Chapter I: Part 1

A number of typographical errors (punctuation, reversal and duplication
of letters on words, etc.) in the original have been corrected.
(etext-transcriber's note.)

“_SERVICE OUR MISSION._”

(_Graduating Class Motto_)

As a hustling agent delivering his popular book, which (by making
the saddest person laugh, the jolliest person cry and the most
thoughtless person think), is selling itself like buckwheat cakes
and sausage steaming-hot some frosty morn or cool refreshing ice
cream when the sun is very warm.]

COLORED

GIRLS AND BOYS’

INSPIRING

UNITED STATES
HISTORY

AND A

HEART TO HEART TALK

ABOUT

WHITE FOLKS

BY

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, JR.

COPYRIGHT 1921

BY

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON. JR.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

TO THOSE COLORED GIRLS AND BOYS

UPON WHOSE NOBLE EFFORTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
WILL REST THE FOUNDATIONS FOR
THE FUTURE SUCCESS OF

THE NEGRO RACE:

AND

TO ALL THOSE WHITE WOMEN AND MEN

WHOSE KIND ENCOURAGEMENT OF AND JUST
DEALINGS WITH ALL HUMANITY ARE BRINGING
ABOUT BETTER UNDERSTANDING AND GREATER
CO-OPERATIONS BETWEEN

WHITE AND COLORED PEOPLE.

COMPOSED--COMPILED--WRITTEN

ARRANGED--DESIGNED

AND

ORIGINAL DRAWINGS

MADE FROM ALONG

=THE FAMOUS PICTURESQUE LEHIGH VALLEY=

OF PENNSYLVANIA, U. S. A.

BY

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, JR.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Actors 233

Agriculture 96

Architects 186

Army Officers 57

Artists 184

Athletics 203

Bankers 118

Baseball 213

Basketball 218

Bishops 73

Boley, Okla. 40

Books 154

Business 114

Business Schools 113

Business People 122

Churches 65

City Officers 45

Civil War 26

Colleges, Colored 161

Colleges, White 160

Colonial War 17

Colored Women’s Clubs 86

Composers 200

Congressmen 42

Dentists 175

Diplomats 43

Elocutionists 239

Field Sports 205

Folklore Songs 36

Football 204

Fraternal Orders 128-252-253

Golfing 231

Higher Education 159

Hospitals 174

Industrial Education 106

Insurance 125

Inventions 176

Lawyers 130

Liberty Bonds 61

Magazines 148

Marcus Garvey 95

Medicine 170

Mexican War 21

Ministers 73

Music 188

N.A.A.C.P. 245

Newspapers 135

“Negro Servants” 10

Negro Business League 89

Nurses 174

Orators 157

Pan-African Congress 92

Pianists 198

Plantation Morals 30

Poets 180

Prize Fighters 220

Reconstruction Days 38

Real Estate 121

Revolutionary War 18

Rowing 227

Rural Schools 110

Science 164

Sculptors 187

Singers 192

Slaves 10

Skating 230

Spanish American War 47

State Legislators 45

Spingarn Medalists 94

Statisticians 157

Sunday Schools 78

Swimming 228

Tennis 230

Theaters 239

Underground R. R. 22

Urban League 248

Violinists 195

War of 1812 19

White Friends 242

World War 49

Y. M. C. A. 83

Y. W. C. A. 79

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

NOT TO BOAST BUT TO BOOST

Negroes should find great pride indeed
In Race progress herein they read;
But to such readers let me tell
This book means not our heads to swell;
For five of the greatest rich white men
Could buy the wealth of our Race: and then!

So this book is neither a brag nor boast
But just to inspire our younger host
To elevate their racial name
From poisoned stains of slavery shame,
By climbing to the highest heights
Thro aid of friends who are “real whites”.

Twenty-five years ago, when a lad fifteen years old attending the public schools of Pennsylvania, in which State I was born and reared, certain ideas and sentiments caused me to secretly resolve that some day, when I had gotten together the necessary data, I would write just such a book as is contained herein. At the time that resolution was formed, I was attending the Darlington School in Middletown District, Delaware County over which Prof. A. G. C. Smith was Superintendent. And I remember with much gratefulness my first and last public school teachers, Misses Carrie V. Hamilton and Rebecca R. Crumley and Prof. Smith for their kind and frequent words to me as encouragement to continue my education after graduating from the public schools.

My favorite study was the United States History, and even at the tender age of fifteen years, I was greatly surprised and Race pridely hurt not to find any history, except about slavery, in such books concerning the American Negro. I had such childish confidence in my school books and their authors that I felt sure if Negroes had fought and died in the several American wars; had become great poets, orators, artists, sculptors, etc., the histories I was studying would have mentioned such. I thought in doing that they would have been preserving United States valuable history more so than merely giving just credit to the Colored people who had made such history. I did not know that right then the attentions of many public school children in far away Europe were often called to the histories of such distinguished Colored Americans as Phyllis Wheatley, the poetess; Frederick Douglas, the orator; Henry O. Tanner, the artist; Edmonia Lewis, the sculptoress--all of them having won recognition and fame in Europe as well as in America.

My youthful ignorance, regarding the achievements of my race, is easily explained when it is taken into consideration that I was a farmer boy living far from libraries I had never seen and Negro histories I had never heard about. And the United States histories then used in the public schools had nothing in them to enlighten me on that subject. They misled and kept me, along with thousands of other Colored school children, in absolute ignorance relative to the progress and attainments of the American Colored people. So whenever our history classes went up to recite and my white classmates proudly went through the lessons about General George Washington, Noah Webster, Benjamin Franklin, Eli Whitney, Longfellow, etc., while I knew and could just as easily recite such history, nevertheless, my feelings of crushed race pride and mortification were beyond expression because not one thing could I proudly recite from my lessons about great things my people had accomplished in America.

