our cultivated men to parade themselves as mere carpet knights of politics, and they themselves assume the added duty of the moral and material restoration of our race? Never! They expect every people to bear somewhat the burdens of their own restoration and upbuilding; and rightly so. And next, as to the other question, How is this problem of labor to be settled? I reply, in all candor, that I am unable to answer so intricate a question. But this I do say: (1) That you have got to bring to the settlement of it all the brain power, all the penetration, all the historical reading, and all the generous devotedness of heart that you can command; and (2) that in the endeavor to settle this question that you are not to make the mistake that it is external forces which are chiefly to be brought to bear upon this enormity. No race of people can be lifted up by others to grand civility. The elevation of a people, their thorough civilization, comes chiefly from internal qualities. If there is no receptive and living quality in them which can be evoked for their elevation, then they must die! The emancipation [Pg 19]of the black race in this land from the injustice and grinding tyranny of their labor servitude is to be effected mainly by the development of such personal qualities, such thrift, energy, and manliness as shall, in the first place, raise them above the dependence and the penury of their present vassalage, and next shall bring forth such manliness and dignity in the race as may command the respect of their oppressors. [Pg 18] [Pg 19] To bring about these results we need intelligent men and women, so filled with philanthropy that they will go down to the humblest conditions of their race, and carry to their lowly huts and cabins all the resources of science, all the suggestions of domestic, social, and political economies, all the appliances of school and industries in order to raise and elevate the most abject and needy race on American soil. If the scholarly and enlightened colored men and women care not to devote themselves to these lowly but noble duties, to these humble but sacred conditions, what is the use of their schooling and enlightenment? Why, in the course of Providence, have they had their large advantages and their superior opportunities? I bring to your notice one other requirement of the black race in this country, and that is the need of a Higher Plane of Morality. Higher Plane of Morality I make
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