Sutton E. Griggs

“ Grant unto us equality of citizenship. Fix your standard for a man! If you choose, plant the foot of the ladder in a fiery test and engirdle each round with a forest of thorns. Do this and more, if your civilization and the highest needs of the unborn world require it. But when, through the fire and up the path of thorns, we climb where others climb, hurl us not back because of a color given us from above. Let one test be unto all men. Let the strong arm of the nation for its own good and for the ultimate good of humanity insist upon the observance of this principle wherever Old Glory floats. ”

“ The snowstorm continues, the child muses, the mother watches. Astral is an onlooker. The look of earnestness on the child's brow deepens and deepens, and Erma's bosom heaves, her lips move as if in prayer, and the book trembles in her hand. By and by the child opens its lips to speak, Erma leans forward, her eyes aglow with strange fire. Astral feels the fever rising in his veins and somehow regards himself as face to face with a crisis in two souls. He realizes that soon his wife and her child shall stand revealed unto each other, and a feeling of awe creeps over him. ”

“ At Stowe University, Belton had learned to respect women. It was in these schools that the work of slavery in robbing the colored women of respect, was undone. Woman now occupied the same position in Belton's eye as she did in the eye of the Anglo-Saxon.
There is hope for that race or nation that respects its women. It was for the smile of a woman that the armored knight of old rode forth to deeds of daring. It is for the smile of women that the soldier of to-day endures the hardships of the camp and braves the dangers of the field of battle. ”

“ Tell the North that down in this Southland there is an element of as noble men as the world affords; men with a keen sense of justice and an unfaltering purpose to lift our section to a position of high esteem in the estimation of the world. We may seem to work at cross purposes with you of the North; we may be overwhelmed by waves of race prejudice from time to time, but we are here, and I claim to be one of them. I challenge the man, white or black, rich or poor, to say that I ever mistreated him by word or deed. ”

“ Eternity has clasped a few more of her romping children, the mad galloping years, to her eager bosom since you last gazed upon the countenances of the principal actors in our little drama. Winter, the frozen love of God, is upon its annual visit to earth, and Astral and Erma Wysong Herndon are spending the winter eve in their cosy, modestly furnished home before a grate full of live, glowing coals, while little Astral Herndon, Jr., a pretty, precocious child of seven summers is astride his fond papa's knee, gazing thoughtfully out of his pretty brown eyes into the fire. ”

“ I die for mankind, for humanity, for civilization. If the voice of a poor Negro, who thus gives his life, will be heard, I only ask as a return that all mankind will join hands and help my poor down-trodden people to secure those rights for which they organized the Imperium, which my betrayal has now destroyed. I urge this because love of liberty is such an inventive genius, that if you destroy one device it at once constructs another more powerful. ”

“ If he had only gone to her and lifted her to a resting place on his bosom—but the Unseen power that ordains that two souls shall journey through earth together, also chooses, it would seem, the hallowed spot; chooses the precious and never to be forgotten moment when soul is unveiled to soul; chooses the exact degree of the development that shall exist in each at the hour of the mating.
So, the Unseen sent Astral forth and not to Erma's side. As he stepped out upon the doorstep, the queen of the night wrapped his noble brow with her silver cords in wanton playfulness. ”

“ The Negro is the latest comer upon the scene of modern civilization. It would be the crowning glory of even this marvelous age; it would be the grandest contribution ever made to the cause of human civilization; it would be a worthy theme for the songs of the Holy Angels, if every Negro, away from the land of his nativity, can by means of the pen, force an acknowledgment of equality from the proud lips of the fierce, all conquering Anglo-Saxon, thus eclipsing the record of all other races of men, who without exception have had to wade through blood to achieve their freedom. ”

“ Just now the American people seem much engrossed with the training of the hand of the Negro, confessedly a work of tremendous moment. But be it known unto you, oh Americans, that it is through his mind, his spirit, the exhalations of his soul, his dreams or lack of dreams, that the Negro is to leave his most marked influence on American life. Let the use to which Mr. Dixon is putting his borrowed emotional power recall the nation to the slumbering Negro mind that must ere long awake to power. ”

