Αποσπάσματα από το «Contending Forces»

Καταδικάζουν τη βία ενώ την ασκούν οι ίδιοι.

“Lynching was instituted to crush the manhood of the enfranchised black. Rape is the crime which appeals most strongly to the heart, of the home life. Merciful God! Irony of ironies! The men who created the mulatto race, who recruit its ranks year after year by the very means which they invoked lynch law to suppress, bewailing the sorrows of violated womanhood!

Όταν η επιβίωση μπλέκεται με τη βία και την εξουσία.

“Time will tell. You don’t expect to succeed in keeping us out of employment, shoved in a corner to starve and to be burnt alive, without getting square sometime, do you? There would be some satisfaction in throwing you fellows out and putting others in, if a new party is the outcome of the issue, and seeing some of you, who have your pockets filled with the salaries which the Government has heaped upon you, shoved out of a job and your vast schemes for growing richer, at the expense of the lives of just such poor unfortunates as the Negroes you are allowing the South to burn in order to keep in power, blown to the devil. We can at least do that much.”

Πώς χτίζει μια γυναίκα έναν ισχυρό κόσμο μέσα από το σπίτι της;

Trivialities are not to be despised. Inborn love implanted in a woman’s heart for a luxurious, esthetic home life, running on well-oiled wheels amid flowers, sunshine, books and priceless pamphlets, easy chairs and French gowns, may be the means of developing a Paderewski or freeing a race from servitude. It was amusing to watch the way in which she governed societies and held her position. In her hands committees were as wax, and loud murmurings against the tyranny of her rule died down to judicious whispers. If a vote went contrary to her desires, it was in her absence. Thus she became the pivot about which all the social and intellectual life of the colored people of her section revolved. No one had yet been found with the temerity to contest her position, which, like a title of nobility, bade fair to descend to her children.

Πότε η επιβίωση μοιάζει να απαιτεί συμβιβασμό;

“Now, look here, Langley, don’t say hard things, and don’t get mad. I will admit every word that you say. It is all true, d⸺ it!” he exclaimed as he arose to his feet and began walking up and down the floor with rapid strides. “I imagine I should feel even worse than you do if I were one of your race, but you see things are as they are, and why not make the best of a bad matter? Your people can’t help themselves. If you rose in the South and appealed to arms you would soon be exterminated; for of course the South is our brother, and in an uprising of that sort, the National arms would necessarily be directed against the ‘rioters,’ as they would be termed.

Ένα βάρος που δεν μπορεί να σηκώσει κανείς μόνος του.

We may right a wrong, but we cannot restore our victim to his primeval state of happiness. Something is lost that can never be regained. The wages of sin is death. Innocent or guilty, the laws of nature are immutable. So with shoulders bent and misshapen with heavy burdens, the Negro plods along bearing his cross—carrying the sins of others.

Πόσο μακριά φτάνουν οι δυνατότητες όταν οι ευκαιρίες κλείνουν;

With about every avenue for business closed against them, it is surprising that so many families of color manage to live as well as they do and to educate their children and give them a few of the refinements of living—such as cultivating a musical talent, gratifying a penchant for languages, or for carving, or for any of the arts of a higher civilization, so common among the whites, but supposed to be beyond the reach of a race just released from a degrading bondage.