the catalogue of violence to obtain power and the lexicon of sophistry
for arguments to extenuate the exceeding heinousness of crime. How
could it be otherwise? To tell a man he is free when he has neither
money nor the opportunity to make it, is simply to mock him. To tell
him he has no master when he cannot live except by permission of the
man who, under favorable conditions, monopolizes all the land, is to
deal in the most tantalizing contradiction of terms. But this is just
what the United States did for the black man. And yet because he has
not grown learned and wealthy in twenty years, because he does not own
broad acres and a large bank account, people are not wanting who
declare he has no capacity, that he is improvident by nature and
mendacious from inclination.


FOOTNOTES:

[3] Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment
for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall
exist within the United States, or any place subject to their
jurisdiction.--Art. XIII. Sec. 1 of the Constitution.

[4] All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of
the State in which they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; _nor shall any State deprive any person of life,
liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any
person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws_--XIVth Amendment, Section 1.