"Boston, January 15, 1833.
"To the Board of Managers of the New-England Anti-Slavery Society:
"The Massachusetts General Colored Association, cordially approving the objects and principles of the New-England Anti-Slavery Society, would respectfully communicate their desire to become auxiliary thereto. They have accordingly chosen one of their members to attend the annual meeting of the Society as their delegate (Mr. Joshua Easton, of North Bridgewater), and solicit his acceptance in that capacity.
"Thomas Dalton, President,
"William C. Nell, Vice-President."James G. Barbadoes, Secretary."
The request was granted, but a few hints among friends on the outside sufficed to demonstrate the folly and hurtfulness of anti-slavery societies composed exclusively of men of color. Within the next two years Colored organizations perished, and their members took their place in the white societies. Such Colored men as John B. Vashon and Robert Purvis, of Pennsylvania; David Ruggles and Philip A. Bell, of New York; and Charles Lenox Remond and Wm. Wells Brown, of Massachusetts, were soon seen as orators and presiding officers, in the different anti-slavery societies of the free States. Frederick Douglass, the Rev. Samuel Ringgold Ward, James McCune Smith, M.D.; James W. C. Pennington, D.D.; Henry Highland Garnett, D.D.; Alexander Crummell, D.D.; and other Colored men were eloquent, earnest, and effective in their denunciation of the institution that enslaved their brethren. In England and in Europe a corps of intelligent Colored orators was kept busy painting, to interested audiences, the cruelties and iniquities of American slavery. By association and sympathy these Colored orators took on the polish of Anglo-Saxon scholarship. Of the influence of the American Anti-slavery Society upon the Colored man, Maria Weston Chapman once said, it is "church and university, high school and common school, to all who need real instruction and true religion. Of it what a throng of authors, editors, lawyers, orators, and accomplished gentlemen of color have taken their degree! It has equally implanted hopes and aspirations, noble thoughts, and sublime purposes, in the hearts of both races. It has prepared the white man for the freedom of the black man, and it has made the black man scorn the thought of enslavement, as does a white man, as far as its influence has extended. Strengthen that noble influence! Before its organization, the country only saw here and there in slavery some 'faithful Cudjoe or Dinah,' whose strong natures blossomed even in bondage, like a fine plant beneath a heavy stone. Now, under the elevating and cherishing influence of the American Anti-slavery Society, the colored race, like the white, furnishes Corinthian capitals for the noblest temples. Aroused by the American Anti-slavery Society, the very white men who had forgotten and denied the claim of the black man to the rights of humanity, now thunder that claim at every gate, from cottage to capitol, from school-house to university, from the railroad carriage to the house of God. He has a place at their firesides, a place in their hearts—the man whom they once cruelly hated for his color. So feeling, they cannot send him to Coventry with a horn-book in his hand, and call it instruction! They inspire him to climb to their side by a visible, acted gospel of freedom. Thus, instead of bowing to prejudice, they conquer it."
In January, 1836, Rev. Mr. Follen offered the following resolution in a meeting of the New England Anti-slavery Society:
"Resolved, That we consider the Anti-slavery cause the cause of philanthropy, with regard to which all human beings, white men and colored men, citizens and foreigners, men and women, have the same duties and the same rights."
In support of his resolution, he said:
"We have been advised, if we really wished to benefit the slave and the colored race generally, not unnecessarily to shock the feelings, though they were but prejudices, of the white people, by admitting colored persons to our Anti-slavery meetings and societies. We have been told that many who would otherwise act in unison with us were kept away by our disregard of the feelings of the community in this respect.... But what, I would ask, is the great, the single object of all our meetings and societies? Have we any other object than to impress upon the community this one principle, that the colored man is a man? And, on the other hand, is not the prejudice which would have us exclude colored people from our meetings and societies the same which, in our Southern States, dooms them to perpetual bondage?"
In May, 1837, the Anti-slavery Women of America met in convention in New York. In a circular issued by the authority of the convention, and signed by Mary S. Parker, President, Angelina E. Grimkie, Secretary, another attack was made upon proscription in anti-slavery societies. There was a Colored lady named Sarah Douglass on the Central Committee. The following paragraphs from the circular are specimens sufficient to show the character of the circular; and the poetry at the end, written by a Colored member. Miss Sarah Forten, justified the hopes of her white sisters concerning the race:
"Those Societies that reject colored members, or seek to avoid them, have never been active or efficient. The blessing of God does not rest upon them, because they 'keep back a part of the price of the land,'—they do not lay all at the apostle's feet.
"The abandonment of prejudice is required of us as a proof of our sincerity and consistency. How can we ask our Southern brethren to make sacrifices, if we are not even willing to encounter inconveniences? First cast the beam from thine own eye, then wilt thou see clearly to cast it from his eye.
"We are thy sisters. God has truly said
That of one blood the nations He has made.
O Christian woman! in a Christian land,
Canst thou unblushing read this great command?
Suffer the wrongs which wring our inmost heart,
To draw one throb of pity on thy part?
Our Skins may differ, but from thee we claim
A sister's privilege and a sister's name."
Every barrier was now broken down inside of anti-slavery organizations; and having conquered the prejudice that crippled their work, they enjoyed greater freedom in the prosecution of their labors.
The Colored orators wrought a wonderful change in public sentiment. In the inland white communities throughout the Northern States Negroes were few, and the majority of them were servants; some of them indolent and vicious. From these few the moral and intellectual photograph of the entire race was taken. So it was meet that Negro orators of refinement should go from town to town. The North needed arousing and educating on the anti-slavery question, and no class did more practical work in this direction than the little company of orators, with the peerless Douglass at its head, that pleaded the cause of their brethren in the flesh before the cultivated audiences of New England, the Middle and Western States,—yea, even in the capital cities of conservative Europe.