Viewing page 11 of 27

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

20 The Crisis

amicably, we would have one or two weak white churches with a membership of 50 or 75 each, and the colored people would all worship in churches of their own colored preachers."
..Now and Then, published in Honolulu, writes editorially:

"Honolulu ought to be free from race prejudice, but it isn't. So many people of so many different races are mingling here in active life that even a blind man would soon realize that every race produces noble men and women. I have never thought that I was superior to others because I happened to be born white. I can readily believe from knowledge and experience that there are many people of darker skins who are better than I. In this world and probably in the next it is neither race nor color that will count. Character is the only thing of enduring value. Make your character something that you can be proud of, and never mind your color. God made that and his stamp ought to guarantee it. If it suits him, no one else has any right to complain. 
******
"The person who is not willing to grant the common rights of humanity to all, no matter their race or color, is not a man himself, but a contemptible thing unworthy to walk on this earth and a long way from the road to Heaven. If you have any race prejudice, be a man and rid yourself of it. You can't be a man and think yourself better than others on account of race or color, and usually the persons who make the most pretentions to superiority on this account have little else of which they can boast." 
Notwithstanding this the Churchman, of New York City, continues optimistic.
"Despite lynching in the South, which is an expression of community lawlessness rather than Negro antagonism, there is reason to believe that prejudice against the Negro is dying out. When the Negro Exposition was held at Richmond, Virginia, a short time ago, the newspapers of that city warmly supported the undertaking, urging white people to attend, and there were thousands of white visitors. At the exposition in Chicago, where the work of 2,000,000 Negro school children was on exhibition, the opening day was declared a holiday by the city council and all municipal and county offices were closed. In connection with the meetings of the National Negro Business League, at Boston, the New York Post publishes some figures relative to the commercial progress of the Negro during the last fifteen years."
We regret, however, that the Churchman is not optimistic enough to spell Negro with a large "N." We have accordingly edited the above copy. 
"Grapho," writing in the Congregationalist, exhibits an optimism less complacent, but to our mind much more effective. He insists "that the real white man under the burden of the world is not necessarily the man with the white skin, but the man with the white heart. There is a white man who blusters and boasts of his superiority, and is an offense wherever he goes. There is a white man who beats down the weak and excuses his conquest and crimes on the ground that his is 'the paramount nation.' 'No doubt you have found,' said President Wilson in his speech to the naturalized citizens of Philadelphia, 'that justice in the United States goes only with a pure heart and right purpose, as it does everywhere else in the world.' That is the white nation, 'the nation,' as he added, 'so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.' The other kind of white man is likely to make more burdens than he bears. His selfishness sends him forth looking for a people upon whom he can levy tribute, a people whom he can compel to bear his burdens. His superiority is a means of conquest, not of uplift." 

[[swastika]] 

COMPLAINT AND ANSWER
[[left margin]] LOGIC OF TWO WHITE SOUTHERNERS [[left margin/]] [[right indent]] Clarence Poe, editor of the Progressive Farmer of North Carolina, who has been for years advocating "Jim-Crow" farms in the south is growing dithyrambic is his appeal: "Let me repeat, therefore, that while as God knows my heart I believe in being just to the Negro, I also believe-and here is the thought that I fear has never occurred to thousands of earnest, sincere, well meaning students of the problem- I also believe in being just to the laboring white man whose ancestors

OPINIONS 21

Through centuries of toil and aspiration and discipline have wrought out the civilization which we enjoy- the civilization to which the Negro, moreover, owes the very peace, safety and prosperity he enjoys.
"And I tell you tonight, my friends, with all earnestness of my soul, that present conditions in the South are not just to the laboring white man-that the working white farmer hasn't an equal chance with the Negro in the struggle for future control of the rural South. I tell you that while I know that here and there individual Negroes are treated with injustice-hideous injustice that reacts to our own hurt-yet considered as a race the really disadvantaged and handicapped man in the South today is not the Negro."
To this the editor of the Elizabeth City (N.C.) Independent makes answer which needs no elaboration:
"It seems to me that a better way to increase the number of white land owners in the South, would be to make it possible for more white persons to own land in the South. It seems to me that this would be a better way than Dr. Poe's segregation scheme. If Dr. Poe gets a law passed in every state prohibiting the sale of land in white neighborhoods to Negroes, he will not have increased the number of white land owners, but he will have strengthened and fortified those land monopolists who are swiftly taking possession of the South. 
"Anything that tends to discourage the Negro land owner tends to throw that much more Negro wage labor into the open market. White tenants and white laborers are thereby forced into keener competition with the Negro. The big landowner deals with his white tenants and white laborers on a basis determined by the availability and cheapness of Negro labor. The more Negro day labor available, the harder the terms for the white tenant and laborer.
"What the South needs is more small landowners regardless of nationality or color. There are millions of idle acres awaiting development, that will continue to wait so long as wealthy landowners wait upon cheap labor. There are millions of foreigners who would be only too glad to come in and work these lands if they could buy small farms on easy terms and not be treated as Negroes are treated. Instead of framing laws to keep any class from owning land, we should make it possible for greater numbers to own land."

[[swastika]]

THE STUDY OF THE NEGRO
[[left margin]] THE LASTES ATLANTA UNIVERSITY PUBLICATION [[left margin/]] [[right indent]] The New York Evening Post says" "There is but one means of determining the degree in which the Negro is advancing in morals and manners. The census, tax-lists, and school record progress in economic and educational directions. Nothing but the observation of skilled inquirers can register conditions as to home life. Professor Hart, in 'The Southern South,' remarks the rarity of such investigation. 'How many white people in the city of Atlanta, for instance, have actually been inside the home of a prosperous, educated Negro? How many have actually sat over the fire of a one-room cabin? The southern whites, with few exceptions, teach no Negroes, attend no Negro church services, penetrate into no Negro society.' Only in recent years has there been a marked increase in the number of social studies of the Negro. Vanderbilt University has published several monographs; Dr. DuBois has directed researches in city and country; Dr. Odum, of the University of Mississippi, has compiled one of great value; while the new Phelps-Stokes Fund at the University of Georgia supports a Fellow who is to give his time to study of the Negro. But the chief work has been that of Atlanta University, which eighteen years ago issued its first volume on black life; and has undertaken a series of decennial studies, initiated in 1903 with a comprehensive survey of 'Morals and Manners among American Negroes.' The second with a resumé of the decade's progress, has just been published. 

******

"Such a survey as this is evidence of the concreteness of the goals towards which social leaders may work in the South. The Negros have the task of transforming their churches into a vital energetic agency; the whites have the