tens of thousands of homes. We pay taxes on a billion dollars’ worth of property.[13]

“Forty years ago we had no business men, no professional men. Now we have painters, poets, architects, inventors, merchants, lawyers, doctors, 34divines. And yet we are shut off from the body-politic. We have to submit to taxation without representation. Even those of us who cannot be defrauded of our votes are excluded from the councils of the party which would not exist without us. That” (with peculiar bitterness) “is what they call the lilywhite policy![14]

34

“But, sir, we are uncomplaining. If there is a colour-problem, it is not we who raise it. No! it is the unprincipled white politician who finds anti-negro agitation a popular plank in his platform.

“Even under this government of the two races by and for the one race, the negro is loyal to the country which he has enriched by his labour, hallowed by his graves, watered with his blood.

“We are a docile and an instinctively religious race. You will find few negro atheists or infidels. We are susceptible to any and all of the forms of the Christian religion. We are Methodists or Baptists among the Methodists and Baptists, Presbyterians among the Presbyterians, Episcopalians among the Episcopalians, Roman Catholics among the Roman Catholics.”

I could not but think this remark significant of much—of far more, indeed, than the speaker realized.

“Are you excluded from municipal as well as from political life?” I asked.

35“Even more strictly, if possible,” was the reply. “All municipal offices are in the hands of ‘sho’ ’nuff white folks,’ though they may be Dagos, or Germans, or Slavs. Of course the city government and the police department are run by the Irish. No negro holds a job higher than that of washing spittoons in the Court House. Yet in this city we pay taxes on three millions of property.

35

“But this is the saving trait of the negro’s character: shut off from all other activities, he goes on quietly and uncomplainingly working, educating himself, and accumulating property.[15] For the righting of our wrongs we must look to the negroes in those States where they hold the balance of power—in Ohio, Indiana, Connecticut, New Jersey, and others. And think what an element we are destined to form in the body politic! In fifty years we 

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