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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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common laborer. The independent professional man holds an opinion
essentially different from the social worker. Yet they are all governed
by those trends of sentiment protective of the Negro group, and in
crises either act upon them or suffer the group's censure.
An instance of the strength of Negro group opinion appeared in a
tragic by-product of the Chicago riot. A Negro prominent in local
political and social circles was sought out as a leader, and asked for
an interview by a reporter of the Chicago Tribune during the riot. In
the published interview he was reported as saying: "This is a white
man's country, and Negroes had better behave or they will get what
rights they have taken away." This aroused a solid Negro sentiment
against him; his life was threatened; for several weeks he had to
have police protection; he was finally ostracized; and in less than a
year he died. His friends asserted that he was slanderously
misquoted, and that his death was due largely to the resulting
criticism.
The more balanced opinions may be found among Negroes who
have developed a defensive philosophy. Race pride and racial
solidarity have sprung from this necessity. The term radical is used
to characterize Negroes whose views and preachments are in
advocacy of changes which to the general white public appear
undesirable. It will be observed that most of the so-called radicals
are southern Negroes now living in the North. They know by
experience the meaning of oppression. Contrasts with them are
sharper and the desire for change is more insistent, because they
can appreciate differences.
Frequently this "radicalism" is no more than a matter of
interpretation by white persons and possibly an oversuspicion. For
example, Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer, in his report on the
investigations of his department, referred to the bitter protests of
Negro publications against lynching and disfranchisement as radical
and incendiary documents. This report is headed, "Radicalism and
Sedition among the Negroes as Reflected in Their Publications." It
reads in part as follows:
There can no longer be any question of a well-concerted movement
among a certain class of Negro leaders of thought and action to
constitute themselves a determined and persistent source of a radical
opposition to the government, and to the established rule of law and
order.
Among the more salient points to be noted in the present attitude of
the Negro leaders are, first, the ill-governed reaction toward race
rioting; second, the threat of retaliatory measures in connection with
lynching; third, the more openly expressed demand for social equality,
in which demand the sex problem is not infrequently included; fourth,
the identification of the Negro with such radical organizations as the
I.W.W. and an outspoken advocacy of the Bolsheviki or Soviet
doctrines; fifth, the political stand assumed toward the present federal
administration, the South in general, and incidentally, toward the
peace treaty and the League of Nations. Underlying these more
salient viewpoints is the increasingly emphasized feeling of a race
consciousness in many of these publications always antagonistic to
the white race and openly, defiantly assertive of its own equality and
even superiority. When it is borne in mind that this boast finds its
most frequent expression in the pages of those journals whose editors
are men of education, and in at least one instance, by men holding
degrees conferred by Harvard University, it may be seen that the
boast is not to be dismissed lightly as the ignorant vaporing of
untrained minds. Neither is the influence of the Negro press in general
to be reckoned with lightly. The Negro World for October 18, 1919,
states that "there are a dozen Negro papers with a circulation of over
20,000, and scores with smaller circulation. There are half a dozen
magazines with a large circulation and other magazines with a smaller
circulation, and there are easily over fifty writers who can write
interesting editorials and special articles, written in fine, pure English,
with a background of scholarship behind them." Notwithstanding the
clumsiness of expression of this particular assertion, the claim is not
an idle one. It may be added that in several instances the Negro
magazines are expensive in manufacture, being on coated paper
throughout, well-printed, and giving evidence of the possession of
ample funds.
In all the discussions of the recent race riots there is reflected the
note of pride that the Negro has found himself, that he has "fought
back," that never again will he tamely submit to violence or
intimidation. The sense of oppression finds increasingly bitter
expression. Defiance and insolently race-centered condemnation of
 the white race is to be met with in every issue of the more radical
publications, and this one in moderateness of denunciation carries its
own threat. The Negro is "seeing red," and it is the prime object of
the leading publications to induce a like quality of vision upon the part
of their readers. A few of them deny this, notwithstanding the
evidence of their work. Others of them openly admit the fact. The
number of restrained and conservative publications is relatively
negligible, and even some of these ... have indulged in most
intemperate utterance, though it would be unfair not to state that
certain papers—I can think of no magazines—maintain an attitude of
well-balanced sanity....
The Messenger for October is significant for one thing above all
others. In it for the first time a Negro publication comes out openly
for sex equality.[81]

It is the sentiment briefly sketched in the foregoing pages that

summons attention. What are Negroes actually thinking? How are
they being affected by what the general public is thinking? What do
they want? Against what are their protests directed? What kinds of
group sentiments are being developed and how significant are they
as to subsequent relations between the two groups?
This report merely sets out examples of those views in the hope of
showing the beliefs that control the conduct of Negroes in Chicago.

1. RACE PROBLEMS

Criticism of Negro leaders.—A Negro attorney said:

I have read numerous articles written by prominent colored men on
the subject of Negroes moving North, and I have heard many of them
speak. But few of them, in my opinion, will bear rigid criticism. They
are wanting in genuine expression of true conditions. Those writers
and orators who have some personal motive for their expression do
not necessarily speak with absolute frankness.

A Negro worker said:

Our leaders are not interested enough in the welfare of the race. As
soon as they reach some little place of fame they try to get off to
 themselves.