It is the same with the United States histories used in our public schools of today. They do not relate about Crispus Attucks, a Negro soldier and the first Colonist martyr to give his life for America in the Revolutionary War; nor about the Colored sailor, William Tillman, who received six thousand dollars from the Federal Government for recapturing a stolen schooner from the Rebels in the Civil War; nor about the Colored Registrars of the United States Treasury, B. K. Bruce, J. W. Lyons, W. T. Vernon and J. C. Napier, whose names, during different administrations covering a period of more than thirty years, appeared on all the United States paper money made and issued during that period; nor about Matthew A. Henson, who was with Commodore Peary when he (Peary) discovered the North Pole; nor about Booker T. Washington, one of the greatest orators America has ever produced and also builder of one of the most famous institutions of learning not only in America but in the world.

As I said before, I knew nothing about such Negro history while I was a farmer’s boy, but I could never quite rid myself of a feeling that the Colored people in the United States did have a worthy history. I studied the white man’s U. S. History from cover to cover and learned all I could from it, but I got no more racial inspiration from it than a white boy would get from studying only a Negro history in which nothing was written about his own racial achievements. So I secretly resolved to immediately begin to quietly and patiently research for American Negro data in order to some day publish a book so that future Colored school children would not be kept in ignorance about their own race history. I felt it was perfectly right and necessary to study the white man’s history at the school desks, but if Colored children were not permitted to study the history of their own race at the same desks, it was perfectly right and necessary that Colored children learn about the achievements of their great men and women at their home firesides within their family circles.

So for the benefit mostly of Colored youths, here are the crude results of my boyhood resolutions and manhood efforts after twenty-five years filled with trying discouragements, and bitter disappointments, but also just as full of unswerving determinations, constant hopefulness, upward climbs, ceaseless works and fervent prayers to God to succeed.

The author wishes to use this place and opportunity to express his deepest thanks to the more than one hundred prominent Colored men and women, living in as many large cities in all parts of the United States, who so friendly sent to him up-to-date information regarding the progress and success of Colored people in those cities.

For the unusual generosity and kindness in giving of their valuable time to personally and helpfully send to him exceptionally fitting and authentic Negro data, the writer most courteously acknowledges and gratefully names the following distinguished Colored and white contributors;

Mr. Cleveland G. Allen, New York City, N. Y., Associate Editor of
the New York Home News, and Lecturer on Negro Music in the Public
Schools of New York City.

Rev. G. W. Allen, D. D., Editor & Manager of Southern Christian
Recorder, Nashville, Tenn.

Attorney Violette N. Anderson, foremost woman lawyer in Chicago,
Ill., and one of the most prominent Colored women in her profession
in America.

Rev. F. P. Baker, prominent minister in Evansville, Ind.

Miss Eva D. Bowles, New York City, N. Y., Executive Secretary in
charge of Colored Work of the Young Women’s Christian Association.

Mr. Thomas F. Blue, Head of Colored Library, Louisville, Ky.

Miss Mabel S. Brady, Branch Y. W. C. A. Secretary, Kansas City, Mo.

Rev. Geo. F. Bragg, prominent minister and author of Baltimore, Md.

Mr. Chas. H. Brooks, Phila., Pa., Sec’y of Cherry Bldg. & Loan
Ass’n, and prominent in insurance business.

Captain Walter R. Brown, Assistant Commandant, Hampton Institute,
Va.

Rev. Russell S. Brown, prominent minister in Atlanta, Ga.

Mr. Walter A. Butler, San Francisco, Cal., Financier and President
of the Northern California Branch of the N. A. A. C. P.

Rev. H. W. Childs, D. D., LL. D., prominent minister in Pittsburgh,
Pa., and member of the Executive Board of New England Baptist
Convention.

Dr. J. B. Claytor, prominent physician in Roanoke, Va.

Mr. M. L. Collins, Editor of Shreveport Sun, Shreveport, La.

Prof. J. W. Cromwell, Historian, and instructor of higher education
in Washington, D.C.

Mr. A. G. Dill, New York City, Editor of The Brownies’ Book and
Business Manager of The Crisis Magazine.

Prof. Carl Diton, Phila., Pa., noted composer, organist and pianist.

Mr. James E. Gayle, New Orleans, La., Editor of The Vindicator, and
Manager of the Pythian two hundred thousand dollar Temple in that
city.

F. Grant Gilmore, Author, Playwright and Producer, Philadelphia, Pa.

Bishop Robert E. Jones, Editor of Southwestern Christian Advocate,
New Orleans, La., first and only Negro elected Presiding Bishop
over the Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas Diocese of the
Methodist Episcopal Church.

Mr. Joseph L. Jones, Founder & President of the Central Regalia
Co., Cincinnati, Ohio.

Rev. D. J. Jenkins, D. D., Editor of Charleston Messenger, Founder
and President of The Orphan Aid Society, Charleston, S. C.

Hon. Jas. Weldon Johnson, New York City, N. Y., United States
ex-Consul to several foreign countries, Associate Editor of The New
York Age, Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People.

Mr. Tony Langston, Chicago, Ill., Advertising Manager of Chicago
Defender and eight theaters, President of Langston’s Slide and
Advertising Company.

Mr. Matt. N. Lewis, Editor of The Star, Newport News, Va.

Principal Isaac H. Miller, A. B., Cookman Institute, Jacksonville,
Fla.

Mr. J. E. Mitchell, Editor of The Argus, St. Louis, Mo.

Dr. J. E. Mooreland, New York City, N. Y., International Secretary
and Head of the Colored Department of the Young Men’s Christian
Association.

