e labor question clearly before our
large-hearted, broad-minded sisters of the dominant race and appeal to
them to throw their influence on the right side. We shall ask that
they train their children to be broad and just enough to judge men and
women by their intrinsic merit rather than by the adventitious
circumstances of race or color or creed. Colored women are asking the
white mothers of the land to teach their children that when they when
they grow to be men and women, if they deliberately prevent their
fellow creatures from earning an honest living by closing their doors
of trade against them, the Father of all men will hold them
responsible for the crimes which are the result of their injustice and
for the human wrecks which the ruthless crushing of hope and ambition
always makes.

Through our clubs colored women hope to improve the social atmosphere
by showing the enormity of the double standard of morals, which
teaches that we should turn the cold shoulder upon a fallen sister,
but greet her destroyer with open arms and a gracious smile. The duty
of setting a high moral standard and living up to it devolves upon
colored women in a peculiar way. False accusations and malicious
slanders are circulated against them constantly, both by the press and
by the direct descendants of those who in years past were responsible
for the moral degradation of their female slaves.

Carefully and conscientiously we shall study the questions which
affect the race most deeply and directly. Against the convict lease
system, the Jim Crow car laws, lynchings and all other barbarities
which degrade us, we shall protest with such force of logic and
intensity of soul that those who oppress us will either cease to
disavow the inalienability and equality of human rights, or be ashamed
to openly violate the very principles upon which this government was
founded. By discharging our obligation to the children, by coming into
the closest possible touch with the masses of our people, by studying
the labor question as it affects the race, by establishing schools of
domestic science, by setting a high moral standard and living up to
it, by purifying the home, colored women will render their race a
service whose value it is not in my power to estimate or express. The
National Association is being cherished with such loyalty and zeal by
our women that there is every reason to hope it will soon become the
power for good, the tower of strength and