hip. In fact, the denial of freedom to any race, along any of
the walks of life, has a tendency to teach that race irresponsibility;
for responsibility must rest with the volition of the human family.

"The Nashville American," in a recent issue, admits that the Southern
white people have made no progress in the great world of thought,
because they had everything their way. The solid South practically
destroyed its opportunities to develop thinkers in the political
world, and the prejudice they entertain and foster by mere sentiment
was not conducive to the production of strong men, or the development
of great thinkers or leaders of distinguished constructive ability. In
some sense the South has for some time lived in an eddy. There has not
been that broad sweep of the current of thought which once made it
strong and powerful. And the reason for this is assigned in their
surroundings, their highest ambition being to suppress the Negro in
the civil walks of life.

Now, we are confronted with a condition--call it a relation, if you
please--in which the interest of the entire Southland is involved, and
we, as the Negro race, are called upon to express ourselves as to the
basis of this relationship and the perpetuity of the same. The facts
above stated make it extremely difficult for one to conscientiously
concede, first that the relations are friendly; and, second, that they
can be sustained and maintained. As a matter of fact, the subject
assigned me can be easily answered by saying that the friendly
relations which now exist can be sustained and maintained by
destroying the system of public instruction; by making no protest
against the encroachments upon our liberty; by destroying the medium
of the Christian religion, pulling down our altars, demolishing our
churches and hanging crape on the door-knobs of all places of public
instruction. This we are unwilling to do, and, as God gives us
strength and light to see our plain duty, we shall work, watch and
wait for that surrounding which shall be congenial to a healthful
development of a Christian manhood, when the sphinx of this age shall
have passed into the oblivious past; and mankind, transformed from
brutish prejudice to that lordly prince, divested of all racial
prejudice, shall stand upon that plain of reason where all are equals.
We must see that our rights under the Constitution are one thing and
the enjoyment of those rights quite another thing.

Now, then, sha