Mr. Daniel Murray, Assistant Librarian, Congressional Library,
Washington, D.C.

Dr. Harvey Murray, M. D., prominent physician, Wilmington, Del.

Mrs. Mary F. Parker, Chester, Pa., Undertaker and Embalmer, and
Fraternal worker.

The late Mr. Chris Perry, who until his death was Editor of
The Philadelphia Tribune and President of National Negro Press
Association.

Attorney T. Gillis Nutter, Charleston, W. Va., Representative in
the West Virginia Legislature.

Mr. Geo. W. Perry, Boley, Oka., Editor of Boley Progress and
prosperous farmer.

Mr. Jos. L. Ray, Bethlehem, Pa., Confidential Man of Mr. Charles M.
Schwab.

Mr. John H. Rives, Dayton, Ohio, Editor of The Dayton Forum.

Hon. F. M. Roberts, Sacramento, Cal., Assemblyman in the California
State Legislature.

Mr. C. K. Robinson, Editor of Independent Clarion, St. Louis, Mo.

Mr. R. H. Rutherford, President & Treasurer of The National Benefit
Life Insurance Co., Washington, D.C.

Miss Myrtilla J. Sherman, In Charge of Negro Record Department, The
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hampton, Va.

Mr. John A. Simms, Jacksonville, Fla., Editor of The Florida
Sentinel.

Attorney Harry C. Smith, Cleveland, Ohio, Editor of Cleveland
Gazette, ex-Member of the Ohio State Legislature where he
introduced as Bills and had enacted as Laws, The Ohio Anti-Lynching
Law and The Ohio Civil Rights Law.

Mr. C. C. Spaulding, Durham, N. C., Vice-President & Gen’l Manager
of The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company.

Mrs. Maggie L. Walker, Richmond, Va., R. W. G. Secretary &
Treasurer of the I. O. of St. Luke, and President of the St. Luke
Bank.

Miss H. Georgiana Whyte, Chicago, Ill., Editor of the Women’s
Department, The Favorite Magazine.

Mr. J. Finley Wilson, Washington, D.C., Editor of The Washington
Eagle, and President of The National Negro Press Association.

Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Washington, D.C., Editor of The Journal of
Negro History, and Director of Research for The Association For The
Study of Negro Life and History, Incorporated.

Mr. P. B. Young, Norfolk, Va., Capitalist and Editor of The Journal
and Guide.

But the full credit, due for most of the Negro data references contained in this book, the author takes great pleasure in justly acknowledging and gratefully extending, through the Negro Year Book, to its Editor, Prof. Monroe N. Work, Director, Department of Records and Research, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Ala., whose personal consent was obtained by the writer to take extracts from the Negro Year Book.

_William Henry Harrison, Jr._

FIRST AFRICANS VISIT VIRGINIA

INVITED GUESTS DETAINED

White settlers came invitedless
And made this land their home so real;
So Negroes to, have right to feel
This is their home without appeal;
For they were brought invited guests
And told that they must always stay;
So this is why they are here today
Most loyal citizens every way.
--_Harrison._

Over three hundred years ago (1619) Africans were first brought as “Negro Servants” (Ref. Prof. Monroe N. Work’s Negro Year Book; page 153, 1918-1919 edition) to the early colonies of the United States by the captain of a Dutch ship who sold twenty Negroes to white plantation owners at Jamestown, Virginia. As the results of those and many other native Africans being later captured and forcibly brought to America, real slavery was finally started and spread so rapidly that there were about four million slaves in the United States by January 1, 1863. At that time all the slaves in the Rebel states were set free by the Emancipation Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, who was later murdered for that Godly act by one of his own race. But today Abraham Lincoln is remembered in all civilized countries as one of the greatest among the greatest men the world has ever known; as the noblest president who has ever governed the United States and as the truest and most fair-minded white friend the Negro race has ever had. On December 18, 1865 the adoption of the 13th Amendment to The Constitution of the United States gave freedom to the remaining slaves who lived in the states that had not rebelled against the Union. Thus in these two legal ways, that were made possible by the Northern States winning the Civil War, were all the slaves in the United States of America set free.

When the few broad-minded white people in the early colonies stopped to realize that the first African people who arrived were not used to America’s new foods, unusual hard work, cold changeable climates and were without a knowledge of the white man’s language, habits and religion; it is no great wonder why that small portion of justice thinking white people so readily saw unusual good qualities and latent talents in a group of supposed brainless heathens who so quickly, peacefully and profitably stepped from the narrow paths of African savagery into the broad avenues of American civilization. But the large numbers of narrow-minded people, who then (as now) tried so hard to make themselves and others believe that Negroes were inferior human beings to themselves, put forth the explanation that the remarkable and rapid adjustments of the slaves to American surroundings were due to their childlike dispositions to imitate actions, to humbly obey orders and their great physical strength to do all kinds of hard work at all times under all conditions. Such people were entirely wrong in such ideas, just as all ill-meaning prejudiced ideas keep their owners wrong, mean and in the lowest stages of human society. When men and women allow their minds to become poisoned with hateful, envious and jealous prejudice toward other people and refuse to have anything to do with them because they are Colored, they have and show just about as much greatness in good taste and good common-sense as if they were to refuse to puff on their favorite brand of Havana cigars or to nibble on one of Mr. Huyler’s famed chocolate bon-bons just because the cigar and bon-bon are of rich brown colors. Such narrow-minded actions do not make people great except in their own home-town little social circles. And when they leave home and go out into the world to mingle among well-cultured, highly educated and broad-minded people, prejudiced men and women soon find that their supposed greatness along side of, for instance, an Abraham Lincoln or a Harriet Beecher Stowe[A] is as large as a grain of sand is along side of a mountain. If President Lincoln had not preserved the Union and signed the Emancipation Proclamation, or if Mrs. Stowe had not written Uncle Tom’s Cabin,[A] but instead, both had turned up their noses in disdain, tossed their heads in haughty proudness and snobbishly spurned well-behaved, well-dressed and intelligent people just because of their colors; the names of Lincoln and Stowe (in stead of now being enshrined in the Hall Of Fame and written in the world’s history ever to be remembered and beloved by all nations) would have been buried and forgotten a few years after their owners had died as is the case with the names of all race prejudiced people. But this point regarding the utter foolishness and ignorance of people showing race prejudice was much more ably and vividly brought out in one of Mr. McKay’s bull’s-eye-shot and soul-stirring pictures that appear in the Sunday issues of the New York American--one among several such big white journals from which the writer derives new inspiration and increased knowledge every Sunday. This picture and editorial in question, that described the “Namaqua” savage tribe of Negroes living in the African jungles, were printed in the March 6, 1921 issue of the New York American, and the following is an extract from that article titled “Shooting At The Storm.”

