Bishop Turner and Dr. Smith’s Open Letter
Christian Recorder: March 7, 1895
Mr. Editor:
You ask me if I am not going to reply to the open letter of Dr. Smith in your last issue? No. I have no time to reply to his fun or past-time; nor did he intend I should reply. If so, he would not have written to all the papers in creation about the time he thought I had left the country. The country knows I am no African emigration agent as he tries to make me, nor have I ever recommended any penniless person to go there, as he tries to imply. I do say, that the Negro has no manhood future in this country and any Negro must be an idiot not to see it. I grant that any one going to Liberia may have some hardships, but I had rather have them with nature than with lynchers and every form of proscription that crushes out my manhood and curses my children. But I am too indignant about being refused decent accommodations of the steamship yesterday in New York to write upon this subject. If Dr. Smith wishes to eat dirt and endorse the deviltry of this nation toward my people, I do not, so I had better stop.
H. M. Turner.
