JUST A MINUTE (continued 2)

In Portland I attended a meeting of a select group of ladies and gentlemen of the Theosophical Society. I did not speak, but went primarily to hear an old friend speak on the subject of “Racial Unity.” His lectures covered a number of cities on the coast, and his subjects, “The Unity of Religions,” “Seven Valleys,” “Inter-racial Amity,” “Harmony Between Religion and Science,” “The Mashrak; Ulkar or Universal Science,” “What is a Bahai?” “Four Stages in Man’s Growth.” All of these different lectures are summed up in the one though, “The Fundamental Unity of Races and Religion.” The object of the lectures are the promotion of universal brotherhood, international coöperation, universal education, the abandonment of prejudices. The lecturer was a colored man, a product of Fisk University, and of the law school of Howard University. He has traveled through Europe, Egypt, and Palestine. His thought and language is clear and convincing. Our friend Dr. Gregory proved himself a master with these subjects.

The subjects above are very suggestive. There is nothing else to be said when the speaker has finished his address. What does it mean? In New York, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, St. Paul, and all our large centers there are the finest temples and edifices built to the new cult, new thought, new religion. Many of our traditional churches in these large centers have a hard fight to get a hearing. I attended one of these new thought churches in St. Paul where the interest was at white heat with an attendance of more than seven hundred people. The temperature outside was fourteen degrees below zero. This was at night. All these cults are based in one way or another on the Bible, but we seem to have adapted for our own spiritual edification and practice that which fits our own mind and temperament. We then argue that everybody else is dead wrong. Some of the finest minds I know are lined up with these new cults. Surely they must have some basis for their mental attitude.

I was asked by the Secretary, Rev. Dr. George Hinman, of the American Missionary Association office in San Francisco, to fill an appointment for him in Berkley, Cal., February 26th. This was at the North Congregational Church at Berkley. This church was right under the shadow of the University of California, and I counted it a great honor to be asked to speak there. The minister of the church was Rev. Mr. Ralph Baxter Larkin. He was sick the day of my visit, and I was introduced by Rev. Dr. Sargent. The printed programme announcing the service for the day with my address had this on the first page, “A Church of Reverent Worship, open mind, intellectual freedom, social conscience, spiritual aspiration and human sympathy. It seeks to discover and interpret the meaning of life in the life of the eternal.” This expression gave me great poise for what I had to say. I was at once at ease.

It is fine to speak to people who have a sympathetic spirit especially when you have a feeling that you have an unpopular subject. My racial identity was not clear in the mind of the gentleman who introduced me. He said something like this: “Professor Steiner, of the University of California said somewhere that if he had to be born again he would like to be born a colored man, so that he might be able to study the colored problem from the inside. We have with us today a gentleman who understands the colored problem, and who did not have to be born colored either.” These may not be the exact words, but it is the thought. The first thing that I had to do was to dispel the mind of my audience of the fact or statement just made, that I did not have to be born a colored man, and that I wanted them to know that the traditions of our country and the laws in many, if not all the states, had said that any man is colored who has one iota of Negro blood in his veins. “I am glad to have the honor to address you as a colored man.” Those who know me best tell me that I do not have many stopping places. So I fore-warned my friends in the front of me that sometimes my address was three in one and sometimes one in three. Three in one when I have only one hour in which to speak and one in three when I have three hours in which to speak. Speaking to a Congregational Church, and a white church, too, one has to observe the traditions very closely. These traditions limit us to about thirty minutes, and unless one is very interesting he had better stop in twenty-five minutes. So my address had to be three in thirty.

The audience was scarcely dismissed when a large crowd gathered at the corner of the church to ask more about certain topics which I had only the time to touch. They were seeking to discover and to interpret the meaning of life. I was invited to go home with many friends, but I could not go with all, so a compromise was effected, and several families joined, and I was the guest for the afternoon of these families. One of these families had been missionaries in China. Others had worked among the Japanese. There we were exchanging our experiences each for the edification of the other. We were all happy that our lot had been cast in these divergent directions.

