Great Speeches by African Americans: Opposing Slavery and Seeking Civil Rights in the 19th Century
"A Deep and Cruel Prejudice" - John Sweat Rock (1825-1866) was a doctor, dentist, and a lawyer. He was the first African American granted admittance to argue cases in front of the US Supreme Court. He delivered this speech before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1862.
[Spoiler (click to open)]He opens with "Ladies and gentlemen: I am here not so much to make a speech as to add a little more color to the occasion." In a brilliant understatement, he acknowledges that "[t]he situation of the black man in this country is far from being an enviable one." and recognizes that the government in the person of Mr. Lincoln is attempting to redeem and rebuild the country.
However, he sees a "deep and cruel prejudice lurking the bosoms of the white people of this country." From a deep investment in their own self interests, people don't want slavery to end, but Rock holds out hope that one day "we shall have a people who will know no man save by his virtues and merits".
He accuses the government of wanting to return to the status quo to reunite the country even if slavery is not abolished. He rejects the idea that the war can be resolved without addressing slavery:
In short, slavery is the cause of the war: I might say, is the war itself. Had it not been for slavery, we should have had no war!
...
The government wishes us to bring back the country to what it was before. This is possible; but what is to be gained by it? If we are fools enough to retain the cancer that is eating out our vitals when we can safely extirpate it, who will pity us if we see our mistake when we are past recovery
Rock points out that abolishionists predicted this storm and were ignored.
No man would prefer to live as a slave rather than in liberty; therefore, it is conceded that it is not the best state. The institution of slavery fails the Golden Rule.
Slavery is treason against God, man and the nation . . . liberty is the inalienable right of every human being; and liberty can make no compromise with slavery . . . Liberty and slavery are contraries and separated from each other as good from evil, light from darkness, heaven from hell.
Rock heaps scorn on the idea that emancipation will leave slaves unable to take of themselves. They're taking care of themselves and their masters. Free black people are managing in spite of the obstacles of prejudice and inequality. People often hate those they have wronged.
Most black people will remain in the US in spite of the pressure to immigrate as a solution. Rather scornfully refers to those who have immigrated as less intelligent and insists that they regret their decision.
You may rest assured that we shall remain here-here, where we have withstood almost everything. Now, when our prospects begin to brighten, we are the more encouraged to stay, pay off the old score and have a reconstruction of things.
The war is a result of not stopping the evil of slavery earlier, but Rock does "not regard this trying hour as a darkness". The conflict has finally moved from defense to offensive.
People have too long ignored black peoples' opinion because the people are perceived as weak. "Be not deceived. No man is so feeble that he cannot do you an injury!" Black men should be allowed to fight in the war.
Let the people of the United States do their duty, and treat us as the people of all other nations treat us as men; if they will do this, our last drop of blood is ready to be sacrificed in defense of the liberty of this country. But if you continue to deny us our rights, and spurn our offers except as menials, colored men will be worse than fools to take up arms at all. We will stand by you, however, and wish you that success which you will not deserve.
While he acknowledges that the government is still not completely anti-slavery, he believes that emancipation is the proper and inevitable outcome of this war. He compares Jeff Davis and the slaveholders to Pharaoh and his Egyptians with Abraham Lincoln assuming the role of Moses. "I have faith in God and gun-powder and lead."
"Equality Before the Law" - Educated at Oberlin College, John Mercer Langston (1829-1897) was first African American elected to public office (township clerk of Brownhelm, Ohio). He delivered this speech at his alma mater in 1874 at a celebration of the anniversary of the adoption of the 15th amendment.
[Spoiler (click to open)]Opens with thanks and good wishes to his alma mater for opening opportunities to African Americans.
Indeed, two nations have been born in a day. For in the death of slavery, and through the change indicated, the colored American has been spoken into the new life of liberty and law; while new, other and better purposes, aspirations and feelings have possessed and moved the soul of his fellow countrymen. The moral atmosphere of the land is no longer that of slavery and hate; as far as the late slave, even, is concerned, it is largely that of freedom and fraternal appreciation.
The laws of a nation are no more the indices of its public sentiment and its civilization, than of its promise of progress toward the permanent establishment of freedom and equal rights. The histories of the empires of the past, no less than the nations of the present, bear testimony to the truthfulness of this statement. Because this is so, her laws, no less than her literature and science, constitute the glory of a nation, and render her influence lasting.
