Minority rights

“ Their republican system, the minority believed, conferred civil equality and legal rights upon every citizen, knew neither privileged nor degraded classes, made no distinctions, and created no differences between rich and poor, learned and ignorant, or white and black, but extended to all alike its protection and benefits. ”

“ But to millions of Americans who are indigent and ignorant-and often members of minority groups-these rights are meaningless. They are helpless to assert their rights under the law without assistance. ”

“ It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority, that is, of the society itself; ”

“ The American state is dedicated to such a duty, not only by its democratic purpose, but by its national tradition. So far as the former is concerned, it is absurd and fatal to ask a popular majority to respect the rights of a minority, when those rights are interpreted so as seriously to hamper, if not to forbid, the majority from obtaining the essential condition of individual freedom and development—viz. ”

“ We protest against segregated districts, separate public conveyances, industrial discrimination, lynchings and limitations of political privileges of any Negro citizen in any part of the world on account of race, color or creed, and will exert our full influence and power against all such. ”

“ One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights. Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression. ”

“ That portion of the community which is not reached by persuasion, and remains in opposition, must obey the law, and submit, such is the nature of society; but minorities have acknowledged rights, which are best preserved, perhaps, by the knowledge that they may be useful to all in turn. Those rights are more respected under democracy than in any other form of government. ”

“ Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights and privileges and immunities guaranteed by that instrument to the citizen? ”

“ All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirmations and negations, guaranties and prohibitions in the Constitution, that controversies never arise concerning them. ”

“ Their reverses in this matter in the old slave-holding States, coupled with a vast mass of class legislation, modelled on the slave code, have affected the Afro-American people in their civil and political rights in all of the States of the Republic, especially as far as public opinion is concerned. This was inevitable, and follows in every instance in history where a race element of the citizenship is set aside by law or public opinion as separate and distinct from its fellows, with a fixed status or caste. ”

“ Doctor, suppose these negroes to whom you talked awhile ago become what you urged them to be—useful, reliant, well-to-do citizens—what will be their status politically? Will the white people, with all this progress of the negro in education, in industry, in independence and in the acquisition of property, acknowledge his political rights? ”

“ Racial legislation as to negroes may be divided into laws bearing on their legal, political, and social rights, including, in the latter, contracts of labor and of marriage. By the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, all adopted within ten years after the war, we endeavored to put the negro in a legal, a political, and a social equality with whites in every particular. ”

“ The answer seems to be that as regards political rights, Race and blood should not be made the ground of discrimination. Where the bulk of the colored Race are obviously unfit for political power, a qualification based on property and education might be established which should permit the upper section of that Race to enjoy the suffrage. Such a qualification would doubtless exclude some of the poorest and most ignorant whites, and might on that ground be resisted. ”

“ It will then be a typical representative of that form of democracy under which there can be no slave, no vassal and no peon, but every one will be an equal before the law in the exercise and enjoyment of life, liberty and property and in the exercise and enjoyment of such public rights and privileges as are, or should be, common to all citizens alike, without distinction or discrimination based upon differences of race, color, nationality or religion. ”

“ It is, I submit, scarcely just to say that the colored race has been the special favorite of the laws. What the nation, through congress, has sought to accomplish in reference to that race is, what had already been done in every state in the Union for the white race, to secure and protect rights belonging to them as freemen and citizens ”

“ In fact, the distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race. They interfere with the municipal legislation of the States, with the relations existing exclusively between a State and its citizens, or between inhabitants of the same State—an absorption and assumption of power by the General Government which, if acquiesced in, must sap and destroy our federative system of limited powers and break down the barriers which preserve the rights of the States. ”

“ The Negroes do not ask social equality, but civil equality; let the false notions that confound civil rights with social rights be dispelled, and advocate the civil equality of all men, and the problem will be solved. ”

“ Be it Resolved, That the Negro people of the world, through their chosen representatives in convention assembled in Liberty Hall, in the City of New York and United States of America, from August 1 to August 31, in the year of our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and twenty, protest against the wrongs and injustices they are suffering at the hands of their white brethren, and state what they deem their fair and just rights, as well as the treatment they propose to demand of all men in the future. ”

“ Today it is the colored race which is denied, by corporations and individuals wielding public authority, rights fundamental in their freedom and citizenship. At some future time, it may be that some other race will fall under the ban of race discrimination. ”

“ Without distinction of color, and there shall be no discrimination in civil rights, or immunities among citizens of the United States in any State or Territory of the United States on account of race, color, or previous condition of slavery. ”

“ The difficulty has been to compel a recognition of the legal right of the black race to take the rank of citizens, and to secure the enjoyment of privileges belonging, under the law, to them as a component part of the people for whose welfare and happiness government is ordained. ”

