Year: 1872

less submissive to the social and DO
itical stigmas under which they are
to-day laboring.


Now that our people throughout
this broad land are free, it yet re-
mains for this Government to give
them that which will not only en-
able them to maintain, defend, and
perpetuate their liberties Imagine
your race, Mr.. Speaker, as having
been in bondage for over two hun
dred years, subjected to all the hor-
rors of slavery, deprived of every
facility by which they might have
acquired an education, and in this
ignorant and helpless condition they
were emancipated and turned loose
in the midst of their enemies; among
those who were opposed to not only
seeing them educated, but opposed
to their freedom; among those who
possessed all the wealth, controlled
all the educational facilities of the
country; among those who believed
your race to be naturally inferior to
themselves in every particular, and
fit only to be considered as goods
and chattels.


Imagine, I say, your race to-day
in this deplorable situation. Would
you be considered as comprehend
ing their desires and situation, were
you to admit that their farmer en-
slavers would take an impartial in
terest in their educational affairs !?
I think not. Hence, I cannot be-
lieve that the Democratic party
South would provide equal educa-
tional advantages to all classes. The
gentleman from the District of
Columbia (Mr. Chipman) has cor
rectly said that the lately enfran-
chised people are peculiarly the
wards of the Government. Still, we
ask that equal advantages, impartial
protection. and the same educational
facility may be extended to all
classes, to the whole people. Give
us this and we will further endeavor
to remove the ignorance from our
people, and about which so much
has been said by those who have
occasioned it and who are Justly re-
! sponsible for it they who have inn
posed it upon us through the opera
ton of that once loved and cherish
ed institution, slavery-that institu-
ton which has cost the nations
millions of dollars and many of her
best and bravest men, and has
stamped upon the negro a curse
which this generation will fail to
obliterate.


In conclusion, Mr.. Speaker, I
might here pay a passing notice to
the arguments generally used
against the negro. And against his
being educated. 1t has been said
that the negro is an inferior race,
with minds unfit for cultivation,
with no traits of science, skill, or
literature; with no ambition for edu-
cation and enlightenment; in short,
a perfect 'booby BRAIN" But these
arguments, Mr.. Speaker, fell to the
ground many years ago, and have
been rendered insignificant from the
fact that Notwithstanding all the
laws enacted prohibiting the negro
from being educated, in spite of the
degradation of over two hundred
and forty-seven years Of the most in
human and barbarous slavery ever
recorded in the history of any people
and coupled with Ave years subjuga-
ton to the reign Of terror from the
Ku-Klux-Klan, the dastardly hor-
rors of which those only know who
have been the victims and those
who commit the deeds. Notwith-
standing all these obstacles and op-
positions, we find in nearly every
town and village, where the whip
ping-post and auction-blocks were
once visible, school-houses and
freedmen's savings banks erected
in their stead, which are the growth
of only five years, and which stand
to day as living refutations to the
foul, maligant, unjust, and untrue
arguments used against the negro.