I cannot continue this without becoming monotonous. I was most happily received in a great many other churches, colored as well as white. My message was generally, “The Amistad,” “The American Missionary Association,” “General O. O. Howard and Reconstruction,” “The Schools of the American Missionary Association,” “The Progress of the Colored People,” “Inter-Racial Relations,” etc. One can see a wide latitude in these subjects.

At the theaters we saw several colored stars. In Buffalo Charles Gilpin in “Emperor Jones.” Gilpin is an artist of the first magnitude, but I did not like his selection. I am not a critic of such matters, but it did seem to me that his piece was coarse. It was very popular. One could hardly find seating room in the large house where the play was given.

In New York “Shuffle ’Long” was exciting great interest. There must have been twenty or more taking part in the play, and every character was an artist. I never saw anything finer. These people played in New York in one house for nearly a year, and while the entrance fees were high the house was packed every night.

In Chicago Bert Williams was the whole attraction. I saw him at the Studebaker in “The Loop” just before his breakdown. I was told that after his death the company broke up. They could not find another “Bert Williams.” In his death the race has lost one of the greatest stars in the theatrical world, irrespective of color. It is an awful tragedy of our times that racial prejudice is blind to art when the artist happens to be colored. It is no fault of the artist that he was born colored. The theatrical field has been rather restricted so far as our colored artists are concerned, but wherever they have had the opportunity they have not been found wanting.

“Broadway Rastus and Sambo” are in a class by themselves. The play is clean and fine, every whit of it. It will cure the blues. The singers are the best on the American stage. The vaudeville is equal to any I have seen in the best white theaters.

Every place visited we met very prominent colored men and women who were formerly from North Carolina. We are compiling some interesting data on them which we hope to give to the public later.

In Cleveland we met our old friend Lawyer J. P. Green. He has been a lawyer there for forty years. He has written a splendid book of his life. He has been Recorder of Deeds in Washington, and for several terms member of the Ohio Legislature.

Mr. Charles Smith, whose parents were North Carolina people, has served on the Cleveland police force twenty-five years, and is now retired. His parents lived at Chapel Hill this state, and migrated to Oberlin where he, with several other brothers and sisters, were educated.

Mrs. Mary Talbert, of Buffalo, is President of the Negro Women’s League, which is a national organization of women. She was educated in Oberlin. Her parents migrated there before the Civil War from this state. It would take a chapter to tell what great things she has done for the colored women and what she is now doing. She is a traveler, lecturer and scholar. She has recently raised the money to have the Fred Douglass Home in Washington City as a Memorial to the greatest Negro who ever lived. It will be dedicated the 12th of August, 1922. Her husband, Mr. William Talbert, is a city official in the treasurer’s office, of Buffalo, New York.

Mrs. Clara Hardy, of St. Paul, Minnesota, a sister of Mrs. Talbert, is also a graduate of Oberlin College. She has held many places of honor in her adopted city. She is now Court Bailiff. She is a writer and speaker of no mean ability. Her home was a perfect model.

In California it was my pleasure to stop with Dr. R. R. Robinson. He is a Halifax County man. He was a student here for a number of years working his way with his hands. He laid out our walks, planted many of our older trees and helped to “Start Bricks.” He took an agricultural course at the A. and T. College in this state and went to Tuskegee, where he taught several years. He married a North Carolina girl from Bethel, who was a trained nurse. Later he went to Nashville, Tennessee, and took a course in medicine. After graduating he practiced medicine in Brunswick, Ga., through the flue, and was very successful. After the world war he went to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was there when the riot broke out. He saved his life by hiding in the woods three days, he and his wife. He lost all his office fixtures and medical instruments, and every remnant of personal apparel. He is now a very successful physician in Los Angeles, California.

I have given only an outline of some impressions of my trip to California with the hope that it may inspire some reader to know, to go, and to acquire a larger vision of the world and of life.