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THE CRISIS ADVERTISER

QUO VADIS?

For forty-two years the Republican party has ridden up to the gates of heaven on the back of the Negro and then tied him on the outside. With the patience of the pack mule the black man submitted. The grand old party of Abraham Lincoln would surely come out to the outer gate where he stood tethered and lead him into the promised land! Such implicit confidence, such blind, dogged faith, the world has seen but once before - the time nearly 300 years ago, when the white men in their square-rigged sloops sailed down the Eastern Atlantic from Europe to Africa, and with words of honey, trinkets and dross enticed into slavery the forbears of the present trustful, gullible black American. Brought hither in droves he was allowed himself to be herded ever since, until to-day he stands before the world as the greatest psychological phenomenon in all history; actually demonstrating that it is a possibility for millions of people of a given racial persuasion to think alike for nearly fifty years, no matter how varying and differing the propositions submitted to his consideration. Is this a sign of mental activity or mental stagnation or, to be fair, does it mean that in American politics, when white men are naturally differing and disagreeing over great live questions of civic and economic policies, black men must forever herd themselves around the standards of a dead issue? Does it mean that while the white man advances from the discussion of Greenbackism, Bimentalism and Tariff Schedules to Government Ownership of Public Utilities, the Direct Election of United States Senators, the Initiative and Referendum; the polemics of the black man must ever be predicated upon Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War?
This is a grave question in any kind of a civilized government. In a democratic republic it is a question which connotes a condition of positive danger. For in our government each citizen is a sovereign and the very health and life of the nation depends upon the intelligent deliberation and wisdom with which each sovereign meets the questions submitted to him. An ignorant electorate is a voidable danger; an electorate not ignorant, but stubbornly, blindly and traditionally, prejudiced and vindictive, is a menace which must be overthrown or it will in time subvert all government of the people, by the people and for the people. The enlightened publicists of the nation, irrespective of party, have observed this dire phenomenon, and North and South, East and West, white men of all shades of political beliefs have grown callous to the black man's pleadings for political and civic liberty under the Constitution. Of the servants of the Lord the Negro received only the one talent, and as it came to pass in the parable of holy writ he comes forth to-day crying: "And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth. * * *" And the talent which was his was taken from him and given to him who had the ten talents. Nearly half a century ago the talent of American citizenship was given to the Negro. Wherein to-day, after voting like wooden blocks all these years, can he show an increase of his powers as a citizen? Almost pari passu with the onward progress of the Republican party the Negro has descended lower and lower in the scale of American citizenship. He cannot accuse the Democratic party of being the responsible and sole agent of his retrogression; for the power, the nearly absolute power, has been in the hands of the Republican party throughout all but eight of these dreary years of hopes born to die again. Whether in that clause apportioning direct taxes and representatives among the people of the several States, or in that which makes the House of Representatives the sole judge of the qualifications of its own members, or in the clause which guarantees to each State a Republican form of government there is ample law in the Constitution. It isn't legislation which is needed, but the honest desire to enforce the law already written. This the Republican party has failed to do. There3 are two kinds of sins - the sin of commission and the sin of omission, and the not doing of those things which we ought to do is just as culpable as the doing of those things which we out not to do. This in a general way sums up the relation of the black man to the government in which he lives. There are some facts of recent occurrence which show to what low estate the Negro has fallen in the house of his friends.
At Chicago, last June, sixty-six black men held the balance of power in the Republican convention. The could have nominated Roosevelt. The nominated Taft; not that they loved Roosevelt less, but because, as black Republicans, they obeyed the behests of the regular party machinery. For their loyalty they asked for a radical platform plank for the race they represented. They received the weakest expression for justice to Negroes which has appeared in a Republican platform since 1872.
When Roosevelt announced the date for his Bull Moose convention for last August there were hundreds of thousands of black men whose bosoms heaved with the

