INTRODUCTION CONTINUED – 5

(CONTINUED FROM 7/17/24)

The great National Convention of colored men held at Louisville, September, 1883, enrolled him as a member. His love for the people is shown in the following little incident. While serving as a member of the committee on education and labor, a proposition was made to ask Congress to pass a bill giving the monies which had been left in the treasury from the unclaimed bounties of colored soldiers to the high schools of the South, which would of course have included the denominational, and excluded the public schools. Against this he protested, notwithstanding he was at the head of the denominational school which would have received benefits, on the grounds that the masses should be aided and not the few, and because it was a lack of statesmanship and knowledge of the laws governing the land to ask aid for denominational schools. The committee voted him down solidly, but when the matter was called up in the convention, he took the platform and made a speech so convincing that the chairman, Hon. D. A. Straker, LL. D., of South Carolina, was called upon to change the report, which was done with good grace. At the convention of the Knights of Wise Men, held in Atlanta, Georgia, he took an active part in the deliberations. He has delivered several addresses before the American Baptist Home Mission Society. At the fiftieth anniversary held in New York, May 24, 1872, his orientation, “What are the Colored People Doing?” was much spoken of and published in the Jubilee Volume. He delivered another before the same body, May 26-27, 1885, at Saratoga, and has been invited to address the next meeting, May 29, 1887, at Minneapolis. In 1884, he was appointed by Hon. B. K. Bruce commissioner for the State of Kentucky in the colored department of the World’s Industrial and Cotton Exposition held at New Orleans, Louisiana, and succeeded in giving a splendid representation, thereby reflecting credit on the State. The school over which he presided made a creditable exhibit. The trustee board, in making the annual report to the General Association of Colored Baptists, said:

At the suggestion of our worthy president, who was also the commissioner for Kentucky for the World’s Exposition at New Orleans, an exhibition of our University, of both the literary and industrial work, was sent to the Exposition. To say that the display was complete and satisfactory is but to state it mildly. It has done much to advertise our University, and shows the capacity of our people for both education and industrial pursuits.

In September, 1883, Dr. Simmons called together and organized the Baptist women into a convention, for the purpose of raising money for the educational work of the denomination in the State. The body known as the “Baptist Women’s Educational Convention” has met every year since, and has and is doing a noble work in paying off the indebtedness of the State University.

Were you to ask me Dr. Simmons’ motto, I would say, “God, my race and denomination.” While holding tenaciously his own religious views, he is willing for other men to hold theirs. Among his strongest friends are eminent preachers, scholars and laymen of every denomination in the United States with which colored people are allied. The fact that the Wilberforce University conferred upon him the degree of D. D. is ample evidence of the friendliness existing between him and the brethren of that faith. The faculty of said school ranks with the most eminent men of America, among whom are Reverend B. W. Arnett, D. D., Professor W. S. Scarborough, LL.D., Bishops D. A. Payne, D. D., LL.D., John M. Brown, D.D., D.C.L., and others of like grace and eminence.

Being impressed with the idea that colored Baptists were not doing what they should for the support and influence of their peculiar views, he suggested, through the American Baptist, April 5, 1886, that a convention be held. This suggestion was heartily endorsed by Baptists throughout the United States. He issued the call at their suggestion, and the result was organization of the American National Baptist Convention, which met, August 25, 1886, in St. Louis, Mo., and of which he was unanimously elected president, and chairman of the executive committee. He preached the denominational sermon which was published in the minutes. It was rich in statistics and history, pregnant with the faith as handed down from the Apostles. He concluded by saying:

The work of the colored Baptists is marvelous, aye, stupendous. When we remember our elevation to-day, it is not with undue pride; no! no! no! with thanksgiving and humiliation, with self-abasement and lowliness, and with an earnest prayer for more faith, we lift our eyes to the Great Father of souls and pray His righteous benediction, that we bow our heads because we have been unprofitable servants. Yet it is with astonishment that we have reached such lofty heights, and with remarkable pleasure do we look back upon the depths from which we came. Driven out, Hagar-like, we have, Ishmael-like, still become a people and dwell in the presence of our brethren, and to-day, in figures bright and glowing in the ending of the nineteenth century, we count fully 1,071,000 – every sign of progress. It might be remarked, if we can rise to this point with few learned men, what shall be the result in the next twenty years? Books, papers, magazines and pamphlets shall be as plentiful as the maple leaves in full blown spring.

