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NEW NEGRO OPINION NEW NEGRO OPINION OFFICIAL ORGAN OF NEW NEGRO ALLIANCE 1232 You St., N.W. Decatur 2371 EDITORIAL STAFF Franklin Thorne … Editor William H. Haste … Associate Editor Isadore Williams … Associate Editor Dutton Ferguson … Associate Editor Bertha McNeill … Associate Editor Howard Fitzhugh … Business Manager Rudolph Renfrow … Advertising Manager Melvin Barker … Circulation Manager [[line]] [[column 1]] A CHALLENGE People have been most outspoken in their praise of the work which this organization has done during the past five months. The spontaneity of this praise has been a great help in the stimulation of a spirit with which to carry on the very difficult work which has been undertaken. The Alliance has reached the point now where it asks those who have been so generous with words to interpret their enthusiasm and sincerity by contributing to the New Negro Alliance so that it may dig deeper into a problem of which the surface has only been scratched. To revert to a slang expression: "Put your money where your mouth is." Help the Alliance so that it may help you. To date this organization has operated on borrowed desks, borrowed chairs, borrowed typewriters, volunteer services and a very few volunteer contributions. If we are to continue even as effectively as we have in the past some of the burdens under which we have been laboring must be removed. The Alliance, however, anticipates a much more aggressive program which will call for much more equipment and work than can be drawn from our present limited resources. There can be no doubt that the Alliance wants to work. There seems to be no doubt that the public wants this work done. If this program is to succeed the public must make the same sacrifice that the members of this organization have made in order to convince Negro Washington that there is a plenty of work that can and must be done. [[line]] WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY . . . . A man's prejudices usually lead him to do foolish things. Will Rogers, in his radio talk about "nigger spirituals" and his smart statement that he had no symapthy for persons too lazy to turn a dial so they would not hear him, was very stupid. He gained exactly nothing. If he is half the humorist he is supposed to be, he must realize that the joke is on him. After all, he was supposed to be advertising a brand of gasoline. Instead, he lost lots of customers for that gasoline. He may even have lost a radio contract for himself. Just as stupid was Congressman Warren when he ordered that two Negroes be denied service at the House restaurant. Once of the gentlemen in question had been eating there from time to time for years. Other Negroes have done the same thing. No evil resulted. It is not even reported that other diners lost their appetites. Few knew that the restaurant existed. Scarcely anyone knew that Negroes had been eating there. Now all is different. Everyone knows about it. Mr. Warren is out on the proverbial limb. His fellow Congressmen are embarrassed because they must vote on the DePriest resolution and thus put themselves on record on the issue of discrimination. Only the Negro gains anything. He has a chance to strike an effective blow at segregation under the most favorable circumstances, with the greatest possible publicity. Truly, who the gods would destroy they first make mad. [[line]] LEADERSHIP? The Time has come when Negroes must forsake the antiquated and idiotic hope that a "leader" is needed to solve the many perplexing problems that confront us. We have all heard those fervid racial arguments that end in "if we only had another Booker T. Washington or another Frederick Douglass." It seems just a bit absurd that people should fail to remember that true leadership comes as the result of a need or a call and not because of the powerful and sometimes dominating personality of some individual. Leadership evidences itself only where there is a group of idealists or discontented persons who place their causes or complaints in the hands of a person or a group in such a manner that their cause is furthered. This present economic upheaval has created the demand for timely and efficient leadership. Situations confront the Negro today [[column 2]] THE PROGRAM OF THE NEW NEGRO ALLIANCE To improve the economic and civic status of the Negro through: 1. The securing of positions which will increase the earning capacity of our group. 2. The securing of opportunities for advancement and promotion in positions secured. 3. The uniting of the purchasing power of the Colored people to be used as a lever in securing economic advantages. 4. The creation of bigger and better Negro business through increased earning power of Negroes, through a better business outlook resulting from contact and experience with successful business of the other group, and through the stimulation of businesses now run by negroes to higher levels of efficiency and service. 5. The concentrated support of all businesses which employ Negroes or in which Negro capital is invested. 