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Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia

We Take This Privilege

 I plead with you, Honored, Pres., in the name of God and for the sake of the “black race,” that you do what you can and that which is in your power to alleviate such conditions. The negro race has borne shackles and bondage long enough, and, we have proven ourselves capable and able to qualify with any other race of mankind, if given a chance.  

Segregation is not a benefit to any race of people, and particularly it is offensive to a Christian nation, and a man who claims to be a son of God by the New Birth through the Redeeming Power of Jesus Christ, must by necessity go back to where he received his New Birth, and there, he will find that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him might be saved.” God is no respecter of persons. 

John P. Scott

I have your kind acknowledgement. . . in which you state that you are trying to “settle it (the segregation issue) in a satisfactory way.” There is but one satisfactory way and that is to do simple justice to the colored people and not to discriminate against them.

 Oswald Garrison Villard, Editor of the New York Evening Post, to Joseph P. Tumulty, Secretary to the President 

Segregation violates the spirit and letter of the Constitution of the United States, forces hardships and degradations on colored employees, undermines civilization, is subversive of American institutions, contravenes every principle of righteousness and justice and is a shameless reproach to our [C]hristian religion. Segregation represents not the ideals of freedom but the ideals of slavery.

William A. Sinclair 

The issue cannot be forever sidestepped by any political party, any more than the issue of slavery could have been in the sixties.

 George H. Gutterson

We Take This Privilege