Contacts as basis for respect.—A Negro professional man said:

When in school in Oberlin my professor in debating and oratory was
so prejudiced that he would not let the other colored boy and me be
on teams together. We asked him repeatedly, but he always refused.
We decided to work on a debate for all there was in it and compel him
to recognize the fact that we could measure up to the other members
of the class. When we finished he praised our work in the highest
terms. After that he began to take an interest in me and finally told
me that he did not know anything about Negroes and just felt that
there was nothing worth while in them. He tried to persuade me to
teach, and when I left he gave me one of the best letters of
recommendation that I have ever seen. That shows what contact can
do.

Not a race problem.—A Negro business man said:

There is no race problem; if the white people would only do as they
would be done by we would not have need of commissions to better
conditions. This won't be done, but an easier plan is to enforce the
law. The laws are good enough but they are not enforced. Riots grow
out of hate, jealousy, envy, and prejudice. When a man becomes a
contented citizen there will be little chance of causing him to fight
anyone. Give us those things that are due us—law, protection, and
equal rights—then we will become contented citizens.

For better race relations in Chicago.—A Negro alderman said:

1. Pass a vagrancy law that will take the idle, shiftless and intolerant
hoodlum off the streets. Put the burden of proof on the one so
arrested.
2. Close all vicious poolrooms and dens of vice, and permit no boy
under nineteen years of age to enter poolrooms.
3. Forbid loitering on the street corners, especially transfer points.
4. Prohibit vicious and race-antagonizing campaign speeches on the
streets of the city and in public halls. Races must not be arrayed
against each other.
5. Make more rigid the habeas corpus act, tighten up on the parole
and probation laws and enforcement of the truancy law.
 6. Stop the newspapers from referring to the territory occupied by the
colored people as the "Black Belt."
7. Inciting and inflammatory headlines in the newspapers must be
stopped.
8. Open the gates of employment to all races in our public utilities,
such as street-car and elevated-road service, Chicago Telephone Co.
exchanges, Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co., and the Commonwealth
Edison Co.
9. Better housing for the colored people and improvement of the
district in which a vast majority of them reside by turning certain
streets into boulevards, building small parks and playgrounds, and let
the city or South Park Commissioners build a bathing-beach equal to
any other for the benefit and comfort of all races along the water
front, between Twenty-ninth and Thirty-ninth streets. This without
lines or thought of segregation and for the benefit of a neglected part
of our tax-paying community.
10. Apprehend and convict the bomb throwers by placing in command
of our police-stations officers who will do their duty and place
patrolmen on duty who will not sympathize with this lawless element
of our citizenry. Greater still, insist that the state's attorney do his full
duty in prosecuting the people who are responsible for inciting these
criminal acts.
11. Safeguard the rights of all races in our public parks and on the
public highways.
12. Give us a man's chance in the field of labor, and we will prove that
we are no burden to any other race of people.

2. THE EMOTIONAL BACKGROUND

An old settler.—The sentiment presented below is probably the

unpolished feeling of a Negro who was born in Chicago before the
fire of 1871, and has lived here since. His grandfather owned the
property where the post-office now stands. He was at one time a
member of the Central Y.M.C.A. (white). For two and a half years he
was assistant bookkeeper in a white bank in Memphis, Tennessee.
He said:
 Prejudice has been on the increase in Chicago since 1893.
Southerners came to the World's Exposition and many of them
remained. They brought their prejudices with them. On the cars they
would order colored people to get up and give their seats to them.
This resulted in fights, and when the cases were taken to court
colored people won as many cases as whites. I took my grandmother
to the fair and on the street car I had an altercation with a white
southerner who called her "Auntie." He tried to hit me, and I got out
my gun to shoot him. A Columbian guard and detective grabbed me.
When the case was called I was discharged.
Hyde Park is a nest of prejudice. These southerners moved out there.
Southern clubs are established throughout the country. They get
northernized and want straight-haired mulatto maids for their
mistresses and call them typists. The southern white boys get jobs on
newspapers in the North and work for nothing in order that they may
write articles and editorials against Negroes and spread the doctrine
of the South.
A good many years ago colored people lived in good homes and the
Irish lived in shanties. They used to call them "flannel mouth," "mick,"
and "shanty Irish." It used to be that only colored men of light
complexion could secure jobs as porters on certain railroads. In 1908
the Archbishop of the Diocese of the Catholic Church issued an edict
that white communicants should not worship at the Thirty-sixth and
Dearborn streets church. The whites still go there, however. The very
fact that the G.A.R. invited the Confederate veterans to march in the
same parade on Memorial Day goes to show that prejudice against
Negroes is increasing. They are combining. These southern societies
in Chicago which foster race prejudice should be exposed.

