The Negro has been throughout the centuries of controversy an active collaborator, and often a pioneer, in the struggle for his own freedom and advan… - Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

Where is our historian to give us our side view and our chair of Negro history, to teach our people our own history? We are at the mercy of the "flotsam and jetsam" of the white writers. The very learned Rev. Alexander Crummell, before the American Negro Academy, stated that he heard J. C. Calhoun say that the inferiority of the Negro was so self-evident that he would not believe him human unless he could conjugate Greek verbs; and yet it must have been evident to Calhoun that in North Carolina there were many Negroes held as slaves who could read and write Arabic.¹ In those days men like Juan Latino, Amo, Capitein, Francis Williams, Rev. J. Pennington, and others could not only conjugate the Greek and Hebrew verbs, but had shown unmistakable evidences of learning, for they had received degrees from the universities of world-famed reputation. Yet in those days there were many whites unrestrained, enjoying the opportunities of education, who could not conjugate Greek roots nor verbs of the spoken language of the land. Yet this barrier was set up to persons restrained by force from the enjoyment of the most ordinary rights.

There is a sad and tragic chapter in the history of Cuba under Spanish rule, that seems to circle with pathetic recollections the dreadful wrongs done to innocent men....A calm generally precedes these conditions and I will attempt to carry you through the events as they were ushered into existence by the break of day.

By virtue of their being regarded as something "exceptional," even by friends and well-wishers, Negroes of attainment and genius have been unfairly disassociated from the group and group credit lost accordingly.