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10 THE CRISIS

courts just as soon as it can get a proper case. But the effective way to beat the "white primary" is through registering and voting on the part of the colored South. In Columbia, S. C., recently some six hundred Negroes registered. Immediately the dominant oligarchy became scared. "What do you want?" they asked, expecting a demand for a bribe. "We want," said the colored voters after careful consultation, "a new high school building." They got not only a fifty thousand dollar high school but a one hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of improvements to their streets. What was done in Columbia is possible all over the South. The Negro must work not only for his own uplift, but he can work for the uplift of the whole South, especially when the white politicians seek to force upon cities and states men whom it would be shameful to put in public office. In Atlanta, Ga., the white nominee for mayor several years ago was a notorious drunkard who was arrested in a bawdy house just before election. It was Negro votes that put a decent mayor in his place despite the "white primary." The colored women of Arkansas have the chance of their lives. The legislature has give the vote to women "in the primary elections." they expect only white women to vote in the Democratic primary; but a Republican primary should be organized forthwith, and colored women should vote in it. Some one should apply at the Democratic primary and if refused should take the matter to the courts. It is the chance of a lifetime. Let us not miss it.

THE WHITE CHURCH

Several white ministers of New York City have recently been assailing the Negro "invasion of Harlem." "The color question," the say, "is a great menace to us." In something the same way, we take it, the Gentiles were "a menace to the Jews" until Jesus Christ preached a new and very unpopular gospel which the reverend doctors of that day stopped by a timely crucifixion. The same spirit is evident in the Chicago Standard, a Baptist publication. The Standard is exercised because the editor of the CRISIS told the students of Morehouse College that lying about their ambitions and aspirations was no way to settle the race problem. He says: "Some of Dr. DuBois' hearers could not help admiring his passion for honesty while at the same time wondering whether this fundamental virtue might not be so accentuated as to delay indefinitely the solution of the great race problems confronting the nation.

"We believe that Professor DuBois, in his passion for frankness, is perhaps in danger of forgetting the injunction of Paul to speak the truth in love."

We would like to overhear St. Paul explain to this gentleman that truth with love is not truth with lies. It is precisely here that the white church is failing. It dare not listen to the truth about present conditions. It dare not inveigh against the thief who is at the bottom of modern industrial organization. It dare not say of the Negro "love your neighbor as yourself." Compelled to be dumb on these great matters of morality and decency it turns to Hell and Damnation and summons Billy Sunday to preach it. This is the course that is spelling moral bankruptcy for white Christianity.

Is there not a spirit of moral leadership in this powerful aggregation of men that can touch with mighty hands our real problems of modern life and lead us? And if there is not does the editor of the Standard and do the white ministers of Harlem believe that their brand of religion can endure? Awake ! put on thy strength, O Zion! 

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"THERE WAS ONE TIME" 11

"ThERE WAS ONE TiME!"

A STORY OF SPRiNG 

BY JESSIE FAUSET

[[image]] "UNCLE DICK."

I. to III.

ANNA RITTER, a pretty brown school-teacher played truant one spring day and went strolling in the park. Her little cousin, Theophilus, had spilled cocoa on her school clothes, so she wore her best blue gown. This made her dream of the story of the little Shepherdess and the Prince which her French class was painfully putting into English. Then suddenly came the unpleasant advances of a white tramp, but a brown and curly haired stranger rescued her and they sat down together quite entranced and had a long talk, until Anna had to hurry home before either had learned the other's name.

IV.

Not until June did Anna encounter the little shepherdess again.

She settled down the night before the lesson was due to read it with a great deal of interest. Her meeting with "the prince" as she always called the strange young man, had left on her a definite impress. She wondered if ever she would meet him again, and wished ardently that she might. Her naiveté and utter lack of self-importance kept her from feeling piqued at his failure to hunt her up. She wondered often if life still seemed interesting to him, found herself borrowing a little of his high ardor. On the whole, her attitude toward "the adventure," as she loved to call it, was that of the little shepherdess and she brought back from that day only a mind "garlanded with pleasant memories."

Perhaps, she thought, fancifully that Thursday evening,-the shepherdess meets the prince again and he gives her a position as court-artist. And she opened the little text to find out. But that lesson was never prepared, for Theophilus came in at that point with a bleeding gap in his head, caused by falling off a belated ice wagon. The sight of blood always made Mrs. Fetter sick, so Anna had the wound to clean and bind and Theophilus to soothe and get to bed.

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[[image: portrait of young man in suit and tie]]