OCCASIONAL PAPERS NO. 20.
American Negro Academy
Alexander Crummell
An Apostle of Negro Culture
BY
WILLIAM H. FERRIS
WASHINGTON, D. C.:
PUBLISHED BY THE ACADEMY
1920
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL
AN APOSTLE OF NEGRO CULTURE.
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL
AN APOSTLE OF NEGRO CULTURE.
A noted English lawyer-author has declared that the twelfth chapter ofEcclesiastes is the final word of the world’s philosophy; that no ancientor modern thinker has uttered a profounder word. And in the seventh verseof that chapter it reads, “Then shall the dust return to the earth as itwas; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”
Metaphysicians tell us that through his five senses, man is in touch withand in relation to his physical environment and a physical world, and thatthrough his reason, imagination, conscience, aesthetic and religiousintuitions, man is in touch with and in relation to his spiritualenvironment and a spiritual world. They also tell us that at death, thesoul and body merely part company and go their respective ways. Theoxygen, carbon, hydrogen and other chemical elements in the body minglewith the material elements from which they came. And the soul of man, theego, the center of self-consciousness, recognitive memory and reflectivethought, which has maintained its identity amid the changes of thephysical organism, will survive the destruction of that organism and liveon and on in the spirit world, embodied in whatever form and clothed withwhatever garments its Maker so decreed.
Scientists tell us that when you throw a pebble in a stream, it sets up aseries of ever-widening circles until it reaches the shore. They tell usthat when you utter an audible sound, you start in motion sound waveswhich travel on for miles and miles. So it is with the influence of ahuman personality. It does not end at the grave. It lives in the livesthat have been inspired, in the example set and the thoughts thrown out.
Twenty years and three months have elapsed since the soul of AlexanderCrummell bid its bodily partner farewell and took its flight to itsspiritual home. But Alexander Crummell’s terrestial influence did not endthus. It still goes on and will go on for centuries. We will brieflyreview his life and career and then estimate the weight, worth andsignificance of the ideas which he advocated, for which he lived and whichwere incarnated in his personality.
The Rev. Dr. Alexander Crummell, the Negro apostle of culture, was a bornautocrat, a man born to command. And men instinctively bowed before him.Some even trembled before his wrath.
[Pg 6]Crummell was born in New York in 1819, nearly a century ago. He was theson of Boston Crummell, a prince of the warlike Temene tribe, who wasstolen while a boy playing on the sands of the seashore. At first,Crummell, with George T. Downing attended a school in New York taught bythe Reverend Peter Williams, then went to the school in Canaan, NewHampshire, which was hauled into the pond by those who were angry becausethe Negro was taught to read. Crummell with others took refuge in a barn.They were fired upon; but Henry Highland Garnet fired a return shot, atwhich they were allowed to depart in peace. Then Crummell attended theOneida Institute, of which Beriah Green was the Presiden