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Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence

[409] <h3>AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF MASSACHUSETTS</h3> By William H. Lewis Assistant Attorney-General of the United States Mr. Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives: The power of the House to summons forthwith any citizen of the Commonwealth has never been resisted; and so by designation of the Honorable Speaker, in accordance with the order of the House, I am here in answer to your summons. You have invited me, as a member of the liberated race, to address you upon this Lincoln's Birthday in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Words would be futile to express my deep appreciation of this high honor, however unworthily bestowed. Twice before have I met this honorable House. I came first as an humble petitioner seeking redress against discrimination on account of color. You then granted my prayer. Some years later, I came as a member of this House, the last representative of my race to sit in this body. You treated me then as a man and an equal. And now the honors of an invited guest I shall cherish as long as memory lasts. To-day is the anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, the preserver of the Union, the liberator of a race. [410] "The mystic chords of memory," stretching from heart to heart of millions of Americans at this hour, "swell the chorus of thanksgiving" to the Almighty for the life, character, and service of the great President. Four brief, crucial years he represented the soul of the Union struggling for immortality—for perpetuity; in him was the spirit of liberty struggling for a new birth among the children of men. "Slavery must die," he said, "that the Union may live." We have a Union to-day because we have Emancipation; we have Emancipation because we have a united country. Though nearly fifty years have elapsed since his martyr death and we see his images everywhere, yet Lincoln is no mere legendary figure of an heroic age done in colors, cast in bronze, or sculptured in marble; he is a living, vital force in American politics and statecraft. The people repeat his wise sayings; politicians invoke his principles; men of many political stripes profess to be following in his footsteps. We of this generation can almost see him in the flesh and blood and hear falling from his lips the sublime words of Gettysburg, the divine music of the second inaugural and the immortal Proclamation of Emancipation. We see this man of mighty thews and sinews, his feet firmly planted in mother earth, his head towering in the heavens. He lived among men but he walked with God. He was himself intensely human, but his sense of right, of justice, seemed to surpass the wisdom of men. A true child of nature, he beheld the races of men in the raw without the artificial trappings of civilization[411] and the adventitious circumstances of birth or wealth or place, and could see no difference in their natural rights. "The Negro is a man," said he, "my ancient faith tells me that all men are created equal." As a man he was brave yet gentle, strong yet tender and sympathetic, with the intellect of a philosopher, yet with the heart of a little child. As a statesman he was prudent, wise, sagacious, far-seeing and true. As President he was firm, magnanimous, merciful, and just. As a liberator and benefactor of mankind, he has no peer in all human history. As Lowell said in his famous commemoration ode, it still must be said: "Great captains, with their guns and drums, Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes; These are all gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American." There are only three great charters of freedom among Anglo-Saxon peoples: the Magna Charta, which the barons wrung from King John at Runnymede; the Declaration of Independence, which a few colonials threw at the head of an obstinate king; the Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln cast into the balance for the Union. The Magna Charta gave freedom to the nobility; the Declaration of Independence brought freedom down to the plain people; the Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln[412] set free the under-man, and proclaimed liberty to the slave and the serf throughout the world. Massachusetts had no small part in the second great charter of liberty. This is attested not only by the signatures of Hancock, the Adams's, Paine, and Gerry to that great document, but here are Boston, Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill, and a thousand memorials of the Revolution besides. Great indeed as was the part that Massachusetts played in achieving independence, greater still was her share in the Emancipation of the slave. Lincoln himself said that Boston had done more to bring on the war than any other city; and when Emancipation had been achieved he generously credited the result "to the logic and moral power of Garrison and the anti-slavery people." This day, therefore, belongs to Massachusetts. It is a part of her glorious history. Emancipation was but the triumph of Puritan principle—the right of each individual to eat his bread out of the sweat of his own brow or not at all. The history of the abolition of slavery in America could not be written with Massachusetts left out; the history of Massachusetts herself, since the Revolution, would be but a dreary, barren waste without the chapter of her part in the Emancipation. The House does well to pause in its deliberations to commemorate this anniversary. In 1837 your predecessors threw open the old Hall of Representatives to the first meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. A year later, the legislature adopted resolutions against the slave-trade, for the abolition of slavery in the District[413] of Columbia, and the prohibition of slavery in the territories. The fathers early enacted that there should be neither bond slaves nor villeinage amongst us except captives taken in just wars and those condemned judicially to serve. When it was attempted to land the first cargo of slaves upon her soil, the people seized them and sent them back to their