Viewing page 11 of 23

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

  This reminds us of a little correspondence of our own, which we subjoin:
"Chairman, Resolutions Committee, 
  "National American Woman Suffrage Association,
      "Louisville, Kentucky.
  "Will you submit the following resolution to the convention for consideration:
  "Resolved, that the women who are trying to lift themselves out of the class of the disfranchised, the class of the insane and criminal, express their sympathy with the black men and women who are fighting the same battle and recognize that it is as unjust and as undemocratic to disfranchise human beings on the ground of color as on the ground of sex.
      "(Signed)  Martha Gruening."
"My dear Dr. Du Bois:
 "I am requested to convey to you a message that in the opinion of the majority of the resolutions committee at the recent convention of our association in Louisville, it was not deemed advisable to include the resolution presented by your association among those to be presented to the convention.
      "Yours very truly,
   "(Signed) Mary Ware Dennett,
      "Corresponding Secretary."
 A prominent suffragist adds:
 "I cannot let the occasion go by with-out at least giving myself the satisfaction of saying how very much I regret the action of the resolutions committee and that I am especially sorry that the matter did not come up at all so that any one outside the resolutions committee could even express an opinion on the subject while the convention was in session. I earnestly hope that a similar resolution will be presented at next year's convention, and that those of us who care about the subject can have the privilege of doing our best to put it through."

"A STRANGER AND YE TOOK ME NOT IN"
   The Literary Digest fives much space in its columns to a quotation from "A Black Man's Appeal to His White Brothers," by Dr. R. S. Lovingood president of Samuel Houston College at Austin, Tex. He writes:
"I was in a Northern city recently. I was a stranger. I was hungry. There was food, food on every hand. I had money, and finally I was compelled to feast on a box of crackers and a piece of cheese. I did not ask to eat with the white people, but I did as to eat.
   "I was traveling. I got off at a station almost starved. I begged the keeper of a restaurant to sell me a lunch in a paper and hand it out of the window. He refused and I was compelled to ride a hundred miles farther before I could get a sandwich.
   "I was in a white church on official business. It was a cold day, blowing day, raining, sleeting, freezing. Warm lunch was served in the basement to my white brothers. I could not sit in the corner of that church and eat a sandwich. I had to go nearly two miles in the howling winds and sleet to get a lunch.
   "I have seen in the South white and black workingmen elbowing each other, eating their lunches at noon and smoing the pipe of peace. Worldly men give me a welcome in their stores. The Government post office serves me without discrimination. But not so in that church run in the name of Jesus.
   "I could not help but feel that Jesus, too, like me, an unwelcome visitor, was shivering in the cold, and could not find a place in that inn, and was saying: 'I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat. I was thirsty and you gave me no drink.' For Jesus was not an Anglo-Saxon.
   "I went to a station to purchase my ticket. I was there thirty minutes before the ticket office opened. When the ticket office opened I at once appeared at the window. While the agent served the white people at the other side I remained there beating the window until the train pulled out. I was compelled to jump on the train without my ticket and wire back to have my trunk expressed to me. Considering the temper of the people, the separate-coach law may be the wisest plan for the conditions in the South, but the statement of 'equal accommodations' is all bosh and twaddle. I pay the same money, but I cannot have a chair car, or lavatory, and rarely a through car. I must crawl out all through the night in all kinds of weather and catche another dirty 'Jim Crow' coach. This is not a request to ride with white people. It is a request for justice, for 'equal accommodations' for the same money. I made an attempt to purchase some cheap land in a frontier section. The agent told me that the settlers, most of whom were Northerners, would not tolerate a Negro in that section. So I could not purchase it. I protest.
   "I rode through a small town in Southern Illinois. When the train stopped I went to the car steps to take a view of the country. this is what greeted me: 'Look here, darkey, don't get off at this station.' I put my head out the window at a certain small village in Texas, whose reputation was well known to me. This greeted me: 'Take your head back, nigger, or we will knock it off.'"


                            EDITORIAL

DIVINE RIGHT.
   We would like to know what rights the white people of this land are going to be able to retain? Step by step their dearest and most cherished prerogatives are being invaded, and THE CRISIS wants to say right here and now that it does not countenance oppression of the downtrodden whites by arrogant black folk. A few years ago the right to kick a darky off the sidewalk was unquestioned in the most devout circles, and yet today they actually complain at being called by their front names.
   Everybody know that for three hundred years the most jealously guarded right of white men in this land and others has been the right to seduce black women without legal, social or moral penalty. Many white mothers and daughters of the best families have helped to maintain this ancient and honored custom by loading the victims of their fathers' and husbands' lust with every epithet of insult and degradation. Thus has the sweet cleanness of their own race virtue shone holier and higher.
   Yet what do we see today? The black husbands an brothers are beginning to revolt. In three separate cases, in three consecutive months and in three localities of the southern South have these blind and ignorant fellows actually killed white men who were demanding these ancient rights, and have compelled the chivalry of the land to rise and lynch the black defenders of defenceless virtue; also two strangely illogical black women have been simultaneously killed and a dark and whimpering little girl burned to a quivering crisp.
   What does all this mean? Does it portend an unthinkable time when the white man can only get his rights by lynching impudent black husbands and squeamish sweethearts? If so, then, by the Great Jehovah, we can depend on the best friends of the Negro to vindicate the ancient liberties of this land! Anglo-Saxon freedom seems safe at least in the hands of most leaders of Southern society, not to mention the blue blood of Pennsylvania.
   Meantime, dear colored brethren, we confess to the error of out ways. We have steadfastly opposed lynching on all occasions, but the South is converting us. We acknowledge our fault. Hereafter we humbly pray that every man, black or white, who is anxious to defend women, will be willing to be lynched for his faith. Let black men especially kill lecherous white invaders of their homes and then take their lynching gladly like men.
   It's worth it!

OPTIMIST AND PESSIMIST
   Few people from without understand the inner currents of the darker world. Should they be told out "optimists" are largely pessimists, while our "pessimists" are optimists, many would be mystified. Yet this is true. 
There is a large class of professional colored optimists. They are not optimists because they believe
      "--- God's in His heaven, 
       All's right with the world."
   On the contrary, believing that the battle for Negro manhood in the United Stated is practically lost, they are whispering "Sauve qui peut" and "Spoil the Egyptians," and other