ace this opportunity to say, out of season,
perhaps, that which I was not permitted to say in season.

In the catalogue of members of Congress in this House perhaps none have
been more persistent in their determination to bring the black man into
disrepute and, with a labored effort, to show that he was unworthy of
the right of citizenship than my colleague from North Carolina, Mr.
Kitchin. During the first session of this Congress, while the
Constitutional amendment was pending in North Carolina, he labored long
and hard to show that the white race was at all times and under all
circumstances superior to the Negro by inheritance if not otherwise, and
the excuse for his party supporting that amendment, which has since been
adopted, was that an illiterate Negro was unfit to participate in making
the laws of a sovereign State and the administration and execution of
them; but an illiterate white man living by his side, with no more or
perhaps not as much property, with no more exalted character, no higher
thoughts of civilization, no more knowledge of the handicraft of
government, had by birth, because he was white, inherited some peculiar
qualification, clear, I presume, only in the mind of the gentleman who
endeavored to impress it upon others, that entitled him to vote, though
he knew nothing whatever of letters. It is true, in my opinion, that men
brood over things at times which they would have exist until they delude
themselves and actually, sometimes honestly, believe that such things do
exist.

I would like to call the gentleman's attention to the fact that the
Constitution of the United States forbids the granting of any title of
nobility to any citizen thereof, and while it does not in letters forbid
the inheritance of this superior caste, I believe in the fertile
imagination of the gentleman promulgating it, his position is at least
in conflict with the spirit of that organic law of the land. He insists
and, I believe, has introduced a resolution in this House for the repeal
of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution.

* * * * *

It would be unfair, however, for me to leave the inference upon the
minds of those who hear me that all of the white people of the State of
North Carolina hold views with Mr. Kitchin and think as he does. Thank
God there are many noble exceptions to the example he sets, that, too,
in the Democratic party; men who have never been afraid that one
uneducated, poor, depressed Negro