own country and clime. In spite of the prayers and resolutions and acts of the early fathers, a form of slavery grew up here, but it was milder than the English villeinage: it resembled apprenticeship except in the duration. The slave had many of the rights of free men; the right to marry and the right to testify in court. Either with the decision of Somerset's case in England or the adoption of the first Constitution of the Commonwealth, during the Revolution, that institution passed away forever. The voices of freedom were first raised here. Whittier, Lowell, and Longfellow sang the songs of Emancipation. Garrison, Phillips, and Parker were the prophets and disciples of Lincoln. In the darkest days of slavery, John Quincy Adams held aloft the torch of liberty and fed its flame with his own intrepid spirit. Sumner was the scourge of God, the conscience of the state incarnate. The people of Massachusetts were not only idealists, dreamers, and molders of public opinion, but when thirty years of agitation had reached its culmination in the Civil War, Massachusetts sent 150,000 of her sons to sustain upon the battle-fields of the Republic the ideals which she had advocated in the Halls of Congress, in the forum and[414] the market-place. The people of Massachusetts, true to their history and traditions, have abolished here, so far as laws can do so, every discrimination between race and color, and every inequality between man and man. I have recalled these things for no vainglorious purpose. We should remind ourselves constantly that we have a history behind us, that we have a character to sustain. Are we of this generation worthy descendants of tea spillers and abolitionists? Are we living up to the traditions of the Commonwealth, to the principles of the fathers in relation to the treatment of citizens of color? I have observed with aching heart and agonizing spirit during the last twenty years not only the growing coldness and indifference on the part of our people to the fate of the Negro elsewhere; but here in our own city the breaking up of the old ties of friendship that once existed between people of color and all classes of citizens, just after Emancipation; the gradual falling away of that sympathy and support upon which we could always confidently rely in every crisis. I have watched the spirit of race prejudice raise its sinister shape in the labor market, in the business house, the real-estate exchange, in public places, and even in our schools, colleges, and churches. I say all this with pain and sorrow. I would be the last to "soil my own nest" or to utter one word that would reflect in the slightest degree upon Massachusetts or her people. I love inexpressibly every foot of Massachusetts soil, from the Berkshires to Essex, from the Capes to the islands off our southern coast. I have studied her history; I know her people, and when I have played out the little[415] game with destiny, I want to rest upon some Massachusetts hillside. I can never forget the emotions that filled my breast when first I set foot in Boston just a quarter of a century ago, a Negro lad in search of education, freedom, and opportunity. As I walked these sacred streets I lived over the Revolution, I saw them peopled with the mighty men of the past. I hastened to make my obeisance first to the spot where Attucks fell, the first martyr of the Revolution. I next looked out upon Bunker Hill where Peter Salem stood guard over the fallen Warren. I said to myself "here at last no black man need be ashamed of his race, here he has made history." And then to scenes of still another period I turned my gaze. I looked upon the narrow streets where Garrison was mobbed for my sake. I viewed the place where a few brave men gave Shadrach to freedom and to fame. The pictured walls of the old "cradle of liberty" seemed still to echo to the silvery tones of Phillips. The molded face of Governor Andrew spoke a benediction: "I know not what record of sins awaits me in that other life, but this I do know, I never despised any man because he was ignorant, because he was poor or because he was black." I felt that here at last was liberty, and here I would make my home. You say to me, "certainly you can find no fault." I gratefully acknowledge the debt which I owe the people of Massachusetts, but I cannot forget my brethren here. I cannot forget my children too, who were born here and by the blessings of God and your help I will leave to them[416] and their children a freer and better Massachusetts even than I have found her. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." I want upon this day to remind Massachusetts of her old ideals of liberty, justice, equality for all beneath her pure white flag. Laws, customs, institutions are nothing unless behind them stands a vital, living, throbbing public sentiment in favor of their enforcement in the spirit as well as in the letter. My friends, unless we can stay the rising tide of prejudice; unless we can hark back to our old ideals and old faiths, our very statues and memorials will some day mock us and cry shame upon us. National Emancipation was the culmination of a moral revolution, such as the world has never seen. It was not as Garrison intended, a peaceful revolution, the unanimous verdict of an awakened national conscience. Thirty years of fierce agitation and fiercer politics made an appeal to arms absolutely certain. A conflict of arms brought on by a conflict of opinion was bound to be followed by a conflict of opinion, whichever side won. So for fifty years since Emancipation, there has been more or less conflict over the Negro and his place in the Republic. The results of that conflict have in many instances been oppressive and even disastrous to his freedom. Many things incidental to Emancipation and vital to complete freedom are unfortunately still in the controversial stages. The right of the Negro to cast a ballot on the same qualifications as his other fellow citizens is not yet conceded everywhere. Public sentiment has not yet caught[417] up with the Constitution, nor is it in accord with the principles of true democracy. The right of the Negro to free access to all public places and