I like to remind the young people who I work with that oppressed people have ALWAYS resisted their oppression. I think that this cannot be stressed enough because it helps to counteract cynicism and hopelessness.

The following is an appeal from the National Afro-American Council to set aside a day of fasting as a protest against lynching. It was published in the New York Tribune, May 4, 1899.

The National Afro-American Council of the United States has issued a proclamation calling upon the colored people of this country to set apart Frihttps://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=9955&action=editday, June 2, as a day of fasting and prayer, and has called upon all colored ministers to devote the sunrise hour of that following Sunday, June 4, to special exercises in order that “God, the Father of Mercies, may take our deplorable case in His own hands, and that if vengeance is to be meted out let God himself repay.” It sets forth the “indescribable barbarous treatment” of the Negro — refers to role in wars, denounces lynchings “in the most strenuous language.” It says, in part:

“We pay out millions of dollars yearly to ride in ‘jim-crow’ cars, some of them scarcely fit for cattle, yet we are compelled to pay as much as those who have every accommodation and convenience. Indians, Chinamen and every other race can travel as they please. Such unjust laws make the railroad highway robbers. In some sections of the country we may ride for thousands of miles and are denied a cup of tea or coffee because no provision is made, or allowed to be made, to accommodate us with something to eat, while we are ready to pay for it. Waiving hundreds of inconveniences, we are practically outlawed by many States, and also by the general Government in its endorsement of silence and indifference.

“We are dragged before the courts by thousands and sentenced to every form of punishment, and even executed, without the privilege of having a jury composed in whole or in part of members of our own race, while simple justice should guarantee us judges and juries who could adjudicate our cases free from the bias, caste and prejudice incident to the same in this country.

“In many sections we are arrested and lodged in jails on the most frivolous suspicion of being the perpetrators of most hideous and revolting crimes, and, regardless of established guilt, mobs are formed of ignorant, vicious, whiskey-besotted men, at whose approach the keys of these jails and prisons are surrendered and the suspicioned party is ruthlessly forced from the custody of the law and tortured, hanged, shot, butchered, dismembered, and burned in the most fiendish manner. Nor is this fate limited to a few unfortunate and monstrous wretches, which we, like other people, doubtless have among our race, but instances have multiplied into hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands. And, horrible to conceive, these mobs no longer conceal themselves in the shadows of the night, but in open day plunder the prisons for the victims of their lawless vengeance and defiantly walk into courts and rob the sheriffs and judges of their prisoners and butcher them without even time to commune in prayer with God, a privilege that no barbaric age has ever denied a soul about to be ushered into the presence of his Maker.

“Owing to these and many other calamitous conditions which time forbids a recital of, unhistoric, unprecedented and dreadfully abnormal, we are impelled by a sense of duty and the instincts of our moral nature to appeal to the Afro-Americans in the United States to put forth some endeavors by ceasing to be longer silent, and to appeal to some judiciary for help and relief. If earth affords none for our helpless and defenceless race, we must appeal to the bar of Infinite Power and Justice, whose Judge holds the destinies of nations in His hands.”