Sections 1 I once heard Henry Ward Beecher make this remark: “Were Africa and the Africans to sink… 2 But after all sentiment, whether adverse or favorable, is ephemeral. 3 The calculation may be made in the same way and on the same principle that we would estimate… 4 Rightly to estimate our material, then, it is necessary to go back of the twenty or thirty… 5 Whatever may be said of its beauty, then, the black side of the stream with us is pretty… 6 Many a passable article has by diligent workmanship been made even from inferior material. 7 What is it worth? 8 What a piece of work, indeed! 9 For 1889 the relative death-rate of the two races in the District of Columbia was: whites,… 10 What our men of means need to do, then, is to devote their money, their enlightened… 11 But I wonder how many know that there are throughout the Southland able bodied, hard working… 12 Will you call it narrowness and selfishness, then, that I find it impossible to catch the… 13 In the South, on the other hand, where the colored man virtually holds the labor market, he… 14 Closely akin to the value that may be said to have been wasted through the inclemency and… 15 This may not have been most wise. 16 One mind in a family or in a town may show a penchant for art, for literature, for the… 17 The world in putting these crucial questions to men and women, or to races and nations,… 18 Now to which class do we belong? 19 We must as individuals compare our cost with what we are able to give. 20 I am unable to say accurately, then, just how many bales of cotton, pounds of tobacco,… 21 Granville Wood, of Cincinnati, has given valuable returns to the world as an electrician;… 22 For after all, the highest gifts are not measurable in dollars and cents. 23 In South Carolina there are two brothers, colored men, who own and conduct one of the most… 24 “The deeds of heroism,” 25 In the heart of what is known as the “Black Belt” 26 We have a notion here in America that our political institutions,—the possibilities of a…
Start Learning Taking up Henry Ward Beecher's sneer that the world would lose little if Africa sank, Cooper answers with a ledger: what the race has cost, what it has produced, what it gives back in labor, in loyalty, in Phillis Wheatley's verse and hard-won schools — and what it must yet produce to force the world's respect.
The race's balance sheet Answering Beecher's sneer Production versus dependence Education as investment
26 sections · ~55 min read
Start Learning