But this is not all or anything like all that mars almost beyond
recognition the citizenship of the Negro. If one doubts this, let him go
into the South and let him venture to incite the Negroes there to an
assertion of their rights. Freedom of the press is theirs under the
Constitution. Does anyone suppose that they would be allowed to say
publicly what they think about the un-Christian and undemocratic way in
which they are treated? Let them try it and see what will happen to them,
that is, if they be wholly reckless of consequences. Freedom of the press
is another of their rights, one of the boasted bulwarks of the
Constitution. Does anyone suppose that they would be allowed to write as
freely or anything like as freely about white men and women, especially
the latter, as white men write about colored men and women? Let some
colored editor make the experiment and tell afterward what happened to him
hot on the heels of his article. He may not be able to enlighten the
public but the associated press dispatch will give the grim facts relating
to the end of that editor, who undertook to monkey with the buzz saw of
the freedom of the press in a Southern community.
Another of the sacred rights which appertain to the Negro's American
citizenship is the right of public assembly to consider his grievances and
discuss measures for their redress. Well, if any group of Negroes in
almost any part of the South are hunting for trouble, let them get up a
public meeting for such a purpose, and give vent to the righteous
indignation against oppressions which ought to stir the blood of any man
who is not a slave, and then watch results. A flaming spirit will
presently appear in the midst of that meeting, and it will not be the
flaming spirit of liberty, but of a Southern mob on arson and murder
bent. Negro property will be burned and Negro blood will be shed, and that
without stint or mercy. The Negro's Constitutional right to assemble to
consider his wrongs is in reality too weak to resist the murderous
violence of a Southern mob. The mob burns Negroes and their property
almost everywhere in the South with absolute impunity. Nothing is done by
the authorities to punish the mob or to protect their victims. And yet
both the mob and its victims are American citizens, entitled alike on
paper to the law's protection and amenable alike to its penalties. The
white man enjoys a monopoly of the first and the Negro gets the lion's
share of the second. The colored man who has the temerity to agitate for
his rights in the South may find himself agitating speedily at the end of
a rope, unless he more speedily finds some hole in the ground to give him
the protection which Government refuses him. He would in that event be
surer of the thing which he seeks if the hole in the ground were a hole in
some grave yard, for then the hole might be pulled in after him, when he
would find rest at last--surcease from all the cruel perplexities and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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