“ If we are not able to contribute to African schools, or do not choose to do so, we can at least refrain from opposing them. If it be disagreeable to allow colored people the same rights and privileges as other citizens, we can do with our prejudice, what most of us often do with better feeling—we can conceal it. ”

“ The climax of the antagonism, which may be dissipated by separating the two peoples, will be reached when the Negro shall not only demand but force the constituted authorities to grant absolute equality in the administration of justice; when he shall not only demand the right to vote, to sit on juries and represent his country in its legislative deliberations and actions but shall force his rights in these premises. ”

“ A natural distinction exists between those races which was not created, neither can it be abrogated, by law, and legislation which recognizes this distinction and provides for the peculiar wants or conditions of the particular race can in no just sense be called a discrimination against such race or an abridgment of its civil rights. ”

“ Because the landmark decisions in this area arose in response to the continued exclusion of Negroes from the mainstream of American society, they could be characterized as involving discrimination by the "majority" white race against the Negro minority. ”

“ Not only do the segregationists deny the validity of many of the basic concepts of democracy but they also dispute the authority of the federal government to assure equal treatment under the laws of the United States to all Americans. They uphold what they consider to be the constitutional rights of the states above human rights as applied to the Negro. Democracy is denied to Negroes in the name of democratic government. ”

“ To urge the protection of the Negro in his exercise of the rights and privileges granted by the Constitution, to secure the enactment of laws with the purpose to secure to him a greater measure of opportunity for social advancement, to oppose the enactment of laws proposing to retard such progress, to stimulate a healthy public opinion favorable to the Negro's cause, to protest against every injustice, great or small, meted out to him, became, as never before, the imperative duties of the Negro members of Congress. ”

“ The practice of racial segregation is not in keeping with the ideals of Democracy and Christianity.
(2) Racial segregation is robbing not only the segregated but the segregator of his human dignity. Furthermore, the propagation of racial prejudice is unfair to the generations yet unborn. ”

“ Considering that a pluralist and genuinely democratic society should not only respect the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of each person belonging to a national minority, but also create appropriate conditions enabling them to express, preserve and develop this identity ”

“ But notwithstanding all this, in many parts of our country where the colored population is large the people of that race are by various devices deprived of any effective exercise of their political rights and of many of their civil rights. ”

“ But we have faced racism squarely, and we have made progress in the past quarter of a century. With landmark civil rights bills of the 1960s, we removed legal barriers to allow full participation by blacks in the economic, social, and political life of the nation. ”

“ Exemption from race discrimination in respect of the civil rights which are fundamental in citizenship in a republican government, is, as we have seen, a new right, created by the nation, with express power in Congress, by legislation, to enforce the constitutional provision from which it is derived. ”

“ In other words, nothing short of an effective national law, to protect the weak against the strong and the minority of the whites against the aggressive assaults of the majority of that race, would enable the minority of the whites to make their power and influence effective and potential ”

“ It must not be inferred because we have emphasized these qualities of intelligence—manliness and coöperation as preparatory to political rights—that the negro race should be deprived of the suffrage until such time as its members acquire these qualities. Many individuals have already acquired them. ”

“ So we see that respect for the Constitution overrides respect for the inalienable rights of three millions of negro men.
Now, to move men, it is necessary to know two things—first, What they think, and next, Why they think it. ”

“ To say that majorities, as such, have a right to rule minorities, is equivalent to saying that minorities have, and ought to have, no rights, except such as majorities please to allow them. ”

“ When different candidates or factions of the Democratic party, or two different parties, outbid one another for the colored vote, the negro's rights will, of course, find the most efficient protection in that very competition for their political favor, and the effect will also be gradually to soften the harshness of civil discrimination in the way above indicated. ”

“ One may hazard the statement that the prejudice of America’s native white majority against the Negroes, the Indians, the Jews and the Asiatics, is now and has always been in some sense attributable and proportional to the majority’s fear of some action on the part of the minority which might injure the material interests of the majority, while the only race-differences which have had any real importance are those superficial ones which serve to make the members of the minorities recognizable at sight. ”

“ Section II Article 4 The Parties undertake to guarantee to persons belonging to national minorities the right of equality before the law and of equal protection of the law. In this respect, any discrimination based on belonging to a national minority shall be prohibited. The Parties undertake to adopt, where necessary, adequate measures in order to promote, in all areas of economic, social, political and cultural life, full and effective equality between persons belonging to a national minority and those belonging to the majority. ”

“ By segregation, I did not mean isolation, but the natural grouping together of Negroes under wholesome conditions, but which permitted their contact through employment, through meetings for the common good, with the dominant race.
Even a minority has the right to expect and demand justice in opportunity to develop industrial, social and spiritual growth. I recognize that education of both whites and blacks is necessary to overcome fear and prejudice and make this possible. ”