Chapter I: L. Purcell, Attorney and Counselor at Law, Pensacola, Fla (3)

The descendants of the Aztecs, Toltecs and other tribes whose ancestors were ruthlessly slaughtered by Cortez and his Spanish soldiers, and oppressed by his successors, had small title to what is known as civilization. Of these little can be said except that the present descendants present the vestiges of degeneracy, and have no marks of being a pure race of any sort. They are just the same as they were when first discovered, barring vices which they have acquired from the civilized races without receiving any benefit from their virtues.

These people present no example worth being followed, but as to the descendants of the real savage American Indian, the Sioux, Algonquins, and other large and savage warrior tribes encountered by the American pioneer and frontiersmen, they show the power of civilization and their adaptability to changed environment.

Among them were many noble men, men of high aspirations and aims, who as soon as they understood civilization, broke away from the trammels of savagery and became civilized. That is, they adopted the manners and customs of the civilized races, and became unified with them.

RESULTS OF EDUCATION

Among them, education has produced a large number of men of high grade, and influence. Most of them have turned to agriculture, but being a race that is still in embryo, so to speak, that is one of the present era, the time has not yet arrived when it can be predicted of them that they are equal to coming up to the highest rank in civilized life.

They are an open, living illustration of the power of education and modern civilization. The lesson to be learned from them is, that what a race so sunk in savagery and barbarism can do, is much more within the reach of the Colored Americans who have a great and noble ancestry back to which they may look with admiration and feel an incentive to continue to advance—it is in them.

THE JAPANESE AS AN ILLUSTRATION

We come to the Japanese as an illustration of unification of the races, because they have put themselves before the world as entitled to consideration as much as any other race. Inasmuch as they are rapidly becoming a world power, and have the warships and guns to back up their pretensions, the nations of the earth feel justified in considering their claims.

Whence they come nobody knows, not even their own learned men. They originated somewhere in the past, but not ancient past, or they would have been heard of, but may be a cross among the Turanian tribes. They are small men and dark, which lends truth to this theory.

With their origin we have nothing to do, because their rise and progress is something men now living have witnessed and stand amazed at its suddenness and at the height to which these small men have attained.

They are a brilliant example of what education and civilization backed by intense persistence and energy will accomplish in taking advantage of opportunity.

They were given an opportunity to enter the ranks of civilization, but they refused the offer. Then, trade and commerce urged and then forced it upon them, and seeing that they had to progress, they took hold of opportunities, and now, never let the smallest opportunity pass by them. When an opportunity does not present itself they go to meet it or make one to suit themselves. They are giving the world a bad scare by their persistence and clamors for equality with every other nation and peoples, due, perhaps, to their newness as a nation and the probability that they may relapse into barbarism should they get the upperhand with restraint removed.

The Story of a Rising Race Told in Pictures

_PHOTOGRAPHED FROM LIFE_

│RELIGIOUS
Special Collection B │PHILANTHROPIC
│EDUCATIONAL
│FRATERNAL

IN THE SERVICE OF GOD

A meeting of the officers of the various churches of all
denominations.
]

UNITY IN RELIGION

Bishops and Officers of all the Negro Churches in America, all
denominations. Conference at Mobile, Alabama.
]

SEEKERS AFTER TRUTH

Graduating Class of the Bible Training School, Theological Department,
Tuskegee Institute.
]

CHRISTIAN UNITY, FELLOWSHIP AND EDUCATION

Inter-Scholastic Young Men’s Christian Association Meeting, held at
King’s Mountain, N. C., May, 1913.
]

SONGS OF PRAISE

Vested Choir attending devotional services. Howard University,
Washington, D. C.
]

REFINING AND CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE

The Reading Room in the Y. M. C. A., Washington, D. C. The young men
are studious and deeply interested in their educational and
Christian work.
]

COLORED SISTERS OF THE HOLY FAMILY

The Holy Family Convent at New Orleans has eight Catholic Schools in
Louisiana and two in Texas. The students are taught Industrial Art,
Embroidery, Music, etc., and become very efficient.
]

BRINGING THE BOYS TOGETHER FOR SELF-IMPROVEMENT

Social Settlement Workers teaching boys innocent games and interesting
them in developing their characters in order to make them useful
citizens.
]

FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE RACE

The Fourth Annual Conference of The National Association for the
advancement of Colored People, at Chicago. In the group are, Jane
Addams, Dr. DuBois, Bishop Lee, Dr. C. E. Bentley, and many other
well known men and women.
]

WORLD-WIDE EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENT

International Conference on better education held at Tuskegee July,
1912.
]

THE WORKERS OF A PRINTING AND PUBLISHING HOUSE

The A. M. E. Sunday School Publishing House, Nashville, Tennessee. An
association which spreads “Christian Teaching” broadcast and opens
an avenue for the employment of intelligent men and women of the
race.
]

MYSTIC SHRINERS

A group of the Mystic Shrine, or Scottish Rite Officers, which
includes many prominent in the Order.
]

KNIGHT TEMPLARS

The International Conference, Pittsburg, Pa. Malta Commandery No. 19,
Knight Templars, welcomed by the Young Men’s Christian Association.
]

ODD FELLOWS ANNUAL BANQUET

In attendance are such national characters as Booker T. Washington,
Ex-Register J. C. Napier, Former Register J. D. Lyons, Ex-Recorder
of Deeds Lincoln Johnson, the Local Grand Master, and others equally
well known.
]

THE RISING GENERATION

A group of intellectual students comprising the Senior Class, 1913,
Tuskegee Institute.
]

Every man who has not had a very good or saintly past, is regarded with suspicion when he joins the ranks of the good and pious. It is not credited that such a man can become good all at once, and the belief spreads that his reform is a mere makeshift, a delusion, and an opportunity for gain.

