Excerpt from An Appeal of a Colored Man, to His Fellow-Citizens of a Fairer Hue, in the United States
His venom may be shown me by his words, but I ask what is it but the mostu morance? This we see in men who regard themselves as quite intelligent, and even dare to call themselves chris tian men and women. They do not believe in revelation which declares that of one blood God hath made all na tions. They may theorize as much as they please, but I prefer practical illustrations. I most readily admit that one man is intellectually superior to another, or physi cally inferior, but in the quality of the soul and the blood I acknowledge no difference God does not himself, then what right have I or any one else?
Some years ago in the State of New Jersey, there were two boys in one family. There was nothing very strange in the fact of two boys being in one family, for often in time past there have been half a dozen or more boys in one family. But the peculiarity of this case is, that one of the boys was white, the other was colored. These boys ate together, and slept together, and played to gether. They had not been taught that one was inferior to the other; the grandmother of the white boy treated the colored boy with the same love that she did her grandson, and when she gave the one boy a piece of bread and butter she gave a piece to the other, and put the butter equally thick on both. Those boys knew no differ ence, and had for years been together. They were equally bright and intelligent one learned under home instruo tion as fast as the other. But in the course of time they had to go to school away from the house. Then for the first time that colored boy was called that name which ishilated the uprising of his youthful mind, and he became depressed, discouraged and disheartened, and he never rallied from or rose above the incision which that insult produced in his mind. But that white boy had no such insults to meet, and no such buffeting met him on. All hands. He went to school, and from school to college, and then, when he had completed his collegiate course he pursued his theological course of study and became an honored minister of the Presbyterian church. The account of the colored boy and of himself I had from his own lips. He said implicitly to me that insult lacerated the very soul of that boy. Break any boy’s or girls spirit by such lan guage, and it is hard for them to rally again.
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