DN28

Higher Ideals of Race Unity and Consciousness

From Speech at AME National Convention [not dated]

Who are the awakened youth of New Orleans? And to this I would answer: We are the spirit of a new age -- a new awakening -- a new birth. We are those who are endeavoring to knit this community of ours in closer bonds of brotherly love and fellowship.

We are those who are striving to lay a good foundation for the higher ideals of Christianity, the higher ideals of citizenship, and the higher ideals of race unity and race consciousness. We are those who are trying to tread the same high path that our fathers trod, but while treading this path we are trying to make it better and brighter as we journey along the way.

We are those who are striving to impress upon the minds of the people of other races that we are not as self-sacrificing as were our proverbial black Mammies and black Uncles, still we are their children, and being their children, we ought to be able to boast of a better virtue, greater ideals, and hearts that have never failed true friends. We would have them understand that we are the new spirit of a new age, and being new we are a little different as everything that is new fits rather awkward and uncomfortable. . . .

We are the spirit of a new age, who standing upon the high ideals outlined in the constitution of this great enlightened republic, cry out as loud as the proudest blue-blooded aristocracy: My Country 'tis of thee, sweet land of Liberty, of thee we sing . . . .

We would have you understand that we are those who grasping in one hand the high ideals of our land, and grasping in the other the blood-bought principles of Christianity, and with the burning words of Frederick Douglass ringing in our ears; and with Washington's torch of useful education at our backs; we are rising to meet the risen sun of a higher education . . . .

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