OUR CIVIL RIGHTS.
"For our civil rights we are struggling and we must secure them. But if they had all come to us when they first belonged to us, we must frankly admit that we would have been unprepared for them.
"Our grotesque dress, our broken language, our ignorant curiosity, and, on the part of many our boorish manners, would have been nauseating in the extreme to men and women accustomed to refined association. Of course these failings are passing away: but the polished among you have often been made ashamed at the uncouth antics of some ignorant Negroes, courting the attention of the whites in their presence. Let us see to it, then, that we as a people, not a small minority of us, are prepared to use and not abuse the privileges that must come to us.
"Let us reduce the question of our rejection to a question pure and simple of the color of our skins, and by the help of that God who gave us that color we shall win.
"On the question of education much might be said in blame of the
South, but far more may be said in her praise.
"The evils of which our president spoke are grave and must be righted, but let us not fail to see the bright side.
"The Anglo-Saxon child virtually pays for the education of the Negro child. You might hold that he might do more. It is equally true that he might do less. When we contrast the Anglo-Saxon, opening his purse and pouring out his money for the education of the Negro, with the Anglo-Saxon plaiting a scourge to flog the Negro aspiring to learn, the progress is marvelous indeed.
"And, let us not complain too bitterly of the school maintained by the Southerner, for it was there that we learned what true freedom was. It was in school that our hearts grew warm as we read of Washington, of Jefferson, of Henry, apostles of human liberty. It was the school of the Southerner that has builded the Imperium which now lifts its hand in power and might to strike a last grand blow for liberty.