Thread by @AlsoACarpenter

1/ I thought this was interesting, from “Mrs. Richard B. Gaffin,” I’m presuming Pauline Gaffin, the wife of Richard Gaffin Sr, printed in The Presbyterian Guardian in 1951:

2/ “The next three months have been allotted to a study of the American Negro. This is a good bit of time. However, it is far too little when we consider our ignorance of the subject and our lack of concern, while the evil one is seeking to capture the Negro people as never ...

3/ "...before.

"The American Negro is one of us. He did not come recently from some distant land bringing a culture and religion all of his own. He is a product of American environment, and not by choice.

4/ "Despite this he is inclined to think and feel in the traditional American way.
This is illustrated by the lives and philosophies of the great Negro leaders in our land.

5/ "… We have a duty toward these Americans, greater than to others if we may say that, because of our relation to them.

6/ "… For your study of The History of the American Negro, in April we are suggesting the first seven chapters of, The Story of The American Negro, by Ina Corinne Brown, Friendship Press, N. Y.

7/ "The author has given us a carefully documented account of the American Negro from the time he was unmercifully uprooted from his native African haunts to the present.

8/ "The author is very sympathetic and shows that slavery, the blackest of social evils, though begun somewhat as an accident grew and shaped the economic pattern of life, because of greed without principle, an evil of which money was, indeed, the root."

9/ Definitely some paternalism throughout, but I thought it was interesting that she understood that she didn't fully understand, and that that was wrong. She saw that more emphasis should be given to the subject because of the mistreatment African Americans had received.

10/10 Also, she perceived that studying the history would be part of the remedy. She acknowledged slavery as true evil, without qualification. And lastly, she realized that the root was not natural or ordained, but was, rather, greed and money, i.e., exploitation.

11/10 No major statement here, hahaha. Just something interesting to come across, and consider the mindset of some in 1951.

Methinks many of her male counterparts in the Presbyterian Church, and authors in The Presbyterian Guardian, could have benefited from her study.

alsoacarpenter.com/2018/11/26/the…