Langston commends the changes in the law over the past decades and describes them:
* 13th amendment, which abolished slavery
* 14th amendment, which grants all people born or naturalized in the US citizenship with all its privileges, including the right to life, liberty, property, and equal protection under the law
Black people now have citizenship with all its attendant rights and duties. The Constitution doesn't set any other barriers to these than being born in this country. Doesn't make any other demands.
* 15th amendment, which grants any (male) US citizen the right to vote
He then argues that black Americans are denied full equality under the law because it could be construed as social equality. He believes social equality is due to each citizen but that's irrelevant to the question of whether there should be equal protection under the law. Denying accommodations at inns, access to transportation facilities, admission to schools, and entry into public entertainment places denies citizenship "much of its value, and liberty seems little more than a name." The principle "omnes homines oequales sunt" "was made the chief corner-stone of jurisprudence and politics" "and when the colored American asks its due enforcement in his behalf, he makes no unnatural and strange demand." The enactment of a law guaranteeing such equality is the next rational step in the progression.
Had I the time, and were it not too great a trespass upon your patience, I should be glad to speak of the injustice and illegality, as well as inhumanity, of our exclusion, in some localities, from jury, public places of learning and amusement, the church and the cemetery. I will only say, however, (and in this statement I claim the instincts, not less than the well-formed judgment of mankind, in our behalf,) that such exclusion at least seems remarkable, and is difficult of defense upon any considerations of humanity, law, or Christianity. Such exclusion is the more remarkable and indefensible since we are fellow-citizens, wielding like political powers, eligible to the same high official positions, responsible to the same degree and in the same manner for the discharge of the duties they impose; interested in the progress and civilization of a common country, and anxious, like all others, that its destiny be glorious and matchless. It is strange, indeed, that the colored American may find place in the Senate, but it is denied access and welcome to the public place of learning, the theater, the church and the graveyard, upon terms accorded to all others.
...
To us the 13th amendment of our Constitution, abolishing slavery and perpetuating- freedom; the 14th amendment establishing citizenship and prohibiting- the enactment of any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or which shall deny the equal protection of the laws to all American citizens; and the 15th amendment, which declares that the RIGHT of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, are national utterances which only recognize, but sustain and perpetuate our freedom and rights.
Concludes with
Freedom and free institutions should be as broad as our continent. Among no nation here should there be found any enslaved or oppressed. "Compromises between right and wrong, under pretense of expediency," should disappear forever; our house should be no longer divided against itself; a new corner-stone should be built into the edifice of our national, continental liberty, and those who "guard and support the structure," should accept, in all its comprehensiveness, the sentiment that all men are created equal, and that governments are established among men to defend and protect their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
James T. Rapier (1837-1883) delivered "The Civil Rights Bill" (called "Half Free, Half Slave" at the linked site) in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 while serving in the US Congress as a representative from Alabama.
[Spoiler (click to open)]Rapier regrets and feels ashamed that he even has to speak on this matter-that he can be denied equal treatment while traveling to serve in Congress. Black people are being denied civil rights even while they enjoy political rights for being "guilty of the crime of color, the only unpardonable sin known in our Christian and Bible lands, where sinning against the Holy Ghost (whatever that may be) sinks into significance when compared with the sin of color."
Rapier eclares that constitution can already be read to guarantee the "right of locomotion without hindrance". Since the grievance is national, Congress is the correct body to enact laws to stop this discrimination. "If the government cannot secure the citizen his guaranteed rights it out not to call upon him to perform the same duties that are performed by another class of citizen who are in the free enjoyment of every civil and political right."
"[T]here is a cowardly propensity in the human heart that delights in oppressing somebody else, and in the gratification of this base desire we always select a victim that can be outraged with safety." Only inferior people could believe that black people are not equal to whites.
Rapier compares an old secessionist returned to Congress to Rip Van Winkle. Although the representative wants to pretend that the states rights argument is still valid, the world has changed rapidly and drastically around him. In fact, a civil rights bill will give practical effect to what the war already established. Rapier expresses (snarky) sympathy for the representative's "inability to comprehend [the Negro's] marvelous change", but asserts that he's unqualified to serve if he cannot adjust to the amended constitution.