Abyssinians.—During the summer of 1920 a group of self-styled

"Abyssinians," in a spectacular demonstration,[82] killed two white
men and seriously wounded two Negroes, one of whom was a
policeman. Neither whites nor Negroes could give any further
explanation of the affair than that it was an ignorant outburst of
fanatics. Although the demonstration was announced as part of a
membership drive in a "Back to Africa Movement," there was a
definite racial sentiment in the appeals to unlettered Negroes. This
sentiment was calculated to solidify the fanatic group, while, at the
same time, by its anti-social dogma, it placed this group in
opposition to the safety and well-being of the community. Meetings
and speeches and anti-racial dogma, founded upon unusual
interpretations of the Bible, gave their sentiments a religious fervor
and a racial aim. Thus these sentiments grew, uncorrected by
outsiders, and finally expressed themselves in criminal but significant
conduct. The significance of these sentiments is apparent in the
attitude of a sympathizer with the movement, expressed to one of
the Commission's investigators several weeks before the outbreak
made the movement unpopular. He is a shopkeeper, and most of his
trade is among Negroes. His business with whites is wholly with
wholesale dealers. In his treatment of those who came into his store
during the interview he was rude and discourteous. He said:
I am a radical. I despise and hate the white man. They will always be
against the Ethiopian. I do not want to be called Negro, colored, or
"nigger." Either term is an insult to me or to you. Our rightful name is
Ethiopian. White men stole the black man from Africa and counseled
with each other as to what to do with him and what to call him, for
when the Negro learned that he was the first civilized human on earth
he would rise up and rebel against the white man. To keep him from
doing this it was decided to call him Negro after the Niger River in
Africa. This was to keep him from having that knowledge by the Bible,
for his right name was Ethiopian. This was done so we could always
be ruled by the white man. I will call your attention to the Bible.
There is not one word of evil against the Children of Israel and
Ethiopia written in it. Ethiopia came out of Israel and God said they
are his people and he will be their God. He also says after the 300
years of punishment he will never go by [desert] Israel again and will
be with him for ever and ever. We find by the Bible that he, the
Ethiopian, is the only child of God.
The three hundred years of punishment are up, and this is the year of
deliverance. It started in 1619 when we were stolen from Africa and
made slaves. God is taking care of the black man. Some great
destruction will take place, but God's chosen people will be all right.
White passers-by from other neighborhoods are the only people who
trouble us. They will call you insulting names or try to annoy you in a
hundred little ways. The white people in the neighborhood are all
right. Two white men ran down an old pet rooster of mine this
morning. They were on a motor-cycle and picked him up, carried him
off, paying no heed to me, as I ran two blocks after them.
Ready for trouble.—A Negro ex-soldier said:
I went to war, served eight months in France; I was married, but I
didn't claim exemption. I wanted to go, but I might as well have
stayed here for all the good it has done me.... No, that ain't so, I'm
glad I went. I done my part and I'm going to fight right here till Uncle
Sam does his. I can shoot as good as the next one, and nobody better
start anything. I ain't looking for trouble, but if it comes my way I ain't
dodging.

Agitation and discussion.—A Negro lawyer said:

Agitation by the press, both white and colored, does nothing but
create dissension. The religious and political leaders have gone from
one extreme to the other. Formerly the Negroes were cringing and
ingratiating when dealing with the whites. Now they are trying to be
radical in order to gain notoriety. There is nothing to be gained in
either being servile or radical. I have had indignities heaped upon me
by the white man. Why, my mother was ill when a white man in
Georgia took every bit of our furniture from us, pulling the bed from
under her. She screamed with pain each time they moved the bed,
but they left her on the floor. I swore that I would kill that man and
for many years held hatred against him. Now I know it is wrong and
only hope that he has learned better.

