The period for him to set up for himself has not yet come, and he is still acquiring means and training within a realm controlled in all respects by a people who maintain toward him an attitude of absolute social exclusion.  His is the history of a people marching from nowhere to somewhere, but with no well-defined Canaan before them and no Moses to lead.  It is indeed, on their part, a walk by faith, for as yet the wisest among the race cannot tell even the direction of the journey.  Before us lie surely three possible destinies, if not four; yet it is not clear toward which one of these we are marching.  Are we destined to see the African element of America’s population blend with the Euro-American element and be lost in a common people?  Will the colored American leave this home in which as a race he has been born and reared to manhood, and find his stage of action somewhere else on God’s earth?  Will he remain here as a separate and subordinate people perpetuating the conditions of to-day only that they may become more humiliating and exasperating?  Or is there to arise a war of races in which the blacks are to be exterminated?  Who knows?  Fortunately the historian is not called upon to perform the duties of prophet.  His work is to tell what has been; and if others, building upon his presentation of facts can deduce what is to be, it is no small tribute to the correctness of his interpretations; for all events are parts of one vast system ever moving toward some great end.  One remark only need be made.  It is reasonable to presume that this new Afro-American will somehow and somewhere be given an opportunity to express that particular modification of material life which his spiritual nature will demand.  Whether that expression will be made here or elsewhere; whether it will be higher or lower than what now surrounds us, are questions which we may well leave to the future.

No people can win and hold a place, either as a nation among other nations, or as an elementary component of a nation, merely by its own goodness or by the goodness of others.  The struggle for national existence is a familiar one, and is always initiated by a display of physical force.  Those who have the power seize territory and government, and those who can, keep possession and control.  It is in some instances the backing up of right by might, and in others the substituting of right by might.  Too often the greatest of all national crimes is to be weak.  When the struggle is a quiet one, going on within a nation, and is that of an element seeking a place in the common social life of the country, much the same principles are involved.  It is still a question to be settled by force, no matter how highly the claim of the weaker may be favored by reason and justice.