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WASHINGTON:
GIBSON BROS., PRINTERS AND BOOKBINDERS.
1886.
In Louisville, KY., 1883.
The following was delivered by FREDERICK DOUGLASS as an address to
the people of the United States at a Convention of Colored Men held
in Louisville, Ky., September 24, 1883:
FELLOW-CITIZENS: Charged with the responsibility and duty of doing what
we may to advance the interest and promote the general welfare of a
people lately enslaved, and who, though now free, still suffer many of
the disadvantages and evils derived from their former condition, not the
least among which is the low and unjust estimate entertained of their
abilities and possibilities as men, and their value as citizens of the
Republic; instructed by these people to make such representations and
adopt such measures as in our judgment may help to bring about a better
understanding and a more friendly feeling between themselves and their
white fellow-citizens recognizing the great fact as we do, that the
relations of the American people and those of civilized nations
generally depend more upon prevailing ideas, opinions, and long
established usages for their qualities of good and evil than upon courts
of law or creeds of religion. Allowing the existence of a magnanimous
disposition on your part to listen candidly to an honest appeal for fair
play, coming from any class of your fellow-citizens, however humble, who
may have, or may think they have, rights to assert or wrongs to redress,
the members of this National Convention, chosen from all parts of the
United States, representing the thoughts, feelings and purposes of
colored men generally, would, as one means of advancing the cause
committed to them, most respectfully and earnestly ask your attention
and favorable consideration to the matters contained in the present
paper.
At the outset we very cordially congratulate you upon the altered
condition both of ourselves and our common country. Especially do we
congratulate you upon the fact that a great reproach, which for two
centuries rested on the good name of your country, has been blotted out;
that chattel slavery is no longer the burden of the colored man’s
complaint, and that we now come to rattle no chains, to clank no
fetters, to paint no horrors of the old plantation to shock your
sensibilities, to humble your pride, excite your pity, or to kindle
your indignation. We rejoice also that one of the results of this
stupendous revolution in our national history, the Republic which was
before divided and weakened between two hostile and irreconcilable
interests, has become united and strong; that from a low plain of life,
which bordered upon barbarism, it has risen to the possibility of the
highest civilization; that this change has started the American Republic
on a new departure, full of promise, although it has also brought you
and ourselves face to face with problems novel and difficult, destined
to impose upon us responsibilities and duties, which, plainly enough,
will tax our highest mental and moral ability for their happy solution.
Born on American soil in common with yourselves, deriving our bodies and
our minds from its dust, centuries having passed away since our
ancestors were torn from the shores of Africa, we, like yourselves, hold
ourselves to be in every sense Americans, and that we may, therefore,
venture to speak to you in a tone not lower than that which becomes
earnest men and American citizens. Having watered your soil with our
tears, enriched it with our blood, performed its roughest labor in time
of peace, defended it against enemies in time of war, and at all times
been loyal and true to its best interests, we deem it no arrogance or
presumption to manifest now a common concern with you for its welfare,
prosperity, honor and glory.
If the claim thus set up by us be admitted, as we think it ought to be,
it may be asked, what propriety or necessity can there be for the
Convention, of which we are members? and why are we now addressing you
in some sense as suppliants asking for justice and fair play? These
questions are not new to us. From the day the call for this Convention
went forth this seeming incongruity and contradiction has been brought
to our attention. From one quarter or another, sometimes with argument
and sometimes without argument, sometimes with seeming pity for our
ignorance, and at other times with fierce censure for our depravity,
these questions have met us. With apparent surprise, astonishment, and
impatience, we have been asked: “What more can the colored people of
this country want than they now have, and what more is possible to
them?” It is said they were once slaves, they are now free; they were
once subjects, they are now sovereigns; they were once outside of all
American institutions, they are now inside of all and are a recognized
part of the whole American people. Why, then, do they hold Colored
National Conventions and thus insist upon keeping up the color line
between themselves and their white fellow-countrymen? We do not deny the
pertinence and plausibility of these questions, nor do we shrink from a
candid answer to the argument which they are supposed to contain. For we
do not forget that they are not only put to us by those who have no
sympathy with us, but by many who wish us well, and that in any case
they deserve an answer. Before, however, we proceed to answer them, we
digress here to say that there is only one element associated with them
which excites the least bitterness of feeling in us, or that calls for
special rebuke, and that is when they fall from the lips and pens of
colored men who suffer with us and ought to know better. A few such men,
well known to us and the country, happening to be more fortunate in the
possession of wealth, education, and position than their humbler
brethren, have found it convenient to chime in with the popular cry
against our assembling, on the ground that we have no valid reason for
this measure or for any other separate from the whites; that we ought to
be satisfied with things as they are. With white men who thus object the
case is different and less painful. For them there is a chance for
charity. Educated as they are and have been for centuries, taught to
look upon colored people as a lower order of humanity than themselves,
and as having few rights, if any, above domestic animals, regarding them
also through the medium of their beneficent religious creeds and just
laws--as if law and practice were identical--some allowance can, and
perhaps ought to, be made when they misapprehend our real situation and
deny our wants and assume a virtue they do not possess. But no such
excuse or apology can be properly framed for men who are in any way
identified with us. What may be erroneous in others implies either
baseness or imbecility in them. Such men, it seems to us, are either
deficient in self-respect or too mean, servile and cowardly to assert
the true dignity of their manhood and that of their race. To admit that
there are such men among us is a disagreeable and humiliating
confession. But in this respect, as in others, we are not without the
consolation of company; we are neither alone nor singular in the
production of just such characters. All oppressed people have been thus
afflicted.
