oppressors--it is from this heterogeneous protoplasm
that the American Negro has been developed. The foundation from which
he sprang had been laid by piecemeal as the slave ships made their
annual deposits of cargoes brought from different points on the West
Coast, and basely corrupted as is only too well known; yet out of it
has grown, within less than three hundred years, an organic people.
Grandfathers, and great-grandfathers are among them; and personal
acquaintance is exceedingly wide. In the face of slavery and against
its teaching and its power, overcoming the seduction of the master
class, and the coarse and brutal corruptions of the baser overseer
class, the African slave persistently strove to clothe himself with
the habiliments of civilization, and so prepared himself for social
organization that as soon as the hindrances were removed, this vast
people almost immediately set themselves in families; and for over
thirty years they have been busily engaged hunting up the lost roots
of their family trees. We know the pit whence the Afro-American race
was dug, the rock whence he was hewn; he was born here on this soil,
from a people who in the classic language of the Hebrew prophet, could
be described as, No People.

That there has been a majestic evolution quietly but rapidly going on
in this mass, growing as it was both by natural development and by
accretion, is plainly evident. Heterogeneous as were the fragments, by
the aid of a common language and a common lot, and cruel yet partially
civilizing control, the whole people were forced into a common outward
form, and to a remarkable extent, into the same ways of thinking. The
affinities within were really aided by the repulsions without, and
when finally freed from slavery, for an ignorant and inexperienced
people, they presented an astonishing spectacle of unity. Socially,
politically and religiously, their power to work together showed
itself little less than marvellous. The Afro-American, developing from
this slave base, now directs great organizations of a religious
character, and in comprehensive sweep invites to his co-operation the
inhabitants of the isles of the sea and of far-off Africa. He is
joining with the primitive, strong, hopeful and expanding races of
Southern Africa, and is evidently preparing for a day that has not yet
come.

The progress made thus far by the people is somewhat like that made by
the young, man who hires himself to a farmer