as that which once existed and was more intense between the Anglo-Saxon and the Norman.  If, as has been the case in many another land, there should arise an emergency threatening the existence of our Nation, and there were one man, and only one, capable of steering us through the storm into safety—­some Lincoln or Washington—­and if every voter in our country knew that this man were the only one who could do it, that man, if he were black, could not be elected President.  Were such an emergency to arise to-morrow, we should perish.  We should perish by suicide, and richly deserve all that we got.  There is no safety for our land until this prejudice of caste is gone.  It never came by argument; it can never be argued away.  It can not be smothered under legislation nor uprooted by resolutions nor effaced by tears.  While good men feel it they will fight it, but the majority will yield to it and it can be decided in only one way.  That way was well outlined by a colored student in Hampton Institute in the debating club of that institution.  The subject for discussion was, “How Shall We Black Men Secure Our Rights?” The last speaker was black as ebony, and had been bred in his early years a slave.  When he arose I expected to hear him repeat the familiar complaints and suggest the familiar remedies.  He did neither.  He simply said:  “My friends, I do not agree with all that you have said.  I think, as you do, that the way white people treat us in the street cars and hotels”—­and he might have added, in churches, but he did not—­“is wrong, unchristian, and cruel.”  And when he said that, there was a pathos in his voice which made me ashamed to be a white man.  “But,” he added, “while I think as you do that it is cruel, I do not think that the white people will ever stop treating us as inferiors so long as we are inferiors, and I think that they will despise us as long as they can.  But when we get enough character in our hearts, enough brains in our head, and enough money in our pockets, they will stop calling us niggers!”

He was right—­a thousand times right.  We must face the facts and steer by them, and not attempt to be guided by sentiment and emotions.  So long as the sight of a black face instinctively suggests to us rags and ignorance, and servility and menial employments, just so long this prejudice of caste will endure, and no amount of individual genius, culture, or character will be able to brush the mildew of caste from any individual black man’s brow.  That lady may be a Florence Nightingale, but if I whisper, and whisper truly, that she came from the slums, that her sisters are in the penitentiary, and her brothers are thieves, society will never forgive her for not being in the penitentiary herself.  Society will pity her in ostentatious magniloquence, which is far worse than contempt or neglect; perhaps it will clothe her with silk and diamonds; but it will never treat her as it would not dare not to treat any lady whom it felt its equal.  As has been well