6. Research and investigation which will discover and thoroughly analyze the possibilities for Negro Business and Negro labor in new fields. [[line]] Persons and Affairs . . . By William H. Hastie [[line]] DuBOIS, Ex-Leader of Negroes "If there is one evil against which the Negroes of this country expect to stand on the Crisis, and the N.A.A.C.P., to be firm and uncompromising, yes, even dogmatic, it is the evil of racial segregation." I had not thought to devote this column to Mr. Dubois on successive weeks. Dean Miller, the venerable Kelly, who announces that he will take important litigation to white lawyers and deign to employ colored lawyers for matters of less consequence, certainly deserves some space. Then there are numbers of persons and affairs deserving comment of a commendatory, or at least non-controversial nature. But Editor DuBois is back with two full pages on segregation in the February Crisis. It is the same story that the Doctor told in January, only worse and more of it. Worse, because disguised as an unprejudiced posing of a perplexing problem. More of it, [[line]] that are not comparable with situation in any period in history since the Civil War. The assurance of certain types of menial jobs which have been the haven for the large number of our people is no longer a certainty. Merely witness the numerous laundry corporations that have in the past decade wiped aside the traditional occupation of many families. Sad though it may be to remember that this type of work has been the source of income for many Negroes, it is still more foreboding when one realizes that such corporations are taking from large groups of people their chance of livelihood in the rapidly changing economic structure of the Nation. Worse than either of the two preceding complications is the unquestionable fact that no new roads of employment have been created to supplant former occupations of Negroes. Consequently, the time has come when Negroes must take a united stand and an immediate stand r face complete economic obliteration. Superficial education for the creation of more professional groups must be slowed up to allow the development of the mass of Negroes. Negro educational institutions are turning out each year by the thousands, trained teachers who are unnecessary as chaff in the wind insofar as absorption into existing educational structures is concerned. All of the strongholds of industrial education are rapily succumbing to the influence of the liberal arts education. At the same time there seems to have been a complete disregard of commercial education which by all rights should be the forte of a minority group struggling for supremacy under an existing social order that recognizes nothing other than wealth or industry. Smug, indifferent pseudo-leaders must be exposed. Incumbents holding responsible offices on the strength of their influence, either through so-called powerful Negro organizations or through powerful political machines, must live up to their responsibilities and duties of the people they represent, or be stamped out by a group imbued with a new determination and philosophy. Indications and trends throughout the country show a definite move on the part of the younger generation to refuse to be bamboozled any longer. These young people have cast aside the axioms that lead toward a complacent conservatism. They have begun a movement that is spontaneous-a movement that is the result of an irrefutable need. And further, they have attached the solution to this problem in the most effective manner, that is, through powerful local organizations uninfluenced and unburdened with national orgaizational complications, yet, strangely, moving along in perfectly synchronized procedure. [[column 3]] USE THE OPINION [[line]] THE NEW NEGRO OPINION welcomes to our columns the news of any other organizations that desire to release information to the public. The New Negro Alliance, in creating this organ, has borne in mind the very pertinent need for non-commercial organ that would serve as an educational medium for the improvement of the Negro of Washington. While the activites of the Alliance are seemingly narrow in scope, being confined to the economic problems of the Negro, we are still in hearty accord with all other programs working for the same ultimate goals. [[line]] The Membership Drive goes forth with the determination to bring into the coffers of the Alliance $12,000. This money will be used as a means of furthering the good work which the organization has already done. [[line]] because . . . . well, I wonder? One thing is clear. DuBois is now spokesman for DuBois only. He no longer voice the opinion of the Negroes of America, or of the N.A.A.C.P. in which he once was a potent factor. In his current article, the gentleman purports to state the facts of segregation. Then he announces that the problem of a "general philosophy" of segregation is the subject "which the Crisis desires to discuss during the present year in all its phases and with ample and fair representation of all shades of opinion." At another place, he says: "so this year we are going to discuss segregation and seek not dogma but enlightenment." What a subject for debate in the Crisis! If there is one evil against which the Negroes of this country expect the stand of the Crisis, and of the N.A.A.C.P. to be firm and uncompromising, yes, even "dogmatic," it is the evil of racial segregation. Discuss a philosophy of segregation! Why discuss a philosophy of humiliation, a philosophy of insult, a philosophy for defeatists, or even more ill-favored gentry! But DuBois does not state the fact objectively. He prejudged them last month. I have already paid my compliments to that judgement. This month, his effort to extenuate while purporting merely to state facts is all too obvious. Though he is seeking "enlightenment" he also states that he is going to reflect "a new and changing philosophy concerning race segregation in the United States." he plainly means a philosophy of acceptance-a philosophy of defeat at its worst! From the premise that, "it would be idiotic simply to sit on the side-lines and yell 'no segregation' in an increasingly segregated world," he proceeds to his startling conclusion that a fight against segregation is "tilting agains windmills." Again DuBois says: "Even in their economic life, they are gradually being forced out of the place in industry which they occupied in the white world and are being compelled to seek their living among themselves." Does not this alarm the Doctor? Would he found a philosophy or an economy upon such separation? We are too poor to find adequate economic opportunity within our racial group. Most of us realize that a struggle to broaden opportunity for Negroes in our (Continued on page 4)