The Japanese have not been tested by any of the conditions that have made the civilized races what they are as to reliability after centuries of experience, and the only thing to be observed is, that they were found first as a barbaric tribe, or semibarbaric, with the most hideous manners and customs, and a religion that was mere idol worship.

If the first American admiral who forced western civilization upon them through trade and commerce could see them now at the bargain counter of opportunities, he would be amazed.

Their arts and sciences are marvels of beauty; their home life when they are not fighting is amid a bower of roses, and they can imitate anything as to mechanical workmanship from a toy dog to a complicated man-of-war. They make everything the civilized men make, and sell them for a pittance. They know what they want and they get it or declare war.

Never did such a race of men exist since history began, and it has sprung up into prominence within about half a century, without being deep or profound, and having a character that is so dubious that one never knows whether he is your friend or enemy.

While studying this race of small men, one is almost tempted to urge every man behind in this world’s favors, to do as the Japanese. It is indeed an incentive to wake up and go ahead.

THE CHINESE

The Chinese are as near the pure Turanian stock as it is possible for a race with their environments to be.

The samples that come to the United States for employment are coolies, mongrels of the race, just as we have natural born mongrels from intermixtures with degeneracy.

But the real Chinaman, the Manchurian, and his similars among the pure Turanian strain, are magnificent men physically, without the slant eye, and highly educated in the Chinese fashion.

Like the other grand divisions of the human race, they lived along for ages in peace and comfort, until the outside barbarian in the form of the little Japanese came along and shattered his dreams of content. As Alaric and his Huns battered down the gates of Rome; as the Romans put an end to the Jewish nation; as the combined attacks of the gold hungered kings of Europe and Asia subdued and obliterated the vast Ethiopian empire, so little Japan routed the big Chinese empire.

But this accomplished something that emphasizes the idea of a universal unification of the nations of the world. Japan forced open China and its people saw the opportunity, and took it. After studying the methods of civilization, particularly those in vogue in this great republic, its students returned to their native land, and aroused the half a billion people from the slumbers and behold! A vast republic. The Chinese are in line with modern education, with the arts of civilization. Like the Japanese, they have begun to wear American clothing. Withal, they have abandoned their old pagan practices, killed their dragon, and are rapidly coming in under the remorseless movement toward the unification of the world.

ETHIOPIA, THE GREAT BLACK EMPIRE
THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE AND ALSO RECENT DISCOVERIES IN AFRICA PROVE
THE ANCIENT AND POWERFUL CIVILIZATION OF THE COLORED RACE 3,000 YEARS B.
C.—THE STORY OF CANDACE, THE BEAUTIFUL BLACK QUEEN OF ETHIOPIA, AND THE
MARRIAGE OF MOSES TO AN ETHIOPIAN WOMAN 1490 B. C.—HOW PIANKHI, THE
BLACK KING, CONQUERED EGYPT 750 B. C., AND HOW EGYPT TOOK HER
CIVILIZATION FROM ETHIOPIA.

We read about Napoleon, Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catherine of Russia, Marie Antoinette of France, and other kings and queens, many of whom led mysteriously cloudy lives and came to a bad ending, but few have ever heard of Queen Candace, Queen of Ethiopia.

You are referred to the Bible (Acts 8:27) as a beginning of the information to follow.

Few among the learned in this present age, and less of the unlearned, know anything about the origin of the colored race in the United States. They are completely in the dark as to their ancestry, as a powerful and highly civilized race of people.

The fact is, that while the Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Scandinavians, Germans, and so on, wore skin coats, devoured their food raw, lived in caverns, and were busily engaged in cutting one another’s throats over dry bones, the ancestors of our Colored people in these United States were enjoying the highest arts of civilization, lived in palaces, and erected magnificent specimens of the most wonderful architecture in the world, and behaved generally like civilized people.

Recent and authentic discoveries in Africa have brought to light, through monuments and other evidences, that the Hamitic race played a very important part in the first stages of the world’s history. There are modern records, which, together with the great number of monuments of great antiquity, demonstrate without the shadow of a doubt that the African civilization of the Hamitic race, was older than the most ancient history recorded of the Egyptians, going back centuries before the birth of Moses.

THE BLACK NATIONS A POWERFUL CIVILIZATION

It appears now that Egypt took its civilization from Ethiopia, the black empire south of it.

The old theories have been smashed into atoms, and it now appears that the black nations of certain regions of the continent of Africa were not races in their infancy, but the descendants of a powerful civilization gradually broken by misfortunes and disastrous wars against it.

The Egyptians have always contended that their forefathers learned their arts and largely received their laws from the black empire farther south. Throughout the pages of Homer, the Ethiopians are spoken of with great respect, as the friends of the gods, the “blameless Ethiopians” being a common phrase.

The great Greek historian, Herodotus, who has been charged with drawing upon his imagination in his accounts of Africa, is now demonstrated to have been truthful. His extraordinary stories about the ancient empire of Ethiopians, south of Egypt, are being verified from the recently unearthed monuments, as having been erected by the very people of whom the historian wrote, to celebrate their victories and honor their gods.

