“ I shall not pause to detail the calamities which slavery has entailed upon our race in the domain of the family. Every one knows how it has pulled down every pillar and shattered every priceless fabric. But now that we have begun the life of [Pg 15] freedom we should attempt the repair of this, the noblest of all the structures of human life. The basis of all human progress and of all civilization is the family. Despoil the idea of family, assail rudely its elements, its framework, and its essential principles, and nothing but degradation and barbarism can come to any people. ”

“ I am not unmindful of the fact that the Negro is a laborer. I repel the imputation that our race, as a class, is lazy and slothful. I know, too, that, to a partial extent, the black man, in the Southern States, is a craftsman, especially in the cities. I am speaking now of aggregates. I am looking at the race in the mass, and I affirm that the sad peculiarity of our labor in this country is that it is rude, untutored, and debased.
Here, then, is a great problem which is to be settled before the Negro race can make the advance of a single step. ”

“ I have thought for twenty years whether or no the Negro is doing right in voting solidly for any one national party. I would advise the race to be slaves to no political party because of public sentiment or misguiding politicians, but would call upon every man of the race to be a freeman at the polls and vote his individual sentiments, looking well to the best interest not only for the common country, but to the best local and sectional interest as well, and for the best men to represent that interest. ”

“ The urgent needs of the present, the fast-crowding and momentous interests of the future appear to be forgotten. Duty for to-day, hope for to-morrow, are ideas which seem oblivious to even leading minds among us. Enter our schools, and the theme which too generally occupies the youthful mind is some painful memory of servitude. Listen to the voices of the pulpit, and how large a portion of its utterances are pitched in the same doleful strain! Send a Negro to Congress, and observe how seldom possible it is for him to speak upon any other topic than slavery. ”

“ Shall your red stripes, O flag! a worthy token of our fathers' blood, which has mingled with the white in all American conflicts, now be used as a signal of welcome and protection to non-Americans, anarchists, and socialists, while the sons of American slaves, soldiers, and citizens are left standing without protection and rightful recognition, reaching forth the brawny hands for labor in vain? O may the goddess of liberty hear us to-day, and may the true American pulse be found forcing life, liberty, and protection through every artery of American sentiment! ”

“ During the past, with the rights guaranteed us by the constitution nullified in the states containing the larger portion of the colored population—the black belt of the South—we have made marvelous progress along the lines of securing classical and industrial education and the accumulation of wealth. With these restrictions or nullifications of our constitutional rights removed, is it either fair or reasonable to believe that a race with so grand and wonderful a record of progress along this line of prosperity as ours is at this late day going to drop into the quagmire of retrogradation? ”

“ Not only have we been connected with Tennessee, but we have been identified with the whole country since 1620, and have assisted in producing peace, prosperity. We have helped to clear the forests, till the soil, level the mountains, fill the valleys, bridge rivers, build railroads, factories, schoolhouses, churches, towns, and cities. We have labored assiduously to make this country bloom as a rose. This fact is admitted by multiplied thousands of the best white people in the whole South. We are not ashamed of our record in the history of our State, neither do we wish it to be ashamed of us. ”

“ Memory is a passive act of the mind, while recollection is the actual seeking of the facts, the endeavor of the mind to bring them back again to consciousness.
The fact of slavery is that which cannot be faulted. What I object to is the unnecessary recollection of it. The pernicious habit I protest against as most injurious and degrading. As slavery was a degrading thing, the constant recalling of it to the mind serves by the law of association to degradation. My desire is that we shall, as far as possible, avoid the thought of slavery. As a people, we have had an exodus from it. ”

“ Where are our rising young men and women? We call them to come forward. We bid them lift their eyes to the highest of knowledge and power. We point them to those whose names have become household words, and bid them press on to the front rank in the struggle for life. Here lies our hope for the future; and the Negro problem, which is one of the greatest problems of the present age, will have solved itself. ”

“ When contemplating the race as a mass it is usual to judge its members by its worst representatives, a method both unjust and untrue. The colored people of the South, as a class, should not be judged by the criminals among them who become conspicuous in the newspapers from evil deeds that are often visited with swift and terrible justice. They should rather be judged from the honest, hard-working men and women who, beginning with nothing, have in the course of one generation accumulated an amount of property that forms no inconspicuous portion even of our magnificent national wealth. ”

“ What we need is a grand moral revolution, which shall touch and vivify the inner life of a people, which shall give them dissatisfaction with ignoble motives and sensual desires, which shall bring to them a resurrection from inferior ideas and lowly ambitions; which shall shed illumination through all the chambers of their souls, which shall lift them up to lofty aspirations, which shall put them in the race for manly moral superiority. A revolution of this kind is not a gift which can be handed over by one people, and placed as a new deposit in the constitution of another. ”

“ This is the duty of the nation to the Negro. I have always been a protectionist, but if every cotton mill is to be run by immigrants from across the sea, while our sons and daughters, who are black and poor, but to the manner born—true and patriotic American citizens—are to be refused employment in the factories of this country, I would advise the Negroes to vote for whatever party may represent low tariff or free trade for all fabricated material. ”

“ We can never purify society until we have good men as well as good women. We have too many men in our race who delight to speak disreputably of nearly every woman when they themselves have a very unsavory reputation, and should be regarded with great diffidence. There are many women in our race who are just as pure, and whose characters are just as irreproachable as the women of any race, and our men owe it to these women and to the race the duty of defending and protecting them, even to the risk of our own lives. ”

