Self-help: An Address Delivered in New York, New York, on May 7, 1849
SELF-HELP: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN NEW YORK,
NEW YORK, ON 7 MAY 1849
New York Herald, 8 May 1849.
On 7 May 1849 Douglass spoke before a meeting of black citizens at the
Abyssinian Baptist Church, Anthony Street, in New York City. The meeting
began at a late hour and was opened with a prayer by John T. Raymond, the
pastor of the church. Thomas Downing, a New York restaurateur, occupied
the chair and Thomas Van Rensselaer, editor of the Ram’s Horn, briefly
stated the purpose of the gathering. Charles Lenox Remond then read a series
of resolutions that he, Frederick Douglass, and Henry Highland Garnet sup-
ported in speeches. The resolutions assailed the systems of degradation and
proscription enforced against Negroes, both slave and free, in America, and
affirmed the obligation of blacks to elevate themselves by their own means.
Garnet followed Douglass with a speech urging support of the black press. A
collection for this purpose was made, and after the resolutions were unani-
mously adopted the meeting adjourned.
He [Douglass] was not taken by surprise; it was a movement for the promo-
tion of our glorious cause. The preamble states a broad fact, that we are
compelled to occupy a degraded position by a corrupt church.1No copy has survived of the preamble that Charles L. Remond read to the audience. The newspaper reporter who wrote up the meeting believed the substance of the preamble “was to the effect, that the colored people. . . [were] subject to degrading proscriptions and. . . compelled to occupy an inferior situation in society in this country. “ New York Herald, 8 May 1849. But this is a
very tame statement. We are not only a proscribed people—a despised
people—a contemned people—an insulted people—but an outraged
people—weighed down under greater oppression than any other people.
Everywhere we are treated as a degraded people. If we go to the
church, we are despised there, and made to take an obscure place, though
the preacher talks of all men being made of one blood. In the State, we are
taxed equally with all other men; we pay for the education of the whites, but
when it comes to rights and privileges, we are regarded so mean and
degraded, that, by State enactment, we are not trusted even to carry a mail
bag twenty yards across the street, or even to lift it off from the top of a
stage coach. An ignorant Irishman, however, but just come to this country,
and totally unacquainted with our institutions, is, the moment he lands on
our shores, thought fit to be entrusted with the mail bags.
We are never tried by our peers, but by our enemies. On steamboats, in
hotels, or in the streets, we are always reminded that we are a degraded
people. Our children are driven away from the schools which we pay to
support. We are compelled to be, by potent circumstances, hewers of wood
and drawers of water—everywhere outraged, ill-treated, insulted.
But the worst part of all is, that we are contented under these circum-
stances! He was ashamed! ashamed! ashamed of his identity with those who
were thus indifferent—with oppressed cowards! (Hear, hear.) Our white
friends may do much for us, but we must do much for ourselves. Equality
and respectability can only be attained by our own exertions. We require
respect—not merely sympathy. We have no right to respect, if, being under
the hoof of oppression, we are not manly enough to rise in our own cause,
and do something to elevate ourselves from our degraded position. The
colored people do not appreciate sufficiently the instrumentalities which
have brought about a great change in public opinion. They see colored
people occupy a better position, but they say, “What has Frederick Douglass
done for us?” They do not understand what the Downings,2Douglass is probably referring to Thomas Downing (1791-1866), the chairman of the meeting and a prominent black abolitionist from New York City. The father of George T. Downing, who also made a name for himself in antislavery circles, Thomas Downing was born a slave in Accomac County, Virginia, but was manumitted by will in early manhood and allegedly educated at the same school attended by Henry A. Wise, the proslavery governor of Virginia. Downing moved north in 1812, when the heirs of his former master tried to reenslave him, and he fought with the Americans during the War of 1812, later settling in Philadelphia. In 1819 he took up residence in New York City, where he worked as a caterer before establishing an oyster bar in the financial district, which for several decades was the favorite eating place of many New York merchants and their families. Downing became a relatively wealthy man for his day, able to finance a European education for a few of his many children, and accordingly he took an active part in the civic life of his community, holding membership