It is one of the most conspicuous evils of caste and oppression, that
they inevitably tend to make cowards and serviles of their victims, men
ever ready to bend the knee to pride and power that thrift may follow
fawning, willing to betray the cause of the many to serve the ends of
the few; men who never hesitate to sell a friend when they think they
can thereby purchase an enemy. Specimens of this sort may be found
everywhere and at all times. There were Northern men with Southern
principles in the time of slavery, and Tories in the revolution for
independence. There are betrayers and informers to-day in Ireland, ready
to kiss the hand that smites them and strike down the arm reached out to
save them. Considering our long subjection to servitude and caste, and
the many temptations to which we are exposed to betray our race into the
hands of their enemies, the wonder is not that we have so many traitors
among us as that we have so few.
The most of our people, to their honor be it said, are remarkably sound
and true to each other. To those who think we have no cause to hold this
convention, we freely admit that, so far as the organic law of the land
is concerned, we have indeed nothing to complain of, to ask or desire.
There may be need of legislation, but the organic law is sound.
Happily for us and for the honor of the Republic, the United States
Constitution is just, liberal, and friendly. The amendments to that
instrument, adopted in the trying times of reconstruction of the
Southern States, are a credit to the courage and statesmanship of the
leading men of that crisis. These amendments establish freedom and
abolish all unfair and invidious discrimination against citizens on
account of race and color, so far as law can do so. In their view,
citizens are neither black nor white, and all are equals. With this
admission and this merited reproof to trimmers and traitors, we again
come to the question, Why are we here in this National Convention? To
this we answer, first, because there is a power in numbers and in union;
because the many are more than the few; because the voice of a whole
people, oppressed by a common injustice, is far more likely to command
attention and exert an influence on the public mind than the voice of
single individuals and isolated organizations; because, coming together
from all parts of the country, the members of a National convention have
the means of a more comprehensive knowledge of the general situation,
and may, therefore, fairly be presumed to conceive more clearly and
express more fully and wisely the policy it may be necessary for them
to pursue in the premises. Because conventions of the people are in
themselves harmless, and when made the means of setting forth
grievances, whether real or fancied, they are the safety-valves of the
Republic, a wise and safe substitute for violence, dynamite, and all
sorts of revolutionary action against the peace and good order of
society. If they are held without sufficient reason, that fact will be
made manifest in their proceedings, and people will only smile at their
weakness and pass on to their usual business without troubling
themselves about the empty noise they are able to make. But if held with
good cause, and by wise, sober, and earnest men, that fact will be made
apparent and the result will be salutary. That good old maxim, which has
come down to us from revolutionary times, that error may be safely
tolerated, while truth is left free to combat it, applies here. A bad
law is all the sooner repealed by being executed, and error is sooner
dispelled by exposure than by silence. So much we have deemed it fit to
say of conventions generally, because our resort to this measure has
been treated by many as if there were something radically wrong in the
very idea of a convention. It has been treated as if it were some
ghastly, secret conclave, sitting in darkness to devise strife and
mischief. The fact is, the only serious feature in the argument against
us is the one which respects color. We are asked not only why hold a
convention, but with emphasis, why hold a _colored_ convention? Why keep
up this odious distinction between citizens of a common country, and
thus give countenance to the color line? It is argued that, if colored
men hold conventions, based upon color, white men may hold white
conventions based upon color, and thus keep open the chasm between one
and the other class of citizens, and keep alive a prejudice which we
profess to deplore. We state the argument against us fairly and
forcibly, and will answer it candidly and we hope conclusively. By that
answer it will be seen that the force of the objection is, after all,
more in sound than in substance. No reasonable man will ever object to
white men holding conventions in their own interests, when they are once
in our condition and we in theirs, when they are the oppressed and we
the oppressors. In point of fact, however, white men are already in
convention against us in various ways and at many important points. The
practical construction of American life is a convention against us.