“ Teach him that men and races grew from within; that man grows by expansion from within; that congressional enactments cannot make us a race. The race must make itself. Teach him that he belongs to a glorious race, which stands before its God with its hands unstained in human blood. Teach him to honor and revere this record, and hand it untarnished down to the remotest posterity. ”

“ Let us aim to be first in the pursuit of our life's work. We cannot reach the topmost round at once, and if we get there at all there must be something in us worthy of the upper rounds. Can we ask Him to be our guide who noticed the falling of a sparrow to the ground? Do so; then we will not choose the wrong path, we will not stumble in our darkest hours. We will not think solely of our slavery, of our closing hour, or how we will spend the evening, but will put our mind on our duties and resolve that they shall have the best that is in us ”

“ The three greatest Negroes that the race has produced are dead. No three living Negroes fill so much space in books or in men's thoughts as Toussaint L'Overture, Richard Allen, and Frederick Douglass, and it will be a long while before three Negroes of equal intelligence and ability for leadership and organization will be able to take their places. There are others, but these represent the real greatness of the Negro on two continents, and each man's work stands out conspicuously for itself. ”

“ All that we ask as citizens is that the several states and general government legislate for the common good of all citizens, regardless of races, and we are willing to take our chances. What more can we ask and what less can be given by an honest Christian nation? And may God have mercy upon any nation or people that would not grant this! The white people of this country proudly boast of their superiority as a race, and I grant it when considered en masse. Their opportunities have made them thus. Then why should the stronger refuse the weaker an equal chance in the race of life? ”

“ I know of no element in noble human character which is not found in the Negro race. Indeed, he has been placed under greater strains of conscience and taxed more severely in honor and integrity than any other race known to history. Did it ever occur to you that the South is even wild in its praises of negro fidelity in the days when it was prostrate in civil strife and its defenseless women and children committed to the care of the black men of the South? ”

“ Let us say what we believe to be a fact: The disciplined thought that the Negro is receiving at this school will give a freshness, a manliness, a hopefulness, and a faith which will deliver him from the tyranny of his surroundings, widen his views of his own capabilities, make him conscious of belonging to a race that has rich things in store for the world, and glorify his heart with a thousand strange and fruitful sympathies and with endless heroic aspirations. ”

“ Let every husband and every wife cherish for each other the heavenly flame of affection, and let no rude, harsh, or embittered expression on either side chill the sacred fire. If every adoration of the creature may hope for pardon, surely the worship rendered by man to a kind, pure, affectionate, and loving wife—Heaven's best gift—may invoke forgiveness. What countless millions of women have sacrificed health, strength, and life in attendance on sick and dying husbands, children, and strangers! ”

“ I scarcely need tell you that our most embarrassing heritage from slavery was a homelessness and a lack of home ties. All the sanctities of marriage, the precious instincts of motherhood, the spirit of family alliance, and the upbuilding of home as an institution of the human heart were all ruthlessly ignored and fiercely prohibited by the requirements of slavery. Colored people in bondage were only as men, women, and children, and not as fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. ”

“ I refer to the industrial conditions of our race. No topic is exciting more interest and anxiety than the labor question. Almost an angry contest is going on upon the relations of capital to labor. Into this topic all the other kindred questions of wages, hours of labor, co-operation, distribution of wealth—all are canvassed in behalf of the labor element of the country, but all, I may say exclusively, for the white labor of this great nation. The white labor is organized labor; it is intelligent labor; it is skilled labor; it is protected labor. ”

“ Though the Negro himself has kept silent, yet there has scarcely been in that length of time a decisive issue before the American Congress that would have affected the entire nation that was not either the outcome of our presence in this country or a corollary thereto in some phase. The nation, not the Negro, is responsible for the so-called Negro problem. Therefore it is the nation's problem, and the nation must solve it. America bought the whistle, and she must pay for it. ”

“ We have no great reason to be discouraged, cast down, or hopeless about our future, because of the many unfavorable happenings; we must not expect to be entirely free from the struggles necessary to be encountered to reach true greatness. It is our duty to use every possible and legitimate effort to avert dangers and troubles. We are earnestly persuaded to believe that the brightness of the future glory of the Negro of America is heightened by the darkness of the present clouds. ”

“ Our hands have ever been firm upon the rudder, guiding and governing the education of our youth for years of future usefulness.
I take it that we, as colored women, must regard ourselves as a peculiar people in these advanced movements. We cannot afford to be swept along in the current of daily happenings without thoughtfully comparing our status and conditions with all that surround us, questioning for a moment whether the experiment will prove an expensive luxury or wholesome and digestible food. Economy of time, economy of means, economy of action, must be our constant watchwords. ”

“ In it can be found men without manhood, women without womanhood, infancy without hope, want and woe, rage and wretchedness, disease and death; and, furthermore, in the trail of this venomous serpent can be found broken vows and broken hearts, bad manners and bad morals, bad words and bad actions, bad parents and bad children, a bad beginning and a bad end. Then surely intemperance is the crowning curse of American society; and as such the traffic is, as has been often said, a gigantic crime. ”

“ We have but begun, and though the wheels of Negro prosperity may continue to be checked by the brakes of race prejudice, we will nevertheless continue to climb upward to the very top of the hill of wealth, honor, and fame. ”

“ Has ever human nature been so taxed before? No other citizens in this great country have better right to rejoice at her prosperity than the Negro.
The South owes her industrial significance largely to the Negro. King Cotton sits on a throne of gold held aloft by the strong black arms of the Negro and shakes his snowy locks over the commercial world. And our beloved South may yet call upon ebony sinews to beat back the enemies of her peace, prosperity, and happiness, and again stand between starvation, danger, and death, and her defenseless wives and little ones ”