* * * * *

You misjudge us because you do not know us. From the very first it has
been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and
elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded
their efforts were slavery and race prejudice; for what is slavery but
the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the work of
natural internal leadership? Negro leadership, therefore, sought from the
first to rid the race of this awful incubus that it might make way for
natural selection and the survival of the fittest. In colonial days came
Phillis Wheatley and Paul Cuffe striving against the bars of prejudice;
and Benjamin Banneker, the almanac maker, voiced their longings when he
said to Thomas Jefferson, "I freely and cheerfully acknowledge that I am
of the African race, and in colour which is natural to them, of the
deepest dye; and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the
Supreme Ruler of the Universe, that I now confess to you that I am not
under that state of tyrannical thraldom and inhuman captivity to which too
many of my brethren are doomed, but that I have abundantly tasted of the
fruition of those blessings which proceed from that free and unequalled
liberty with which you are favored, and which I hope you will willingly
allow, you have mercifully received from the immediate hand of that Being
from whom proceedeth every good and perfect gift.

"Suffer me to recall to your mind that time, in which the arms of the
British crown were exerted with every powerful effort, in order to reduce
you to a state of servitude; look back, I entreat you, on the variety of
dangers to which you were exposed; reflect on that period in which every
human aid appeared unavailable, and in which even hope and fortitude wore
the aspect of inability to the conflict, and you cannot but be led to a
serious and grateful sense of your miraculous and providential
preservation, you cannot but acknowledge, that the present freedom and
tranquility which you enjoy, you have mercifully received, and that a
peculiar blessing of heaven.

"This, sir, was a time when you clearly saw into the injustice of a state
of Slavery, and in which you had just apprehensions of the horrors of its
condition. It was then that your abhorrence thereof was so excited, that
you publicly held forth this true and invaluable doctrine, which is worthy
to be recorded and remembered in all