Original Coming Soon
Voice of Missions: May, 1900
If the colored man meets in convention he is bound to speak to please the white people of his community, particularly if he is a politician, school teacher or employed in any respect so as to bring him in contact with the whites. Laws may pass forbidding us of sleeping cars or any other privilege and nothing is said or done about it, and we tamely submit to it and talk about God bringing better times. God helps nobody that do not try to help themselves, and this we are not trying to do and never will while we are under the grinding wheel of white people. As for the colored of the north realizing our condition, is next to impossibility. They are as scared of the white folks as we who live in the south and will speak and write in favor of them, no matter how cruel they act. I have come to the conclusion that this generation of black scullions will never be anything while the world stands, and as long as we have such papers as yours we are bound to be nothing.
African emigration is “Monumental Folly”, according to your definition of the term, yet you are doing nothing or saying nothing in defense of your race. Emigration has been the key of success in all ages, and the people who will not emigrate are cowardly, weak, ignoble and low in their composition. But if the Negro race sees fit to take such counsel as you give and thereby become exterminated, let them go on, for nothing but extermination or emigration is the hope of the future. Last year four hundred sixty six colored men were killed, according to the published accounts of over a hundred newspapers. Now if four hundred sixty six were murdered for the last ten years, it would amount to four thousand, seven hundred and sixty. Queen Mary, who is called “Bloody Mary”, killed about three hundred in her entire reign and yet she is denounced by every lip that speaks, and not one of your anti-african emigrationists is doing anything or saying anything or organizing anything to put an end to this flow of blood.
If we have not got the poorest, the most stupid, the most ignorant and the most cowardly and the most wretched class of leaders that ever a race was cursed with, I don’t know where you’ll find them. They ought to be taken out and hanged to the first tree that can be found. The dirty devils will be better off hung than thousands of their foolish victims, for every man that opposes African emigration is particeps criminis in taking the life of the innocent and weak. In other words, he is guilty of taking the blood of his fellow creatures. They do not perpetrate the murder, but they say well done to the murderer and bid him God speed in taking the life of more. I say they ought to be hanged dead by the neck, as they are as guilty as the men who do it. You make a wonderful estimate in figures of what a petition, ten miles long would consist of. I don’t expect to get a petition that long, but I do expect to get a petition of the men of the brain and the men who love their race. I do expect a petition that will be sent up to congress of those who sue for better conditions and better times. I do not expect to see the names of men who have been made prominent by white men or in many instances by their own race. I don’t expect for scullions, fools and coward to sign such a petition. Whenever you anti-african emigrationists start and do something to put an end to the existing condition of things, then talk to me. But until then keep your ignorant lips closed, for I have no respect for you and your talk is but chaff.
The opposers of African emigration or emigration somewhere are made up of the lowest, the most contemptible and ignorant set of Negroes that ever breathed the breath of life. They will do nothing here to call for better times. They are opposed to emigration, which has been the key to elevation in all ages and they are too cowardly to hold mass meetings and denounce the wrongs that we are the victims of. Such so called men would be a disgrace in hell. Talk about dying in Africa, my God, can we die any faster than we are being murdered here? And the oldest people we ever saw we have seen in Africa.