A Negro and a mob.—How does a Negro feel when he is being

hunted or chased by a mob? Few persons are able to analyze their
emotions under such stress. It happens, however, that a Negro
university student fell victim to the sportive brutality of a gang of
white men in a clash in September, 1920, and after being chased
and hunted for five hours and a half in an unfriendly neighborhood
escaped uninjured. He recounted his experience in an effort at a
purely objective study of his emotions.
While at work in a plant just outside Chicago he became ill and was
forced to leave early. Unaware that a riot was in progress, he left a
street car to transfer in a hostile neighborhood. As he neared the
corner one of a group of about twenty young white men yelled:
"There's a nigger! Let's get him!" He boarded a car to escape them.
They pulled off the trolley and started into the car after him. His
story follows:
The motorman opened the door, and before they knew it I jumped
out and ran up Fifty-first Street as fast as my feet could carry me.
Gaining about thirty yards on them was a decided advantage, for one
of them saw me and with the shout "There he goes!" the gang started
after me. One, two, three, blocks went past in rapid succession. They
came on shouting, "Stop him! Stop him!" I ran on the sidewalk and
someone tried to trip me, but fortunately I anticipated his intentions
and jumped into the road. As I neared the next street intersection, a
husky, fair-haired fellow weighing about 180 pounds came lunging at
me. I have never thought so quickly in all my life as then, I believe.
Three things flashed into my mind—to stop suddenly and let him pass
me and then go on; to try to trip him by dropping in front of him; or
to keep running and give him a good football straight arm. The first
two I figured would stop me, and the gang would be that much
nearer, so I decided to rely on the last. These thoughts flashed
through my mind as I ran about ten steps. As we came together, I left
my feet, and putting all my weight and strength into a lunge, shot my
right hand at his chin. It landed squarely and by a half-turn the fair-
haired would-be tackler went flying to the road on his face.
That was some satisfaction, but it took a lot of my strength, for by
this time I was beginning to feel weak. But determination kept me at
it, and I ran on. Then I came to a corner where a drug-store was
open and a woman standing outside. I slowed down and asked her to
let me go in there, that a gang was chasing me; but she said I would
not be safe there, so I turned off Fifty-first Street and ran down the
side street. Here the road had been freshly oiled and I nearly took a
"header" as I stepped in the first pool, but fortunately no accident
happened. My strength was fast failing; the suggestion came into my
mind to stop and give up or try to fight it out with the two or three
who were still chasing me, but this would never do, as the odds were
too great, so I kept on. My legs began to wobble, my breath came
harder, and my heart seemed to be pounding like a big pump, while
the man nearest me began to creep up on me. It was then that an old
athletic maxim came into my mind—"He's feeling as tired as you."
Besides, I thought, perhaps he smokes and boozes and his wind is
worse than mine. Often in the last hundred yards of a quarter-mile
that thought of my opponent's condition had brought forth the last
efforts necessary for the final spurt. There was more than a medal at
stake this time, so I stuck, and in a few strides more they gave up the
chase. One block further on, when I had made sure that no one was
following me on the other side of the street, I slowed down to walk
and regained my breath. Soon I found myself on Forty-sixth Street
just west of Halsted where the street is blind, so I climbed up on the
railroad tracks and walked along them. But I imagined that in crossing
a lighted street I could be seen from below and got down off the
tracks, intending to cross a field and take a chance on the street. But
this had to be abandoned, for as I looked over the prospect from the
shadow of a fence I saw an automobile held up at the point of a
revolver in the hands of one member of a gang while they searched
the car apparently looking for colored men.
This is no place for a minister's son, I thought, and crept back behind
a fence and lay down among some weeds. Lying there as quietly as
could be I reflected on how close I had come to a severe beating or
the possible loss of my life. Fear, which had caused me to run, now
gave place to anger, and a desire to fight, if I could fight with a
square deal. I remembered that as I looked the gang over at Fifty-first
and Ashland I figured I could handle any of them individually with the
possible exception of two, but the whole gang of blood-thirsty
hoodlums was too much. Anger gave place to hatred and a desire for
revenge, and I thought if ever I caught a green-buttoned "Ragen's
Colt" on the South Side east of State that one of us would get a
licking. But reason showed me such would be folly and would only
lead to reprisals and some other innocent individual getting a licking
on my account. I knew all "Ragen's" were not rowdies, for I had met
some who were pretty decent fellows, but some others—ye gods!
My problem was to get home and to avoid meeting hostile elements.
Temporarily I was safe in hiding, but I could not stay there after
daybreak. So I decided to wait a couple of hours and then try to pass
through "No Man's Land"—Halsted to Wentworth. I figured the time to
be about 11:30 and so decided to wait until 1:30 or 2:00 a.m., before
coming out of cover. Shots rang out intermittently; the sky became
illumined; the fire bells rang, and I imagined riot and arson held sway
as of the previous year. It is remarkable how the imagination runs wild
under such conditions.
Then the injustice of the whole thing overwhelmed me—emotions ran
riot. Had the ten months I spent in France been all in vain? Were
those little white crosses over the dead bodies of those dark-skinned
boys lying in Flanders fields for naught? Was democracy merely a
hollow sentiment? What had I done to deserve such treatment? I lay
there experiencing all the emotions I imagined the innocent victim of
a southern mob must feel when being hunted for some supposed
crime. Was this what I had given up my Canadian citizenship for, to
become an American citizen and soldier? Was the risk of life in a
country where such hatred existed worth while? Must a Negro always
suffer merely because of the color of his skin? "There's a Nigger; let's
get him!" Those words rang in my ears—I shall never forget them.
Psychologists claim that it is in the face of overwhelming forces that
man is prone to turn to the Supreme Being. I was no longer afraid,
only filled with righteous indignation and a desire to get out of danger.
But mingled emotions shook me, and a flood of tears burst forth. In
the midst of it I found myself praying fervently to God against the
injustice of it all, for strength and help to go through safely, and
thanks for my deliverance from the gang which had chased me. Then
relief came from all these pent-up feelings with the determination to
get up and try to go through—and to fight, if necessary. I began to
speculate on means. A freight train came along, and the impulse
came to jump on it and ride out of town until the trouble was over,
but the knowledge of only 15 cents carfare in my pocket compelled
the rejection of this idea. I thought of phoning to a friend to come
and get me in his car, but this was futile, for where could I find a
phone and be safe in that neighborhood? Some clothes on a line in a
yard across the field offered a disguise, but even dressed as a woman
I'd need a hat, and that idea had to be abandoned. With resources at
an end, I picked up four rocks for ammunition and started out.
For four blocks I glided from shadow to shadow, through alleys. A
couple of dogs nearly "spilled the beans" when they barked just as an
automobile came down the street. I dove for cover until the car had
disappeared and then emerged. At Forty-ninth Street and Union
Avenue I climbed up on the railroad tracks and cautiously walked
along them in the darkness. All of a sudden a block ahead appeared
what seemed to be about ten men standing on the tracks, so I
dropped to the ground and made a pair of binoculars out of my
hands. For what seemed like five minutes I watched these forms then
decided they were uprights on a bridge and went on. Imagination and
fear can play tricks, and this was one of them.
Finally I found myself at Thirty-seventh and Stewart streets, having
been walking northeast instead of east as I thought. I climbed down
to the street and walked through back lanes until I saw the Sox ball
park. All was quiet, so I came out and crossed Wentworth Avenue. At
State and Thirty-seventh I saw two colored fellows waiting for a car
and ran up to them. Putting my hands on their shoulders I said, "Gee!
I'm glad to see a dark skin." Then I related my experience. They
assured me the "fun" was all over, and I was thankful. It was twenty-
five minutes to four, just five and a half hours after I had started for
 home from work. A white man came along, and my first impulse was
to jump on him and beat him up. But again reason told me he was
not responsible for the actions of a gang of rowdies, and he was as
innocent as I had been when set upon.
Is such an experience easily forgotten? Recent events would prove to
the contrary. I vowed that morning never to let the sun set on me
west of Wentworth Avenue, and never to go into that section
unprotected, even in daytime. On a recent Sunday the papers came
out with an "Extra" about 11:00 p.m., announcing a "Big South Side
Fight." I went to the door and hailed a boy. Just then an automobile
with men standing on the running-board came around the corner. The
possibility of another riot flashed through my mind and without
looking at the paper I snapped off the light, closed the door, and
prepared for trouble if it came my way. But the "Fight" had been a
gunman's war. This is just indicative of the caution such an experience
develops. It is not a fear, but a wariness in uncertainty.

3. DEFENSIVE POLICIES

To stimulate group morale and solidify the sentiments of Negroes for

unified opposition to what they regard as oppressive measures of
white people, many tactics are employed. The most common of
these is that of interpreting the aims and ambitions of Negroes to
white persons and of defending themselves generally against
criticism. A selection of types of this "defensive" sentiment is given.
A Negro attorney said:
The only way to gain favorable public opinion is to create favorable
press notices. A certain amount of agitation is necessary on the part
of colored papers to educate the race as to what it is entitled to. The
American white race has been very successful in its propaganda that
colored people are not entitled to certain things. This has caused
many Negroes to believe that they are not as good as the white
people.
The press can be a source of evil or of good. It depends upon the
point of view. The difficulty lies in the fact that the white press has
the wrong attitude, usually. A great deal of harm is done by paid
workers who will give interviews that will sustain the viewpoint of the
 papers. Others desirous of newspaper notoriety are guilty of the same
offense. Usually those interviewed are not capable of giving exact
opinions and viewpoints. Those capable of doing justice to the
situation are not sought by reporters. During the time when there is
more calm and people are in a position to give thoughtful
consideration to the question, no effort is made to find out the
attitude of substantial citizens. If this were done the papers would get
somewhere.

A letter from a Negro thanking the editor of a northern paper for a

fair editorial said:
The colored citizens realize fully the extent to which propaganda is
spread against them in the average newspaper under the guise of
news, and when they find someone who knows that too, and who is
strong enough to help, as is the —— [newspaper], they thank him
with all the strength of their hearts, although their lips may remain
mute.

Negro sentiment regarding racial news in the white press.—A Negro

weekly paper said:
Whatever be the cause or the motive there is apparently a well
organized plan to discredit the race in America and to bring
estrangement between fellow Americans. A short-sighted ... press is
contributing to this estrangement by playing upon the passions of the
undiscriminating and thoughtlessly by its glaring and sensational
headings, emphasizing rumours of alleged crimes by Negroes.

Flattery as a means of promoting tolerance.—A popular Negro orator

said:
I think that the great trouble with us already is that we have allowed
the white people to settle too many things for us. The nation gave
you constitutional freedom, but no man can make you truly free
except you yourself. The white man hates nothing worse than a
coward, and the American white man is the most remarkable human
being the world ever knew. He is God's superman. As white and black
have one destiny beneath the Stars and Stripes, so have we the
common duties of citizenship....
Woodrow Wilson is my leader. What he commands me to do I shall
do. Where he commands me to go I shall go. I had naught of ill will
 toward Von Bernsdorf until Wilson pointed him out as a national
menace. Whom Woodrow Wilson cannot receive into fellowship, I
cannot receive.

A Negro resident of Chicago for fourteen years, formerly of

Louisiana, said:
I went to Wilson's last inauguration in Washington and tried to talk to
the President. I got in the gate, but the guard would not let me go
farther without a pass. I went into every place that men were allowed
to enter and found no "Jim-Crowing" in any public place. The nearest
approach to it was in the printing department of the government.
There were several colored girls all working at the same table. In
other departments I had seen white and colored together. I went into
every washroom on every floor of one building and must have washed
my hands twenty times.

