"AT LEAST RESPECTABLE"

"I am not an educated man; but I have seen those, who are, writhe under this worse than brutal treatment, until my heart ached for them. May I be pardoned for saying , that the educated among us deserve the credit, at least, of a place and name among the respectable of the world?... "The richest colored man in Philadelphia cannot purchase a first-class railway ticket for New York; neither could he obtain for his son the opportunity of being educated in any college of the many in either New York or Philadelphia . What progress we have made has been under the frown of these obstacles. May it not be hoped that having combatted so much, we may overcome more? In that worst of all countries, the United States, the Negro not only exhibits the fact that 'all is not lost,' but he shows a tendency for improvement; he gives evidence of having cultivated this tendency; he displays success in this endeavor . I beg to claim, that if other people have entitled themselves to lasting honor from mankind, for what they have done, for the brilliant specimens of manhood they have presented to the world's admiring gaze--specimens of self-made men, in unfavorable circumstances--my people, having done something like it in circumstances a thousand fold more forbidding , should not be altogether struck from the roll of, at least, 'the respectable among mankind.'" P.195-196, AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FUGITIVE SLAVE by Samuel Ringgold Ward (1855, 1970)