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THE NEGRO-AMERICAN.
ON
Monday evening. Dec. 7, 1885, the colored men of Massachusetts,
assembled in Faneuil Hall to discuss the themes familiar to this place
— civil rights and human freedom. It was the first meeting of the
Massachusetts Colored League, and Mr. O'Reilly was the speaker of the
evening.
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:
I was quite unaware
of the nature of this meeting when I came here. I
learn from Mr. Downing's speech that it is more or less a
political meeting; that you are going to express preferences
this way or that. I came here because I was asked to speak
at a colored men's meeting in Boston. I don't care what
your political preferences or parties are. I don't care whether
you vote the Republican or Democratic ticket, but I know
that if I were a colored man I should use parties as I would
a club — to break down prejudices against my people. I
shouldn't talk about being true to any party, except so far
as that party was true to me. Parties care nothing for you
only to use you. You should use parties; the highest
party you have in this country is your own manhood.
That is the thing in danger from all parties; that is the
thing that every colored American is bound in his duty to
himself and his children to defend and protect.
I think it is as wicked and unreasonable to discriminate
against a man because of the color of his skin as it would
be because of the color of his hair. He is no more responsible
for one than for the other, and one is no more significant
than the other. A previous speaker's reference to Mr.
Parnell and his growing power as a reformer ought to
suggest to you that Parnell is to-day a powerful man because
he is pledged to no party. He would smash the Tories to-morrow as readily as he smashed the Liberals yesterday.
That is the meaning of politics. The highest interest of
politics is the selfish interest of the people. You are never
going to change the things, that affect you colored men, by
law. If my children were not allowed into Northern
schools, if I myself were not allowed into Northern hotels,
I would change my party and my politics every day until
I changed and wiped out that outrage.
I was in Tennessee last spring, and when I got out of
the cars at Nashville I saw over the door of an apartment,
"Colored people's waiting-room." I went into it and
found a wretched, poorly-furnished room, crowded with
men, women, and children. Mothers with little children
sat on the unwashed floor, and young men and young
women filled the bare, uncomfortable seats that were
fastened to the walls. Then I went out and found over another
door, "Waiting-room." In there were the white people,
carefully attended and comfortable; separate rooms for
white men and women, well ventilated and well kept. I
spent two days in Nashville, and every hour I saw things
that made me feel that something was the matter either
with God or humanity in the South; and I said going
away, "If ever the colored question comes up again as
long as I live, I shall be counted in with the black men."
But this disregard for the colored people does not only
exist in the South; I know there are many hotels in
Boston, where, if any one of you were to ask for a room, they
would tell you that all the rooms were filled.
The thing that most deeply afflicts the colored American
is not going to be cured by politics. You have received
from politics already about all it can give you.
You may change the law by politics, but it is not the law
that is going to insult and outrage and excommunicate
every colored American for generations to come. You can't
cure the conceit of the white people that they are better
than you by politics, nor their ignorance, nor their prejudice,
nor their bigotry, nor any of the insolences which they
cherish against their colored fellow-citizens.
Politics is the snare and delusion of white men as well as
black. Politics tickles the skin of the social order; but
this disease, and other diseases of class, privilege, and
inheritance, lie deep in the internal organs. Social equity
is based on principles of justice; political change on the
opinion of a time. The black man's skin will be a mark
of social inferiority so long as white men are conceited,
ignorant and prejudiced. You cannot legislate these
qualities out of the whites — you must steal and reason them
out by teaching, illustration, and example.
No man ever came into the world with a grander
opportunity than the American negro. He is like new metal
dug out of the mine. He stands at this late day on the
threshold of history, with everything to learn and less to
unlearn, than any civilized man in the world. In his heart
still ring the free sounds of the desert. In his mind he
carries the traditions of Africa. The songs with which he
charms American ears are refrains from the tropical forests,
from the great inland seas and rivers of the dark continent.
At worst, the colored American has only a century or so
of degrading civilized tradition and habit to forget and
unlearn. His nature has only been injured on the outside by
these late circumstances of his existence. Inside he is a
new man, fresh from nature — a color-lover, an enthusiast, a
believer by the heart, a philosopher, a cheerful, natural,
good-natured man. I believe the colored American to be
the kindliest human being in existence. All the inhumanities
of slavery have not made him cruel or sullen or
revengeful. He has all the qualities that fit him to be a
good citizen of any country; he does not worry his soul
to-day with the fear of next week or next year. He has feelings
and convictions, and he loves to show them. He sees
no reason why he should hide them. He will be a great
natural expression if he dares to express the beauty, the
color, the harmony of God's world as he sees it with a
negro's eyes. That is the meaning of race distinction —
that it should help us to see God's beauty in the world in
various ways.
What this splendid man needs most is confidence in
himself and his race. He is a dependent man at present.
He is not sure of himself. He underrates his own qualities.
He must be a self-respecting man. Not all men can be
distinguished, but assuredly some distinct expression of genius
will come out of any considerable community of colored
people who believe in themselves, who contemn and
despise the man of their blood who apes white men and their
ways, who is proud to be a negro, who will bear himself
according to his own ideas of a colored man, who will
encourage his women to dress themselves by their own taste,
to select the rich colors they love, to follow out their own
natural bent, and not to adopt other people's stupid and
shop-made fashions. The negro woman has the best artistic
eye for color of all the women in America.
The negro is the only graceful, musical, color-loving
American. He is the only American who has written new
songs and composed new music. He is the most spiritual
of Americans, for he worships with soul and not with
narrow mind. For him religion is to be believed, accepted
like the very voice of God, and not invented, contrived,
reasoned about, shaded, and made fashionably lucrative and
marketable, as it is made by too many white Americans.
The negro is a new man, a free man, a spiritual man, a
hearty man; and he can be a great man if he will avoid
modeling himself on the whites. No race ever became
illustrious on borrowed ideas or the imitated qualities of
another race.
No race or nation is great or illustrious except by one
test — the breeding of great men. Not great merchants or
traders, not rich men, bankers, insurance-mongers, or
directors of gas companies. But great thinkers — great
seers of the world through their own eyes — great tellers of
the truths and beauties and colors and equities as they
alone see them. Great poets — ah, great poets above all —
and their brothers, great painters and musicians,
fashioners of God's beautiful shapes in clay and marble and
harmony.
The negro will never take his full stand beside the white
man till he has given the world proof of the truth and
beauty of heroism and power that are in his soul. And
only by the organs of the soul are these delivered — by
self-respect and self-reflection, by philosophy, religion, poetry,
art, love, and sacrifice. One great poet will be worth a
hundred bankers and brokers, worth ten Presidents of
the United States, to the negro race. One great musician
will speak to the world for the black men as no thousand
editors or politicians can.
The wealth of our Western soil, in its endless miles of
fertility, is less to America than the unworked wealth of
the rich negro nature. The negro poet of the future will be
worth two Mexicos to America. God send wise guides to
my black fellow-countrymen, who shall lead them to
understand and accept what is true and great and perennial, and
to reject what is deceptive and changeable in life, purpose,
and hope.
It is a great pleasure to me to say these things that I
have long believed to a colored meeting in Boston. It
would be a greater pleasure to go down to Nashville and
address a colored meeting there; and God grant that it may
be soon possible for a Boston white man to go down to
Nashville and address colored men. As I said in the
beginning, so long as American citizens and their children are
excluded from schools, theaters, hotels, or common
conveyances, there ought not to be and there is not among those
who love justice and liberty, any question of race, creed, or
color; every heart that beats for humanity, beats with the
oppressed.
