are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great
wrongs.

The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism,
to assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has
cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North--her co-
partner in guilt--cannot salve her conscience by plastering it
with gold. We cannot settle this problem by diplomacy and
suaveness, by "policy" alone. If worse come to worst, can
the moral fibre of this country survive the slow throttling and
murder of nine millions of men?

The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty
stern and delicate,--a forward movement to oppose a part of
the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington
preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the
masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him,
rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this
Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless host.
But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North
or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of
voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions,
and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter
minds,--so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this,--we
must unceasingly and firmly oppose them. By every civilized
and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the
world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great
words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget: "We
hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain