February is Black History Month. It is a time to acknowledge the accomplishments and achievements African-Americans have contributed to the fabric of our nation’s culture, society, and civilization. In celebration, a few thoughts are presented from black historical figures who have interesting perspectives. For this week’s entry, Henry O. Flipper wrote, 

“Now in these recent years, there has been a great clamor for rights. … Among those who, claiming social equality, claim it as a right, there exists the greatest possible diversity of creeds, instincts, and of moral and mental conditions, in which they are widely different from those with whom they claim this equality. They can therefore have no rights socially in common; or, in other words, the social equality they claim is not a right, and ought not to and cannot exist under present circumstances, and any law that overreaches the moral reason to the contrary must be admitted as unjust if not impolite.”

(From his Book, The Colored Cadet at West Point, Homer Lea & Co, ©1878.)

(Photograph of Lt. Henry O. Flipper Photo by Kennedy, ca. 1877 Center for Legislative Archives, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives National Archives and Records Administration)