He is to be kept down by brute force if he cannot be kept down in any other way, below the social and industrial and political level of the lowest and most worthless of the whites, because he is black and because they are white.
He describes the brutal methods used to maintain the social hierarchy based on race.
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More from Archibald Henry Grimké
When he had ceased speaking I said to those around me: 'That is a providential man; he is a prophet; he will shake our nation to its center, but he will shake slavery out of it.
Then you had better let all your irons burn than neglect your duty to the slave.
I have always supposed that its spirit was directly opposed to everything in the shape of fraud and oppression.
During those dark years the blacks were much more sinned against than sinning.