Part 56

IS THE YOUNG NEGRO AN IMPROVEMENT, MORALLY, ON HIS FATHER?

BY REV. J. S. FLIPPER.

REV. J. SIMEON FLIPPER, D. D.

The subject of this sketch was among the first to enter Atlanta University the first day it opened, 1869, and there remained until 1876. He taught school in Georgia for several years. He was converted in 1877 and joined the A. M. E. Church at Thomasville, Ga. He was licensed both to exhort and to preach. In January, 1880, he joined the Georgia Annual Conference. In 1882 was elected secretary of the Georgia Conference, which position he held for five consecutive years. In this same year he was ordained a Deacon by Bishop W. F. Dickerson and sent to Darien, Ga., where he prepared for and took care of the session of the Georgia Conference.

In 1884 he met the Georgia Conference at Valdosta, Ga., and was ordained an Elder by Bishop W. F. Dickerson, and was stationed at Quitman, Ga., remaining there two years. In January, 1886, he was transferred by Bishop James A. Shorter to the North Georgia Conference and stationed at Big Bethel A. M. E. Church, Atlanta, Ga., the city in which he was born. His mother had been a member of this church and its old members knew him when a boy. There he remained four years with great success, raising the largest amount of dollar money that had up to that time been raised in the State: by this he became one of the dollar money kings of the connection for 1886 and was awarded a gold badge by the Financial Department of the A. M. E. Church. Thus, in six years after entering the ministry, he became pastor of the largest church in the State at the age of twenty-seven years. In 1889 he was assigned to Pierce's Chapel, Athens, Ga., and served it three years. In 1892 he was made Presiding Elder of the Athens District, which place he filled for three years. In 1893 he preached the annual sermon to the students of Allen University, Columbia, S. C., when the faculty and Trustee Board conferred on him the title of Doctor of Divinity. In 1892 he was a delegate to the General Conference of the A. M. E. Church, which met in Philadelphia, and served as a member on the committee on statistics.

In 1895 he was stationed a second time in Atlanta, at Allen Temple, A. M. E. Church, remaining here four years with great success and entertaining the session of the North Georgia Conference in his last year. He was elected again to the General Conference, which met at Wilmington, N. C., in May, 1896, and served on the committee on revision of discipline.

In 1899 he was elected not only a delegate but the leader of his delegation to the General Conference, which met at Columbus, Ohio, in May, 1900. Here he was elected without opposition chairman of the Episcopal Committee, the most important committee of the church; it is composed of all the leaders of the delegations from all parts of the church, and before this committee the Bishops appear for an examination in their moral, religious and official character; it fixes the boundaries of the districts and assigns the Bishops to their fields of labor.

He is now a trustee of Morris Brown College, Secretary of the Trustee and Executive Boards, Treasurer of the Theological Fund, Chairman and treasurer of the dollar money committee of the Atlanta, Ga., Conference, Book Steward, Chairman of Committee on Fourth Year's Studies. He is a prominent craftsman and for one year was Deputy Grand Master of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge, A. F. and A. M. of Georgia, Grand Representative of the Stringer Grand Lodge of Mississippi to the Grand East of Georgia, with the rank of Grand Senior Warden. He is now a Trustee of the W. E. Terry Masonic Orphan and Widows' Home and Industrial School, located at Americus, Ga., Associate Editor of the "Voice of Missions," the missionary organ of the A. M. E. Church, published in New York.

One of the greatest events of his life was the receiving of Rev. Jas. M. D'wane of the Ethiopian Church from Pretoria, Transvaal Republic, South Africa, into the A. M. E. Church, and through him eighty preachers and two thousand eight hundred members.

The difficulty of considering this question deepens as we consider the young Negro from every phase of life. Universally it cannot be answered in the affirmative, for the Negro is divided into classes as well as are other races, and as no people are universally, morally good, so such cannot be expected of the Negro.

