of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow
of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly
explain it as the natural defence of culture against barbarism,
learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the "higher"
against the "lower" races. To which the Negro cries Amen!
and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is
founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness,
and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance.
But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this
he stands helpless, dismayed, and well-nigh speechless; before
that personal disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic
humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of
fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and the boisterous
welcoming of the worse, the all-pervading desire to inculcate
disdain for everything black, from Toussaint to the devil,
--before this there rises a sickening despair that would disarm
and discourage any nation save that black host to whom
"discouragement" is an unwritten word.

But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the
inevitable self-questioning, self-disparagement, and lowering
of ideals which ever accompany repression and breed in an
atmosphere of contempt and hate. Whisperings and portents
came home upon the four winds: Lo! we are diseased and
dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is
vain; what need of education, since we must always cook and
serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this self-criticism,
saying: Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what
need of higher culture for half-men? Away with the black
man's ballot, by force or fraud,--and behold the suicide of a