They should not have been at all surprised to find
their race helpless and hopeless before the trained and organized
power of the whites, controlled by the instinct of generations and
animated by the sting of defeat.
All this should have been clear and plain to them, and they should
have looked with philosophic calmness on the abstract rights which
the Nation had conferred and solemnly guaranteed to them, instead
of troubling themselves about the concrete wrongs they fancied
they endured. Why should Berry Lawson care enough about attending
a political meeting to risk provoking his employer's displeasure
by so doing; or why, after being discharged, should he feel angry
at the man who had merely enforced the words of his own contract?
He was a free man; he signed the contract, and the courts were open
to him as they were to others, if he was wronged. What reason was
there for complaint or apprehension, on his part?
Yet many a wiser head than that of Berry Lawson, or even that of
his more fortunate kinsman, the many-named Nimbus, has been sorely
puzzled to understand how ignorance and poverty and inexperience
should maintain the right, preserve and protect themselves against
opposing wisdom, wealth and malicious skill, according to the
spirit and tenor of the Reconstruction Acts. But it is a problem
which ought to trouble no one, since it has been enacted and provided
by the Nation that all such persons shall have all the rights and
privileges of citizens.
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