Thomas Sigismund Stribling

“ Peter left his mother to her stare and went to his own room. This constant implication among Niggertown inhabitants that Niggertown and all it held was worthless, mean, unhuman depressed Peter. The mulatto knew the real trouble with Niggertown was it had adopted the white village's estimate of it. The sentiment of the white village was overpowering among the imitative negroes. The black folk looked into the eyes of the whites and saw themselves reflected as chaff and skum and slime, and no human being ever suggested that they were aught else. ”

“ As Peter sat thinking it over, it came to him that the progress of any race depended, finally, upon the woman having complete power of choosing her mate. It is woman alone who consistently places the love accent upon other matters than mere flesh and muscle. Only woman has much sex selectiveness, or is inclined to select individuals with qualities of mind and spirit. ”

“ I told him I couldn't take his offer. ‘It's like this,' I argued: 'if every negro with a little ability leaves the South, our people down there will never progress.’ It's really that way, Cissie, it takes a certain mental atmosphere to develop a people as a whole. A few individuals here and there may have the strength to spring up by themselves, but the run of the people—no. I believe one of the greatest curses of the colored race in the South is the continual draining of its best individuals North. Farquhar argued—” just then Peter saw that Cissie was not attending his discourse. ”

“ For millions of years these instinctive spiritualizers of human breeding stock have been hampered in their choice of mates by the unrestrained right of the fighting male. Indeed, the great constructive work of chivalry in the middle ages was to lay, unconsciously, the corner-stone of modern civilization by resigning to the woman the power of choosing from a group of males. ”

“ But of course these Hooker's Bend negroes will never see that!”
Peter, surprised and grateful, looked at Cissie. Her construction of the swindle was more flattering than any apology he had been able to frame for himself.
“Still, Cissie, I ought to have used the greatest care—”
“I'm not talking about what you 'ought,'” stated the octoroon, crisply; “I'm talking about what you are. When it comes to 'ought,' we colored people must get what we can, any way we can. We fight from the bottom.” ”