12 THINGS THE NEGRO MUST DO FOR HIMSELF
By Nannie Helen Burroughs
Note: Many of you have copied and posted this article on your web sites and blogs. We would appreciate proper attribution to Black Men In America.com.
The 12 Things The Negro Must Do For Himself was a booklet sold in the early 1900’s. The retail price for this booklet was 10 cents. We learned about the book from Black Men In America.com Founder and Publisher, Gary Johnson’s grandmother who gave him her original copy of the book which was in mint condition. The book sold for 10 cents.
Many attempts have been made to find the booklet. As far as we know it is out of print. There is a wealth of information about Nannie Helen Burroughs on the Internet. To learn more about her, check your favorite search engine and share the knowledge. A good site to visit is www.nhburroughsinfo.org.
Posted by Black Men In America.com Founder & Publisher Gary Johnson from the original book by Ms. Burroughs. (Circa Early 1900’s)
1. The Negro Must Learn To Put First Things First. The First Things Are: Education; Development of Character Traits; A Trade and Home Ownership.
The Negro puts too much of his earning in clothes, in food, in show and in having what he calls “a good time.” The Dr. Kelly Miller said, “The Negro buys what he WANTS and begs for what he Needs.” Too true!
2. The Negro Must Stop Expecting God and White Folk To Do For Him What He Can Do For Himself.
It is the “Divine Plan” that the strong shall help the weak, but even God does not do for man what man can do for himself. The Negro will have to do exactly what Jesus told the man (in John 5:8) to do–Carry his own load–“Take up your bed and walk.”
3. The Negro Must Keep Himself, His Children And His Home Clean And Make The Surroundings In Which He Lives Comfortable and Attractive.
He must learn to “run his community up”–not down. We can segregate by law, we integrate only by living. Civilization is not a matter of race, it is a matter of standards. Believe it or not–some day, some race is going to outdo the Anglo-Saxon, completely. It can be the Negro race, if the Negro gets sense enough. Civilization goes up and down that way.
4. The Negro Must Learn To Dress More Appropriately For Work And For Leisure.
Knowing what to wear–how to wear it–when to wear it and where to wear it, are earmarks of common sense, culture and also an index to character.
5. The Negro Must Make His Religion An Everyday Practice And Not Just A Sunday-Go-To-Meeting Emotional Affair.
6. The Negro Must Highly Resolve To Wipe Out Mass Ignorance.
The leaders of the race must teach and inspire the masses to become eager and determined to improve mentally, morally and spiritually, and to meet the basic requirements of good citizenship.
We should initiate an intensive literacy campaign in America, as well as in Africa. Ignorance–satisfied ignorance–is a millstone about the neck of the race. It is democracy’s greatest burden.
Social integration is a relationship attained as a result of the cultivation of kindred social ideals, interests and standards.
It is a blending process that requires time, understanding and kindred purposes to achieve. Likes alone and not laws can do it.
7. The Negro Must Stop Charging His Failures Up To His “Color” And To White People’s Attitude.
The truth of the matter is that good service and conduct will make senseless race prejudice fade like mist before the rising sun.
God never intended that a man’s color shall be anything other than a badge of distinction. It is high time that all races were learning that fact. The Negro must first QUALIFY for whatever position he wants. Purpose, initiative, ingenuity and industry are the keys that all men use to get what they want. The Negro will have to do the same. He must make himself a workman who is too skilled not to be wanted, and too DEPENDABLE not to be on the job, according to promise or plan. He will never become a vital factor in industry until he learns to put into his work the vitalizing force of initiative, skill and dependability. He has gone “RIGHTS” mad and “DUTY” dumb.
8. The Negro Must Overcome His Bad Job Habits.
He must make a brand new reputation for himself in the world of labor. His bad job habits are absenteeism, funerals to attend, or a little business to look after. The Negro runs an off and on business. He also has a bad reputation for conduct on the job–such as petty quarrelling with other help, incessant loud talking about nothing; loafing, carelessness, due to lack of job pride; insolence, gum chewing and–too often–liquor drinking. Just plain bad job habits!
