I have gone as far as to cite a recent occurrence in Camden, Wilcox County, Alabama, where more than one hundred and forty Negroes were sent to the cantonments and I was asked to be one of the speakers on the occasion. The white people there gave the Negroes a great banquet and in my remarks after thanking them for their hospitality, I said “That it would be foolish and cowardly on my part to stand here in your presence and say that as a race we have no grievances, for we have them, but this is no time to air them. When the house is on fire it is no time for family quarrels, but the thing to do is to put the fire out and then we can adjust the quarrels after.
“Today our National house is on fire and it is the duty of every man, both white and black, rich and poor, great and small, to rise in his might and put the fire out and when the fire is out, we will see you about these grievances.”
I went a step further and told that “already the war had brought some good results as this was the most democratic day that this little city had ever seen.” Before the war, two expressions were commonly used by the white man and the Negro. The Negro’s expression was this:—“I haven’t any country,” and the white man’s expression was:—“This is a white man’s country.” Now both of these classes are saying, “This is our country.” I further said that “we should win this war, because democracy was right and autocracy is wrong, and if we lose, and God forbid that we should, the fault will not be in democracy, but it will be due to the fact that we are not practicing what we preach.”
At the close of my remarks many of the white citizens, including the judge, the sheriff, lawyers and other prominent men came forward and congratulated me on what I had said and some said that the white people of Camden needed more of such plain talk. I took these signs to mean that better things were coming for the Negro of the South after the war, but I must admit that when I read in the evening papers of June 27th that Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi had practically defeated the bill for women suffrage, because he said that he favored the vote for white women only and that the bill in its present form would not be allowed in his state—I must confess that this action almost took away all of my hopes especially after there was no one to rise and rebut his argument. There was no one in the United States Senate to speak for democracy for all the people. Now I think that just such spirit as this exhibited by that great Senator from Mississippi is at the foundation of this world’s war and until that spirit is crushed, I fear that this war will continue. For of a truth, “God is no respecter of persons.”
Now I have given my answers to both the Negro and the white man. What is the answer of the white man?
Are we fighting for democracy for all the people, or are we fighting for democracy for the white man only?
This question has never been answered by the white man, but it must be answered after this great war.