He finds that even the Chinese who are denied citizenship in the Republic, receive better treatment, are accorded larger liberties as men than are allowed him in the South.
Archibald Henry Grimké
The Public Record
Archibald Henry Grimké was an African-American lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat and community leader in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He graduated from freedmen's schools, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and Harvard Law School, and served as American Consul to the Dominican Republic from 1894 to 1898. He was an activist for the rights of Black Americans, working in Boston and Washington, D.C. He was a national vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as president of its Washington, D.C. chapter.
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Not a doubt of it in legal theory but when he puts his theoretical rights to the test of fact he finds that he is different, that he may not do many of the things which white men all about him are doing all the time.
He has the right to reach up and out and to grow in every direction like other American citizens whose race and color are different from his own.
There is an enormous discrepancy in his case between National promise or guarantees and National performance or possessions.
What he is entitled to does not anywhere in the South and in some states of the North square itself with what he actually enjoys.
The legal status of the Negro in the United States is difficult to define or describe, because on paper he is an American citizen, entitled to the rights of an American citizen, but in practice he does not get what he is entitled to or…
Look down upon us, guide and cheer us still From the serene height where thou dwellest now; Dark is the way without the beacon light Which long and steadfastly thy hand upheld.
Oh friend beloved, with longing, tear-filled eyes We look up, up to the unclouded blue, And seek in vain some answering sign from thee.
Fair is the world that smiles upon us now; Blue are the skies of June, balmy the air That soothes with touches soft the weary brow; And perfect days glide into perfect nights,-- Moonlit and calm; but still our grateful hearts Are sad, and…
Like as the eyes of a mother about to die are turned and fixed on a darling child, so turned his thoughts to the struggling cause of human brotherhood and equality.
He was never weary of sowing and resowing in the laws of the Nation and in the mind of the people the grand ideas of the Declaration of Independence.
He toiled therefore in the Senate and on the platform to make equality before the law the master principle in the social and political life of America.