Page:The National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race (1919).djvu/11



Cyclopedia of the Negro race should, it seems to me, have two purposes to inform and to inspire. The ordinary work of the kind has merely the task to inform. The inspiration story, the tale of struggle and achievement, is attended to by the daily paper, the magazine, the technical journal and the photographer. Hut the only sure hope that the black Ameri can can entertain for immediate notice comes through committing crime. The black man who assails a hen roost, one who perpetrates a blind tiger or commits even more revolting crimes is pretty certain of a big headline and several pages in the daily news, while he who pays his taxes, supports his family and lays away a few shekels or invests in land, houses or brain power, passes on unheralded.

Let the task of this work be to inform of the good deeds. Rapidly the Negro himself is casting out the discriminating hook, with the label, "Who is he?" written in pretty bold let ters. Good deeds, a life of service, have come to be a passport required among groups of col ored Americans as well as among groups of other people.

We have still also our weakness toward education. We like the diploma on the wall, the cap and gown, the enriching memories of college days. He, therefore, who would make his place in various groups must carry the stamp of merit in cultivation of intellect, in the acquisition of wealth, in deeds of good for the betterment of his people.

Therein does the Clyclopedia hope to fill what assuredly appears to be a crying need. Negroes over the country do not know one an other, neither do the white Americans know what their darker countrymen are doing to make a stronger and nobler race and to make of all wholesome citizens.

As a rule, however, we cannot accomplish the end of this undertaking by cataloging a few dry, abstract facts. Thus to set down "John Smith, born 1884, proprietor of a drug store, candidate for Grand Secretary of K. P." and so on, would not, though thoroughly informing, give all that we want the Negro school boy and the Negro school girl to find

A hen they go to search for our names in the Cyclopedia. We want them to look there, both young and old, to find a brief succinct story, one that while it informs, gives some measure of the man, some measure of the character he developed while becoming the proprietor of a drug store, or candidate for Grand Secretary. Here is the editor of a Negro paper. How did he get his education in general? How did he get his particular training for the craft? How many nights, as Horace Greely put it, did he "sleep on paper and eat ink" or support his family on unpaid subscriptions? In other words, we want the Negro boy to feel inspired, to come away with a thrill: we want the older Negro to feel that he is among a great galaxy of black folk, great because of character, of education, of goodness.

Thanks to the breaking of a new day, we now have a great many friends who are genuinely interested in our progress. They want to see what the black folks have done; to see the fruit of their labor on the one hand and to uphold the black man's cause to those who still doubt, or who alas ! simply do not know.

As we feel about the person so we feel about the organization, the institution. Here is a big Negro church whose night classes, rest rooms and the like owe their existence to the poor mothers who sweat over the wash tub: A Negro school whose first master likely as not taught in the rain, or waded through water and mud to reach his classes. Here again is a Negro bank, whose first president begged deposits from door to door: A big Negro farmer and land owner, who once grubbed his soil or chopped wood by the light of a pine torch: a Negro publisher who once was class ed a little above a tramp: A Negro insurance man, who was once a cook: A big Negro physician who came from the farm or from the ranks of the hotel waiters. It is this we would chronicle, not of course that it may be known merely, but that there may be more and better banks, holier churches, finer schools, bigger farmers, a larger number forging forward from the ranks typifying the best in the race.

To have undertaken a task of this kind was, in the eyes of many, to pursue a course of rash-