Negroes, real Americans.—A letter from a Negro workman to

Governor Lowden said:
Why is it that intelligent colored people, the real Americans and the
most humble and purest nation that ever trod the soil of America
since they have been here—we have never thrown any bombs; we
have never written a black-hand letter and what disgrace and
shameful things we do it was learned to us by our foreparents'
masters down south because they taught them to steal and murder
and do all other most disgraceful things. We have never bombed any
white people's homes, but I cannot see into it why it is that all nations
such as the Polish, Japan, Chinaman, Mexican, German and Russ and
now you see what they have done to this country; they have done
everything to overthrow this Government and have got the I.W.W. and
the Red. Where have we done such dirty deeds? We have enriched
this soil of America with our blood in every war for this country and
then cannot live where we want to as an American citizen. We even
shed our blood in France to save someone else money and their
homes, and the thanks we got when we come back was a big race
riot which I do believe was started by southern white men to put a
disgrace on the North because the North do not lynch and burn as
they do. Of course I know you cannot do anything by yourself. But if
you can get enough men who have got a backbone to protect the
ones who have always protected them this outrage could be stopped.
I read a piece in the Herald-Examiner that it would be a riot here; that
 has poisoned the minds of so many people. So now I hope you will try
to stop such trouble.

Defensive philosophy; silence does not mean contentment.—A Negro

educator said:
Many white men of high intellectual ability and keen discernment have
mistaken the Negro silence for contentment, his facial expression for
satisfaction at prevailing conditions, and his songs and jovial air for
happiness. But not always so. These are his methods of bearing his
troubles and keeping his soul sweet under seeming wrongs. In the
absence of a spokesman or means of communication with the whites
over imagined grievances, he has brightened his countenance, smiled
and sung to give ease to his mind. In the midst of it all he is unable to
harmonize the teachings of the Bible which the white Christian placed
in his hands with the practices of daily life. He finds it difficult to
harmonize the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and
his faith is put to the test in that "Providence" which enslaved his
ancestors, corrupted his blood and placed upon him stigmas more
damaging than to be a leper or convict by making his color a badge of
infamy and his preordained social position at the bottom of human
society. So firmly has his status been fixed by this "Providence" that
neither moral worth, fidelity to trust, love of home, loyalty to country
or faith in God can raise him to human recognition.

Votes for Negroes.—The Crisis for January, 1921, said:

The astonishing thing about the Bourbon South is its intellectual
bankruptcy when it comes to the Negro. It continually assumes that
the Negro is a fool. Some Negroes are fools, but the proportion
among them is steadily decreasing, while that among the Bourbons
seems to increase. When the average white Southerner faces the
problem of racial contact he has absolutely nothing to offer except
what he offered in 1861, namely: the Will of God, Force and
Bloodshed, and, "The best friend in the world to the Negro is the
Southern white man—the only one who truly loves him." We quote
from our ever-delightful friend, the editor of the Macon (Ga.)
Telegraph.
The tragedy of the situation is that this man believes what he says.
He knows absolutely just the "place" for which God made "niggers";
but to support this sincere belief he spreads falsehoods. He says that
the woman suffrage party by its secret machinations "probably"
 caused the blood shed in the Florida elections! He threatens murder
for black men who want to vote, and almost weeps over the
misguided Negroes who have left the Empire State of lynching and
gone to Chicago.
There seems to be in this man's mind absolutely no conception of the
tremendous, increasing, unswerving development of the Negro. To
him all aspiration, unrest, and complaints of black folk are
conspiracies of whites. For the blacks he has no program, no vision,
except that they stay where they have always been, growing more
content with "Jim-Crow" cars, lynching and disfranchisement.
It is inconceivable to the mentality of this section of the white South
that such a program is absolutely impossible. That if, in the end, the
price we must pay for aspiration to modern manhood is death, and
death in the most horrible form of public torture and burning like that
in Florida, if to live we must die, then the South will have us to kill.
Any man who does not prefer death to slavery is not worth
freedom....
The black man must vote. Every Southerner with brains knows this.
The Negro is awaiting his enfranchisement with greater patience than
the South has any right to expect. But he will not wait forever. If he
sees gathering signs of sanity—a willingness to let the intelligent and
thrifty vote, an honest effort to establish law and order and overthrow
the rule of the mob, a desire to substitute honest industrial conditions
in place of the organized and entrenched theft of black wealth upon
which southern industry is based today—such a program, tardy and
slow and inadequate though it be, may count on the infinite patience
and long suffering of Ethiopia.

4. RACE CONSCIOUSNESS

Ancient Order of Ethiopian Princes:[83]

