Fifty Years of Freedomwith matters of vital importance to both the white and colored people of the United States
was running from Jezebel—"The children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only am left." In this he was mistaken. It seems there were seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal. But, as some one said, no one knew it, and therefore they counted for nothing. Now we don't want our friends among the whites who want us to get our rights, who think that we ought to be treated fairly, justly, to count for nothing; we don't want them to be so silently sympathetic that no one will know of it. We want them to be outspoken; to be openly for us, and thus help to mould public sentiment in our favor. It would have 22helped greatly if, during this segregation agitation there had been some meetings held among the whites giving expression to a different sentiment. Even a simple protest from a single individual helps. A letter like the one published not long ago by the Hon. A. E. Pillsbury of Boston, Massachusetts, declining to pay his annual dues to the treasurer of the National Bar Association, and giving as his reason his positive and emphatic dissent from the action of the Association in discriminating against colored men, is bound to have its effect in educating public sentiment, in helping to break down invidious distinctions. Carl Schurz, in his Life of Henry Clay, in speaking of the Abolitionists, says, "The immediate effect of their work has frequently been much underrated. They served to keep alive in the Northern mind that secret trouble of conscience about slavery which later, in a ripe political situation, was to break out as a great force." And so here, the protest of our white friends in the struggle we are making now will serve to keep alive in others the sense of right, which will ultimately become a great force before which the wrongs from which we are now suffering will be righted. Silent sympathy is better than no sympathy; but the sympathy that expresses itself in word and act is greatly to be preferred. If you think we are not treated right; if you think that invidious distinctions based upon color, upon race ought not to exist, say so; and say it so loud that all about you will hear it. This is the request that we make of you, as we enter upon another half century of freedom.

22

And now just a word more. The struggle before us is a long and hard one; but with faith in God, and faith in ourselves, and indomitable perseverance, and the purpose to do right, in spite of the forces that are arrayed against us, we need have no fears as to the ultimate result. Success is sure to crown our efforts. We are not always going to be behind; we are not always going to be 
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