RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF OUR COLORED FELLOW-CITIZENS.
Letter to the National Convention of Colored Citizens at Columbia, South Carolina, October 12, 1871.
This letter was read in the Convention October 24th, the sixth day of its sitting, and received a vote of thanks.
Boston, October 12, 1871.
DEAR SIR,—I am glad that our colored fellow-citizens are to have a Convention of their own. So long as they are excluded from rights or suffer in any way on account of color, they will naturally meet together in order to find a proper remedy; and since you kindly invite me to communicate with the Convention, I make bold to offer a few brief suggestions.
In the first place, you must at all times insist upon your rights; and here I mean not only those already accorded, but others still denied, all of which are contained in Equality before the Law. Wherever the law supplies a rule, there you must insist on Equal Rights. How much remains to be obtained you know too well in the experience of life.
Can a respectable colored citizen travel on steamboats or railways, or public conveyances generally, without insult on account of color? Let Governor Dunn of Louisiana describe his journey from New Orleans to Washington. Shut out from proper accommodation in the cars, the doors of the Senate Chamber opened to him, and there he found that equality which a railroad conductor had denied. Let our excellent friend, Frederick Douglass, relate his melancholy experience, when, on board the mail-boat of the Potomac and within sight of the Executive Mansion, he was thrust back from the supper-table, where his brother Commissioners were already seated. You know the outrage.
I might ask the same question with regard to hotels, and even the common schools. A hotel is a legal institution, and so is a common school, and as such each must be for the equal benefit of all. Nor can there be any exclusion from either on account of color. It is not enough to provide separate accommodations for colored citizens, even if in all respects as good as those of other persons. Equality is not found in any pretended equivalent, but only in equality; in other words, there must be no discrimination on account of color.
The discrimination is an insult, a hindrance, a bar, which not only destroys comfort and prevents equality, but weakens all other rights. The right to vote will have no security until your equal rights in the public conveyances, hotels, and common schools are at last established; but here you must insist for yourselves by speech, by petition, and by vote. Help yourselves, and others will help also.