is best work; the white
workman who welcomes him to his side; the trade-union that opens its
doors alike to both colors; the teacher spending heart and brain for her
pupils; the statesman planning justice and opportunity for all; the
sheriff setting his life between his prisoner and the mob; the
dark-skinned guest cheerfully accepting a lower place than his due at
life's feast; the white-skinned host saying, Friend, come up higher,--it
is these who are solving the race problem.
Slowly but surely we are coming together. We confront our difficulties
as a people, however we may differ among ourselves, with a oneness of
spirit which is a help and pledge of final victory. We are one by our
most sacred memories, by our dearest possessions, and by our most solemn
tasks. Our discords are on the lower plane; when the rich, full voices
speak, in whatever latitude and longitude, they chord with one another.
When Uncle Remus tells Miss Sally's little boy about Brer Rabbit and
Brer Fox, the children from the Gulf to the Lakes gather about his
knees. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are claimed as comrades by all the boys
between the Penobscot and the Rio Grande. Lanier's verse rests on the
shelf with Longfellow's. The seer of Concord gives inspiration in Europe
and India and Japan. Frances Willard stands for the womanhood of the
continent. When Fitzhugh Lee died, it was not Virginia only but America
that mourned a son. When Mary Livermore passed away, we all did honor to
her heroic spirit. When Dunbar sings his songs, or DuBois speaks in the
tones of scholar and poet, we all listen. The great emancipators of the
successive generations,--Woolman, Lundy, Channing, Mrs. Stowe, Lincoln,
Armstrong, Booker Washington--do we not all claim a share in them? Just
as all Englishmen feel themselves heirs alike of the Puritan Hampden and
the Royalist Falkland, so we Americans all pay our love and reverence to
the heroes of our war,--Grant and Lee, Jackson and Sheridan, Johnston
and Thomas, and all their peers.
And we are one by the common tasks that confront us. This problem of the
races,--it is a challenge to do our best. "Impossible? What are we put
into the world for, but to do the impossible in the strength of God?"
The rich man and the poor man, the employer and the laborer, must find
some common ground of justice and harmony. The nation must be steered
away from commercial greed and military glory, toward international
arbitration, toward peace
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