Colored people

“ I never knew of any distinction on account of the color of the flesh of a human being. Indeed, when I think of what the colored people have been made to suffer at the hands of their supposedly superior race, every time I look a colored brother in the face I blush for the crimes that my race has committed against his race. ”

“ Minds of no ordinary character, but those which embraced business, professions, and literature—minds, which at once grasped the earth, encompassed the seas, soared into the air, and mounted the skies. And it is none the less creditable to the colored people, that among those who have stood the most conspicuous and shone the brightest in the earliest period of our history, there are those of pure and unmixed African blood. A credit—but that which is creditable to the African, cannot disgrace any into whose veins his blood may chance to flow. ”

“ I say Colored people, because we would have been pure black, were it not that immoral white men have, by force, injected their blood into our veins, to such an extent, that we now represent all colors, from pure black to pure white, and almost entirely as{131} the result of the licentiousness of white men, and not of marriage or by the cohabitation of Colored men with white women. ”

“ When the Emancipation Proclamation was sounded the eagerness and determination of the Negro to obtain an education opened into full blossom, and the colored people consecrated themselves to the one great task of educating their children, so that these coming men and women might be able to live happier and better lives. ”

“ Few among the learned in this present age, and less of the unlearned, know anything about the origin of the colored race in the United States. They are completely in the dark as to their ancestry, as a powerful and highly civilized race of people. ”

“ These are lower forms of art, but they give evidence of a power that will some day be applied to the higher forms. In this measure, at least, and aside from the number of prominent individuals the colored people of the United States have produced, the race has been a world influence ”

“ I believe it to be a fact that the colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them. ”

“ In calling attention to the practical utility of colored people of the present day, we shall not be general in our observations, but simply, direct attention to a few particular instances, in which colored persons have been responsibly engaged in extensive business, or occupying useful positions, thus contributing to the general welfare of community at large, filling their places in society as men and women. ”

“ The fact is, that while the Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Scandinavians, Germans, and so on, wore skin coats, devoured their food raw, lived in caverns, and were busily engaged in cutting one another’s throats over dry bones, the ancestors of our Colored people in these United States were enjoying the highest arts of civilization, lived in palaces, and erected magnificent specimens of the most wonderful architecture in the world, and behaved generally like civilized people. ”

“ This latter class of colored people are well-disposed towards the whites, and always willing to meet them more than halfway. They, however, feel keenly any injustice or gross discrimination, and generally show their resentment. ”

“ It is quite impossible, at this early date, to say with any decided emphasis what the future of the colored people will be. Speculations of that kind, thus far, have only reflected the mental bias and education of the many who have essayed to solve the problem. ”

“ I think that the white people somehow feel that colored people who have education and money, who wear good clothes and live in comfortable houses, are "putting on airs," that they do these things for the sole purpose of "spiting the white folks," or are, at best, going through a sort of monkey-like imitation. ”

“ There are those among his friends who would stake their all upon his veracity and integrity; and we are sure that the colored people throughout America, in whose cause he has so long labored, will with one accord assign the highest niche in their affections to the champion of universal emancipation. ”

“ Thus in all the relations of life and death we are met by the color line. We cannot ignore it if we would, and ought not if we could. It hunts us at midnight, it denies us accommodation in hotels and justice in the courts; excludes our children from schools, refuses our sons the chance to learn trades, and compels us to pursue only such labor as will bring the least reward. While we recognize the color line as a hurtful force, a mountain barrier to our progress, wounding our bleeding feet with its flinty rocks at every step, we do not despair. We are a hopeful people. ”

“ A chance encounter with a cultured man of color induced me to look into the race problem and I was perfectly amazed when I discovered how greatly the colored people have been libelled and traduced. I have spent a considerable amount of time with colored people and have met many who are highly cultivated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whenever any colored people were in town, I had usually made myself acquainted and welcomed them—if it was acceptable, and it usually was—so when I saw this young man approaching I called the attention of my companions, saying, "There is a nice-looking colored man." ”

“ The colored people are not yet known, even to their most professed friends among the white Americans; for the reason, that politicians, religionists, colonizationists, and abolitionists, have each and all, at different times, presumed to think for, dictate to, and know better what suited colored people, than they knew for themselves ”

“ The general truth of this, and the points at which variations begin to appear, can be seen best in America by studying the colored people. I have seen a body of colored worshipers in chapel, and have seen just the same frenzy at a political meeting for the abolition of the color-line and even in moving picture theaters, when Tom Mix or Duck Jones or Rin Tin Tin dashed upon the screen at the critical moment to save the heroine. ”

“ Circumstances compel us to be a distinct class of Americans, without regard to shades of color; because we have many among us who are as white as any Caucasian, but when the fact is known that they have in their veins the slight admixture of African blood, whether they are of light or dark hue, they are all classed as Colored people, treated as such, and might as well mingle as such, allowing character only to be the dividing line. ”

“ With one accord, with an anxiety that wrenched our hearts with cruel hopes and fears, the colored people of the United States turned to you when Wilmington, N.C., was held for two dreadful days and nights in the clutch of a bloody revolution; when negroes, guilty of no crime except the color of their skin and a desire to exercise the rights of their American citizenship, were butchered like dogs in the streets of that ill-fated town ”