Human law may know no distinction among men in respect of rights, but
human practice may. Examples are painfully abundant.
The border men hate the Indians; the Californian, the Chinaman; the
Mohammedan, the Christian, and _vice versa_. In spite of a common nature
and the equality framed into law, this hate works injustice, of which
each in their own name and under their own color may justly complain.
The apology for observing the color line in the composition of our State
and National conventions is in its necessity and in the fact that we
must do this or nothing, for if we move our color is recognized and must
be. It has its foundation in the exceptional relation we sustain to the
white people of the country. A simple statement of our position
vindicates at once our convention and our cause.
It is our lot to live among a people whose laws, traditions, and
prejudices have been against us for centuries, and from these they are
not yet free. To assume that they are free from these evils simply
because they have changed their laws is to assume what is utterly
unreasonable and contrary to facts. Large bodies move slowly.
Individuals may be converted on the instant and change their whole
course of life. Nations never. Time and events are required for the
conversion of nations. Not even the character of a great political
organization can be changed by a new platform. It will be the same old
snake though in a new skin. Though we have had war, reconstruction and
abolition as a nation, we still linger in the shadow and blight of an
extinct institution. Though the colored man is no longer subject to be
bought and sold, he is still surrounded by an adverse sentiment which
fetters all his movements. In his downward course he meets with no
resistance, but his course upward is resented and resisted at every step
of his progress. If he comes in ignorance, rags, and wretchedness, he
conforms to the popular belief of his character, and in that character
he is welcome. But if he shall come as a gentleman, a scholar, and a
statesman, he is hailed as a contradiction to the national faith
concerning his race, and his coming is resented as impudence. In the one
case he may provoke contempt and derision, but in the other he is an
affront to pride, and provokes malice. Let him do what he will, there is
at present, therefore, no escape for him. The color line meets him
everywhere, and in a measure shuts him out from all respectable and
profitable trades and callings. In spite of all your religion and laws
he is a rejected man.
He is rejected by trade unions, of every trade, and refused work while
he lives, and burial when he dies, and yet he is asked to forget his
color, and forget that which everybody else remembers. If he offers
himself to a builder as a mechanic, to a client as a lawyer, to a
patient as a physician, to a college as a professor, to a firm as a
clerk, to a Government Department as an agent, or an officer, he is
sternly met on the color line, and his claim to consideration in some
way is disputed on the ground of color.
Not even our churches, whose members profess to follow the despised
Nazarene, whose home, when on earth, was among the lowly and despised,
have yet conquered this feeling of color madness, and what is true of
our churches is also true of our courts of law. Neither is free from
this all-pervading atmosphere of color hate. The one describes the Deity
as impartial, no respecter of persons, and the other the Goddess of
Justice as blindfolded, with sword by her side and scales in her hand
held evenly between high and low, rich and poor, white and black, but
both are the images of American imagination, rather than American
practices.
Taking advantage of the general disposition in this country to impute
crime to color, white men _color_ their faces to commit crime and wash
off the hated color to escape punishment. In many places where the
commission of crime is alleged against one of our color, the ordinary
processes of the law are set aside as too slow for the impetuous justice
of the infuriated populace. They take the law into their own bloody
hands and proceed to whip, stab, shoot, hang, or burn the alleged
culprit, without the intervention of courts, counsel, judges, juries, or
witnesses. In such cases it is not the business of the accusers to prove
guilt, but it is for the accused to prove his innocence, a thing hard
for any man to do, even in a court of law, and utterly impossible for
him to do in these infernal Lynch courts. A man accused, surprised,
frightened and captured by a motley crowd, dragged with a rope about his
neck in midnight-darkness to the nearest tree, and told in the coarsest
terms of profanity to prepare for death, would be more than human if he
did not, in his terror-stricken appearance, more confirm suspicion of
guilt than the contrary. Worse still, in the presence of such hell-black
outrages, the pulpit is usually dumb, and the press in the neighborhood
is silent or openly takes side with the mob. There are occasional cases
in which white men are lynched, but one sparrow does not make a summer.
