Written by a black woman in the 1900’s
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.’
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–is a millstone about 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 earning that fact.
The Negro must first QUALIFY for whatever position he wants. Purpose,
initiative, ingenuity and industry are the keys tha t 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 co nduct 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
Simila r 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 Hebrews 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 th e
early days, laid down their lives fo r 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 t o w in out. Get to work! That’s the
an swer 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!
And, this was written in the early 1900’s! The more things change the
more they stay the same.
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