The Crisis 1916-03: Vol 11 Iss 5
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The CRISIS Vol. 11—No. 5 MARCH, 1916 Whole No. 65 ale ONE DOLLAR A YEAR TEN CENTS A COPY
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Si WW PUBLISHER'S CHAT WW The Aprii CRISIS will be our annual Easter issue. It will be Church Number. The cover will be a reproduction of one of C. M. Battey’s beautiful pictures. WH Selected List of Books These prices do not include postage. Postage extra. ‘Hazet. (Mary White Ovington) THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN Ex-CoLoreD Man. Norris WricHTt CunEy. (Maud Cuney Hare) A NARRATIVE OF THE NEGRO. (Leila Amos Pendleton) Sous oF Biack Fork. (W. E. B. Du Bois) THE WHITE Man’s Burpen. (T. Shirby Hodge) Race ADJUSTMENT. (Kelly Miller) History OF THE Necro. (B. G. Brawley) Harr a Man. (Mary White Ovington) AFTERMATH OF SLAVERY. (William Sinclair) Joun Brown. (W. E. B. Du Bois) NEGRO IN AMERICAN History. (J. W. Cromwell) Prince Hatt AND His Fottowers. (George W. Crawford) Liserta. (Frederick Starr) Tue Necro. (W. E. B. Du Bois) THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO Prior To 1861. (Carter G. Woodson) Facts OF RECONSTRUCTION. (John R. Lynch) Story OF THE Necro. 2 Volumes. (Booker T. Washington) MASTERPIECES OF NEGRO ELoguence. (Alice Moore Dunbar, Editor) 2.50 PoEMS OF PAuL LAURENCE DUNBAR AFRO-AMERICAN Forxsoncs. (H. E. Krehbiel) Out oF THE House or Bonpace. (Kelly Miller) Address "THE CRISIS, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York
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EDITION FORTY - THREE THOUSAND — SIXTY -EIGHT PAGES THE CRISIS A RECORD OF THE DARKER RACES PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, AT 70 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY Conducted by W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS AUGUSTUS GRANVILLE DILL, Business Manager Contents Copyrighted, 1916, by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Contents for March, 1916 PICTURES Page COLORED ODD FELLOWS HALL, NEW HAVEN, CONN............... 216 eo, sie ranes Ss arin te a ane ate win oe wieiele wale OATS HO. OWN 225 GERTRUDE HUBBARD ................ preach kins Sect avs ange ines anaes toes ahs 226 THE LATE BOOKER T. WASHINGTON LYING IN STATE.............. 227 UNCLE SAM SPEAKS. Cartoon. By Lorenzo Harris.................. 236 MAJOR CHARLES YOUNG, SECOND SPINGARN MEDALIST........... 241 ARTICLES THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS. A Story. By Lee Wallace........... 237 JUST A LITTLE TIRED. A Poem. By Katharine Gilliard.............. 239 SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE... ....0c.ccccccccocccveseues 245 THE CHEROKEE FIRES. AN N. A. A. C. P. Investigation. By Royal MN 8G ioe ope pees Gea Wee KES RHR oD Sine Mia meteor 265 DEPARTMENTS Pe ee I ooo 5 acon igunt dos wine nw aise’ aunlwcs ee bee meee wae 215 a us iu Sic adios colo Bison bade a kay anor avs Wighae ahd Swe es Mies 224 ee eS NON 555-5 40's pine aididirdin die ua Sia ea alw he aleaeaDeel 228 naa vii e's Ct aioe incense Wes IIo hears Miaalade Uae menly wae 240 TEN CENTS A COPY; ONE DOLLAR A YEAR FOREIGN SUBSCRIPTIONS TWENTY-FIVE CENTS EXTRA RENEWALS: When a subscription blank is attached to this page a renewal of your subscrip- tion is desired. The date of the expiration of your subscription will be found on the wrapper. CHANGE OF ADDRESS: The address of a subscriber can be changed as often as desired. in ordering a change of address, both the old and the new address must be given. Two weeks’ notice is required. MANUSCRIPTS and drawings relating to colored people are desired. They must be accom- panied by return postage. If found unavailable they will be returned. Entered as Second-class Matter in the Post Office at New York, N. Y.
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212 Atlanta University Is beautifully located in the City of Atlanta, Ga. © courses of study include High School, Normal School and College, with manual training and domestic science. Amon the teachers are graduates of Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth and Wellesley. Forty-six years of successful work have been completed. Students come from all parts of the South. Graduates are almost universally successful. For further informetion address President EDWARD T. WARE ATLANTA, GA. Knoxville College Beautiful Situation. Healthful Location. The Best Moral and Spiritual Environ- ment. A Splendid Intellectual Atmos- 0 Noted for Honest and Thorough ork. Offers full courses in the following departments: College, Normal, High School, Grammar School and industrial. Good water, steam heat, electric lights, geod drain- age. Expenses very reasonable. Oppertunity for self-help. Fall Term Began September, 1915 Fer information address President R. W. MCGRANAHAN KNOXVILLE, TENN. THE AGRICULTURAL TECHNICAL COLLEGE North Dasifinn (Formerly the A. & M. College) The 22d annual session began September 1, 1915. Board, lodging and tuition $8.90 per month. Four year cour.es leading to trade certifi- cates. Four year college courses leading to degrees of Bachelor of Science in Agriculture and Bachelor of Science in Mechanics. For catalog or further information Address President Dudley, A. & T. College GREENSBORO, N. C. THE CRISIS ADVERTISER MOREHOUSE COLLEGE (Formerly Atlanta Baptist College) ATLANTA, GA. College, Academy, Divinity School An institution famous within recent years for its emphasis on all sides of manly develop- ment—the only institution in the far South devoted solely to the education of Negro young men. Graduates given high ranking by greatest northern universities. Debating, Y. M. C. A., athletics, all live features. For information address JOHN HOPE, President. WILEY UNIVERSITY MARSHALL, TEXAS Recognized as a college of the First Class by Texas and Louisiana State Boards of Education. Harvard, Yale and Columbia represented on its faculty ; students gath- ered from ten different states. Strongest Music Department in the West M. W. DOGAN, President FISK UNIVERSITY NASHVILLE, TENN. Founded 1866 Thorough Literary, Scientific, Educational, Musical and Social Science Courses. Pioneer in Negro music. Special study in Negro life. Ideal and sanitary buildings and grounds. Well-equipped Science building. Christian home life. © High standard of independent manhood and womanhood. For literature, etc., write FAYETTE AVERY McKENZIE, President ST. MARY’S SCHOOL An Episcopal boarding school for girls, under the direction of the Sisters of St. Mary. Address: THE SISTER-IN-CHARGE 609 N. 43d St. W. Philadelphia, Pa. Learn the S. T. Taylor System of Garment Cutting, Dressmaking, Ladies’ Tailoring, Millinery and Designing. Prepare yourself to earn a large salary. Terms reasonable. Write for catalog. S. T. TAYLOR SCHOOL AND PATTERN PARLORS MRS. MAYBEL B. EVANS, Prin., 34 N. Garfield Ave., Columbus, 0. Mention Tue Crisis
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THE CRISIS ADVERTISER The National Religious Training School “I cordially commend the school’s interest and needs to all who believe in the Negro race and in our obligation to help promote its intellectual, moral and religious uplift.” Rev. Dr. Coartes H. Parxuurst, New York City. IT IS MORE THAN A MERE SCHOOL IT IS A COMMUNITY OF SERVICE AND UPLIFT Its influence is destined to be felt in all sections of the country in improved Negro community life wherever our trained workers locate. Settlement workers, missionaries for home and foreign mission fields, Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. secretaries and district nurses receive a comprehensive grasp of their studies under a Wellesley graduate and experienced co-workers and- actual every-day practice through the school’s SOCIAL SERVICE DEPARTMENT. We aim also to create a better qualified ministry. Industrial training, advanced literary branches, business school. Thirty-two acres; ten modern buildings; healthful location. We can accommodate a few more earnest, ambitious students. Communities requiring social ~workers should write us. For catalog and detailed information address: PRESIDENT JAMES E. SHEPARD National Religious Training School Durham, N. C. The school has no endowment fund and must raise a yearly maintenance fund of $15,000 for running expenses. Won’t you help us this year? The Cheyney Training School for Teachers CHEYNEY, PENNSYLVANIA Under the management of the Society of Friends. Beautifully located, healthful, well appointed, and within easy reach of a great variety of educa- tional institutions, public and private, extending from West Chester to Philadelphia; representing a wide range of educational problems and practice, This school offers to young colored men and women who have a reasonable secondary school preparation, and who earnestly desire to become teachers, carefully graded courses in academic work, domestic science, domestic art, manual crafts and agriculture. For teachers of experience and intending teachers it offers also a six weeks’ summer-school course during the months of July and August. Tuition is free. Board, lodging, heat, light and laundry privileges are offered for nine months for $100. The charge for the same during the summer-school course is $15. Write for particulars to LESLIE PINCKNEY HILL, Principal Mention Tug Catsis
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214 THE CRISIS ADVERTISER
ROLAND W. HAYES, Tenor Recitals Concerts Oratorio Opera “An unusually good voice. The natural quality is beautiful. It is a luscious yet manly voice. Mr. Hayes sings freely and with good taste."—Philip Hale, in the Boston Herald. “A voice of unusual sweetness and calibre.” —Chattanooga Times. Address: 3 WARWICK ST..
BOSTON, MASS. REGALIA A Race Enterprise Manufacturing Badges, Banners and Supplies for all Fraternal and Church Societies. Cat- alog upon request. CENTRAL REGALIA CO.
E. ALDAMA JACKSON Graduate Institute of Musical Art, Organist and Director of Music St. Mark's M. E. Church Teacher of Theory and Piano Theory course embraces elementary and advanced ony or Counterpoint. ‘Private or Class Work Studio: 3@ W. 132d STREET, NEW YORK CITY
OF INTEREST TO VOCALISTS Tone-Placing and Voice Development, With Sup- plement Co-ordinating with Original Chapters Highly recommended and endorsed by well known Choral and Musical Societies, Directors, Vocal Teachers Mciacevsae and Musical Publications, as evi- eb tah ante denced by the following extracts pA Sal selected at random from those who now:
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Jos. L. Jones, Pres. c Pedro T. Tinsley of Chicago is nw N.E. Corner 8th end Plum Streets, Cincinnati. Ohi ME SaMe Ee the first of the vocal teachers to v res realize the possibilities of Tone- y, YOUR SPRING SUIT peta oe ot oe c as applied to music, and will soon be reaping his reward in the knowl- in edge that he is helping thousands to a thorough musical education where he previously tor helped but hundreds. La THE MUSIC TRADES. : Send postal today for full I highly endorse your Book Tone-Placing and De information how to get your Voice-Development as being in a class by itself. This ba Spring suit, made to meas- is my fourth order and will be able to use quite a ure, without a penny’s cost. number of additional copies very soon. ac $30 to $40 would not buy a G. W. WILLIAMS, B.M.A., better one. Simply wear it, 1214 Pease Ave., Houston, Texas. ¢ tell your friends where you “Dear Mr. Tinsley: t got be " I jake, great. pleasure in commendia, your, very a useful and succinctly written book on one-Placing | Make 10 to 15 aDay and Voice-Development.’ Your own appreciation of R taking their orders. It is dead eas the psychology of singing and the fundamental prin- ; —you never saw a nobbier suit ciples of the art you have cleverly reduced to a m i oss Teens te ese simple system. Cordially yours, aheadofthe times). Your choice “Father WILLIAM J. FINN, C. S, P., j R of 60 patterns and a dozen styles Director Paulist Choristers of Chicago.” a wp peg hy FEN _ From “Musical Courier,” N. Y.: “A very practical inside information about styles, little book is ‘Tone-Placing and Voice-Development, tl self-measuring blanks, etc. Dont by Pedro T. Tinsley. It contains some very excellent wait. Everything free. Sara — vous ay and should be in the e ands of all.vocal students.” We Pay Delivery Charges From “Music News,” Chicago, Ill.: ‘Accordingly . Get shend of other saowe— seen this this ‘Practical Method of Singing’ is a most concise E aor an wentee eee and practical little manual, containing many valuable I; American Woolen Mills Co. vocal exercises. It cannot fail to be helpful to all Dept 351 CHICAGO ambitious vocal students.” ( PRICE $1.00 k WANTED Address the publisher: Pedro T. Tinsley, 6448 Drexel a Agents for THE CRISIS. Dignified work. | 4°¢:,“iic##2, Ill, or Clayton F. Summy, 64 E, Van : 70 Fifth Avenue, New York. Ave., Chicago, Ill. M n HAVE YOU GOOD PICTURES IN YOUR HOME? 7 . I Now is the time to secure hand painted portraits in ofl colors of Dr. B. T, Washington, which we are selling at the very low price of $2.00 wach. These paintings, the exact likeness I of the “‘Wizard of Tuskegee,”’ are giving universal satisfaction and are being bung in the f highest class homes in the country We also have reproductions of ““A Moment of Rest’ and “‘Still Life,” the two favorite ‘ paintings of the Lincoln Exposition. These pictures ure the sensation of Chicago and are being purchased by both colored and white people who treasure them as the favorite \ paintings in their homes. All of these pictures are artistically mounted on a mat about : 10 x 13 inches in size. Prices: Booker T. Washington (hand painted) Booker T. Washington (photogravure).. ] A Moment of Rest or Stlil Life (hand pa! ; Photogravure .........eeseeees ecccccverce ‘ By mall, six cents additional. { Satisfaction guaranteed er money refunded. Best terms to agents. W. M. FARKOW 6117 S. Racine Ave. Chicago, Ill.