Although the most ancient inscriptions on the monuments along the upper Nile have not yet been deciphered, the story of the Land of the Blacks is well known as far back as eight hundred years before Christ.

THE BLACK KINGS

As showing a common civilization, in fact, perhaps a common origin, the doings of the Black Kings were chronicled after the same fashion as those of the Egyptian kings.

The writing of the people of the Great Black Empire, is like that of the Egyptians, and the gods they worshiped were closely related to the gods of Egypt.

Inscriptions on these monuments that have been deciphered, tell us that Piankhi, the black king, conquered Egypt 750 B. C., and that he worshiped without question in Egyptian temples, and the carvings in the excavated ruins, which show men and women unmistakably Negro, give evidence of the similarity of religion.

We have always supposed, as told by the scientists, that civilization went up the Nile, whereas, it is now proven that it came down the Nile, that is, from Ethiopia to Egypt, instead of the other way.

When Cambyses, king of Persia, conquered Egypt six hundred years before the Christian era, he ventured to arrange an expedition against the black empire to the south, stories of the greatness of which he had been told. He sent to the Black King gifts of gold, palm wine and incense, and asked to be informed whether or not it was true that on a certain spot called the “Table of the Sun,” the magistrates, every night, put provisions of cooked meats so that every one who was hungry might come in the morning and help himself.

The history proceeds to tell us, that the black king, Nastasenen, received the envoys of Cambyses peacefully but without enthusiasm. He showed them the “Table of the Sun” mentioned by Cambyses, and took them to the prisons where the prisoners wore fetters of gold, so that the Persians might be properly impressed.

Cambyses was very much impressed by the fact that gold was so common that it was used in making the shackles of prisoners, and he made war upon the black empire to get that gold, but miserably failed.

THE BEAUTIFUL BLACK QUEEN

We now come to the Queen Candace mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. The account there given is as follows (Chapter 8):

“26th verse. And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, arise and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert.

“27th verse. And he arose and went: and behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship.”

This is all that relates to Queen Candace, but it transpires from subsequent verses of the same chapter, that the treasurer of Queen Candace was baptized and went on his way rejoicing.

One queen Candace of Ethiopia, was a famous black queen, tales of whose prowess spread as far as Greece. It appears from the monuments, that the kingdom was ruled by successive queens each bearing the name of Candace, which may account for the different descriptions of her, some showing her as very beautiful, and some allowing her but one eye with the disposition of a termagant.

These kings and queens, whose records have been deciphered, are of comparatively recent years—not more than 2,500 or 3,000 years old. It is expected that the results of the excavations of the older ruins will be more interesting.

ETHIOPIANS FIRST LIVING MEN

To revert to Herodotus. This ancient historian was a great traveler, the first, perhaps, to visit the region of the blacks and their empire.

He says, somewhere in his history: “The Ethiopians were the first men who ever lived.”

There is more astounding evidence of the civilization of the black men to be found in recent excavations.

Lying north of Egypt and a little southeast of Greece, in the Mediterranean Sea, is the famous Island of Crete, or Candia, embracing 3,326 square miles, and at the present time it has a population of about 300,000 people all told.

This island was anciently regarded as the spot where Jove himself was cradled, and it became the center or reservoir of the highest forms of ancient civilization. All the ancient Greek and Roman gods had their origin or birthplace on this island, and under the famed King Minos, nothing disgraceful or monstrous was permitted to find a resting place. It has always been a mysteriously unknown island, and the great aim of delvers into antiquities.

Within the last ten years, there has been dug out in this island of Crete, the remains of a civilization two thousand years more ancient than any hitherto known in Europe.

THEATRES, PALACES AND TEMPLES

There are actual buildings, theatres, palaces, and temples that existed in 3,000 B. C., and were mere guess work in Homer’s time. What has been unearthed shows that there was communication between Crete and Egypt 2,000 years before Christ. One of the frescoes found shows some religious ceremonial in the Egyptian style. Some of the priestesses are black, others white, and the connection between African and Cretan civilization as to dates will soon be settled.

Enough appears to show that there were two great civilizations at a very early time, that in the Nile country begun and maintained by black men, and the other in Crete. The Cretans seem to have been a dark race, rather small, with regular, almost Greek profiles and full lips.

Nothing has been found in this newly discovered cradle of the human race to indicate that civilization came to them or to Africa from Asia, whence it has always been thought all knowledge originated.

Everything so far unearthed in Crete and in the Soudan, favors the theory that all around the Mediterranean there arose in the stone age a common race of men, who in the course of centuries developed differing physical characteristics, and they peopled Europe and Africa where the first civilizations arose in Crete and the Soudan.

There is tremendous food for thought in these discoveries. It may transpire after all is discovered the Colored American descended from the African, the Hamitic, or the Negro—call him anything, it will not harm his ancestry—is in fact descended from a superior race of people.

While the colored race do not care for any admixture of their blood with the Aryan, the latter need have no fear that it will ever be forced upon him.

MOSES MARRIED A COLORED WOMAN

What would Moses, the great lawgiver, say to you? Listen to the good book in Numbers 12:1. “And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.”

For this reviling, the Lord made Miriam leprous, and punished her, and Aaron acknowledged that he had sinned.

While on this subject, it may be interesting to specify some of the doings of the Ethiopians in ancient history. First, Moses married an Ethiopian woman in B. C. 1490, quite a number of years before any legislature had an opportunity to prevent it.

