Frederick Douglass

by Booker T. Washington

The foregoing extracts sufficiently indicate the character and importance of this Nashville address. It was quite unlike speeches that had been made by most of the colored leaders to their people. While emphasizing the importance of hard work, of duties, and patience, he indulged in no false hopes and made no extravagant claims. The every-day facts, needs, and responsibilities of the people on the soil were, he held, the paramount things for men who were beginning their social development. In short, it was a strong and stirring call to the Negroes to look about them, and not afar, for the instruments and forces that must be utilized for their salvation.

Belonging to this latter period of his life, another address, in character quite different from the one just referred to, illustrates how the colored people have been carried from one extreme of hopefulness to the other of despair and uncertainty by the changes in public sentiment concerning them.

In 1883 the Supreme Court of the United States rendered a decision declaring unconstitutional what was known as the “Civil Rights Bill.” This was one of the Reconstruction measures, championed by Senator Sumner, and, when brought forward it was regarded by the colored people and their friends as a sort of charter of liberty. It undertook to prevent discriminations against Negroes in hotels, restaurants, and other places of public accommodation. At the time of its enactment it was considered a necessary appendage to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and the colored people everywhere felt a strong sense of protection in its provisions.

When the Supreme Court’s opinion declaring the law, outside of the District of Columbia and other national territory, to be null and void, was made known, it produced a sensation of alarm and almost despair among Negroes everywhere. They saw in this decision a complete reversal of the public sentiment that a few years before was so strongly favorable to them. They began to lose faith in the potency of the letter of the law, either to define or protect their rights. It was a sort of rude reminder that, if they would be secure in their rights, they must rely upon something else than mere statutes. Here was an apt illustration of the maxim that what the law gives, the law can take away. In relying upon only this for his salvation, the Negro had been suspended between hope and despair, until it seemed to him that there was no such thing as stability of sentiment toward him. The first impulse was to protest, in the name of all the colored people, not only against the letter of the decision, but also against haunting implications that they had no rights which the law of the land was bound to respect.

The spirit of resentment found adequate expression in a great mass-meeting arranged for and held in the city of Washington in 1883. Frederick Douglass was selected, as a matter of course, as the one colored man in the country who could best voice the feelings of the people affected by the decision. The other speaker was the eloquent Robert G. Ingersoll. The meeting was a notable one in every respect. The most distinguished leaders of the race were there, and the audience was large and earnest. There were present, too, a great number of prominent white people who sympathized with the colored race. The address of Mr. Douglass was one of the most interesting ever made by him. In it he showed his ability to put into the most telling form the arguments with which it seemed possible at that time to counteract, to some extent, the moral effect of the decision upon the colored and the white communities. His speech showed a wide acquaintance with the principles of the law and more than usually profound knowledge of the philosophy of democracy. The following extracts will indicate its character, and reflect, no doubt, the opinions and sentiments of the meeting and the time:

“It makes us feel as if some one was stamping on the graves of our mothers, or desecrating our sacred temples.”

“We have been, as a class, grievously wounded in the house of our friends.”

“This decision has swept over the land like a cyclone, leaving moral desolation in its track.”

“Inasmuch as the law in question is in favor of liberty and justice, it ought to have had the benefit of any doubt which could arise as to its strict constitutionality.”

“If any man has come in here with his breast heaving with passion and expecting to hear violent denunciation of the Supreme Court on account of this decision, he has mistaken the object of this meeting. Its judges live, and ought to live, an eagle’s flight beyond the reach of fear or favor, praise or blame, profit or loss.”