Mention Tux Carers
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Vol. 11—No. 5 THE CRISIS MARCH, 1916 Whole No. 65 Along the Color Line MUSIC AND ART HE Fisk Quartet was heard in a program of spirituals and modern numbers at the second anniversary of the Y. M. C. A. in Philadelphia, Pa. @ Mrs. Estelle Ancrum Forster appeared in an organ recital at Haynes Hall, Bos- ton, Mass. She was assisted by Mrs. Paul Lawrence Dunbar, reader; Miss A. Mac- Donald, soprano; Mr. Charles W. Forster, baritone, and Mrs. Clarence Cameron White, accompanist. @ Miss Helen Hagan gave a piano recital at the colored Music School Settlement in New York City. She was assisted by Miss Reba Fairfax, soprano, and Mr. J. Rosa- mond Johnson, basso-cantante. Miss Ethel Richardson was the efficient accompanist. @ Hampton Quartet, after appearing at the San Francisco Exposition for one month, sang groups of Negro melodies at a large meeting held in Symphony Hall, Boston, Mass., in the interest of Hampton Institute. @ The five hundred dollar prize for the best sculptured piece on “The Immigrant in America,” submitted in a contest held in the studio of Mrs. Harry Payne Whit- ney, New York City, was won by a young Italian student of, the Art Students’ League, Beniamino Bufano. Bufano did not picture America as a “land of the free.” The sentence at the base of the group of thirty figures reads: “I came unto my own and my own received me not.” The work is described as showing “op- pressed people who seek the promised land, and finding it, find oppression there—at the head is placed a sturdy youngster in defiant pose as if in challenge to prejudice which ranks all aliens as ‘Dagoes,’ ‘Chinks,’ ‘Polacks’ and ‘Niggers’!” @ Mrs. Maud Cuney Hare, pianist, and Mr. William H. Richardson, baritone, of Boston, Mass., began their winter concert tour at Montclair, N. J., in January. @Mme. Anita Patti Brown is appearing successfully in recitals in the British West Indies. GENERAL CTION on the treaty extending a financial protectorate over Haiti has been deferred by the United States Sen- ate. @ The trustees of Tuskegee Institute are appealing to the Negroes of the United States to raise $250,000 toward a $2,000,000 Booker T. Washington Memorial Fund. C@ A memorial meeting to the late Booker T. Washington was held at Carnegie Hall, New York City, February 11th. Music was rendered by Hampton and Tuskegee Quartets, and a chorus of one hundred and fifty voices from the Music School Set- tlement. Distinguished speakers took part. @ Doubleday, Page Company announce the publication of “Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization,” by Lyman Beecher Stowe and Emmett J. Scott. @ Work among Negroes received $1,104,- 000 from white Presbyterian mission socie- ties last year. C President Wilson has told Bishop Wal- ters that he will not appoint a Negro as Recorder of Deeds because the appoint- ment would precipitate a discussion of the race question in the Senate. In an open letter to the President, Bishop Walters still urges the appointment of a Negro for this position. C The Republican National Convention will meet in Chicago, IIl., June 7th. The representation of the South will be reduced about one-third. The changes in the num-
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216 THE CRISIS COLORED ODD FELLOWS ber of delegates in the States affected fol- lows: 1912 1916 NN aia dra wea wea a 24 16 ES ree errr re 18 15 I Oia te Duk sks wa eieibi ek 12 8 ELS es open a bens 8 Mee eo 28 17 SO ated CEs ce'e gpm weve x Se 12 RE oly 5 6 isos Aa ee we 20 12 NS nk aru Kwik Kia ces kis 90 87 DE ARO sis oid. bee ceee ws 24 21 ONE MOMEOUR Soca seusacaas 18 11 I 655 oy talib x intinila ie faa e 24 21 NE Sate Cnn Gans ak uae melee 40 26 Ta Nes Sead awe ke oe 24 15 NE ars Gone cGG bangs saa bese 6 2 INDUSTRY OLORED and white capitalists of Nashville, Tenn., are proposing to erect a building which will combine a hotel and apartment house for colored people. It is to be seven stories high with all mod- ern conveniences, and will cost not less than $100,000. @ The City Council of Mound Bayou, Miss., has voted $20,000 bonds for im- HALL, NEW HAVEN, CONN. provements to be made in that colored city. @ A paper mill corporation has been formed in Boston, Mass., composed of col- ored business men, and an option on prop- erty for the mill secured. Mr. George R. Thompson, a Negro who knows this busi- ness thoroughly, is General Manager. @ Mr. John Mitchell, Jr., is the only Ne- gro member of the American Bankers’ As- sociation. This association has appointed him chairman of a committee to distribute literature among the colored people to arouse interest in saving. (The colored Odd Fellows of New Haven, Conn., have a three-story fireproof build- ing which cost $40,000. @ The Solvent Savings Bank & Trust Company, of Memphis, Tenn., had a Christ- mas Club of over 5,000 members. @ The Nashville, Tenn., Globe passed its tenth birthday in January. The size of the paper has been increased. @ William Tucker and J. B. Dobbins, two colored men, have opened the Clark Hotel, at Northfork, W. Va. It has all modern conveniences. C Principal J. W. Scott of Douglass School, Hun “Th the mov emp in ¢ race oper org: thor paic G3 in ] by you ture { invi whi obj for and afr me! C ' den for rec has Mis lab
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Huntington, W. Va., has launched a “Thrift Club” to encourage saving among the colored pupils. @ The Ancient Order of Foresters re- moved $81,400 from a bank that did not employ Negroes and deposited the money in one that did employ members of their race. @ The Mutual Savings Bank has been opened in Portsmouth, Va. This bank was organized and chartered in 1914 with au- thorized capital of $25,000, and $10,000 paid in. ( The People’s Auditorium is to be erected in Los Angeles, Cal., at a cost of $35,000, by Negro citizens. Mr. Paul Williams, a young Negro architect, planned the struc- ture. @ White mechanics of Baton Rouge, La., invited the colored mechanics to a meeting which they held in their City Hall. The object of the meeting was to form a union for the betterment of working conditions and wages. As a matter of fact they are afraid of the competition of the colored men. @ The North Carolina Mutual & Provi- dent Association had a premium income for 1915 of $416,374.16. Its first year’s receipts, in 1899, amounted to $840. @ More than a million dollars in net cash has been paid into the State Treasury of Mississippi during the last eight years from the lease and use of Negro convict labor. @ At the annual stockholders’ meeting of the Standard Life Insurance Company, At- lanta, Ga., Emmett J. Scott was elected to succeed the late Dr. M. C. B. Mason, as director. This company has two million dollars worth of insurance in force, and its capital stock is to be increased from $100,- 000 to $125,000. @ The total resources of the One Cent Savings Bank, Nashville, Tenn., were $66,- 476.14 for 1915. C Dr. H. J. Dumas, receiver for the Bluff City Savings Bank, Natchez, Miss., has an- nounced another 20 per cent dividend to depositors, which brings the total up to 60 per cent. @ At the dedication of the Odd Fellows three-story brick building at Harrisburg, Pa., Past Grand Master John P. Scott in an address summed up the history of the lodge. ALONG THE COLOR LINE 217 C Murray Brothers Printing Company, a colored business of Washington, D. C., is featured in the American Printer. This company was started seventeen years ago when F. Morris Murray, manager, re- ceived a miniature printing outfit as a Christmas gift. The plant now is a first- class small size printing establishment, and employs twelve people. @ Mr. E. Bernard Taylor, a successful! Negro caterer of Baltimore, Md., had charge of the catering for the inaugura- tion of Governor Harrington, at Annapolis, Md. He served over 19,000 people. NORTH ATLANTIC CS W. J. Doherty, of the New York City Charities, has pub- licly condemned the Colored Orphan Asy- lum at Riverdale: “The city put it on the blacklist last year, but had to send children there, as there was no other home in town for small colored Protestants. When Doherty chided the Superintendent for keeping the children in the kitchen most of the time she said: ‘That’s the proper place for them, for that’s where they will spend most of their lives after they leave here.’” @ The Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth at Bordentown, N. J., is seeking to secure an increased ap- propriation from the State in order to broaden its scope of work. @ The State Athletic Commission has an- nounced a revision of boxing rules so as to allow bouts between colored and white pugilists in New York. C The fiftieth anniversary of the promul- gation of the Thirteenth Amendment was celebrated by the colored people of Boston, Mass., in a mass meeting at Faneuil Hall under the auspices of the Massachusetts branch of the National Independent Equal Rights League and the Citizens’ Auxiliary Committee. @ A Sigma Chapter of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity has been established in Greater Boston, Mass. @ Fred E. Towns, a colored boy in Public School No. 40, New York City, has won a gold medal for the highest scholarship in his class. ( The Sedalia Club, an organization com- posed of over one hundred women of Brookline, Mass., and vicinity, held its an- nual sale and bazaar in November. Two
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218 THE CRISIS hundred dollars was realized for Palmer Memorial Institute, Sedalia, N. C. @ Lincoln Settlement, Brooklyn, N. Y., re- cently celebrated the fiftieth birthday an- niversary of its founder, Dr. V. Morton Jones, a colored woman. @ The McDonough Memorial Hospital As- sociation, an organization of Negroes in New York City, has bought the building at No. 22 West 134th Street, which they plan to have remodeled for a hospital. @ Mayor Trout, of Lancaster, Pa., refused to permit the “Birth of a Nation” to be shown in that city. @ The third athletic meet of the Public Schools Athletic League and Howard Uni- versity was held at Convention Hall, Wash- ington, D. C., in February. @ Fire destroyed the colored Y. M. C. A. building at Atlantic City, N. J., causing a loss of $10,000. @ The new colored high school at First and O Streets, N. W., Washington, D. C., has been named after the late Paul Law- rence Dunbar. @ Vocational training is to be introduced at the Thomas Durham Public School, the largest segregated school in Philadelphia, Pa. If this trial “proves a success,” the other segregated schools of the city will in all probability follow this course. @ Miss Caroline Bond, secretary of the Colored Y. W. C. A., Montclair, N. J., was invited to arrange a program for the Feb- ruary meeting of the Local Council of Phil- anthropy, a body of great influence. Mrs. A. W. Hunton, of Brooklyn, N. Y., was one of the principal speakers. SOUTH ATLANTIC tien Ocala Knitting Mill in Florida has received an order for $50,000 worth of knitted underwear from a white firm in New York City. So successful has been this enterprise that a large brick factory is being built and more machines ordered. Mr. George Giles, President of the com- pany, is a Negro. @ A Prison Aid Association for Colored Prisoners has been organized in Baltimore, Md. @ The Negro Welfare League of Rich- mond, Va., has planned the establishment of a public library for colored people. @ Over 1,500 Negroes registered for the “Recall” election in Atlanta, Ga. @ The white State Federation of Women’s Clubs is circulating a pamphlet in Mary- land which declares that at the present rate Negro illiteracy will disappear in 1930 and white illiteracy not until 1950. @ The North Carolina Inter-collegiate Ath- letic Association held its annual meeting at Shaw University, Raleigh. Over fifteen of the larger schools of North Carolina were represented, and much legislation concerning college athletics in the State enacted. C H. iH. Tift, founder of Tift County, Ga., and the man from whom Tifton is named, has donated six acres of land for a high school for Negroes. @ Williams Lodge of Elks, of Richmond, Va., won the prize offered by the Supreme Lodge at their last convention in Chicago, Ill., for having the largest number of rep- resentatives from the longest distance. @ The enrollment in Negro schools of South Carolina decreased 5 per cent for the past school term. An average yearly expenditure of $1.93 is made for a Negro pupil, as against $16.22 for a white pupil. The white enrollment increased 3 per cent. C A Better Home League has been formed in Richmond, Va., to arouse interest in home buying and improving among Ne- groes. C The thirty-fifth anniversary of the mar- riage of Bishop and Mrs. Joseph S. Flipper, of the African M. E. Church, has been cele- brated in Atlanta, Ga. @ The Board of Police Commissioners of Wilmington, Del., refused to permit the “Birth of a Nation” to be shown in that city. @ The Mather Industrial School at Beau- fort, S. C., was founded forty-eight years ago and ministers to 30,000 colored people on adjacent islands. @ One of the dump piles in Richmond, Va., where refuse from the streets and other places is thrown, is located near two col- ored institutions of learning, Virginia Union University and Hartshorn Memorial College. The latter college also suffers from the odor of a tobacco factory across the street. @ The Florida State Teachers’ Association held its twenty-fifth annual session at Tallahassee. Professor L. C. Jones deliv- ered the annual address. ( Howard University has a large and growing collection of Negro Americana. The Moreland collection has eight hundred
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ALONG THE COLOR LINE volumes, the Tappan collection three hun- dred volumes, and altogether there are about fifteen hundred volumes with a great many pamphlets and newspapers. @ The South Carolina Race Conference be- gan February 6th and closed February 9th. The white laymen’s convention took place at the same time. Dr. L. G. Broughton of London, Eng., delivered an address. @ The State Teachers’ Association and School Improvement League will hold a meeting at Danville, Va., March 2nd. Major R. R. Moton, Principal of Tuskegee Insti- tute, is included among the speakers. C Dr. Wilbur A. Drake, physician-in-charge of the Tidewater Colored Hospital, Nor- folk, Va., has launched a campaign for $5,000 needed to meet the urgent demands upon this institution. C Lincoln Hospital, a colored institution at Durham, N. C., reports $8,736 spent during 1915. The hospital is said to be in excellent financial condition. @ Governor Goldsboro, of Annapolis, Md., in his biennial message to the legislature, urged better schools and a tuberculesis hos- pital for Negroes. @ Dr. M. P. Watters has been made Presi- dent of Gammon Theological Seminary, South Atlanta, Ga. A large number of edu- cators from all parts of the country wit- nessed the inauguration, and Governor Nat Harris was present to extend greetings of the State. C Kittrell College at Kittrell, N. C., is to receive $12,500 from J. B. and B. N. Duke of New York City. The school authorities are to raise a like amount. @ Andrew Carnegie has subscribed half the fund for a $2,300 pipe organ to be in- stalled in First Baptist Church, Roanoke, Va. The members of the congregation have raised $900 of their half. Rev. E. E. Ricks is the colored pastor. C A bill will be presented before the Gen- eral Assembly providing that all children in Virginia, whether white or colored, be compelled to attend school until fourteen years of age. The Richmond School Teach- ers’ League has endorsed the measure. It is expected, however, that the clause in the proposed bill, naming white and col- ored children alike, may meet with oppo- sition, and that consideration of the meas- ure on the floors of the House and Senate is likely to be stormy. 219 SOUTH CENTRAL ' Southern Sociological Congress will meet at New Orleans, La., April 12th to 16th, and the Southern Conference for Education and Industry in the same city April 16th to 20th. The program of the first organization will deal almost exclu- sively with the conservation of health. There will be a special conference on law and order to create sentiment against lynching. Prominent speakers both white and colored have been invited. C The new library for colored people was opened in Nashville, Tenn., in February. @ Cincinnati has dedicated the Ninth Street Branch of the Y. M. C. A. for col- ored people. The land cost $17,500, the building $81,000 and the equipment $9,500, making a total of $110,000. Of this Julius Rosenwald contributed $25,000, the colored people raised $15,000, and the local white people contributed liberally. There is still $18,000 more to be raised. @ There is much suffering in Dallas County, Ala., on account of the boll weevil, which attacked the last cotton crop. @ In Monroe County, Ala., the government is conducting a series of agricultural ex- tension schools for the benefit of the col- ored farmers. @ The North Mississippi annual confer- ence of the Colored M. E. Church was given over to an educational rally. Seven thou- sand dollars was raised for education and six thousand dollars for general funds. @ At Baton Rouge, La., out of 395 colored people who took the teachers’ examination. 242 passed. @ The white pupils of Walnut Hills High School, Cincinnati, Ohio, demanded the elimination of colored pupils and threat- ened to strike. Superintendent of Schools Condon said: “To do so would not only be a violation of law, but also a variance with the spirit of our public schools.” @ Alonzo Allen, a colored youth of seven- teen, saved a white boy from drowning at Louisville, Ky. Mr. Owen Gathright, a prominent white citizen, has asked the col- ored people to contribute to a fund as a reward to this hero. @ The New Orleans Board of Health re- ports the number of deaths per thousand among Negroes 32.95 for 1915, as against 30.30 for 1914. Deaths from tuberculosis increased from 551 per 100,000 in 1914 to 664 in 1915.
