African Americans; United States -- Race relations
“As for the Bolsheviks, it’s injustice is making Bolshevism. It’s
injustice that changes quiet, inoffensive school teachers and
workingmen into Bolsheviks, just as it is injustice is stirring up
the colored people. Not that we are Bolsheviks. I am not going to say
anything against Bolsheviks, either. Show me the Bolshevik first, I
say, and then I’ll know whether I’m against him. People are alarmed
because the number of Bolsheviks is increasing. But what is making them
increase? If America is such a blessed country, why is she making all
these Bolsheviks? You know a tree by its fruits, and so you may know
a country by what it produces. These Bolsheviks that we read of being
deported in the Soviet Ark weren’t Bolshevik when they came to this
country. It comes to this: that we’ve raised a crop of Bolshevism in
this country and are exporting it to Europe, and now we’re busy sowing
another crop. Stop sowing injustice, and Bolshevism will cease growing.
(_Applause again._)
“But there is less Bolshevism among the colored people than among the
white, because the colored are more humble, more subservient, more used
to inequalities. We are always being told that we are backward, and we
believe it; bad, and we believe it; untrustworthy, and we believe it;
immoral, and we believe it. We are always being told what we ought to
be. But I’ll come back to what we are.
“We may be immoral; we may be a danger to the white women. But has
anyone ever honestly compared the morality of Whites and Blacks? They
will tell you there is not sufficient evidence to make a comparison, or
they will bring you pamphlets and paragraphs out of newspapers, records
of disgusting crimes; and we know very well that in twelve million
Negroes there are bound to be some half-wits and criminals capable
of terrible breaches of morality. But at best it is a paper evidence
against the Negro, while there is flesh-and-blood evidence against the
White. The moral standard of the Whites is written visibly in the
flesh and blood of three million of our race. (_Another sensation._)
Brothers, there’s one standard for the white man, and another for the
colored man. (_Sensation redoubled._) A colored man’s actions are not
judged in the same light as those of a white man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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