Historical voices

He felt angry now when men did not call him “Mister,” he clenched his hands at the “Jim Crow” cars, and chafed at the color-line that hemmed in him and his.

He grew slowly to feel almost for the first time the Veil that lay between him and the white world; he first noticed now the oppression that had not seemed oppression before, differences that erstwhile seemed natural, restraints and…

It was a hard struggle, for things did not come easily to him,—few crowding memories of early life and teaching came to help him on his new way; but all the world toward which he strove was of his own building, and he builded slow and hard.

And neither world thought the other world’s thought, save with a vague unrest.

And yet it was singular that few thought of two Johns,—for the black folk thought of one John, and he was black; and the white folk thought of another John, and he was white.

And herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor,—all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked,—who is good? not that men are ignorant,—what is Truth?

His name to-day, in this broad land, means little, and comes to fifty million ears laden with no incense of memory or emulation.

He did his work,—he did it nobly and well; and yet I sorrow that here he worked alone, with so little human sympathy.

The more I met Alexander Crummell, the more I felt how much that world was losing which knew so little of him.

They who live without knew not nor dreamed of that full power within, that mighty inspiration which the dull gauze of caste decreed that most men should not know.

He never faltered, he seldom complained; he simply worked, inspiring the young, rebuking the old, helping the weak, guiding the strong.

He fought among his own, the low, the grasping, and the wicked, with that unbending righteousness which is the sword of the just.

He bent to all the gibes and prejudices, to all hatred and discrimination, with that rare courtesy which is the armor of pure souls.

Out of the temptation of Hate, and burned by the fire of Despair, triumphant over Doubt, and steeled by Sacrifice against Humiliation, he turned at last home across the waters, humble and strong, gentle and determined.

No wonder we point to thief and murderer, and haunting prostitute, and the never-ending throng of unhearsed dead!

You will not wonder at his weird pilgrimage,—you who in the swift whirl of living, amid its cold paradox and marvellous vision, have fronted life and asked its riddle face to face.

Twenty years he wandered,—twenty years and more; and yet the hard rasping question kept gnawing within him, “What, in God’s name, am I on earth for?” In the narrow New York parish his soul seemed cramped and smothered.

So the man groped for light; all this was not Life,—it was the world-wandering of a soul in search of itself, the striving of one who vainly sought his place in the world, ever haunted by the shadow of a death that is more than death,—the…

You might have noted only the physical dying, the shattered frame and hacking cough; but in that soul lay deeper death than that.

And yet the fire through which Alexander Crummell went did not burn in vain.

Sometime, we trust—sincerely trust—all such distinctions will fade away; but now the world is as it is.

They were not wicked men,—the problem of life is not the problem of the wicked,—they were calm, good men, Bishops of the Apostolic Church of God, and strove toward righteousness.

A voice and vision called him to be a priest,—a seer to lead the uncalled out of the house of bondage.

He heard the hateful clank of their chains; he felt them cringe and grovel, and there rose within him a protest and a prophecy.