Town Hall

 Town Hall (meeting)

In class we had to pick a leader in history who represented and stood for the rights of people. I chose Lucretia Mott. In this speech we had to play the person we choose and say what they beleve and play them as if they were talking in a town hall meeting.

Friends, I thank thee for the chance to stand before thee this evening.

I was raised among Friends — thee knows this word, "Quaker" — and from the time I was a small girl, I was taught a simple truth: that the Light of God dwells in every soul alike. Not in some souls more than others. Not in the master more than the servant, nor the rich man more than the poor. Every soul, equal, and every soul free.

I did not come to this belief by reading it in a book, though I have read many. I came to it by watching. When I was young, I taught school for a time, and I found that the young women who taught alongside me were paid but half of what the young men were paid, for the very same work. It seemed a small wrong beside the great wrong of slavery — and yet it planted a seed in me. For once a body sees that unfairness can be written into the very rules of a place, dressed up as custom, as "the way things are done" — that body cannot help but look further, and ask: what other wrongs have we simply agreed to stop noticing?

And so I looked further, Friends. I looked at the South, and I looked at our own North too, for we are not
so innocent as we like to think. I looked at men and women bought and sold like sacks of grain. I looked at children torn from their mothers' arms and carried off to be sold at auction, never to be seen again. I looked at the sugar in our bowls and the cotton on our backs, and I asked myself — whose hands picked this? Whose back was bent to grow it? And what price did they pay, that we might have it cheap?

I could not look upon these things and call myself a follower of the Light, and stay silent. Silence, Friends, is its own kind of speech. It says: I am comfortable, and comfort is enough for me. But comfort is not enough. Not while a single soul in this land is held as property instead of person.

Some tell me this is not a woman's place to speak on such matters. That I ought to leave the great questions to the men, and busy myself elsewhere. I say to thee plainly — if the house is on fire, I do not ask permission to cry out. And this house, this whole nation, is on fire with the sin of slavery, and every one of us, man and woman both, is called to carry water.

I have heard it argued that this is a matter for the Southern states alone, that we in the North ought not meddle in it. But Friends, a wrong done to one soul is a wrong against every soul, for we are none of us free while others are chained. This is not merely their sin to answer for. It is ours, so long as we buy what their bondage produces, and look away from how it is made.

So I ask of thee tonight — not thy pity, for pity changes nothing. I ask thy conviction. Speak of this in thy
homes. Refuse the goods grown by unpaid hands, when thee is able. Open thy doors to those who flee northward seeking freedom. And above all — do not let comfort silence thee, as it has silenced so many good people before.

I believe, with my whole heart, that the day will come when this nation looks back and wonders how it ever tolerated such a thing. Let us be among those who did not wait for that day to arrive before we spoke.

I thank thee for thy patience in hearing me.