him that he was corrupt, purchasable, unreliable in politics
and that the franchise should be denied to him by fair or foul means,
because of this, by the kuklux klan terrorists, or red shirt
brutalists--sufficient answer to it all, in my mind, has been that if
he could have been seduced from his best interests, from his friends
in party politics, without violence towards him, none would have
molested him or made him afraid. That is a self-evident proposition in
partisan ethics.

We do not terrorize and shoot and defraud people who vote with us. No,
the Afro-American has instinctively distrusted his political enemies,
even when they came to him bearing grapes in their hands and honey on
their tongues. His attitude has been one of manly protest, wherever he
was allowed to vote, or made to sulk in silence and indignation. And
here has been and here is the rub. When you cannot coax a man against
his will, as Jonathan did David, or purchase his birthright as Jacob
did Esau, if you have the power you terrorize and shoot him into
compliance. That is what the political enemies of the Afro-American
have done and are doing, but patient as the ass and with the faith of
Job, which passes all understanding, he sticks to his principle of
self-interest and waits; and the good proverb says, "All things come
to him who waits." I believe it. And if every man of the race had the
alternative of being shot in his tracks for clinging to his principles
or life eternal for deserting them, the part of manhood and honor
would be to stand up and be shot. As a matter of fact, thousands upon
thousands of Afro-Americans have been shot to death by their political
enemies since 1868, and perhaps thousands more will be shot in the
future in the same way, and for the same reason and by the same
heartless enemies, before the nation reaches the conclusion that an
Afro-American citizen should have as much protection under the Federal
Constitution as any other citizen with a white skin, despite the fact
that the whole matter is largely one of state control and regulation.
When cancers get on the body politic like this of disfranchisement and
debasement of an entire element of the citizenship, they are usually
cut out, as that of slavery, and its exceeding horrors, were.

Steadfastness, therefore, in the faith that moves mountains and
patience which overcomes a world of wrong and injustice, will bring
the reward as it has so often done with the race in the