In January, 1836, Rev. Mr. Follen offered the following resolution in a meeting of the New England Anti-slavery Society:
"_Resolved_, That we consider the Anti-slavery cause the cause of philanthropy, with regard to which all human beings, white men and colored men, citizens and foreigners, men and women, have the same duties and the same rights."
"We have been advised, if we really wished to benefit the slave and the colored race generally, not unnecessarily to shock the feelings, though they were but prejudices, of the white people, by admitting colored persons to our Anti-slavery meetings and societies. We have been told that many who would otherwise act in unison with us were kept away by our disregard of the feelings of the community in this respect.... But what, I would ask, is the great, the single object of all our meetings and societies? Have we any other object than to impress upon the community this one principle, that the _colored man is a man_? And, on the other hand, is not the prejudice which would have us exclude colored people from our meetings and societies the same which, in our Southern States, dooms them to perpetual bondage?"
In May, 1837, the _Anti-slavery Women of America_ met in convention in New York. In a circular issued by the authority of the convention, and signed by Mary S. Parker, President, Angelina E. Grimkie, Secretary, another attack was made upon proscription in anti-slavery societies. There was a Colored lady named Sarah Douglass on the Central Committee. The following paragraphs from the circular are specimens sufficient to show the character of the circular; and the poetry at the end, written by a Colored member. Miss Sarah Forten, justified the hopes of her white sisters concerning the race:
"Those Societies that reject colored members, or seek to avoid them, have never been active or efficient. The blessing of God does not rest upon them, because they 'keep back a part of the price of the land,'--they do not lay _all_ at the apostle's feet.
"The abandonment of prejudice is required of us as a proof of our sincerity and consistency. How can we ask our Southern brethren to make sacrifices, if we are not even willing to encounter inconveniences? First cast the beam from thine own eye, then wilt thou see clearly to cast it from his eye.