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194  THE CRISIS

woman, what then when the black man dares to lift lustful eyes to the white man's woman? Can the Anglo-Saxon exterminate the children of his own blood, half-breed though they be?
"'Let him who is without a blemish cast the first stone.'" 
Here is a new note in a Negro paper, which perhaps answers the Southern lady: "It seems that a few weeks ago several white apple peddlers visited Boley, Okla., and remained over night. One of the white men made himself very friendly and familiar after nightfall with several of Boley's Negro citizens, and finally suggested that a colored girl be brought to entertain him. He was promptly knocked down by the Negro young men and thoroughly thrashed. He ran from Boley and took refuge at Okemah, a white town nearby. He got sympathy by telling the officers he had been beaten and robbed by Negroes at Boley. The white officers went to arrest the Boleyites and their treatment was magnified by the Okemah Ledger, a white journal, into a race riot."
The colored paper, the Boley Progress, says: "Any white gentlemen who comes to Boley will be given courteous treatment, whether he comes on business or sightseeing.
"The citizens of Boley realize that the white people of the country have helped them and are yet helping them, and we are not ingrates, neither are we all criminals, but we are not fools.
"The low-down, insignificant night-riding jackasses, who seem to be a cross between a hyena and a coyote, and who would lynch a Negro man in the daytime and would hunt for Negro women at night, might as well understand that Boley doesn't give a corrugated whoop in hell for their presence, and this atmosphere won't produce the woman they are looking for."
The following communication may be a joke, but it is a grim one:
"Whereas, the United States of America is the only country in which human beings are burned at the stake;
"And, whereas, the President of the United States has thus far declined to use, in any way, the influence and power of his great office to suppress this horrible practice of primitive barbarism and savagery:
"Be it, therefore, resolved, that the Cosmopolitan Society of America petition, and it hereby does petition, His Imperial Majesty, the Czar of Russia, the organizer of the Hague Peace Conference, to use his good offices with the government at Washington, to urge upon the President and the Congress the human necessity of discouraging and suppressing, if need be, by federal legislation, the burning of men, women and children at the stake.
"And be it further resolved, that this resolution be forwarded to the Russian Ambassador at Washington, and that a copy thereof be furnished the Associated Press."

When Thieves Fall out. 

Some interesting side lights on democracy in the South have come to hand. The New Orleans Picayune publishes, this broadside to reassure its supporters in a fictional fight: 

White Voters Will Be Guaranteed Full Rights in the Primaries

Law Intended to Give Franchise to Every White Man in the State

The Governor's Announcement

"New Orleans, La., Jan. 20, 1912. 

"As there is a conflict between the attorney- general of the State and the district attorney of the Parish of Orleans as to the law on the question of the right of voters to call for assistance in fixing their ballot, I desire to announce that, as governor of the State, I concur in the opinion of the attorney- general. 

"I know that the purpose of the registration sections of the constitution is to give the right of franchise to all the white men in the state. 

"I know that the intention of the primary election law is to allow any white man to call for assistance if he desires same. 

"The general election law provides an emblem for the voter; the primary law provides none; the general election law provides that only those suffering from physical disability can ask for assistance; the primary election law specifically omitted the words 'Physical Disability,' and permits any voter, whether registered under the educational qualification or otherwise to call for assistance, if he states that he is unable to fix his ballot."

The Augusta Chronicle, in a similar fictional fight, makes this unbelievable accusation against white voters: 

"That hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars are being put up, by somebody, to pay the taxes of a certain element of voters in this community, for the purpose of voting them against commission government, is being daily demonstrated. 

Opinion 195

"It is being done so openly that any citizen may drop in at the court house and witness it for himself at any hour of the day. The 'heelers' are there with the money, and the taxes are being paid openly - shamelessly. 

"Now, the question naturally arises, who is so interested in the defeat of commission government as to put up all this money - and why?" 

The Times-Dispatch of Richmond, Va., completes this picture by showing the beneficent effect of disenfranchisement on colored people: 

"That the city council has not dealt fairly with the Negro since his elimination from politics was tacitly admitted by a special council committee last night, when it began a general discussion of the housing problems of the Negro race, in their hearing, not only on health and morality, but their effect on the city generally. 

"The special committee was appointed as a result of the passage last year of the segregation ordinance- an effort on the part of the council to prevent Negroes from encroaching on Clay Street. 

"Twenty or more of the representative leaders of the Negro race appeared before the committee last night showing, that while annexations have been made in all directions, and large sections improved for the homes of white people, there has been no addition to the Negro quarter of the city in a generation; that rows of houses have been standing in the city limits for forty years without water or sewerage; that there is neither curbing, paving nor street cleaning through the poorer sections; that contaminated wells are used by hundreds of families who are unable to secure city water, both because of the unwillingness of the city to extend its mains and because of the conduct of property owners and agents, who, even where such mains are provided, will not supply plumbing for their properties until compelled to do so by the Board of Health." 

The Houston (Tex.) Post adds an illuminating word to this symposium, in a reference to President Taft's recent remarks: "In Texas we used to have liberal election laws, and the elections were participated in by most of the potential voters. It is not the case now. The poll- tax qualification, which was adopted principally to suppress the Negro vote, has had the effect of barring two white man to every Negro delinquent. There are men in Texas at the present time seeking a further suppression of voters. As the poll- tax qualification bars most of the Negroes, these additional 'safeguards' are intended to take the ballot away from white men."

Heckling the Hecklers.

The president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association is timid on the Negro problems and thinks Negroes oppose women's suffrage. Celia Parker Woolsey answers her in the Public: "We are told that 'all Negroes are opposed to woman suffrage,' an astonishing statement, which will not bear examination. I have worked with and among colored people for many years. In the institution with which I am connected, the Frederick Douglass Center, the subject of woman suffrage is a familiar and welcome theme. Suffrage meetings have been held in our assembly room, where the subject was discussed by white and black. I have yet to hear a serious argument on the negative side from a colored speaker.

"The feeling of the most thoughtful Negroes on this subject is one that does equal credit to heart and understand. 'I know what disfranchisement means,' said one of these in my hearing. 'I have suffered from it, my race suffers from it still. I should be ashamed to impose such a wrong on any other class.' Compare this to the rallying, cry, 'Do not touch the Negro problem!'

"It may be well in this connection to tell the story of one of Miss Anthony's very early visits to Chicago, her first, I believe. She has come in the hope of securing a chance to speak her gospel word. Church after church was solicited from the white clergy and invariably refused. It so happened that the friend with whom Miss Anthony was stopping lived near the color district and was on friendly terms with her dusky-skinned neighbors. She called on the pastor of Quinn Chapel, the oldest and largest colored church in the city, whose use was promptly granted. Thus, it was from a colored pulpit, and in the main to a colored audience, that our Susan addressed her first argument in the city of the lakes.

"Women suffrage has no more loyal friend than Frederick Douglass. Doubtless he injured himself in many more cautious minds by thus openly allying himself with a cause which was in those days far more unpopular than the black man's. Did anyone say to him, 'Let the woman question alone?' One can easily imagine the reply he would have made, he who said: 'I know no race problem; there is a human problem.' His last public act was to attend a meeting of the National Association, where Miss Anthony spoke words of gratitude and praise to him, pinning a flower in his buttonhole. He went to his home and an hour later he was dead."