Would you succeed, you must deserve success; and this can only be by character.

Remember well, do not forget, you cannot be a good lawyer unless you are a good man.

If to these things be added health, there is no success which will not be within your reach.

Belonging to a race which for long generations has been oppressed and despoiled of rights, you must be the vigilant and sensitive defenders of all who suffer in any way from wrong.

The good lawyer should always be on the side of Human Rights; and yet it is a melancholy fact in history that lawyers have too often lent learning and subtle tongue to sustain wrong.

In the sacred cause of Justice be faithful, constant, brave.

No matter who is the offender,--whether crime be attempted by political party, by Congress, or by President,--wherever it shows itself, whether on the continent or on an island of the sea, you must be ready at all times to stand forth…

Therefore, sustaining the rights of all, you will sustain your own.

Be not satisfied with anything less than the Rights of All.

But while generously maintaining the rights of others, I venture to say that you will be entirely unworthy of the vantage-ground on which you now stand, if you do not insist at all times on those Equal Rights which are still denied to you.

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.

The Constitution does not contain the word “white”; who can insert it in the Law?

Insist that the common-school, where the child is prepared for the duties of manhood, shall know no discrimination unknown to the Constitution.

Insist, also, that the public conveyances and public hotels, owing their existence to Law, shall know no discrimination unknown to the Constitution, so that the Senator or the Representative in Congress, who is the peer of all at the…

Insist upon equal rights everywhere; make others insist upon them.

Insist that our institutions shall be brought into perfect harmony with the promises of the Declaration of Independence, which is grand for its universality.

Let us do all that we can for each, with this understanding,--that, where there is the most suffering, there must our charity go.

Before making a change in our laws, it is important to consider the nature and extent of what is proposed; especially is this the case, if the change will be far-reaching in influence.

It is plain that such a system made the administration of justice differ in different States.

The same statute might be successfully administered in a State where there was no exclusion of colored testimony, and miserably fail in another State where such exclusion prevailed; and the same judge might be called in one court to admit…

In lending the sanction of the United States, even indirectly, to an exclusion founded on color, all the people have been made parties to injustice.

To appreciate the true character of this proscription, we must repair to the Slave States, where it is declared, and consider it in the very language, legislative and judicial, by which it is maintained, not neglecting the eccentricities…

Slaves cannot testify in any of the States for or against a white person in any case, either civil or criminal,--unless, perhaps, in Maryland they may be allowed to testify against a white person who is not a Christian.

Free persons of color are also, like slaves, incompetent to testify for or against white persons, except in Delaware and Louisiana, where, under circumstances already stated, they may testify, even though a white person is a party.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.