“And what is worse than all, this spirit is carried to the graveyard; and for fear that the dead body of a black man shall black up or disgrace the body of a white, they go and dig holes round under the fences, and off in a wet corner, or under the barn, and put all of our colour in ’em; for every one may be an eyewitness if he’ll go to our graveyard and others; for I have lived now goin’ on fourteen years in one place, and any colored person who has been buried at all there, has been buried all along under the fences, and close up to the old barn that stands there. I know God will receive the souls of sich, jist as well as though they was buried in the middle of the yard, but I say this, to let the reader know what a cruel and unholy thing prejudice agin color is, and what it will do to us poor black people.
“Now I know that all this is the reason why the people of our colour don’t rise any faster. The scorn, the disgrace that every body flings on ’em, keeps ’em down, and they are sinkin’, and such treatment is enough to sink the Rocky mountains.
“Now I know from experience, that the better you treat a black man the better he will behave; for his own pride will keep his ambition up, and he’ll try to rise; why if you should treat white folks so they’d grow bad jist as fast. Why, who don’t know that a body will try to git the good will of those who treat ’em well, so as to make ’em respect ’em still more? And it’s jist like climbin’ a ladder; you’ll git up a round any day, but if you keep a knockin’ a man on the head with the club of prejudice, how in the name of common sense can he climb up.
“Now this is most as bad as slavery; ☜ for slavery keeps the foot on the black man’s neck all the time, and don’t let ’em rise at all; and prejudice keeps a knockin’ on him down as fast as he gits up; and we ought not to go to the South, till we can git the people of the North to treat our color like men and women. A good many people oppose abolitionists, and say, ‘why what will you do with the niggers when they are free? They will become drunken sots and vagabonds like our niggers at the North; why don’t _they_ rise?’ I can answer that question in a hurry! The reason is, because they don’t give us the same chance with white folks; they won’t take us into their schools and colleges, and seminaries, and we don’t be allowed to go into good society to improve us; and if we set up business they won’t patronize us; they want us to be barbers, and cooks and whitewashers and shoeblacks and ostlers, camp-cullimen, and sich kind of mean low business. We ain’t suffered to attend any pleasant places, or enjoy the advantages of debating schools and libraries, and societies, &c. &c., and all these things is jist what improves the whites so fast. And if we by hook or by crook git into any sich place, why some feller will step on our toes, and give us a shove, and say, ‘stand back nig, you can see jist as well a little furder off.