There were colored leaders who followed closely in the footsteps of the white leaders in perverting public trusts to corrupt ends, but the chief malefactors, the biggest scoundrels were members of the white race.
Grimké acknowledges that some African American leaders also engaged in corrupt practices, but he emphasizes the greater culpability of white leaders.
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It should make this a day of fasting and prayer, not of boisterous merriment and idle pageantry--a day of great lamentation, not of congratulatory joy.
I have always supposed that its spirit was directly opposed to everything in the shape of fraud and oppression.
And in this moral mud there bred apace bestiality and cruelty, superstition and sensuality, tyranny and fear--the black brood of man's inhumanity to man.
It is true examples of disinterested benevolence and individual sacrifices are numerous, particularly in the Southern States; but no systematic, vigorous, and successful measures have been made to overthrow this fabric of oppression.