And any amount of flowery speeches or proclamations, or enactments, or anything, hain’t a goin’ to amalgamate the two races and make ’em blend into another and be a hull one.
No; a law may contain every big law word, and “to wit” and “be it enacted” and every clause that ever wuz claused, and every amendment that wuz ever amended, but it hain’t a goin’ to make any difference with this law that wuz made in a higher court than any they have in Washington, D. C.
And a speech may contain the hull floral tribe, all the flowers that wuz ever heard on; it may soar up in eloquence as fur up as anybody can go, and dwindle down into pathos as deep as ever wuz went.
But it is a goin’ to blow over the subject jest like any whiff of wind; it hain’t a goin’ to do the job of makin’ the two races come any nigher to each other.
Why, you see when anybody is a tryin’ to do this, he hain’t a fightin’ aginst flesh and blood only, the real black and white flesh of the present, but he is a fightin’ aginst principalities and powers, the powers of the long kingdom of the past, the viewless but unfightable principalities of long centuries of concentrated opinions and hereditary influences, the ingrained contempt and scorn of the superior race towards the inferior in any other condition only servitude—the inbred feelin’s of slavery, of lookin’ up with a blended humility and hatred, admiration and envy, into the face of the dominant race.
The race difference lays like a gulf between the two people. You can’t step over it, your legs hain’t long enough; you can’t bridge it over, there hain’t no boards to be found strong enough; there it yawns, a deep gulf, and always will between the two races.
And when the Nation expected to jine these two forces and hitch ’em side by side to the car of freedom by a piece of paper with writin’ on it, expectin’ they would draw it along easy and stiddy, that wuz the time the Nation wuz a fool.
It would be jest as reasonable to hitch a wild lion from the jungles by the side of a sheep, and set ’em to drawin’ the milk to the factory.
They might expect that if the team got to the factory at all, the sheep would be inside of the lion, and the milk too.