The Upward Path: The Evolution of a Race

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Young people's missionary movement of the United States and Canada, 1911 - African Americans - 331 pages
 

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Page 34 - But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones.
Page vii - SLOW THROUGH THE DARK. SLOW moves the pageant of a climbing race ; Their footsteps drag far, far below the height, And, unprevailing by their utmost might, Seem faltering downward from each hard won place. No strange, swift-sprung exception we; we trace A devious way thro...
Page 75 - ... slave property gone, his farms and other industries in a state of collapse, and the whole industrial or economic system upon which he had depended for years entirely disorganised. As we review calmly and dispassionately the period of reconstruction, we must use a great deal of sympathy and generosity. The weak point, to my mind, in the reconstruction era was that no strong force was brought to bear in the direction of preparing the Negro to become an intelligent, reliable citizen and voter. The...
Page 55 - Christian profession as a white art, and among the non-professors as a black art; a memory of the revenges of his African ancestors; a secret fraternity among slaves of far distant plantations, with words and signs, — the lifting of a finger, the twitch of an eyelid, — that telegraphed from house to house with amazing rapidity (as today in Africa) current news in old slave days and during the late Civil War ; suspected, but never understood by the white master ; which, as a superstition, has...
Page 115 - in some" because even the more menial offices of industry are being slowly but gradually denied to him. And what is the opportunity of such an environment to the development of self-dependence, what is the value to his labor of so inadequate and restricted a market for the complex capacities and the legitimate ambitions of an awakening manhood ? And what lies at the background of the man ? What of the family, the wife, the mother, the children ? What are the possibilities, there, of self-respect,...
Page 22 - If it be desired to obtain power over some one else, the oganga must be given by the applicant, to be mixed in the sacred compound, either crumbs from the food, or clippings of finger nails or hair, or (most powerful !) even a drop of blood of the person over whom influence is sought. These represent the life or body of that person. So fearful are natives of power being thus obtained over them, that they have their hair cut only by a friend; and even then they carefully burn it or cast 'it into a...

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