FOREWORD It is not my purpose to write a history of the United States nor of any period of that history. The Negro is so interwoven with the growth and development of the American Nation that a history of him as an important element, during little more than a century of which he has been a factor, becomes a task of peculiar difficulty. In the few pages that follow, mine is a much more simple and humble task-to indicate some of the more important points of the contact of the Nation and the Negro; to tell how the former in its evolution has been affected by the presence and the status of the latter; and to trace the transformation of the bondman and savage stolen from Africa to his freedom and citizenship in the United States, and to his recognition as such in the fundamental law, and by an increasing public sentiment of the country. The rise to eminence of representative men and women in both Church and State, as educators, statesmen, artists, and men of affairs, will be cited for the emulation of our youth who are so liable from the scant mention of such men and women in the histories which they study and the books they read, to conclude that only the lowest and most menial avenues of service are open to them. Well nigh ten years ago Mrs. Charles Bartlett Dykes, formerly of the Leland-Stanford, Jr., University, while an instructor in a Summer School at the Hampton N. & A. Institute, gave this result of studies made with six hundred colored pupils in certain near-by primary schools. She had asked two questions that were fully explained: (a) Do you want to be rich? If so, why? If not, why not? The answers were almost without exception, "No." The reason given was "because we cannot go to Heaven." (b) Do you want to be famous? If so, why? If not, why not? The answers were almost uniformly, "No, because it is impossible." This voiced the despair of the average colored child in the common schools right under the guns of Fortress Monroe, where the first schools for colored children in the Southland were opened nearly forty years before. A test somewhat similar, in several of the public schools in Washington produced practically the same result. The remedy suggested by Mrs. Dykes for such a condition was the preparation of "a first book in American history, in which the story of at least twelve of the really eminent men and women of African descent" would give a stimulus to tens of thousands of youth in our schools, who in their formative period learn little or nothing of their kith or kin that is meritorious or inspiring. This necessity formally set forth by Mrs. Dykes, confirmed by my own conclusions based on an experience in the schoolroom covering twenty years, leads me to attempt the publication of a book which shall give to teachers and secondary pupils especially the salient points in the history of the American Negro, the story of their most eminent men and women and a bibliography that will guide those desirous of making further study and investigation. The author has not been handicapped by dearth of material in the selection of the men and the women whose careers he has aimed to trace, his main purpose having been to consider representative types whose careers afford side-lights of the growth and development of the American Negro and who at the same time are worthy of emulation. Others, perhaps, quite as conspicuous, might be preferred by some as equally deserving of notice, yet on the whole we think it will be the verdict of competent and impartial judges that none herein named could have been excluded from consideration. Obviously only those still living could be the subjects of notice who have reached the acme of their career. The preeminence of Booker T. Washington, because of the establishment of Tuskegee and the recognized place of industrial training in the public mind, is a fact, while the art of Tanner is conceded in salons and art galleries of America and Europe. To Dr. James R. L. Diggs of Selma University, Chaplain Theophilus G. Steward of Wilberforce University, T. Thomas Fortune, L. M. Hershaw, Wm. C. Bolivar, Daniel A. Murray of the Library of Congress and A. A. Schomburg, he acknowledges indebtedness for many helpful suggestions in the development, progress and completion of this work. JOHN W. CROMWELL. |