The Negro possesses an upper class, a middle class, and a lower class, and in a consideration of these classes we shall look for an answer to the question. The upper class consists of those who have made extraordinary progress, morally, religiously, mentally and materially; who have outstripped their fellows in the race of life and attained a standard of civilization commensurate with their opportunities and proved to the civilized world that under favorable circumstances the Negro is as capable of a high development in civilization as any other race. This class is an improvement, morally, upon their fathers. For their opportunities have been such as to render them more capable of a higher conception of morality and of their duties to their fellowmen, and in proportion as a man is enlightened on morality does he improve in morality, other things being equal, and reaches a higher type of manhood. Morality is always affected by one's religious views. The moral binds us to our fellowmen, and the religious to our God; and a man may in many respects be better than his fellowman but he can never be better than his God. If a man has low and meagre ideas of God his ideas of man will be low and meagre whatever may be his conceptions of the law, government, and the character of his Creator will be his ideas of duty to wife, children, neighbors and country.

The educational qualifications on moral and religious lines must furnish some of the rules by which the standard can be gauged for the man who has by liberal and extensive educational facilities gotten the capacity to know his God and His moral government over His creatures must rise in moral improvement and stand out as the towering mountain above the plain that surrounds it. And on this line the upper class of Negroes, by reason of religious and educational advantages, are an improvement morally on their fathers, whose opportunities for moral improvement were very meagre, indeed.

The middle class of Negroes are not equal to the upper class in attainments. Their educational advantages have not been so great as those of the upper class, and yet their moral development has been correspondingly as great. The moral law of God has been heard as distinctly by them as by the upper, but they have not that discriminating judgment that enables them in every instance to distinguish between the morally wrong and the morally right, and yet there has been awakened in them a consciousness of certain things due to their fellowman and to their God that has kept them in a way that they could not be charged with wilful moral wrong, and their conservatism has placed them in a manner nearer to the morally right than to the morally wrong. And the young Negroes of this class are an improvement morally on their fathers. Solomon hath said, "As a man thinketh, so is he." Good character cannot arise out of low thoughts, but it must emanate from pure, noble, God-fearing and elevating thoughts and ideas. Correct ideas of life practically embodied in conduct can lift man above the low, sensual, evil walks of life. Now that there are many young Negroes with correct ideas of life cannot be denied. Now the lower class of Negroes are those whose ideas are distorted; who are conscience-seared, and who have no regard for God nor man; and as the upper and middle classes have ascended in the scale of moral civilization, so the bad class of Negroes have descended in the scale, their finer sensibilities having become blunted by vice and crime, so that education on moral and religious lines has no charms for them. Sinai's majestic summit and moral law are as chaff to them, and as freedom has given a greater and better opportunity for the morally good to improve and rise, so it has given the same for this class to descend and become more and more corrupt. Indeed, they have gone lower than their fathers on this line. But the character of a race is not to be judged by its degraded element, but by the upper and middle classes, which form the major portion of any race and give it a standing along the line of moral and religious civilization. We conclude by saying that the young Negro is an improvement morally upon his father.

First, because freedom has given to the young Negro aspirations for a purer life, which his father did not have.

Second. The moral atmosphere of the young Negro's home life is better than that of the old Negro.

Third. The young Negro's educational advantages give him higher conceptions of life and duty than those had by his father.

Fourth. The young Negro has a more enlightened pulpit than his father had to preach a broader and more comprehensive gospel to him, and to thus give him more correct ideas of life.

Now these superior advantages, which the young Negro has, make it possible for him to outstrip his father in moral accomplishments, and the arguments of his enemies to the contrary notwithstanding, the educated young Negro presents a striking contrast in point of morality to the old Negro.

THIRD PAPER.

IS THE YOUNG NEGRO AN IMPROVEMENT, MORALLY, ON HIS FATHER?

BY REV. E. C. MORRIS, D. D.

REV. E. C. MORRIS, D. D.

