Famous Quotes | If the black man is feeble and...

If the black man is feeble and not important to the existing races, not on a parity with the best race, the black man must serve, and be exterminated. But if the black man carries in his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming civilization; for the sake of that element, no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him: he will survive and play his part. So now, the arrival in the world of such men as Toussaint, and the Haytian heroes, or of the leaders of their race in Barbadoes and Jamaica, outweighs in good omen all the English and American humanity. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Attribution: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. “Address Delivered in Concord on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies, August 1, 1884,” Miscellanies (1883, repr. 1903). Emerson’s intellectual Darwinism appears to have made even his editor, Edward Emerson nervous, for in his notes to this speech he suggests we read “Lecture on the Times” for a more “coolly philosophical” treatment of slavery.

Categories: African Americans, Essayist, Philosopher, Race

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