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220 THE CRISIS C A bill has been introduced in the Ken- tucky Legislature to prevent the “Birth of a Nation” and like films from being shown in that State. @ Surgeon Joseph Goldberger, of the Bu- reau of the United States Public Health Service, spoke at the Tuskegee Negro Con- ference on Pellagra. In accordance with a suggestion of the late Booker T. Wash- ington, special demonstrations and exhibits took the place of the reading of reports. A corn show for men and a canned goods show for women were special features. @ The midwinter session of the Bishops Council of the A. M. &. Church was held in February in Nashville, Tenn. Important matters to come up at the General Confer- ence to be held in Philadelphia, Pa., in May, were discussed. @ The Baptist Sunday School Congress will hold its eleventh annual session in Vicksburg, Miss., June 14th to 19th. WEST R. PATTERSON & SONS, a colored * firm of Greenfield, Ohio, announce their 1916 model automobile. This firm was established in 1865 as manufacturers of wagons, carriages and buggies. @ The seventeenth annual meeting of the Western Negro Press Association was held in Kansas City, Mo. It was well attended by members from the West and South- west. @ The Cosmopolitan Club of Michigan Ag- ricultural College has two Negro students as members. @ Lincoln Turner, a colored boy, was first prize winner in a toy contest conducted by a leading daily paper in Cleveland, Ohio. @ Governor Frank B. Willis, who would not permit the “Birth of a Nation” to be shown in Ohio, addressed an audience of 2,500 Negroes at Allen A. M. E. Church, Cincinnati. He was presented with a solid silver loving cup. @ Three colored women passed the exami- nation for police at Chicago, IIl.: Miss Ger- trude Hart, Mrs. Anna Fitts and Miss Grace Wilson. @ William Johnson, a Negro, saved the life of a white girl employee, when fire broke out in the cleaning establishment of Dresner Brothers, Omaha, Neb. @ Five hundred Negro soldiers of the United States Cavalry raided and wrecked Honolulu’s tenderloin district. @ The National Negro Business League will hold its seventeenth annual session in Kansas City, Mo., August 16th, 17th and 18th. The Grand Lodge of Masons and the National Medical Association will also meet in that city during August. SOUTHWEST HE case of the Negroes who were mis- treated by United States soldiers at Texas City, Texas, last August, has been satisfactorily settled. The enforced la- borers were paid for their work and Dr. Dogan of Wiley University received a let- ter of apology. @ The valuable oil land of eleven year old W. C. Flanigan, of Oklahoma, was sold by his white guardian, A. L. Evans, for $700. Mr. Evans has been taken into court to re- cover the land. @ The seventh annual session of the State Federation of Colored Teachers was held in Pine Bluff, Ark. Two hundred and fifty teachers were present and Dr. Yeager de- livered the principal address. C Bishop R. A. Carter, presiding Bishop over the Sixth Episcopal District of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, raised $10,000 last year among the colored people of Texas for Texas College, Tyler, Texas. @ The Colored Free Library, Tulsa, Okla., is in great need of books. An appeal has been made for funds, and donations of books will be appreciated. @ The ninth annual session of the Okla- homa Association of Negro Teachers met in Oklahoma City during February. PERSONAL R. RICHARD W. THOMPKINS, a well-known citizen of Washington, D. C., is dead. He was one of the best ex- pert accountants in the Government serv- ice. @ At the Chicago Musical College, Mrs. Florence Talbert was among the graduates to take part. @ Max Hall, a Negro waiter on the South- ern Pacific, has been made traveling head- waiter. He will inspect and instruct all waiters in the service of the company, and have a Pullman pass as well as railway transportation. q@ Dr. R. B. McRary has been elected Grand Master of the Masons of North Carolina for the eighth time. C Dr. Harry F. Brown has been elected to suc ent pra pin tak Alt Ne Chi hay Rai ove bar ass Ho: hol to Yo cau stit ord ton, tific at 1 tool Ber tar: Geo and low. has cou! C poil of | the Ma: late pro: sup colo post yea offic mas tenc
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ALONG THE COLOR LINE succeed Dr. D. Grant Scott as superintend- ent of Provident Hospital, Baltimore, Md. C Dr. Daniel Troy Brantly, who has been practicing medicine in Albay in the Philip- pine Islands, has returned to the States to take a post-graduate course in surgery. In Albay there are only two other American Negroes, Albert Somersville, a judge, and Charles Miller, a blacksmith. @ The 1916 San Diego Exposition will have a colored sanitary inspector in the person of Mr. George C. Ramsay. Mr. Ramsay will have twenty men under him. @ Professor William Pickens addressed over 3,000 people in the City Auditorium in Macon, Ga., under the auspices of the Dun- bar-Douglass Literary Association recently. @ Dr. Laurie Allen has been made first assistant surgeon at Milwaukee County Hospital, Wis. He is the first Negro to hold such a position in Wisconsin. @ Miss Eola Chichester won a scholarship to the School of Applied Design in New York City, but was refused admittance be- cause of her color. She entered Pratt In- stitute and is making a very creditable rec- ord. @ N. C. Bruce, a Negro farmer near Dal- ton, Mo., received both the medal and cer- tificate for the best Missouri corn exhibited at the San Francisco Exposition. Missouri took second place among all corn exhibitors. C B. S. Ingram, district grand master, and Benjamin J. Davis, district grand secre- tary of District Grand Lodge No. 18, of Georgia, have been found guilty of contempt and suspended from the Order of Odd Fel- lows for one year, and the Lodge’s charter has been revoked. They have secured a court injunction. C William H, Twiggs has received an ap- pointment in the office of the Commissioner of Public Works at Evanston, Ill. This is the second colored appointment made by Mayor Pearsons. C Mrs. Janie Porter Barrett, wife of the late Harris Barrett, and one of Virginia’s prominent colored women, has been made superintendent of the school for wayward colored girls in Hanover County. @ Clay Estill, a Negro employed in the post office at Lexington, Ky., for many years, died recently. The flag on the post office hung at half mast, and the post- master and a number of employees at- tended the funeral. 221 C Solomon T. Huston, a prominent col- ored banker of Salisbury, Md., died re- cently at the age of 83. @ The Honorable Alfred Boyd, of Mobile, Ala., is dead at the age of 65. He was for many years Tax Assessor of Dallas County. CG Emmett J. Scott has been elected a member of the Negro Rural School Fund, Anna T. Jeanes’ Foundation. @ Miss Donvea W. Donnell has been ap- pointed to a clerkship in the office of County Treasurer Sourbier, Indianapolis, Ind. Her work will include the preparing of nearly 300,000 spring tax receipts made in triplicate. CR. J. Salisbury is the only Negro in North Carolina who holds a captain’s li- cense for a passenger steamship. @ Charles Reese, who learned the auto- mobile business while working in the Stude- baker establishment with 400 white em- ployees, is now head of the Wabash Ave- nue Y. M. C, A. Automobile School, Chi- cago, Ill. @ Father Massiah, for ten years rector of St. Thomas’ P. E. Church, Chicago, II. is dead of pneumonia. C Dr. Arthur A. Wall is the first colored man to be appointed Borough Physician at Rankin, Pa. C William D. R. Brown, for forty years sexton of St. Phillips P. E. Church, New York City, is dead. q Dr. J. K. Polk is the first Negro to be- come a member of the Board of Health at Indianapolis, Ind. @ Squire Gilford Troup is the only Negro Justice of the Peace in Alabama. The new constitution of 1901 deprived many Ne- groes of the right to vote. Troup appealed to his white friends and they re-elected him. @ At Madison Square Garden, New York City, Howard P. Drew finished first in the seventy-yard race equalling the world’s record. Roy Morse, another Negro, finished second. C Dr. J. B. Reeve, for forty-three years pastor of Lombard Street Central Presby- terian Church, Philadelphia, Pa., is dead. He was eighty-four years old. An account of his life appears in the Crisis for Sep- tember, 1915. @ Louis A. Fenderson won first honors at a test held in the New Haven Post Of- fice by the National Inspectors to deter-
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222 THE CRISIS mine the volume of mail handled by car- riers. @ Carroll Van Court, a Negro of Los An- geles, Cal., has designed a “Safety First” kitchen utensil which combines a carving fork, cooking spoon, graduating spoon, graduating half-gallon measure, ice cream freezer, half gallon churn, safety spoon and fork. @ Martha Washington, a former slave 72 years old, has been attending the West Side Evening School, Cincinnati, Ohio, since its beginning, 15 years ago. She hopes to con- tinue until she is awarded a diploma on merit. C John R. Baker, a junior in the Central High School, Harrisburg, Pa., won the first prize of $25 for his oration, “Siberia, Its Struggles and Its Promises.” He was the only colored contestant left from the elimi- nation contests, there being seven whites and himself in the final contest for three prizes. @ George Gabriel, an Abbysinian who speaks eighteen languages, is a porter at the Grand Central Terminal, New York City. He was called upon recently to inter- pret after the official interpreter had failed with his eleven languages. Mr. Ga- briel succeeded. @ Bishop William Quayle has subscribed $100 toward the fund for a ““Welcome Hall” in St. Paul, Minn., for colored people. @ Mr. Harry Warwack has been drawn for grand jury duty and Mr. Fred John- son for petit jury work in Montgomery County, Ohio. They are the first Negroes to appear on jury work in this county. @ Former Assistant United States Attor- ney General William H. Lewis is taking a prominent part in the Mohr murder case, Providence, R. I., in behalf of the Negroes in the case. @ Miss Emma S. Brown, who is 61 years old, has been in the employ of the Federal Government fifty years. She has 105 em- ployees* working under her in the Trim- ming Department of the Bureau of En- graving and Printing, Washington, D. C. @ J. Myron Crawford made the highest av- erage in the examination of the Missouri State Board of Embalmers held in St. Louis. Thirty-four colored and white ap- plicants took the examination. @ The appointment of Charles Redmon to the police force in Knoxville, Tenn., gives the Negro race its fourth representative in that department. @ Mr. and Mrs. David Newsom, said to be the wealthiest couple of Hertford County, N. C., passed away within twenty- four hours of each other at the ages of 94 and 60, respectively. They were vic- tims of pneumonia. C( J. J. Cleveland, an elderly Negro farmer near Brooksville, Okla., has a cornfield of twenty acres averaging three ears to a stalk. His whole crop yields 125 bushels to the acre. C W. H. Pollard, a Negro, is President of the Buffalo Bayou Longshoremen’s As- sociation of Houston, Texas, which has a membership of 200. C Dr. William A. Hinton has been ap- pointed pathologist to take charge of all the laboratory work of the Boston Dispen- sary, Mass. @ George McBean is the oldest Negro sailor out of the port of Philadelphia, Pa. He is 75 years old, and has been a sailor for 61 years. @ Sam Lucas, the oldest Negro actor, died recently in New York City. He was born at Washington Courthouse, Ohio, eighty years ago. Funeral services were held at Mother Zion Church, and Daniel Frohman, his white manager for forty years, came from Boston to attend. C R. L. Lillard, a colored man, is chewing- gum maker in one of the largest gum fac- tories in Dayton, Ohio. @ Mr. George McAneny and Major R. R. Moton were principal speakers at a meet- ing of the Brooklyn Armstrong Associa- tion held in Brooklyn, N. Y. A live calf was used for demonstration purposes by Hampton students. @ Mrs. Payne, a well-known colored de- signer of women’s wear, and employed by a white firm in New York City, was killed in a wreck on the Lackawanna Road. @ Captain James S. Tyler, of Columbus, Ohio, is dead. He was a veteran of the Civil War, and held many prominent posi- tions. @ Honorable John C. Dancy has been ap- pointed General Financial Secretary of the A. M. E. Zion Board of Bishops to succeed Rev. J. S. Jackson. He will hold this po- sition together with his present one, Gen- eral Church Extension Secretary, until the next General Conferenece, in May. @ Miss Colin Rice is the first colored wom- an to hold a clerical position in the Ele- vated Railways of Chicago. She is em- ployed in the medical department. 4 on | pub: iam Gra Chi lean Sou is d of t in / lish, pow qd §s celel and rigit sitio Hos on | has gele ficer own rest; mati Fla. ordi Cou oper Tra that catic ein ises ame nant ing St. ] emp labo
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@—4._- = oe 1, e le- by ed us, she Si- ap- the eed po- en- the om- Ele- ALONG THE COLOR LINE 223 FOREIGN - senreee McADOO has appointed the following white persons to serve on the Permanent Committee for the Re- public of Haiti: Edward Hidden, of St. Louis, Mo., chairman; Major-General Wiill- iam C. Gorgas, Washington, D. C.; E. R. Grabow, Boston, Mass.; S. M. Hastings, Chicago, Ill., and Leon C. Simon, New Or- leans, La. @ Chief George Moshesh of Basutoland, South Africa, a son of the great Moshesh, is dead at the age of eighty. He was one of the greatest living leaders of black men in Africa, speaking both French and Eng- lish, and being a man of shrewdness and power. @ Sir Thomas Fowell Burton, member of a celebrated family of English abolitionists and for many years President of the Abo- rigines Protection Society, is dead. GHETTO ISS JANE R. BOSFIELD, after be- ing discriminated against in her po- sition as stenographer at the Medfield State Hospital, Mass., has finally been dismissed on account of color. The superintendent has asked for a “white” stenographer. @ An attempt has been made in Los An- geles, Cal., to prevent a colored police of- ficer, Mr. H. L. Garrott, from occupying his own property on the ground that the deed restricted’ occupation to white people. The matter is before the courts. @ The Colored Board of Trade, Miami, Fla., sends us this report: A segregation ordinance was brought before the City Council to be placed on its passage. The open protests of the Colored Board of Trade have.“about” killed it, to the extent that they are now receiving many communi- cations from white civic organizations, beg- ging us to allow it to pass upon the prom- ises of many concessions thereafter. q@ A bill has been passed in Virginia amending the Norfolk Segregation ordi- nance. @ An attack has been made upon the mov- ing picture theatre at 2351 Market Street, St. Louis, Mo., because the white proprietor employs colored help instead of white union labor. @ The colored people of Dallas, Texas, are fighting segregation in that city. q J. J. Beal and Frank Guinn, election of- ficials of Blaine County, Okla., who were convicted two years ago of intimidating Negroes and preventing them from voting under the Grandfather Clause, have been given a complete and full pardon by Presi dent Wilson. @ Greeley Square Amusement Company in New York City has been fined $500 for discriminating against Negroes. C Ben Higgs, a well-known white man of Milwood, Ga., has been sentenced to 95 years in the penitentiary for the murder of Martha Anderson, a Negro woman aged 59. Higgs tried to hire her to pick cotton for him; when she refused he shot her. (@ Claud Pennel, a descendent of both col- ored and white parents, is under sentence of twelve months on the county roads of Kingston, Va., for marrying a white girl, Caro Jones. The girl is to serve an equal length of time in the county jail. Pennel is said to have means to fight the case. @ The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has decided against “Athens” George, who tried to discriminate against Negroes in his thea- tre. @ Clyde B. Hayes has been awarded a ver- dict of $125 by the courts of Wayne County, Mich., against the white proprietor of a restaurant who refused him service because of his color. @ The following lynchings have taken place since our last record: December 29th, Reddick, Fla.—Seven- teen year old Negro, unknown; alleged at- tempt to assault white girl. January 12th, Goldsboro, N. C.—John Richards; alleged murder. January 20th, Albany, Ga.—For the murder of Sheriff Moreland in the home of Felix Lake when he tried to make an arrest: Lake, Felix, father; Lake, Frank, son; Lake, Dewey, son; Lake, Major, son; Keith, Rodius. January 25th, Boston, Tex.—W. J. May- field (white), alleged murder. January 25th, Livingston, Ala—Richard Burton; burglary and stabbing owner of premises. January 31, Hot Springs, Ark.—Will Warren; aceused of chasing white boys. Gh
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Men of the Month A ClVIL February a year ago Thaddeus SERVANT W. Wheeler was appointed Cost Clerk of the City of Dayton, Ohio. He comes of one of the oldest and best col- ored families of the city, having been born and educated there, and a graduate of the Steele High School. In 1903 he was made Deputy Clerk of the Common Pleas Court, a position which he held until 1909. He then went into the real estate business and afterward became Engrossing Clerk of the State House of Representatives. He gained his present position under the Commission Government through Civil Service examina- tion. He is a charter member of the local Branch of the N. A. A. C. P. oi A JUDGE Judge Edwin J. Barclay is well- known throughout the Republic of Liberia. He was born there in 1882 and is a nephew of ex-President Arthur Barclay. He is a graduate of Liberia College and was admitted to the Bar in 1904. He has served the Republic in the Educational Department; the Department of State, and has been Judge of the Circuit Court since 1912. In addition to all this he has written some poetry and furnished the music for the most popular patriotic song sung in Liberia. Chi Thirty years ago Fred F. Smith was a Boston boot- black. Last December he was made First Assistant Assessor by Major Curley with a salary and fees as Appraiser of Property. Mr. Smith has been in the Assessor’s office for twelve years and has twice before been certified for the position of First Assistant by the Civil Service Commission, but color prejudice barred him from the appointment. This year he stood at the top of the list and the Mayor said: “They do not want you in this position simply because of the fact that your skin is a little darker than mine, but you deserve it, have honestly won: it, and are perfectly competent to fill it, and in spite of the opposition to you on account of your color I am going to appoint you.” AN ASSESSOR A LEADER OF General Andrew S. Burt, COLORED SOLDIERS ‘who died last year, was for ten years Colonel of the 25th United States Infantry, composed of colored soldiers. He was a veteran of the Civil War, an Indian fighter for thirty-two years, and took part in both the Spanish- American and Filipino Wars. Before a committee of the United States Senate at the time of the Brownsville affray he testi- fied in glowing terms of the bravery and discipline of the colored soldiers. Chil Many colored folk saw and en- joyed the Progressive Westerner during its brief career. The guiding spirit was Eleane S. Dickson, who died last July at the age of twenty-two. Miss Dickson was educated in Denver and Seattle and graduated from the High School at seventeen. She was a cheerful, energetic girl who is sadly missed. A YOUNG EDITOR AN INSPIRER Mr. A. H. Glenn, Oberlin ’02, OF YOUTH has been connected with the Washington, D. C., Public Schools for the past ten years. He is secre- tary of the Board of Examiners and head of the Department of Languages; but per- haps his really best work and the work least known is the personal encouragement which he has given to colored college men. He has secured scholarships for M Street High School graduates as follows: Amherst, 3; Bowdoin, 1; Brown, 1; Harvard, 3; Pitts- burgh, 3; Syracuse, 3; Williams, 3; Dart- mouth, 4; Iowa State, 1; Yale, 1. Many of these universities had never before offered such aid to colored youth. Nearly all these young people have made or are making fine records, and a considerable percentage have been elected to the Phi Beta Kappa. Ch A LAWYER George H. Woodson has long been one of the best-known col- ored lawyers in the West. He was born in Virginia in 1865, graduated from Howard University, and has practiced at the Iowa State Bar for twenty years. He has han- dled chiefly labor litigation and personal in- 224
