday night, when Dr. O. M. Atwood read the paper on "Individual Development," Mr. Price was the lion of the hour in the discussion following the reading of the paper. Frederick Douglass and Mr. Wears were among the other disputants. Thenceforth Price never failed to draw an audience in Washington.

At the Centenary of American Methodism held in Baltimore in 1884, he was a delegate and had a prominent place on the program. In the following year he was chairman of the A. M. E. and A. M. E. Z. Church commission held in the city of Washington to consider the question of union between these two denominations. In 1890 he was elected president of two national conventions within brief intervals. The first was held in Chicago and the Afro-American League was formed. The second met in

Washington and chose Bishop Alexander W. Wayman as its presiding officer, but because of factional differences between Bishop Wayman and former Lieutenant-Governor P. B. S. Pinchback of Louisiana, Mr. Price, who had not arrived when the Convention was called to order, was subsequently elected president amidst great enthusiasm.

In 1891 Mr. Price was appointed Commissioner-General of what was to be the Grand Southern Exposition to be held at Raleigh. In the discharge of this duty he traveled extensively through the South, journeying in the interior as well as in the larger cities, and learned much at first hand of the material conditions of the masses at the South.

While he delivered addresses on invitation all over the country and participated in some prohibition campaigns, he took no part in party politics. He refused the Liberian Mission, even after his name had been sent to the Senate by President Cleveland. He would not allow his name to be considered in connection with the bishopric at any of the A. M. E. Z. General Conferences, from 1884 to 1892, though he could have been elected at any time practically without opposition. His one ambition was the upbuilding of Livingstone to the growth and development of which all his energies were given.

The history of Livingstone for the first ten years of its existence forms a most interesting chapter in the career of this remarkable man. 1 At its Quarter Centennial Exercises held in 1907 all the speakers honored Joseph C. Price as the one man who had made its success possible. Beginning in the fall of 1882, with five students in one building of two stories and forty acres of land, the total cost of which was $4,600, its progress was mar

1 At its quarto-centenary it had real estate valued at a quarter of a million dollars, had enrolled during its existence 6,500 students representing twenty-six States, and a large faculty of graduates from the collegiate department, scores from the theological, 291 from the normal of whom one bishop, presiding elders, nearly two-score ministers, 75 teachers and scores of physicians and other professionals.

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