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THE AMENIA CONFERENCES                                DIGGS

to agree that Blacks should give up social equality for the time being.

  It was in 1900 that James Weldon Johnson composed "Lift Every Voice and Sing" which became the national anthem for Blacks in the United States. Du Bois in 1901 made his now famous statement "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line."

  In 1901 George Forbes and Monroe Trotter began publishing the Guardian, which bitterly demanded full equality for Blacks and satirically opposed the ideas of Booker T. Washington. In 1901, President Roosevelt invited Washington to the White House for an interview and dinner which outraged many whites, North and South, but pleased many Blacks. In 1903, The Souls of Black Folk stated unequivocally Du Bois' attitudes toward Washington's ideas of work, the vote and wage; decried Washington's lack of emphasis on dignity and manhood, and Washington's failure to aggressively and overtly oppose discrimination.

  In 1904 Andrew Carnegie financed a meeting of black leaders at the request of Booker T. Washington, during which the "Committee of Twelve for the Advancement of the Interests of the Negro Race" was formed. It was a much larger conference than the First Amenia and the spirit was different. It was a conference carefully manipulated. There was no confidence; there was no complete revelation. It savored more of armed truce than of understanding. Whites came and talked benevolently to Blacks. Numbers of rich and powerful whites admonished Blacks to be good. "The opposition between the wings flamed in bitter speech and charge. Men spoke with double tongues saying one thing and meaning another. And finally there came compromise and an attempt at constructive effort which somehow no one felt was real." Washington's pledge to support "absolute civil, political and public equality" permitted Du Bois to join in good faith, but Du Bois soon withdrew because of Washington's dictatorial control of the Committee. The Committee of Twelve, proposed by Du Bois, never functioned but left a few pamphlets edited by Hugh Brown. It spent money "discreetly" to defeat disenfranchisement in Maryland. It also published a number of pamphlets on self-help and economic achievement for Blacks.

  In 1904, Blacks in Augusta, Atlanta, Columbia, New Orleans, Mobile and Houston, who had been boycotting street cars to protest Jim Crow legislation, organized their own transportation network.

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