[T]he valor of the colored soldier was tested on many a battlefield, and today his bones lie bleaching beside every hill and in every valley from the Potomac to the Gulf; whose mute eloquence in behalf of equal rights for all before the law, is and ought to be far more persuasive than any poor language I can command.
...
[N]othing short of a complete acknowledgment of my manhood will satisfy me. I have no compromise to make, and shall unwillingly accept any . . . After all, this question resolves itself to this: either I am a man or I am not a man. If one, I am entitled to all the rights, privileges and immunities common to any other class in this country."
Rapier seems comfortable with a society divided into classes as long as the classes are not defined by race. He doesn't seek to interfere with private affairs, but he wants Congress to "enact such laws and prescribe such penalties for their violation as will prevent any person from discriminating against another in public places on account of color." He stresses that he is looking for civil, not social, equality. The law cannot wait for public opinion's support. Opinion will follow the law eventually.
Passage of such laws will allow black people to pursue more interests and careers than politics and this broadening of their horizones will help them to become better citizens, who are advancing the common good.
Alexander Crummell (1819-1898) - Missionary to Liberia. Founder of the American Negro Academy. Delivered speech in 1883 to a Freeman's Aid Society entitled "The Black Woman of the South: Her Neglects and Her Needs".
[Spoiler (click to open)]I hesitate to even discuss this one because of its ignorantly misogynistic and racist slant. It's dreadful and I think Sojourner Truth would have a lot to say in response.
Crummell has valid points about the degradation of slavery and later civil and social inequality, but he offensively asserts that, while black men had some opportunity to pick up culture, "[t]he black woman of the South was left perpetually in a state of hereditary darkness and rudeness." The terrible trials of slavery coarsened her. Being freed "had no talismanic influence to reach to and alter and transform her degrading social life." Partly (mostly?) because of the way she is treated by white men. But she's also slovenly, poor, and corrupted by "coarse, ignorant, senseless religion".
Believes that "in her natural state, with her native instincts and peculiarites", "the Negress is one of the most interesting of all the classes of women on the globe." Accepts "flattering" stereotypes of black women as factual-tender, gentle, patient, devoted. He seems to base this on his time spent in Africa.
Claims men are too strong to need a champion, but claims he has the right to speak for black women.
[Spoiler (click to open)]He opens with "Ladies and gentlemen: I am here not so much to make a speech as to add a little more color to the occasion." In a brilliant understatement, he acknowledges that "[t]he situation of the black man in this country is far from being an enviable one." and recognizes that the government in the person of Mr. Lincoln is attempting to redeem and rebuild the country.
However, he sees a "deep and cruel prejudice lurking the bosoms of the white people of this country." From a deep investment in their own self interests, people don't want slavery to end, but Rock holds out hope that one day "we shall have a people who will know no man save by his virtues and merits".
He accuses the government of wanting to return to the status quo to reunite the country even if slavery is not abolished. He rejects the idea that the war can be resolved without addressing slavery:
In short, slavery is the cause of the war: I might say, is the war itself. Had it not been for slavery, we should have had no war!
...
The government wishes us to bring back the country to what it was before. This is possible; but what is to be gained by it? If we are fools enough to retain the cancer that is eating out our vitals when we can safely extirpate it, who will pity us if we see our mistake when we are past recovery
Rock points out that abolishionists predicted this storm and were ignored.
No man would prefer to live as a slave rather than in liberty; therefore, it is conceded that it is not the best state. The institution of slavery fails the Golden Rule.
Slavery is treason against God, man and the nation . . . liberty is the inalienable right of every human being; and liberty can make no compromise with slavery . . . Liberty and slavery are contraries and separated from each other as good from evil, light from darkness, heaven from hell.
Rock heaps scorn on the idea that emancipation will leave slaves unable to take of themselves. They're taking care of themselves and their masters. Free black people are managing in spite of the obstacles of prejudice and inequality. People often hate those they have wronged.
Most black people will remain in the US in spite of the pressure to immigrate as a solution. Rather scornfully refers to those who have immigrated as less intelligent and insists that they regret their decision.
You may rest assured that we shall remain here-here, where we have withstood almost everything. Now, when our prospects begin to brighten, we are the more encouraged to stay, pay off the old score and have a reconstruction of things.
