[I have] been selected as the representative of the twenty-five thousand [free African Americans] of Ohio, to ask your honorable body to the necessary and appropriate steps for striking from the . . . law of this State, all those clauses which make discriminations on the ground of color. . . . "As men . . . we have rights, inherent rights, which civil society is bound to respect. . . . Prominent among those rights . . . is the elective franchise. . . . Self-government, in our opinion, is an inherent right. And without the privilege of saying who shall be the makers of our laws, . . . there can be no self-government. This was the view taken of the matter by the Fathers of the Republic. And it was upon this principle as enduring granite that they built up the free institutions of the land. . . . ". . . It is a . . . fundamental maxim of your political faith, that taxation and representation are never to be [separated], but always go together; and since we are taxed in common with all others to meet the expenditures of the government, we respectfully submit, that we ought to have the advantage of a fair and impartial representation [in the legislature]. . . . ". . . In conclusion . . . , we hold that it is unjust, anti-democratic, impolitic and ungenerous to withhold from us the right of suffrage."

We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American.... The battle we wage is not for ourselves alone but for all true Americans.... Our demands are clear and unequivocal. First, we would vote; with the right to vote goes everything.... We want discrimination in public accommodation to cease. Separation in railway and street cars, based simply on race and color, is unAmerican, undemocratic.... We want the Constitution of the country enforced…. We want the Fourteenth Amendment carried out to the letter and every state disfranchised in Congress which attempts to disfranchise its rightful voters. We want the Fifteenth Amendment enforced and no state allowed to base its franchise simply on color.... We want our children trained as intelligent human beings should be, and we will fight for all time against any proposal to educate black boys and girls simply as servants and underlings, or simply for the use of other people. They have a right to know, to think, to aspire.... Justice and humanity must prevail.

To-day Massachusetts has again been disgraced; again she has shewed her submission to the Slave Power; and Oh! with what deep sorrow do we think of what will doubtless be the fate of that poor man, when he is again consigned to the horrors of Slavery. With what scorn must that government be regarded, which cowardly assembles thousands of soldiers to satisfy the demands of slaveholders; to deprive of his freedom a man, created in God’s own image, whose sole offense is the color of his skin! And if resistance is offered to this outrage, these soldiers are to shoot down American citizens without mercy; and this by the express orders of a government which proudly boasts of being the freest in the world; this on the very soil where the Revolution of 1776 began; in sight of the battle-field, where thousands of brave men fought and died in opposing British tyranny, which was nothing compared with the American oppression to-day.