Cayton's weekly. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1916-1921, 1920-07-17

and every obstacle which prejudice could put
in their way. What they have has been
won by hard and persistent labor. They
have not met injustice and violence with
violence but with patience and fortitude.
They have kept their courage and their
progress has not been stayed.
Let us white men put ourselves in the
position which the freedmen occupied in
1868; let us imagine that we had faced the
prejudice and injustice which they have en-
cOuntered, and then ask ourselves whether
we can be sure that we should have risen
any faster than they have done? We can
certainly be sure that we should not have
endured what they have endured with equal
patience. If one seeks to measure the pro-
gress of the glacier month by month or even
year by year, it's advance seems negligible,
but it moves with resistless force and no
human power can arrest or check it. The
progress of the cOlored race is like the move
ment OF the glacier, as sure, as steady and
as irresistible. In the words of Whittier:
'You may wrestle while you can,
With the strong upward tendency,
And God-like soul of man.
but it is contest in which you face certain
defeat.
Justice like truth els mighty and will pre-
vail We are fools and blind if we fight
against the inevitable
[ have said that the problem is a white
man s problem. The root of all our diff
culties is planted in the breast of the white
man, IN his belief that he is SUPERIOR that
ne has the right to trample upon his weaker
nelghbors, In his prejudice against men
whom he remembers as slaves, in his deter
mlnatlon that his former servant shall be
kept in his place. to use the current
phrase. 1t is this root that must be extir-
pated, this prejudice that must be discour-
aged There IS no countenance for it to be
found either in our political or our religious
principles. Might does not make right ac-
cordlng to our creed. The place of any man
IN this country is that which he can win for
himself by his ability and industry, and no
man can say to another "Thus far shalt
thou 90 and no farther''
l am proposing today to consider the sub
Ject from the white mans standpoint. and
ask you to consider what his interest re-
cures. What is our duty to these millions
OF Americans. | come back to the words
OF Grady We must recognize their ''eoual
civil and political rights" we must carry
them IN peace and Gin equal justice''
or we are sowing dragon teeth which will
yield an abundant crop of Injustice dis
honor crime and perhaps of greater calami-
ties by this [ do not mean calamities to
the Negroes but to us all.
Inc CONSTITUTION of the United States for
pas 81 all "cruel and unusual punishments. -
IT assures to every man charged with crime
"a speedy and public trial by an impartial
jury. Is there man in this whole conn.,
try SO lost to shame as to propose that the
Constitution be amended by striking ont
those provisions? Yet during the wear 1919
eeven men were burned to death by mops
III thls country and four of them in this
s Sn"h IN; No civilized man can justify such
narbarlsm, and yet the men who committed
these crimes have not been prosecuted. The
t ape reported faithfully in the newspapers
ceal their faces; women and children crowd
TO TO witness the writings of the victim, and
the perpetrators walk among their ne;ob.
a oohs WIN heads 3G erect unpublished and un-
ashamed What effect, think you, do sncb
horrors have on the good name of the I7n;teo
states? What should we have said boJ
frenchmen been burned by Germany in LON.
vain How can we crit;oco px,,.: n,