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8  THE CRISIS

THE WORLD LAST MONTH

THREE vast events stand out: the Russian freedom, suffrage for English women, and War.

I envisage the rise of Russia in one picture. Catherine Breshovsky returning from Siberia, after a life-long fight, after all seemed lost. So some day a black woman will ride down the world crying, "Disfranchisement is done! 'Jim-Crow' cars are gone! Segregation is past! I am an American!"

The English suffragettes did not hesitate when war came. They were English and although bowed beneath age-long insult and injustice, they fought for England. So will we black men fight against Germany for America. God grant us freedom, too, in the end.

War! It is an awful thing! It is Hell. It is the end of civilization. It is an appeal to barbarism; yet it comes. Bad as it is, slavery is worse; German dominion is worse; the rape of Belgium and France is worse. We fight shoulder to shoulder with the world to gain a world where war shall be no more.

LOYALTY.

NOTHING better illustrates the attitude of the Bourbon South than the recent tales about German propaganda among Negroes.

Slowly, but surely the Negro is winning his fight. Despite wretchedly inadequate schools, peonage, low wages and public insult, the Negro is getting education, buying land and homes and migrating slowly but surely to a land of liberty.

The slave-thinking South is beset by fear of losing these peons either by migration or by their regaining their lost franchise. Any tale or propaganda by which the Bourbon South can get the country to believe the Negro is a menace would play straight into the hands of the slaveholders. Martial law would be declared in the South and this is what the reactionaries want: to stop migration.

They are playing with fire! The Negro is far more loyal to this country and its ideals than the white Southern American. He never has been a disloyal rebel. He never fought for slavery in a land of Liberty. He never nullified the basic principles of democracy because he hated the people whom he had hurt!

Enslaved, raped and despised though he has b been and is, the Negro knows that this is his country because he helped found it, fought for its liberties and ever upheld its ideals.

No temptation to trust German race-hatred has ever been offered and if offered would not for a moment have been considered. Back of the German mask is the grinning skeleton of the Southern slave driver.

THE MIGRATION.

THE migration of Negro laborers from South to North continues as it should. Southern white papers are filled with contradictory statements; to-day, with editorials ridiculing the exodus, painting fearsome pictures of the awful condition of the emigrants and chronicling their wholesale return; tomorrow come editorials bewailing the loss of labor and crying for drastic measures to enslave the black peons.

Meantime the truth is clear: the demand for black workers in the North is unprecedented; after the war the demand will continue because not for a generation will immigration from Europe rise to appreciable figures. There are not jobs for everybody; there is no demand for the lazy and casual, but trained, honest colored laborers are welcome in the North at good wages, just as they are lynched in the South for impudence. Take your choice!

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EDITORIAL   9

THE NAVAL RULER.

When the United States takes possession of foreign territory it send to govern it a naval officer. But naval officers are not trained to govern. They are trained to fight! They have made no study of social organization, of human development of industrial organization; if they are not quite unsympathetic, it is no fault of their training or of the traditions of their caste; yet, to-day they are well-nigh absolute masters in Nicaragua, San Domingo, Hayti [Haiti] and the erstwhile Danish West Indies. It would be impossible to conceive a more dangerous or foolhardy experiment.

A MORAL VOID.

There can be no doubt but that the South is lacking in certain moral stamina which must be found among successful, forward-striving people. Recently, for instance, the press of the country went wild over the brave action of Governor Stanley of Kentucky. What then? This same Governor Stanley is apparently going to allow the rescued victim of that mob to be lynched by court under forms of law. there would seem to be no reasonable doubt but that Lube Martin killed Guthrie Diuguid in self-defense after Diuguid had followed him for a year and sworn to kill him. Yet Martin is sentenced to death and the Governor dares not raise his voice. So too in South Carolina. A man is lynched because he is a self-respecting, wealthy Negro citizen who refuses to let a dirty mob publicly whip him. Governor Manning makes brave professions and sends them out through the associated press yet to-day every single lyncher is free and unindicted. The Governor does nothing and will do nothing. How different is the tale at Lima, Ohio! There a mob attempted to lynch a Negro but was foiled by the brave sheriff. The ring leaders of the mob were arrested and the sheriff writes us: "We have one serving time in the Ohio Penitentiary, three serving time in the Mansfield Reformatory, one locked up in Ottawa Jail waiting return of Court of Appeals, one out on $1,500 bond waiting answer from the Court of Appeals, for a new trial, several that we could not get the strongest of evidence against that came in and pleaded guilty that got suspended sentences by paying costs which amounted anywhere from $25 to $50, and are under our watch for one year to see that they don't drink and do anything bad, and we surely have our eyes on them and will continue so. I also have one locked in the county jail yet awaiting his trial, several to try yet, and about four who were indicted that we have not been able to locate yet. We have them whipped here and I hope and pray that our steps here in this matter will have its effect everywhere."

A SUGGESTION.

The Republican party is on the rocks. The disfranchised Negro sees light by dimly. The disfranchised woman is still disfranchised in the vast majority of inhabited states. Suppose these three groups strike a simple bargain: Let them work for a Constitutional Amendment basing representation in Congress on the actual vote cast for president in each state.

We pause for reply.

REGISTER AND VOTE.

It is of prime necessity that the colored people of the South should begin to break down the "white primary." The N. A. A. C. P. proposes to take the matter of the "white primary" into the

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