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MEN OF THE MONTH THE LATE GEN. A. 8S. BURT THE LATE MISS E. 8. DICKSON A. H. GLENN GEO. H. WOODSON JUDGE E. J. BARCLAY T. W. WHEELER F. F, SMITH
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226 THE CRISIS jury cases. He has been a judge of the Sixth Judicial District of Iowa and ran for the Legislature on the Republican ticket in 1912. Mr. Woodson is a charitable, public- Commissioner Henry McColl present- ing a gold medal to Gertrude Hubbard, who rescued her sister and brother from their burning home. The medal was purchased by the Civic league and pre- sented to the little girl at the City Hall., St. Paul, Minn. (Courtesy of the Pioneer Press) spirited man. He is a thirty-third degree Mason and an Odd Fellow, and was one of the strongest supporters of the original “Ni- agara Movement.” H celel spri ly him: in ] Firs the in t] dask the letic Twe men beat
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THE LATE BOOKER T. WASHINGTON LYING IN STATE AT EES DREW Howard Drew the celebrated colored sprinter has recent- ly been covering himself with glory in New York City. First he equalled the world’s record in the seventy yards dash and finally at the New York Ath- letic Club Games, Twenty-second Regi- ment Armory, he beat the world’s in- RES MEN OF THE MONTH 227 HOWARD P. DREW World Champion Sprinter TUSKEGEE SNES door record for one hundred yards run- ning it in ten sec- onds flat. Roy Morse, another col- ored lad who holds a world’s running record, ran second, and behind these two came the vaunt- ed Loomis of Chi- cago, a white man. Loomis beat Drew once in California and has been boast- ing of it ever since. SRE
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The Looking Glass LITERATURE DELAIDE CRAPSEY writes in the New Republic: And if the many sayings of the wise Teach of submission I will not submit, But with a spirit all unreconciled Flash an unquenched defiance to the stars. Better it is to walk, to run, to dance, Better it is to laugh and leap and sing, To know the open skies of dawn and night, To move untrammeled down the flaming noon, And I will clamor it through weary days Keeping the edge of deprivation sharp, Nor with the pliant speaking on my lips Of resignation, sister to defeat. I’ll not be patient. I will not lie still. The December number of the American sconomic Review has a review of Census Bulletin, Number 129. Professor Kelly Miller writes on the “Practical Value of Higher Education” in December Education. The Living Age for January 8th has an article on the late Booker T. Washington. Articles on African missions, entitled “Black Sheep,” by J. K. Mackenzie, ran through the October, November, December, January and February numbers of the Atlantic. The most interesting literary occurrence of the month has been the appearance of the Journal of Negro Histery edited by Carter G. Woodson. This is a quarterly magazine of ninety-eight pages, excellently printed on good paper. It contains four leading articles together with documents and book reviews. It is twenty-five cents a copy and one dollar a year at 2223 Twelfth Street, Washington, D. C. The New York Evening Post welcomes this magazine editorially as “a new and strik- ing note in the advance of the black man.” Miss Werner’s new book on the languages of Africa (“The Language-Families of Africa,” by A. Werner, London, 1915, 149 pp. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 3 s 6 d.) is one of the most valuable of recent contributions to Negro history and ethnology. She makes five groups of languages: the Sudan family; the 2 Bantu family; the Hamitic family; the Bushman group; and the Semitic family. The first group contains some two hundred “isolating” languages like the Chinese, and is peculiarly West African. The second family, of some three hundred languages, is “agglutinating,” while the Hamitic lan- guages are inflected. The Semitic languages are, of course, Asiatic, and the place of the Bushman has not been exactly de- termined. Miss Werner insists upon the importance of the study of African lan- guages and of their highly organized gram- mar. Mr. J. W. Work of Fisk University has done us good service in his book on Negro folk-songs (Folk-Song of the American Negro, by John Wesley Work, 131 pp. Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn.). The chief value of this collection of folk-songs is Mr. Work’s personal knowledge of the exact way in which the Negroes sing them. On the other hand Mr. Work’s knowledge of African music and African sociology séems exceedingly vague, and his almost naive religious faith rather spoils the scientific value of his otherwise interesting work. oF CRUCIFYING CHRIST rq“ HE Rev. Francis J. Grimké of Wash- ington, D. C., is determined not to allow the hypocrites of the white Christian church to succeed in their unchristian policy of color discrimination without protest. He says in a recent leaflet: “I have a friend who is at the head of an educational work. In the interest of his school he had occasion sometime ago to travel a little in seeking to raise funds. During this tour he stopped at a certain town and called upon one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest man in the town, who is also a prominent member and officer in one of the churches of the town. This friend is a college graduate and an alum- nus of one of the leading theological sem- inaries of the country; his manner and bearing are also that of a gentleman. He finally succeeded in getting an interview with this wealthy church member, and, in 28 intro¢ of su purpe throu him. losing the | tive; of th and self t Now mean and I a col frien with self ¢ ing I leavil finall to hi speal do so — to di gentl color of h consi Gene the and 1 Now spon: nothi speal feelit ting mans I ash of al that men lowir Fu risy artic West Adve press jorit segre hypo says ‘one inter
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THE LOOKING GLASS 229 introducing himself, said, ‘I am Mr. B of such a city,’ and proceeded to state the purpose of his mission. When he was through, this Christian gentleman said to him. ‘I must tell you frankly that I am losing my interest in your race. Most of the leaders of your people are very asser- tive; they want to be the social equals of the white people. You have come here, and look how you have introduced your- self to me. You said, “I am Mr. B -.7? Now what do you mean by that? You mean simply that you are my social equal. and I don’t care to have anything to do with a colored man who feels that way.’ This friend said, for a moment he was dumb with astonishment, but soon recovered him- self and, although he felt at first like tell- ing him just what he thought of him and leaving his house, he held his temper, and finally told him that if it was more pleasing to him to have him drop the word ‘Mr.’ in speaking of himself, in the future he would do so. “The point particularly to which I want to direct attention is that this Christian gentleman who could not bear to have a colored man use the word ‘Mr.’ in speaking of himself was at that very time being considered for the chairmanship of the General Evangelistic Committee of one of the greatest denominations in the country, and was afterwards appointed its chairman. Now I am not holding the denomination re- sponsibile for that appointment, for it knew nothing of this incident of which I am speaking, but think of the man himself, feeling as he did, acting as he did, permit- ting himself to be considered for the chair- manship of such a committee. Before God, I ask, ‘Was that man fit to be at the head of an evangelistic committee—a committee that sought to hold up Jesus Christ before men with a view of accepting Him, of fol- lowing Him?’ ” Further proof of the extraordinary hypoc- risy of white churchmen is shown in an article “By the Rev. Edgar A. Lawther, West Virginia Conference” in the Christian Advocate. After stating that “it is the present consensus of opinion among the ma- jority of the leaders in the South that the segregation of the races is a fundamental hypothesis of southern civilization,” he says: “This conclusion does not deny the ‘one blood’ doctrine of Saint Paul, for racial intermingling is one thing and _ racial brotherhood is another. If the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, is wrong in its attempted solution of the Negro problem, then also is southern statesmanship wrong and the conscientious and able leaders of the ‘new South’ are guilty of injustice toward their colored neighbors and brothers.” When we reflect that “southern statesman- ship” has lynched 2,812 untried colored men in thirty years beside disfranchising the race and instituting “Jim-Crow” cars and other methods of public and private insult, we wonder if the Church could not find slightly better model. Not so, however, with the Rev. Edgar: ‘We need surrender no vital principle in advocating the organization of a separate fraternal Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America. Our colored constitu- ency would doubtless favor such a move.” In the same breath he continues: “We need not talk about larger move- ments of church federation till we can have unity and union in our denominational families. In God’s name, let us earnestly strive for a united Methodism in Amer- ica. oS ie “We shall pray earnestly to God, whose providence watches over these two great churches, that as we look toward the Gen- eral Conference it may not be that our hope for union will be shattered, but that our bishops, ministers and laymen shall strike hands with the bishops, ministers and lay- men’ of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for a more determined effort in the work of our world parish.” Or in other words, let American Metho- dists unite by kicking out the “Niggers.” The St. Paul Appeal adds this similar thought: “Said Secretary of the Navy Daniels at Washington recently, at fraternal night ceremonies: ““T pray to God that the day will come in Methodism when there will not have to be any fraternal night.’ The Secretary added that he hoped that the day would come when there would be no Northern or Southern Methodist churches, but there will be but one church. “Of course he did not exactly mean that. What he meant to say was that he hoped the time would come when there will be but one WHITE church and that the yellow, black,
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230 THE CRISIS red and brown Christians be forbidden to enter.” What is—what must be, the inevitable, logical result of such an outrageous trav- esty on the teaching of Jesus Christ as these remarks reveal? Is it not such horrors as we hear from the war in Christian Eu- rope? Listen to the wail from Poland: ‘Hundreds of thousands were forced from their homes on a day’s notice, the more for- tunate being packed and shipped as freight —the old, the sick and insane, men, women, and children, shuttled from one province to another, side-tracked for days without food or help of any kind—the less fortunate driven into the woods and swamps to die of starvation. Jewish towns were sacked and burned wantonly. Hundreds of Jews were carried off as hostages into Germany, Aus- tria, and Russia. Orgies of lust and torture took place in public in the light of day. There are scores of villages where not a sin- gle woman was left inviolate. Women, old and young, were stripped and knouted in the public squares. Jews were burned alive in synagogues where they had fied for shelter.” Listen to the cry from the Belgian Bish- ops: “There is not an honest heart that is not swollen with indignation. While we hear our own Government saying to the face of the world, ‘That one is twice guilty who, after violating another’s rights, tries still, audaciously and cynically, to justify him- self by imputing to his victim faults which he had never committed,’ our own people can only by doing violence to themselves stifle words of malediction. But yesterday a countryman in the suburb of Malines learned that his son had fallen on the field of battle. A priest consoled him. And the brave man answered: ‘Oh, for my son, I give him to our country. But they took my eldest son, the cowards, and shot him down in a ditch!’” Fi THE ART OF BEING JUST OW and then our conscience hurts us, particularly under the plain speaking of foreigners. Mme. Elsa de Pierrefeu, of the French Red Cross, has been speaking in Boston: “We think nothing of lynching in certain states. How about our treatment of the Negroes and the fostering of race prejudice and hatred? Have we not all the seeds of war right in our midst? Terrible war of neighbor against neighbor. America’s hour is about to strike, for she stands as guilty as any nation in Europe. Her only hope of re- generation is through suffering.” The National Rip-Saw says: “An incident is reported from Fort Worth, Texas, that makes us feel that the twentieth century is but a dream and that we are really living in the dark ages. “When the Liberty Bell on its return from the Pacific coast stopped at Fort Worth, the school children were permitted to gather around the old relic, touch it with their hands, and kiss it with their lips, and then it happened. It was a frightful thing to happen in a civilized community and no wonder the people were thrown into a panic and narrowly escaped riot and bloodshed. A Negro school child tried to kiss the bell. That settled it. The mob spirit was aroused in that civilized white community as if by an electric shock and instantly the blood of ignorant fanatics was fired and they threatened to drive every colored man out of the city. For shame! When I think of that Negro child I blush scarlet for my race. If the kiss of that child was an insult to that community then the Liberty Bell had no business there. The first blood shed in the war of the revolution which ended in the independence proclaimed by the old bell was the blood of a martyr with a coal-black skin. “IT was not surprised to learn that the Negro child that caused the near-riot was the child of a poor workingman. Let us apologize to ourselves for being human beings!” John Randolph Cooper, a white Georgia lawyer, said recently before a Washington court: “T have defended Negroes in Georgia, Alabama and Florida, and where a white man and a Negro are on opposite sides of a case in these states it is impossible for the Negro to get a fair trial. The Fourteenth Amendment was supposed to have been passed for the uplift of the Negro race, but it is used for the benefit of the railroads. The Negroes do not benefit by it. “In Georgia Negroes are prevented from registering and I contend that whenever by any action of a state, whether through its legislature or through its courts, or through its executive or administrative officers, all persons of the African race are excluded, solely because of their race or color, from sel thi ES a Url
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ur re- ort he at in ell ack the vas lan gia ton ria, Lite fa the nth een but ids. ‘om by its ugh all Jed, rom THE LOOKING GLASS 231 serving as petty and grand jurors in the criminal prosecution of a person of the Af- rican race, the equal protection of the laws is denied to him, contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.” The South is undoubtedly restive under this unanswerable charge. The Louisville Courier-Journal says in this choice English: “Congress will be asked to pass a segre- gation law for Washington to prevent the encroachment of Negro property owners in residence sections occupied chiefly by white persons. “Well, Congress will not grant the re- quest. “Washington, a half century after Ap- pomattox, is Exhibit A to prove the fallacy of the theory of the rabid advocates of race equality that race prejudice was unreason- able and eradicable. “Washington has the best Negroes in the world. They are, speaking generally, intel- ligent and educated, well dressed without being swaggerers, and quite easy to meet and greet without injury to anyone’s feel- ings. The relations between whites and blacks in the National Capital might be de- scribed as being mutually respectful, and, as between individuals who are acquainted, agreeable and even cordial. But the color line remains drawn as clearly in Washing- ton as in Georgia, where there is, in some sections, at least, a mutual lack of respect based upon outrageous conduct of lawless individuals of both colors which provides each race with the excuse for attributing to the other a shocking lack of character and decency. .. . “Congress will undertake no such deli- cate, difficult task as segregating the Negro residents of Washington or deliminating blocks in which they live. Neither a Repub- lican Congress nor a Democratic Congress would risk it. Soothing a wildcat or stop- ping a circular saw with the bare hands would be a task for woman in comparison with it.” A Southern white man writes in the Montgomery Advertiser: “In the mistaken treatment of the Negro in the outset we proceeded on the basis of certain theories which operated on us with all the force and effect of facts, yet these theories have gone to naught in the light of development. So far from yielding good to the race of whites these theories have only brought forth evil, not to the Negro only, but the white race as well. One of these dominant theories of the past was that of withholding from utterance or expres- sion any commendation of the Negro lest he be lifted above himself and be emboldened to assume undue consequence to the detri- ment of the white race. Yet, where the op- posite course has been pursued as it has in many localities in the South, the results have been to the contrary. That is to say, plainly and unequivocally, that where the Negro has been properly respected, becom- ingly treated as a man, has been duly rec- ognized as worthy of consideration by ac- cording to him a fair chance and simple justice, he has never failed to become a valu- able asset to society. On the other hand, where there has been a studious effort to suppress the black man, to mistreat him, to establish one standard of justice for him and another for the race of whites, there have inevitably been disturbance, demorali- zation, backwardness, and much else to the detriment of the public good. “Another theory has been that of the exercise of force toward the Negro rather than that of suasion and the gentler methods cf treatment. Few thought of treating a Negro gently, and few of the exercise of suasion as a means of amendment of race conduct. No, he must be forced to do, hence there were kept before him the terrors of the nightly lash, the jail, the chain-gang, the penitentiary, and especially the venge- ance and violence of mobocracy. It need scarcely be said that this is the reflection of the regime of slavery.” Albert Leon Guérard, who teaches French in a Texas institute, speaking “to the men and women of the South,” says: “The time has come when you can afford to be just—to frame such laws that the illit- erate, the drunkard, the criminal, be ex- cluded from the privileges of active citizen- ship; whilst all desirable citizens, whatever may be their sex, race, color or previous condition of servitude, will be welcome to the full exercise of American liberty. I do not know whether these words of mine will not be resented. I am no platform virtuoso, and I have not come here to sing old words to an old tune. Think for youselves, young men and women: do not allow your grand- fathers to do your thinking for you.” For the gaiety of nations we add the comment of a dyed-in-the-wool Bourbon, the
