REMINISCENCES OF MY LIFE IN CAMP, EXCERPT...

"Living here in Boston where the black man is given equal justice, I must say a word on the general treatment of my race, both in the North and the South in this twentieth century. I wonder if our white fellow men realize the true sense or meaning of brotherhood? For two hundred years we have toiled for them; the war of 1861 came and was ended, and we thought our race was forever free from bondage, and that the two races could live in unity with each other, but when we read almost every day about what is being done to my race by some whites in the South, I sometimes ask, "Was the war in vain? Has it brought freedom in the full sense of the word, or has it not made our condition more hopeless?" "In this "land of the free" we are burned, tortured, denied a fair trial, murdered for any imaginary wrong conceived in the brain of the negro-hating white man. There is no redress for us from a government which promised to protect all under its flag. It seems a mystery to me. They say, "One flag, one nation, one country indivisible." Is this true? Can we say this truthfully, when one race is allowed to burn, hang, and inflict the most horrible torture weekly, monthly, on another? No, we cannot sing, "My country, 't is of thee, Sweet Land of Liberty!" It is hollow mockery. The Southland laws are all on the side of the white, and they do just as they like to the negro, whether it is right or wrong." P.61-62, "Thoughts on Present Conditions," REMINISCENCES OF MY LIFE IN CAMP: AN AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMAN'S CIVIL WAR MEMOIR, by Susie King Taylor (U. of Georgia, 1902, 2006)