And this fate he can not escape so long as he remains a ballotless man--with no weapon of defense against the white man's race prejudice, which is regnant in his home and church and government and press and mills and shops and trades and schools.
Archibald Henry Grimké: “And this fate he can not escape so long as he remains a ballotless man--with no weapon of defense against the white…”
Editor's note · Context
Grimké discusses the inescapable fate of African Americans without the right to vote, highlighting systemic racial prejudice.
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There must be added to them this something else, this one thing needful to render them effective to save the blacks from the evil consequences of their race ignorance, and the whites from the evil consequences of their race prejudice.
And this one thing needful, I believe, the Progressive Party brings to the solution of the problem, and that it formed the underlying motive and the statesmanlike purpose of the action at Chicago last August of Theodore Roosevelt.
That colored men with the ballot should be rated in terms of the political game higher than other colored men who have it not, violates no rule of business ethics.
It reaches down to the springs of fundamental social and political changes at the South in relation to its race question, and sets in motion the healing waters of its pool of Bethesda, which will in time heal it of its sickness and cleanse…