[511] suffer in any way, on account of color, they will naturally meet together in order to find a proper remedy, and, since you kindly invite me to communicate with the convention, I make bold to offer a few brief suggestions. In the first place, you must at all times insist upon your rights, and here I mean not only those already accorded, but others still denied, all of which are contained in equality before the law. Wherever the law supplies a rule, there you must insist upon equal rights. How much remains to be obtained, you know too well in the experience of life. Can a respectable colored citizen travel on steamboats or railways, or public conveyances generally, without insult on account of color? Let Lieutenant-Governor Dunn, of Louisiana, describe his journey from New Orleans to Washington. Shut out from proper accommodations in the cars, the doors of the Senate Chamber opened to him, and there he found the equality which a railroad conductor had denied. Let our excellent friend, Frederick Douglass, relate his melancholy experience, when, within sight of the Executive Mansion, he was thrust back from the dinner-table where his brother commissioners were already seated. You know the outrage. I might ask the same question in regard to hotels, or even common schools. An hotel is a legal institution, and so is a common school. As such, each must be for the equal benefit of all. Now, can there be any exclusion from either on account of color? It is not enough to provide separate accommodations for colored citizens, even if in all respects as good as those of other persons. Equality is not found in an equivalent, but only in equality. In other words, there must be no discrimination on account of color. The discrimination is an insult and a hindrance, and a bar, which not only always destroys comfort and prevents equality, but weakens all other rights. The right to vote will have new security when your equal right in public conveyances, hotels, and common schools, is at last established; but here you must insist for yourselves, by speech, by petition, and by vote. Help yourselves, and others will help you also. The Civil Rights law needs a supplement to cover such cases. This defect has been apparent from the beginning, and, for a long time, I have striven to remove it. I have a bill for this purpose now pending in the Senate. Will not my colored fellow-citizens see that those in power shall no longer postpone this essential safeguard? Surely, here is an object worthy of effort. Nor has the Republican party done its work until this is established.
This text is part of:
United States Publishing Company, 1874.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.