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[[Left page]] 216 THE CRISIS the South are gradually making headway and gaining strength. But they are not yet strong enough to overcome it. Yet this rational explanation makes the Southerners furious. "No!" they yell, "the South is a center of culture and civilization. It is really one of the most civilized parts of the globe. It is 'pure' in its blood and ideals and suited and able to lead the world." But, if this is so, what about the lynching and lawlessness? What sort of a culture is it that cannot control itself in the most fundamental of human relations, that is given over to mobs, reactionary legislation and cruel practices? That the "culture" of the South is thus shot through with barbarism can easily be proven. A white woman, whose letter the Columbia State feels compelled to publish, gives the following reasons for the lynching of a wealthy colored man: She does not believe in lynching, but (1) Crawford would not let certain classes of Negroes enter his house; (2) Crawford hired Negroes who were working for white people; (3) Crawford was "insolent" toward whites; (4) Negroes in general had their pockets full of money and would not work; (5) That for the above reasons this lynching may have "prevented some more serious trouble." A letter from a white man in New Kent, Va., to the Richmond Times-Dispatch says: "How would they like to have their wives and daughters out in the cotton fields? Somebody must do the work and the Negro is fitted by nature for it. All the rough manual labor in the South, and much in the North, is done by him. No white man will do it if he can possibly avoid it; and education totally unfits anybody for it." We ask in all honesty, Does the thing which the South calls culture, and yet which stands for sentiments like those above, represent really a modern, civilized community? Is it not rather true that the former slave states stand today at least three hundred years behind the civilized world in all essential social and economic thought? And that outside of a very few progressive whites, their only really modern, forward-looking class is the educated Negro? HAITI ON November 26, there appeared in the Chicago Record-Herald an article on Haiti. It was written by "Tom Peete Cross, Ph.D." It was a scurrilous pack of degrading misstatements, accusing the Haitians of barbaric orgies and accompanied by sensational pictures. The following correspondence has taken place concerning the libel: "It is an outrage that the University, I am sure, will not care to be connected with. Not only has Dr. Cross expressed opinions ludicrous in a scholar and contradicted himself in ways little creditable to a teacher of English, but even assuming as one must that he did not contribute headlines and pictures, he has lent himself to the grossest and most libelous kind of newspaper misrepresentation of another people at a time when our relations to that people are extraordinarily strained and subject to criticism both at home and abroad. The article is, of course, the most unscrupulous kind of propaganda for drastic control by the United States or for annexation." "I have travelled in Haiti (Dr. Cross, I infer, has not) and I have appreciated the sensitiveness of its gracious people. At a time when our relations to the Haitians are particularly strained and subject to criticism both at home and abroad, it seems doubly unfortunate for a scholar to be guilty of international immorality [[right page]] EDITORIAL 217 and to lend himself thus to the annexationist tricks of yellow journalism. "Elsie Clews Parsons." CONTRADICTION One of the methods which the South has long used in answering criticism of the North is a cool denial of the accusations. It was Henry Grady who in Boston some years ago said when asked why the Negro vote was suppressed, "It is not suppressed." This method is not quite as popular to-day as formerly but it still persists, as the following show: There is a place in the South for the Negro and there always will be. But the people of the South never will try to force the black man to stay on this side of the Mason and Dixon line. And any talk about the Negro being unable to buy a ticket to the North is sheerest tommyrot and is unworthy of publication in a journal with the high standing universally attributed to the Christian Science Monitor.- Beaumont, Tex., Enterprise. Ever since its occurrence I have felt impelled to give some public expression of my condemnation of the course of the police force in the recent arrest at the Union Station of a large number of unoffending Negroes, solely because they intended to go to another state in pursuit of work. They were not charged with any crime; they were not guilty of any offense. No warrant had been sworn out. Their arrest and incarceration were wholly without justification or excuse, in law or in right. -Judge S. B. Adams in the Savannah Morning News. I have yet to hear a true Southerner speak other than in a kindly way of the black race, and, where they deserve such honorable recognition, have ever been allowed the right of franchise. The Negro is a lazy, trifling, incompetent, good-natured child, and the worst thing that the South has done was to allow him to go to the devil in his own good way. A Southerner in the Milwaukee, Wis., Sentinel. Holding back the returns in the black belt, counting whatever vote was necessary to overcome opposition majorities in other districts, was once the plan of the Democratic machine in the Southern States. Contests for seats in Congress caused this system to give way to the present disfranchisement method. This present method eliminates practically all blacks, and has so operated in reducing the electorate of rural whites that minority government is a walk-over for the machine. -A Southerner in the New York Evening Globe. Albert Woodruff Gray, who is described by the Spartanburg Herald as a "Wall Street attorney and capitalist" attended the police court there voluntarily the other morning to inspect the treatment of the Negro lawbreaker therein. He was much impressed with what he saw and said that "the white man in New York does not have the same fair treatment that the Negro does here. I had the impression that the Negro did not have a fair chance in the South, but this has been entirely removed since I have attended the sessions of your recorder's court." -Greenville, S. C., News. We hope and trust that our leading men will get together at an early date to see if some remedy can be found for the relief of the many inoffensive Negroes who are constantly arrested upon the most frivolous pretext by country constables, carried before some magistrate and told to "submit and pay the cost." It is an undeniable fact that laborers are afraid to come to Nashville on account of the fear they have of these watchful minions of the law (?) who seem to watch every avenue of ingress in order to arrest some ignorant Negro. -Nashville, Tenn., Globe (colored). They are devoted and faithful to their white people, and in return their white people love them in a way that northern people cannot understand. -A Southern woman in the New York Sun. For God's sake urge our people to leave these lawless sections, and tell our people in the North to receive kindly these poor oppressed fugitives. -Anonymous letter in the Baltimore Afro-American. THE CRISIS Despite our known modesty we venture to emphasize certain matters in the history of the Crisis which were disclosed in the annual report but possibly lost sight of in the mass of details.