What he needs to-day is moral sympathy,
which in his condition years ago he could hardly appreciate. The
sympathy must be moral, not necessarily social. It must be the
sympathy of a soul set on fire for righteousness and fair play in a
republic like ours. A sympathy which will see to it that every man
shall have a man's chance in all the affairs of this great nation
which boasts of being the land of the free and the home of the brave
for which the black man has suffered and done so much in every sense
of the word.
Let this great Christian nation of eighty millions of people do
justice to the Black Battalion, and seeing President Roosevelt
acknowledges that he overstepped the bounds of his power in
discharging and renouncing them before they had a fair trial, and now
that they are vindicated before the world, to take back what he called
them, Cutthroats, Brutal Murderers, Black Midnight Assassins, and
Cowards. This and this alone will to some extent atone for the wrong
he has done and help him to regain the respect and confidence of the
world.
Now in order to change the condition of things, I would suggest:
First, that an international, industrial association be formed to help
Afro-Americans to engage in manufacturing and commercial pursuits,
assist them to buy farms, erect factories, open shops in which their
young men and women can enter and produce what the world requires
every day for its inhabitants.
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