3. Individual Achievement: The Spanish-American War

It happened that just at the time that Booker T. Washington was advancing to great distinction, three or four other individuals were reflecting special credit on the race. One of these was a young scholar, W. E. Burghardt DuBois, who after a college career at Fisk continued his studies at Harvard and Berlin and finally took the Ph. D. degree at Harvard in 1895. There had been sound scholars in the race before DuBois, but generally these had rested on attainment in the languages or mathematics, and most frequently they had expressed themselves in rather philosophical disquisition. Here, however, was a thorough student of economics, and one who was able to attack the problems of his people and meet opponents on the basis of modern science. He was destined to do great good, and the race was proud of him.

In 1896 also an authentic young poet who had wrestled with poverty and doubt at last gained a hearing. After completing the course at a high school in Dayton, Paul Laurence Dunbar ran an elevator for four dollars a week, and then he peddled from door to door two little volumes of verse that had been privately printed. William Dean Howells at length gave him a helping hand, and Dodd, Mead & Co. published Lyrics of Lowly Life. Dunbar wrote both in classic English and in the dialect that voiced the humor and the pathos of the life of those for whom he spoke. What was not at the time especially observed was that in numerous poems he suggested the discontent with the age in which he lived and thus struck what later years were to prove an important keynote. After he had waited and struggled so long, his success was so great that it became a vogue, and imitators sprang up everywhere. He touched the heart of his people and the race loved him.

By 1896 also word began to come of a Negro American painter, Henry O. Tanner, who was winning laurels in Paris. At the same time a beautiful singer, Mme. Sissieretta Jones, on the concert stage was giving new proof of the possibilities of the Negro as an artist in song. In the previous decade Mme. Marie Selika, a cultured vocalist of the first rank, had delighted audiences in both America and Europe, and in 1887 had appeared Flora Batson, a ballad singer whose work at its best was of the sort that sends an audience into the wildest enthusiasm. In 1894, moreover, Harry T. Burleigh, competing against sixty candidates, became baritone soloist at St. Georges's Episcopal Church, New York, and just a few years later he was to be employed also at Temple Emanu-El, the Fifth Avenue Jewish synagogue. From abroad also came word of a brilliant musician, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who by his "Hiawatha's Wedding-Feast" in 1898 leaped into the rank of the foremost living English composers.

On the more popular stage appeared light musical comedy, intermediate between the old Negro minstrelsy and a genuine Negro drama, the representative companies becoming within the next few years those of Cole and Johnson, and Williams and Walker.

Especially outstanding in the course of the decade, however, was the work of the Negro soldier in the Spanish-American War. There were at the time four regiments of colored regulars in the Army of the United States, the Twenty-fourth Infantry, the Twenty-fifth Infantry, the Ninth Cavalry, and the Tenth Cavalry. When the war broke out President McKinley sent to Congress a message recommending the enlistment of more regiments of Negroes. Congress failed to act; nevertheless colored troops enlisted in the volunteer service in Massachusetts, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The Eighth Illinois was officered throughout by Negroes, J. R. Marshall commanding; and Major Charles E. Young, a West Point graduate, was in charge of the Ohio battalion. The very first regiment ordered to the front when the war broke out was the Twenty-fourth Infantry; and Negro troops were conspicuous in the fighting around Santiago.

They figured in a brilliant charge at Las Quasimas on June 24, and in an attack on July 1 upon a garrison at El Caney (a position of importance for securing possession of a line of hills along the San Juan River, a mile and a half from Santiago) the First Volunteer Cavalry (Colonel Roosevelt's "Rough Riders") was practically saved from annihilation by the gallant work of the men of the Tenth Cavalry. Fully as patriotic, though in another way, was a deed of the Twenty-fourth Infantry. Learning that General Miles desired a regiment for the cleaning of a yellow fever hospital and the nursing of some victims of the disease, the Twenty-fourth volunteered its services and by one day's work so cleared away the rubbish and cleaned the camp that the number of cases was greatly reduced. Said the Review of Reviews in editorial comment:215 "One of the most gratifying incidents of the Spanish War has been the enthusiasm that the colored regiments of the regular army have aroused throughout the whole country. Their fighting at Santiago was magnificent.

The Negro soldiers showed excellent discipline, the highest qualities of personal bravery, very superior physical endurance, unfailing good temper, and the most generous disposition toward all comrades in arms, whether white or black. Roosevelt's Rough Riders have come back singing the praises of the colored troops. There is not a dissenting voice in the chorus of praise.... Men who can fight for their country as did these colored troops ought to have their full share of gratitude and honor."