Читать книгу The Choctaw Freedmen and the Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy - Robert Elliott Flickinger - Страница 59

The Freedman has hosts of friends, who are interested in his welfare. He has interested neighbors, amongst whom he lives, and also friends at a distance. Both are trying to solve the problem of his true relation to American institutions and privileges. While both have been co-operating together to a considerable extent and in a very commendable manner for the betterment of his condition, it remains to note however that if one is considered by the other as moving too slowly, or too rapidly, one acts as a gentle spur or check to the other.

This is the harmonizing process that is now going on among the friends of the Freedman. He is scarcely regarded as a participating factor in this harmonizing process. There are times when to him every new event seems to be one moving him in the wrong direction. His natural impulse, on experiencing these apparently adverse movements, is to raise the voice of bitter complaint against one set of his friends. When this is done in a personal or partisan way it is offensive and always does more harm than good. This method of procedure should therefore never be approved or adopted.