On May 7, 1855, near Springplace on the Connesauga, in the chestnut hills of North Georgia, of slave parentage, was born E. C. Morris, now the President of the National Baptist Convention, which is the largest deliberative body of Negroes in the world, the editor-in-chief of the Sunday School series issued by the National Baptist Publishing Board, the President of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, and pastor of the Centennial Baptist Church of Helena, Arkansas. His early education was through the common school, but practically from nature and necessity. From earliest childhood he was peculiarly interested in men and things; hence, now possesses a large stock of knowledge concerning human nature, is an advocate of prudence, conservatism and manliness in all affairs bearing upon the relation of the races in this country. He stands for self-help and racial integrity and believes that when man has acknowledged his inability and failure to ameliorate the ill conditions in this country, God will settle the same and cause the deserved recognition of all men, black and white.

He saw with his father the first train that passed through North Georgia, though the spectacle was quite an amusing draft on his youthful nerve, for, says he, "Had I been older than five years, it is questionable that my father, by whose hand I was led, could have detained me from the urgent business I felt I had back home when that mysteriously terrible locomotive came rushing down the track seemingly intent upon spending its fury upon no one else but me."

When Elias was ten years old, his parents, James and Cora Morris, moved into Alabama, settling at the little town of Stevenson. But Elias had a short while before begun living with the late Rev. Robert Caver, his brother-in-law, at Stevenson, and so lived until he arrived at the age of twenty-one. Mr. Caver taught the young man the shoemaker's trade and the latter earned his bread upon the shoemaker's bench until thirty and three years old. He felt a call to the gospel ministry immediately upon his conversion at the age of nineteen, which took place just at the time when he had grown so inimical and impatient toward a revival that had been going on for several days in the church at Stevenson that he had plotted mischievous disturbance of the meeting.

He grew in grace and general ability, and in 1879 accepted a call to the pastorate of the Centennial Baptist Church of Helena, Arkansas, which position he has held continuously to the present time. His ability as an organizer is fully recognized among his people. He established and for the first two years edited the first religious paper published by the Negroes in the State of Arkansas. In 1884, he organized the Arkansas Baptist College and for sixteen years has been Chairman of its Board of Trustees. For nineteen consecutive years he has been annually elected President of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. In 1894 he was elected President of the National Baptist Convention, whose constituency numbers about a million and a half, and has been elected every year since to the same position. Under his leadership, this society has been firmly unified and has enjoyed the greatest prosperity in its history. It was his address before this Convention at Washington, in 1893, that inspired an indomitable and uncompromising determination in the minds of the colored Baptists to begin publishing interests of their own. It was his active brain that conceived the idea of the National Baptist Young People's Union Board, which Board is located at Nashville. And so his progressive acts have multiplied as he has advanced in age and responsibility. Dr. Morris is an acknowledged adviser of the colored people of his community, in all matters relating to their general uplift. He is a friend to humanity and a lover of his race. He is a possessor and advocate of wholeheartedness and sincerity, being charitable to a difference or a fault. His influence begins at home and spreads abroad, and all distinctions that he bears are borne with gentlemanly modesty, believing leadership to him a duty rather than an honor.

The subject of this article is a very important and delicate one; important because it forms the base from which all the advancement made by the race for the last past thirty-six years must be measured, and delicate because it makes comparison between father and son. If there has been no improvement in the race, morally, since its emancipation from slavery, then no real advancement has been made; and to say that the Negro has made no advancement would be sufficient to call forth universal derision.

It must be admitted in the beginning that to do full justice to the subject, much study and space is required. In the absence of comprehensive statistics on the subject and the time in which to compile the same, several standpoints of reasoning must be assumed, and these will be taken up in no regular order, one being important as the others. I do not attempt to go upon or set up a system of scientific theories either, but simply to state and connect obvious facts. The past and present moral status of the race is involved, but I shall not go beyond that period in which the race was emancipated, and will include, as the fathers, such as were the heads of families at that time and those who were born about that time, constituting largely the heads of families now, as the respective parties to the comparison.