The war is a result of not stopping the evil of slavery earlier, but Rock does "not regard this trying hour as a darkness". The conflict has finally moved from defense to offensive.
People have too long ignored black peoples' opinion because the people are perceived as weak. "Be not deceived. No man is so feeble that he cannot do you an injury!" Black men should be allowed to fight in the war.
Let the people of the United States do their duty, and treat us as the people of all other nations treat us as men; if they will do this, our last drop of blood is ready to be sacrificed in defense of the liberty of this country. But if you continue to deny us our rights, and spurn our offers except as menials, colored men will be worse than fools to take up arms at all. We will stand by you, however, and wish you that success which you will not deserve.
While he acknowledges that the government is still not completely anti-slavery, he believes that emancipation is the proper and inevitable outcome of this war. He compares Jeff Davis and the slaveholders to Pharaoh and his Egyptians with Abraham Lincoln assuming the role of Moses. "I have faith in God and gun-powder and lead."
"Equality Before the Law" - Educated at Oberlin College, John Mercer Langston (1829-1897) was first African American elected to public office (township clerk of Brownhelm, Ohio). He delivered this speech at his alma mater in 1874 at a celebration of the anniversary of the adoption of the 15th amendment.
[Spoiler (click to open)]Opens with thanks and good wishes to his alma mater for opening opportunities to African Americans.
Indeed, two nations have been born in a day. For in the death of slavery, and through the change indicated, the colored American has been spoken into the new life of liberty and law; while new, other and better purposes, aspirations and feelings have possessed and moved the soul of his fellow countrymen. The moral atmosphere of the land is no longer that of slavery and hate; as far as the late slave, even, is concerned, it is largely that of freedom and fraternal appreciation.
The laws of a nation are no more the indices of its public sentiment and its civilization, than of its promise of progress toward the permanent establishment of freedom and equal rights. The histories of the empires of the past, no less than the nations of the present, bear testimony to the truthfulness of this statement. Because this is so, her laws, no less than her literature and science, constitute the glory of a nation, and render her influence lasting.
Langston commends the changes in the law over the past decades and describes them:
* 13th amendment, which abolished slavery
* 14th amendment, which grants all people born or naturalized in the US citizenship with all its privileges, including the right to life, liberty, property, and equal protection under the law
Black people now have citizenship with all its attendant rights and duties. The Constitution doesn't set any other barriers to these than being born in this country. Doesn't make any other demands.
* 15th amendment, which grants any (male) US citizen the right to vote
He then argues that black Americans are denied full equality under the law because it could be construed as social equality. He believes social equality is due to each citizen but that's irrelevant to the question of whether there should be equal protection under the law. Denying accommodations at inns, access to transportation facilities, admission to schools, and entry into public entertainment places denies citizenship "much of its value, and liberty seems little more than a name." The principle "omnes homines oequales sunt" "was made the chief corner-stone of jurisprudence and politics" "and when the colored American asks its due enforcement in his behalf, he makes no unnatural and strange demand." The enactment of a law guaranteeing such equality is the next rational step in the progression.
Had I the time, and were it not too great a trespass upon your patience, I should be glad to speak of the injustice and illegality, as well as inhumanity, of our exclusion, in some localities, from jury, public places of learning and amusement, the church and the cemetery. I will only say, however, (and in this statement I claim the instincts, not less than the well-formed judgment of mankind, in our behalf,) that such exclusion at least seems remarkable, and is difficult of defense upon any considerations of humanity, law, or Christianity. Such exclusion is the more remarkable and indefensible since we are fellow-citizens, wielding like political powers, eligible to the same high official positions, responsible to the same degree and in the same manner for the discharge of the duties they impose; interested in the progress and civilization of a common country, and anxious, like all others, that its destiny be glorious and matchless. It is strange, indeed, that the colored American may find place in the Senate, but it is denied access and welcome to the public place of learning, the theater, the church and the graveyard, upon terms accorded to all others.
...
To us the 13th amendment of our Constitution, abolishing slavery and perpetuating- freedom; the 14th amendment establishing citizenship and prohibiting- the enactment of any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or which shall deny the equal protection of the laws to all American citizens; and the 15th amendment, which declares that the RIGHT of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, are national utterances which only recognize, but sustain and perpetuate our freedom and rights.
