Not long ago I saw in an illustrated paper President Harrison with his Cabinet, represented as all lolling over asleep; and in the group there stood a Negro, his mouth open, his collar open, his teeth showing, and with a large scroll in his hand.  Beneath this picture was this remark:  “Wake up to the question of the day,” and on that scroll which the Negro had in his hand were the words:  “What are you gwine to do with the black man?”

Now, that question has been asked here indirectly to-day:  and, my friends, do you know that sometimes, as we have heard this question discussed, we wonder just exactly how people do consider us in this country.  There have been some who have advocated colonization.  Some have said that we would have to be sent back to Africa or out West, or to South America.  One man thinks that extermination will be the final thing to be resorted to.  It may be a fault in my education, it may be that this American Missionary Association has not educated me all right—­for I am a product of the Association,—­but I have been taught to suppose that we Negroes were free, independent, American citizens, at liberty to choose where we will stay and how long we will stay.  It seems that very eminent men are discussing the feasibility of sending us to Africa, and whether it is wise to go to the expense if it is thought best to send us there.  Now, my friends, it does not seem to me that there is any question about it so far as we are concerned.  The whites may go if they want to, but we are not going to budge!  So long as this is a free country we are going to stay here; it satisfies us.  It seems to me God has so settled it.

The question is not, what are you going to do with the colored man, but what are you going to do for him?  A great deal has been done, and it has been said that more has been done for the Negroes than for any other people.  That is true:  and the Negro has done more in these last twenty-five years than any other people on whom money and time and labor has been expended.  The American Missionary Association found out long ago what the Negro problem was.  They established schools and sent teachers among us, and when they came to us, they came at once, assuming—­not as Senator Eustis has done, that the Negroes have an inherent sense of inferiority, and that they should take an assigned place; not as Governor Lee has insisted, that the all-important thing for the white man to do is to keep the Negro down; and not as Senator Gibbs of Georgia, who a few weeks ago insisted that the white people are in imminent peril, and even went so far as to bring a bill before the Legislature as to whether the Negroes should be driven out of that State.  That is not the way these teachers have come down to us.  They have assumed that we are as capable as other people, that we have the same needs; and because they have come to us with this assumption to begin with, because they have received us in this way, we have made the progress that we have.