In the history of nearly all other
races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has
been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and
houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such
respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.
In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can
survive only through submission. Mr. Washington distinctly
asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three
things,--
First, political power,
Second, insistence on civil rights,
Third, higher education of Negro youth,--
and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, and
accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South.
This policy has been courageously and insistently advocated
for over fifteen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps
ten years. As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what
has been the return? In these years there have occurred:
1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.
2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority
for the Negro.
3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the
higher training of the Negro.
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