The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States — John Shaqi
The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United StatesDelany, Martin Robison
History
The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States
Delany, Martin Robison
African Americans
Sensible of the high-handed injustice done to the colored people in the
United States, and the mischief likely to emanate from the unchristian
proceedings of the deceptious Colonization scheme, like all honest
hearted penitents, with the ardor only known to new converts, they
entreated the Convention, whatever they did, not to entertain for a
moment, the idea of recommending emigration to their people, nor the
establishment of separate institutions of learning. They earnestly
contended, and doubtless honestly meaning what they said, that they (the
whites) had been our oppressors and injurers, they had obstructed our
progress to the high positions of civilization, and now, it was their
bounden duty to make full amends for the injuries thus inflicted on an
unoffending people. They exhorted the Convention to cease; as they had
laid on the burden, they would also take it off; as they had obstructed
our pathway, they would remove the hindrance. In a word, as they had
oppressed and trampled down the colored people, they would now elevate
them. These suggestions and promises, good enough to be sure, after they
were made, were accepted by the Convention--though some gentlemen were
still in favor of the first project as the best policy, Mr. A.D. Shadd
of West Chester, Pa., as we learn from himself, being one among that
number--ran through the country like wild-fire, no one thinking, and if
he thought, daring to speak above his breath of going any where out of
certain prescribed limits, or of sending a child to school, if it should
but have the name of "colored" attached to it, without the risk of being
termed a "traitor" to the cause of his people, or an enemy to the
Anti-Slavery cause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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