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232 THE CRISIS Augusta Chronicle: “There is no question but that the courts should deal impartially, and while it ushers in a condition that has, frankly, been to a certain extent, disregarded heretofore, it will have a wholesome effect in one way, and beyond doubt establish distinctively high standing for the courts of the entire country, furnishing an incentive and prece- dent upon which justice may be impartiaily dispensed everywhere. “One element of doubt as to the prudence of it clings around this action, but that should be no hindrance and cannot influ- ence the courts. This lies in the danger of the ignorant and ruthlessly criminal Ne- groes arrogating to themselves an unwar- ranted degree of importance and trespassing upon the rights of others as citizens. Evi- dences of this nature have been manifested, from time to time, on occasions where meas- ures according them fair recognition were given. It is one of the unfortunate features of Negro civilization.” The above somehow reminds us of the solemn dignity of a drunken man. “Negro civilization” consists apparently of “igno- rant and ruthlessly criminal Negroes,” while white civilization consists of the Congrega- tion of the Saints. Chi A LYNCHING “TALK-FEST” VERY year the American people from the comfort of their arm chairs read over the list of mob murderers (or at least the list that looks most respectable) and then after a lot of real indignant talk they have dinner. The Boston Herald thinks it “fortunate for our national reputation that Russia is more than occupied at present with war. Otherwise, certain barbarous Russian news- papers in the exclusive circles of St. Peters- burg and Moscow might be commenting to- day upon the chaotic condition of darkest America.” The New York Evening Globe suggests two remedies for lynching—“the appeal to reason and the appeal to force. As Georgia apparently will not heed the former, the time has come to app’y the latter with inex- orable resolve.” The Buffalo Express can only joke grim- ly: “While it is a lynching crime for Ne- groes to jest with a white girl, it is justifi- able retaliation, and quite chivalric for white men to beat a Negro girl.” The Brooklyn Eagle follows: ‘In a Geor- gia town two Negroes were lynched for the alleged offense of speaking saucily to a white woman. Let the good work go bravely on. If it is persisted in the black folks of Geor- gia will soon be giving etiquette lessons to the elite. Elsewhere in the United States no race has been trained to courtesy by making impoliteness a capital offense.” The Boston Post says: “This is rather worse than anything that has been told of atrocities committed in the fury of the Eu- ropean war. It is inconceivable in a free community under conditions of peace.” The Pittsburgh Leader says: “While the angry tide was still swelling and threatening against the Mexicans, a crowd of American bandits murdered some other American citizens in our own country, right at their own homes. And the Amer- ican public, gritting its valiant teeth at its helplessness to go down to Mexico and shoot that country clear off the earth, paid no attention to the lynching of five Negroes, or if it did it was either to ignore the murder- ous act or to applaud it. “It is just this intellectual national cross- eyededness and near-sightedness that is making a world laughing stock of America and Americans. What looks real to us is silly and shortsighted and unintelligent to people who keep their feet on the ground.” Secretary Lansing is recommending “as an act of grace” an appropriation of $41,030 for the lynching of certain Austrians, Greeks and Turks in Omaha, Neb., in 1909; which proves the advantage of being a hy- phenated American. We think much sympathy should be shown Professor Josiah Morse of the Uni- versity of South Carolina (“white”), who “holds no brief for lynching,” but gravely suggests in the Philadelphia Public Ledger that we should count “occasions” of lynch- ing, and not merely the unimportant number of victims of each mob. In this way he would be able to prove “little or no” increase in lynching! He insists that “irritability” on account of the fall in the price of cotton is a respectable cause of killing “darkies” by Southern gentlemen, and finally con- cludes with this gem: “May I add what I have elsewhere writ- ten, and what every intelligent Negro knows to be true—that among no other people on this planet would the Negro have fared bet- ter Sou tha Cit dee whi aga oni nea sus lior the like tro; has hat to rig doc his sm dee anc by as wh of lea pla lig! hez blu wil gre wa pu Sor bla are fri nee for nit sib of ur the cal the
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THE LOOKING GLASS 233 ter than he has with the people of the South.” If this is true we certainly need to be thankful! The editor of the /ndependent, Elizabeth City, N. C., has more common sense and deeper insight: “I shudder when I think of the price the white race must some day pay for its sins against colored peoples. -The day of reck- oning is coming, it must come, and it may be nearer at hand than the more far-seeing suspect. “There are probably more than ten mil- lion Negroes in the United States. Under the vicious leadership of intellectual brutes like Thomas Dixon and Thomas Watson, the troglodyte population of the Southern States has made these ten million or more Negroes hate the country in which they are forced to live but in which they are denied the rights of citizenship. The average Negro is docile, patient, kind and polite. He knows his place, he keeps his place, and bows and smiles when he meets a white man. But deep down in the heart of every black man is a grievous knowledge of all the insults and abuses and infamies heaped upon him by men who would not for a moment pass as his superiors if their skins were not white. The Negro realizes his inferiority of numbers and his lack of organization and leadership. Meekly he takes the humble place assigned to him and tries to be happy, light-hearted and content. But his heart is heavy, his soul is oppressed, his vision is blurred by the welling springs of grief within, and he cannot love and respect the great white race. If we do not find a better way of dealing with the Negro, if we do not put down the wild mob of barbarians in the South who kick and cuff and burn and lynch black men upon the slightest provocation, we are going to some day lose one of our best friends, and just at a time when we shall need him most.” But commend us to the Macon Telegraph for purblind blundering. Heavy with dig- nity, and a grave sense of unlimited respon- sibility, it deserves a tomb beside the Charleston News and Courier: “There is a mistaken idea in the minds of so many white people in the South that ‘uplifting the Negro’ means putting him on the same street to live, abolishing Jim Crow cars, admitting him to white hotels and theatres and generally puffing him up so that he will become intolerable to live with because of his social aspirations. Nothing could be further from the real aim in effec- tive education and training of the Negro, nothing could be further from the actual results achieved up to the present time. Tuskegee has proved one thing conclusively —that the trained and equipped Negro is taught, among other things, to realize his limitations as a race, and that the indi- vidual, even if mentally qualified, must never take himself conspicuously outside those limitations even if he is fitted to do it and feels he would like to. The trained Negro is an ideal servant, an ideal artisan, and ideal worker generally—properly han- dled. But it takes an intelligent white man to do it. It’s beyond the narrow-headed roughneck of the Caucasian race to get along with the Negro under such condi- tions, but the trained Negro is a more effi- cient instrument than the untrained white man, and no matter how careful the Negro may be to keep his qualifications from be- coming obvious, the unequipped white man senses it himself with such quickness and accuracy that a ‘situation’ develops at once. There is an element of white people who find expression of race superiority only in keeping the inferior race as stupid, unin- formed, and inefficient as individuals as it is possible. Their adoption of this course is spontaneous and it is inspired by the first flash of an unthinking instinct for self-pres- ervation without sitting down intelligently to figure out how best to accomplish it. To so fit themselves that they can turn the increased efficiency, the high standard of the apparently encroaching inferior race to their own profit, comfort and increment and the general enrichment of the community, does not occur at all. The only impulse is to kill what appears to be a dangerous competitor. It is unthinking, suicidal and disturbingly stupid.” “Disturbingly stupid”! That is the word, and we doubt if it fits the “narrow-headed roughneck” any better than it does the editor of the Macon Telegraph and his ilk. Harper’s Weekly says of the Tuskegee lynching statistics: “How much more effec- tive these facts are than any talk about them can be.” Of course. “The Germans recently in- vaded Belgium.” ‘‘The Jews are excluded from the Yale Skull and Bones.” “There was an execution recently on Golgotha.”
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234 THE THE LURE OF THE TROPICS AMUEL L. PARRISH, in a pamphlet entitled “Self-Government in the Trop- ics,” declares that if one girdles the world with the parallel lines of the thirtieth de- grees of North and South latitude one will embrace the populations unfit for self-gov- ernment because of their inefficiency, etc. Mr. Horace White points out in the New York Evening Post that in the first place, most of this region consists of water and desert; that in the second place it includes the birth place of Simon Bolivar, and St. Augustine, and comes very near including Moses, the Prophets, and Jesus Christ. It also includes the great Republic of Brazil. Mr. White is much too modest in his claims. This part of the world is respon- sible for the whole Egyptian civilization with its mightiest Pharoahs, and its culture extending over four thousand years; for the Ethiopian and Sudanese Empires, for the main part of Chinese civilization, and for the civilization of India. Mr. Parrish lays down the rule that stable civilizations must have “an incorruptible judiciary” to impar- tially administer the law. Mr. White points to the mob murders in Georgia, and says: “Instead of vaunting our superiority over tropical countries in this self-satisfied way we might better call upon the mountains and rocks to cover us.” The new Herald, published in the Danish West Indies, declares that laborers are lured to the Islands by false pretences as to the kinds of work and the amount of pay, and says: “That the field laborer in Santa Cruz, if the truth in all its fulness be told, is no better treated than the laborers in the rub- ber districts in the Congo, or even in the Putamayo regions in South America, over which so many protests arose.” The Herald is being violently attacked for its disclosures of the “misery, the filth, and the dreadful conditions under which these poor laborers live.” C. R. Enock, in his book on the Tropics, shows how the small and beautiful native in- dustries of the colored races have been sys- tematically driven out by debt bondage, the culture of one staple, and forced or contract labor. Says the New York Evening Post: “Nothing but the enrichment of estate owners has dictated the establishment of monoculture of coffee, cocoa, cotton, rubber, and so on. Mr. Enock points out that in CRISIS nearly all the African colonies and terri- tories, whether Negro or Mohammedan, the natives carry on small manufacturing oper- ations. The same fact is true of India, Mex- ico, South America, and almost every tropi- cal land. In Africa and India, for example, clever native smelters have never owed any- thing of their knowledge of the working of iron to Europe; nor have the expert makers of textiles. Wood-carving, gold and silver working, stone masonry, are as far ad- vanced. Yet the almost indefensible opera- tions of wholesale manufacturers and trad- ers are tending to drive out these native arts. Even travellers and students appear to regard them as instances of curious sav- agery and native cunning, rather than as the nucleus of a possible economic culture.” oi THE VOTE OF THE DIS- FRANCHISED KLAHOMA is trying to get around the decision of the Supreme Court. “We elect officials,” says the Muskogee Times- Democrat, “because they stand for better government and in opposition to Negro ac- tivity in governmental affairs.” The Oklahoman says: ‘‘That amendment must be one that provides for a literacy test, and the execution of its provisions must be placed in the hands of officials who realize that this is a white man’s state and that it must forever remain a white man’s state.” Meantime, the Governor in calling the spe- cial session of the Legislature, mentions every subject except the one for which the Legislature is really being called. “The governor cannot well be blamed for being ashamed to mention that subject. It’s not one that should appeal with particular pride to a party that calls itself democratic,” says the Wichita, Kan., Eagle. “Probably a majority of the people of Oklahoma do not object to an educational qualification that will honestly disfranchise all those unable to meet its provisions. But an educational qualification meant to disqualify all Negroes regardless of education and to qualify all Indians and whites, however ignorant, is another matter. Governor Williams is not to be blamed for approaching the subject with the utmost caution. He is one gover- nor whose situation we do not in the least envy.” Meantime the Raleigh, N. C., Times is looking to the far future: ny © — = es hlCUmrK CU
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“Without considering the professional ele- ment of Southern Republicanism, with whose fate no one is concerned, this political set- ting adrift of the Negro is fraught with the element of change in the South of the next decade. In that time it is to be expected that illiteracy, so far as the right to vote is concerned, practically will have been elimi- nated from the Negro as well as from the white race. The Negro, too, will have lost with education and with the stoppage of Re- publican nursing that thoughtless and dan- gerous habit of voting en masse which, more than anything else, has made him a political menace. It must be remembered that with the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States adverse to the ‘grandfather clauses’ and with the expiration of the time limit of those clauses, the South is under no regulation of the suffrage other than that of poll-tax and educational requirements. Thousands on thousands of Negroes are now competent to vote, who remain silent by choice. It is inevitable that some day they will begin to vote.” The East Tennessee News, a colored paper, is preparing for this day by a strong plea against the custom of buying and sell- ing Negro votes. The Knoxville Journal and Tribune thus holds up the hands of its colored contempo- rary: “It is a well-known fact, that there have been a large number of men of the colored race in Knoxville, who have been voting for a price. In the days of slavery, their pro- genitors may have been bought and sold without their consent; but men who vote for a price sell themselves for a small pit- tance. “We are sorry to have to make the ad- mission; but there are a good many white men here, as many as there are of the col- ored race perhaps, who admit that their souls are not their own, by selling their votes on election day, for a price far below that accepted by Judas Iscariot for his his- torical betrayal.” oA THE COLORED PRESS TRANGE indeed that wherever crime is committed by Negroes, every detail is published broadcast and the fact of color is most prominent in the details, but when up- lift and preventive measures are planned our welfare workers are neither consulted or considered. THE LOOKING GLASS 235 “Seventy-five thousand colored citizens are studiously ignored. Again the question, is it indifference or prejudice? or both. And echo answers, which and why.’’—Chicago Broad-Ax. “And thus the President, a Virginia Chris- tian gentleman, eighteen months after his removal of Henry Lincoln Johnson, keeps his words to the Negroes of the country who supported him. It is very plain that Wood- row Wilson does not expect the Negroes who vote to vote for him. In truth, he doesn’t want the Negro vote. He will certainly not get the German vote. He will not get the Republican vote; and next November will retire the man who gave his word and re- fused to keep it because those to whom he gave it are too weak to compel him to keep it. Taft couldn’t keep his word either! Where is he today?”—The St. Luke Herald. “In the course of an address at the open- ing exercises of the new annex to the John T. West School, Mr. T. C. Walker of Glou- cester County, made the statement that ‘Ne- groes would not pay enough taxes in ten years to cover the cost of such a building,’ or words to that effect. “Let us see. The building Mr. Walker re- ferred to cost $34,500. The assessed valu- ation of colored property in Norfolk is $1,- 462,630, which is assessed annually by the city and State $29,252.60. Besides, the Ne- groes of Norfolk pay their proportion of poll taxes, corporation taxes, liquor licenses, court fines, etc., from which funds for edu- cation are derived. Figure it out for your- self. Mr. Walker of Gloucester is good at compromising, but in this instance he ex- celled himself.”—Norfolk, Va., Journal and Guide. “The licensed bullying of the white color over the black, propensity to subject them to a position of inferiority and contempt throughout the human age, the most scorn- ful language pouring upon him even from the personages apparently well-bred and cultured, the growing habit of murdering with impunity and lynching, are the vices which the foreign adventurers under the assumption of Africanders, have trans- formed into habits manifesting heroism to the white races and are politely described as the only practical policy which make the natives remain subordinate. “It is upon this degrading policy that the white supremacy is built.”—-Mochochonono, Basutuland, South Africa.
