Viewing page 4 of 26

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

112        THE CRISIS

march of the colored people—homes like Meyzeck's, Porter's, and Vaughn's; businesses like Johnson's and Bryant's; schools like Fisk and Meharry; librarians like Blue; and musicians: Helen Hagan, Osiris-eyed; the busy little hands of Mildred Bryant; and the beautiful winding paths of Schmidlapville—all this was a striking story of our forward march.

JUSTICE.

A GENTLEMAN, unnamed, but with a card that assured us that he represented the Department of Justice at Washington, has called upon THE CRISIS. He said he was looking for "two German girls" said to be employed here, and he incidentally read us a lecture on loyalty and told us that the visit was "confidential."

We do not know what this gentleman really represents and we do not particularly care, but we do remember with some misgivings that it was the U.S. Department of Justice which discovered that Negroes were migrating from the south in order to vote against Woodrow Wilson in the late election. It was this same Department of Justice which discovered German plots among Negroes of the South, raising a furor which was promptly drowned out by loud reassurances by the white South itself. We also remember with still graver apprehension that it is this same Department of "Justice" that is unable to find upon the map of the United States certain places called Waco and Memphis, and that it is presumably more interested in Home Rule in Ireland than it is in lynching and disfranchisement in the United States.

PROMOTING RACE PREJUDICE.

RACE prejudice is not so much a matter of startling deeds as of petty insinuations. The New York Community Chorus, for instance, has sent broadcast a statement which says that "the chorus has sung every week since its organization, June 9, 1916, and has invited everybody freely to sing with it,"—to which the editor of THE CRISIS was forced to reply that the colored people of New York had not been invited nor, indeed, allowed to sing with this chorus.

Mr. Theodore Roosevelt showed his trophies to the Oyster Bay Home Guard recently. Among them were some gifts from the Kaiser. Said Mr. Roosevelt: "I got them when he was a white man." To which Mrs. H. M. Godfrey replies in the New York Times that none of the rough-riders "would have ever lived to tell the tale but for the colored 9th and 10th cavalry regiments," who were not "white men."

The Official Bulletin, published by George Creel for the government, cannot forget the usual slur when it suggests as a commencement day subject: "The Character of the Negro as a Soldier When Well Led."

Finally, note this rom the New York Evening Post, speaking of the questions in the Draft circular: "As to your race state whether 'Caucasian,' 'Mongolian,' 'negro,' Malayan,' or 'Indian.'" Even the Literary Digest cannot quite stomach this illogic and prints it this way: "Caucasian, Mongolian, Negro, Malay, or Indian."

MEMPHIS OR EAST ST. LOUIS

WE seem to hear four voices screaming above the mobs of Memphis and East St. Louis—Why will Negroes be Scabs, Why will Negroes Stay in the South, How Can We Stop Negro Migration, Where Can Negroes Be Treated Justly?

We believe we can answer all these questions and for the first we quote a letter of Charles Augustono, a colored bricklayer of Camden, N.J.:

"I am a member of the Bricklayer, Mason and Plasterers' International


[[4 images]]

PHI BETA KAPPA

Four Winners of the Highest Honor in the Undergraduate College World.

MISS FRANCES C. GRANT, Radcliffe.
RAYFORD LOGAN, Williams.
MISS A. L. PENDLETON, Oberlin.
DAVID A. LANE, JR., Bowdoin.

113