wealth, and education, he may never hope to
associate as an equal with white men? Do white men believe that
10,000,000 blacks, after having imbibed the spirit of American
institutions, and having exercised the rights of free men for more than
a generation, will ever accept a place of permanent inferiority in the
Republic? Taught by the Declaration of Independence, sustained by the
Constitution of the United States, enlightened by the education of our
schools, this nation can no more resist the advancing tread of the hosts
of the oncoming blacks than it can bind the stars or halt the resistless
motion of the tide.

The answer which the American people may give to the question proposed
cannot be final. There is another question of greater importance which
must be answered by the Negro, and by the Negro alone: _What kind of an
American does the Negro intend to be?_ The answer to this question he
must seek and find in every field of human activity and endeavor. First,
he must answer it by negation. He does not intend to be an alien in the
land of his birth, nor an outcast in the home of his fathers. He will
not consent to his elimination as a political factor; he will refuse to
camp forever on the borders of the industrial world; as an American he
will consider that his destiny is united by indissoluble bonds with the
destiny of America forever; he will strive less to be a great Negro in
this Republic and more to be an influential and useful American. As
intelligence is one of the chief safeguards of the Republic, he will
educate his children. Knowing that a people cannot perish whose morals
are above reproach, he will ally himself on the side of the forces of
righteousness; having been the object of injustice and wrong, he will be
the foe of anarchy and the advocate of the supremacy of law. As an
American citizen, he will allow no man to protest his title, either at
home or abroad. He will insist more and more, _not only upon voting, but
upon being voted for_, to occupy any position within the gift of the
nation. As an American whose title to citizenship is without a blemish
or flaw, he will resist without compromise every law upon the
statute-books which is aimed at his degradation as a human being and
humiliation as a citizen. He will be no less ambitious and aspiring than
his fellow-countrymen; he will assert himself, not as a Negro, but as a
man; he will beat no retreat in the face of his enemies and opposers;
his gift