Fifty Years of Freedom: with matters of vital importance to both the white and colored people of the United StatesGrimké, Francis J. (Francis James)
History
Fifty Years of Freedom: with matters of vital importance to both the white and colored people of the United States
Grimké, Francis J. (Francis James)
African Americans
And it is necessary that this be done—that the weaker part be joined,
and joined openly as he did, if it is to be strengthened. There is a
good deal in numbers. Somehow people have a great deal more respect, are
inclined to be very much more considerate of a cause that has many
adherents, or whose adherents are increasing in numbers. Where we are
silent we are never counted. Elijah is sometimes criticised for his
so-called pessimistic statement when he was running from Jezebel—"The
children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars,
and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only am left." In
this he was mistaken. It seems there were seven thousand who had not
bowed the knee to Baal. But, as some one said, no one knew it, and
therefore they counted for nothing. Now we don't want our friends among
the whites who want us to get our rights, who think that we ought to be
treated fairly, justly, to count for nothing; we don't want them to be
so silently sympathetic that no one will know of it. We want them to be
outspoken; to be openly for us, and thus help to mould public sentiment
in our favor. It would have helped greatly if, during this segregation
agitation there had been some meetings held among the whites giving
expression to a different sentiment. Even a simple protest from a single
individual helps. A letter like the one published not long ago by the
Hon. A. E. Pillsbury of Boston, Massachusetts, declining to pay his
annual dues to the treasurer of the National Bar Association, and giving
as his reason his positive and emphatic dissent from the action of the
Association in discriminating against colored men, is bound to have its
effect in educating public sentiment, in helping to break down invidious
distinctions. Carl Schurz, in his Life of Henry Clay, in speaking of the
Abolitionists, says, "The immediate effect of their work has frequently
been much underrated. They served to keep alive in the Northern mind
that secret trouble of conscience about slavery which later, in a ripe
political situation, was to break out as a great force." And so here,
the protest of our white friends in the struggle we are making now will
serve to keep alive in others the sense of right, which will ultimately
become a great force before which the wrongs from which we are now
suffering will be righted. Silent sympathy is better than no sympathy;
but the sympathy that expresses itself in word and act is greatly to be
preferred. If you think we are not treated right; if you think that
invidious distinctions based upon color, upon race ought not to exist,
say so; and say it so loud that all about you will hear it. This is the
request that we make of you, as we enter upon another half century of
freedom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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