The bee., 1883-04-21


in honor OF the Twenty first (2D Anniyer-
sary of the Emancipation Celebration, on
the 10th day of April, 1888
Mr.. President, Ladies aud Gentlemen and
Feilo,c CiizeRs:--Another years recollection
of the greatest, grandest and most comnlem-
orable blessing for which any people should
be grateful, has brought US to the closing
hours of our twenty first anniversary cele-
bration of the emancipation Of the great
colored race of the American nation COM
prising about one-sixth or S,000,OOO of the
whole, whose oppression was of unequaled
suffering for more than two hundred and
fiftyyea The history we celebrate to-day
covers Il period of twenty one years of free
dom, comprising the emancipation, the
civil and political, educational, religious and
social liberties for which we owe unbound
ing gratitude.
All nations have maintained statues of
honor mouldened into human form, and
DAYS of commemoration from fond recollec-
tions of some good deeds done.
Therefore. general customs of mankind
have furnished all ages with the best author
ity for benefits derived by others from dem
onstrations similar to ours of to-day, express
sive of their appreciations for their greatest
victories.
The Jews have always followed this Gus
tom: they hold to-day in memory the recol-
lection of the hand that saved them. They
hold in sacred memory the celebration of
passing signals of heavenly angels who indi-
Gated by signs their liberty; and the endura-
BILE acts of Queen Esther to the King for the
return of the Jewish life.
NEW WORLD.
In the closing hours of these ceremonies
we have one nation, but part of all races;
different COmnlpyiOOS hut one DpOnln-
Is it not strange to say that as many of
this race as are dead from oppression that
so many should still live to acknowledge the
blessing of liberty and of God. Is it not
strange that as many years and schemes as
have gone into Legislative enactment to keep
these people apart as enemies TO friends as
blacks to whites, as servants to masters, as
slaves 10 free men and as monkeys to human
beings. that such wonderful a change should
take place as to convert enemies into friends,
blachS into whites, servants into masters,
slaves into free men, and monkeys into
human beings; SO that one country, one
nation, one citizenship, one constitution, one
law and one house can accommodate US to
unite in the celebration of one grand princi-
pie, freedom?
Is it not strange that as indescribable as
the ruins of slavery with its cruelties, affiic-
tions and hard bondage of this race, so much
so that one portion of them had to refuse to
marry the affections cf their youth from the
other, because the one was declared to be
goods and chattels and the other to have had
no rights, which the white man was bound
to respect, should now enjoy these rights of
marriage not only between the severed fac
tons of the same race but between men and
women of the different races?
And. is it not also strange thai as many
European women as were enslaved for nearly
fifty years for life to the husband S owners by
one law and others during the lives of their
husbands by another. and their children by
colored men to be enslayed for thirty years
by another, and all who marry colored men
(now in many states) should be imprisoned
for term of years or leave the state of their
birth, that so many of them should still con-
tinue to marry cOlored men in defiance.
Prudence requires that | should answer
yes. very strange. So strange that we, like
tie earlier settlers of this country from the
Kingdom of Great Britain, may call not
merely new world but new order of
things.
Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen and
fellow citizens. let me say right here that 1t
never was the intention of the white men
that any other race (the Mongolian) should
remain here or come here (the African) a
free race, but the Europeans; yet they like
the man who signs away his rights In making
a bad contract, they said more in the decla-
ration of independence than they meant to
say, they inserted the words their re ator"
in connection with the word ''all men,"
EQUAL JUSTICE.
On this occasion the great question of
equal justice and not sectional fayors should
be conceded.
The North, from Massachusetts, including
Maine, is as guilty of this infamous crime as
the South is TO Louisiana, including Texas.
For the North with her gr, a manufactures
to- day are as rich on the money for which
they Old this race when they found that they
could not use them to an advantage, as the
outh is impoverished for the want of the
money with which we men we're purchased.
have my scruples about me as to whether
we can regard the sale of human beings by
the white citizens of this district on the 16sh
day, 1862, and their purchase by the general
government at $500 apiece, which amount
they would have had to pay for each individ-
ual had not the fourteenth article of the con-
stltutlon freed them and for which some of
the District cranks among the whites even
now sometimes claimed pay under that
promised obligation, Emancipation or not,