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BOOK REVIEWS 

EARLY CLEAR THINKING

THE BLACK PRESS VIEWS AMERICAN IMPERIALISM, 1898-1900.  By George P. Marks, III.  Preface by William Loren Katz.  Arno Press, New York.  211 pages.  $11.00

Republican Doctrine

One who steals a ham is a thief.
One who steals a fortune is a financier.
One who assists in stealing the Philippines is a patriot.
  from the Chicago Broad Ax, October 27, 1900

CHANGE "Philippines" in the above quote to "Vietnam" and it could easily be an epigram for today.  The language appropriately sums up a decade of black sentiment.
  From the 1890's through the turn of the century, Blacks were the most consistent and vocal of those opposed to American economic-military expansion in the Third World.  This little known sidelight forms another part of the legacy of hidden American history.
  Fortunately, the progressive writings and speeches of black spokes-men on this question have been compiled in the recent work, The Black Press Views American Imperialism, 1898-1900, by George P. Marks, III.  Part of the New York Times collection on the "American Negro: His History and Literature," the book opens investigation into the long neglected area of black involvement in the historic radical movement.  Other works on the black press include: The Negro Press in the United States, The Negro Newspaper, The Negro Press Re-Examined, Fifty Years of Progress in Negro Journalism, Who's Who in the American Negro Press, and The Negro Press, Past, Present and Future.  All of these works have chosen to ignore the early press material on black activism.
  The articles and editorials in Marks's work are particularly signif-icant as a gauge of the thinking of the black intellectuals in that period.  Most of the newspapers had incomplete volumes of editions making the task for the anthologist more difficult.  In 1900, the black press was in its embryonic stage of development and hadn't yet be-come an established institution in the black community.
  Nearly all the papers faced problems of low budgets, shortages of trained personnel, and distribution.  Often the papers went under in

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