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For Frederick Douglass' Paper.
OUR LEADERS
MR. EDITOR : - The last objection (to the Industrial School) made by the Herald of Freedom is in the following words: "The colored people are not so apathetic from a want of desire to rise, but from the repeated failures of the high-wrought plans which their leaders have presented for their adoption. Forgetting the materials with which they must work and the resources upon which they must rely, they (the leaders) have looked upon the enterprises of the whites, and laying their plans on the same scale, and have called on an ignorant, poverty-stricken and divided people to accomplish the work. - The consequence has always been disheartening failures. If this cannot be verified in a national point of view, many local experiences will justify the statement. On the list of impracticabilities we must place the Industrial College."
What is said about leadership will be examined at present, as a former article treats of the practicability of the Industrial School. I deny, absolutely, that the colored people in the United States now have, or ever had, leaders : an essential to the idea of "leader" in relation to any people, is the assumption that said people can be led : the Whigs had a leader, Henry Clay; and the Democrats had a leader, Andrew Jackson : both Whigs and Democrats had a capacity for being led : but can we say this thing, in this sense of the colored people ? Certainly not ; for whoever among us may have attempted to grasp this people and bear them aloft, has bet the fate of the jackdaw in the fable. And the reason why we cannot be led by one of ourselves may be found in the fact that whilst we bear a common relation to the whites - attraction - we bear the opposite relation to each other - repulsion. I speak of the masses, who must move, or be moved, or we cannot rise. This attraction to the whites, and repulsion from each other, is but an instance of a general law, which holds good in physics and psychics, matter and mind. It is of the same class of facts with chemical affinity, head, and the electrical phenomena : it is our natural state : we could not have a common impulse to amalgamate with the whites wihtout mutual repulsion or debiscence. Hence the remark of Mr. Clark that "we are a divided people," is absolutely true, and contains the sub-statement that we have no leaders ; for if we had leaders we would not be what we are, absolutely disintegrated in regard to each other.
It is not pertinent at this time to enquire why this is so : yet the reason seems to be, that ours is the common destiny of all the peoples in this land, to amalgamate with all the rest and have no separate nationality.
Is it necessary to adduce facts to show that we have no leaders and that we are mutually repellent ? The Anti-Colonization movement, and the embracing of Methodism, the two great facts in the history of our people, were spontaneous movements of the masses, without leadership by anyone. The history of these events affords a curious study of a people otherwhise scattered and divided, yet moved by a common impulse pro hoc vice. The first was but an expression of the tendency to amalgamate, and the second was the cravings of a spiritual nature apart from the concerns of this life, and out of our mutual relations. In all our history, no man from among us has stood forth and announced a principle, or line of conduct, or set an example of progress to which any thousand have asseuted, or carried out. Let any among us, rising above menial occupation.
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set up a creditable business in the midst of a colored neighborhood ; and he will find, as others have found, that his brethren, so far from supporting him and holiding up his hands, will, on the contrary, pass his door to trade with the whites : if he succeed, he must depend largely upon the patronage of the whites : of all the colored churches in the land, I know not one which pays a decent salary to a colored minister, out of its own funds : and if a colored man seek the higher ranks of life as a lawyer, physician or editor, the same treatment by his brethren meets him. "The Herald of Freedom," says John I. Gaines, "in the midst of a colored population of nearly 4000 in and about Cincinnati - a population who command one million and a half of dollars - receives from them, for its support, sixteen dollars a week." Yet the Herald of Freedom is a straightfoward, earnest advocate of our common rights, and is doing manly service in battering down the special forms of oppression under which our people labor in Cincinnati.
But, if we have no "leaders" among the colored people, by what term are we to distinguish the colored men who
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were assiduously drummed up : by dint of persevering energy, and the aid of an old friend, he secured that grand yet lovely site, Clifton Park, where, some years before, Kossuth's tent had been pitched when he first landed on American soil : after all this toil, and trouble, and invention, when he called the people together for preliminary organization of the procession, he was scarcely permitted to say a word : the people elected marshall and aids, but left him out : and, on the eventful First of August, when there assembled, in squads of dozens, and hundreds, no less than five thousand colored people called together by his almost unaided efforts our "leader" was the only man who came and departed alone ! he wore cocked hat, and sword, and sabertash, and marched into the grand old park, as some one cruelly remarked, "Captain of the Invisible Guards!" and his brother "leaders!" as Mr. Clark calls them, may they not, in like manner, be termed, "leaders of an invisible people?"
It is not the fault of the "leaders," then, for we have none. Now, I cannot do more than point out where our difficulty lies. After a quarter of a century of earnest, patient thought over this heart problem, I can faintly utter my sad eureka, and leave to others the discovery of the remedy : it is for those who, with true hearts and clear heads, will assemble at Philadelphia in October, to begin the work of contriving the cure : if they take a clear view of the nature of our divided-ness, they will advance far : if they furthermore can seize upon the grand talisman which shall substitute mutual attraction for mutual repulsion, love for hate, their labors will be more than blessed : there is no need that we shall hate the white man in order to love one another : but come when or whence it may, the remedy will at first be slow, very slow, in action : there is so much to be overcome : myriad molecular affinities to be substituted for myriad molecular repulsions : let us be patient, therefore : the revolution is almost too great to be done in one generation. To the generous few who are laboring with true hearts, and walk by faith rather than sight, let me say, "let us pump as long as we can work our arms."
Yours as ever
COMMUNIPAW
New York, Sept., 1855.