Fifty Years of Freedomwith matters of vital importance to both the white and colored people of the United States
discriminated against; we are not always going to be denied our rights. For as Sojourner Truth said, "God is not dead." And some day, in his own good time, the right will triumph. As the poet has expressed it,

What is needed is a New EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION—a proclamation that will set the white man free from the degrading influence of race prejudice—a proclamation that will register a decree or purpose on the part of the white race to free itself not only from the narrowing lust of gold, but from the still more narrowing lust of race hatred and proscription. O, for another and greater Lincoln to speak the word of power,—another and greater Lincoln to set the thought and heart of white America going in a new and better way—the way of righteousness—the way of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. In the inspired record we read: "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and 23the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea." Surely if this be true; if this is a prophecy of what is to be, there is reason and good reason to believe that the savage element in the white man's nature, which corresponds to the nature of these ferocious animals, and which leads him to devise and execute his various schemes of disfranchisement, of segregation, of restricted opportunities, in order to annoy and degrade us, will yet undergo a change. If the wolf and lamb can dwell together, and the lamb be perfectly safe, surely the white man in this country is not so absolutely beyond being amenable to reason and common sense and decency as to make it impossible, some time in the future, for him and his brother in black to dwell together, and the brother in black feel no uneasiness, no fear of being molested, or of having his rights infringed upon by him. The white man, when it comes to the Negro, is pretty bad, I know, but I cannot believe that he is so hopelessly bad as to render it impossible for the colored man to dwell with him and be treated by him as a man and brother. It may ultimately turn out to be true; but I am not yet willing to believe it. It cannot be that this white race, which prides itself upon its superiority to all other races, under this highest test of superiority—the ability to accord to every man his right and to treat every man as a 
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