Black and White | Page 7

given them that
protection to which their sovereign citizenship entitles them!
Practically, there is no law in the United States which extends its
protecting arm over the black man and his rights. He is, like the
Irishman in Ireland, an alien in his native land. There is no central or

auxiliary authority to which he can appeal for protection. Wherever he
turns he finds the strong arm of constituted authority powerless to
protect him. The farmer and the merchant rob him with absolute
immunity, and irresponsible ruffians murder him without fear of
punishment, undeterred by the law, or by public opinion--which
connives at, if it does not inspire, the deeds of lawless violence.
Legislatures of States have framed a code of laws which is more cruel
and unjust than any enforced by a former slave State.
The right of franchise[5] has been practically annulled in every one of
the former slave States, in not one of which, to-day, can a man vote,
think or act as he pleases. He must conform his views to the views of
the men who have usurped every function of government--who, at the
point of the dagger, and with shotgun, have made themselves masters
in defiance of every law or precedent in our history as a government.
They have usurped government with the weapons of the coward and
assassin, and they maintain themselves in power by the most approved
practices of the most odious of tyrants. These men have shed as much
innocent blood as the bloody triumvirate of Rome. To-day, red-handed
murderers and assassins sit in the high places of power, and bask in the
smiles of innocence and beauty.
The newspapers of the country, voicing the sentiments of the people,
literally hiss into silence any man who has the courage to protest
against the prevailing tendency to lawlessness[6] and bare-faced
usurpation; while parties have ceased to deal with the question for other
than purposes of political capital. Even this fruitful mine is well-nigh
exhausted. A few more years, and the usurper and the man of violence
will be left in undisputed possession of his blood-stained inheritance.
No man will attempt to deter him from sowing broadcast the seeds of
revolution and death. Brave men are powerless to combat this
organized brigandage, complaint of which, in derision, has been termed
"waving the bloody shirt."
Men organize themselves into society for mutual protection.
Government justly derives its just powers from the consent of the
governed. But what shall we say of that society which is incapable of

extending the protection which is inherent in it? What shall we say of
that government which has not power or inclination to insure the
exercise of those solemn rights and immunities which it guarantees? To
declare a man to be free, and equal with his fellow, and then to refrain
from enacting laws powerful to insure him in such freedom and
equality, is to trifle with the most sacred of all the functions of
sovereignty. Have not the United States done this very thing? Have
they not conferred freedom and the ballot, which are necessary the one
to the other? And have they not signally failed to make omnipotent the
one and practicable the other? The questions hardly require an answer.
The measure of freedom the black man enjoys can be gauged by the
power he has to vote. He has, practically, no voice in the government
under which he lives. His property is taxed and his life is jeopardized,
by states on the one hand and inefficient police regulations on the other,
and no question is asked or expected of him. When he protests, when
he cries out against this flagrant nullification of the very first principles
of a republican form of government, the insolent question is asked:
"What are you going to do about it?" And here lies the danger.
You may rob and maltreat a slave and ask him what he is going to do
about it, and he can make no reply. He is bound hand and foot; he is
effectually gagged. Despair is his only refuge. He knows it is useless to
appeal from tyranny unto the designers and apologists of tyranny.
Ignominious death alone can bring him relief. This was the case of
thousands of men doomed by the institution of slavery. But such is not
the case with free men. You cannot oppress and murder freemen as you
would slaves: you cannot so insult them with the question, "What are
you going to do about it?" When you ask free men that question you
appeal to men who, though sunk to the verge of despair, yet are capable
of uprising and ripping hip and thigh those who deemed them incapable
of so rising above their condition. The history of mankind is fruitful of