9. He Must Improve His Conduct In Public Places.
Taken as a whole, he is entirely too loud and too ill-mannered.
There is much talk about wiping out racial segregation and also much talk about achieving integration.
Segregation is a physical arrangement by which people are separated in various services.
It is definitely up to the Negro to wipe out the apparent justification or excuse for segregation.
The only effective way to do it is to clean up and keep clean. By practice, cleanliness will become a habit and habit becomes character.
10. The Negro Must Learn How To Operate Business For People–Not For Negro People, Only.
To do business, he will have to remove all typical “earmarks,” business principles; measure up to accepted standards and meet stimulating competition, graciously–in fact, he must learn to welcome competition.
11. The Average So-Called Educated Negro Will Have To Come Down Out Of The Air. He Is Too Inflated Over Nothing. He Needs An Experience Similar To The One That Ezekiel Had–(Ezekiel 3:14-19). And He Must Do What Ezekiel Did
Otherwise, through indifference, as to the plight of the masses, the Negro, who thinks that he has escaped, will lose his own soul. It will do all leaders good to read Hebrew 13:3, and the first Thirty-seven Chapters of Ezekiel.
A race transformation itself through its own leaders and its sensible “common people.” A race rises on its own wings, or is held down by its own weight. True leaders are never “things apart from the people.” They are the masses. They simply got to the front ahead of them. Their only business at the front is to inspire to masses by hard work and noble example and challenge them to “Come on!” Dante stated a fact when he said, “Show the people the light and they will find the way!”
There must arise within the Negro race a leadership that is not out hunting bargains for itself. A noble example is found in the men and women of the Negro race, who, in the early days, laid down their lives for the people. Their invaluable contributions have not been appraised by the “latter-day leaders.” In many cases, their names would never be recorded, among the unsung heroes of the world, but for the fact that white friends have written them there.
“Lord, God of Hosts, Be with us yet.”
The Negro of today does not realize that, but, for these exhibits A’s, that certainly show the innate possibilities of members of their own race, white people would not have been moved to make such princely investments in lives and money, as they have made, for the establishment of schools and for the on-going of the race.
12. The Negro Must Stop Forgetting His Friends. “Remember.”
Read Deuteronomy 24:18. Deuteronomy rings the big bell of gratitude. Why? Because an ingrate is an abomination in the sight of God. God is constantly telling us that “I the Lord thy God delivered you”–through human instrumentalities.
The American Negro has had and still has friends–in the North and in the South. These friends not only pray, speak, write, influence others, but make unbelievable, unpublished sacrifices and contributions for the advancement of the race–for their brothers in bonds.
The noblest thing that the Negro can do is to so live and labor that these benefactors will not have given in vain. The Negro must make his heart warm with gratitude, his lips sweet with thanks and his heart and mind resolute with purpose to justify the sacrifices and stand on his feet and go forward–“God is no respector of persons. In every nation, he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is” sure to win out. Get to work! That’s the answer to everything that hurts us. We talk too much about nothing instead of redeeming the time by working.
R-E-M-E-M-B-E-R
In spite of race prejudice, America is brim full of opportunities. Go after them!
Note: Many of you have copied and posted this article on your web sites and blogs. We encourage you to share the information. We simply ask that you copy the material from this web site or blog that you attribute and acknowledge Black Men In America.com.
About The Author
Nannie Helen Burroughs was born in Orange, Virginia on May 2, 1879 to parents John and Jennie Burroughs. Young Burroughs attended school in Washington, D.C. and then moved to Kentucky where she attended Eckstein-Norton University and eventually received an honorary M.A. degree in 1907.
Despite the absence of a college degree, Burroughs sought a teaching position in Washington, D.C. When she did not receive it, she moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and became associate editor of The Christian Banner, a Baptist newspaper. Burroughs returned to Washington, D.C. where, despite receiving a high rating on the civil service exam, she was refused a position in the public school system. Burroughs took a series of temporary jobs including office building janitor and bookkeeper for a small manufacturing firm, hoping to eventually become a teacher in Washington, D.C. She then accepted a position in Louisville as secretary of the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention.
