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76 The Crisis

that are subnormal. There is nothing to show that all the blond, blue-eyed, tall individuals present excellent strains; there are mediocre and subnormal types among them just as well as among other races; and the proof has never been given that the relative number of excellent hereditary strains in this race is greater than in others. To speak of hereditary characteristics of a human race as a whole has no meaning. 

It is necessary to state emphatically against the tendency of this book that nobody has so far succeeded in proving racial superiority, and certainly nothing like the superiority of one European type over another one; that the whole formulation of the problem as a struggle between different races is misleading; and that if we were to follow purely rational eugenic methods, which fortunately we cannot do, we should have to select our best endowed individuals from the most divergent types, and many of the scions of North-European nobility who do conform with Mr. Grant's racial requirements would have to be removed from our society on account of their degeneracy. That kind of a race aristocracy of which Mr. Grant is dreaming is unreal, and has occurred only in those cases in which a people of pronounced local type have conquered another people of distinct type. 

[[italicize]] GLASS HOUSES [[/italicize]]

Frederick Harrison, the famous English writer, says in the London [[italicize]]Morning Post[[/italicize]]: 
Englishmen welcome with enthusiasm the entrance of the great republic into this tremendous war, not merely because we are now fighting side by side, but rather because it manifests that the common cause is that of civilization, humanity and peace. 

But does this glorious comradeship in arms quite justify American politicians, however eminent and friendly, thrusting themselves into our municipal politics at a moment of crisis? as an Englishman, I wonder to see my stalwart friend Roosevelt and so many leaders of American intellect and statesmanship reaching the stale sophisms of our enemies during one of the most inveterate trials to which Britain has ever been exposed. What would Americans do if we intervened in one of their dilemmas-say, if our ex-ministers, doctors and preachers were to summon them with a passionate appeal to raise up their 12,000,000 of colored citizens to equal human dignity, to wipe out the national stigma on the commonwealth that every man or woman born with a dark skin is born into the shame of exclusion and the life of a pariah race?

To this we may append and editorial from a colored paper, the St. Paul, Minn., [[italicize]]Appeal[[/italicize]]:
Governor Bickett of North Carolina has cabled Foreign Minister Milyoukov of Russia greetings to the new republic: 

"The State of North Carolina," the governor wired, "sends warmest greetings to the greatest republic of the old world. The high tides of human thought and feeling all set in your direction and all the stars of destiny smile on you. The Russian people have asserted their divine rights in joining the brotherhood of man, and may the Lord of Liberty keep them steadfast."

Think of it! Old "No'th Ca'liny," home of the K.K.K., the jimcrow car,  mob murder, segregation and damnation congratulating the new-born Russia, talking about the brotherhood of man and hoping that the "Lord of Liberty may keep them steadfast!" 

It's enough to make one snicker and snort. 

[[Italicize]]DEMANDING RIGHTS.[[/italicize]]

  Dr. H.B. Frissell, principal of Hampton Institute, has said in a recent letter: 

" As Dr. Washington and Dr. Moton have proved by their lives of quiet, unpretentious service, the colored man is going to secure recognition, not by demanding his rights, but by deserving them." 

Dr. Moton himself does not seem to agree with the above as his excellent letter on Negro loyalty contains an implicit demand for better treatment. The Richmond, Va., [[italicize]]Planet[[/italicize]], adds:

A right is a thing to be demanded; a privilege, a thing to be deserved. If Dr. Frissell had said that the colored man is going to secure recognition by demanding his rights and by deserving them, we would understand fully that he recognized that the citizen of color is entitled to every right and every privilege enjoyed by any other citizen. We pause to remark that the colored people in this country will never come unto their own as long as they believe that they are inferior and that they are not manly enough to deserve their rights, to demand them. 

The badge of servility better known by the look of cowardice and the halting attitude of submission to  any wrong, is what is handicapping us more than anything else. Colored people who could lead a charge at El Caney and San Juan Hill should walk upright, and, while being respectful and obliging should demand their rights when necessary and "dig deep in their jeans" to secure the necessary legal rights which will make them respected by their enemies in the courts of this country. Manhood is what is wanted and not servile submission. A blooded white man hates a cringing citizen, be he black or white, and he admires manhood, self respect and courage in a Negro and much so as he does in an Englishman, Frenchman or a German. 

