Let us not deceive ourselves at our situation
in this country. Weighted with a heritage of moral iniquity from
our past history, hard pressed in the economic world by foreign
immigrants and native prejudice, hated here, despised there and
pitied everywhere; our one haven of refuge is ourselves, and but
one means of advance, our own belief in our great destiny, our
own implicit trust in our ability and worth. There is no power
under God's high heaven that can stop the advance of eight
thousand thousand honest, earnest, inspired and united people.
But–and here is the rub–they MUST be honest, fearlessly
criticising their own faults, zealously correcting them; they
must be EARNEST. No people that laughs at itself, and ridicules
itself, and wishes to God it was anything but itself ever wrote
its name in history; it MUST be inspired with the Divine faith
of our black mothers, that out of the blood and dust of battle
will march a victorious host, a mighty nation, a peculiar
people, to speak to the nations of earth a Divine truth that
shall make them free. And such a people must be united; not
merely united for the organized theft of political spoils, not
united to disgrace religion with whoremongers and ward-heelers;
not united merely to protest and pass resolutions, but united to
stop the ravages of consumption among the Negro people, united
to keep black boys from loafing, gambling and crime; united to
guard the purity of black women and to reduce the vast army of
black prostitutes that is today marching to hell; and united in
serious organizations, to determine by careful conference and
thoughtful interchange of opinion the broad lines of policy and
action for the American Negro.
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