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236 THE CRISIS UNCLE SAM SPEAKS: “BARBAROUS UNCHRISTIAN EUROPE!” SPICE HE Louisville News records this inter- esting occurrence: “It happened on a south-bound Fourth avenue car. At Chestnut street an unusu- ally large number of passengers got on, and among whom was a well dressed, elderly man whose appearance and bearing bore the stamp of the Kentucky Colonel. He was not unlike those lithographic pictures of the Kentucky gentleman about to partake of Kentucky cheer, and his ruddy complexion indicated that he had been cheered quite fre- quently. As he is the hero of our story this rather intimate description may be par- doned. “Before boarding the car he stood aside with that courtesy for which the male of the State are noted, to allow the ladies to pre- cede him. Among those waiting to get on were three colored ladies, but the Colonel, feeling nv doubt that to permit them to pre- cede him would be carrying courtesy to a ridiculous extreme, pushed unceremoniously past them and entered the car. He found a seat and was soon busy with his newspaper. “When the car reached Breckinridge street our hero had occasion to look up from his paper and found his vision obstructed by a most charmingly proportioned young lady. Her back was toward him. She was dressed in the extreme of fashion and wore a veil. “For a few moments our hero gazed in silent admiration at this exquisite creature, and then, realizing that one of Kentucky’s fairest was standing, he smoothed out his whiskers, removed his hat, rsese from his seat, and, with a bow that would have made Lord Chesterfield turn green with envy, said: ‘Accept my seat, lady.’ “The lady did so; and when she raised her veil and turned to thank him our hero al- most collapsed when he found himself look- ing into the winsome countenance of a choco- late brown.” oe | ok | of h nari to tl “yl dole its ; for the kne inju how exp sug suff the day joy litt whi tex wil Sel sea dig rid acl ey he aft su fr:
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Hetty THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS A Story By LEE WALLACE EEAEEEEEEAEAA EEE T her teacher’s call Selena rose and limped carefully out from the shade of her mother’s whitewashed shanty. Ordi- narily she would have taken the cinder path to the gate at a hop-skip-and-jump pace. “I’ve got me a sore toe,” she volunteered dolefully. One skinny bean-brown foot with its squirming bare digits was thrust forth for Miss Ellis’s inspection. Miss Ellis having long been a victim of the imaginative genius of small children, knew just how little of Selena’s microscopic injury to attribute to sand-burr prickles and how much to “make believe.” She tactfully expressed her sympathy with the hopeful suggestion that the crippled member would sufficiently recover to allow it to be shod for the Sunday school picnic to be held the next day. Whereupon Selena pirouetted about joyously, displaying an agility worthy of a little girl with ten sound toes. In her swift whirl the cloth strips of many colors and textures tied to her own tiny braids swung wildly around her head. “T see you’ve got long hair this morning, Selena,” remarked her teacher. “Yessum,” answered Selena gravely. She searched Miss Ellis’s face keenly, but that dignified dark countenance expressed neither ridicule nor merriment. Some of the “hair” hung so that it blew across the child’s face, whipping into her eyes, and this she put back with a toss of her head and a graceful brush of her hand after the manner of a fine lady annoyed by superabundant and disobedient locks. “Mine’s only playin’ like,” she confessed frankly. “That little girl next door’s got sure ’nough long hair, though—way long an’ curly. But then she’s white.” “Selena, where’s your mother?” Miss Ellis irrelevantly. “Q, she’s gone out. to wash,” returned the child. The question was wholly mechanical. Miss Ellis knew the answer before it was given. She knew, too, if she had made the same in- quiry of almost any other of her half-a- hundred small pupils she would have re- ceived that same unconsciously pathetic reply. “What time will she be here this even- ing?” she pursued. Selena was evidently in a mood for what her mother rebukingly termed “actin’ a monkey.” She pursed her lips and puck- ered her shiny forehead with the dismal querulousness of crabbed old age; she bowed her thin legs distressfully outward and stooped her, hipless midget of a body as if leaning palsiedly on a cane. “Gawd knows, honey, fo’ Ah don’t,’ she mouthed, shaking her head with an inimit- able show of solemnity. Miss Ellis told Selena “good bye” rather hurriedly, promising to stop in on her way back later in the day. She resolved to take Selena to task then for making a mockery of the aged and infirm as well as for break- ing the third commandment; but just now with the ludicrous mimic before her she realized her »%wn inability to be properly censorious. Selena grew sober in earnest as her teach- er turned to leave her. “Miss Lelly, won’t you come back quick please?” she pleaded, ‘“Mama said for me asked 237
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238 THE CRISIS not to go ’way while she’s gone an’ I haven’t had a single comp’ny to-day. I wish school would hurry up an’ start again.” The genuine appeal of this childish com- plaint set Miss Ellis off at her favorite oc- cupation of erecting a day nursery for the washerwomen’s children. It was a roomy structure supplied with competent attend- ants and surrounded by spacious play- grounds—a refuge for the school children during vacation and for the younger ones every working day in the year. She was again engrossed in her architec- tural day-dream as she returned from her errand. So much so that she might have forgotten her promise to Selena if she had not heard shrill, happy laughter as she ap- proached the whitewashed hut. Selena had “a comp’ny”—a freckled mite of a girl with pale blue eyes and a mass of wiry, light-col- ored ringlets. Obviously this was the pos- sessor of “sure ’nough” long hair. The two children seated side by side upon the ground were chattering together with a contentment that implied an amiable solu- tion of the race problem for all time. They were busy over the toilette of a foolish, pink- cheeked, yellow-haired doll, Selena’s most valued possession. Miss Ellis had an avowed liking to see the children of her people with dollies that were black or brown like themselves. In her race-jealous eyes a black mother with a white baby was hardly more incongruous than a black child with a white doll. “Am I invited to the party?” she called, entering the shutterless gate. The assent was enthusiastic; the two chil- dren scrambled apart to make room for her to sit between them. “We’ve got dinner,” announced Selena, indicating several rust-eaten tin dishes on the ground before her. “This,” lifting one containing a mound of green grass blades, “is puddin’, an’ this’—displaying a cake of dried mud sugared over with sand—“is ice cream pie, an’ this is strawberries.” The last “this” was a:jagged-mouthed can filled with small lumps of coal. “We had a piece of really and truly pie yesterday,” interjected the younger visitor. “Yes; but yesterday was a different kind of day,” reminded Selena. The two ex- changed twinkling glances over the secret of yesterday, but quickly the white child burst into merry laughter. “S’lena’s so funny,” she explained. “She said it was her doll’s birthday an’ dolls don’t have birthdays. They’re not borned like us; they just make ’em at the doll factory.” Confronted with these undeniable facts Selena looked rather crestfallen. “Aw!” she protested sheepishly. Miss Ellis had been half afraid that her presence would be a constraint on the little stranger, but the child was both friendly and fearless. “And so you’re Selena’s little friend, are you?” Miss Ellis asked her. “Yes,” was the emphatic response given between dainty “make believe” nibbles of “ice cream pie.” “I’m her little friend an’ she’s my little friend. Ain’t S’lena funny, though?” she gurgled on, “She says my hair’s gold an’ sometimes she calls me “prin- cuss.” Miss Ellis flashed a look of scorn and re- proachful displeasure at the little creator of royalty and Selena quick to sense it hung her head and was silent. Directly, however, with the joyousness that is the rightful province of “six going on seven,” she was again the merry hostess of the party. The banquet was still in progress when a frowzy, wrapper clad woman, who looked merely a larger and older and less amiable edition of the “princuss,” came to the gate and sum- moned the royal guest with angry peremp- toriness. The “princuss” ran hastily out to her and was back presently in tears. “T—I—c—can’t play with you any more,” she sobbed despairingly, groping for her dis- carded sunbonnet. “Why?” queried Selena, big-eyed with wonderment, “Why?” “*Cause—’Cause you’re colored,” came the half-drowned reply. When she reached the gate again she turned her wet face back toward Selena and waved the soiled pink bonnet she carried in her hand. ““Goo’ bye, S’lena!”’ she wailed yearningly, “Goo’ bye,” and then once more before she went on “S’lena! Goo’ bye!” Selena sat gazing after her lost little playmate with the deep, wordless hurt and mortification of a grown-up in her baby eyes. When the tiny figure had passed out of sight she turned her whole attention to one of her naked feet, laying it across the other knee and seeming to examine it with minutest scrutiny. “T’ve got me a sore toe,” she murmured lifelessly.
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~— ae ee. ee JUST A LITTLE TIRED 239 “I’ve got me a sore heart,” declared every woebegone lineament of the brown little face. “Dinner’s all getting spoiled, Selena,” re- minded Miss Ellis gaily—‘See here we haven’t eaten a bit of the pudding.” “Why are some folks white an’ other folks colored?” demanded Selena abruptly. “For some wise purpose, I suppose,” re- plied Miss Ellis inadequately, “but you needn’t bother about that just now.” “But sposin’ you love somebody that’s white?” persisted Selena. “You mustn’t love them,” returned Miss Ellis grimly, “They don’t love you.” “She does love me,” averred Selena fiercely. “Well, she won’t when she gets older. But never mind; come on and let’s eat up the strawberries.” Selena looked down at the nuggets of coal and pushed out her full little lips in sor- rowful disdain. The corners of her small mouth drooped with the bitterness of unde- lusion. “QO,” she said wearily, picking up the jagged-mouthed can and deliberately spill- ing its contents upon the ground, “They’re only playin’ strawberries.” JUST A LITTLE TIRED Ge ss Just a little tired, waiting Through the night For the new day to be breaking Into light. Just a little tired, yearning For the blest In the land of no returning God—and rest. Just a little tired, trying Yet again— To smile and cease the crying Through the pain. By KATHARINE GILLIARD uF uF CY Just a little tired, bending ’Neath the rod, Though the rough, bleak way is wending Up to God. Just a little tired, facing Blows that fall Unexpected; tired placing Trust in all. Just a little tired, falling— Blund’ring here. Ideals gone beyond recalling Friends once dear. Just a little tired, waiting Through the night For the new morn to be breaking Clear and bright.