“The savages of Africa had first of all to fight and conquer the burning sun, hence the black skin that keeps off the deadly “actinic rays” that would quickly destroy any white race in their climate, and the thick woolly hair, saturated with grease, protecting the skull from the heat and the deadly effect of those same rays.

“As we think of different kinds of human beings, let us judge them by the conditions under which they live, whether they be Eskimos near the North Pole or men like these Namaquas at the Equator.

“Self-satisfied ignorance is horrified at the Eskimo eating enormous quantities of rank, fat whale blubber. Any race transferred to the Arctic Circle would do that or die. Ignorance despises the black skin and woolly hair of the African. Any white race transferred to the African tropics would develop such skin and hair, or it would die.

“UNDERSTAND what you are discussing, as far as possible, before discussing it. An eagle cannot understand a turtle, or a turtle an eagle. And a cow, mildly grazing, cannot understand either. Every human being that despises another, no matter what the other may be, simply represents the animal expression of prejudice based on ignorance.”

Now the real truth, as to how those strange and friendless slaves were able to so readily adapt themselves to this country and so aptly adopt the methods and customs of the colonists, is that from mere force of habits they put into their everyday lives their inherited qualities of open-friendliness, big-heartedness, broad-mindedness, trustworthiness, constant-loyalty, quick-alertness, unbounded-patience, everready-forgivefulness and undying hopefulness. These qualities (in which all civilized countries of today stand badly in need of a much broader growth and a higher culture) had been handed down to the American slaves by their African forefathers who had for centuries dwelt in the darkest and wildest torrid jungles without a knowledge of the white man’s civilization. And those black ancestors had passed to their suffering offsprings such full portions of the above named manhood and brotherhood principles that the slaves were able, as they pitifully and tearfully went back and forth to their body-torturing and spirit-crushing tasks, to shame, by their unspiteful and unrevengeful actions under such cruel treatments, just a little measure of their inherited virtues into the so-called civilized, educated and Christian white people who held them in bondage. It must be granted that their owners did teach the slaves (whose foreparents had lived in a very hot country where little clothing was needed and food was plentiful without working for it) how to properly dress and how to regularly work. And although those enslaved people were taught those good habits only as means for their selfish and greedy owners to enable themselves to get richer, nevertheless, the Colored people of to-day are glad and thankful that they are now able to turn to their own personal and racial advantages the industrial habits learned by their people in slavery. On the other hand, Colored people will always be sorry and unthankful to those brute overseers and raping slave owners who so sinfully and beastfully forced upon and taught numerous and most harmful immoral vices to their slaves. And those soul-damning and life-sapping vices are still clinging to and leaving their marks on the rapidly advancing Colored people, just as the poison ivy clings to and mars the health and beauty of the young and tender acorn sprouts as they struggle upward to become future majestic oaks in the densely foliaged forests.

However, all of the white people in America at that time did not approve of or own slaves (just as all of the white people in the United States today do not approve of nor take part in discriminating against respectable Colored people) because they knew it was not right. They had the kind of Christianity that was real and pure enough to make their minds fully understand and their hearts to tenderly feel that slavery in its kindest manner is the worse sin against God and the greatest crime against humanity. And it was this class of God-serving and fellowman-loving white men and women who secretly and in great danger of being caught and punished (for the laws of the country forbid the educating of slaves) taught the otherwise friendless people in bondage their first knowledge of God and Jesus Christ. When it is remembered that those African people were just a few years out of a land where the practices of their tribes for centuries had been to worship in a different religion; it is easily seen that the slaves were an unusual reasoning, sensible and broad-minded group of uncivilized people to have so quickly found the mistake in and so suddenly thrown aside their old and false religion and so readily accepted in its place the new and true Faith.

Answered Prayers

During the two hundred and forty-four years of their bitter servitude those shackled people had learned to place so much faith and trust in their newly found religion that they felt sure God in his own wisdom, time and manner would hear and answer their usually silent and always heart-rending prayers for deliverance from slavery.

So as Southern heats washed briny sweat into their sun-dazed eyes, or Northern colds checked frozen blood from flowing through their veins; the hopeful prayers of the slaves, that they and their children might some day become free, were constantly offered up from the tobacco plantations of Virginia; from the cotton belts of Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi; from the corn fields of Tennessee and Texas; from the rice swamps of South Carolina; from the orange groves of Florida; from the stone quarries of Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania; from the truck farms of Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey; from the turpentine forests of North Carolina; from the blue grass meadows of Kentucky; from the fishing banks of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island and from the cane-brakes of Louisiana.