to exact similar treatment therein is not universal in this country. He is segregated by law in some sections; he is segregated by custom in others. He is subjected to many petty annoyances and injustices and ofttimes deep humiliation solely on account of his color. The explanation of this reactionary tendency sometimes given is that the Negro is only a generation from slavery. It should not be forgotten that individuals of every other race in history have at some time been held slaves. The bondage of Israel is to-day only an epic poem. The Greek Slave adorns simply a niche in some palace of art. The Servii of Rome instructed the masters of the world. The Anglo-Saxon has not only worn the Roman and Norman collars, but individuals of that race were sold as slaves in the West Indies as late as the seventeenth century. White men have enslaved white men, black men have enslaved black men. The place of human slavery in the divine economy I do not understand, nor do I defend it; I am glad that the human race has long since passed that stage in its development. No race has a right to lord it over another or seek to degrade it because of a history of servitude; all have passed through this cruel experience; the history of the black race is a little more recent, that is all. The fact of slavery, therefore, should not impose the slightest limitation upon the liberty of the Negro or restriction upon his rights as a man and citizen. [418] The one great phase of the race question agitating the country to-day is that of intermarriage and miscegenation. It is a serious question; it is a vital question. No one will deny the right of any man to protect his family stock, or the right of a group to preserve its racial integrity. The facts show, however, that laws, however stringent, will not accomplish it. I submit for the serious consideration of the American people that the only danger of infusion from the Negro side is simply one thing, and that is summed up in one word "injustice." Why is it that thousands of colored men and women go over to the other side, "pass" as we say? It is for no other purpose than to escape the social ostracism and civic disabilities of the Negro. Why is it that we see so many pathetic attempts to be white? It is simply to escape injustice. In a country where every opportunity is open to the white, in business, in society, in government, and the door shut against or reluctantly opened to the black, the natural unconscious effort of the black is to get white. Where black is a badge of an inferior caste position in society, the natural effort of the black is to find some method of escape. I do not advocate intermarriage; I do not defend miscegenation. The same thing is true to-day as it was true in the time of Lincoln. In his debates with Douglass in 1858, he noted "that among the free States, those which make the colored man the nearest equal to the white have proportionally the fewest mulattoes, the least amalgamation." I submit therefore, that the only sure way to put an end to this tendency or desire, so far as the Negro is[419] concerned, is to accord him all his public and political rights and to treat each individual upon his merits as a man and citizen, according to him such recognition as his talents, his genius, his services to the community or the state entitles him. Make black, brown, yellow, the "open sesame" to the same privileges and the same opportunities as the white, and no one will care to become white. Upon this day which commemorates the emancipation of the black and the larger freedom of the white race, the redemption of the state and the birth of a new nation, I would bring to you a message not of blackness and despair but of hope—hope triumphant, hope, that Watts has pictured as blind with one string to her lyre, that sees not the star just ahead, but sits supreme at the top of the world. Emancipation redeemed the precious promises of the Declaration of Independence. It rid the Republic of its one great inconsistency, a government of the people resting upon despotism; it rescued the ship of state from the rocks of slavery and sectionalism, and set her with sails full and chart and compass true once more upon the broad ocean of humanity to lead the world to the haven of true human brotherhood. We have encountered storms and tempests at times; the waves of race antipathy have run high, and the political exigencies of the hour seem to overcast the heavens with clouds of darkness and despair, yet I have never lost faith, because the fathers set her course, and God, the Master Mariner, has ever been at the helm. "In giving freedom to the slave we[420] insured freedom to the free." In a country where all men were free none could be slaves. Emancipation raised labor to its true dignity and gave a new impetus to industry, commerce, and civilization. Under free labor men of many climes have come here to help develop the natural resources of the country, and the nation has entered upon a period of progress such as the world has never before witnessed in any time or place. What of the Negro himself? Has he justified Emancipation? The statistics of his physical, intellectual, and material progress are known to all. He has increased his numbers nearly threefold. The Negro population is to-day nearly three times that of the whole country at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. It is nearly three times that of New England in 1860. He has reduced his illiteracy to thirty per cent. He owns nearly $700,000,000 worth of property including nearly one million homes. He has shown that his tutelage in American civilization has not been vain; that he could live under the most trying and oppressive conditions. Three milestones in his progress have been reached and passed: First: The North and South agree that the abolition of slavery was right and just. Second: The people of the North and South agree that every industrial opportunity shall be given to the Negro. Third: The right of the Negro to be educated and the duty of the state to see to it that he has every opportunity for education are established. Public opinion has settled[421] forever the right of the Negro to be free to labor and