With their own poverty
and ignorance and the prejudices of the white people to contend
with, it does indeed seem a hopeless task for them to attempt to
be anything more, or anything better, than they are now. I am even
surprised that they do not go backward instead of forward under
the difficulties they have to encounter.
"I am learning to be more charitable than I used to be, Miss Mollie,
or ever would have been had I not returned here. It seems to me
now that the white people are not so much to be blamed for what has
been done and suffered since the war, as pitied for that prejudice
which has made them unconsciously almost as much _slaves_ as
my people were before the war. I see, too, that these things cannot
be remedied at once. It will be a long, sad time of waiting, which
I fear our people will not endure as well as they did the tiresome
waiting for freedom. I used to think that the law could give us our
rights and make us free. I now see, more clearly than ever before,
that we must not only make _ourselves_ free, but must overcome
all that prejudice which slavery created against our race in the
hearts of the white people. It is a long way to look ahead, and I
don't wonder that so many despair of its ever being accomplished.
I know it can only be done through the attainment of knowledge and
the power which that gives.
"I do not blame for giving way to despair those who are laboring
for a mere pittance, and perhaps not receiving that; who have wives
and children to support, and see their children growing up as poor
and ignorant as themselves.
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