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Editorial ST. LOUIS 3 OLORED St. Louis and its friends are today fighting for life and breath. It has been a fight not simply against the enemy, but also an inner fight. This is as it must be, although most of us forget it. Most of us assume that the colored people know their rights and want them and are ready to fight for them. On the contrary, what slavery means is that its victims should be uncertain as to their place in the world; as to just what they really want; and as to their readiness to strive for the satisfac- tion of those wants. This was the case in St. Louis. When the segregation proposal came up the masses of the colored people were indifferent. ‘‘We are already segregated,” they said, “and what, pray, is the difference between cus- tomary segregation and legal segrega- tion?” A large number of business men openly and publicly favored segregation when they scented a monopoly of colored business. Only a few, then, were willing to start the active campaign. Most of the ministers came to the rescue and opened their churches; contributions were made to a campaign fund; liter- ature we printed, lawyers hired and by and Ly headquarters were opened. An auxiliary committee of prominent white people was finally gotten to- gether consisting of a former presi- dent of the City Club, a Unitarian pastor, a city judge, a secretary of the City League, several prominent law- yers and the secretary of the City Club. The election was set for Febru- ary twenty-ninth. The colored people were finally aroused, registered in large numbers and voted against seg- regation almost toa man. Yet there were only 15,000 colored voters and considerably over 100,000 whites. Thus is the colored American in the hands of his white friends. The Post Dispatch said in a closing editorial : “Undoubtedly the conditions now existing, in cities particularly, create a problem difficult to deal with. Race prejudice is a fact, not a theory, and some concessions of strict principle have to be made to avoid trouble in emergencies. But serious as the con- sequences of the mixture of the races sometimes are, we do not believe it to be wise to violate the principles of lib- erty and justice in order to save a few individuals from loss and _ trouble. The present conditions entail loss w individuals, but the enforcement of segregation affects fundamental prin- ciples and thus may bear upon the welfare of all the people. “Self-interest and prejudice may make segregation popular enough to carry, but we do not believe it will survive. We believe that in the long run temporary victory for segrega- tion will end in permanent defeat. Certainly intelligent people who see the significance and the inevitable drift of such a measure should vote against it.” A YOUNG T is peculiarly fitting that Major Charles Young should be the second Negro American to re- ceive the Spingarn medal. Major Young was born in Kentucky and educated in Ohio, as we have already noted in the pages of THE CrRIsIs. He is forty-eight years of age, strongly built, and physically fit. He has just been assigned com- mand of the 2nd Squadron of the 10th Cavalry stationed in Arizona. Every 240
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MAJOR CHARLES YOUNG, U. 8. A. Commanding 2d Squadron of the Tenth Cavalry. SECOND SPINGARN MEDALIST, 1916, for dis- tinguished service in Liberia 241
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242 effort was made by the State Depart- ment to retain him in Liberia, where his work was invaluable, but the De- partment of War refused to make an exception in his case under the “‘Man- chu” Law; and this was well. We hope yet to see Major Young at the head of the constabulary in Haiti. But it is not because of this man’s military career that he was chosen as the recipient of the Spingarn medal; nor was it solely because of his bril- liant civic service in Haiti, in Liberia and in California; but rather because of a certain unusually fine quality of spirit. Few people know what Major Young suffered at West Point. There was no refinement of cruelty and in- sult that was not heaped on this black boy by his white fellows in the first three years of his career to drive him out of the institution. The same kind of social difficulties and temptations faced him during his early career in the army. He has faced insult as he has faced his daily bread, and with the same imperturbable balance and determination. He has not only faced death in war, but—what is much more difficult—he has faced it in peace. When he last returned to Africa after an unusually severe attack of Black Water Fever not one of his friends expected to see him alive again. It was a piece of bravery almost foolhardy; but he went and won and comes back strong and ready for further sacrifices. The Liberian Government has ex- pressed its “grateful appreciation of the most valuable services by Major Young,” services “which will always stand as a monument to the Major’s name in the military annals of the Re- public.” The Adjutant-General of the United States says of the Liberian frontier: “It has been only with the most care- ful advisory supervision of Major Young that peace and order has been maintained.” THE CRISIS Leonard Wood, Major-General of the United States Army, says that Major Young’s “‘service in the army has been highly creditable to his race from every standpoint.” This is the man whom this Associ- ation is honoring itself by honoring. or PREPAREDNESS N the presence of a world gone stark mad it seems of little use to talk of anything but war. Yet we wonder if a voice out of the South may not possibly call our war-mad President back to the kind of preparedness that some of us expected of him when he took the presidential chair. The University Commission of Southern Race Problems sends a let- ter to college men about the horror of lynching. Surely President Wilson has read these paragraphs from a let- ter signed by white college professors in eleven Southern states: “These are the terrible facts. Is there no remedy? Have we not suffi- cient legal intelligence and machinery to take care of every case of crime committed? Must we fall back on the methods of the jungle? Civiliza- tion rests on the obedience to law, which means the substitution of rea- son and deliberation for impulse, in- stinct and passion. It is easy and tempting to obey the latter, but to be governed by the former requires self- control, which comes from the inter- position of thought between impulse and action. Herein lies the college man’s opportunity to serve his fel- lows; to interpose deliberation be- tween their impulses and action, and in that way to control both. “Society has a right to expect col- lege men to help in moulding opinion and shaping conduct in matters of this sort. It is their privilege and duty to co-operate with others in lead- ing crusades against crime and mob rule and for law and civilization. The college man belongs in the front rank
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of those fighting for moral and social progress. For this reason the Uni- versity Commission makes its first appeal to you and urges you strongly to co-operate with the press, the pul- pit, the bar, officers of the law and all other agencies striving to eliminate this great evil, by speaking out boldly when speech is needed and letting your influence be felt against it in decided, unmistakable measure and manner.” Is there any “preparedness” for Christianity, for human culture, for peace or even for war, that is more pressing than the abolition of lynch- ing in the United States? Alas! We have little hope of reaching the ears of the President. He is too- busy yell- ing for the largest navy in the world. OF STONE E do not want to appear un- gracious or hark back to forgotten things, but we cannot refrain from re- minding certain gullible northerners of a prophet that ap- peared in this land something over ten years ago, yclept Alfred Holt Stone, Mr. Stone was a Southern planter and a genial gentleman withal. He came to about the same conclusions as most white Southerners of conven- tional type do, when discussing the race problem ; but he came to his con- clusions so suavely and with such evi- dent regard to utter necessity, that he quite captured the American Econom- ic Association and other organiza- tions of the kind. He told of planta- tion experiments with Italians; he shed tears over the positively un- thinkable shiftlessness of black folk and he showed that economically the free Negro was going to the dogs be- cause he simply would not work. Then came the Census of 1910. We have not heard of Mr. Alfred Holt Stone since. We have missed his learned articles and his genial pres- EDITORIAL 243 ence. The reports of the American Historical Association have known him no more and we simply rise to ask if Mr. Stone has run out of facts, or if the business of prophecy is as poor today as it always used to be? Meantime, the lazy Negro is plod- ding along and buying up the waste acres of the South. BRANDEIS mH ERE seems to be a chance to put a modern man on the Bench of the Supreme Court. We have had some fine Judges there. We have had a few men like the late Justice Har- lan who stood straight as an arrow for human rights; but there can be no doubt that the deeper causes of human right and justice as developed in the modern world have received from the Supreme Court of the United States scant consideration. It looked as though for a while it was going to be utterly impossible for any Supreme Court decision to take ac- count of the rights of the Negro as men and as workingmen; even the “Grandfather” decision was but an inadequate sop. With the nomination of Mr. Bran- deis we have a man who, as a Jew, knows what it is to be “despised and rejected of men”; and especially as a friend and advocate of laboring men he knows what the curse of poverty means and what its abolition involves. THE SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT | T hardly seems possible that six years have rolled around since the “National Negro Commit- tee” issued its first call to arms on the one hundredth anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. Yet here we are at our sixth milestone with a record of accomplishment that is really astonishing. Never before in the history of the Negro in the United States has there been so ef- fective an organization to fight for
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244 his rights; and to those pessimistic persons who believe that ‘“‘nothing can be done,” and that it is ‘‘no use to re- sist,” we urgently recommend a read- ing of the terse sentences of this re- markable record of effort. It ought to hearten the slowest and most pes- simistic. OF FORTY-THREE THOUSAND SHE CRISIS this month pub- ‘| lishes forty-three thousand copies. It is needless to say that this is the largest edi- tion that we have issued and a good deal more than twice as large as the edition of any colored peri- odical devoted to colored people has ever been. It is fair to add, however, that this is not a normal edition. Our normal edition this month for our regular readers would be about thir- ty-seven thousand copies; the extra six thousand copies have been or- dered on account of the Annual Re- port of the Association. Nevertheless our continued and on the whole steady growth is evident, and we have to thank very sincerely our friends and supporters for this evidence of their appreciation and be- lief. en MOHR SIH E decision in that sordid mur- der trial in Providence, R. I., was- perfectly American. Americans as a mass regard women as imbeciles and Ne- groes as criminals. When such per- sons come to trial, acquit the imbecile as irresponsible and lynch the “nig- ger!” THE NEGRO PUBLIC SCHOOL PHRASE in the December CRISIS has led to some in- , quiry as to what we mean by the “decline” of the Ne- gro public school. Perhaps our meaning can best be illustrated by two or three references. The THE CRISIS Christian Herald, for instance, says: “It was early recognized by those re- sponsible for the education of the Negro that an education which would fit him to associate with the whites on equal terms was an education which would only disappoint him and which would leave him unfitted for anything. The main _ effort, therefore, was put upon the develop- ment of schools that should give to the Negro an education that would fit him for the occupations and manner of living which he could expect to fol- low. This meant vocational train- ing.” To this we may add the informa- tion from the Charleston (S. C.) News and Courier that in Rock Hill has been established a school “for Negro servants” and that the public schools of the town are being used to co-operate in this work. This we maintain points to the decline of Ne- gro schools and it indicates a wide- spread movement. Whenever a pub- lic school system is used not for dis- seminating intelligence and giving the keys of knowledge, but rather for the establishment of caste, then the school is missing its purpose. It may well be that at a particular time and a particular place the caste feel- ing is so strong, the race hatred so potent, that the only school possible is a school which will keep the hated in their places; but manifestly under such circumstances there is not only room for but crying need for a propa- ganda to attack caste; to say that it is not right to build up a public school system in order to furnish menials for the rich. In the schools of no other group in the nation be- side Negroes have persons dared to enunciate such an object for the pub- lic schools, no matter how much they may have thought it. If we would build real democracy in the United States we must make such daring impossible in the case of Negroes.
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yy eS SCD ° o e » National Association for the Ad- i oe : vancement of Colored People Section 1. Our Reasons for Being HE National Association for the Advancement of Colored People C was first called into being on the one hundredth anniversary of It conceives its mission to be the completion of the work which the great emancipator began. It proposes to make a group of 10,000,000 Americans free from the lingering shackles of past slavery: free from disfranchisement and socially free from insult. We are impelled to recognize the pressing necessity of such a move- ment when we consider these facts: The thousands of unaccused black folk who have in these years been done to death. The widespread use of crime and alleged crime as a source of public The defenseless position of colored women continually threatened by laws to make their bodies indefensible and their children illegitimate. The total disfranchisement of three-fourths of the black voters. The widespread and growing discrimination in the simplest matters of public decency and accommodation. All these things indicate not simply the suffering of a people, but And so the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People appeals to the nation to accept the clear and simple settlement of the Negro problem, which consists in treating colored men as you would The definite program and purpose of this organization has thus been stated: “The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to them the full enjoyment of their rights as citizens, justice in all courts, and equality of opportunity everywhere. It favors, and aims to aid, every kind of education among them save that which teaches special privilege Negro problem and no sectionalism. It believes in the upholding of the Constitution of the United States and its amendments, in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln. It upholds the doctrine of ‘all men up and no man crime, and most of all the crimes committed by mobs in the mockery of the law, or by individuals in the name of the law. “It believes that the scientific truths of the Negro problem must be SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT, 1915 the birth of Abraham Lincoln. physically free from peonage, mentally free from ignorance, politically The lynching of 2,812 prisoners without trial in the last thirty years. revenue. The new attack on property rights. greater than that, they show the impotence of American democracy. like to be treated if you were colored. seeks to uplift the colored men and women of this country by securing or prerogative. class or caste. It recognizes the national character of the down.’ It abhors Negro crime, but still more, the conditions which breed available before the country can see its way wholly clear to right existing
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246 THE CRISIS wrongs. It has no other belief than that the best way to uplift the colored man is the best way to aid the white man to peace and social content; it has no other desire than exact justice, and no other motive than hu- manity.” Section 2. Two Paths of Duty WO lines of action are necessary for the emancipation of any indi- vidual or group or nation. First and foremost, the unfreed must himself strive, equip himself and advance. Secondly, the path before him must be cleared of dangerous and unfair obstacles. It will not do for the slave or the serf to sit supinely before his ob- stacles without making an effort to remove them. On the other hand, the modern world is too well aware of the tremendous power of organized society to believe that any individual or group can prevail against it, if the nation is deliberately and consciously determined to oppose advance. In the United States, therefore, we must ask ourselves so far as the American Negro is concerned, where does the present danger lie? Does it lie in the Negro’s refusal to exert himself, or does it lie in the obstacles which are deliberately or thoughtlessly put in his path? Any fair-minded American can easily answer that the second case is the true one. It has been proven beyond peradventure that the effort of American Negroes in the last twenty-five years to better their condi- tion in all possible ways has been, so far as the experience of men goes, unusual. JIlliteracy has decreased, thrift and wealth have increased, health has improved, and there has been a notable advance in self-respect and self-expression. Not for a moment would we deny or seem to deny the tremendous work of social uplift still to be accomplished from within by a poor and ignorant folk but a generation removed from slavery. The point is, how- ever, that as human improvement goes the American Negro is moving forward with unusual speed and unfaltering persistence. The real danger in the Negro problem lies today not in the apathy and shiftlessness of the Negro but in the way in which his advance and attempts to advance have been met by the nation and the world. These efforts have been met by no decrease in racial prejudice but by an actual increase in its manifestations; by definite proposals for a caste system and by very little disposition to relax disabilities originally invoked against ignorance and inefficiency, but now held in spite of intelligence and ambition. Section 3. Theory of Inaction HE attitude of most intelligent people toward this situation falls under one of two'heads. Some deny that there is any material or noticeable obstruction to the advance of the colored race in America, which is not the natural difficulty encountered by all rising groups and races. It is difficult to become intelligent, it is difficult to save money, it is difficult to gain respect among one’s fellows; but these are all human and natural difficulties. They must not be at- tributed to race, although racial differences may modify them. What is Mmaortreos o a _ ee
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SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT 247 needed, therefore, is simply to insist upon striving on the part of colored people and to discourage mere complaint and agitation. Other people admit and admit frankly that in addition to the natural difficulty that any ignorant class has in gaining a place in the world, the Negro encounters other difficulties on account of race and color; but they say that these racial difficulties are irremovable. Nothing can be done about them. There is no use trying to minimize their influence and at the same time there is no use trying to get rid of them. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People feels that both these classes are wrong. It is therefore our business first, to show the people that race preju- dice furnishes real obstructions to human uplift, and, secondly, that these obstructions are not necessary, that they are not inevitable, that they are not inherent in human nature, but that they can be successfully attacked by modern and philanthropic methods without endangering real human freedom or real advance of civilization; and that on the other hand, if they are not so met, they threaten the foundations of modern culture; that in fact, every single thing for which the intelligent Negro is today striving is in line with the best thought and best endeavor of men who look forward and upward. Section 4. The Proof of the Pudding =| ANY wiil say all this is very fine theory, but as a matter of fact, what are you going to do about it practically? If we knew anything we could do to shake the grip of race prejudice in the United States and in the world, and make it possible for colored Americans to be free and to be men, we would do it; but we have not seen any feasible program. You have an organization for these ends. You have been at work some seven years. What have you done, and how have you done it, and what do you propose to do? In making the sixth annual report of the N. A. A. C. P. we are at once keenly conscious of how little we have accomplished compared with our ideals and at the same time we realize that we have done much. We may divide our work into seven lines of endeavor: 1. Legislation: The endeavor to correct unfair laws and to prevent the enactment of further unfair laws. 2. Administration: To bring about a fairer administration of present laws. 8. Courts: To secure individual justice and a proper interpretation of law in the courts. 4. Slander: To answer if not to stop the systematic, public slander of a whole race of people. 5. The Truth: To make careful investigation of the facts of racial contact in the United States, and to publish the truth about the situation of the colored American, and his difficulties. 6. The Talented Tenth: To encourage and recognize distinguished work by men of Negro blood, to broaden opportunity in industrial and professional lines, and to encourage self-help and self-expression. 7. Organization: To endeavor to secure as large a number of per- sons as possible to associate themselves with us in order to help on this work.
