To such an unconquerable will, to such an invincible faith obstacles vanish; the impossible becomes the attainable.
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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O Freedom! how are ye still born In the rude stable, in the manger nursed; What humble hands unbar those gates of morn Through which the splendors of the New Day burst.
The difference between this motto of the Liberator and that of the Free Press: Our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country--measures the greatness of the revolution which had taken place in the young editor.
The grand lesson he had learned, than which there is none greater, that beneath diversities of race, color, creed, language, there is the one human principle, which makes all men kin.
Of one thing we are sure: all Southern threats and rewards will be insufficient to deter us from pursuing the work of emancipation.
Buxton had somehow or other supposed that no white American could plead for those in bondage as I had done, and therefore I must be black!
I never can look up to these wretched retreats for my colored brethren without feeling my soul overwhelmed with emotions of shame, indignation, and sorrow.
He knew that beneath many a dark skin he had found real ladies and gentlemen, and he knew how sharper than a serpent's tooth to them was the American prejudice against their color.
There are colored men and women, young men and young ladies, in that city, who have few superiors in refinement, in moral worth, and in all that makes the human character worthy of admiration and praise.
It was human for the American people to hate a class whom they had so deeply wronged, and altogether human for them to justify their atrocious treatment by blackening before the world the reputation of the said class.
That this was actually done is the best of all proofs of the moral depravity of the nation which slavery had wrought.
I was too proud to beg, and ashamed to borrow.