People of color

“ 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. ”

“ Owing to the increase of the Negro population and for other causes which I have already mentioned, sentiment in the North toward the Negro has been undergoing a swift change.
How Colour Lines Are Drawn
Now the tragedy of the Negro is the colour of his skin: he is easily recognisable. The human tendency is to class people together by outward appearances. When the line began to be drawn it was drawn not alone against the unworthy Negro, but against the Negro. It was not so much drawn by the highly intelligent white man as by the white man. ”

“ Herself a person of light color, and with a confirmed social prejudice against black people, she thoroughly identified herself with the colored race, and it was evident that her sympathies were with them. ”

“ Besides, such demonstrations of popular feeling in regard to large benefits received and progress made, are consistent with and creditable to human nature. They have been observed all along the line of by-gone ages, and are peculiar to no class, clime, race, or color. ”

“ Of all the races and varieties of men which have suffered from this feeling, the colored people of this country have endured most. They can resort to no disguises which will enable them to escape its deadly aim. They carry in front the evidence which marks them for persecution. They stand at the extreme point of difference from the Caucasian race, and their African origin can be instantly recognized, though they may be several removes from the typical African race. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are important movements among the colored people that should be noted. All will remember the enthusiastic patriotism, civil and religious, which was to abolish all color-lines and all laws that recognized black and white, or their intermediate 298shades. Yet a law of nature, of race, and of common sense is asserting itself among the colored people, in that they want to be separated from such close connection with the white man. ”

“ Thus in all the relations of life and death we are met by the color line. ”

“ Religious and political conflicts have always obtained, but the color line has been drawn only in very recent times. As long as black and yellow people have been of a lower order and have been willing to serve the white, there was never any serious disorder between them. ”

“ And this is the dwarfing, warping, distorting influence which operates upon each and every colored man in the United States. He is forced to take his outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen, or a man, or even a human being, but from the viewpoint of a colored man. It is wonderful to me that the race has progressed so broadly as it has, since most of its thought and all of its activity must run through the narrow neck of this one funnel.
And it is this, too, which makes the colored people of this country, in reality, a mystery to the whites. ”

“ Do we act with compassion and empathy. Are we measured by our efforts -- by what Dr. King called “the content of our character” rather than the color of our skin or the manner in which we worship our God. In both our countries, in India and in America, our diversity is our strength. And we have to guard against any efforts to divide ourselves along sectarian lines or any other lines. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first negro fact for white thought is—that my clients, the colored people here in America, are not responsible for being here any more than they are responsible for their conditions of ignorance and poverty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are an open, living illustration of the power of education and modern civilization. The lesson to be learned from them is, that what a race so sunk in savagery and barbarism can do, is much more within 80the reach of the Colored Americans who have a great and noble ancestry back to which they may look with admiration and feel an incentive to continue to advance—it is in them. ”

“ To know the race one must do more than occasionally to visit it here [Pg 415] and there, must see more than even a close examination of schools and churches, instructed, aided and supported by white philanthropy, will disclose. The toadying, the servile representatives of the race, the politicians, the dependent ones—all must be passed by and the people found. To know the Negro one must be with him and become a part of his life—see what he is doing, and above all, to know what he is thinking. ”

“ Phillis Wheatley has been mentioned already. So, in the midst of darkness and oppression, the Negro race in America, without the use of the Christian church, schoolhouse, or printing-press, produced a poetess, an astronomer, a mathematician, and a physician, who, had they been white, would have received monuments and grateful memorials at the hands of their countrymen. But even their color cannot rob them of the immortality their genius earned. ”

“ In all my forty years of thought and labor to promote the freedom and welfare of my race, I never found myself more widely and painfully at variance with leading colored men of the country, than when I opposed the effort to set in motion a wholesale exodus of colored people of the South to the Northern States ”

“ I became convinced that a history of the Colored people in America was required, because of the ample historically trustworthy material at hand; because the Colored people themselves had been the most vexatious problem in North America, from the time of its discovery down to the present day; because that in every attempt upon the life of the nation, whether by foes from without or within, the Colored people had always displayed a matchless patriotism and an incomparable heroism in the cause of Americans ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now I like the colored people, and sympathize with all their reasonable aspirations; but you and I both know, John, that in this country the Negro must remain subordinate, and can never expect to be the equal of white men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And it is not merely the demand of the white man that the Negro step aside by himself, for the Negro himself is drawing the colour line, and drawing it with as much enthusiasm as the white man. A genuine race-spirit or race-consciousness is developing. Negroes are meeting prejudice with self-development. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 am inclined to the opinion that, like thousands of people of the same class, their identity with the colored race has long since ceased and that they have been absorbed by the white race, as I firmly believe will be true of the great mass of colored Americans. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Anyone at all familiar with the hopes and aspirations of the colored race, as expressed, for instance, in their prolific newspaper literature, must have perceived the wonderful inspiration which they have drawn from the career of a few distinguished Europeans of partial Negro ancestry, who have felt no call, by way of social prejudice, to deny or conceal their origin, or to refuse their sympathy to those who need it so much. ”

“ But let us consider our subject in a deeper sense; if by education is meant that training, those influences by which the habits, the character, the thoughts, and the ideals of a people are formed and developed, then, the answer hinges upon the answer to another question: Is the Negro to remain in this country a separate and distinct race, or is he to become one of the elements in the future composite American? ”

“ I always feel sympathy for the colored people, especially for the better educated and more refined men and women of this class [Pg 178] who must suffer keenly from the discrimination against their race. ”

“ A new racial consciousness is growing up leading to organisations for self-help; and while white prejudice [Pg 147] is increasing, so is white helpfulness as manifested in social settlements, industrial schools, and other useful philanthropies. ”

“ Furthermore the social influence is a tremendous force in the affairs of men, as all history teaches. To all that goes to constitute this powerful factor in your life as a people, you have seen fit to pronounce the Negro a stranger. The pride of the Negro race has risen to the occasion and there is a thorough sentiment in that race in favor of racial integrity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In dealing with them as a race, a people, therefore, I do as I would with my own race, I take what to me seem to be racial characteristics, or in other words, the things that are manifested in the lives of the best men and women, and which seem to represent their habitual aims, ambitions, and desires. ”

“ Natural qualities are common and universal, and do not change essentially on the mountain or in the valley. I come therefore to the second point -- the existence of countries where this malignant prejudice, as we know it in America, does not prevail; where character, not color, is the passport to consideration; where the right of the black man to be a man, and a man among men, is not questioned; where he may, without offense, even presume to be a gentleman. ”

“ Yes sir, the run of colored folks is much more secretious than what the run of the white folks give 'em credit for. I reckon they has been made so. In times past they has met up with so many white folks which taken the view that everything black men and black women done in their lodges or their churches or amongst their own color was something to joke about and poke fun at. ”

“ The pride of race, of color, of the owner above the serf, stripped of its old power and insignia, but no whit weakened in root and core, set an adamantine wall along the line of social familiarity. Let the black man have his own place—in school and church, in street and market and hotel ”

“ But, as I have watched the careers of this class of Negroes, in practically every case their popularity and influence with the masses of coloured people have not been lasting. There are few races of people the masses of whom are endowed with more common-sense than the Negro, and in the long run these common people see things and men pretty much as they are. ”