264                THE A. M. E. REVIEW

prominence by bartering the rights of the race for the
honors of office or the gain of gold; we must spurn the offers
of those white men, who, under the guise of philanthropy
or friendship, would assume to aid or lead us, only to discard
us when their personal or partisan ends had been served.
     Fifty years hence the Negroes of this generation will
be reviewed by our children's children, and the men who
now assume to speak and act for the race, who have been
untrue to truth and freedom, will be visited with the con-
tempt their memories deserve.
    To fully emancipate ourselves we must so organize and
stand together that neither political party nor politician
will invade our rights or affront us; but at the peril of our
swift and united retaliation, we must invoke the law to up-
hold our rights and give money to back up our plea, up to
the court of last resort; while protesting against discrimi-
nation on account of color, we must ourselves cease defer-
ring to a white face or a fair skin; we must refuse to accept
all half-way measures, whether in church, state or the
realm of education, and stay out and fight until we can come
in marked up to the full measure of other men.
    With faith in ourselves and an unfaltering trust in
God, we should now resolve, that as under slavery we were
beneath the white man's feet, and as for fifty years we
bowed before him in all inferior ways, that within the next
fifty years, by strength of character, by might of physical
strength, by power of intellect, by stoutness of heart, by the
exercise of the franchise, by loyalty to the state and serv-
ice to society, we will straighten up, and stand erect, neither
below nor beneath, but by the side of our white fellow-
citizens, to walk with them an equal in all the paths of duty,
opportunity, service and achievement.

               ----------------------

                 WHITE BLACK BIRDS

    It has been said that a Negro Democrat was as rara avis
as a white black bird. But he can no longer be considered
exceptional. According to accepted estimates approximately




			

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 29, Num. 3

Editorials

Volume:  29
Issue Number:  03
Page Number:  260
Date:  01/1913