Down On the Farm
Downon a farm in the south, of the year of eighteen hundred and seventy-two, I was born in Louden County, Virginia. Son of a black, who was bought by Josh Fletcher from a slave trader, an Englishman by the name of Cook, for about two or three thousand dollars. The slave masters called him the buck. If I had been born in the time of slavery by black Jewish mother, I would have been worth about one thousand dollars to my father’s master, but my mother was a mulatto and I was born free, so-called. Now I am not worth thirty cents to any one. They won’t have me in jail unless some of my own people put me there.
Twelve years of my life was spent on the farm. My father taught me how to farm, milk cows and do a man’s work. When between eleven and twelve years of age, I sought the Lord for three weeks and days. I found him and he filled my heart with joy and love. At the age of twenty-eight, he called me from the world and I started to clean up.
I was a clean man, sent to the world with this message, The Black Jews.
The black boys do not need gymnastics to help make him a man. He only needs to be on a farm and made to work a few years. Then he will be able to take care of himself. The black man has got to get back to the place where he can produce the food he eats. He has been forced off of the farms, asthese farms have been given to others, to work, who are not of the black race.
We must find a farm somewhere in this world that we may produce the things that we need.
Haling Hank LenhtisA. W. Cook
Haling Hank LenhtisA. W. Cook
Haling Hank LenhtisA. W. Cook
During my farm life, God was preparing me for this day, because he wanted to use me for a good work among my people.
After seven years of country school I came North and fell into the hands of a good English family in Montclair, New Jersey. They taught me how to do house work, and gave me more schooling. They left me lacking for nothing, so I could make an honest living. When I left them I was able to do any kind of domestic job.
In nineteen hundred I stepped out into the professional world, and I saw the weak part of my life, that was: If I hoped to measure arms with my brother, I must go back to school. So, in nineteen hundred and five, I took a three years’ course in a business college in Newark, New Jersey, and made good. For the past ten years I have conversed with representatives of all races or nations of the world. They talk freely with me, and I am yet learning. I don’t know it all, and my ears are still open. This boy, Haling Hank Lenht has grown to a man of responsibility, and has gained many friends among all nations, because they can trust him.
In nineteen hundred and three I came before the world as professor A. W. Cook, a dancing master and a teacher of etiquette to my people. At that time, all the dancing that my people could do, was jigging and buck and wing dancing. I did that old stuff down on the farm. So I made up my mind to teach my people a new kind of dancing, the way the white people dance. I went to a book store and bought a book on etiquette and a ball room guide. I studied these books from cover to cover, and when I opened my dance halls, I was a success. In 1904 I had dancing classes in different cities and towns. Every night except Sunday night.