Thanks Karen Jones MeadowsNow In 1901, George Henry White, (born December 18, 1852) a lawyer, educator, and entrepreneur, the only remaining African American representative in Congress, gave his now famous farewell speech having been forced not to run because new laws made reelection impossible. Since 1897 he’d represented the disenfranchised emphasizing legal and social justice, and introduced the first anti-lynching bill. He went on to practice law in D.C., and Philadelphia where he founded the citys first black bank, and established Whitesboro, an all-black community in Cape May County, N.J. Here are excerpts from his final address to Congress. “I want to enter a plea for the colored man, the colored woman, the colored boy, and the colored girl of this country. I would not thus digress from the question at issue and detain the House in a discussion of the interests of this particular people at this time but for the constant and the persistent efforts of certain gentlemen upon this floor to mold and rivet public sentiment against us as a people and to lose no opportunity to hold up the unfortunate few who commit crimes and depredations and lead lives of infamy and shame, as other races do, as fair specimens of representatives of the entire colored race... we have reduced the illiteracy of the race at least 45 percent. We have written and published nearly 500 books. We have nearly 800 newspapers, three of which are dailies. We have now in practice over 2,000 lawyers, and a corresponding number of doctors. We have accumulated over $12,000,000 worth of school property and about $40,000,000 worth of church property. We have about 140,000 farms and homes, valued in the neighborhood of $750,000,000, and personal property valued about $170,000,000. We have raised about $11,000,000 for educational purposes, and the property per-capita for every colored man, woman and child in the United States is estimated at $75. We are operating successfully several banks, commercial enterprises among our people in the South land, including one silk mill and one cotton factory. We have 32,000 teachers in the schools of the country; we have built, with the aid of our friends, about 20,000 churches, and support 7 colleges, 17 academies, 50 high schools, 5 law schools, 5 medical schools and 25 theological seminaries. We have over 600,000 acres of land in the South alone. The cotton produced, mainly by black labor, has increased from 4,669,770 bales in 1860 to 11,235,000 in 1899... All this was done under the most adverse circumstances. We have done it in the face of lynching, burning at the stake, with the humiliation of Jim Crow laws, the disfranchisement of our male citizens, slander and degradation of our women, with the factories closed against us, no Negro permitted to be conductor on the railway cars…no Negro permitted to run as engineer on a locomotive, most of the mines closed against us. Labor unions--carpenters, painters, brick masons, machinists, hackmen and those supplying nearly every conceivable avocation for livelihood--have banded themselves together to better their condition, but, with few exceptions, the black face has been left out. The Negroes are seldom employed in our mercantile stores… With all these odds against us, we are forging our way ahead, slowly, perhaps, but surely… You may use our labor for two and a half centuries and then taunt us for our poverty, but let me remind you we will not always remain poor! You may withhold even the knowledge of how to read Gods word and…then taunt us for our ignorance, but we would remind you that there is plenty of room at the top, and we are climbing...!” This site has more info history.house.gov/People/Detail?id=23657
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 21:34:34 +0000
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