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Page 2.

A man cannot keep down a man without staying down himself. So
it is with a nation, it cannot keep a man down without staying down with
him.

The colored man never has and does not ask for favor, charity
or social equality; but for the free and equal opportunity in the pur-
suit of life and happiness, and this no man or nation can permenantly
withold fron any race.

No doubt, the root of these present conditions is in the ob-
structions placed in the colored man's path to the ballot box. It is
true that the Supreme Court of the United States has held, that the
various qualifications to vote, enacted by the Southern States, except-
ing the grandfather's clause, do not discriminate, and are legal and
are within the power of the Sovereign State. With this decision or those
laws, the colored man has no complaint to make. But his complaint is
that by chicanery and evenly openly, the officials charged with the en-
forcement of these laws, violate them in favor of the white man, while
the colored man is held to the letter and the spirit. Therefore, it is
utterly impossible for any colored man to satisfactorily qualify as a
voter, save those whom this oligarchic form of government which this
system has produced would have qualify. Now, who can say this sort of
thing does not degrade America more than it degrades the Colored man?

1t is the Colored man deserving of these grievous, unequal
burdens placed upon him; Is he not a loyal citizen? Has he not brave-
ly from time to time, laid down his life for America? And even now,
America can have no sorrow that is not the Colored man's sorrow.

Then is it not time and high time that America should
resolutely set herself to treat her Colored sons and daughters with just-
ice and humanity?

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