No human lips can tell the story of that dark night that has left its impress upon the habits, customs and life of a whole race of people.  The crudest results of that iniquitous system fell heaviest upon the colored woman.  From childhood, no matter how favorably situated, she was liable to become the doomed victim of the grossest outrages.  There was no assurance that she would not be a constant associate in the field with the coarsest and most ignorant men of both races, or at any moment, at the caprice of the master, be sold.  Swayed, body, mind and spirit, by a master class who found it necessary to close every avenue of intelligence in order to accomplish his fiendish purposes, this creature, made in the image of God, was often taught that there was no God of justice for her.  Her body, instead of being a fit temple for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, was subject to the foulest demands of sensuality.  No wonder they sang,

     “Nobody knows the trouble I see, Lord,
     Nobody knows but Jesus.”

These slave songs, born of agony, might well be called “The Passion Flowers” of the slave cabin.  Thank God that all of my sisters were not thus brutalized, and even to those who were, God was merciful.  Deep down underneath the lacerated and bruised heart, rested the “Shekinah of the Lord,” preventing the wholesale transmission of vice.  Two hundred and fifty years of such tuition gave her but little chance to develop her womanhood.

Intuitively she knew that there was a living God, and she sought Him in visions, and listened for His voice, and looked forward and persevered for that home not made with hands, and from her heart were wrung these words: 

     “O Lord, O my Lord, O my good Lord,
     Keep me from sinking down.”

And then comforted, she cried out triumphantly—­

     “Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel,
     Then why not every man?”

Many have told me their struggles, and I know of others who even suffered death rather than submit to the outrage of chastity.  One poor mother with three beautiful baby girls, driven to despair by realizing their probable doom if allowed to live, sent them back to the God who gave them and then took her own life.

Thus the colored women and girls lived before the war.

How have they fared since Freedom?

Have they had a fair chance in the race of life?  No.  They have met caste-prejudice, the ghost of slavery, at every step of their journey during these years of freedom.  They have been made to feel that they are a separate species of the human family.  The phrases “Your people” and “Your place,” do not so much designate their race identity, as the fixed status in the sisterhood of races.  This idea, as harmless as it may appear, or as much as it is used, with varied phrases of meaning, according to the attitude of the speaker, has been one of the greatest barriers to the progress of the