“Yes, you know us as your servants.  The law takes cognizance of our crimes.  Your charitable institutions of our poverty, but what do any of you know of our best and most thoughtful men and women?  When we write how many of you ever read our books and papers or give yourselves any trouble to come near us as friends and help us?  Even some of your professed Christians are trying to set us apart as if we were social lepers.”

“You draw a dark picture.  I confess that I feel pained at the condition of affairs in the South, but what can we do in the South?”

“Set the South a better example.  But I am hindering you in your business.”

“Not at all.  I want to see things from the same standpoint that you do.”

“Put yourself then in my place.  You start both North and South from the premise that we are an inferior race and as such you have treated us.  Has not the consensus of public opinion said for ages, ’No valor redeems our race, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the ban which clings to us’; that our place is on the lowest round of the social ladder; that at least, in part of the country we are too low for the equal administrations of religion and the same dispensations of charity and a fair chance in the race of life?”

“You bring a heavy verdict against us.  I hardly think that it can be sustained.  Whatever our motives may have been, we have been able to effect in a few years a wonderful change in the condition of the Negro.  He has freedom and enfranchisement and with these two great rights he must work out his social redemption and political solution.  If his means of education have been limited, a better day is dawning upon him.  Doors once closed against him in the South are now freely opened to him, and I do not think that there ever was a people who freed their slaves who have given as much for their education as we have, and my only hope is that the moral life of the race will keep pace with its intellectual growth.  You tell me to put myself in your place.  I think if I were a colored young man that I would develop every faculty and use every power which God had given me for the improvement and development of my race.  And who among us would be so blind and foolish as to attempt to keep down an enlightened people who were determined to rise in the scale of character and condition?  No, Mr. Thomas, while you blame us for our transgressions and shortcomings, do not fail to do all you can to rouse up all the latent energies of your young men to do their part worthily as American citizens and to add their quota to the strength and progress of the nation.”

“I am conscious of the truth and pertinence of your remarks, but bear with me just a few moments while I give an illustration of what I mean.”

“Speak on, I am all attention.  The subject you bring before me is of too vital importance to be constantly ignored.”