Likewise, the Colored people of today, as they patiently and gradually draw themselves up and away from the slum and slime of slavery, are constantly sending up to Heaven from the east, the west, the north and the south points of this country their hopeful and earnest prayers that God in His mysterious way will convert and bring back to Christianity those prejudiced, heathenish and uncivilized members of the Caucasian race who persecute and discriminate against all darker races just on account of their progress. As living witnesses and proofs that such prayers are already being duly heard and daily answered by God, the author will tell on the following pages of this book (mainly for the inspiration of Colored boys and girls so that they will not lose confidence in themselves, trust in mankind and faith in God) just a little of the remarkable progress and success made by the American Colored people during their fifty-eight years of freedom.

But the Negro youths who read these following pages should ever bear in mind that the members of their race who have climbed and mounted these rounds of success have only been able to do so through the guidance and care of God; through the unswerving determinations and ceaseless struggles on the part of themselves and through the hearty good-will and brotherhood helpfulness of the thousands of American white people who are today true and loyal friends of the American Colored people.

THE COLORED RACE IN THE WARS OF THE U. S.

In the Colonial, French and Indian Wars

(1704-1759)

Even farther back than 1704 Colored freemen and slaves showed their braveness and fighting abilities by taking active parts in helping the white plantation owners to protect and preserve their homes from the justly aggrieved Indians. Around the above date and the period between the years 1708 and 1718 a series of Colonial and Indian wars took place. These conflicts stretched from little but dignified Rhode Island (Queen Anne’s War) through the Tuscarora Indian War down to the Yamassee Indian War that for a time threatened to wipe away the rice and indago colony of South Carolina. Included among these military operations were the French and Indian Wars in which many Negroes gave good accounts of themselves, foremost among them being Sam Jenkins and Israel Titus who showed unusual braveness under the commands of General Washington and Braddock.

IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

(1775-1783)

Crispus Attucks

His statue stands in Boston park
To tell the sacred battle mark
Where first his life met death’s decree
So freedom to these States could be.
--_Harrison_

Although such records cannot be found on the pages of the United States histories used in the American public schools, a trip to cultured Boston will enable one to read on the monuments in public squares and in the public libraries the name and facts about the glorious deeds of that pioneer Negro patriot, Crispus Attucks who fell as the first American martyr in the Boston Massacre of 1770. It is also in the Puritan records of New England where one may learn about Peter Salem, the Colored soldier who avenged the death of the first seven American martyrs at Lexington and Concord by slaying Major Pitcairn, the British officer who in company with his men charged against the Colonists at Bunker Hill. Among the hundreds of other men of color who took parts in those fierce skirmishes were Salem Poor, reported at the Commander’s office for extraordinary bravery at Bunker Hill, and “Black Prince” cited for unexcelled gallantry at Newport. It is understood that among those who received pensions at the close of the war were Cato Howe, A. Ames and T. Coburn.

Few know that it was a Colored man, Jordan Freeman, who timely and mortally received on his ready spear point the British officer, Major Montgomery as he daringly leaped, followed by his soldiers, over the walls of Griswold, an American fort. Later on in that same battle of 1781 the Colonists were over powered and compelled to surrender, whereupon the American leader, Ledyard, courteously handed his sword to the British officer in command. That unfair Englishman upon receiving the sword immediately thrust it up to the hilt through the body of Ledyard. A Colored soldier, Lambo Latham, who was standing near and saw the dastardly act, made one mighty pantherlike leap and loyally avenged the death of his American commander by plunging his bayonet clear through the body of that ungallant Britisher. For that act of fidelity and patriotism, Lambo Latham received over thirty bayonet stabs from the enemy before he stopped fighting and gave his last breath for America and its white people who at that moment were denying their Colored slaves the same sweet freedom for which they were fighting to get from England.

Not only did “John Bull’s” subjects have to face human lions in the forms of fighting Colored men, but they also had to feel the pains and fear the death dealing blows of human tigeresses in the forms of Colored women fighters. And all Americans who are truely proud of their country and its real history should read and remember about one Molly Pitcher, who after her husband had been killed in the battle of Monmouth, bravely took his place at a cannon and nervely upheld America’s cause during the remainder of that fierce and bloody conflict. Then there was the undaunted and resourceful Deborah Gannet, who by assuming the name of “Bob Shurtliff” entered the American army and went through more than one year of actual battlefield fighting and camp life exposure. And during her entire service she successfully kept her moral purity by cleverly hiding from the officials and the soldiers the knowledge of her sex. This in other words read her war record on a pension certificate granted to her after her honorable discharge from the army. And there were doubtless many other unrecognized but noble Negro women who entered numerous conflicts and gave their last drop of blood and lives in order that the white colonists might enjoy the freedom that their Colored brothers and sisters then saw no signs of ever receiving.

In the War of 1812

(1812)

There are few people who know that one of the main causes of The War of 1812 was on account of the British forcibly taking and compelling three Americans (two Negroes and one Caucasian) to sail under the English flag. It was in that same war that a Colored soldier, Jefferys, on seeing a body of American troops retreating under heavy fires from the enemy, dashed to their front, rallied them together, led their steps back and repelled the British soldiers who were about to break through a very important but weak point in General Jackson’s defense at Mobile. That general not only noted that leadership rally but gave full credit and praise where it was due. He also expressed gratefulness to the soldier of color whose ideas first suggested the successful use of bales of cotton for breastworks in fortifications. In the battles around New Orleans he looked with soldierly pride upon the splendid fighting of his black troops.