“ The neatness and cleanly appearance of the masses are actually surprising. I say it with all due respect, but, take them all in all, the colored people really present a better appearance than the whites. ”

“ As I dope it out, if I can produce pictures which will appeal particularly to your people I'll have a steady market through the big exchanges; because, if I know anything about the tastes of the general public, white people will enjoy all-colored comedies—if they're done right—almost as much as colored people will. ”

“ Educated as they are and have been for centuries, taught to look upon colored people as a lower order of humanity than themselves, and as having few rights, if any, above domestic animals, regarding them also through the medium of their beneficent religious creeds and just laws—as if law and practice were identical—some allowance can, and perhaps ought to, be made when they misapprehend our real situation and deny our wants and assume a virtue they do not possess. ”

“ Do the colored people of the United States deserve equal consideration with the Cuban people at the hands of your administration, and shall they, though late, receive it? If, sir, you have the disposition, as we know that you have the power, we are confident that you will be able to find a constitutional way to reach us in our extremity, and our enemies also, who are likewise enemies to great public interests and national tranquillity. ”

“ No class of citizens can be denied the protection of the law with impunity.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People fights this evil, as others in its program, with spiritual and legal weapons. Its appeal is to the heart, the mind, the conscience of America. It insists upon "ordered law and humane justice," to quote a phrase used by President Wilson in his appeal to the country against lynching. ”

“ The opposition to amalgamation, of which we hear so much on the part of colored people, is for most part the merest affectation, and, will never form an impassable barrier to the union of the two varieties. ”

“ Northern white people love the Negro in a sort of abstract way, as a race; through a sense of justice, charity, and philanthropy, they will liberally assist in his elevation. ”

“ The various colors seen in the natives in Africa, where amalgamation with other races is impossible, has drawn forth much criticism, and puzzled the ethnologist not a little. Yet nothing is more easily accounted for than this difference of color amongst the same people, and even under the same circumstances. Climate, and climate alone, is the sole cause. ”

“ The charge is sometimes made that the colored people are ungrateful to their benefactors. In my judgment no charge could be more unjust. In whatever else they have failed,{56} they have ever shown a laudable sense of gratitude. ”

“ Now of "the nations that dwell on the face of the earth," that is, all the people—there are one thousand millions of souls, and of this vast number of human beings, two-thirds are colored, from black, tending in complexion to the olive or that of the Chinese, with all the intermediate and admixtures of black and white, with the various "crosses" as they are physiologically, but erroneously termed, to white. ”

“ Because God has given each colored girl a beautiful voice, she should be taught to speak in a soft mellow tone. She should speak eloquently and elegantly. If she screeches or yells and abuses her vocal cords, she will not only disgust people but she will lose her voice and have no beauty of tone to bequeath.
As the colored child has been made in the image of God, her poise should be erect and fearless. Nature bestowed the gift of a straight backbone.
The native African has always been straight like the pine sapling. ”

“ Enough has been unearthed, however, to establish the ancestry of the Colored race of America, greater and higher than that of any of the mixed races.
91 The Genius of Colored Americans in Literature; The Arts and Sciences Inherited From the Ancient Ethiopians
Read, Study, and Educate up to Opportunities—A High Racial Type Appears in Modern Times—A Cause for Pride and an Incentive to Action, Energy and Efficiency. Men of learning, wisdom, and honest, without prejudice, take the standard of a race of men from his primitive type. ”

“ We must put the Colored American upon the same basis, or foundation, as the other races, and in doing so, and giving him the same advantages, it is most astonishing to find that he is improving along the same line, and in the same ratio as the other races. That is, the Colored citizen is the intellectual equal of the other races, when given equal opportunities and advantages.
It must be admitted, to be strictly just, that without advantages of education or uplifting environment, the races are also equal in ignorance and prejudice. ”

“ In the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Albany, Utica, and many other places in the free states, the colored people were hunted down like wild beasts, and their property taken from them or destroyed. ”

“ We all believe in the justice of God, that he is impartial, "looking upon his children with an eye of care," dealing out to them all, the measure of his goodness; yet, how can we reconcile ourselves to the difference that exists between the colored and the white races, as they truthfully present themselves before our eyes? ”

“ The human skin develops pigments to protect itself against a strong sun, and the quantity of pigment in the skin varies with the intensity of the sun.
“It is therefore the men who live in the hottest and least shaded parts of the world—that is to say, in the African, that we find the blackest skin. The white peoples, on the contrary, are confined to a region where the humidity of the atmosphere forms a screen against the rays of the sun. Finally, between the Negro and the White, is the Yellow man, who is a product of desiccating grasslands with seasonal extremes of temperature.” ”

“ These people live in a little world of their own; in fact, I concluded that if a colored man wanted to separate himself from his white neighbors, he had but to acquire some money, education, and culture, and to live in accordance. For example, the proudest and fairest lady in the South could with propriety—and it is what she would most likely do—go to the cabin of Aunt Mary, her cook, if Aunt Mary was sick, and minister to her comfort with her own hands ”