THE LOOKING GLASS 77

The colored man in going to obtain his rights, Dr. Frissell, by demanding them and by deserving them. 

To this the Boston [[italicize]]Guardian[[/italicize]] adds:

We arise also to deny directly that the "quiet service" lives of Booker T. Washington or of Russa Moton secured recognition of rights. the most striking thing about the race-leadership career of Dr. Washington was that coincident with it with it went the greatest period of loss of citizenship and of legal debarment from rights ever known in any race that once enjoyed full rights and especially during the time Dr. Washington preached most pronouncedly the doctrine of "quietly deserving" rights. No further exposition of that matter by us is any longer needed. 

We warn Dr. Frissell against reviving the Booker Washington- no agitation issue. Dr. Washington's own friends do not relish or desire it. 

[[Italicize]]THE WAR AND LABOR.[[/italicize]] 

Even the Charleston [[italicize]] News and Courier[[/italicize]] sees the handwriting on the wall:

There is small chance that the labor shortage in the United States will be remedied for a long time to come. The war has wiped out the European surplus from which for many years our labor supply has been recruited even more rapidly than was desirable. It is not probable, therefore, that the shifting of colored people from the South to the North will be checked. If anything, the movement will in all likelyhood become more marked. No matter what effects on the Negro or on the South or on the North, so long as the North is able to offer the Negro higher wages than he is able to earn in the South, with the hope of political equality thrown in, the Negro exodus is sure to continue. 

The New Orleans [[italicize]]Times-Picayune[[/italicize]] acknowledges that the appeal for interference on the part of the U.S. Government has so far failed:

It is explained now that the investigation has been abandoned, but that the departments which have been studying it can find no plan under which the government can intervene or hold the exodus in check. No laws have been violated, it is asserted, either by the departing Negroes or by the labor agents, who have been credited with responsibility for many departures. As a matter of fact, say the departments, the emigration has gotten out of the hands of the labor agents and is progressive, by its own momentum- Negroes who have gone North are now instrumental in persuading many who are still here to come on. Many of the Southern States have passed very stringent laws against labor agents, requiring heavy licenses of them, and many obstacles have been placed in the way of the Negro emigration. The belief is expressed that under these circumstances it would be difficult or impossible to prevent this movement.

James Calloway, the press correspondent of the Macon [[italicize]]Telegraph[[/italicize]], has, however, discovers the real mare's nest! His pet aversions are the Negro and women suffrage, and he thus discants:

The Negro exodus is a new thing. Whatever causes produce it have excited for years. But it came all of a sudden in the fall of 1916, and was simultaneous over Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, and the movement is still on. 

What in the past ten months has occurred to produce this simultaneous restlessness and dissatisfaction among the Negroes? There is some underlying cause for its suddenness. What is it?... A prominent Alabamian in a letter to me says: "The Germans expected to enter our country with the Mexicans, via the South, and seize Mobile and New Orleans and Savannah-and hold these ports as a base or operations. The plan was for the Negroes to rise and help them as they invaded...In addition to this but without any collusion whatsoever, during the campaign of 1916 the suffrage question became very conspicuous. Spectacular suffrage parades were had in the Northern and Western cities. Illustrated literature of thes parades, white and black, Negro women taking active part, was circulated in the South. 

"The CRISIS.' the Negro, Dubois' paper of New York. '[[italicize]]The Suffragist,[[/italicize]]' organ of the Congressional Union, the Chicago [[italicize]]Post[[/italicize]]and [[italicize]]'The Masses,'[[/italicize]] Max Eastman's paper, were filled with vicious thrusts at the South, with cartoons derogatory to the White people of our section, holding us up as enemies of the Negroes, and were scattered all over Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi among the colored race. This pernicious literature was followed by agents acting like spies doing in secret their work, and thus a restlessness among the Negroes was created. The lure of better things, especially 'equality,' was held out. These things seized upon the imagination of the Negroes and the exodus begun." 

This lurid explanation throws the Greenville, N.C., [[italicize]]Piedmont[[/italicize]] quite in the shade when it says:

What the South's course should be is of easy answer. if southern people would have the Negroes remain the thing to do is to make it worth their while to remain. One thing is certain-the South cannot hold the Negroes by force: the Mason and Dixon Line is not a Red Sea if the North be a land of promise to the blacks, and the trip by rail is cheap and quick from the Gulf and the Atlantic Coast to Cincinnati, Chicago and New York.