William Wells Brown

“ They wished every means to be used to secure our success on the field, including Emancipation. But they would grow pale at the words Negro Equality; just as if the liberating of a race, and securing to them personal, political, social and religious rights, made it incumbent upon us to take these people into our houses, and give them seats in our social circle, beyond what we would accord to other total strangers. ”

“ The great works of genius could never have benefited the world, had those who composed them been mean and selfish. All great and useful enterprises have succeeded through the influence and energy of numbers.
I would not have it thought that all colored men are to be bought by the white man’s smiles, or to be frightened by intimidation. Far from it. In all the Southern States we have some of the noblest specimens of mankind,—men of genius, refinement, courage and liberality, ready to do and to die for the race. ”

“ To-day, we must hold up to merited reprobation and condemnation the armed men who besieged the Trenton Jail, and wantonly as wickedly, without anything like justification, took thence the unarmed negroes there awaiting trial by the courts, and brutally shot them to death; and, too, with a show of barbarity altogether as unnecessary as the massacre was unjustifiable. To say that we are not, in any county in the State, strong enough to enforce the law, is to pronounce a libel upon the whole Commonwealth. We are as a thousand to one in moral and physical force to the negro ”

“ Future generations will marvel at the calm forbearance, good sense, and Christian zeal of the American Negro of the nineteenth century.
Nothing has been left undone to cripple their energies, darken their minds, debase their moral sense, and obliterate all traces of their relationship to the rest of mankind; and yet how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of oppression under which they have groaned for thousands of years.
After looking at the past history of both races, I could easily see the cause of the great antipathy of the white man to the black, here in Tennessee. ”

“ With all his fickleness, the Frenchman never forgets to find out and patronize one of his own people. Italians flock together and stand by each other, right or wrong. The Chinese are clannish, and stick by one another. The Caucasian race is the foremost in the world in everything that pertains to advanced civilization,—simply owing to the fact that an Englishman never passes the door of a countryman to patronize another race; and a Yankee is a Yankee all the days of his life, and will never desert his colors. But where is the Negro? ”

“ For two hundred years the Southern whites lived a lazy life at the expense of the negro’s liberty. When the rebellion came, the blacks, trusted and true to the last, protected the families and homes of white men while they were away fighting the Government. The South is the black man’s home; yet if he cannot be protected in his rights he should leave. Where white men of liberal views can get no protection, the colored man must not look for it. Follow the example of other oppressed races, strike out for new territory. ”

“ Indeed, the greater portion of the colored women, in the days of slavery, had no greater aspiration than that of becoming the finely-dressed mistress of some white man. Although freedom has brought about a new order of things, and our colored women are making rapid strides to rise above the dark scenes of the past, yet the want of protection to our people since the old-time whites have regained power, places a large number of the colored young women of the cities and towns at the mercy of bad colored men, or worse white men. ”

“ But the nation, knowing the Southerners as they did, aware of the deep hatred to Northern whites, and still deeper hatred to their ex-slaves, who aided in blotting out the institution of slavery, it was the duty of the nation, having once clothed the colored man with the rights of citizenship and promised him in the Constitution full protection for those rights, to keep this promise most sacredly. ”

“ History shows that of all races, the African was best adapted to be the “hewers of wood, and drawers of water.”
Sympathetic in his nature, thoughtless in his feelings, both alimentativeness and amativeness large, the negro is better adapted to follow than to lead. His wants easily supplied, generous to a fault, large fund of humor, brimful of music, he has ever been found the best and most accommodating of servants. The slave would often get rid of punishment by his wit; and even when being flogged, the master’s heart has been moved to pity, by the humorous appeals of his victim. ”

“ The colored people of the United States are sadly in need of a National Scientific Association, to which may be brought yearly reports of such investigations as may be achieved in science, philosophy, art, philology, ethnology, jurisprudence, metaphysics, and whatever may tend to unite the race in their moral, social, intellectual and physical improvement.
We have negro artists of a high order, both in painting and sculpture; also, discoverers who hold patents, and yet the world knows little or nothing about them. The time for the negro to work out his destiny has arrived. ”

“ We are told that this ’free-negro bill’ is a politic, popular measure. Where is it popular? In what nook or corner of the State are principles of humanity so deplorably deficient that a majority of the whole inhabitants would commit an outrage not committed in a Christian country of which history gives any account? In what country is it, this side of Africa, that the majority have enslaved the minority, sold the weak to the strong, and applied the proceeds of the sale to educate the children of the stronger side, as this bill proposes? ”

“ While we had three or four trustworthy and faithful servants, it must be admitted that most of the negroes on “Poplar Farm” were always glad to shirk labor, and thought that to deceive the whites was a religious duty.
Wit and religion has ever been the negro’s forte while in slavery. Wit with which to please his master, or to soften his anger when displeased, and religion to enable him to endure punishment when inflicted. ”

“ Property and goods are worth nothing to a black man there. He can’t get his price for them; he gets just what the white man chooses to give him. Some people who raise from ten to fifteen bales of cotton sometimes have hardly enough to cover their body and feet. This goes on while the white man gets the price he asks for his goods. This is unfair, and as long as we pay taxes we want justice, right, and equality before the people. ”

