"Be Patient; Be Earnest; Be Aggressive"

Via my friend Chris, a gift for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day from Francis Grimke, pastor of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington. These remarks are from a memorial sermon on John Brown preached in 1909:

If John Brown were permitted to speak to us today from heaven, where he has been now for fifty years, he would say to us, I believe, Never despair! Never give up! The forces that are for you are greater than those that are against you. Be patient; be earnest; be aggressive. In spite of the Atlanta riots; in spite of the official lynching, or the unjust dismissal of Negro soldiers [an issue in 1906-7], and the Negro-hating spirit which it exhibits, and all the other brood of evils that seem to be threatening you, keep a stout heart.

Out of the darkness, and the seeming triumph of the forces of oppression and injustice in 1859 when I was executed, there came the Emancipation Proclamation, and the great Amendments to the Constitution. Be assured of one thing, God did not strike the shackles from your limbs, and lift you to the plane of American citizenship, that he might desert you and leave you in the hands of your enemies. The same power that was with you in the dark days of slavery, and that stood behind you when the great Amendments were being put through, is still with you, and will continue to be with you to the end.

Back of all the forces that have been put in operation for the uplift of your race, from the beginning to the present, God has been, and still is. He it was who stirred the Anti-slavery leaders to action, and brought on the war, and inspired the men in Congress,—men like Sumner, and Stevens, and Wade,—and that moved upon the heart of Lincoln himself. It was the power of God, working through human agencies, that brought about emancipation, and that lifted you to the plane of citizenship, and clothed you with the sacred right of the ballot. And will he now desert you? Will he leave you naked to the tender mercies of your enemies? Never. God doesn't work that way; that is not his way of doing things.

These great landmarks in your history,—slavery, emancipation, citizenship, the ballot, are evidences that there is to be no backward step. God never would have brought you thus far unless he meant to stand by you, and to see that the rights guaranteed to you under the Constitution, are yours in reality as well as in name. In spite of discouragements; in spite of the gathering gloom, God is leading you on.

(Works, edited by Carter Woodson, 1942, vol. 1, 140)