The Ethiopians must have flourished after the last mentioned date, because we read in II Kings 9, that Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, had come out to fight the Assyrians—quite a distance from Ethiopia—and the frightened Assyrian king besought the aid of Hezekiah, king of Judah. This happened in B. C. 710.

Again, in B. C. 957, we learn from II Chronicles 14:9, that Zerah, the Ethiopian, came out against Asa, king of Judah, with a million men and three hundred chariots. The scripture reads, “an host of a thousand thousand.”

GREAT ANCESTRY OF COLORED RACE

Let the Colored American live up to the records of the past history of his race and prove himself worthy of his great ancestry.

It was said in another place in this article that there appear to have been two great civilizations at a very early period of time. One flourished in the Nile country, maintained by black men, and the other in Crete.

It is an astonishing fact, for it is fast developing into a historical fact, that a common race of men arose, and that in the course of centuries, they developed differing physical characteristics, due to climatic necessities, either black, brown or swarthy, and that they peopled Europe and Africa, the first civilizations arising in Crete and the Soudan, which is the very heart of the continent of Africa, extending from the Equator to 25 degrees north latitude, and from 20 degrees west longitude to 50 degrees east longitude. A territory comprising 1,650 by 4,650 miles extent, and including the “Phut” territory, it is nearly as large again.

All this vast territory constituted the Empire of Ethiopia. An empire that was able more than 600 years before the Christian era to send a million of fully equipped soldiers against a Jewish king.

A very slight circumstance has been the beginning of explorations that will undoubtedly alter all of our text-books upon the subject of the origin of the human race.

A German explorer recently unearthed, in a remote region in the Soudan, a bronze head of fine and exquisite workmanship. This has been taken as another evidence of an ancient African civilization—indeed, a black men’s civilization, and has operated as an incentive for other explorations.

THE BIBLE AS A PROOF

We read in the Bible (I Kings 10), a whole chapter concerning the visit of the Queen of Sheba, who visited Solomon, coming to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bore spices, and very much gold and precious stones. And that when she departed she presented Solomon with a hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great store, and precious stones. “There came no more such abundance.”

The same account of this great queen is given in 2nd Chronicles, and in Matthew 12:42 she is styled “The Queen of the South.”

A queen from the South who could present Solomon with about a million dollars of our money in gold and precious stones, was certainly a rich and powerful queen.

The Queen of Sheba had many successors, however, and they were all warlike, leading their armies either to victory or successfully defending the Ethiopian empire against attack. Ahasuerus, the most powerful Persian monarch, who ruled over 146 provinces, attempted to extend his dominion over into Ethiopia but could not succeed.

Some years ago, ruins of ancient dwellings were discovered in Upper Rhodesia, which were declared by Dr. MacIver of Oxford to be those of an ancient African civilization.

BLACK MEN DISCOVER ART OF WORKING METALS

Within the past ten years, excavations in the Upper Soudan, verify the claim that the black man was the first to discover the art of working metals, and that they gave this knowledge to Europe and Asia. Dr. Schweinfurth, the famous German ethnologist, and the University of Berlin, have adopted this theory.

Lady Lugard, the authoress, gathered from old Arab books, many details of this high civilization among the black men of the Upper Nile, their customs and government until quite recent times.

We know as a historical fact, that the Nubians conquered Egypt, and set the pace for a good government among the Egyptians, suppressing many of their cruel practices.

The end of these discoveries is far from having been reached. Indeed, they are just beginning to attract attention. Enough has been unearthed, however, to establish the ancestry of the Colored race of America, greater and higher than that of any of the mixed races.

The Genius of Colored Americans in Literature; The Arts and Sciences
Inherited From the Ancient Ethiopians
Read, Study, and Educate up to Opportunities—A High Racial Type Appears
in Modern Times—A Cause for Pride and an Incentive to Action, Energy and
Efficiency.

Men of learning, wisdom, and honest, without prejudice, take the standard of a race of men from his primitive type.

That type is sought for in the most excellent productions of the race, their achievements and their position among civilized nations that were the founders of our present civilization.

He who grovels in the worst human elements of any race, knows nothing about that race, and opens the door to the degeneracy of all the nations and races on earth, by advocating them as the evidences of degeneracy.

Since the world began there have been good and bad elements among the peoples that inhabited it, but the good elements alone have survived, the bad or the evil has gone down into ruin. Nations that sought to waylay and throttle progress for their own selfish ends, and immoral purposes have been forced out into the world’s Gehenna, and in the garbage heap there are still rummaging many of the split races of the earth, and many individuals bury themselves in its reek refusing to emerge into the clear sunlight.

It is, as it always has been, the great, the high hope and aim of men of intellect, and higher aspirations than the luxuries of life which kill the soul, to lift the evil in mankind out of the category of civilization, and develop mind and intellect as the only adjunct toward universal unity and peace.

To cure all the evil which afflict men of every race and people, is an impossibility so long as the earth exists for the use and benefit of mankind. Force has been tried, but even the death penalty does not stay crime and disorder. The Crucified One gave up his life and took upon himself all the sins of men, and pointed out the way for them to follow if they would be saved. But even this Majestic, this Divine Sacrifice has not stayed the evils afflicting man when left to his own devices, to his own ill-regulated freedom. We know the way, indeed, and whoso refuses to follow it, must be classed with the evils we suffer. Every man must lift himself out of the slough.