“ Generations of oppression have done their work too thoroughly to have its traces wiped away in a dozen years. The race must be educated out of the ignorance in which it at present dwells, and lifted to a level with other races. Colored lawyers, doctors, artisans and mechanics, starve for patronage, while the negro is begging the white man to do his work. ”

“ One Sunday, Bishop Kean said to the colored congregation, numbering twelve hundred, who had come to hear him: “There are distinctions in the 208 business and in the social world, but there are no distinctions in the spiritual. A soul is a soul before God, may it be a black or a white man’s. God is no respecter of persons, the Christian Church cannot afford to be. The people who would not let you learn to read before the war, are the ones now that accuse me of trying to use you for political purposes. ”

“ The great interest felt in the South for education amongst the colored people often produce scenes of humor peculiar to the race. Enjoying the hospitality of a family in West Virginia, I was not a little amused at the preparation made for the reception of their eldest son, who had been absent six months at Wilberforce College. A dinner with a turkey, goose, pair of fowls, with a plentiful supply of side dishes, and apple dumplings for dessert, was on the table at the hour that the son was expected from the train. ”

“ Yes, sir, when the great trumpet blows, we ought to be ready. And a man in your business of buying and selling slaves needs religion more than anybody else, for it makes you treat your people as you should. ”

“ The blacks have been so badly treated in the past that kind words and social recognition will do much to win them in the future, for success will not depend so much upon their matter as upon their manner; not so much upon their faith as upon the more potent direct influence of their practice. In this the Catholics of the South have the inside track, for the prejudice of the Protestants seems in a fair way to let the negro go anywhere except to heaven, if they have to go the same way. ”

“ After all, the ten years of negro Legislation in the South challenges the profoundest study of mankind. History does not record a similar instance. Five millions of uneducated, degraded people, without any preparation whatever, set at liberty in a single day, without shedding a drop of blood, burning a barn, or insulting a single female. They reconstructed the State Governments that their masters had destroyed; became Legislators, held 183 State offices, and with all their blunders, surpassed the whites that had preceded them. ”

“ The blacks felt their importance, saw their own power in national politics, were interviewed by obsequious and cringing white men from the North—men, many of them, far inferior, morally, to the negro. Two-faced, second-class white men of the South, few in number, it is true, hung like leeches upon the blacks. Among the latter was a respectable proportion of free men—free before the Rebellion; these were comparatively well educated; to these and to the better class of freedmen the country was to look for solid work. ”

“ We consider the goods from the store of a white man necessarily better than can be purchased from a colored man.
No man ever succeeded who lacked confidence in himself. No race ever did or ever will prosper or make a respectable history which has no confidence in its own nationality.
Those who do not appreciate their own people will not be appreciated by other people. If a white man will pat a colored man on the shoulder, bow to him, and call him “Mr.,” he will go a mile out of his way to patronize him, if in doing so he passes a first-class dealer of his own race. ”

“ The time for colored men and women to organize for self-improvement has arrived. Moral, social, and intellectual development, should be the main attainment of the negro race. Colored people have so long been in the habit of aping the whites, and often not the better class either, that I fear this characteristic in them, more than anything else. ”

“ To get religion, join a benevolent society that will pay them “sick dues” when they are ill, and to bury them when they die, appears to be the beginning, the aim, and the end of the desires of the colored people of the South. ”

“ Dinkie hunted, slept, was at the table at meal time, roamed through the woods, went to the city, and returned when he pleased, with no one to object, or to ask a question. Everybody treated him with respect. The whites, throughout the neighborhood, tipped their hats to the old one-eyed negro, while the policemen, or patrollers, permitted him to pass without a challenge. The negroes, everywhere, stood in mortal fear of “Uncle Dinkie.” The blacks who saw him every day, were always thrown upon their good behavior, when in his presence. ”

“ The black man’s position as a servant, for many generations, has not only made the other races believe that is his legitimate sphere, but he himself feels more at home in a white apron and a towel on his arm, than with a quill behind his ear and a ledger before him. ”

“ This was, for all the world, like a negro. A Yankee would have had a revolver with every chamber loaded; an Irishman would have slept with one eye open, and a stout shillalah in his right hand, and in all probability somebody would have had a nice funeral after the attack. But that want of courage and energy, so characteristic of the race, permitted one of the foulest crimes to be perpetrated which has come to light for years. ”

“ The price of women rose in proportion; they being valued at 107 about three hundred dollars less each than the men. This change in the price of slaves caused a lucrative business to spring up, both in the breeding of slaves and the sending of them to the States needing their services. Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and North Carolina became the slave-raising sections; Virginia, however, was always considered the banner State. To the traffic in human beings, more than to any other of its evils, is the institution indebted for its overthrow. ”

“ A good-looking, well-dressed colored man approached a white man, in a business-like manner, and began talking to him, but ere he had finished the question, the white raised his walking stick, and with much force, knocked off the black man’s hat, and with an oath said, “Don’t you know better than to speak to a white man with your hat on, where’s your manners?” The negro picked up his hat, held it in his hand, and resumed the conversation. ”