When American school children learn from their United States histories that clean-cut and famous naval battle report, “We have met the enemy and they are ours” ..., such histories do not also inform their readers that the personal pronouns “we” and “ours” so prominent in Commodore Perry’s above message includes the heroic deeds of Colored sailors as well as white. So when in reciting these stirring words their iron-charged bloods suddenly gallop through their veins; their chests expand wide with national pride; their heads jerk erect with proud fighting spirits and their eyes sparkle bright with slumbering fires, such patriotic emotions have been unknowingly and involuntarily aroused in true American youths because of the loss of Colored blood and lives as well as of white in those lake battles. And among those weather-beaten bronze “salts” were Jack Johnson (not our present ex-champion heavyweight prize fighter of the world) and John Davis who were both especially mentioned for distinguished service on the schooner, “George Thompson.” That world known message of 1812 also included many other Negro sailors who pitted their bravery and brawn against the British “tars” in order to help Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to break the backbone of the War of 1812 by opening up a clear passage on the Great Lakes. It was through that same newly made water path that General William Henry Harrison (the hero of Tippicanoe, Log Cabin and Hard Cider) and his seasoned famed Indian fighters were conveyed in order to enter Canada where they completely defeated the artful Proctor and slew the cunning Tecumseh in that savagely fought battle of The Thames. Thus Colored fighters helped to end the foxy and wolfish Proctor-Tecumseh partnership that had annoyed and tormented for so long the American settlers on the Northern frontiers.

In the Mexican War

(1845-1847)

If it were possible for General Santa Anna to bodily slip back to earth, personally mingle amid and chat with those of his soldier friends who are still living; it is more than likely that among the many things talked over they would seriously mention the fact of having caught many hasty glances of dark fighting faces under command of the American Generals Taylor and Scott who kept the Mexicans on a constant hop-step-and-a-jump around Vera Cruz, Buena Vista and other places in that section.

On account of Negroes at that period being greatly removed from the United States Army and State Militias, because of racial questions, it is not likely that many Colored fighters had a chance to get busy in that one and a half year backyard quarrel and fight. There was published in a Western paper a few years ago an account of a Mexican War Colored veteran known as Captain Jackson who died in Chicago, Ill., in 1894. And in order to have received that military title, officially or unofficially he surely must have used some brain power as well as much brawn force in helping to establish America’s boundary line on the Southern frontier.

THROUGH THE “UNDERGROUND RAILROAD”

EVERY LOCAL WAS A SPECIAL

No thundering trains on iron laid tracks:
No steel made cars with cushioned backs:
No tickets punched by uniformed crews:
Yet a railroad it was: I’ll soon show you.

Fleet-footed horses on soft dirt roads
Stole by in nights with slavery loads
To stations anew further on the way
Where all were hid throughout the day.

Engineers, Conductors and Agents most
Were of Quaker stock--that Godly host,
Who through their silent night-dark roads
Transported blacks from slavery goads.
--_Harrison._

Many years before the Civil War there was organized among the Northern white and Christian people, mostly Quakers, a secret society to help runaway slaves to escape from the South into the free states and Canada. This society, on account of its hidden, winding and rapid ways of carrying its fleeing and hunted passengers into places of freedom and safety, was known as the “Underground Railroad”.

“As early as 1786, there are evidences of an underground road. A letter of George Washington, written in that year, speaks of a slave escaping from Virginia to Philadelphia, and being there aided by a society of Quakers formed for the purpose of assisting in liberating slaves. It was not, however, until after the War of 1812, that escaped slaves began to find their way by the underground roads in considerable numbers to Canada.”

“From Maine to Kansas, all the northern States were dotted with the underground stations and covered with a network of the underground roads. It is estimated that between 1830 and 1860 over 9,000 slaves were aided to escape by way of Philadelphia. During this same period in Ohio, 40,000 fugitives are said to have escaped by way of the underground railroad.”

Reference (Work’s Negro Year Book; page 167, 1918-1919 edition).

Without doubt, among the greatest workers in that society and truest white friends to the freedom seeking slaves were; Calvin Fairbanks who was arrested and kept for over fifteen years in Southern jails where he was daily whipped until blood flowed from his back, just because he helped human beings to get their freedom; Thomas Garrett who was jailed and had to sell all his personal property and real estate to pay the fines imposed upon him by the Southerners for doing the works of Jesus Christ by aiding the weak and comforting the suffering. And when penniless Thomas Garrett got out of jail he continued to help runaway slaves to find their freedom; Samuel May whose Christianity helped thousands of Colored people to enjoy the freedom due all human beings instead of suffering yokes and chains belonging to dumb beasts of burden; and Levi Coffin, who was recognized as the central electrical force that so powerfully and silently drove on, and the chief consulting engineer who so watchfully kept in motion the ever welloiled and frictionless machinery of the underground railroad systems.

* * * * *

The following names are those of some of the leading free Colored people who in every way possible were foremost in helping to liberate from slavery their less fortunate race brothers and sisters in the South:

“Brown, William Wells.--Anti-slavery agitator. Agent of the
underground railroad. Born a slave in St. Louis, Mo., 1816.”

“Douglass, Frederick.--Noted American anti-slavery agitator and
journalist. Born a slave at Tuckahoe, near Easton, Maryland,
February.., 1817. Died February 2, 1895.”

“Whipper, William.--Successful business man, anti-slavery agitator,
editor of The National Reformer.”

“Forten, James.--Negro abolitionist. Born in Philadelphia,
September 6, 1776; died March 4, 1842. Forten was a sail-maker by
trade.”

“Harper, Mrs. Frances E. Watkins.--Distinguished anti-slavery
lecturer, writer and poet. Born of free parents, 1825, Baltimore,
Maryland; died February 22, 1911.”

“Hayden, Lewis.--Born 1815, died 1889. Runaway slave from Kentucky
to Boston, Abolitionist.”

“Ray, Charles B.--Anti-slavery Agitator. Agent Underground
Railroad. Born Falmouth, Mass., December 25, 1807; died New York
City, August 15, 1886. Congregational minister and editor of the
Colored American from 1839 to 1842.”

