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194 The Crisis
might lead one at first to believe. THe color line is there and sharply drawn. Women have had difficulty in having gloves and shoes fitted at the stores, the restaurants are not for all that hunger. still the better class of people, colored and white, can and do meet each other. There is a great deal of co-operation and good will and the black folk are fighters and not followers of the doctrine of surrender. 
The group at San Diego I shall remember chiefly through the women's club and the interesting audience of colored people, white people and radicals. Here I had my first sight of the Pacific and realized how California faces the newest color problem, the problem of the relation of the Orient and Occident. The colored people of California do not quite realize the bigness of this problem and their own logical position. They do not yet realize that the Japanese are protagonists in that silly but awful fight of color against color which is world wide, and which will only escape a last great catastrophe because of its utter unreasonableness. 
The new blood of California with its snap and ambition has captured Los Angeles, but is just penetrating Oakland and San Francisco. In these latter cities the older, easier-going colored man, born free, but also born listless, still holds sway and looks with suspicion upon the Southern and Eastern newcomer. Then, too, the white trades union have held the Negro out and down, so that here one finds a less hopeful, pushing attitude. At the same time, yet curiously intertwined casually with this, there is less of the color bar. I stopped at Oakland in a good hotel and dined in San Francisco at first-class restaurants. Notwithstanding this the opportunity of the San Francisco Negro to earn a living is very difficult; but he knows this and he is beginning to ask why. Moreover,
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single house and a solitary tree in the front yard behind the sidewalk.
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Dr. Somerville's Home 

Colored California 195
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home with bushes in the front yard. Family of 7 standing in front of the house on the grass and sidewalk
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Mr. Greene's family and home
San Francisco, being as it is in the grip of labor folk and radicals, is beginning to see that the Negro problem is not so very far from their problem as one might think. I dined with the social workers of the twin cities and talked with them frankly of our difficulties and found them sympathetic.
At Stockton I found a handful of folk with the familiar conditions of the Eastern small town-the colored group shut out and almost forgotten; somewhat stagnant and dull eyed and yet with a certain stirring and leaven and a certain premonition of awakening; and then, at last, out from the glory of the Golden Gate and through the red heat of Sacramento, I flew up and on toward the great ghost of Shasta. Shasta, where the earth, white robed and silent, walks up into Heaven and disappears, while we wind round about in cut and canon with full and brawling rivers. All day we wander round as though fascinated by the crowning splendor of this mysterious bridal.
It is difficult to illustrate one's impressions, but THE CRISIS gives a few bits of Los Angeles to show the stranger its beauty and enterprise. Our cover picture represents the beautiful home of Mr. and Mrs. William Foster. At the bottom of page 194 is the pretty new home of a bride and groom, Dr. and Mrs. J. A. Somerville where the editor was entertained during his stay. ON this page is the family of the secretary of the colored Y.M.C.A. and their home, while the last picture on page 196, is the home of Mr. Spigner, a photographer, who furnished most of these pictures. 
Of the business life of Los Angeles one may get some idea from the picture of the shop of a successful merchant tailor, on page 192, and the business block owned by R.C. Owens, the wealthiest colored resident of the city.