Freemen of color

“ I cannot promise however, to write such a book as ought to be written to illustrate fully the bitterness, malignity, and cruelty, of American prejudice against color, and to show its terrible power in grinding into the dust of social and political bondage, the hundreds of thousands of so-called free men and women of color of the North. ”

“ Slavery had the power at one time to make and unmake Presidents, to construe the law, dictate the policy, set the fashion in national manners and customs, interpret the Bible, and control the church; and, naturally enough, the old masters set themselves up as much too high as they set the manhood of the negro too low. Out of the depths of slavery has come this prejudice and this color line. It is broad enough and black enough to explain all the malign influences which assail the newly emancipated millions to-day. ”

“ We turn to the free States, where slavery has not directly steeled our hearts against human suffering, and where no supposed danger of insurrection affords a pretext for keeping the free blacks in ignorance and degradation; and we ask, what is the character of the prejudice against color here? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Will they occupy more room as freemen than as slaves? Is the presence of a black freeman less agreeable than that of a black slave? Is an object of your injustice and cruelty a more ungrateful sight than one of your justice and benevolence? ”

“ It is probably the design of Providence in this case, to call the attention of the public to the fresh consideration of what is implied in the great doctrine of human brotherhood. Is it true or not, that a colored man has all the rights of a white man? Is this a question still mooted among Abolitionists? ”

“ It is our prejudice against the color of these poor people that makes us consent to the tremendous wrongs they are suffering. If they were white,—ay, if only two thousand or two hundred white men, women, and children in the Southern States were treated as these millions of colored ones are, we of the North should make such a stir of indignation, we should so agitate the country, with our appeals and remonstrances, that the oppressors would be compelled to set their bondmen free. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Reader, the life of a colored man in America, save as a slave, is regarded as far less sacred than that of a dog. There is no exaggeration in this statement—I am not writing of exceptions. It is true there are white people in America who, while the colored man will keep in what they call "his place," will treat him with a show of respect even. But even this kind of people have their offset in the multitudes and majorities—the populace at large who would go out of their way to inflict the most demon-like outrages upon those whose skins are not colored like their own! ”

“ A certain shade of complexion, though much lighter than some brunettes, consigned any one guilty of it to the grade of the blacks, which was de-gradation. We were educated to regard negroes as an inferior race of beings, not entitled to the distinctive rights and privileges of white men. Ignorance, poverty, and servitude came to be considered the birthright, the inheritance, of all Africans and their descendants; and therefore we did not feel the pressure of their bonds, nor the smart of the wounds that were continually given them.
Prejudice against color had become universal. ”

“ The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color-line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the excuse for further discrimination. ”

“ This convention is a proof of our faith in you, in reason, in truth and justice—our belief that prejudice, with all its malign accompaniments, may yet be removed by peaceful means; that, assisted by time and events and the growing enlightenment of both races, the color line will ultimately become harmless. When this shall come it will then only be used, as it should be, to distinguish one variety of the human family from another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Free people of color, like the slaves, are excluded by law from all means of obtaining the common elements of education.
The free colored man may at any time be taken up on suspicion, and be condemned and imprisoned as a runaway slave, unless he can prove the contrary ”

“ 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. ”

“ The recent proceedings in several of the slave States toward the free population of color in those States seem to render it highly probable that that oppressed class of the community will soon be obliged to flee to the free States for protection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Clerks who sat in the “L’s” turned their nostrils away from the Negroes beside them. Men of a hundred occupations, creeds and politics, who had been individuals since the war, suddenly found themselves once more a unit—a unit because of their common color. The Negroes felt the unity of their blackness.
Freeman smelled the coming storm, like a thousand other men, and prophesied about it freely.
[Pg 224]
“It’s Sunday,” he said one afternoon as they sat in the lobby of Robert’s hotel. “Well, perhaps I don’t blame you much for not wanting to visit some of the black and tan dance halls. ”

“ 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! ”

“ In Europe when an inferior is elevated to the rank of equality with the superior class, the law first comes to his aid, which, in [331] its decrees, entirely destroys his identity as an inferior, leaving no trace of his former condition visible.
In the United States, among the whites, their color is made, by law and custom, the mark of distinction and superiority; while the color of the blacks is a badge of degradation, acknowledged by statute, organic law, and the common consent of the people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This unfortunate difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ That this denial of rights to us is because of our color, only{21} as color is a badge of condition, is manifest in the fact that no matter how decently dressed or well-behaved a colored man may be, he is denied civil treatment in the ways thus pointed out, unless he comes as a servant. ”

“ I commit this work to the public, white and black, to the friends and foes of the Negro, in the hope that the obsolete antagonisms which grew out of the relation of master and slave may speedily sink as storms beneath the horizon; and that the day will hasten when there shall be no North, no South, no Black, no White,—but all be American citizens, with equal duties and equal rights. ”