THE CRISIS ADVERTISER

enthusiastic hope that at last the hour had struck when the dashing Chevalier of the "Square Deal," "The Door of Hope," "All Men Up and No Men Down," would make solemn asseveration of those Presidential utterances which in a former day had wrung from their throats lusty and exultant hosannas. "On to the Roosevelt convention" was the cry. "The Crusader of the Common People is the Moses who will lead us out of the wilderness." Every Southern State elected its full quota of colored delegates. Like burning excelsior their enthusiasm was a "fast but fading fire;" for there came out of the cloudless heavens a thunderbolt which staggered the nation and dashed to the ground, with a cruelty unparalleled, the high hopes of the mighty black phalanx of delegates who stood ready to rush to the standards of their idol. It was the Julian Harris letter, in which Roosevelt, in the insane delusion that he might capture some Southern States, proclaimed his opposition to the sitting of Southern colored men in his convention. Disaster followed disaster. Hoping still that the convention, whose symbolic hymn was "Onward, Christian Soldiers," would listen to their humble pleadings, these colored delegates, through the kindly and noble offices of Prof. Spingarn of Columbia University, himself a delegate, offered the following plank for incorporation in the platform of the Bull Moose party!
"The Progressive party recognizes that distinctions of race or class in political life have no place in a democracy. Especially does the party realize that a group of 10,000,000 people who have in a generation changed form a slave to a free labor system, re-establish family life, accumulated $1,000,000,000 of real property, including 20,000,000 acres of land, and reduced their illiteracy from 90 to 30 per cent., deserve and must have justice, opportunity and a voice in their own government. The party, therefore, demands for the American of Negro descent the repeal of unfair discriminatory laws and the right to vote on the same terms in which other citizens vote."
The reading of this plank instantly struck a popular chord and everything bade fair for its passage, when a man arose and made objection. He was given profound attention, for he was a man whose renown extended over two continents. He had been a member of the Cabinet of Theodore Roosevelt and later Minister to Turkey. In private life he was a merchant prince and philanthropist. This man himself was a member of a despised race of people whose struggles for civic and religious liberty have been the marvel of centuries. He encouched his objections to this plank of justice to another oppressed people in earnest but brief speech. He carried the day and the plank was voted down. This man was Oscar Straus, the Bull Moose nominee for Governor of New York. Thus was the Negro betrayed in the house of his friends.
But where can he go?
The Democratic party, standing on the Jeffersonian principle of "equal rights to all, special privileges to none," is opposed to the practice of placing in its party platforms declarations making of any class or race its special pledges; it believes that planks of this kind are not only inserted for decoy purposes, but that they are of a piece with class legislation. At its national convention in Baltimore, last June, Senator Newlands of Nevada, a member of the resolutions committee, made a stubborn attempt to have his plank declaring for the national disfranchisement of colored persons made a part of the Democratic platform. He made a direct and impassioned appeal to the Southern members of the committee, among whom were Senators Tillman and Vardaman. When the vote was taken it stood 39 to 1. Not only did this Democratic committee on resolutions refuse to deliver this wanton attack upon colored men, in spite of the fact that colored men had always voted against the Democratic party; but in the convention itself marked courtesies were extended to the members of the National Colored Democratic League, and to the ladies who accompanied many of them.
An earlier instance of this disposition of the Democratic party to extend the olive branch to the black man was afforded shortly after the Congressional campaign of 1910, when colored voters in unprecedented numbers assisted in the election of the first Democratic Congress since 1894. Speaker Champ Clark addressed a delegation of colored men in the Speaker's Room at the Capitol, and in a speech remarkable for its profound sincerity assured the colored people that inasmuch as colored men were members of the House would see to it that no legislation inimical to Negroes should be given serious consideration as long as he was Speaker. And this promise was religiously observed to the closing day of the Sixty-second Congress.
It does not require a philosopher or a statesman to see a light in a sky long shrouded in darkness. All that is needed is clear vision and a mind free from the cobwebs of ancient history and traditional prejudice. Governor Wilson is the highest type of a Christian gentleman and scholar. His antecedents, training and public life are absolute guarantee of an aversion to everything which savors of "Man's inhumanity to man." But seldom in their political career have colored men had the opportunity to vote for a man who possessed his sympathy with the struggles and aspirations of humanity. The opportunity lies open to them and there are thousands who will accept humanity. The opportunity lies open to them and there are thousands who will accept it. The others we exhort as did Rienzi the Romans: "Awake, arise, or be forever fallen."
(Adv.)