“Nell, William C.--Anti-slavery agitator and author of Boston. In
1840 was a leader in the agitation for public schools to be thrown
open to Negro children.”

“Lane, Lunsford.--Born a slave at Raleigh, N. C. He is placed in
Prof. Bassett’s “History of the Anti-Slavery Leaders of North
Carolina” among the four prominent abolitionists of that State.”

“Purvis, Robert.--Anti-slavery agitator; chairman of the
Philadelphia Vigilance Committee of the Underground Railroad, and
member of the first Anti-slavery Convention in 1833.”

“Redmond, Charles Lenox.--Born at Salem, Massachusetts, 1810, died
1873. First Negro to take lecture platform as an anti-slavery
speaker.”

“Russwurm, John Brown.--Born in Jamaica, 1799; died in Liberia,
1851. Editor of the first Negro newspaper published in the United
States, the “Freedmen’s Journal,” published in New York City, 1827.”

“Tubman, Harriet.--Fugitive slave and one of the most famous of the
underground railroad operators, died March 10, 1913.”

“Truth, Sojourner.--A noted anti-slavery speaker, born about 1775,
in Africa. Brought when a child, to America, she was sold as a
slave in the State of New York.”

“Still, William.--Secretary of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee
of the Underground Railroad. Born October 7, 1821, in Burlington
County, New Jersey.”

“Walker, David.--First Negro to attack slavery through the press.
Born free at Wilmington, North Carolina, 1785.”

“Gibbs, Miffin Wistar.--Lawyer and anti-slavery agitator; born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April, 1823. He died in Little Rock,
Ark., July 11, 1915.”

“Knights of Liberty.--In 1846 Moses Dickson and eleven other free
Negroes organized at St. Louis, The Knights of Liberty for the
purpose of overthrowing slavery. Ten years was to be spent working
slowly and secretly making their preparations and extending the
society.”

Reference: (Work’s Negro Year Book; pages 168-69-70-71, 1918-1919
edition)

To the Colored boys and girls who desire to learn more about such mysterious underground railroad trains, that with their nervy and plucky passengers holding on with all their might, were constantly diving into and running under rivers as well as climbing upon and rolling down mountain sides without ever being wrecked or seldom losing a passenger, the writer begs to offer the following suggestion:

Any evening when such boys and girls suddenly get a burning thirst to visit the “movies” and drink in the red-blooded and heroic screen capers of a Wm. S. Hart, a Pearl White or a Douglass Fairbanks; let those boys and girls go to the nearest library instead, secure a copy of William Still’s “Underground Railroad Records”, and return home with it. In its stories they will find just as hair-raising adventures and exciting escapes as are to be found in any of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes detective cases; between its leaves they will find the same kind of serious wit and humor that smile up from a Walt Mason newspaper article; from cover to cover they will find the same kind of heart-rending and flesh-suffering word pictures that Longfellow and other authors have so vividly painted in telling of the expulsions and wanderings of the doomed Arcadians; but, last and most important of all they will find every one of its pages to contain as true and valuable American history as ever appeared in the writings of a Bancroft, a Fiske, a Higginson, a Prescott or a Ridpath.

IN THE CIVIL WAR

(1861-1865)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

On American pages of history space,
The world gives Lincoln the highest place,
For the triple service his life did give
So all men in freedom here could live.

When he signed his immortal name that day,
It meant that together the States must stay;
It lead the slaves to their freedom goals;
It washed one sin from the Rebels’ souls.
--_Harrison_

If Colored men and women in the previous wars could become such wonderful fighters and loyal Americans with no knowledge and little hope of ever receiving freedom from their unnumbered slave sufferings and sacrifices; then, how much braver and more patriotic would they be when fighting with a new hope and full knowledge that their future freedom depended upon the success of the side on which they were fighting? It is needless to say that out of the more than one hundred forty thousand Colored people who took active parts in the Civil War, there were countless numbers of gallant and self-sacrificing deeds performed by them that were only seen and noted by God. And those acts of valor and heroism that were witnessed and recorded here on earth by mankind are so numerous that space herein will not allow but the mention of a very few.

* * * * *

Captain Andre Cailloux was one of the bravest soldiers to fall in the Union charge on Fort Hudson. It is said that his Company charged that fort six times looking point-blank into the red-flaming, fire-spitting, bullet-biting and smoke-breathing mouths of the enemy’s cannons, with a heavy loss among his men in each charge. Feeling sure he was going to his certain death, yet never flynching, a Colored soldier, Anselmas Plancianocis, who was a color sergeant, uttered the following words to his commander before departing to his post of duty within gun range and full view to the enemy; “Colonel, I will bring back these colors in honor, or report to God the reason why.” He never brought back the colors. At another time during the noted battle at Fort Wagner, it was William Carney who upon seeing the colors about to trail on the ground as they slipped from the relaxing grasp of a dying comrade, quickly leaped to his side grabbed the flag staff and planted it on the breastworks. When he in turn was severely wounded and carried to the rear, he had just strength and breath enough to whisper, “Boys, the Old flag never touched the ground.” Both artists and poets have often come forth to paint and sing of the fierce fighting and brave stand made by that famous 54th Massachusetts Colored Regiment and its fearless and beloved white commander, Col. Robert Gould Shaw. He fell in the thickest of the battle surrounded by hundreds of his wounded and dying Colored troops whom he had watched over as a loving father and always led as a fighting officer. Although Col. Shaw and his men were greatly outnumbered by the enemy who repulsed their attack at Fort Wagner, the Colored soldiers, who had marched continually a day and a night without stopping and then pitched right into fighting without rest or food, proved to both the North and South that they were among the bravest of brave soldiers.

