The Dallas express. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1893-1970, 1919-12-06
OPEN LETTER TO. NEGROES OF
SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.

To our Odd Fellow Citizens of the
Colored Race,
Dear Friends:
We salute you in the Love OF
Jesus Christ our Lord! This love ex-
presses itself between human beings
in brotherhood. We cannot conceive
OF a Fatherhood of God that does
not imply a brotherhood of man
George Fox, the founder of the Re-
ltgious Society of Friends. was drawn
! toward members of your race in a
feeling of this brotherhood, and wrote
more than one epistle to express this
feeling for himself and for his as
sociates. At later date in Phil
adelphia, but more than a hundred
years ago, Anthony BENEFIT opened
his home for a school for Colored
people, and demonstrated to his won
dering fellow citizens, the complete
capacity of the race for education
Previous to the Civil War, during
that sad conflict and since, many
members of our Religious Society
have devoted themselves and Their
estates to your education and train
ing for citizenship.
So our present interest in you and
our desire for your best welfare have
had a long, history and no small
measure Of firsthand experience. The
multiplied injustices you have had
TO endure, have been grievous bur-
dens upon our hearts. We wish now
at time of world crisis. to be quick
ened to much greater effort on your
behalf. We have recently constituted
special committee to combine In
every legitimate way with other
forces for good to deliver our coun-
try from the unspeakable Stain oil
savagery brought upon it by lynch
ings. Four years of the most de-
structive warfare in human annals
have brought us all face to face with
the utter futility of physical force
to advance the welfare of human
society.
If the world is to be saved-your
world as well as ours, it must
be by the triumph of spiritual values
over the despotisms of fear and hate.
"a great leader of your race, the late
Fanny Jackson Coppin. was often
saying, publicly and privately, "War
settles nothing. When war is over
it remains for good men to put in
motion processes of healing and re-
construction" Your whole history
very particularly the fifty years of
your history since the Civil War.
has been wonderful record of that
method Of reconstruction which had
its highest example in Jesus Of Ma
TlFnfh hA
could pray, Father, forgive them
for they know not what they do"
AS we plead with you in brother
ly love, to persist in this thoroughly
Christian attitude, we hold ourselves
ready to join you in every reasonable
protest against injustice. We do this
not only because we want you to have
your rights, but also because we
want our beloved country to realize
that. Righteousness alone exalts a
nation" We have ourselves often
known the sting of injustice, through
our two hundred and fifty years of
history.
In the )ate world struggle, many
of our members have been imprisoned
and flagrantly punished in some
cases unto death, for conscience sake.
This seems always to have been the
price of civil and religious liberty.
AT this moment of National peril.
more perhaps than at any
previous time in our history, the
call is for us all to stand together
and work together, even in suffer-
ing. to bring to fruition our hopes
For better world.
On behalf of the meeting.
GEORGE NJ. WARNER, Clerk.
VIM B. HARVEY, Secretary.