“This is but a fair sample of the treatment which our race receives everywhere in the South.

“If we enter a place where a sign tells us that the public is served, we do not know whether we are to be waited upon or driven out like dogs.

“And the most shameful and hopeless feature connected with the question of our civil rights is that the Supreme Court has lent its official sanction to all such acts of discrimination.  The highest court in the land is the chief bulwark of caste prejudice in democratic America.

EDUCATION.

“The race that thinks of us and treats us as we have just indicated has absolute charge of the education of our children.

“They pay our teachers poorer salaries than they do their own; they give us fewer and inferior school buildings and they make us crawl in the dust before the very eyes of our children in order to secure the slightest concessions.

“They attempt to muzzle the mouths of negro teachers, and he who proclaims too loudly the doctrine of equality as taught by Thomas Jefferson, will soon be in search of other employment.

“Thus, they attempt to cripple our guides so that we may go forward at a feeble pace.

“Our children, early in life, learn of our maltreatment, and having confidence in the unused strength of their parents, urge us to right our wrongs.

“We listen to their fiery words and gaze in fondness on their little clinched fists.  We then bow our heads in shame and lay bare to them the chains that yet hold our ankles, though the world has pronounced us free.

“In school, they are taught to bow down and worship at the shrine of the men who died for the sake of liberty, and day by day they grow to disrespect us, their parents who have made no blow for freedom.  But it will not always be thus!

COURTS OF JUSTICE.

“Colored men are excluded from the jury box; colored lawyers are discriminated against at the bar; and negroes, with the highest legal attainments, are not allowed to even dream of mounting the seat of a judge.

“Before a court that has been lifted into power by the very hands of prejudice, justice need not be expected.  The creature will, presumably, serve its creator; this much the creator demands.

“We shall mention just one fact that plainly illustrates the character of the justice to be found in our courts.

“If a negro murders an Anglo-Saxon, however justifiably, let him tremble for his life if he is to be tried in our courts.  On the other hand, if an Anglo-Saxon murders a negro in cold blood, without the slightest provocation, he will, if left to the pleasure of our courts, die of old age and go down to his grave in perfect peace.

“A court that will thus carelessly dabble and play in puddles of human blood needs no further comment at my hands.