"I appear before you to-night to discuss a subject which
is of vital importance to the American people and especially
to my race. It is time that the Negroes themselves should say
something about this matter which is attracting the attention
of the civilized world.
It is high time that we should take a position and let the
world know our position. We have held our peace too long already.
Every Negro pulpit should speak out on this subject.
To begin with, I state most
positively, that I have no sympathy for the ravishers nor do
I weep at their death. Every guilty man of them ought to have
died. I object to the manner by which they were put to death.
In this, I do, as every civilized man should, stand forth for
law and order.
I would say to my race especially, that our only hope and
safety lie in our strictest obedience to law and our unqualified
support of the officers of the law. It is only then we rise to
the sublimity of citizenship. Let us not seek to defend our criminals.
They do us more injury than they do to others. We will be measured
by them and we cannot reasonably object as long as we defend
them, for then we will become accessories after the fact and
thus become partakers of other men's sins. I regret that most
of the lynching is done in the south and that most of the victims
are Negroes. I regret most of all that such awful crimes are
charged against us which provoke these lynchings. It is unfortunate
that these crimes are laid at our door even if the accusers are
mistaken. The south is our home, and all talk about the Negroes
leaving the south to any very great extent, is the sheerest folly.
Even those who have left the south have not bettered their condition.
Since the Negroes must remain in the south, it is good sense,
indeed, it is the highest duty to do all in their power to make
the south the glory of all the world. The fact that most of these
lynchings are done in the south and that most of the victims
are Negroes lends, at least, the suspicion that there is foul
play, affords material for political capital, forms an excuse
for ambitious, wicked, designing politicians to keep the fire
of dissention and race hatred in an everlasting blaze and to
continue the waving of the bloody shirt and thus causing eternal
unrest and the most intense anxiety among our people.
The sensible conservative Negroes are disgustingly tired of
this sort of stuff and painfully regret any and every occasion
that conserves its perpetuation. These things do the south no
good and whatever injures the south, injures us. It is nonsense
to suppose that a man's home can be injured without injuring
him. To injure a home of a people the weakest and poorest of
them are injured most. An apt illustration of this is unmistakably
before our eyes in the yellow fever epidemic at brunswick. It
injures the whole people, but it injures the Negroes worse because
they are poorest and weakest. Financially weakest. They could
not get away and had not enough laid up to go upon, and hence,
suffered most."
Full
text (Library of Congress/Daniel A.P. Murray Pamphlet Collection)
