VII. “I b’lieve that one of the wickedest and most awful things in creation, and the root, and bottom, and heart of all the evil, is prejudice agin’ color.’ ☜ There is most, or quite as much of this at the North as there is at the South, for I can speak from experience. There is that disgrace upon us, that many people think it’s a disgrace to ’em to have us come into a room where they be, for fear that they will be _blacked_, or _disgraced_, or _stunk_ up by us poor off-scourin’ of ‘arth. And if I come into a room with a sarver of tea, coffee, rum, wine, or sich like, they can’t smell any thing; but jist the second I set down on an equal with ’em, as one of the company, they pretend they can smell me. But, worse than this, this same disgrace is cast on our color in the Sanctuary of the Living God. In enemost all the meetin’ houses, you see the ‘nigger pew;’ and when they come to administer the Lord’s Supper, they send us off into some dark pew, in one corner, by ourselves, as though they thought we would disgrace ’em, and stink ’em up, or black ’em, or somethin.’ Why, ’twas only at the last Sacrament in our Church this took place. All communicants was axed to come and partake together, and I come down from the gallery, and as I come into the door, to go and set down among ’em; one of the elders stretched out his arm, with an air of disdain, and beckoned me away to a corner pew, where there was no soul within two or three pews on me, as though he had power to save or cast off. Now think what a struggle I had, when I sot down, to git my mind into a proper state for the solemn business I was agoin to do.
“First, I thought it was hard for me to be so cast off by my brethren in the church, and a feelin’ riz, and I fit agin’ it, and, finally, I thought I could submit to my fate; and I believed God could see me, and hear my cry, and accept my love, as well there as though I sot in the midst on ’em. And it is the strangest thing in the world, too, that Christian people can act so. There must be some of the love of Christianity wantin’ in their hearts, or they could not treat a brother in Christ in that way. As I sot there, I thought, ‘can there be any sich place as a dark-hole, or black pew, or behind the door, or under the fence, in heaven? If there is sich a spirit or policy there, I don’t feel very anxious desire to go there.’ The bible says, ‘God is no respecter of persons.’ ☜