The Baptist host is like a cube; throw them aside and they always land on an equal side, and you need never despair when in your trials and doubts in your several churches; remember the God of battles is on your side and that the ages have only increased His glory.

His knowledge of the tenets of the denomination with which he is identified is marvelous. In this direction his research has been thorough and extensive as is shown in an article on “Baptism” published in the A. M. E. Review, October, 1886, in reply to Rev. B. W. Williams.

As an orator Dr. Simmons is pleasing to his audience. A quick thinker, and possessing a rich and ready flow of choice language, a figure that can be seen, and a voice that can be heard at a distance. At times, in the heat of debate, the whole grandeur of his soul is transfused into his countenance; and his hearers are electrified as only true eloquence can electrify.

He was invited to address the students of three different colleges in one year. At Selma University, May 28, 1885, his subject was “True Manliness.” The Baptist Pioneer commented as follows:

For nearly an hour and a half the speaker held the large audience spellbound. He was eloquent and inspiring. Rarely have we listened to a more practical oration. At times the audience was convulsed with laughter at the wit, and then immediately made to reflect under the solid words of wisdom which fell from the speaker’s lips.

His address before the Berea College students, subject “The Great Text-Book of the Ages,” received much comment. June 18, 1885, after delivering an oration before the Wilberforce Literary Society, subject “Leaders and Followers,” he had conferred on him the degree of D.D., by that venerable institution. In 1881, he had received the degree of A. M., from Howard University. During the educational movement in Kentucky, in 1885, I think, Dr. Simmons delivered a speech before the Inter-State Educational Convention, which was held in the white Baptist church, subject “The Education of the Negro Race.” In this convention were found the most eminent educators, State superintendents and the most noted thinkers in America. Favorable criticism was made by the New York Journal of Education, the Courier-Journal of Louisville, and other State papers.

He delivered an oration at the Lexington Emancipation celebration, January 1, 1887. Urging the hearers to greater efforts, he said:

The warm blood of the Negro that haunts the channels of his veins with ancient Egyptian and Ethiopian fires has been tempered in the climate of the South and reduced to that proportion which robs it of its sluggishness, subdues it of wild passion and holds it by reason, while the trials of the past have been the friction that brightens, the winds that toughen, and the frosts that ripen. No great song, or poem, or book, or invention has yet seen birth south of the “Mason and Dixon Line.” It has been reserved for us. The only American music was born on the plantations and wrung from aching hearts as wine from the luscious grape. It has touched the heart of the learned and engaged the attention of the scientific musician. As the Indian faded in the North, before the white man, so the white man of the South must yield to us, without, however, a bloody conflict. We shall gather wealth, learning and manhood and occupy the land. This is the asylum of the world; and the tramp of hurrying nations warns us that this is the “Valley of Decision.” On this soil are settled the great questions of the earth. Already the march of empire has bathed its weary feet in the Pacific, and with the exception of watery waste has arrived at its home, and it is possible that He who made all nations of one blood, will here in our land, marry and intermarry, and reduce this conglomerate mass to one distinct nationality, with all the blood made one, and the highest type of consecrated manhood being realized, reduced back to the Adamic color through us; or He may out of the aggregate develop each to its highest type, and let them live to the end of time, carrying out His divine plans, and unerringly accomplishing His decrees. Here in this new South the Negro shall shine in the constellation of the nations, and by his words and deeds hand down to unborn ages the glittering pages of our history. We shall in some prominent way mount the ladder of difficulties, scale the cliff of prejudices and hide our heads among the stars.

TO BE CONTINUED…