Concludes with
Freedom and free institutions should be as broad as our continent. Among no nation here should there be found any enslaved or oppressed. "Compromises between right and wrong, under pretense of expediency," should disappear forever; our house should be no longer divided against itself; a new corner-stone should be built into the edifice of our national, continental liberty, and those who "guard and support the structure," should accept, in all its comprehensiveness, the sentiment that all men are created equal, and that governments are established among men to defend and protect their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
James T. Rapier (1837-1883) delivered "The Civil Rights Bill" (called "Half Free, Half Slave" at the linked site) in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 while serving in the US Congress as a representative from Alabama.
[Spoiler (click to open)]Rapier regrets and feels ashamed that he even has to speak on this matter-that he can be denied equal treatment while traveling to serve in Congress. Black people are being denied civil rights even while they enjoy political rights for being "guilty of the crime of color, the only unpardonable sin known in our Christian and Bible lands, where sinning against the Holy Ghost (whatever that may be) sinks into significance when compared with the sin of color."
Rapier eclares that constitution can already be read to guarantee the "right of locomotion without hindrance". Since the grievance is national, Congress is the correct body to enact laws to stop this discrimination. "If the government cannot secure the citizen his guaranteed rights it out not to call upon him to perform the same duties that are performed by another class of citizen who are in the free enjoyment of every civil and political right."
"[T]here is a cowardly propensity in the human heart that delights in oppressing somebody else, and in the gratification of this base desire we always select a victim that can be outraged with safety." Only inferior people could believe that black people are not equal to whites.
Rapier compares an old secessionist returned to Congress to Rip Van Winkle. Although the representative wants to pretend that the states rights argument is still valid, the world has changed rapidly and drastically around him. In fact, a civil rights bill will give practical effect to what the war already established. Rapier expresses (snarky) sympathy for the representative's "inability to comprehend [the Negro's] marvelous change", but asserts that he's unqualified to serve if he cannot adjust to the amended constitution.
[T]he valor of the colored soldier was tested on many a battlefield, and today his bones lie bleaching beside every hill and in every valley from the Potomac to the Gulf; whose mute eloquence in behalf of equal rights for all before the law, is and ought to be far more persuasive than any poor language I can command.
...
[N]othing short of a complete acknowledgment of my manhood will satisfy me. I have no compromise to make, and shall unwillingly accept any . . . After all, this question resolves itself to this: either I am a man or I am not a man. If one, I am entitled to all the rights, privileges and immunities common to any other class in this country."
Rapier seems comfortable with a society divided into classes as long as the classes are not defined by race. He doesn't seek to interfere with private affairs, but he wants Congress to "enact such laws and prescribe such penalties for their violation as will prevent any person from discriminating against another in public places on account of color." He stresses that he is looking for civil, not social, equality. The law cannot wait for public opinion's support. Opinion will follow the law eventually.
Passage of such laws will allow black people to pursue more interests and careers than politics and this broadening of their horizones will help them to become better citizens, who are advancing the common good.
Alexander Crummell (1819-1898) - Missionary to Liberia. Founder of the American Negro Academy. Delivered speech in 1883 to a Freeman's Aid Society entitled "The Black Woman of the South: Her Neglects and Her Needs".
[Spoiler (click to open)]I hesitate to even discuss this one because of its ignorantly misogynistic and racist slant. It's dreadful and I think Sojourner Truth would have a lot to say in response.
Crummell has valid points about the degradation of slavery and later civil and social inequality, but he offensively asserts that, while black men had some opportunity to pick up culture, "[t]he black woman of the South was left perpetually in a state of hereditary darkness and rudeness." The terrible trials of slavery coarsened her. Being freed "had no talismanic influence to reach to and alter and transform her degrading social life." Partly (mostly?) because of the way she is treated by white men. But she's also slovenly, poor, and corrupted by "coarse, ignorant, senseless religion".
Believes that "in her natural state, with her native instincts and peculiarites", "the Negress is one of the most interesting of all the classes of women on the globe." Accepts "flattering" stereotypes of black women as factual-tender, gentle, patient, devoted. He seems to base this on his time spent in Africa.
Claims men are too strong to need a champion, but claims he has the right to speak for black women.