ical
righteousness; and let us say to all, be he high or low, "who touches a
stone in yon God-given edifice" is guilty of vandalism, is an iconoclast
not at any time to be tolerated. He is tampering with the rights and
privileges of a worthy people and deserves to have visited upon him the
excoriation of a fiery indignation. Howard was created to meet the dire
needs of a meritorious class, and insensible indeed must the man be who
for sentimental or personal reasons or for profit, swerves one degree
from the line of the highest form of education in administration or
instruction. There should be launched upon him the anathema of an
outraged people.

Sound the alarm that no man must hinder the true mission of Howard
University. It were better for him that a millstone were hung about his
neck and that he be cast into the deep. For him there is punishment even
after death in the sure infamy that will attach to his name.

The old motto, "Equal rights and knowledge for all," is a necessary
constituent of the Howard University life and purpose. There can be no
Howard University without equal rights and highest culture for all,
based upon merit and capacity. To be plain, we know of no Negro
education. Political rights and civic privileges are accompaniments of
citizenship and are therefore part of the warp and woof of Howard
University's curricula; the salt and savor without which wherewith will
it be salted? Mathematics has no color; ethics and philosophy are of no
creed or class; culture was not fashioned for race monopoly; knowledge
is in no plan or department an exclusive goal; justice is universal.
Freedom in striving for the acquisition of God's bounty as revealed by
nature is the birthright of all and an inalienable right of all. These
are God-given privileges, and any contravention of them is born of evil
and belongs to the evil powers.

Our privileges have imposed a trust and we are the trustees. Let no man
deceive himself. Whatever the opportunity of approval now for betrayal
of trust bequeathed to us, the time will come for the court of public
opinion to find whom to blame and whom to thank. What the founders
demanded for Howard, we must still demand. What William Clark and Martha
Spaulding by their gifts meant, must still be meant by Howard's
activities. Being justified in the past, it must be maintained in the
future. Then to-night let us re-baptize in Howard spirit and issue the
mandate of loyalty and endeavor.