"I have ventured to present this special train of thought, because you are colored young men; and as such, allied to a people whose special need for a long while will be strength. All history shows that when a new people come on the stage of action and commence the career of manhood, there is, and for no short time either, a very large demand made on them for union, for combination, for effective force, for demonstrated manhood, for manifest and indubitable strength...
"Your work then in life, young gentlemen, is most serious, and most burdensome. You have got to organize a people who have been living nigh 200 years, under a system of the most destructive mental, moral, and physical disorganization the world has ever seen. You have got to train a people to solid sober and persistent thought; a people that have been accustomed for generations to every seductive, sensual inducement which might banish thought, and dissipate all the sober processes of the intellect....
"Everything in this work is new; and believe me, as severe as it is new . The past is forever gone; and it has no teachings either for the present or the future. Nowhere in our American history can you light upon any instructive antecedents. "
P. 152, 154, "Right-Mindedness," (1886) CIVILIZATION AND BLACK PROGRESS: SELECTED WRITINGS OF ALEXANDER CRUMMELL edited by J R Oldfield (1995)
(The above quote was excerpted, and shared, initially, primarily to point out that the woeful disdain for the past's application to the present and to the future is not new, even among highly educated blacks. American history, indeed world history, whether in the aggregate, or as limited to the indispensable and discrete contributions of Africans to either's economic, political, or cultural legacies, if learned and studied with the focused intensity warranted by its triumphant glory, would yield many instances of "instructive antecedents" to black men and women, contrary to this Episcopal priest's asserverations.)
Monday, March 23, 2015
RIGHT-MINDEDNESS
"I have ventured to present this special train of thought, because you are colored young men; and as such, allied to a people whose special need for a long while will be strength. All history shows that when a new people come on the stage of action and commence the career of manhood, there is, and for no short time either, a very large demand made on them for union, for combination, for effective force, for demonstrated manhood, for manifest and indubitable strength...
"Your work then in life, young gentlemen, is most serious, and most burdensome. You have got to organize a people who have been living nigh 200 years, under a system of the most destructive mental, moral, and physical disorganization the world has ever seen. You have got to train a people to solid sober and persistent thought; a people that have been accustomed for generations to every seductive, sensual inducement which might banish thought, and dissipate all the sober processes of the intellect....
"Everything in this work is new; and believe me, as severe as it is new . The past is forever gone; and it has no teachings either for the present or the future. Nowhere in our American history can you light upon any instructive antecedents. "
P. 152, 154, "Right-Mindedness," (1886) CIVILIZATION AND BLACK PROGRESS: SELECTED WRITINGS OF ALEXANDER CRUMMELL edited by J R Oldfield (1995)
(The above quote was excerpted, and shared, initially, primarily to point out that the woeful disdain for the past's application to the present and to the future is not new, even among highly educated blacks. American history, indeed world history, whether in the aggregate, or as limited to the indispensable and discrete contributions of Africans to either's economic, political, or cultural legacies, if learned and studied with the focused intensity warranted by its triumphant glory, would yield many instances of "instructive antecedents" to black men and women, contrary to this Episcopal priest's asserverations.)