The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States by Martin Robison Delany
page 21 of 189 (11%)
page 21 of 189 (11%)
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fair opportunity, and they would prove their capacity. That it was
unjust, wicked, and cruel, the result of an unnatural prejudice, that debarred them from places of respectability, and that public opinion could and should be corrected upon this subject. That it was only necessary to make a sacrifice of feeling, and an innovation on the customs of society, to establish a different order of things,--that as Anti-Slavery men, they were willing to make these sacrifices, and determined to take the colored man by the hand, making common cause with him in affliction, and bear a part of the odium heaped upon him. That his cause was the cause of God--that "In as much as ye did it not unto the least of these my little ones, ye did it not unto me," and that as Anti-Slavery men, they would "do right if the heavens fell." Thus, was the cause espoused, and thus did we expect much. But in all this, we were doomed to disappointment, sad, sad disappointment. Instead of realising what we had hoped for, we find ourselves occupying the very same position in relation to our Anti-Slavery friends, as we do in relation to the pro-slavery part of the community--a mere secondary, underling position, in all our relations to them, and any thing more than this, is not a matter of course affair--it comes not by established anti-slavery custom or right, but like that which emanates from the pro-slavery portion of the community by mere sufferance. It is true, that the "Liberator" office, in Boston, has got Elijah Smith, a colored youth, at the cases--the "Standard," in New York, a young colored man, and the "Freeman," in Philadelphia, William Still, another, in the publication office, as "packing clerk"; yet these are but three out of the hosts that fill these offices in their various departments, all occupying places that could have been, and as we once thought, would have been, easily enough, occupied by colored men. Indeed, we can have no other idea about anti-slavery in this country, |
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