A woman who marries and does not intend to have children is merely an object of convenience who has sold herself.
To assume the position of colored motherhood is the greatest privilege and responsibility that can come to any woman in this age.
The colored mother beautiful carries a heavy burden—the weight of future generations of a handicapped, persecuted people. She may bless or curse each succeeding generation; she may change race history; she may make a more beautiful race with the beauty that comes from beauty of character and right living.
What a privilege to carve the destiny of a race! How glorious to look into the future and see lines of ancestry influenced and advanced by her thought and example, to see her stamp of personality upon a posterity which will point to her in pride and thankfulness!
The time has come when each colored girl must prepare herself for this rare privilege, when she must distribute her powers and talents for race good.
Whatever the colored mother is, millions of colored children will be. A colored mother lives not only for herself and for her own children, but she must live for the race. A colored mother is a success as she measures up to her relation and obligation to the race.
Negro children of all children need mothers who are strong spiritually, physically, and intellectually. Enough colored children have been born under bad or careless conditions. The child born under bad conditions can not be expected to hold his own among other children.
No woman has a right to blight the future of her race. Not even her body may be abused—this beautiful casket—the treasure house of future souls. Any crime that she commits against herself or her body she commits against the race.
Almost any colored mother would lay down her life for her children but she must have a wider vision into the scheme of life and the world, and must deliberately plan to make her grand-children and great grand-children healthier, happier and more useful.
While it is admitted that heredity is not all, yet inherited tendencies have great influence.