When we are ripe for it, there will appear Colored men with means ready to enter nearly every line of business, who are now afraid to do so, because of the fact that they cannot rely upon their own people for support.
We recognize three distinct grades among us; namely, the wealthy or those who have acquired money, supporting their families in the style that aristocratic Americans do; the working class including those engaged in business, professors, tradesmen, and the daily laborers; the third and last class includes the shiftless, worthless, and thoroughly degraded. Many prejudiced white people affect to know but one grade, and that the lowest always, and promptly charge all crimes committed by that class to the Colored people generally, taking that class as a criterion by which to judge the entire people, placing men like Frederick Douglass on a par with this degraded class, in speaking to him about them as “your people.” They know as well as they know anything, that Mr. Douglass has no more dealings or association with that class of Colored people, than Chauncey M. Depew has with the roughs and thugs of New York. It really makes me feel hurt to hear white men who, I believe, know better than to talk that way, men who will never reach Mr. Douglass’s standing, if they live to be old as Methuselah.
It would be well for us to remember, that we cannot always be considered as little helpless babes, and therefore objects of charity by the white philanthropists of this country. They have been very liberal towards us in their donations to establish institutions of learning, not only in the common branches, but the higher as well, so that we have a large number of colleges and universities sustained by donations from the white people, regardless of politics. We own many million dollars worth of school property, located in the South, which came to us by donation, besides a large amount invested in church property, much of which came in the same way. The charitably-disposed white people of this country have been very good to us, but we are now nearly thirty-year old children, and these philanthropists will find that out some day and cease their liberality upon the ground, that we are old enough to take care of ourselves. Can we dispute this fact? I think not. We will have to meet the obstacles I have referred to at no distant day, and should be paving the way to that end, so as to be prepared for them when the time comes. If there is a better plan than the one I have suggested, one more practical, let it not be only stated, but adopted and put into active operation, for we cannot expect to succeed with so many difficulties, as we are now forced to encounter, unless we unite ourselves more closely.