Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [481]
26. National Freedman, I (Dec. 15, 1865), 364 (Convention of Colored People, Alabama); New Orleans Tribune, Sept. 24, 1865 (Address of Freedmen of Robeson Co., N.C); Freedmen’s Convention of Georgia (Jan. 1866), 19. More than a hundred years later, at the peak of the civil rights struggle in the South, Malcolm X would make a similar pronouncement on the limits of black forbearance: “It’s simply not possible to love a man whose chief purpose in life is to humiliate you, and still be what is considered a normal human being.”
27. Colored Tennessean, March 31, 1866 (Kentucky Colored People’s Convention); New York Tribune, Nov. 29, 1865 (Convention of Colored People, South Carolina); Convention of the Colored People of Virginia (Aug. 1865), 9, 21; Proceedings of the Convention of Colored Citizens of the State of Arkansas Held in Little Rock … Nov. 30, Dec. 1 and 2 (Helena, 1866), 3–4.
28. Convention of the Freedmen of North Carolina (Sept.-Oct. 1865), 13; Colored Tennessean, March 31, 1866 (Kentucky Colored People’s Convention); Convention of the Colored People of Virginia (Aug. 1865), 9, 10, 12.
29. Montgomery, “Alabama Freedmen: Some Reconstruction Documents,” 248; New York Times, Nov. 12, 1865 (Selma, Ala.).
30. New York Times, June 20, 1866; American Freedman, I (Sept. 1866), 87 (Georgia Equal Rights Assn. meeting); Proceedings of the Convention of the Equal Rights and Educational Association of Georgia, Assembled at Macon, October 29th, 1866 (Augusta, 1866), 17; S. W. Laidler to Thaddeus Stevens, May 7, 1866, Stevens Papers, Library of Congress (New Bern freedmen’s meeting). Praise for the work of the Freedmen’s Bureau was voiced by conventions in Alabama (1865), Georgia (1866), Kentucky (1867), North Carolina (1865), South Carolina (1865), Tennessee (1865), and Virginia (1865).
31. [State Exec. Comm. for Equal Political Rights in Missouri], An Address by the Colored People of Missouri to the Friends of Equal Rights (St. Louis, 1865), 3; South Carolina Leader, Nov. 25, 1865 (Convention of Colored People); “Our Wrongs and Rights,” Convention of the Colored People of Virginia (Aug. 1865), 12–13.
32. American Freedman, I (Sept. 1866), 87–88 (Georgia Equal Rights Assn. meeting); Freedmen’s Convention of Georgia (Jan. 1866), 16–17; Proceedings of the State Convention of Colored Men, Held at Lexington, Kentucky, in the A.M.E. Church, November 26th, 27th, and 28th, 1867 (Frankfort, 1867), 5–6; Convention of the Colored People of Virginia (Aug. 1865), 12.
33. Colored Tennessean, Aug. 12, 1865 (Convention of the Colored People); New York Tribune, Nov. 29, 1865 (Convention of Colored People, South Carolina).
34. Freedmen’s Convention of Georgia (Jan. 1866), 30. The address drawn up by the freedmen of North Carolina to the Constitutional Convention did complain of “unscrupulous and avaricious employers” who expelled blacks from the plantations and refused adequate compensation (Convention of the Freedmen of North Carolina, Sept.-Oct. 1865), and Tennessee and Georgia blacks demanded “just compensation” for labor performed (Colored Tennessean, Aug. 12, 1865; Freedmen’s Convention of Georgia, Jan. 1866, 29).
35. National Freedman, I (Dec. 15, 1865), 364 (Convention of Colored People, Alabama); Freedmen’s Convention of Georgia (Jan. 1866), 30; St. Landry Progress (Opelousas, La.), Sept. 7, 1867. For opposition to confiscation, see also New Orleans Tribune, June 12, 1867 (Radical Republican convention, Louisiana, June 1867), and New York Times, May 26, 1867 (James Harris of N.C.). The Alabama convention of 1867 called for the confiscation of property of employers who discharged blacks for exercising their civil rights (New Orleans Tribune, May 4, 1867), and Beverly Nash, a South Carolina black leader, thought the confiscation question should be settled by Congress and “we should make no expression of opinion about it” (New York Times, Aug. 9, 1867). For proconfiscation sentiment, see New Orleans Tribune, Sept. 10, 24, 1864, April