My Father taught me that. No doubt passed down to him from the venerable James Brown! 36 years my mother and father have been married. I'm proud of my heritage and our traditions.
I'm proud to come from a tradition of sober, intellectual, and forward thinking brothers and sisters. Read the following. Now realize that it was written 100 years ago! Way to go Black Men in America!
- 12 Things The Negro Must Do For Himself by Nannie
Helen Burroughs
- (Circa Early 1900's)
1. The Negro Must Learn To Put First Things
First. The First Things Are: Education; Development of
Character Traits; A Trade and Home Ownership.
-
The Negro puts too much of his earning in
clothes, in food, in show and in having what he calls "a good
time." The Dr. Kelly Miller said, "The Negro buys what he
WANTS and begs for what he Needs." Too true!
2. The Negro Must Stop Expecting God and
White Folk To Do For Him What He Can Do For Himself.
-
It is the "Divine Plan" that the strong shall
help the weak, but even God does not do for man what man can do
for himself. The Negro will have to do exactly what Jesus
told the man (in John 5:8) to do--Carry his own load--"Take up
your bed and walk."
3. The Negro Must Keep Himself, His
Children And His Home Clean And Make The Surroundings In Which He
Lives Comfortable and Attractive.
-
He must learn to "run his community up"--not
down. We can segregate by law, we integrate only by
living. Civilization is not a matter of race, it is a
matter of standards. Believe it or not--some day, some
race is going to outdo the Anglo-Saxon, completely. It can
be the Negro race, if the Negro gets sense enough.
Civilization goes up and down that way.
4. The Negro Must Learn To Dress More
Appropriately For Work And For Leisure.
-
Knowing what to wear--how to wear it--when to
wear it and where to wear it, are earmarks of common sense,
culture and also an index to character.
5. The Negro Must Make His Religion An
Everyday Practice And Not Just A
Sunday-Go-To-Meeting
Emotional Affair.
6. The Negro Must Highly Resolve To Wipe
Out Mass Ignorance.
-
The leaders of the race must teach and inspire
the masses to become eager and determined to improve mentally,
morally and spiritually, and to meet the basic requirements of
good citizenship.
-
We should initiate an intensive literacy
campaign in America, as well as in Africa. Ignorance--satisfied
ignorance--is
a millstone abut the neck of the race. It is democracy's
greatest burden.
-
Social integration is a relationship attained as a result of the
cultivation of kindred social ideals, interests and standards.
-
It
is a blending process that requires time, understanding and
kindred purposes to achieve. Likes alone and not laws can
do it.
7.
The Negro Must Stop Charging His Failures Up To His "Color" And To
White People's Attitude.
-
The truth of the matter is that good service and conduct will
make senseless race prejudice fade like mist before the rising
sun.
-
God never intended that a man's color shall be anything other
than a
badge of distinction.
It is high time that all races were learning that fact.
The Negro must first
QUALIFY
for whatever position he wants. Purpose, initiative,
ingenuity and industry are the keys that all men use to get what
they want. The Negro will have to do the same. He
must make himself a workman who is too skilled not to be wanted,
and too
DEPENDABLE
not to be on the job, according to promise or plan. He
will never become a vital factor in industry until he learns to
put into his work the vitalizing force of initiative, skill and
dependability. He has gone
"RIGHTS"
mad and
"DUTY"
dumb.
8.
The Negro Must Overcome His Bad Job Habits.
-
He
must make a brand new reputation for himself in the world of
labor. His bad job habits are absenteeism, funerals to
attend, or a little business to look after. The Negro runs
an off and on business. He also has a bad reputation for
conduct on the job--such as petty quarreling with other help,
incessant loud talking about nothing; loafing, carelessness, due
to lack of job pride; insolence, gum chewing and--too
often--liquor drinking. Just plain bad job habits!
9.
He Must Improve His Conduct In Public Places.
-
Taken as a whole, he is entirely too loud and too ill-mannered.
-
There is much talk about wiping out racial segregation and also
much talk about achieving integration.
-
Segregation is a physical arrangement by which people are
separated in various services.
-
It
is definitely up to the Negro to wipe out the apparent
justification or excuse for segregation.
-
The only effective way to do it is to clean up and keep clean.
By practice, cleanliness will become a habit and habit becomes
character.
10.
The Negro Must Learn How To Operate Business For People--Not For
Negro People, Only.
-
To
do business, he will have to remove all typical "earmarks,"
business principles; measure up to accepted standards and meet
stimulating competition, graciously--in fact, he must learn to
welcome competition.
11.
The Average So-Called Educated Negro Will Have To Come Down Out Of
The Air. He Is Too Inflated Over Nothing. He Needs An
Experience Similar To The One That Ezekiel Had--(Ezekiel 3:14-19).
And He Must Do What Ezekiel Did
-
Otherwise, through indifference, as to the plight of the masses,
the Negro, who thinks that he has escaped, will lose his own
soul. It will do all leaders good to read Hebrew 13:3, and
the first Thirty-seven Chapters of Ezekiel.
-
A
race transformation itself through its own leaders and its
sensible "common people." A race rises on its own wings,
or is held down by its own weight. True leaders are never
"things apart from the people." They are the masses.
They simply got to the front ahead of them. Their only
business at the front is to inspire to masses by hard work and
noble example and challenge them to "Come on!" Dante
stated a fact when he said, "Show the people the light and they
will find the way!"
-
There must arise within the Negro race a leadership that is not
out hunting bargains for itself. A noble example is found
in the men and women of the Negro race, who, in the early days,
laid down their lives for the people. Their invaluable
contributions have not been appraised by the "latter-day
leaders." In many cases, their names would never be
recorded, among the unsung heroes of the world, but for the fact
that white friends have written them there.
"Lord, God of Hosts, Be with us yet."
-
The Negro of today does not realize that, but, for these
exhibits A's, that certainly show the innate possibilities of
members of their own race, white people would not have been
moved to make such princely investments in lives and money, as
they have made, for the establishment of schools and for the
on-going of the race.
12.
The Negro Must Stop Forgetting His Friends. "Remember."
-
Read Deuteronomy 24:18. Deuteronomy rings the big bell of
gratitude. Why? Because an ingrate is an abomination
in the sight of God. God is constantly telling us that
"I
the Lord thy God delivered you"--through
human instrumentalities.
-
The American Negro has had and still has friends--in the North
and in the South. These friends not only pray, speak,
write, influence others, but make unbelievable, unpublished
sacrifices and contributions for the advancement of the
race--for their brothers in bonds.
-
The noblest thing that the Negro can do is to so live and labor
that these benefactors will not have given in vain. The
Negro must make his heart warm with gratitude, his lips sweet
with thanks and his heart and mind resolute with purpose to
justify the sacrifices and stand on his feet and go forward--"God
is no respector of persons. In every nation, he that
feareth him and worketh righteousness is"
sure to win out. Get to work! That's the answer to
everything that hurts us. We talk too much about nothing
instead of redeeming the time by working.
R-E-M-E-M-B-E-R
-
In
spite of race prejudice, America is brim full of opportunities.
Go after them!
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