"As I gazed upon the beautiful and classic obelisk of Luxor, removed from Thebes, where it had stood for four thousand years, and transplanted to the Place de la Concorde, at Paris, and contemplated its hieroglyphic inscription of the noble daring of Sesostris, the African general, who drew kings at his chariot wheels, and left monumental inscriptions from Ethiopia to India, I felt proud of my antecedents, proud of the glorious past, which no amount of hate and prejudice could wipe away from history's page, while I had to mourn over the fall and the degradation of my race. But I do not despair; for the Negro has that intellectual genius which God has planted in the mind of man, that distinguishes him from the rest of creation, and which only needs cultivation to make it bring forth fruit. No nation has ever been found, which, by its own unaided efforts, by some powerful inward impulse, has arisen from barbarism and degradation to civilization and respectability . There is nothing in race or blood, in color or features, that imparts susceptibility of improvement to one race over another. The mind left to itself from infancy, without culture, remains a blank. Knowledge is not innate . Development makes the man. As the Greeks, and Romans, and Jews, drew knowledge from the Egyptians three thousand years ago, and the Europeans received it from the Romans, so must the blacks of this land rise in the same way. As one man learns from another, so nation learns from nation. Civilization is handed from one people to another, its great fountain and source being God our Father. No one, in the days of Cicero and Tacitus, could have predicted that the barbarism and savage wildness of the Germans would give place to the learning, refinement , and culture which that people now exhibit . Already the blacks on this continent, though kept under the heel of the white man, is fast rising in the scale of intellectual development , and proving their equality with the brotherhood of man."
P.476, "The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements," WILLIAM WELLS BROWN/CLOTEL & OTHER WRITINGS (Library of America: 2014)
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
THE BLACK MAN: HIS ANTECEDENTS, HIS GENIUS, AND HIS ACHJIEVEMENTS
"As I gazed upon the beautiful and classic obelisk of Luxor, removed from Thebes, where it had stood for four thousand years, and transplanted to the Place de la Concorde, at Paris, and contemplated its hieroglyphic inscription of the noble daring of Sesostris, the African general, who drew kings at his chariot wheels, and left monumental inscriptions from Ethiopia to India, I felt proud of my antecedents, proud of the glorious past, which no amount of hate and prejudice could wipe away from history's page, while I had to mourn over the fall and the degradation of my race. But I do not despair; for the Negro has that intellectual genius which God has planted in the mind of man, that distinguishes him from the rest of creation, and which only needs cultivation to make it bring forth fruit. No nation has ever been found, which, by its own unaided efforts, by some powerful inward impulse, has arisen from barbarism and degradation to civilization and respectability . There is nothing in race or blood, in color or features, that imparts susceptibility of improvement to one race over another. The mind left to itself from infancy, without culture, remains a blank. Knowledge is not innate . Development makes the man. As the Greeks, and Romans, and Jews, drew knowledge from the Egyptians three thousand years ago, and the Europeans received it from the Romans, so must the blacks of this land rise in the same way. As one man learns from another, so nation learns from nation. Civilization is handed from one people to another, its great fountain and source being God our Father. No one, in the days of Cicero and Tacitus, could have predicted that the barbarism and savage wildness of the Germans would give place to the learning, refinement , and culture which that people now exhibit . Already the blacks on this continent, though kept under the heel of the white man, is fast rising in the scale of intellectual development , and proving their equality with the brotherhood of man."
P.476, "The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements," WILLIAM WELLS BROWN/CLOTEL & OTHER WRITINGS (Library of America: 2014)