"In advocating the cause of the colored man, since the Dred Scott decision, I have sometimes said I thought the nation had touched bottom. But let me tell you there is a depth of infamy lower than that. It is when the nation, standing upon the threshold of a great peril, reached out its hands to a feebler race, and asked that race to help it, and when the peril was over, said, You are good enough for soldiers, but not good enough for citizens. When Judge Taney said that the men of my race had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, he had not seen the bones of the black man bleaching outside of Richmond. He had not seen the thinned ranks and the thickened graves of the Louisiana Second, a regiment which went into battle nine hundred strong, and came out with three hundred. He had not stood at Olustee and seen defeat and disaster crushing down the pride of our banner, until word was brought to Col. Hallowell, "The day is lost; go in and save it:" and black men stood in the gap, beat back the enemy, and saved your army."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesEducators from the United StatesWomen authors from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Frances_Harper
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Frances Harper
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825 – February 22, 1911) was an abolitionist, suffragist, poet, teacher, public speaker, and writer, one of the first African American women to be published in the United States.
25 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Frances Harper →
Related Quotes
"power without righteousness is one of the most dangerous forces in the world"
"Great evils stare us in the face that need to be throttled by the combined power of an upright manhood and an enlight…"
"A wrong done to the weak should be an insult to the strong"
"In coming into her political estate woman will find a mass of illiteracy to be dispelled. If knowledge is power, igno…"
"How can any woman send petitions to Russia against the horrors of Siberian prisons if, ages after the Inquisition has…"
"One hundred years ago and Africa was the privileged hunting-ground of Europe and America, and the flag of different n…"
"The truly polite woman has no snub in her voice nor scorn upon her lips for those who occupy a lower social grade tha…"
"So close is the bond between man and woman that you can not raise one without lifting the other. The world can not mo…"
"If the fifteenth century discovered America to the Old World, the nineteenth is discovering woman to herself."
"I envy neither the heart nor the head of any legislator who has been born to an inheritance of privileges, who has be…"