Our Sufferings and Aspirations

The Planet recalls all of the obstacles and sufferings faced by the black man, but looks to the future with hope and ambition.

The colored man has had and is having a hard time of it. In politics and religion, law and business, he has to confront adverse condition the like of which would tend to dishearten any people.
We must not however be insensible to our own weaknesses or blind to our short-comings.
We have been the victims of a galling slavery which has taught us to blunder rather than to make a success. We have had the gates which lead to the garden-spot of financial prosperity closed against us, and on the outside, have had to establish industries of our own.
In this we have attempted the task of making “bricks without straw,” running business without capital, and hoping for the dawn of a better day in the future.
White men have deceived us with visionary schemes, by which to defraud us of our money and distrust ourselves which came to us with slavery, has tended to keep us from trusting each other when there was really no risk to our finances in such proceedings.
But the dawn has come at last, and despite deceptions and disappointment’s, in the face of wrong-doing and criminal negligence, we are progressing along lines, which seem to indicate that we are as ye to see the high-tide of our industrial and financial prosperity, the zenith of our permanent and transcendent glory.

“Our Sufferings and Aspirations,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed March 15, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1213.