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[[image - black & white photograph of James Weldon Johnson]]
[[caption]] JAMES WELDON JOHNSON, 1928
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE[[/caption]]

THE NEW YORK WORLD, FEBRUARY 3, 1924

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON ON ANGLO-SAXON SUPERIORITY

Is the Negro dangerous to white culture and to the white race? Is it true that "Anglo-Saxon culture" is threatened by aliens? Is it true that "Anglo-Saxons" are the only group fit for leadership, cultural and political, in America?

(Yes, seems to be the answer to these questions by the "Anglo-Saxon Clubs" of which Mr. John Powell of Virginia wrote in the (Italics) World of Dec. 2. To the specific questions raised by Mr. Powell and the "Anglo-Saxon Clubs," I am glad, in response to the request of the Editor of the World, to make reply, as Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as a Negro and, primarily, as an American.

The attitude exemplified by Mr. Powell is a common one. At its extreme it results in the Ku Klux Klan and its alleged protection of Anglo-Saxondom. At its mildest it issues in such a program as the one Mr. Powell outlines, maintaining virtually the same creed as the Klan, minus the violence. This attitude is grounded on assumptions about what makes an American, what is dangerous to an American, what American culture is and who created it.

...The original American stock, the American Indian, is almost extinct. the white original stock includes settlers from almost every part of Europe, including Hessians, Scotch, Irish, English, Dutch, French and Spanish. Furthermore, the Negro must be included among the original stock, because he first came to the American Continent in 1525 with the Spaniards. His first coming to the English colony was in 1619, one year before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth. The Negro continued coming, or being brought forcibly and against his will, until the early part of the nineteenth century. None have come in any quantity since then. The Negro is certainly part of the original American stock, whether Mr. Powell likes it or not.

Many of the best things in America have been created here or brought by people whom Mr. Powell and the Anglo-Saxon Club group would doubtless look upon as aliens. The mythical Anglo-Saxon -- and by that term I assume Mr. Powell means people of English descent, though he himself confesses he does not know what it means -- the mythical Anglo-Saxon, and his culture as well, never existed. If Mr. Powell means merely people of English descent, they are among the late comers to America, later than French, Spanish and Negro. This leads me to question Mr. Powell's idea of culture. What is culture anyhow? Is it something that belongs to someone, like an automobile? Is it the color of your hair, the pride of family tradition? Is being elected to office a sign of culture?

... If Mr. Powell wants to go back far enough, to Puritan days in New England, for example, one of the traditional American virtues was a willingness to take part in the burning of the witches, men and women; and other virtues and principles included such intolerance as made the settlers fine, flog and imprison people for being members of the Society of Friends, better known as Quakers; and drive out Roger Williams from Massachusetts. Those virtues were perhaps understandable in those days in which a rigid social organization was necessary to meet frontier conditions. No one but a maniac would maintain that they would be suited to the years in which we live. So when Mr. Powell talks about the original American stock and weeps a tear over its submergence; when her orates about the original American principles and virtues, he had better be a little more specific as to what he means.

The Negro's case is not so dissimilar from that of other aliens, insofar as culture is concerned. Mr. Powell deplores the "polyglot boarding house" aspect of America with its foreign-language newspapers, its racial and national traditions maintained by immigrants. I say it is better to encourage these people to bring here their cultural heritages, to give us in America the benefit of their songs and dances and literature and customs, than to try to force them to conform to some Anglo-Saxon idea of what is American.

The "Anglo-Saxon" acts as if he had something to fear. He behaves like a coward. The American does not have to. He can receive the contribution of any spirit, any nation and any race. If he cannot, then he had better say so. He had better stop twadling about democracy, liberty and what-not. Let him then come out boldly and say: This is a country for people who call themselves Anglo-Saxons without knowing what they mean; people who intend to make America their own cozy little club where everyone else can exist on sufferance only.