- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- T. Thomas Fortune the Afro-American Agitator: A Collection of Writings, 1880–1928
- Brief Chronology of T. Thomas Fortune's Life
- Prescript
- PART 1 Politics, Economics, and Education
- 1 Who Will Own the Soil of the South in the Future
- 2 Status of the Race
- 3 The Civil Rights Decision
- 4 Between Two Fires
- 5 A New Party/But It Will Be!
- 6 The Negro in Politics
- 7 Negrowump
- 8 The Kind of Education the Afro-American Most Needs
- 9 The Negro's Place in American Life at the Present Day
- 10 The Voteless Citizen
- PART 2 Civil Rights and Race Leadership
- 11 The Virtue of Agitation
- 12 Civil Rights and Social Privileges
- 13 Afro-American League Convention Speech
- 14 Are We Brave Men or Cowards?
- 15 Mob Law in the South
- 16 Immorality of Southern Suffrage Legislation
- 17 False Theory of Education Cause of Race Demoralization
- 18 Failure of the Afro-American People to Organize
- 19 The Breath of Agitation Is Life
- 20 The Quick and the Dead
- 21 A Man Without A Country
- 22 Segregation and Neighborhood Agreements
- PART 3 Race and the Color Line
- 23 John Brown and Nat. Turner
- 24 The Color Line
- 25 The Afro-American
- 26 Whose Problem is This?
- 27 The Latest Color Line
- 28 Race Absorption
- 29 Who Are We? Afro-Americans, Colored People or Negroes?
- 30 We Must Make Literature to Make Public Opinion
- 31 Separate the Douglass and Lincoln Birthdays
- PART 4 Africa, Emigration, and Colonialism
- 32 The World in Africa
- 33 An African Empire
- 34 Will the Afro-American Return to Africa?
- 35 The Nationalization of Africa
- Postscript
- Selected Bibliography of Fortune's Writings
- Selected Bibliography For Further Reading
- Index
- [UNTITLED]
- New Perspectives On the History of the South
The Negro's Place in American Life at the Present Day
The Negro's Place in American Life at the Present Day
- Chapter:
- (p.92) 9 The Negro's Place in American Life at the Present Day
- Source:
- T. Thomas Fortune, the Afro-American Agitator
- Author(s):
Shawn Leigh Alexander
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
This chapter presents the essay “The Negro's Place in American Life at the Present Day.” Despite Fortune's usual themes of race unity, race pride, and agitation for political and civil rights, his message was essentially one of gradualism, not the immediate demand of rights of his earlier years and his later Negro World editorials. In the end, Fortune optimistically looked at the future, arguing that being “mindful, therefore, of the Negro's two hundred and forty-five years of slave education and unrequited toil, and of his thirty years of partial freedom and less than partial opportunity, who shall say that his place in American life at the present day is not all that should be reasonably expected of him.” In essence, he was trying to win the respect of the white audience in this essay. Fortune explained how far the race has come and recognized that there was still some work to do, but at the same time he made the point that such a condition did not justify abandonment of the principles of the Constitution by white America.
Keywords: Negro, African American community, civil rights, race unity, gradualism, race pride, whites
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- T. Thomas Fortune the Afro-American Agitator: A Collection of Writings, 1880–1928
- Brief Chronology of T. Thomas Fortune's Life
- Prescript
- PART 1 Politics, Economics, and Education
- 1 Who Will Own the Soil of the South in the Future
- 2 Status of the Race
- 3 The Civil Rights Decision
- 4 Between Two Fires
- 5 A New Party/But It Will Be!
- 6 The Negro in Politics
- 7 Negrowump
- 8 The Kind of Education the Afro-American Most Needs
- 9 The Negro's Place in American Life at the Present Day
- 10 The Voteless Citizen
- PART 2 Civil Rights and Race Leadership
- 11 The Virtue of Agitation
- 12 Civil Rights and Social Privileges
- 13 Afro-American League Convention Speech
- 14 Are We Brave Men or Cowards?
- 15 Mob Law in the South
- 16 Immorality of Southern Suffrage Legislation
- 17 False Theory of Education Cause of Race Demoralization
- 18 Failure of the Afro-American People to Organize
- 19 The Breath of Agitation Is Life
- 20 The Quick and the Dead
- 21 A Man Without A Country
- 22 Segregation and Neighborhood Agreements
- PART 3 Race and the Color Line
- 23 John Brown and Nat. Turner
- 24 The Color Line
- 25 The Afro-American
- 26 Whose Problem is This?
- 27 The Latest Color Line
- 28 Race Absorption
- 29 Who Are We? Afro-Americans, Colored People or Negroes?
- 30 We Must Make Literature to Make Public Opinion
- 31 Separate the Douglass and Lincoln Birthdays
- PART 4 Africa, Emigration, and Colonialism
- 32 The World in Africa
- 33 An African Empire
- 34 Will the Afro-American Return to Africa?
- 35 The Nationalization of Africa
- Postscript
- Selected Bibliography of Fortune's Writings
- Selected Bibliography For Further Reading
- Index
- [UNTITLED]
- New Perspectives On the History of the South