There is food for thought in the past, which hinges much upon the present and the future, and if it is taken in the proper spirit, it can not fail to develop the mind, the soul, and put men on the high road toward the accomplishment of the designs of God.

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA AND SOLOMON

It was related in another article, that the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon, but we shall give a further account of this great queen because it will lead to the reason why Ethiopia reached a high state of development.

Open the Bible at 1st Kings, 10, verses 6 to 10 and read:

“6. And she said to the king, it was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and thy wisdom.

“7. Howbeit I believed not the words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and, behold, the half has not been told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard.

“8. Happy are the men, happy are these thy servants, which stand continually before thee, and that hear thy wisdom.

“9. Blessed be the Lord thy God, which delighted in thee, to set thee on the throne of Israel: because the Lord loved Israel forever, therefore made he the king, to do judgment and justice.”

Here was an Ethiopian Queen who was clearly desirous of benefiting her great empire and uplifting her people, traveling in pursuit of the best way to do it, just as our modern men are now doing.

This, it should be remembered, occurred more than a thousand years before the birth of Christ, or to bring the years down to date, it was two thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight years ago—nearly thirty centuries.

THE ETHIOPIANS CONQUERED EGYPT

To diverge a few lines: Napoleon Bonaparte was a deep student, and when attempting the conquest of Egypt, he pointed his soldiers to the great Pyramids saying: “Soldiers of France, forty centuries are looking down upon you,” he uttered a truth of history, and established an Ethiopian empire a thousand years before Solomon. The reason is this: The Ethiopians conquered Egypt, or erected it into a province, and built the great Pyramids that still exist.

But to return to the Queen of Sheba.

She found a knowledge of God in her visit and carried it back to her people, because we find His worship beginning to make its appearance upon the monuments and inscriptions.

Now a singular circumstance is presented by the claim of Ethiopian kings and princes after the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon.

It was claimed by the princes of Axoum, in Ethiopia, which was evangelized by the Empress Helena, consort of the Roman Emperor Constantine, in the year 324 of the Christian era, that the Queen of Sheba bore a son to King Solomon, and that he was the founder of a dynasty, the annals of the kingdom giving a long list of the kings descended from him, and relating that they governed for centuries without interruption. Pieces of their money still in existence and the inscriptions on recently unearthed monuments furnishing evidence of this fact.

In a history of Alexander the Great, translated from the Ethiopian, it is related of another Queen of Sheba, who, in the year 332 before the Christian era, resisted that mighty conqueror with so much vigor, that he capitulated to her charms, as she was a most beautiful woman, and left her kingdom in peace. She laughingly reproached him for his weakness, so the story goes: “You, the mighty conqueror who have never been defeated by man, have been captured and defeated by a woman.”

BLACK QUEENS WHEN CHRIST WAS BORN

The reign of the Sheban dynasty was followed by that of the queens of Candace, who were ruling Ethiopia at the date of the birth of Christ, indeed, one of them is mentioned in the New Testament, Matthew 12:42, and her story is related in another chapter of this book.

Among the many evidences of high civilization in Ethiopia, are its literary productions. There are several hundred books in the various public libraries of Europe which show a remarkable condition of development.

In the way of history, there are the annals of ancient chronology by Georges Ibn-al Amid, which follows the genealogy of David from Adam, and a list of the kings of Israel and Judea, together with the principal events of their reigns. To this is added a chronology of the reigns of the Roman Emperors, and the Consuls.

In the chronological book, there is an entire chapter giving the history of the kings of Ethiopia, from Ibn-al Hakim, son of Solomon by the Queen of Sheba, down to recent times.

There are also volumes of poems of great beauty and perfect meter, stories of wars, genealogical lists, biographies, commentaries, moral maxims, philosophy, anecdotes, astrologies, homilies, hymns, etc. All of these are contemporaneous.

In proof of this remarkable condition, reference is made to the “Catalogue des manuscripts Ethiopiens (Gheez et Amharique) de la Bibliotheque nationale de France, a Paris,” a copy of which may be found in any of our great public libraries.

ETHIOPIAN WOMEN HELD IN HIGH ESTEEM

In refinement, the Ethiopians held women in a superior position in the social scale, which says Dr. Reich, the historian, “Shows a higher point of delicacy and refinement than either their Eastern or Western successors. Colossal in art, profound in philosophy and religion, and in possession of the knowledge of the arts and sciences, =the Ethiopian race exhibits the astounding phenomenon of an elevated civilization at a period when the other nations of the world were almost unknown=.”

Referring to this question of psychology in civilization exhibited by the Ethiopians, the same Dr. Reich, in his “History of Civilization,” says:

“People, as a rule cherish the idea that nations are like individuals, and that accordingly nations have their childhood, their youth, and their old age, and their death just as we are used to see in individuals. This entire idea is utterly false. There is no such parallel development. =A nation is a mental thing only.=”

Dr. Scholes, in his “Glimpses of the Ages,” citing Heeren’s “Manual of Ancient History,” relative to the Ethiopians, says:

“It may be gathered from the monuments and records that Upper Egypt (Ethiopia) was the first seat of civilization, which originating in the South, spread by the settlement of colonies toward the North (Egypt).

“These migrations are proved by the representations, both in sculpture and painting found in the yet remaining monuments throughout Egypt.” “Glimpses of Ages,” p. 191. Heeren, p. 57.

