, and the church, and the home, for our
women, and honesty and integrity for our men. We can and will lift the
shadow of immorality from the great masses of our race, and demonstrate
to the whole world what religion and education can do for a people. We
are doing it. Among the thoroughly cultured and rightly trained of our
women, virtue is as sacred as life, and among our men of similar
advantages, honor and integrity are prized as highly as among any people
on the globe.

Is our poverty the barrier that divides us from a closer fellowship with
our white brethren? Would wealth cure all the evils of our condition,
and give us the cordial recognition we ask from them? If so, we can
remove even this barrier. Our labor has already created much of the
wealth of the South, and it only needs intelligence to turn it into our
own coffers and make it the possession of our own people. Among the
whites money seems to be the _sesame_ that opens the doors to social
recognition, and converts the shoddy into a man of influence and rank.
Barney Barnato, a London Jew, who began life with a trained donkey,
became at length the "South African diamond king," and then all London
paid homage to this despised son of a hated race. Would money thus
convert our despised people into honorable citizens, give them kindly
recognition at the hands of our white neighbors, and take from them the
stigma which has so long marked them with dishonor and shame? If so, we
can hope to secure even this coveted prize, and claim like Barney
Barnato the respect of mankind.

But if it is none of these things that doom us to ostracism and
degradation, as a people, I ask finally is it our _color_? Alas, if it
be this, we can do nothing to remove the line of separation, unless it
be to wait the slow process of amalgamation which despite our efforts,
the white people of this country seem bound to consummate. If we knew of
any chemical preparation by which we could change the color of our skins
and straighten our hair we might hope to bring about the desired
consummation at once, but alas, there is no catholicon for this ill, no
mystic concoction in all the pharmacies of earth to work this miracle of
color. We must fold our hands in despair and submit to our fate with
heavy hearts.

To be serious, however, I would plead with our white brothers not to
despise us on account of our color. It is the inheritance we received
from God, and it could be no mark of shame or di