To My Kinsmen.—In a broad sense, the words "Negro" and "Nigger"
have no historical significance. They are used synonymously in the
white man's dictionary. "Negro" is a pure Spanish word meaning
"black." The word "Negro," therefore, may be descriptive of a race,
but not the name of it. In reality "Negro" is an alias, or nickname
applied to us originally, in much the same contemptuous spirit as the
black boy is called "Rastus" or "Sambo."
The white man writes his history for us to study, makes his scenario
with his heroes and heroines for us to admire, and supplies our
newspapers. Through these instrumentalities he almost entirely
controls our thought.
Remember that "a word is the sign of an idea." The kind of an "idea"
that the "sign" stands for depends upon our teaching. If we associate
a word, then, with a noble or degraded idea, we have been taught to
do so.
You can easily prove this by experimenting with certain words for
yourself. After repeating each word tell what your idea is and what
you see: (1) Roman, (2) Paradise, (3) Statesmen, (4) General. Is the
idea or picture you get degraded? No. The White Press, history, reel
and teacher have taken care of that.
Now take the following words: (1) Lynched, (2) Jim Crow, (3)
Disfranchised, (4) Negro.
What is the result? The words "Lynched," "Jim Crow," "Disfranchised,"
are the signs of degraded ideas. Moreover, "Negro" is very apt to
creep into each one of the three mind pictures and conversely one of
the three into the "Negro" mind picture.
Do you understand? Now why is that? That is what Ethiopic culture
teaches, through the "Ancient Order of Ethiopian Princes."
If we believe that we come from nowhere and have no history but
that of a slave, our substance will be the charity of our oppressors,
and our future handicapped by doubts and fears.
Ancient history knows no "Negro," but ancient history does know
Ethiopia and Ethiopians. Change a family's name and in a generation
you cannot tell whether its foreparents were rogues or saints. It is the
same with a race. You cannot trace your ancestors through the name
"Negro."
Take away our birthright, our ancient honorable name, "Ethiopian"
and you have stopped the very fountain of our inspiration. If we are
"Negroes" we are by the same dictionary also, "Niggers." The moment
we realize, however, that we are "Ethiopians," we can see the beams
from the lamps of Ethiopian culture lighting a pathway down the
shadowy ages, and the fires of ambition are rekindled in our hearts,
because we know that we came from the builders of temples and
founders of civilization.
 Study this.

Contrasts of North and South.—An investigator's report on home

conditions of retarded children said:
The mother is eager to learn, and constantly talks of wanting to
attend night school if the opportunity ever offers itself. She is eager
for her girl to complete her education and wants her to take a
business course so she will be independent. "A white man can take
everything from the colored man but his learning," Mrs. —— said
repeatedly.
In coming to Chicago she wasn't sure what she would find, but she
had heard that colored people had a show here. She brought her child
here to give her one. Chicago seems like heaven to her now when she
thinks of what she had been through in the South.
When the investigator asked her about the church to which she
belonged she said: "Olivet. I goes every Sunday and Wednesday
nights to prayer meeting just to thank God that he let me live to go to
a place of worship like that, a place where my people worship and
ain't pestered by the white men."

The Chicago riot provoked probably the first full expressions of

sentiment from Negroes in their own press. Underlying them are
attitudes toward present race relations. There is a strong note of
resentment, and the announcement of the birth of a "New Negro."
The war is credited with bringing about this change. More than
250,000 young Negroes, the pick of the race in health and
intelligence, had returned to the United States, presumably with
changed ideas, and perhaps with growing cynicism as to promises of
fair treatment. Perhaps for the first time in American history the
Negro group fought in the 1919 riot as a body against mob violence.
The idea that these disorders are a result of active opposition to
distasteful practices is prominent in practically every Negro
discussion. "The Negro race is facing about" is a familiar statement.
Said one Negro newspaper:
It is the utter ignoring of the Negro in the community life that is
responsible for these outbreaks. The controlling whites were
absolutely out of touch with the Negroes, and the races came
 together in a quarrel and there was no means by which the trouble
could be settled.

A monthly magazine, the Favorite, said:

If the white man thinks that the rights, privileges and ordinary
pursuits of the Negro can now be annulled at this stage of the world's
affairs, he certainly has "another thought coming." This Washington
revolt is only the "handwriting on the wall." Don't squeeze the Negro
too hard; if you do you squeeze him to the bursting point. The young
Negro of today is far different from his foreparents, and will not be
content with anything less than a fair deal.

The New York American said:

The dangerous enemy of his race is the colored man that advocates
force as a remedy. There is such a thing as being outnumbered
beyond any hope.

A Negro newspaper replied:

There is such a thing, too, as a noble preference of death to a life of
slavery. Do Hearst and Arthur Brisbane think the sentiment of "Give
me Liberty or Give me Death" belongs exclusively to a white skin?

A poem in the Crusader and republished in the Messenger and

several other periodicals, carries this same idea:
 If We Must Die

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While around us bark the mad and hungry dogs
Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us, though dead!

Oh, kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;

Though far outnumbered, let us still be brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but—fighting back!

—Claude McKay

Defensive measures justified.—The general belief among Negroes is

that resistance to violence is justified. Some view this display of
counterviolence as simply defensive measures, some as retaliation,
which in substance means the same.
The Washington Eagle, a Negro newspaper, commenting on the
beginning of the Washington riot, said:
Notwithstanding the fact that these mobs, increasing in number and
in violence each evening, were allowed to harass law-abiding colored
citizens for three consecutive evenings, the colored citizens showed
no signs of revenge or retaliation. But when the situation became so
terrible that colored citizens could endure it no longer they rose up
almost as one man, and, adhering to the first law of human nature,
which says that self-preservation is the first law of nature, they armed
 themselves "to the teeth," to use the phrase of one of the local
newspapers. It was only when they showed this disposition to fight
back that the riot ceased.

The Messenger, a Negro magazine, said:

The world knows not that the new Negroes are determined to observe
the primal law of self-preservation whenever civil laws break down; to
assist the authorities to preserve order and prevent themselves and
families from being murdered in cold blood. Surely, no one can easily
object to this new and laudable determination.