There were tribes among the Ethiopians which were of a low grade of civilization, just as in the most civilized countries of the present times, there are peoples of a very low grade, not only in civilization but in intelligence. But, there existed a highly cultured and civilized Ethiopian people, who dwelt in cities, erected temples and other edifices, and who had good government and humane laws. Moreover, their fame and progress in knowledge and their social arts spread in the earliest ages over a considerable part of the earth.

Upon the authority of Heeren, already referred to, and upon their own investigations, Dr. Glidden and Dr. Morton, who are quoted in Scholes’ “Glimpses of the Ages,” made an examination of the Egyptian skulls, and gave it as their opinion that the Egyptians and the Ethiopians never came from Asia, but were indigenous or aboriginal inhabitants of the African Nile country, and were all of the “Negroid type.”

ANCIENT EGYPTIANS WERE NEGROES

Featherstone in his “Social History of the Races of Mankind,” goes still further, and confidently asserts that the ancient Egyptians were of the Negro race.

“This,” he adds, substantially, “is borne out on all the Egyptian paintings, sculptures, and mummies; the hair found, as well as that possessed by their descendants, the Copts, is the curly, or woolly variety, and the lips and nose the same.

“The fact that the ancient Egyptians were Negroes three thousand six hundred years before the Christian era is substantiated, and that their population in Egypt at that period amounted to seven millions.”

Admitting all these things to be true, it may be asked: “Well, what of it? What good will that do the Colored Americans?”

It has to do with Colored Americans as much as an ancient highly civilized ancestry has to do with the modern Jews. They know that their race is not extinct; that they are an integral part of the great movement of all mankind toward a unification of mind and intelligence. This fact burned into their minds must operate as an incentive of the greatest propelling force to urge them onward toward the high destiny that awaits all mankind.

That they are working out the plans of the Almighty by so doing, puts them in the vanguard of civilization, with opportunities at hand to avail themselves of all the advantages attached to such a high purpose. There is something to work for—something worth working for, and when the Colored American takes this high view of his destiny, it will be too small a thing to notice, even should he be denied the privilege of sitting beside a white man.

THE JEW AND THE COLORED MAN

A curious racial transformation is going on in the United States outside the two divisions of man, the Jew and the Colored man, which means much more to the ethnologist and lover of mankind than is apparent on the surface. The various nations, such as the English, French, German, Irish, Scotch, Spaniard, etc., are rapidly losing their identity of race or descent, and becoming American with new facial traits, as well as mental attributes. All these nations or tribes, will lose their identity and be merged into another and different stock distinctly American, perhaps revert to the parent Aryan stock. Thus we shall witness, the four primitive divisions of mankind, the Aryan, rehabilitated; the Jew or Semitic, with renewed wisdom; the Ethiopian, or Hamitic, still a distinct race, and the Turanian, or Chinese, working together to accomplish a unity of nations, one in thought and high purpose. Everything is apparently working in that direction, and there is no single nation, or union of nations of diverse civilization that will be able to stay the movement.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE RACE IN THE UNITED STATES
The Result of a Great Civilized Ancestry—Some of our Colored Americans,
Their Doings and Their Personality

The Colored Americans, as one of the great divisions of the human family, with as proud an ancestry and as high a civilization as the Jews, and co-eval with them in the point of cultured antiquity, are proving themselves as progressive and, with the additions of modern culture, civilization and progress, are building their race up to a high point of excellence.

They have bridged the ages, so to speak, and are showing themselves penetrated with the spirit of a civilizing evangelization, which began in the Far East, nearly four thousand years ago.

They are carrying down to date, without losing by an intermission, the great aims and purposes of the Ethiopian Candace and Sheba dynasties, under which were introduced the arts and sciences, sculpture and painting into Egypt and Europe, refinement, literature, and wise government.

They are demonstrating every day, that they are moving with the great divisions of the human race, toward that high goal of unity that is the evident purpose of God in creating man.

Under an enlightened political system, the few aggravations in the local laws of which will soon disappear beneath the mighty onward tread of the peoples of the earth, our Colored Americans are beginning to realize their destiny, and are seizing the opportunities that present themselves for their benefit, as for the benefit of a common destiny of all men.

They are beginning to understand, and they are acting upon the understanding that education is the chief factor in the solution and proper attainment of their destiny.

This “education” has always been the essential element in the rise and progress of every nation on the earth, the educated have forced their way upward toward the light, and become factors in the world’s progress toward enlightenment. Those who have ignored education have fallen and lie buried beneath the sands of the deserts of Europe and Asia, without descendants or successors, and known only to the excavator of ruins. Their very races have disappeared without a trace.

THE CASE OF THE JAPANESE

The marvelous rise of the Japanese is due to the seizure of the opportunity of education, and appropriating every detail that goes to make power and physical influence.

Not much more than three generations ago, the Japanese empire was a mere name, an isolated country of semi-barbarians, a mere tribe without power, influence or standing as a national unit. It is now clamoring at the door of every civilized nation for recognition as a world power, and threatens to enforce its demands with an army and navy that is too formidable to be ignored or slighted.

It has reached the acme of the physical and lays claim to that alone as its right to recognition. It has not yet learned that in the great movement of the peoples of the earth toward unification, the physical must go down before the psychological, and therefore, if the Japanese persist in their physical prowess, they will disappear as have other greater nations claiming the same force as the summit of earthly influence. They are mere fragments of a tribe detached from the Turanian division of the human family.

