Free person of color

“ Why is it that the free people of color are now, in almost every part of our country, threatened with banishment from State to State, and with hunting from city to city, until there shall be no place for the soles of their feet in this their native land? Is it because they are in reality, as slaveholders tell us, an inferior race of beings? No, my friends: their consistent conduct, their polished manners, and their great respectability, wherever they have enjoyed the advantages of equality of education and equality of motives, proclaim the contrary. ”

“ The free blacks of the United States, will at length discover their true interests, will at length perceive that if they would consult their own real happiness, and the lasting good, moral and physical, of themselves and their children — if, in a word, they would become truly freemen, not only legally, but civilly and socially, they must separate themselves from the whites, and go where they will be in a community of their own color and kin, and where they Will be on perfectly equal terms with all around them. ”

“ The free people of color themselves were not only not anxious to go but bore it grievously that any one should even suggest that they should be driven from the country in which they were born and for the independence of which their fathers had died. ”

“ All disqualifications and distinctions of color have ceased; men of all colors have equal rights in law, and an equal footing in society, and every man’s position is settled by the same circumstances which regulate that point in other free countries, where no difference of color exists. ”

“ To set them free here, even if there were no legal obstacles in the way, would not, in the present state of feeling towards free colored people, and the little chance they can have to rise in the world, be much of a favor. ”

“ In all this world, but one spot offers, what you would desire. No where else, but in Liberia, does the man of color live under a free Government of his own organization and administration. Go where else you will, and um but partially relieve yourself from the disabilities under which you now labor. In the free States of the North, you meet a stronger prejudice against your color then here, and in many places with a legislation depriving you of many kinds of labor, at present open to you. ”

“ Now, under the elevating and cherishing influence of the American Anti-slavery Society, the colored race, like the white, furnishes Corinthian capitals for the noblest temples. Aroused by the American Anti-slavery Society, the very white men who had forgotten and denied the claim of the black man to the rights of humanity, now thunder that claim at every gate, from cottage to capitol, from school-house to university, from the railroad carriage to the house of God. He has a place at their firesides, a place in their hearts—the man whom they once cruelly hated for his color. ”

“ And to tell you the truth, having passed most of my life in white society, I did not feel that the advantages of that society would have ever paid me for the loss of my self-respect, by passing as white, when I knew that I was colored; when I knew that any society, however cultivated, wealthy or refined, would not be a social gain to me, if my color and not my character must be my passport of admission. ”

“ That baleful American peculiarity, prejudice against color, is evidently diminishing, under the influence of anti-slavery principles and practice; and the laws which have oppressed the free colored citizen are rapidly yielding to the persevering action of the abolitionists. ”

“ But, fortunately for the Negro and for humanity at large, we live now in an epoch when race malice and sectional hate are disappearing beneath the horizon of a brighter and better future. The Negro in America is free. He is now an acknowledged factor in the affairs of the continent; and no community, state, or government, in this period of the world's history, can afford to be indifferent to his moral, social, intellectual, or political well-being. ”

“ And it further appearing by satisfactory proof to the Judge here, that all the said persons of color are entitled to their freedom and are free and cannot be held in slavery or involuntary servitude, it is therefore adjudged that they are entitled to their freedom, and are free forever. ”

“ But where, at the present time, can they live in perfect freedom, cheered by the hopes and excited by the rewards, which stimulate white men to exertion? Every avenue to distinction is closed to them. Even where the body is suffered to be free, a hateful prejudice keeps the soul in fetters. I think every candid mind must admit that it is more wonderful they have done so much, than that they have done no more.
As a class, I am aware that the negroes, with many honorable exceptions, are ignorant, and show little disposition to be otherwise ”

“ The noble men who first projected the plan of providing a home for the free people of color of these United States, where they could exercise the functions and privileges so dear to all men, after much deliberation, wisely fixed upon the West Coast of Africa, where but a few generations back, your forefathers were born ”

“ This American State has given some examples to history, it has given some demonstrations of the power of free institutions for the white, it is giving to-day its most memorable, and is it too much to hope that it will yet give to the world a more glorious, because more difficult, demonstration of the same power in the black race? What if it should remain, for it, after having completed its work for the one, it should crown it in the other, by lifting it from deepest slavery, and by self-sacrifice and toil make it a blessing to the world! ”

“ His creed begins and ends with it—that the colored race can only obtain their true status as men, by relying on their own identity; that they must prove, by merit, all that white men claim; then color would cease to be an objection to their progress—that the blacks must take pride in being black, and show their claims to superior qualities, before the whites would be willing to concede them equality. ”

“ He not only wanted him free, but he wanted him located where he might receive all the rights of citizenship, and where he could live--self-respectful and independent--in the society of his equals and his race. It was a matter of pitying wonder with him that the negro should love to live with a race that abused him, and held him at so low a value in the scale of humanity. ”

“ But if, in full view of a proposition to break down all the social barriers which now divide the races, so that our descendants and those of the colored man shall form one homogeneous people, we interrogate our own [Pg 603] consciousness, we shall discover that we, even those of us who have most eloquently and indignantly denounced 'prejudice against color,' are compelled to own ourselves in sympathy with the great mass of the American people, in utter and unconquerable aversion to such an arrangement. ”

