are not in earnest.

Such bands of men and women as I have been describing, are everywhere needed to-day—in the home, in the church, in the Sabbath school, in the Young Peoples’ Society of Christian Endeavor, in all our secret organizations—among the Masons and Odd Fellows; in all our benevolent societies, in our schools, colleges, universities, in all business corporations, banking and other establishments—everywhere such bands are needed—bands of clean men and women, pure men and women, men and women who stand up for what is right, who are willing to fight for what is right, who can always be depended upon in every moral crisis—who fight, and who fight always on the side of right, of honor, of decency—whose influence is always thrown in the interest of the things that are true, and just, and pure, and lovely, and of good report.

All that I have said in reference to meeting the moral evils that assail us, is also true as to meeting those enemies who are assailing our civil and political rights, as American citizens. They are to be met in the same way.

(1). In every community we have got to have men and women who put a proper estimate upon our civil and political rights—men and women who know what rights we are entitled to as American citizens, who value those rights; and who are deeply conscious therefore of the wrong which the enemies of the race are seeking to perpetrate upon us by depriving us of those rights. There are some members of our race, unfortunately, who, for one reason or another, have attempted to minify the importance of civil and political rights, or who, at least, pretend that they see no great evil in the deprivation of these rights. I say pretend, for, at heart, I do not believe they think anything of the kind. They cannot believe as they say they do, if they have any self respect, or any appreciation of what citizenship means. Such people are of no value to us in the fight which we are making for our rights under the Constitution: they are rather a hindrance to us, because they are used by the enemy in justification of the course which they are pursuing. The fact that there are colored people, and some so-called leaders, who don’t attach much importance to these rights, makes the white assailant feel that, after all, no great injury is done to the Negro. The colored people themselves, they say, in effect, don’t regard it as such, and why should we, why should we attach any more importance to the matter than they do. In every community therefore, as a foil to this pernicious doctrine, there must be men and women to whom these rights mean something; there must be men and women who hold them 

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