There
must be developed manly strength and courage and a power of intellect
which will manifest itself in organization and attractiveness, and in
the aptitude of employing appropriate methods for ends in view. To
these must be added the power that comes through wealth; and thus,
with the real advancement of condition and character will come,
tardily and grudgingly perhaps, but nevertheless surely, improved
social standing. Once filled with the common national spirit,
partaking of its thoughts, entering heartily into the common
movements, having the same dress, language and manners as others, and
being as able and as willing to help as to be helped, and withal being
in fact the most intensely American element on the continent because
constructed on this soil, we may hope that the Afro-American will
ultimately win and hold his proper place.
The history made by the American Negro has been so filled with
suffering that we have overlooked the active side. The world has heard
so much of the horrors of the "Middle Passage"; the awful sufferings
of the slave; the barbarous outrages that have been perpetrated upon
ex-slaves; the inhuman and senseless prejudices that meet colored
Americans almost everywhere on their native soil; that it has come to
look upon this recital as the whole of the story.
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