“ The free colored American, of whatever shade, sees that his destiny is linked with slavery. Where his face is a crime he can not hope for justice. In the country which enslaves his race he can never be an acknowledged man. ”

“ It is said that the number of colored people who are bound is three millions, while the free are about one-third of that amount. In this you can plainly discern the wonderful agency of the Lord, for at one time they were all bound. Since then, many have been released from bondage, and are now nominally free: but there is not an actually free colored person in the United States, for they are not citizens. Every intelligent person knows this to be a fact. ”

“ This much was done by free colored men. In view of that fact the reader will find the following extracts from publications of the Colonization Society remarkable reading. Said Henry Clay in a speech found in the African Repository, Vol. VI., p. 12:
"Of all the descriptions of our population the free persons of color are by far, as a class, the most corrupt, depraved, and abandoned." ”

“ Thus, at this moment, stands the question of the capacity of the free colored people of the United States, to influence public opinion in favor of emancipation. And where are their champions who kindled the flame which is now extinguished? Many of them are in their graves ”

“ The colored people did not intrude themselves upon us. They were brought here in chains and held in the communities where they are now chiefly found by a cruel slave code. Happily for both races, they are now free. They have from a standpoint of ignorance and poverty--which was our shame, not theirs--made remarkable advances in education and in the acquisition of property. They have as a people shown themselves to be friendly and faithful toward the white race under temptations of tremendous strength. ”

“ This accounts for much of the persecution of the colored people, everywhere, in the free States. It is a comfort to the lowest and most degraded of the whites to feel that there is a class of society which they can despise and trample. ”

“ But this is not a question of the rich against the poor, nor the common people against the higher classes, but a question of white against black—every white person, by legal right, being held superior to a black or colored person. ”

“ The negro has been made free, though he did not seek freedom. Nominally free, he is beyond expression helpless by his want of self-reliance, of experience, of ability to understand and appreciate his condition. ”

“ How utterly at variance is this with the commonly received opinion, that the colored people are disposed to thrust themselves into the society of the whites!
"Prejudice against color exists in this community only to a limited extent, and that chiefly among those who could never bring themselves to believe that emancipation would really take place. Policy dictates to them the propriety of confining any expression of their feelings to those of the same opinions. ”

“ At the dawn of this twentieth century we see the future of mankind through a glass darkly, but if we study the state of the coloured people who are shaking themselves free from the law of custom, we may see it almost face to face. Race prejudice does not die as hard as one would think. ”

“ No class of persons in the world, who have the name of being free, are more sorely oppressed than the free colored people of the Southern States. Each state has its code of black laws, which are rigorously enforced, and the victim made to feel his degradation at all times and in all places. ”

“ It also demands the same freedom of action for the Negroes in the exercise of every function of a citizen that is allowed the whites and contemplates their assimilation in the political life of the nation to the extent of their being eligible to the highest office of trust without regard to any qualification other than that of all citizens. Of course, it is worse than useless to say that the demand carries with it the observance of every principle of equality before the law without discrimination on account of race or color. ”

“ I would set no limits to the attainments of the Negro in arts, in letters or statesmanship, but I believe the surest way to reach those ends is by laying the foundation in the little things of life that lie immediately about one's door. I plead for industrial education and development for the Negro not because I want to cramp him, but because I want to free him. ”

“ We of the South generally maintain that the negro is a free man, and that the law bears on white and black alike, when we must know that this is not the fact. Is a man free who cannot vote, hold office or serve on the jury; is he free when he must ride in second-class coaches, sit in the gallery at public places, occupy rear seats of electric cars and flee for his life when suspected of being a dangerous character? Is a race free which has been battered into submission by whippings and lynchings, and which has no part in governmental affairs? Can man or race be free with a spirit in chains? ”

“ The subterfuges of pro-slavery selfishness must now be dragged to light, and the last weak argument, that the negro can never contribute anything to advance the national character, ‘nailed to the counter as base coin.’ To the conquering of the difficulties heaped up in the path of his industry, the free colored man of the North has pledged himself. ”

“ If the blacks, strongly marked as they are by physical and lasting peculiarities, be retained amid the whites, under the degrading privation of equal rights, political or social, they must be always dissatisfied with their condition, as a change only from one to another species of oppression; always secretly confederating against the ruling and privileged class; and always uncontrolled by some of the most cogent motives to moral and respectable conduct. The character of the free blacks even where their legal condition is least affected by their color, seems to put these truths beyond question. ”

“ One does not grudge the black man his prosperity, his freedom, his opportunities of advancing himself; one would wish to see him as free and prosperous as the fates and his own exertions can make him, with more and more means of raising himself to the white man's level. ”

“ The gates of heaven are not closed against those unhappy beings; but their inferiority is continued to the very confines of the other world. The negro is free, but he can share, neither the rights, nor the labor, nor the afflictions of him, whose equal he has been declared to be, and he cannot meet him upon fair terms in life or death. ”

“ There is hope for a people when their laws are righteous whether for the moment they conform to their requirements or not. But until this nation shall make its practice accord with its Constitution and its righteous laws, it will not do to reproach the colored people of this country with keeping up the color line—for that people would prove themselves scarcely worthy of even theoretical freedom, to say nothing of practical freedom, if they settled down in silent, servile and cowardly submission to their wrongs, from fear of making their color visible. ”