The Proper Means of Elevating Ourselves

Martin Delany's ignored admonition

By Elizabeth Wright

[Reprinted from Issues & Views Fall 1992]

Long before Marcus Garvey's dictum to, "Let the people know that in themselves only is the power to rise," enlightened American blacks had done their best to rouse members of the race to actively participate as producers in the economic system. Long before slavery ended, there were already pockets of free, prosperous middle class blacks in various states. The nationalist Martin Delany took such blacks to task, in the 1850s, for ignoring the power they held, even then, to significantly improve the condition of the race. Most well-off blacks ignored such pleadings, a pattern their descendants would continue into the next century, with the formation of the NAACP.

Blacks like Delany were shouted down and vilified by the growing alliance of race-peddling blacks and self-aggrandizing whites, who saw the personal benefits to be derived from moral crusading, instead of following an economic roadmap to uplift the masses. To the black bourgeoisie, it mattered not that poor blacks were the victims of this single-minded desire to undermine the white establishment and intrude into white-created enterprises. The Jesse Jackson blueprint for getting whites to give jobs and perks to black elites, so that the middle class might take no risks with their own resources, was already coming into focus even as early as the 19th century.

Following is an excerpt from Delany's book, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, published in 1852, in which he exhorts his fellow blacks to take initiatives to compete with whites.

White men are producers -- we are consumers. They build houses, and we rent them. They raise produce, and we consume it. They manufacture clothes and wares, and we garnish ourselves with them. They build coaches, vessels, cars, hotels, saloons, and other vehicles and places of accommodation, and we deliberately wait until they have got them in readiness, then walk in, and contend with as much assurance for a "right," as though the whole thing was bought by, paid for, and belonged to us. ...

Until we are determined to change the condition of things, and raise ourselves above the position in which we are now prostrated, we must hang our heads in sorrow and hide our faces in shame. It is enough to know that these things are so; the causes we care little about. Those we have been examining, complaining about, and moralizing over, all our life time. This we are weary of.

What we desire to learn now is, how to effect a remedy; this we have endeavored to point out. Our elevation must be the result of self-efforts, and work of our own hands. No other human power can accomplish it. If we but determine it shall be so, it will be so. Let each one make the case his own, and endeavor to rival his neighbor, in honorable competition.

These are the proper and only means of elevating ourselves and attaining equality in this country or any other, and it is useless, utterly futile, to think about going anywhere, except we are determined to use these as the necessary means of developing our manhood. The means are at hand, within our reach. Are we willing to try them?

-- From the anthology, African-American Social & Political Thought 1850-1920, edited by Howard Brotz, reprinted 1992 by Transaction Publishers. (An excellent collection of writings and speeches tracing the range and diversity of thinking among American blacks prior to the modern civil rights movement.)

See also this article on the politically incorrect black businessman S.B. Fuller, and his 1963 speech to the National Association of Manufacturers, where he follows up on Delany's exhortation to blacks, to take advantage of the many opportunities already in their hands.

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