Opinions of Negroes regarding the conduct of the police.—Negro

condemnation of the police seems general. From a large selection of
comments two are given. The Favorite said:
History proves that nearly all race riots are started by white
policemen. East St. Louis, Houston and Washington, D.C., have had
terrible cataclysms provoked by white bluecoats who in nine cases out
of ten carry their prejudices with them whenever they enter black
belts. Instead of acting in behalf of law and order white policemen
usually act in behalf of some passion that tells them Negroes are
convenient brutes. For the safety of the twenty-five thousand colored
and ten thousand whites in the Second Ward of Chicago we ask that
every white patrolman in the district be replaced by a colored
bluecoat. Chicago must not be added to the list of American cities cut
off from civilization by race riots, and it is up to Mayor William Hale
Thompson and Chief Garrity to see that the honor of that city is
preserved.

The Washington Eagle thought most of the trouble was due to the
overbearing attitude of the police. It said:
Bishop Cottrell, wiring from Holly Springs, Miss., wants the President
to call a conference of representatives of both races to consider the
matter of mob law. We doubt if the President will take the trouble to
do anything of the kind: while he is thinking it over the police in every
place had better be instructed to have more respect for the rights and
feelings of the Afro-American people. Most of the trouble is to be
found in the insolent and overbearing attitude of the police.

Negro opinions regarding white newspapers.—It is asserted by

numerous Negro papers that certain white papers spurred the rioters
to greater lawlessness in the Washington outbreak, and in some
cases settled the date and place of assembly for attacking parties.
The Afro-American quoted from the Washington Post an excerpt
headed "Mobilizing for Tonight," and reading:
It was learned that a mobilization of every available service man
stationed in or near Washington or on leave here has been ordered
for tomorrow evening near the Knights of Columbus hut on
Pennsylvania Avenue, between Seventh and Eighth streets. The hour
of assembly is 9 o'clock and the purpose is a "cleanup" that will cause
the events of the last two evenings to pale into insignificance.
Whether official cognizance of this assemblage and its intent will bring
about its forestalling cannot be told.

The Afro-American added:

Commenting on this article Secretary Shillady of the National
Association declares: "In view of the fact that the 'mobilization'
announced by the Washington Post had not been ordered by any
authority, military or civil, does not the passage show intent by the
Washington Post to bring about such mobilization?"

Another Negro paper in Washington carried the criticism farther:

Editorials are supposed to concern those topics that are most
important to the community in which they are written. No one can
deny the importance of the race riots that disgraced the name of fair
America's Capital during the present week; yet two of the leading
daily papers of the city found everything to fill their editorial columns
but the proper attempts to discourage mob violence and a disposition
to place the blame where it justly belongs. The rioting, in itself, was a
deplorable disgrace, but a greater disgrace is that the daily
newspapers should have encouraged the rioting by the glaring, ugly
headlines that they gave it, rather than discourage the riots in
editorials.

The National Defender and Sun replied to an editorial of the Chicago

Tribune:
In a recent edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune, which calls itself the
world's greatest newspaper, in discussing the recent race riot in
Chicago, it had this to say: "Can the two races continue to live in
peace in Chicago without segregation? We have for some time
 criticized the South for its treatment of its black citizens. We believe
since the race riot in Chicago that segregation, separate cars, will be
the only cure to prevent race riots in the future." We are very much
surprised at the statement of the Chicago Tribune. Does the world's
greatest newspaper forget that Atlanta, Ga., Memphis, Tenn.,
Arkansas and Texas, had great race riots, and that all of the above-
named states have their Jim Crow laws and segregated district?

The New York Age had this to say:

So much clamor and bad blood have been aroused by the repeated
charge of assaults attempted upon women in the city of Washington,
that more than ordinary significance attaches to a news item found
tucked away in an inconspicuous position on an inside page of the
Washington Times. It was headed: "Woman Now Denies She Was
Attacked," and read as follows: "The case of an alleged attack on Mrs.
Minnie Franklin, 1361 K. Street Southeast, by two Negroes near
Fifteenth and H. Sts., Northeast, Thursday night, was closed last night
when according to detectives, the woman said the story was a
fabrication. Several headquarters detectives questioned the woman
yesterday and then went over the ground where the alleged attack
was supposed to have occurred, but could find no evidence of a
struggle."
This reported case of "assault" had "scare" headlines at the time it
was supposed to have occurred, and it looked as if the daily papers
were trying to provoke another riot. Later, by the admission of the
accuser, the police and the press, the charge was shown to be
groundless. Time and again these charges of assaults have been
shown to be "faked," and the most credulous should be brought to
see the necessity of searching investigation before pronouncing the
accused guilty. Hysteria, by newspaper suggestion, may be at the
foundation of many a case of reported "assault."

Charges of southern propaganda in the North.—A wide distinction

has been made by Negro observers between the Washington and
Chicago riots, the former being called a typical southern, and the
latter a typical northern, riot. Reasons for this are given in the
different forms of incentive to rioting. The Washington reasons were
largely sentimental and bore a striking resemblance to the Atlanta
riot about 1906. Reports of attacks on white women, played up in
the newspapers, were sufficient to set the current going. The
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