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FREEDOMWAYS                             SECOND QUARTER 1973

severely divided between Booker T. Washington, Du Bois and their followers. "Jealousy, envy, greed, cowardice, intolerance had been attributed to antagonists on either side." In general, Washington had been most successful in stopping free expression among Blacks; considerable money had been spent to influence the posture of certain Negro newspapers; the oldest and largest was bought by white friends of Tuskegee. "Newspapers and magazine articles had seethed with threat, charge, and innuendo." Numbers of Blacks were very discouraged; many believed Blacks would never gain freedom in the United States; there was no unanimity as to what black folk really wanted. Booker Washington and many Blacks had not understood the growing bond between politics and industry.

[[/bold italic font]][[beginning of the amenia conferences]]

  It was with this accumulation of grievances and in this atmosphere of culminative oppression that Joel Spingarn, President of the NAACP, sponsored and Du Bois planned a meeting for consolidating the present and future leadership of Blacks; for reconciling the various factions of the Negro movement; for achieving a unity of thought an action impossible while Washington was alive. The First Amenia Conference, August 24-26, 1916, at Spingarn's home included representatives of all points of view from Emmett J. Scott to Monroe Trotter.2 To arrange this was a difficult and intricate task. About two hundred invitations to white and black people were actually issued, and in making up the list the advice of friends of Mr. Washington such as Moton, Emmett J. Scott, and Fred Moore was sought. There were messages of good will from many who could not attend: from Taft, Roosevelt, Hughes, Woodrow Wilson, and others. Sixty agreed to come; fifty came.

  The meeting began with discussion of the controversies. Then deliberations were made private and no records of what various persons said were kept.

  After a few days of frank discussion there appeared no adequate reason left for essential difference of opinion. The First Amenia Conference issued no manifesto and its resolutions were without bitterness.3 The delegates agreed almost unanimously on the fundamental issues: assertion of essential manhood, equal education, enfranchisement, abolition of lynching and the protection of civil rights and civil liberties. But how to get these things created infinite divergences of opinion. The Amenia Conference of 1916 was a symbol marking the end of old things and thoughts and new techniques for

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