Every one knows that what is called Lynch law is peculiarly the law for
colored people and for nobody else. If there were no other grievance
than this horrible and barbarous Lynch law custom, we should be
justified in assembling, as we have now done, to expose and denounce it.
But this is not all. Even now, after twenty years of so-called
emancipation, we are subject to lawless raids of midnight riders, who,
with blackened faces, invade our homes and perpetrate the foulest of
crimes upon us and our families. This condition of things is too
flagrant and notorious to require specifications or proof. Thus in all
the relations of life and death we are met by the color line. We cannot
ignore it if we would, and ought not if we could. It hunts us at
midnight, it denies us accommodation in hotels and justice in the
courts; excludes our children from schools, refuses our sons the chance
to learn trades, and compels us to pursue only such labor as will bring
the least reward. While we recognize the color line as a hurtful force,
a mountain barrier to our progress, wounding our bleeding feet with its
flinty rocks at every step, we do not despair. We are a hopeful people.
This convention is a proof of our faith in you, in reason, in truth and
justice--our belief that prejudice, with all its malign accompaniments,
may yet be removed by peaceful means; that, assisted by time and events
and the growing enlightenment of both races, the color line will
ultimately become harmless. When this shall come it will then only be
used, as it should be, to distinguish one variety of the human family
from another. It will cease to have any civil, political, or moral
significance, and colored conventions will then be dispensed with as
anachronisms, wholly out of place, but not till then. Do not marvel that
we are not discouraged. The faith within us has a rational basis, and is
confirmed by facts. When we consider how deep-seated this feeling
against us is; the long centuries it has been forming; the forces of
avarice which have been marshaled to sustain it; how the language and
literature of the country have been pervaded with it; how the church,
the press, the play-house, and other influences of the country have been
arrayed in its support, the progress toward its extinction must be
considered vast and wonderful.
If liberty, with us, is yet but a name, our citizenship is but a sham,
and our suffrage thus far only a cruel mockery, we may yet congratulate
ourselves upon the fact that the laws and institutions of the country
are sound, just and liberal. There is hope for a people when their laws
are righteous whether for the moment they conform to their requirements
or not. But until this nation shall make its practice accord with its
Constitution and its righteous laws, it will not do to reproach the
colored people of this country with keeping up the color line--for that
people would prove themselves scarcely worthy of even theoretical
freedom, to say nothing of practical freedom, if they settled down in
silent, servile and cowardly submission to their wrongs, from fear of
making their color visible. They are bound by every element of manhood
to hold conventions in their own name and on their own behalf, to keep
their grievances before the people and make every organized protest
against the wrongs inflicted upon them within their power. They should
scorn the counsels of cowards, and hang their banner on the outer wall.
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow. We do not believe,
as we are often told, that the negro is the ugly child of the national
family, and the more he is kept out of sight the better it will be for
him. You know that liberty given is never so precious as liberty sought
for and fought for. The man outraged is the man to make the outcry.
Depend upon it, men will not care much for a people who do not care for
themselves. Our meeting here was opposed by some of our members, because
it would disturb the peace of the Republican party. The suggestion came
from coward lips and misapprehended the character of that party. If the
Republican party cannot stand a demand for justice and fair play, it
ought to go down. We were men before that party was born, and our
manhood is more sacred than any party can be. Parties were made for men,
not men for parties.
If the six millions of colored people of this country, armed with the
Constitution of the United States, with a million votes of their own to
lean upon, and millions of white men at their back, whose hearts are
responsive to the claims of humanity, have not sufficient spirit and
wisdom to organize and combine to defend themselves from outrage,
discrimination, and oppression, it will be idle for them to expect that
the Republican party or any other political party will organize and
combine for them or care what becomes of them. Men may combine to
prevent cruelty to animals, for they are dumb and cannot speak for
themselves; but we are men and must speak for ourselves, or we shall not
be spoken for at all. We have conventions in America for Ireland, but we
should have none if Ireland did not speak for herself. It is because she
makes a noise and keeps her cause before the people that other people go
to her help. It was the sword of Washington and of Lafayette that gave
us Independence. In conclusion upon this color objection, we have to say
that we meet here in open daylight. There is nothing sinister about us.
The eyes of the nation are upon us. Ten thousand newspapers may tell if
they choose of whatever is said and done here. They may commend our
wisdom or condemn our folly, precisely as we shall be wise or foolish.
We put ourselves before them as honest men, and ask their judgment upon
our work.