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The great question is this: Am I a man? If I am, I claim the rights of such. . . . Though we are not white, we have accomplished much. We have pioneered a civilization here; we have built up your country; we have worked in your fields, a gathered your harvests for 250 years. And what do we ask in return? Do we ask you for compensation for the sweat our fathers bore for you, for the tears you have caused, the hearts you have broken, the lives you have curtailed, and the blood you have spilled? Do we ask retailiation? We ask it not . . . . .but we do ask you for our rights. You have all the elements of superiority on your side; you have our money and your own; you have our education and your own; you have our land and your own too.

We, who number hundreds of tousands in Georgia, including our wives and families, have not a foot of land to call out own - strangers in the land of our birth; without money, without education, without aid, without a roof to cover us while we live or clay to cover us when we die. It is extraordinary that a race such as yours, professing gallantry, and chivalry and education and superiority, living in a land where Bibles are read and Gospel truths are spoken and where courts of justice are presumed to exist - it is extraordinary that with all these advantages on you side, you can make war on the defenselesss black man.

You may expel us, but I firmly believe thatsomeday you will someday repent it. The black man cannot protect a country if the country doesn't protect him, and if, tomorrow, a war should arise, I would not raise a musket to defend a country where my manhood is denied. The fashionable way in Georgia when hard work is to be done is for the white man to sit at ease while the black man does the work, but I will say this much to the colored men of Georgia: Never lift a finger or raise a hand in defense of Georgia unless Georgia acknowledges that you are men, and invests you with the rights pertaining to manhood.

Henry McNeill Turner,
Representative, Bibb County
September 3, 1868