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336 THE CRISIS adoption of this resolution? Do not wait. Act now! When you have done this, get your friends to do likewise. A CHURCH PLATFORM IT is extremely difficult to get the white church to take a decided stand on any burning social question. We welcome, therefore, the "Constructive Program for Just Inter-Racial Relations" issued recently by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America. In brief, it follows: The Government, local, state, and national, should impartially guarantee to all classes security of life and property. The Negro should have economic justice. We call upon men and women everywhere to protect the sanctity of home and womanhood. Adequate recreational provisions should be made available for Negro citizens. We strongly endorse the plea of the Negro for equal traveling accommodations for equal charges. Adequate educational facilities for Negro children and youth should be provided. Qualifications for the franchise should be administered irrespective of race, creed or color. Closer co-operation between the races should be promoted by organizing local committees of white and colored people. THE GOVERNORS THE Governors' program of racial adjustment falls flat on its first proposal: "It is imperatively urgent that lynching be prevented. "1. By the enlistment of Negroes themselves in preventing crimes that provoke mob violence." The most prevalent crime in the United States that provokes mov violence is the crime of being black. Alleged rape causes only 19 per cent of the lynchings of Negroes in the United States, and it is doubtful if half the alleged cases are true. Again, the only way to endow Negroes with the power to deal with that crime or any other crime is to give them the ballot, and this the Governors were afraid to demand. THE PLUMB PLAN THE Plumb Plan for railroad management in the United States is the best proposed so far. It includes government ownership and operation by employees and the government in partnership. The underlying principle of permitting the workingmen to share in the conduct of industry is absolutely correct. The monarchic business institution that "belongs" to one man or group and refuses to allow those who do the work to have any decisive voice or influence in the conduct of the business is doomed. Industrial democracy means a voice and vote in industry by the workers. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS THE colored folk want the League of Nations. The proposed League is no the best conceivable—indeed, in some respects it is the worst. But the worst Internation is better than the present anarchy in international relations. This anarchy has just cost civilization two hundred thousand millions of dollars, eight million corpses, twenty million maimed pieces of men and untold and untellable waste, destruction, sorry, misery and crime. To save human culture from a repetition of the Great War, a government of governments is proposed. In its present form it is oligarchic, reactionary, restricted and conservative, and it gives Imperialism, particularly Imperial England, unwarranted preponderance. Nevertheless, it has a democratic Assembly, it recognizes no color line, and it can enforce peace. No opponent of the League offers anything better that has the slightest chance of adoption. Most opponents want no League at all. They want a swashbuckling anarchy, with a Jingo United States yelling in chorus with Jingoes of all Europe. OPINION 337 What boots it to complain now that Wilson did not stand to this moral guns at Paris, or that Egypt, India and Ireland are not free? Will they be any freer or the world any safer without some international bond of reason and sanity? No. Let us have the League with all its autocracy and then in the League let us work for Democracy of all races and men. HONESTY IT is characteristic of the inner spiritual turmoil of our race that the old homely morality should totter on its foundations; that our boys and girls—aye, our men and women—should seriously question whether it really pays to tell the truth, to refrain from theft or to refuse to spread malicious gossip. Without that fine feeling of honor which needs no proof, it is often difficult in this day and land to point to the true worth of honesty and probity. There comes now and then, however, a flash of revealing lightning. Out in Nebraska ninety-eight white dental students bought copies of examination questions before the test. One looked, but did not buy. On did not even look, and he was a Negro. If the Negro had yielded to the temptation, our charming friends would have found but one more proof of racial dishonesty. So this young man, John Singleton, bore on his shoulders, not simply his personal honor, but the honor of a great race, standing there "within the shadow, keeping watch." SOCIAL EQUALITY EVERY time the American Negro seeks reasonably and earnestly to bring his case before the whiteSouth and the nation the bourbons proceed to throw dust in the eyes of the public by screaming frantically, "Social Equality." That bogey can easily be met: If "Social Equality" means the right to vote, the abolition of "Jim-Crow" cars, the stoppage of lynching, universal education and civil rights, then social equality is exactly what we want what eventually we will and must have. If, on the other hand, "Social Equality" involves the denial of the social right of any individual of any race or color to choose his own marital mate, his own friends and his own dinner companions—in fine, to be master of his own home, then no sane person ever dreamed of demanding the slightest interference with such an obvious right, and any one who accuses Negroes of such a demand writes himself down as an ass or a deliberate liar. HEROES WE stand with uncovered heads before the tens of thousands of black men and women of the South who are fighting the real battle of Freedom. They are striking no blows—they are using no violence—they are uttering no threats—in most cases they are speaking no word. But they are standing with bleeding souls and streaming eyes, silently, steadfastly, before the altar of their own beliefs and aspirations. Not once by word, deed or gesture do they flinch. They believe themselves the equals of any man, and not all the mobs of bourbon South—not even death and torture—can make them deny it. Neither by money nor fear can they be induced to betray their race, either by the cringing deed or by the lying admission; in the face of the slobbering "white folks' nigger" with his soothing syrup of false flattery and lies, they stand unmoved. They seek peace and self-respect, but before everything, they insist upon respecting themselves. Their white neighbors know and secretly honor them. They wonder how such souls can live and endure the lot of the Negro in the South. Yet they do live, they do endure, and in God's good time such martyrdom must and shall win. OPHELIA OPHELIA has selected a home. She had twenty-six states and one hundred and forty-six towns to choose from!