Civil War veterans now living, and when meeting each other usually become so excited when tongue fighting their battles over again that they forget for the time being all about their rheumatics and, throw away their canes as they hop about trying to imitate their former military actions in battles. Those who were there take delight in telling how Gen. Fitzhugh Lee and his prancing Old Dominion well trained white soldiers met their “Waterloo” in Fort Powhatan at the hands of the belittled and untrained slave troops. It was at Fort Harrison in Virginia that the Southerners on seeing Negro troops charging on the fort, taunted them with, “Come on darkies, we want your muskets.” Eye witnesses say that the so-called “darkies” being so used to obeying orders really did take the guns to the fort, but several hours afterwards when the smoke had cleared away it was seen that those Rebels who had remained to accept the muskets had received the bayonet ends through their bodies instead of the trigger ends into their hands. Gen. B. F. Butler’s records show that his ten regiments of ex-slave soldiers brought victory and fame all along their fighting lines.

Aside from the chief motive to help free themselves, without doubt one of the main things that spurred the Negro men to fight so valiantly was their constant memory of Fort Pillow. At that fort were stationed 292 Northern white soldiers and 262 Colored troops, all under the command of Major L. F. Booth. On the twelfth of April 1864 that place was surrounded by a much larger Confederate force under Generals Chalmers and Forest and ordered to surrender. Upon the fort refusing to do so, the Rebels closed in with their usual battle cry, “No Quarter”. And then as they broke in the fort and overpowered the handful of Union men, there began a scene of unmentioned butchering and slaughtering of Northern white soldiers and Colored ex-slave men, women and children that far surpassed in horribleness the massacre of Custer and his faithful little band by the Sioux chief, Sitting Bull and his merciless Indian warriors. So after that whenever Colored men entered battles their answer to the Rebel’s “No Quarter” was a challenge “Remember Fort Pillow,” and times too numerous to mention did Negro soldiers fully avenge that awful massacre of their comrades on that April day in Fort Pillow.

By reading the battlefield records of Gen. Thomas at Miliken’s Bend; Gen. Morgan at Nashville; Gen. Blount at Henry Springs; Gen. Smith at Petersburg; Generals S. C. Armstrong, B. F. Butler and O. O. Howard at other vital places, as well as the fighting records made in Virginia at Wilson Wharf, Deep Bottom, Fair Oaks, Hatchers Run and Farmville; full proofs can be found regarding the Colored soldiers’ supreme brave fights made for a twofold purpose--the saving of the Union and the freedom of themselves.

In summing up this part of this very important topic, the writer can think of no better way of strengthening the truth of foregoing assertions relative to Negro battlefield valour and loyalty in the Civil War than by quoting the following: “When the battle test came these regiments justified the hopes entertained by their sanguine friends.” This just and high tribute was paid to Colored Civil War fighters by Comrade John McElroy, a white editor of Washington, D.C., in the editorial correspondence of his National Tribune published April 7, 1921. He had written about General Rufus Saxton of Massachusetts taking military command of St. Helena Island, S. C. and forming the thousands of idle Negro men into regiments during the early stages of the Civil War.

On the Sea

In the month of June, 1861, the Union schooner, “S. J. Waring” was captured by the Confederate privateer, “Jeff Davis”. All the crew of the schooner, with the exception of a Colored man, William Tillman and two white men, were taken from the ship and replaced by Rebel sailors. At an opportune moment Tillman killed the Rebel captain and mate, drove all the other Rebels at the point of a gun below deck and took full charge of the ship. After ploughing through a terrific storm, during which time the Rebel sailors were brought up and forced to help man the wave-tossed ship, the Colored sailor safely guided the recaptured “S. J. Waring” into the harbor of New York. For that nervy and patriotic act he received from the Federal Government prize money amounting to six thousand dollars.

It was through the cool-headedness, gamesness and shrewd planning of Robert Small, a man of color, that the Confederate gunboat, “The Planter” was stolen out of Charleston Harbor, running the gauntlet of the Rebel’s watchful forts and barking cannons and safely delivered into the hands of a Northern squadron. In payment for this naval strategy Robert Small was made captain of the gunboat he captured and during his service continued to show marked fearlessness as a fighting sailor and unusual executive ability as a commanding officer.

When the Civil War was finally ended by General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army compelling General Robert E. Lee of the Rebel Army to surrender at Appomattox Court House, Va., on April 9, 1865, the Colored soldiers and sailors laid aside their warfare weapons with proud and thankful feelings that they had been given such great chances to help fight for and secure their own freedom.

ON THE PLANTATIONS

BROAD-MINDEDNESS

From African jungles to American shores,
Negroes were brought to do all the chores;
Though bought and sold without due blame,
They now forgive this country’s shame.
--_Harrison_.

The slaves who went into the battles of the Civil War came up to all the standards of loyalty and bravery that had been set for them as fighting soldiers. But it was left to the millions of Colored men who staid on the plantations during the war to come up to and go far beyond the standards of moral self-control and human just treatment set by their owners. The Colored men who were in the war were really enjoying a temporary freedom while they were fighting for a permanent freedom. But it was quite different with the shackled men who staid on the plantations during the war. They were then slaves not only one way but in three ways. First, they were still slaves to their owners as they were yet under their control; secondly, they were slaves to themselves inasmuch as they were their own bosses and overseers to plant, cultivate and reap the crops in the absence of the white men; thirdly and most important of all, they were slaves to the trust and honor under which they had been left with the care and protection of the white women and children on the plantations. And no records in history have been found to show where those thousands of white wives, daughters, mothers and sisters made complaints to their returned husbands, sons, fathers and brothers about having forced upon them insulting and raping attentions from those millions of slave men under whose whole care those white women had been freely left and safely kept during the Civil War.