The Washington bee., 1909-06-19
JUDGE STAFFORD ON THE
BROTHERHOOD OF MAN


BROTHERHOOD OF MAN
Prom the Boston, Mass. Advocate
Before the National Conference on
the Status of the American Negro
held in New York City, Judge Wen
del Phillips Stafford, of the Supreme
Court of the District of Columbia,
had this to say on the Negro prob
LEM
Il believe in the fatherhood of God
and the brotherhood of man. Not
the brotherhood of white men, but
the brotherhood of all men. I be-
lieve in the golden rule and the Dec
laratiOn of independence, and I stand
by the Constitution of the United
States, including the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments. That is my
creed and my platform
"The broad subject of our confer
ence is the Negro and the nation,
not the Negro and the north, not the
Negro and the south, not the Negro
and the white man, but the Negro
and the nation The questions it
brings up are national. They cannot
be settled by any one race and still
less by any one section. They con-
Germ the whole country, and they
must be answered by the country as
whole. If the constitution is not
binding in South Carolina, it is not
binding in New York. If it cannot
protect the colored man, it cannot
protect the white.
IF fifteen states can set aside the
constitution at their pleasure; there
IS no constitution worth the name.
If a state can nullify one clause, it
can nullify the whole. If a state
can, in a single congressional district,
deliberately exclude three-fourths Of
its eligible voters from the polls on
the real ground of color, and yet in
sist upon having them counted for
the purpose of holding a seat in the
national assembly, it can perpetrate
a fraud on every legally constituted
congressional district in the United
States, and there is no security for
representative government in any
corner of the land.
"If any class or race can be per
manently set apart from and pushed
down below the rest in political and
civil rights, so may any other class
Or race when it shall incur the dis
pleasure OF its more powerful asso-
ciate, and we may say farewell at
once to the principles in which we
have counted for protection.
I'VE are confronted, not by a
theory, but by a fact. That fact is
the deliberate and avowed exclusion
of whole race of our fellow-citizens
from their constitutional rights, ac
companied by the announcement that
that exclusion must and shall be per-
manent It is not that the Negro is
ignorant, nor that he is poor, nor
that he is vicious, but that he is
Negro Even when he is good and
learned and rich, he must still be
excluded because he is still a Negro.
That is the proposition, and that it
is which makes it the duty of all who
dissent from such a doctrine to make
their dissent known and make it un-
compromising and clear.
1t will not do to shut our eyes to
the real causes and results of the war
especially now when northern in
difference and southern injustice
strike hands to keep the black race
in a new bondage as helpless and
hopeless as the old. As a member of
the white race and turning for the
moment to white men, I say that our
race will deserve any calamity the
presence OF the black race may bring.
We brought it here by theft and
force. We promised it liberty and We
gave it a chain. We owe it light and
we gave it darkness We owe it op-