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 now just a word more. The struggle before us is a long and hard one;
but with faith in God, and faith in ourselves, and indomitable
perseverance, and the purpose to do right, in spite of the forces that
are arrayed against us, we need have no fears as to the ultimate result.
Success is sure to crown our efforts. We are not always going to be
behind; we are not always going to be discriminated against; we are not
always going to be denied our rights. For as Sojourner Truth said, "God
is not dead." And some day, in his own good time, the right will
triumph. As the poet has expressed it,
"Right is right since God is God,
And Right the day will win."
What is needed is a New EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION—a proclamation that
will set the white man free from the degrading influence of race
prejudice—a proclamation that will register a decree or purpose on the
part of the white race to free itself not only from the narrowing lust
of gold, but from the still more narrowing lust of race hatred and
proscription. O, for another and greater Lincoln to speak the word of
power,—another and greater Lincoln to set the thought and heart of white
America going in a new and better way—the way of righteousness—the way
of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. In the inspired
record we read: "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard
shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the
fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and
the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the
lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on
the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the
adder's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters
cover the sea." Surely if this be true; if this is a prophecy of what is
to be, there is reason and good reason to believe that the savage
element in the white man's nature, which corresponds to the nature of
these ferocious animals, and which leads him to devise and execute his
various schemes of disfranchisement, of segregation, of restricted
opportunities, in order to annoy and degrade us, will yet undergo a
change. If the wolf and lamb can dwell together, and the lamb be
perfectly safe, surely the white man in this country is not so
absolutely beyond being amenable to reason and common sense and decency
as to make it impossible, some time in the future, for him and his
brother in black to dwell together, and the brother in black feel no
uneasiness, no fear of being molested, or of having his rights infringed
upon by him. The white man, when it comes to the Negro, is pretty bad, I
know, but I cannot believe that he is so hopelessly bad as to render it
impossible for the colored man to dwell with him and be treated by him
as a man and brother. It may ultimately turn out to be true; but I am
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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