History repeats itself always in the cases of the great divisions of the human family, where some branch attempted to usurp the power, functions and authority of the whole.

The Assyrians, the Persians, the mighty mistress of the world, the Roman Empire, vanished like a breath when they presumed to stand in the way of the designs of the Almighty.

All were pawns upon the chessboard of time, so to speak, the very foundation of which is soul, that attempted to wrest the fiat from its meaning by the adoption of brute or national force.

They served the purpose of carrying man toward a certain goal on the way to his final pinnacle, then claimed the results of the uplift, and went down through vanity and presumption.

Japan with its physical impress persisted in, will go down like the rest. It must go down because it does not represent any factor in the Divine designs. But it is an illustration of what education will accomplish, and its fate will illustrate what human nature, obsessed by its own reliance upon force, will reach in the end.

Our Colored Americans have no such incentive as force or physical designs. The conquerors of the earth were compelled to yield to the educational programme to uplift the soul of man, not his material prospects, except so far as they advanced the psychological, and they may be said to be now in that psychological phase of the movement of the nations of the earth, which leads to the highest point of intensive civilization.

A GREAT DIVISION OF THE HUMAN FAMILY

It should be constantly borne in mind, that the Ethiopians and their descendants, the Colored Americans in the United States, represent a great division of the human family, which, with the others, are alone to be considered in the great design of unification.

The Roman Empire represented no such portion of the human family. Assyria, Persia, Egypt, and the dominating historical peoples were all mixed, and when their uses had culminated, that is, when there was no more use for them, or when they ventured to assume superiority over the rest of the earth, they were submerged.

Of the mighty races that constituted the primitive divisions of man, there are now remaining, with each bearing a sharp line of distinction between them, the Aryan, Semitic, Turanian, and Ethiopian. Into these four divisions all the nations and peoples of the earth may be resolved.

It may be said that the Aryan consists of the white race; the Ethiopian, or Hamitic of the dark race; the Semitic, the Jews, and the Turanian, the yellow race, of which the Japanese are a mere branch of a subdivision.

Each of these great divisions of the human family has its own part to play in the great drama of the world’s progress, and the elimination of brute force or the physical as a negative element in progress, has brought these grand divisions face to face with the problem of psychology, mind or soul. It is immaterial what it is called, it cannot be disregarded.

The conditions or environments that have hedged in these great divisions have appeared to be similar in the world’s history. The Jews had their mighty empire. The Aryan developed into enormous power, but broke into fragments. The Ethiopian possessed the initial civilization of the world, and the Turanian, evidenced by the Chinese, have still a high position in the world.

Let us give a few details and then proceed to the progress of our Colored Americans toward the fulfillment of the great design:

The Jews lost their physical empire to become a psychological force. The Aryan became split into numerous branches which are now existing and moving steadily forward toward the psychological. The Turanians that controlled the Orient for ages by their physical prowess, have become a great republic based upon the power of mind. The great Ethiopian empire after leaving its impress upon the civilization of the world, was transformed into the psychological progress of the other members of the human family.

It will be perceived that all of them are drifting toward the same point, and that each of them is employing all the advantages and devices of modern life to continue on the march toward that point, at which all men shall be of one mind, one soul.

OPPORTUNITY AND ADVANTAGES OF COLORED AMERICANS

The Colored Americans in the United States, with their advantages are accepting the inevitable in the form of opportunities presented them, and are as irresistibly impelled toward the ultimate goal of unified mankind as the others.

Let us consider our Colored Americans at close range and see what they are doing in the way of seizing opportunities, and building themselves up to the accepted modern standards.

ECONOMIC PROGRESS

The one essential of modern life which the Colored American has not attained to perfection, is the proposition of economy. Not saving, but business qualifications. But he is an apt pupil and is rapidly acquiring experience.

The reports of 1912 give the value of property owned by the Colored people in the United States as =six hundred millions of dollars=. And upon this they pay taxes.

A year ago, The National Negro Business League held its eleventh annual session at Little Rock, Arkansas, with every State represented by delegates.

The wide range of Negro business activities discussed at that annual meeting, shows a vast stride toward improved commercial conditions, and an adaptability to the opportunities presented. Some of these activities were: Raising and shipping fruits and poultry; pickles and preserve manufactories; horticulture: grain, hay, and fuel; cotton raising; dealers in fresh and salt fish; farming and stock raising; town building; real estate; railroad building; coal and iron business; general and special merchandising; banking, and a multitude of other businesses. Sixty-two banks are operated by Colored Americans, and there is a National Negro Bankers’ Association, with W. R. Pettiford its President, the latter gentleman being President of the Alabama Penny Savings Bank, the second oldest Negro bank in the country. The Bankers’ Association has in process of formation, a large central Negro bank to act for Negro banks in the same capacity as the great banks of the East act as clearing houses for the other banks of the country.

It transpired in this connection, that the various Negro secret societies had on hand a large amount of money for the purposes of members’ funds and for widows. The Knights of Pythias alone, holding in all, cash and property $1,500,000.

INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS

When it comes to mental success and adaptability, the advance of Colored Americans is phenomenal, and shows as high an order of intelligence as any nationality in the world. Remember they are just regaining a lost heritage of renown.

