NARRATOR
After the Civil War, with the federal government enforcing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, guaranteeing the right to vote to black people, African Americans were elected to governing bodies throughout the South. But after a few years of what might be called “Radical Reconstruction,” the political and business interests of the North made a deal with those of the South, to withdraw federal power and allow the white South to have its way. Henry McNeal Turner, elected to the state legislature of Georgia, was expelled by that body in 1872, but before he left, he addressed his colleagues.
HENRY TURNER
Mr. Speaker. I wish the members of this House to understand the position that I take. I hold that I am a member of this body. Therefore, sir, I shall neither fawn or cringe before any party, nor stoop to beg them for my rights. I am here to demand my rights, and to hurl thunderbolts at the men who would dare to cross the threshold of my manhood.
The scene presented in this House, today, is one unparalleled in the history of the world. Never, in the history of the world, has a man been arraigned before a body clothed with legislative, judicial or executive functions, charged with the offense of being of a darker hue than his fellowmen. It has remained for the State of Georgia, in the very heart of the nineteenth century, to call a man before the bar, and there charge him with an act for which he is no more responsible than for the head which he carries upon his shoulders. The Anglo-Saxon race, sir, is a most surprising one. I was not aware that there was in the character of that race so much cowardice, or so much pusillanimity. I tell you, sir, that this is a question which will not die today. This event shall be remembered by posterity for ages yet to come, and while the sun shall continue to climb the hills of heaven.
We are told that if black men want to speak, they must speak through white trumpets; if black men want their sentiments expressed, they must be adulterated and sent through white messengers, who will quibble, and equivocate, and evade, as rapidly as the pendulum of a clock.
The great question, sir is this: Am I a man? If I am such, I claim the rights of a man.
Why, sir, though we are not white, we have accomplished much…. We have built up your country; we have worked in your fields, and garnered your harvests, for two hundred and fifty years! And what do we ask of you in return? Do we ask you for compensation for the sweat our fathers bore for you—for the tears you have caused, and the hearts you have broken, and the lives you have curtailed, and the blood you have spilled? Do we ask retaliation? We ask it not. We are willing to let the dead past bury its dead; but we ask you now for our RIGHTS.