In 1907 Burroughs, supported by the National Baptist Convention, began planning the National Trade and Professional School for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C. The school opened in 1909 with 26-year-old Burroughs as its first president. Burroughs adopted the motto “We specialize in the wholly impossible” for the school, which taught courses on the high school and junior college level. She led her small faculty in training students through a curriculum that emphasized both vocational and professional skills. Her students were to become self-sufficient wage earners and “expert homemakers.”
Unlike most of her contemporaries, Burroughs believed that industrial and classical education were compatible. She also became an early advocate of African American history, requiring each of her students to pass that course before graduation. Burroughs was a demanding principal. According to observers, she was such a purist that she was physically pained when she encountered grammatical errors made by her students.
Nannie Helen Burroughs never married. She devoted her life to the National Trade and Professional School for Women and Girls and remained its principal until her death in 1961. Three years later the institution she founded was renamed the Nannie Burroughs School.
The Secret of Selling the Negro Market
The Secret To Selling the Negro Market is a 1954 film financed by Johnson Publishing Company, the publisher of Ebony magazine, to encourage advertisers to promote their products and services in the Black/Negro media. The film showed Black/Negro professionals, housewives and students as participants in the American consumer society, and it emphasized the economic power of this demographic community. The film, which was shot in Kodachrome Color, featured appearances by Sinclair Weeks, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and radio announcer Robert Trout. The film had its premiere in July 1954 at the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was shown on a non-theatrical basis.
Watch this film and measure how far we’ve come over the last 60+ years.
To see how far we’ve come and how far we’ve fallen, click here and read the most read article in the history of this website: How Do Black People Spend Their Money.
Attorney S. Lee Merritt Speaks On The Atrocities Befalling Blacks In America
S. Lee Merritt, Esq. is a social justice activist and attorney barred to practice law in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the State of New Jersey, federally in Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the US District Court for the District of New Jersey, and US District Court of the Northern District of Texas.
Attorney Merritt is emerging as an influential new voice in the fight for Civil Rights throughout the country by bringing a passion for social reform and a commitment to speaking out on inequities while practicing law.
Merritt is a Cum Laude graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. He attended law school in Philadelphia, PA at Temple University’s James Beasley School of Law where he received several commendations for trial advocacy as part of the National Trial Team. He was also recognized for his acumen in persuasive writing as an inductee to the Temple Inn of Courts. He began his legal career as an associate of the Cochran Firm before going into private practice.
Attorney Merritt leads a high profile practice with clients involved in international events including the tragic Dallas sniper attacks of July 7, 2016, corporate discrimination cases, viral police brutality matters and several cases associated with the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Attorney Merritt enjoys a reputation for dogmatic determination and ensuring a just outcome for his clients beyond mere monetary compensation.
Prior to becoming an attorney, Merritt worked as a school teacher and basketball coach. Merritt is also a spoken word artist, public speaker, mentor and proud father.
His commitment to social justice is born out of his own experiences and inner city upbringing. Merritt is committed to the reform of the justice system in America and is using his practice to effect lasting change for undeserved and underrepresented communities.
Click here to visit the official web page of Attorney S. Lee Merritt.
Gospel truth for all that is seriously lacking today.
Wow. I am going to print this out for my son.
This is quite an insightful read! Being a young, black man with an old soul and mind, seeing publications like this are both inspiring and puzzling. While many of us struggle to find better ways to live our lives and fulfill the duty of one conscious negro to another, it is a treat to see that efforts such as this, encouraging our communities to do better for ourselves and seek better lives. In the same breath, it is puzzling to see that such advocacy for our communities has been in place for decades, and yet we’re still scrambling to find the right ways to lead our people out of adversity. This is certainly a relevant piece of information and a great tool for teaching no matter the era.
I happen to live on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue, so this was a treat to read. In my travels, I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for a copy of this book.
Great read!
That make u reevaluate reconstruc and refresh your thinking and whole way of doing