Person of color

“ Alas! if color could disgrace a people, how deep in the nethermost regions of shame, would that color be, which is called white in the United States; frequently with such utter recklessness of truth. White! ”

“ Colored citizens have had to fight against all kinds of prejudice and even submit to humiliations that ought to rouse their manhood and compel them to inquire when or whether it will ever end. Every Colored American who reads this book may feel assured that the end is in sight, and that his children will witness a great diminution in the slights put upon his race and color. ”

“ Is it not the foundation of a greater or less suffusions of color in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reign in the countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? ”

“ White men sought him out and made much of him; white women talked to him about his career; and wherever he went, women of color—black girls, brown girls, yellow girls—wrote him of their admiration, whispered, when he would listen, of their passion and hero-worship. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The white man, in his arrogance, sneers at all the rest, and thinks that his complexion is the one above all others. How does he know but what God prefers the ebony black to his white leprous skin?
“The different races uphold their own color, as they should. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some people will have it that there is a natural, an inherent, and an invincible repugnance in the breast of the white race toward dark-colored people; and some very intelligent colored men think that their proscription is owing solely to the color which nature has given them. ”

“ Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here at the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line. ”

“ And if we ask what is ‘white’ we can only say, ‘that it is a term used to designate the absence of color’—that is all, and no sign whatever of ‘race integrity.’ We have already indicated that science and investigation point to the fact that primitive man was not white. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In such a white world, the entrance of a black man would be hailed with joy by the inhabitants. Anybody or anything would be welcome that would break the oppressive and tormenting monotony of the all-prevailing white. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If what we call prejudice against color be natural, i.e., a part of human nature itself, it follows that it must be co-extensive with human nature, and will and must manifest itself whenever and wherever the two races are brought into contact. ”

“ After all, some very well informed and very well meaning people will read what I have now said, and what seems to me so just and reasonable, and will still insist that the color of the negro has something to do with the feeling entertained toward him; that the white man naturally shudders at the thought of contact with one who is black -- that the impulse is one which he can neither resist nor control. ”

“ Sometimes the White shows in spurts of fierce, childish pride—which is Pride of Race run crooked—and sometimes the Black in still fiercer abasement and humility, half heathenish customs and strange, unaccountable impulses to crime. ”

“ In the abstract, there is no prejudice against color. No man shrinks from another because he is clothed in a suit of black, nor offended with his boots because they are black. We are told by those who have resided there that a white man in Africa comes to think that ebony is about the proper color for man. ”

“ But what is the Color Line? It is the practice of the theory that the colored and “weaker” races of the earth shall not be free to follow “their own way of life and of allegiance,” but shall live, work and be governed after such fashion as the dominant white race may decide. ”

“ The Northern Negro who has been enjoying the free life of Boston and Philadelphia has protested passionately against the drawing of a colour line: he wishes to be looked upon, and not at all unnaturally, for he possesses human ambitions and desires, solely for his worth as a man, not as a Negro. ”

“ Color may almost be said to be no bar to promotion in official life, within limits. This middle set is extremely assertive in its pride and, on the whole, is more disliked by the negroes than are the whites themselves. ”

“ And all engage in the work; all take hold with a will, even with joy. For they feel the blood course more freely in their veins, hear the wind breathe sweeter music, and see the light weave a more lovely world of colors. Their dormant energies are awakened, the heightened color on the cheek, the lustrous laughing eye, the merry mobile lip, the fair white hand, the whole person speaks in eloquent language the pleasure which springs from progress, or a work well done. ”

“ Add to this the fact that the darker races in other parts of the world have, in the last four centuries, lagged behind the flying and even feverish footsteps of Europe, and we face to-day a widespread assumption throughout the dominant world that color is a mark of inferiority. ”

“ The color of our skin and hair is not very important. It matters far more whether we are honest, loving, industrious and fair-minded.
Not all of the white people living around us were born in this country. Where did your parents and [p41] grandparents live when they were children? Do you know any people who came from distant lands? ”

“ 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. ”

“ But all this has reference to white society; you are ready to ask what is its bearing on the colored girls? The humbler life in the old days reflected the ideas of the superior, as the second rainbow reflects the coloring of the first. ”

“ On the walls of the church hung the pictures of coloured men who had accomplished something for their race, and the essence of the speaker’s address was an appeal to racial pride and the demand that the race stand up for itself, encourage Negro business and patronise Negro industry. ”

“ The negro's great ambition is to rise in the social scale t o which his color has made him a stranger and an outsider, and he is quite willing to accept the shadow for the substance where that is the best he can get. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fortunately, however, for them, there were scattered over the State a few representative men, who, by their industry, honesty, and moral courage did much to raise the character and standard of the colored man. ”

“ Not to name the living, let me hold up the example of one whose career deserves to be often spoken of, as complete proof that a colored man can rise to social respect and the highest employment and usefulness, in spite not only of the prejudice that crushes his race, but of the heaviest personal burdens. ”

“ They measure and esteem men according to their moral and intellectual worth, and not according to the color of their skin. Whatever may be said of the aristocracies here, there is none based on the color of a man’s skin. ”

“ There is among the colored people an increasing desire for information, and laudable ambition to be respectable in manners and appearance. Are we not foolish as well as sinful, in trying to repress a tendency so salutary to themselves, and so beneficial to the community? Several individuals of this class are very desirous to have persons of their own color qualified to teach something more than mere reading and writing. ”

“ I confess that I have never yet outgrown my affection for the colored race: an affection at best, perhaps, born of the dim, undefined memories of my childhood and of an old black mammy—my father's slave—who crooned over me all day long, and sang me lullabies at night. ”

“ Here are a great many that will persuade you that Black is White. I set the greater Value upon you because you love Learning. So much as you have, so much you shall be esteem'd by all Men; so much as you have, so much you shall be accounted of every where. ”

“ Why was his hair tinted with gold? An evil omen was golden hair in my life. Why had not the brown of his eyes crushed out and killed the blue?—for brown were his father’s eyes, and his father’s father’s. And thus in the Land of the Color-line I saw, as it fell across my baby, the shadow of the Veil. ”