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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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.
It would reappear as Negro serfdom unless placed in the way of utter extinction.
Perhaps the common people would hearken to what the wise and powerful had rejected.
He saw that they were not essentially unlike other races--that there was nothing morally or intellectually peculiar about them, and that the evil or the good which they manifested was the common property of mankind in similar circumstances.