Negro on the rostrum, or those who fought so desperately on the field of battle to make its provisions effective. And our cup is all the more bitter, when the thought comes to us that among those who bled and died that the country might be saved and their kinsmen free were black men, the bravest soldiers that ever wore a uniform.

The denial of rights guaranteed the Negro by the Constitution and the refusal to grant him the ordinary privileges of a freeman have created what is called the “Negro Problem”—the most prominent, the gravest and the most important question in American affairs. Ten millions of people with African blood in their veins—“an undifferentiated part of the Nation”—are made the objects of the meanest discrimination and the most unjust treatment by a so-called superior race seven times their number. I can see for the American people no permanent peace, no ease of conscience until the Negro question is settled, and settled right.

At no time since the Civil War has the future of the Negro seemed so dark and so uncertain as today. We are in thick weather and on a stormy sea, and many wise and thoughtful people fear for our safety. But I believe behind the clouds the sun is shining and is bound to bring in God’s final day of light. The older ones among us have seen darker days than these. They have seen husbands sold from wives and children from mothers, yet they hoped on and prayed on until the day of their redemption came. And shall we with forty years of freedom behind us and forty years of opportunity to strengthen and develop us be less courageous than they were? It may be well for us to pause a moment and take a cursory glance at the history of the black man in America and see through what trials and through what difficulties he has so triumphantly come. Such a review may be helpful to us and may make our present seem less gloomy and more hopeful.

In the year [1]1620 two ships from foreign shores set sail for America. Both carried passengers destined to play an important part in the history of our country. One came from England and landed her precious burden on the northern shore of Cape Cod. The other sailed from the sunny shores of Africa, touched at Jamestown in Virginia, and left there twenty black men as slaves. Those from England were the forerunners of a people distinguished for thrift, enterprise and ingenuity. To these pilgrims and their descendants the American nation is very largely indebted for its greatness. But that score of black men, unwilling emigrants, torn by force from their native land, were the fathers of a people who produced no such salutary effect upon the civilization 

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