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132 THE CRISIS

course, to that part of the race which constitutes the overwhelming majority, who are capable, industrious and physically fit.

It will be everlastingly to the credit of the Negroes of the South that they never once permitted themselves to be led off by the most insidious propaganda German sympathizers and agents have attempted in this country. Instead of listening to the seductive appeals of these intriguers and conspirators, the Negro by reporting to the authorities, made that sort of thing so dangerous that it was not continued long, but was abandoned early.


The Savannah (Ga.) Morning News reports that "from every section of the state come reports that Negroes are meeting the demands of war with a spirit and devotion that prove them worthy American citizens...This is no more than Georgia expects of her Negro population. Just as with the white citizens, the Negroes have their work cut out for them and they have gone about it in a business-like and patriotic manner."

The same may be said of the Negroes of this state. Let us demand, then, that the spirit of intolerance and race hatred that shows itself in lynchings and the burning of Negroes shall be stopped, the Negro himself having earned such consideration, whatever may be said of our obligations to law and humanity.


The State Journal of Raleigh, N. C., writes:

Troop trains that weekly go through Raleigh carrying help to our allies, have been accustomed along the route to drop the heroic boys down in the cities where the populace could briefly see them and cheer them as they leave their country.

Nobody, save the soldier, can tell how much this means to the men who bear arms for us in another world. They stop and gather loving symbols from a people aroused to highest enthusiasm, and parading the streets the boys in uniform make those of us who imagine a sacrifice, feel a lasting shame while sitting back enumerating items of expense and counting the cost in comforts.

But there is one black hero who goes through every time two whites do and we hear nothing of him. That is the chocolate soldier who sits wedged into a stuffy day coach and waits until snail-like trains back him from the station to put out on the main line. Nearly all of these black boys have been drafted and put into uniform to fight across a trackless waste of water for an abstraction which is well-nigh stranger to them at home. A few colored friends may know of their coming and there is a short good-bye at the stations. But the great heart of a municipality is lost to them and they must go to war without any of the cheers that so freely and lovingly are given to the white men with whom they eventually will fight.

It isn't right and it should be ended this day.

The colored troops should be allowed to get off the cars, march through the city and receive the plaudits of all the people for whom they fight. If there be white people who feel as the fool Beard of Abbeville felt before he got into the Federal penitentiary for his feeling; if there be whites who withhold their own enthusiasm lest it spoil a "damnigger," then let the colored soldier have the public streets for a moment while his own cheer him as he puts out to war. There are black people who have souls and sentiment and whose hearts thrill and ache for their own. Let these black people see their boys and give them mementoes of the land to which thousands of them will not return....

The white people owe it to themselves to give all the comfort and cheer that they can. No race can be happy long surrounded by those whose happiness has been destroyed either by indifference or by wilfulness. Much has been written of the "problem of the Negro soldier." We are always making a "problem" out of a simple justice to the colored man who has risen in earnest striving by the might of his merits. The "problem" now before the Negro soldier is helping us to kill Huns. Let us make the job easier for him by giving him a little heart for his work.


The World News, of Roanoke, Va., says:

The same newspapers that bring news of this fine heroism that wins honor for our whole country tell of the lynching in Georgia of three members of this same race, one of them a woman, suspected of murder. Of course there was no excuse for this, as the courts are in full power and operation in Georgia. Equally, of course, nobody will be punished. We predict that one of the results of the war will be that the Negro troops will acquit themselves so well that the United States Congress will interfere in this lynching business, of which Negroes usually are the victims. Evidently in this regard there is no use clinging to the doctrine of States' rights and trusting weak and cowardly local authorities and sympathetic juries to punish mob murderers. We have been trying it now fifty years and after hundreds of such murders there is hardly a record of a conviction. The States have failed to maintain within their own borders decent respect for the lives of citizens and residents of the United States. The war will hasten the time when members of murdering mobs will face the Federal Courts and serious punishment, even if an amendment to the Constitution is required to bring that result. The country is sick and tired of having to bear as a whole the shame of the lawlessness of bloodthirsty rowdies and the miserable truckling to it of small and cheap county and town politicians who value their jobs more than the honor of their States and country and their allegiance to their own oaths of office and duties.