“ Now, Aunt Mollie, I have an engagement at four o'clock and must leave you. Pray for me, for I shall be most viciously assailed by my own people who feel that the stand they take against me has a parallel in the white race where the common laborer is shut out from social recognition by the well-to-do element. And you know how hard a Negro will throw a stone at another if he feels that he has the sanction of the white people. Nevertheless, I shall strive in my humble way to prove that labor is not inimical to ladyhood. ”

“ We must change the conception which the Anglo-Saxon has formed of our character. We should let him know that patience has a limit; that strength brings confidence; that faith in God will demand the exercise of our own right arm; that hope and despair are each equipped with swords, the latter more dreadful than the former. Before we make a forward move, let us pull the veil from before the eyes of the Anglo-Saxon that he may see the New Negro standing before him humbly, but firmly demanding every right granted him by his maker and wrested from him by man. ”

“ A Negro wife, true to that impulse of the woman's heart that has made this old world worth living in, that has taught men that the fireside is worth dying for, that impulse—devotion to a loved one in distress, led that girl to journey by her husband's side through bog and swamp, bearing up bravely under the scorching heat of the sun and wilting not in the dead of night amid the gloom of the beast infested forest. ”

“ When his eye fell upon the rigid body of the convict on the chair and beheld the form of the beautiful Erma—it, too, rigid in death—in terror at the sight, he began to struggle to get out of the house. Astral seemed equally determined to have him drink in the horror of the situation fully. The policeman, now completely terror-stricken, raised the cry of "Murder! murder!" and struck Astral a violent blow on the head. As if robbed of life, Astral fell unconscious upon the floor. The noise of the struggle, and the cries of the policeman drew a large crowd to the house. ”

“ He loved her still if anything, more passionately than ever. But ah! what were his feelings in those days toward the flag which he had loved so dearly, which had floated proudly and undisturbed, while color prejudice, upheld by it, sent, as he thought, cruel want with drawn sword to stab his family honor to death. Belton had now lost all hope of personal happiness in this life, and as he grew more and more composed he found himself better prepared than ever to give his life wholly to the righting of the wrongs of his people. ”

“ On an eminence crowning the center of the area whereon the city is planted, the State has builded its capitol, and from the tower thereof one can see the engaging network of streets, contemplate the splendid architecture of the buildings, and gaze upon the noble trees that boldly line the sidewalks, and thus testify that they are not afraid of civilization.
Even in the matter of climate Almaville is highly favored, it would seem. Her summers are not too hot nor her winters too cold, and many a fevered brow finds solace in her balmy breezes. ”

“ But, we may gaze on Bernard Belgrave as he emerges from the room where his sun has set to rise no more. His eyes flash, his nostrils dilate, his bosom heaves, he lifts his proud head and turns his face so that the light of the sky may fall full upon it.
And lifting up his hands, trembling with emotion as though supplicating for the strength of a god, he cries out; "By the eternal heavens these abominable horrors shall cease. The races, whose union has been fraught with every curse known to earth and hell, must separate. Viola demands it and Bernard obeys." ”

“ Having done this to her satisfaction, she started home at a rapid pace arriving there in an exhausted condition. As soon as she was sufficiently recovered from her exhaustion to permit it, she danced a wild, joyous sort of dance, uttering a succession of savage like shrieks of delight.
Sleep, the tender nurse in the employ of nature, soon folded Dolly Smith in her arms and lulled her to rest as soothingly as she did the innocent girl Erma, who now became the storm center of the elements. Let us not find fault with nature because she will not become a party to these human strifes of ours. ”

“ It is our privilege, and our duty as well, to contribute our best heart and brain to the care of the interests of our nation and to the guidance of the world. But if our statesmen walk through the halls of Congress emitting from their garments the scent of burning human flesh, when they would put forth their souls as great magnets for mankind, the tender, sensitive world-heart will recede from their touch, and leave their hollow, resounding voices reverberating through space. ”