Address
What, Then, Must We Do Now?
Joseph H. Jackson calls Black Baptists beyond resentment and pampering toward responsibility, one American standard, moral discipline, and the one gospel of Jesus Christ.
Attribution
The following address is attributed to Dr. Joseph H. Jackson and comes from the pamphlet The Record of the 89th Annual Session of the National Baptist Convention, held with the Baptist Churches of Kansas City, Missouri, September 9-14, 1969. The text has been lightly cleaned for paragraphing and obvious transcription errors.
What, Then, Must We Do Now?
We must not despair, we must not compromise. We must no longer be motivated by the foul deeds that have been done against us in the past. But we, like other Americans, must return in earnest to our American ideology, in all seriousness, and seek to solve our problems in the light of the nation’s life and growth.
The civil rights movement must now modify its course and move in a different direction. It must cease to be a campaign of color, that is, of Negro Americans against white Americans. It must be a campaign to help America become, in theory and in practice, a more perfect and more wholesome and more constructive society.
The goals should be, not Negro rights alone, but the rights of all Americans. The emphases must be as much on civil responsibility as on civil rights. The appeal in the future must be made to the maturity, the existing ability of Negro people, and to their historic spirit of patriotism. The call is now to harness the health, physical, mental, moral, and spiritual, and not over-dramatize their hurts.
We need now to match our civil rights clubs with as many or more responsibility clubs. We do not wish to be deceived or pampered any longer by our community or our nation. We desire protection of all of our rights. We wish our communities to be protected against crimes of all sorts and against criminals, be they colored or white, but we do not wish to be pampered.
If we are guilty, punish us. If there be those of us who have conducted ourselves in such a way that we can rightfully be listed among the enemies of freedom and democracy, we ask the Department of Justice not to shield our deeds and overlook the secret files. If we have done wrong and repent of our sins, then pardon us and give us another chance, but don’t pamper us.
If we do not know, give us a chance to learn and classify us according to our mental gifts and our moral fitness. When we have done well, promote us, but don’t pamper us. Don’t pamper us by excusing our mistakes and finding alibis for us when straight talk is better. Don’t pamper us with the old smear campaign of what happened in the days of slavery. Don’t pamper us by giving us dole and refusing jobs on which we can earn an honest dollar.
For in pampering Negro people, the government, local and national, drives a wedge between honest white Americans and Negro Americans.
We Seek One Standard
We do not need two Americas. One is enough. We do not need to keep before us the relics of a Confederate and a Union army. We do not need to divide this nation any longer with a Mason and Dixon’s line–with one section in the North and another in the South.
We do not need two Americas: one rich and the other poor, one white and one black, one free and one in chains. We need only one America. And that America should be free, just, and strong.
We do not need two Federal Constitutions. The one we have is enough. It is enough to break the barriers between races and nationalities and merge this great country into one great American family under one glorious flag.
We do not need two standards. We are equipped already with all of the faculties and talents of first-class citizenship. As a race we are not going to condone in ourselves the doctrine that standards must be lowered in order to give us our rightful place in life. For we know that we cannot be counted in the ranks of first-class citizens if we advocate or accept for ourselves second-class standards and an inferior share of our responsibilities.
We resent and resist the attempts of the scholars, black or white, who advocate the adoption of a two-language system in the United States–broken English as the legitimate language of Negroes, and correct speech as the legitimate tongue of American whites. Incorrect English is not a racial trait. There are many white Americans who speak an English dialect and there are many Negroes who know and appreciate correct English.
Many Negroes know and rejoice in Shakespeare’s dramas and weep in grief at his bloodstained tragedies. We know John Milton and can feel the pain of his “Paradise Lost” and find new hope in his “Paradise Regained.” We have joined with Robert Browning in the “Journey of Paracelsus,” and we move gracefully from youth to old age in his fascinating “Rabbi Ben Ezra.” We can appreciate the vision of beauty revealed by Byron, Shelley, and Keats, and one of America’s sons, Jonathan Brooks, has added his lines to the glory of poetry.
So leave the language as it is. Let incorrect English be incorrect and leave a standard to which all may aspire.
We do not need two standards of scholarship–one for Negroes and one for whites. Already the records of some of our best universities and colleges in this country tell us that Negroes have qualified, and can qualify, as the valedictorians of their classes and as outstanding thinkers and scholars among other races and nationalities.
We do not need two standards of ethics. Keep the standard as high as possible and let all men aspire for the heights. We understand the oughtness of conscience. We can heed the call of the highest and the best, and can appreciate the grandeur and the beauty of that which is sacred and holy.
We ask not, and seek not, a lower morality than that proclaimed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. It is true the standards here are most exacting. The requirements are unselfish; and here morality is deeper than actions, and has its foundation in motives and attitudes. But by the help of Divine Providence, and through the mercies of God, we can hear the voice of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, and we can understand His claims, His demands, and His directives.
Don’t scale down the heights or lower the most lofty peaks thereof. Give us also the Mount of the Beatitudes as Jesus left it, and He will teach our feet to climb and our souls to behold the heights from which our help will come.
We do not need another gospel–a gospel of compromise, a gospel of convenience, and a religion of ease and complacency. We accept the one gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have already produced some of the greatest preachers that America has ever known. When the history of great preachers is written in America, the volume will not be complete until the names of C. T. Walker, E. C. Morris, E. K. Love, and L. K. Williams are included in the ranks.
We do not need two Calvarys–one is enough. We can hear what it says to us, and we know full well what it does for us. The one Calvary breaks down the middle wall of partition between the soul and the Savior. Its redemptive power is just as great in ghettos as it is in the homes of suburbia, and the vitality of Calvary is just as effective for the vileness of the poor as it is for the lust and the pride of the rich.
We accept no compromise, and we seek no substitute, for the one transaction on Calvary satisfied all the claims against humankind, and included the scattered tribes of Africa, the ebony sons of America, as well as kings and princes of Europe and the crown heads of the ancient world.
One transaction of Calvary paid the whole debt, and from Immanuel’s veins enough blood was drawn to give the needed transfusions. From the eternal Son of God an abiding, copious, and abundant stream gushed forth for all the weary sons of men, and He opened a fountain not only in the House of David, but in every hut, in every hovel, and in every clime.
We can join with others in singing with hope of that fountain–the cleansing fountain, the flowing fountain, and the full fountain. We too can sing with the poet:
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away.
What a message! What words of hope! And what a lift for every troubled and sinful soul.
It is no longer money or wealth, race or nationality; it is the grace of God. Here is a new freedom that no oppressor can take away–a new liberty that chains cannot bind, and a new democracy that reaches all mankind.
In the shadow of Calvary we need not cringe or lose our souls in the bitterness of despair; for here is no discrimination, no class distinction, and no special rank. The searching and pure light of divine holiness that beams from Calvary reveals the sins and guilt of all, and testifies that there is no difference, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
But its redemptive message gives to each soul a new chance and a new benediction, and whosoever will may rise from gloom to the boundless glory of God. We need not pity, but apply ourselves. We need not hold grudges against enemies or seek revenge against those who have wronged us. Calvary will right every wrong. It has not only forgiven us our sins, it has taught us to forgive those who have trespassed against us.