Farther than that, our Americanism does
not go. At that point, we are Negroes, members of a vast
historic race that from the very dawn of creation has slept, but
half awakening in the dark forests of its African fatherland. We
are the first fruits of this new nation, the harbinger of that
black to-morrow which is yet destined to soften the whiteness of
the Teutonic to-day. We are that people whose subtle sense of
song has given America its only American music, its only
American fairy tales, its only touch of pathos and humor amid
its mad money-getting plutocracy. As such, it is our duty to
conserve our physical powers, our intellectual endowments, our
spiritual ideals; as a race we must strive by race organization,
by race solidarity, by race unity to the realization of that
broader humanity which freely recognizes differences in men, but
sternly deprecates inequality in their opportunities of
development.
For the accomplishment of these ends we need race
organizations: Negro colleges, Negro newspapers, Negro business
organizations, a Negro school of literature and art, and an
intellectual clearing house, for all these products of the Negro
mind, which we may call a Negro Academy. Not only is all this
necessary for positive advance, it is absolutely imperative for
negative defense.
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