to educate. These three things constitute no slight advance; they are the fundamental rights of civilization. The prophecy of Lincoln has been fulfilled, that Emancipation would be "An Act, which the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless." Moreover it should not be forgotten, as Bancroft the historian has said, that "it is in part to the aid of the Negro in freedom that the country owes its success, in its movement of regeneration—that the world of mankind owes the continuance of the United States as an example of a Republic." The American Negro in freedom has brought new prestige and glory to his country in many ways. Tanner, a Georgia boy, is no longer a Negro artist, but an American artist whose works adorn the galleries of the world. Paul Laurence Dunbar, an American poet, who singing songs of his race, voicing its sorrows and griefs with unrivalled lyric sweetness and purity, has caught the ear of the world. The matchless story of Booker Washington, the American educator, is told in many tongues and in many lands. The history of the world has no such chapter as the Negro's fifty years of freedom. The duty of the hour is to unshackle him and make him wholly free. When the Negro is free from the vexatious annoyances of color and has only the same problems of life as any other men, his contribution to the general welfare of his country will be greater than ever before. Whatever be his present disadvantages and inequalities, one thing is absolutely certain, that nowhere else in[422] the world does so large a number of people of African descent enjoy so many rights and privileges as here in America. God has not placed these 10,000,000 here upon the American Continent in the American Republic for naught. There must be some work for them to do. He has given to each race some particular part to play in our great national drama. I predict that within the next fifty years all these discriminations, disfranchisements, and segregation will pass away. Antipathy to color is not natural, and the fear of ten by eighty millions of people is only a spook of politics, a ghost summoned to the banquet to frighten the timid and foolish. I care nothing for the past; I look beyond the present; I see a great country with her territories stretching from the rising to the setting sun, with a climate as varied as a tropical day and an Arctic night, with a soil blessed by the fruits of the earth and nourished by the waters under it; I see a great country tenanted by untold millions of happy, healthy human beings; men of every race that God has made out of one blood to inherit the earth, a great human family, governed by righteousness and justice, not by greed and fear—in which peace and happiness shall reign supreme. Men more and more are beginning to realize that the common origin and destiny of the human race give to each species the right to occupy the earth in peace, prosperity, and plenty, and that the duty of each race is to promote the happiness of all. The movements for social and industrial justice and the right of the people to rule are world-wide. [423] The American people are fast losing their provincial character. They are to-day a great world power with interests and possessions upon every part of the globe. Their horizon is the world; they are thinking in terms of the universe, and speaking in the tongues of all men. With the widening of men's visions they must realize that the basis of true democracy and human brotherhood is the common origin and destiny of the human race; that we are all born alike, live alike, and die alike, that the laws of man's existence make absolutely no distinction. I wandered recently into Westminster Abbey. I beheld all around me the images and effigies of the illustrious and the great,—kings, rulers, statesmen, poets, patriots, explorers, and scientists; I trampled upon the graves of some; I stood before the tombs of kings, some dead twelve centuries; there the wisest and merriest of monarchs and the most pious and dissolute of kings slept side by side. As illustrating the vanity of triumphs of personal glory, on one side of the Chapel of Henry VII, rests Mary, Queen of Scots, and almost directly opposite, all that remains of Elizabeth, her executioner. I stood before the tomb of the great Napoleon; I wandered through his palaces at Versailles and Fontainebleau with all of their magnificence and splendor, and I recalled the period of his power and glory among men, and yet, he too died. Then I passed a Potter's field and I looked upon the graves of the unknown, graves of the pauper and the pleb, and I realized that they were at last equal, those who slept in Valhalla and those who slept in the common burying-ground, and that they would each and all hear[424] the first or the second trump of the resurrection "according to the deeds done in the body and the flesh, according to whether they were good or evil." In the democracy of death all are equal. Then men, my brothers, our duty is to make life in human society the same great democracy of equality of rights, of privileges, of opportunities, for all the children of men. There is nothing else worth while. God grant to the American people this larger view of humanity, this greater conception of human duty. In a movement for democracy, for social and industrial justice, for the complete Emancipation of the Negro from the disabilities of color, Massachusetts must now, as in the past, point the way. If we fail here, with traditions and history such as are ours behind us, can we succeed elsewhere? The Great Emancipator speaks to us at this hour and furnishes the solution for all our race problems. "Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and the other race, and the other race being inferior and therefore must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that 'all men are created equal.'" God grant that the American people, year by year, may grow more like Lincoln in charity, justice, and righteousness to the end that "the government of the people, for the people, by the people, shall not perish from the earth." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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