Now, we are confronted with a condition--call it a relation, if you please--in which the interest of the entire Southland is involved, and we, as the Negro race, are called upon to express ourselves as to the basis of this relationship and the perpetuity of the same. The facts above stated make it extremely difficult for one to conscientiously concede, first that the relations are friendly; and, second, that they can be sustained and maintained. As a matter of fact, the subject assigned me can be easily answered by saying that the friendly relations which now exist can be sustained and maintained by destroying the system of public instruction; by making no protest against the encroachments upon our liberty; by destroying the medium of the Christian religion, pulling down our altars, demolishing our churches and hanging crape on the door-knobs of all places of public instruction. This we are unwilling to do, and, as God gives us strength and light to see our plain duty, we shall work, watch and wait for that surrounding which shall be congenial to a healthful development of a Christian manhood, when the sphinx of this age shall have passed into the oblivious past; and mankind, transformed from brutish prejudice to that lordly prince, divested of all racial prejudice, shall stand upon that plain of reason where all are equals. We must see that our rights under the Constitution are one thing and the enjoyment of those rights quite another thing. Now, then, shall we, because these rights are denied us, fail to teach our children that these rights are ours? And can it not be seen that for us to concede that the relationship, now existing between the two races in the South, is friendly, is an admission of the righteousness upon which such relation is based? And even this very book will be brought in evidence against us. A friendly relation grows out of real friendship, so that it is necessary here to explain friendship. Mr. Webster gives the meaning of friendship as a state of being friends; a friendly relation or attachment, to a person, or between persons; affection arising from mutual esteem and good will; friendliness; amity; good will. "There is little friendship in the world," says Bacon. There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity. Dryden says, "Aptness to unite; conformity; affinity; harmony and correspondence are the signs of friendship." These grow out of that soil and are the forerunners of that friendship out of which a relation must be had to be called friendly. Now let us analyze this term "friendship." "Amity"--from the Latin, amare to love, or friendship in a general way between individuals, societies or nations. "Goodwill"--I wish you well, peace and prosperity. "Integrity"--moral soundness; completeness; honesty; rectitude.