The Philosophical Treatise of William H. Ferris by Curry Tommy J.;

Author:Curry, Tommy J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786600349
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Unlimited Model
Published: 2016-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

Footnote

1. Here Ferris reiterates the phrases and sentiment expressed in an essay titled ‘‘Douglass as Orator.’’ For that short piece, see Werner Sollors et al., eds., Blacks at Harvard: A Documentary History of African-American Experience at Harvard and Radcliffe (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 113–22.

Chapter Five

The Epical Meaning and Historic Significance of the Black Man’s Spiritual Strivings and Higher Aspirations

There are three attitudes which intelligent and thoughtful colored men assume towards the all-embracing and all-encompassing fact of American caste prejudice. Professor William H. H. Hart of the Law Department of Howard University says that we must ignore caste prejudice and live and act as if it did not exist; we must forget that we are colored men and live and work on the assumption that we are men the same as other human beings.1 Dr. Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskeegee Institute, says that we must recognize American caste prejudice as a fact that cannot be striven against; but to which we must adjust and adapt ourselves just as we recognize the fact of gravitation as one of the immutable facts and laws of nature. To disregard it and jump from a tower or leap over a precipice is to court and meet certain death. So the colored man who clamors for his civil and political rights, who does not lie down, keep still and remain quiet when the white man of the South tells him to, is as wise as the man who butts his head against a stone wall or as the bull who charges into a locomotive that is coming towards it at full speed, with steam up and throttle valves thrown back. Dr. DuBois differs from Professor Hart and agrees with Dr. Washington in that he recognizes caste prejudice as a basic and fundamental fact of the black man’s existence, which cannot be ignored or passed by, by our closing our eyes to it, just as the ostrich does not elude its pursuers by burying its head in the sand and thinking that because it does not see its pursuers, its pursuers cannot see it. On the other hand, Dr. DuBois differs from Dr. Washington and agrees with Professor Hart in holding that American caste prejudice can be overcome by the colored man’s endeavoring to think and feel and act and live like a human being and an American citizen clothed in the full panoply of his constitutional rights.

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