The schools, colleges and universities number among their brightest and most brilliant pupils numerous Colored American youths, who are an honor to the cause of education and to their race. They have won scholarship prizes at Cornell University, at Amherst College, Simmons College, Columbia University, Wellesley College, Radcliffe College, Howard University, and in numerous public schools prizes have been awarded them against numbers of competitors.

Our Colored Americans are taking hold of the educational problem with a vim and courage, and they are succeeding along every department of study.

As an illustration of the thirst for knowledge, the case of Mrs. Martha Harmon, of New York, will be agreeable: This lady is seventy years of age, and attended night school for four years, taking an elementary course. She never missed an evening and was late only once. The New York Board of Education presented her with two gold medals, one for attendance, and the other for proficiency in her studies.

The intellectual progress of the Colored Americans may be emphasized by reference to that highly modern and civilized agent of education known as “The Press.”

There are now more than one hundred and fifty-three organs of the Colored Americans, edited and managed exclusively by them, and devoted to their interests as well as to the cause of general intelligence, improvement and higher education. These organs of the “Press” are classified into: magazines, 3; daily papers, 3; school papers, 11; weekly papers, 136.

Ten of these newspapers own the buildings they occupy, and fifty-four own their own printing plants.

There is a large field here for exploitation and splendid opportunities for the development of a high order of intellect. Only one of these newspapers was established before the Civil War, the Christian Recorder, of Philadelphia, which began in 1839. All the others were established after the Civil War, one in 1865, the others after 1870—a fact which demonstrates the ability of Colored Americans to advance in intellectual ability when the opportunities are presented for its free exercise.

The sphere of influence of the newspapers can not be disputed, we know how it is regarded and the enormous deference paid to that influence among the White Americans, and the same results must obtain among the Colored Americans.

There is room in this department of intellectual development, for many strong and vigorous writers, who will be able to crystallize the energies of the Colored Americans into a determined effort to maintain their position in the onward movement of the human race toward unification.

AUTHORS, WRITERS, POETS AND THE FINE ARTS

An investment in brains has always been regarded as the most productive in profitable returns. It is becoming the fixed opinion, based upon ages of experience, that the uplift of the world, the advancement of people and their progress can be accomplished by brains only.

War and its desolations, its ravages, rapine, and cruelties, have for a time swayed and dominated various parts of the earth, but, it must be considered that violence is the mere handmaid to an uplift by intellectual effort. War prepares the way for intellect and secures it an opportunity to be made manifest without molestation.

If we refer to the “Catalogue des manuscripts Ethiopiens,” already mentioned, we shall find a most amazing condition of intellectual development among the ancient Ethiopians. It was this intellectual condition that made its impress upon Egypt, and the other nations of Europe and Asia, because the Ethiopians were not a conquering race by force of arms, except so far as it was necessary to protect themselves against attack.

If we turn to their descendants—our Colored Americans—we find the same intellectual efforts resumed and progress going on in a marked degree under favorable circumstances and highly civilized and free conditions and environments. The same talent and genius that sculptured the exquisite Ethiopian bronze statuary recently discovered in The Soudan, carved the beautiful designs on Egyptian monuments, traced the architecture of noble palaces and immortal buildings, still traceable in ruins more than three thousand years old, and other evidences of art, is manifesting itself at the present day among our Colored Americans and other descendants in foreign countries.

Consider Lethierre, once president of the School of Fine Arts at Rome, within our present generation, and view his paintings that now adorn the walls of the Louvre in Paris.

We should not omit Edmonia Lewis, the sculptress, whose admirable works required a residence in Rome, nor Henry Owassa Tanner, the eminent artist, whose gems of art are represented in the fine art museums of the world. There are numerous others but these are given to emphasize the point of present Ethiopian intellectual ability.

Among writers were Alexander Poushkin, the celebrated Russian poet. He was a Negro with curly hair and a black complexion, but a man of extraordinary talent and versatility, in prose fiction, and history as well as poetry.

Jose Maria Heredia, the greatest of Spanish-American poets, was a Colored man, likewise the poet Placidio.

We can not forget Paul de Cassagnac, of France, editor, author and poet, who was also a Colored man.

Dumas, the noted dramatic author and novelist, was a colored man, and a most prolific popular author, poet, dramatist, novelist and essayist. That great production “Camille” is familiar to all theater-goers in the world, and when a man rises and says: “The world is mine,” he uses the language of Dumas’ Monte Christo, a world-wide novel that has been translated in all languages and performed on every stage.

We might go on for pages and refer to the Ethiopian intellect as something almost dominant in the world of letters in foreign countries, but must refer to our own Colored Americans as this work concerns them particularly.

We can claim as our own Williams, the historian, the first Colored American ever elected to the Ohio legislature, and at one time judge advocate of the G. A. R. of Ohio.

Phillis Wheatley, the girl who translated the Latin “Metamorphoses of Ovid” in Boston, which were republished in England as standard. Under the most distressing and adverse circumstances Phillis Wheatley became a scholar and a poetess of distinction and the associate of culture and refinement in Boston.

Paul Laurence Dunbar may be held up to all as an example worth following as a man, a poet, a novelist, and a journalist. At the age of twenty-one years he published his first book, “Oak and Ivy,” and followed it with others that commanded the attention and received the encomiums of the literary world in the United States. His poetry appeals to the heart and the hearth, and the intensity of thought displayed in his numerous writings is relieved by humor and quaint philosophy. Dunbar is a triumphant and unerring demonstration of Ethiopian intellect.