The bright ideals of
the past,--physical freedom, political power, the training of
brains and the training of hands,--all these in turn have
waxed and waned, until even the last grows dim and overcast.
Are they all wrong,--all false? No, not that, but each alone
was over-simple and incomplete,--the dreams of a credulous
race-childhood, or the fond imaginings of the other world
which does not know and does not want to know our power.
To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded
into one. The training of the schools we need to-day more
than ever,--the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears,
and above all the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted
minds and pure hearts. The power of the ballot we need in
sheer self-defence,--else what shall save us from a second
slavery? Freedom, too, the long-sought, we still seek,--the
freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the
freedom to love and aspire. Work, culture, liberty,--all these
we need, not singly but together, not successively but together,
each growing and aiding each, and all striving toward that
vaster ideal that swims before the Negro people, the ideal of
human brotherhood, gained through the unifying ideal of
Race; the ideal of fostering and developing the traits and
talents of the Negro, not in opposition to or contempt for
other races, but rather in large conformity to the greater ideals
of the American Republic, in order that some day on American
soil two world-races may give each to each those characteristics
both so sadly lack.
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