lions; in 1900 we shall be twelve millions; in 1920, twenty-four millions; in 1940, forty-eight millions; in 1960, ninety-six millions; and in 1980, one hundred and ninety-two millions. We are convinced that the advancing column of our race, thirsting for some higher use of the nation's gift than invincible prejudice now tolerates, will never halt, until in the near future the politicians are driven to recognize the influence of a political power which they cannot safely disregard.
But if the bands woven of the strands of ancestral race-prejudice are wrapped round and round our race, every step of our way must be a triumph of will over circumstances. To the resolute,nothing is impossible. That, as Mirabeau said, "is a blockhead of a word; the stars in their courses are in league with him who is fully committed to duty; the cherubim are his allies; the angels have been commissioned to bear him on his way, and the pestilence flees at his approach." Defeat came not to Socrates in his cell, nor to Savonarola in the flames: this was their hour of triumph. Every year the Minotaur claimed its tribute of young men and maidens of Greece, until Theseus boldly entered the den of the monster and killed it. Every day the pro-slavery Minotaur—Race-Prejudice—demands, of our young men and maidens, that they shall fall down upon their knees, and, bowing low and humbly, surrender those pledges of civil rights which the mighty dead bequeathed them by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The imperative necessity of to-day is the sanitary influence of light, Justice herself holding aloft the torch. Is it not in the artificial world of civil rights as in the natural material world? When the clear beams pierce the clouds which envelop the mountain-top, its lofty peaks grow discernible to the eye of those in the vales below. The light of the primary, accurate, practical knowledge of our constitutional rights, and of the principles of the common law, will lift the dense fog and clear the murky atmosphere which hang over the valley of superstitious caste, wherein race-prejudice "genders and knots itself." The clarified atmosphere with healing on its wings will dispel the malarial poison which permeates the air within sight of the statue of Liberty Enlightening the World.