in the New York African Society for Mutual Benefit, the Masons, and the Odd Fellows, and serving for many years as a vestryman in St. Philips Protestant Episcopal Church. Prominent in the antislavery and equal rights movement, from 1831 onwards Downing was a familiar face at various National Negro Conventions, and he was in the forefront of the effort to repeal the New York property qualification for black voters, helping to draft the 1837 petition that black abolitionists sent to the state legislature. Downing also served on the New York Vigilance Committee and the Committee of Thirteen, two black organizations in New York City dedicated to assisting fugitive slaves. New York Times, 12 April 1866; New York Herald, 12 April 1866; NASS, 21 April 1866; New York Colored American, 16 January, 20 February 1841; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 107, 171; Douglass, Life and Times, 227, 516; Freeman, “Free Negro in New York City," 35, 46, 103-04, 128, 138, 197, 236, 285, 295, 394. the Re-
monds,3Charles Lenox Remond. the Van Renssalaers,4Thomas Van Rensselaer, or Van Renselaer—the spelling varied considerably—was a leading black abolitionist in New York City and a cofounder and coeditor of the Ram's Horn (c. 1846-48), for which Douglass was reputedly a corresponding editor shortly before establishing the North Star. A former slave from the Mohawk Valley in New York, Van Rensselaer ran away from his master in 1819, though he eventually reconciled with him. and later operated a restaurant in New York City called the “Temperance House." During the 1830s and 1840s Van Rensselaer was prominent in a variety of black reform causes. In 1836 he joined with Lewis Tappan in opening a black school in the city, and eleven years later he helped organize the New York Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children. He was also in the forefront of the petition campaign to equalize suffrage requirements for blacks in New York state, and he took an active part in the affairs of the New York Vigilance Committee. Van Rensselaer maintained his association with the Garrisonians after the schism of 1840, serving on the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society from 1840 through 1843, though his antislavery politics did not always follow Garrisonian tenets. In 1849 or thereabouts Van Rensselaer removed to Philadelphia, where he tried without success to revive the Ram's Horn. In the 1850s he was a sometime participant in various antislavery and black conventions. New York Colored American, 18 March, 28 October, 9 December 1837; NS, 8 December 1848, 26 October, 2 November 1849; FDP, 15 July 1853; Wesley, “Negroes of New York," 78, 79, 87; Eric Foner, “Racial Attitudes of the New York Free Soilers," NYH, 46: 320 (October 1965); I. Garland Penn, The Afro-American Press and Its Editors (Springfield, Mass, 1910), 61-65; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 45, 174; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 79-80, 100-01, 138, 178, 185; Dick, Black Protest, 50, 57, 138; Carleton Mabee, Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists From 1830 Through the Civil War (London, 1970), 270, 391n; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3: 72n.; Freeman, “Free Negro in New York City," 71, 98, 100, 193-94, 195, 197, 200, 284-85, 353, 365. the Sweets, have done by moral force.
He had no doubt the time was coming when the colored man would
occupy the same platform with the white man. The sword might be required
at the South, but it was not necessary at the North, to promote the elevation
of the colored people. Colored people are now beginning to exercise their
gifts. They are now in a position to be heard. But we have no organization
among ourselves, in the Ishmaelitish5Ishmael was the son of Abraham and the Egyptian slave Hagar. Following the birth of Isaac to Abraham’s wife Sarah, Ishmael and Hagar were banished into the desert. Jewish and Islamic tradition regards Ishmael as the ancestor of the nomadic Arab tribes of the Sinai and Negev deserts. His name has become a synonym for a social outcast. Gen. 16: 15-16, 17: 24-26, 21: 29-21, 25: 12-18; Joan Comay, Who's Who in the Old Testament together with the Apocrypha (New York, 1971), 172. situation in which we are.
The clergy are to blame for the apathy of the colored people to their
own cause. The text, “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and its righ-
teousness,"6A close paraphrase of Matt. 6: 33: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." &c., has been grossly perverted by the ignorant colored cler-
gy, so that the people wait for God to help them. (Great laughter.) It is a
ridiculous and absurd notion to expect God to deliver us from bondage. We
must elevate ourselves by our own efforts.
Mr. Douglass concluded by a stirring appeal to his colored brethren, to
rouse from their lukewarmness and apathy.