The Colored Folk’s Festival

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THE COLORED FOLK'S FESTIVAL.

Whatever may be the diversity of opinion among the whites, in regard to the effect of Negro Emancipation in the British West Indies, the colored race themselves certainly entertain not the slightest shade of doubt upon the subject. They do not greatly trouble themselves with facts and figures in connection with the matter, but unequivocally insist that Emancipation has proved a vast blessing and a complete success.

This is very plainly shown by the various celebrations of the colored people at various places yesterday, that is, if the speeches there delivered, and the sentiments there expressed correctly represent the feelings and convictions of the great mass of the race throughout the North. And of this we see no reason to doubt. The morning papers are filled with accounts of the celebration, and the speeches made display not a few points of interest.

Probably the most important meeting took place at Poughkeepsie. Here a vast concourse of people met who ushered in the day with the firing of guns and the ringing of bells, and formed a grand procession. When the meeting had been organized on College Hill, the President, Mr. Rich, made a speech, the key-note of which may be perceived from the following:

They had met together, he said to celebrate the most noble act the British Parliament had ever done—the emancipation of 800,000 slaves; and they would come together in much better spirits, he thought, if they were celebrating the emancipation of the four millions of slaves in the United States.

Then Fred. Douglass¹ talked four columns of solid nonpareil. Fred’s speech was a clever one and contained a number of good points. Here is one, where he protests against Emancipation being called an “experiment.”

There is obviously no more reason for calling West India emancipation an experiment than for calling the law of gravitation an experiment. Liberty is not a device, an experiment, but a law of nature dating back to man’s creation, and if this fundamental law is a failure, the responsibility is not with the British Parliament, not with the British people, but with the great author of this law. Slavery is the experiment in this case.

Pretty soon the speaker, leaving his argumentative vein, proceeds to invective. The allusion to the “new cent” is good:

You know that our national birthday, like the word “Liberty” on the old-fashioned copper cent, has been regarded with increasing suspicion of late. The new-fashioned coin, now passing for a good cent, has banished the old copper and “Liberty,” and some doubts have been expressed if the Fourth of July will be much longer retained among our institutions, since the principles which make that day glorious have been buried out of sight, and Slavery, with the negro’s bleeding bones in his mouth, is now stamping on Freedom’s grave.

Fred. evidently has as little sympathy with moderate conservatives as for ultra pro-slaveryites. He pitches into Everett² and Stephen A. Douglass³ in the same breath. Here is what he says of the latter:

He is one of the most restless, ambitious, boldest and most unscrupulous enemies with whom the cause of the colored has to contend. It seems to me that the white Douglass should occasionally meet his deserts at the hands of a black one. Once I thought he was going to make the name respectable, but now I despair of him, and must do the best I can for it myself. [Laughter.]

At Morris Grove a damper was cast upon the meeting by the rain, and there was a paucity of distinguished speakers. A “Professor” Wilson said he had expected to see the great guns—Culver, Garrison, Goodel, and Garnet—but none of these were there, so they did the best they could.

In Bridge street, Western District, the day was celebrated characteristically, by an association called “the Young Men of Promise.” Speeches were made in the usual tone, but no particular points call for special comment.

At Myrtle avenue Park, the congregation of Rev. Mr. Hodges, accompanied by their friends, celebrated the day. As we said yesterday, the unpropitious weather marred the occasion. About noon the company took refuge in the church, where the exercises of the day were finished. So far as we can learn, everything passed off in good order. In the evening a supper was provided in the Church in South 6th street, and everything passed off pleasantly.

Upon the whole, we observe much improvement in the tone of the speeches delivered and the sentiments expressed. There was less of rabid denunciation, and useless anathematizing than on other similar occasions.

There is one feature in connection with these celebrations of our colored population that we wish to characterise at it deserves. We refer to the custom of unscrupulous journals, including the Herald,⁴ and the small-fry following in its lead, of publishing garbled reports, or rather not reports, but the coarsest caricatures of the proceedings. This is most unmanly, disgraceful and disgusting, and worthy only of the journals which initiated, and still keep up the abuse.

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