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248 THE CRISIS Section 5. Legislation EW people in the United States realize how persistent and con- tinuous is the effort to curtail even the present rights of colored people by legislation. For instance, in the Sixty-third Congress there were no less than twenty bills introduced to restrict the rights of Negroes. These bills advocated: “Jim Crow” cars in the District of Columbia. The segregating of employees in the government service from their white fellows. The forbidding of Negroes to hold commissions in the army or navy. The making of marriages between white persons and persons of Negro descent illegal. The exclusion of immigrants of Negro descent, etc. It required active and sometimes desperate effort to defeat these bills. For the most part Congressmen were indifferent. They said, how does it matter if separate seats in street cars are provided for colored people? Or if colored government clerks work by themselves? They did not at first realize that race mixture is not prevented by making children illegitimate or by rendering the seduction of colored women easy and without its natural penalty. Such apathy and lack of knowledge had to be systematically attacked. Every one of these bills was a blow not simply at colored people but at the fundamental principles of democracy, the rights of women and chil- dren, and decency. This Association has found that careful scrutiny of bills proposed in Congress must be made if colored people are to be protected. Bills of general application like those for agricultural education, for rural credits, for vocational training, and the like, are continually drawn so that the colored citizens are either entirely shut out from their benefits or come in for a disproportionately- small share. For two years now we have employed two experienced newspaper men to report on all bills affecting colored people and to watch their progress. Only by constant vigilance have we been enabled so far to circum- vent hostile legislation in Congress. During the whole six years of our existence, we have given a great deal of attention to this work, both in Congress and in the states. We made a hard fight to have Negro schools in the South included in the agricultural appropriations of the Smith-Lever Bill. We have opposed anti-intermarriage bills in California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin. Only in one case, Nebraska, have we lost our fight. Section 6. Segregation NE form of legislation which has taken a great deal of our time and attention during the past year, and during several previous years, is the matter of Segregation. This is an attempt, usually by city ordinance and sometimes by State law, to define the ter- ritory in which Negroes may live. It is, in other words, an attempt to establish a modern ghetto. mar is = A" t m
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SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT 249 The movement began in Baltimore in 1912 and it has spread through- out the cities of the border states. During the past year we have been fighting particularly the ordinances in Baltimore and Louisville and the proposed ordinance in St. Louis. The real crux of the matter lies in the fact that colored people, in- creasing in thrift and wealth, have been trying in the last decade to move out of the slums and unhealthy places of the cities into more desirable residential districts. They have been met by the plea that they are un- desirable neighbors and that they depress real estate values. Hatred. riot, and even bloodshed have been the result of the controversy and finally the endeavor to prescribe the bounds of habitation by law. There is even a demand, centering in North Carolina, to carry this segregation into the matter of buying farm lands. No clearer cause for the defense of the most elementary rights of Negro American citizens can be presented. Here is a real test, not only of our democracy but of our sincerity. Strong and greedy forces are behind the segregation movement. Shall not the forces of justice organize and fight in turn? In Baltimore we have succeeded in defeating two segregation ordi- nances in the courts and we are carrying a third ordinance to the highest State tribunal. In Louisville our segregation case was lost in the highest court of the State and we are now carrying it to the Supreme Court of the United States. In St. Louis we are trying to defeat the segregation- ists both in court and in the proposed election. Section 7. Administration ERHAPS even more important than the actual law is the way in which laws are administered so far as the colored people are con- cerned. Laws which upon their faces are quite fair are con- tinually administered so as to discriminate most unfairly against colored citizens. This indeed is one of the chief reasons that this Association and its friends fight all sorts of discrimination, even when there is fairness on the face of the law. The disfranchisement laws of the South are particularly cases in point. They do not in so many words disfranchise colored people but they are administered and can be administered so as to keep the great masses of colored people from having any voice in their own government. This Association has started an effort looking toward the enforce- ment of the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitu- tion which provides for the reduction of representation in Congress for States disfranchising their male citizens. Especially in the matter of travel the Association is endeavoring to make the States and railroads at least live up to the letter of the laws requiring separate cars. An agent has been sent through the Southern States to gather information on present conditions; this matter is being published in THE CRISIS and-will be laid before the Interstate Commerce Commission and other authorities. In education cvlored children are discriminated against. During the last year in Indianapolis, colored children have been sent long distances to avoid enrolling them in a nearby public school. In Carlisle, Pa., a colored boy who had been a second-year high school student at Steelton was refused admission to the white high school. The
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250 THE CRISIS colored high school does not offer the work which the boy desires to take. In Dayton, O., a separate colored school has been organized. In Cincinnati, O., a second colored school is about to be established. In several great universities, supported by public funds and public benefactions, well equipped colored students are refused admission, as. for instance, at Johns Hopkins University. Colored doctors are discrim- inated against in the clinical work required in their university courses. The well known case of Isabella Vandervall who led her class during her whole course at the Woman’s Hospital, New York City, illustrates this situation. She was appointed interne at the Syracuse Hospital for Wo- men and Children and then the hospital peremptorily refused to fulfill its contract when they discovered that she was of Negro descent. In the civil service of the United States Government discrimination has been kept up during the past year and unwarranted dismissals fror office and refusals to promote have been traced to sheer color prejudice. This is particularly true in the Railway Mail Service and the Post Office Department in general. The question of civil rights brings us repeatedly matters for inves- tigation and. protest. Few people realize how common it is throughout the great cities of the North for respectable colored people to be refused accommodation at hotels, theatres and restaurants. In crime or alleged crime we have only to remember that during the last year eighty American Negroes have been lynched without trial by mobs and that during the last thirty years these mob murders have claimed 2,812 victims. How can the American people sit longer silent under such an indictment of their own civilization? Section 8. Courts OR the most part, there are but two practical ways of meeting hos- tile legislation and unfair administration of the law, and these are through an appeal to the courts and through an appeal to public opinion. From the very first, it has been the policy of this Association to seek to build up a body of fair judicial decisions which should fix beyond question the status of the American citizen of Negro descent. We have had in the past some partial victories: We have prevented the unjust holding of suspects in New Jersey; we have secured decisons against residential segregation in Maryland; and we have won a half dozen minor civil rights cases. A motion will be submitted ome time in January to have the Louis- ville residential segregation case advanced in the Supreme Court of the United States. Cases involving the Oklahoma “Jim Crow” car law have been nearly perfected and will be presented to the courts soon. Fred Brown of South Carolina was wanted on a charge of murder. The Philadelphia Branch took the matter up. He was finally extradited and an effort is being made to defend him in South Carolina. Our greatest triumph, however, came during the past year in the “Grandfather” clause decision of the United States Supreme Court. This case was brought up to the Supreme Court from Oklahoma by the United States Solicitor-General. We were allowed to participate in the case and our President, Mr. Moorfield Storey, filed a brief which was the only brief , ————— 9 ¢ ) | - ne Uc alk. ae leelCU, Oe
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SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT 251 submitted by any private individual or organization. The court in its decision held that the “Grandfather” clause was a mere evasion intended to disfranchise colored people and it distinctly affirmed the right of the colored people to vote under the Fifteenth Amendment. This is perhaps the greatest victory for democracy across the color line which has been gained in the last generation. For the better prosecution of work like the foregoing, a special Legal Bureau was established in 1912. For a year it was carried on under the volunteer direction of Mr. William M. Wherry, Jr.; then for next year, 1914, we had the services of a special attorney, Mr. Chapin Brinsmade. The stringency due to the war compelled us to give up Mr. Brinsmade’s services with great reluctance, and since then our legal work has been di- rected voluntarily by Mr. Charles H. Studin and Mr. Arthur B. Spingarn. In addition to these we have had the voluntary services of many distin- guished lawyers. Section 9. Slander OLOR prejudice flourishes because it is so elusive and indefinite a thing. People grow to hate their neighbors not for carefully stated reasons or carefully investigated facts, but for the very lack of reasons and facts. This makes the power of suggestion and innuendo and slander all the more dangerous. A propaganda of this sort against colored people has long been carried on in the United States. It was used to defend slavery; it was used to disfranchise Ne- groes; and today there is evidence of new life and determination on the part of certain classes of Americans to make Negroes despised and hated. A peculiarly aggravating case of this during the last year has been the picture play called “The Birth of a Nation.” Here every resource of a magnificent new art has been employed with an undeniable attempt to picture Negroes in the worst possible light. Of course, it is difficult under such circumstances to select a feasible method or campaign to counteract the undoubtedly vicious influences of this widely viewed picture. If Negroes and all their friends were free to answer in the same channels, by the same methods in which the attack is made, the path would be easy; but poverty, fashion and color prejudice preclude this. We have therefore sought vigorously through censorship to stop this slander of a whole race. We secured the disapproval of the National Board of Censorship but the Board was reorganized afterward against us. We secured a law strengthening the censorship in Massachu- setts, but the censors decided against us. So far we have kept the film out of the State of Ohio, the State of Kansas and out of a number of cities. In a large number of other places we have had important modi- fications made in the film. In other ways, through newspapers and maga- zines and pamphlets we have sought to counteract the indefinite but wide- spread idea that the Negro race is necessarily vicious and incompetent. Section 10. Publications and Research GREAT weapon against such indefinite feeling with all its terrrible consequences is an appeal to the facts. ) With this in mind the Association established the ‘“‘Depart- ment of Publicity and Research” at the very beginning and at the suggestion of the Director began to issue in November, 1910, its monthly organ, THE CRISIS. THE CRISIs is thus a little over five
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252 THE CRISIS years old and on January 1, 1916, became self-supporting. Its gross an- nual income has increased from $6,500 the first year to $24,000 during the year 1915. Its total income, 1910-15, has been $84,069.55. It has printed altogether 1,490,300 copies of which 1,469,500 have been net paid circulation. THE CRISIS circulates in every State in the Union, in Europe, Africa and the Islands of the South Seas. For April, 1915, its net paid circula- tion was as follows: New England, 1,804; Middle States, 6,903; East North Central, 7,730; West North Central, 2,925; South Atlantic, 6,606; East South Central, 1,885; West South Central, 4,056; Mountain States, 797; Pacific States, 933; Insular and Foreign, 882. Total, 33,921. THE CRISIS has tnus become a vehicle by which the facts concerning the Negro problem can be put before a considerable portion of the world. Besides this the Department of Publications and Research has been a lecture bureau, has issued publications, has taken part in general move- ments and carried on several pieces of research work. In all, the Director has during the last five years delivered 314 lec- tures in thirty-one States and three foreign countries before audiences which totaled 138,017 hearers. Scientific research into the problems of racial contact and into the history and condition of the American Negro has from the first been a prime object of this Association. So far, however, no funds have been available. The Director of this Department has, however, induced various es- tablished agencies to finance six larger pieces of research into various phases of the Negro problem. Mr. A. G. Dill has assisted in all of them: 1910—Research into the condition of Negro graduates of colleges throughout the United States; investigation financed by the Slater Fund and Atlanta University; conducted from this office over a period of six months. 1911—Analysis of Census Agricultural figures for the American Economic Association. Research into Negro common school education, extending over twelve months; financed by the Slater Fund and Atlanta University. 1912—Research into the condition of Negro artisans and trade unions; financed as above, and extending over twelve months. 1913—Research in manners and morals among Negro Americans; financed as above, znd extending over twelve months. 1914—-Analysis of occupation statistics of the United States Census. Study of economic condition of Negroes for the Revue Internationale d'Economie Politique. Memorandum for United States Commission on Industrial Education. 1915—Researches into African history, extending over years 1913, 1914, and part of 1915. The Director has written six books and large pamphlets, thirty-three magazine articles and small pamphlets. The books are: The Quest of the Silver Fleece—1911. The College-Bred Negro-American—1911. The Common School and the Negro-American—1912. The Negro-American Artisan—1913. Morals and Manners Among Negro-Americans—1915. lish
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em DG SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT 253 The Negro—1915 (Home University Library). In addition to works written by the Director, THE CRISIS has pub- lished three volumes as follows: Norris Wright Cuney—By M. C. Hare—230 pages—1913. Hazel—By M. W. Ovington—162 pages—1913. Prince Hall and His Followers—By George W. Crawford—95 pages —1914. It has also published four pamphlets, four calendars, three sets of Christmas cards, besides pictures and leaflets. It has sold during the last five years $4,567.50 worth of books on the Negro problem. The Director has also co-operated in the following general movements: In 1911—The Races Congress. The Director was one of the two American secretaries for this Congress. He arranged the exhibit for American Negroes; spent three months in London, during which time he helped in the organization of the Congress and in the reception of the delegates; spoke three times before the Congress and in this and other ways helped to bring to the front the race problems of the United States. In 1913—The Emancipation Exposition of the State of New York. The Director was appointed a member of the Commission to carry out this Exposition. Largely through his efforts the Exposition became a serious educational effort without political favor. In this respect it stands in marked contrast to most of the other State expositions. The Exposition cost $37,000 and had an attendance of 30,000 people, and was honestly and efficiently conducted. In 1914—Child Welfare Exhibits. The Director acted as Chairman of the Child Welfare Exhibits in two chief sections of Negro population— San Juan Hill and Harlem. In 1915—The Washington Pageant. This Pageant was given before audiences aggregating 12,000 people. Section 11. General Publicity NE of the most effective ways of bringing our work and our ideas to the attention of the public has been by mass meetings, con- ferences and speaking tours. Our Association began with the New York conference of 1909 with such distinguished speakers as Dr. William Hayes Ward, Professor E. R. A. Seligman, Professor John Dewey, Judge Wen- dell Phillips Stafford, Dr. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Professor John Spencer Bassett, and the Honorable Albert E. Pillsbury. In 1910 a second conference was held and permanent organization effected. Since then similar conferences have been held in Boston, 1911; in Chicago in 1912; in Philadelphia in 1913, and in Baltimore in 1914. Beside these general conferences hundreds of other meetings have been held both by the National Association and by its Branches. In addition to the lectures referred to in the last section, speaking tours in the interest of the Association have been undertaken by Dr. M. C. B. Mason in 1912 and 1918, covering the Middle West and South; by Dr. J. E. Spingarn in 1912, 1913, 1914 and 1915, covering parts of the South and most of the larger cities of the Middle West; and by Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard in 1914, covering St. Louis, Kansas City, Topeka, Indianapolis and Cleve- land. Miss Mary Childs Nerney, the secretary, also made a trip through
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254 THE CRISIS the Middle West in 1915. Miss Mary W. Ovington, Mrs. Butler R. Wilson and others have made shorter tours. Large numbers of newspaper stories, leaflets and pamphlets have been distributed throughout the nation from headquarters reaching hundreds of thousands of copies since the existence of the Association. Special investigations have been made for us by distinguished writers and social observers. Memorials have been laid before Legislatures and Congress, and widespread appeals made by letter. Section 12. The Talented Tenth S far as means allow we try to discover talent and encourage ability among young colored folk. Their achievements are care- fully noted in THE CRISIS which issues an annual education number. In one case we discovered a young artist in color of remarkable ability and started him on his career by introducing him to instructors and holding an exhibition of his work on Fifth Avenue. In 1913 Dr. J. E. Spingarn gave the Association a gold medal of the value of $100 to be awarded annually for the highest achievement made by an American Negro during the preceding year in any field of elevated or honorable human endeavor. The first Spingarn Medal was presented at the annual meeting on February 12, 1915, at Ethical Culture Hall, New York City, by Governor Whitman of New York to Professor Ernest Everett Just, head of the Department of Physiology in Howard University Medical School. Prof. Just was recommended by men of the highest standing in both races for his general research work in biology and for raising the standards of medical education for his own race. The committee making the award were: Bishop John Hurst, Chairman; ex-President William Howard Taft, Mr. John Hope, Dr. James H. Dillard, Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard. The second Spingarn Medal was presented February 22, 1916, to Major Charles Young, U. S. A. The presentation was in Boston by Gov- vernor McCall of Massachusetts and was for distinguished service in developing the constabulary and the roads of Liberia. The same com- mittee acted as in the previous year. A scholarship of $200 was awarded the Pittsburgh Branch for its activity in raising funds for the Association in 1915. It is to go toward the college expenses of the most promising colored high school graduate chosen by the branch. Section 13. Propaganda F equal importance with our effort to carry out the objects of this Association with the means at hand is our effort to let the public know and understand our objects and gain their co-operation. The matter, therefore, of increasing our membership is of prime importance. Most white friends of this cause already belong to so many organizations that they hesitate to take new responsibilities financially or otherwise. The colored people, on the other hand, are comparatively new to the matter of organization, although organized life among them has vastly increased in efficiency and intricacy during the last ten years.
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on ve ang mn. rs nd ge re- on ng ue. ide ted 10r the ‘of. for of urd ft, to Ov- in ym- its ard jate this blic ion. ime ong ties the stly SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT bo ou ou The growth of our membership has been as follows: 1912 329 1913 1,100 1914 3,000 1915 6,000 1916 9,500 Our method of propaganda is simple. First, through THE CRISIS and public meetings we directly invite interested persons to join the As- sociation. The membership fees are graded as follows: Donors pay $100 to $500 per year; sustaining members, $25 per year; contributing members, $2 to $10 per year; associate members, $1 per year. Approximately 75 per cent of our membership are one-dollar mem- bers; 10 per cent, two-dollar members; and 14 per cent pay from five dollars up. Another and more effective way of gaining membership and spread- ing an idea of our work is through appeals in specific cases. For instance, hostile legislation is threatened in Congress: appeals are made directly to members of Congress in Washington and also to the constituents of such members as can be influenced. The local branches are written to and they in turn secure a large number of communications sent direct to Con- gressmen. If there are no local branches this agitation is an excellent occasion for starting a branch or a local. Special literature is sent out and numbers of letters written. During the last year 15,868 individual letters were sent out from the executive offices and 19, 435 circular letters. A total of 7,293 packages of literature containing 67,546 pieces were also distributed. Telegrams, letters to newspapers, personal appeals, special meetings and conferences, all these methods are used not only to forward our great objects but to gain sym- pathizers and members. The center of the work of propaganda and of the main activities of the organization, except those carried on by the Department of Publica- tions and Research, is the Executive Offices, of which the Secretary has charge. Our first regular secretary, Miss Frances Blascoer, was succeeded by Miss Mary W. Ovington and Miss Mary Childs Nerney. The resignation of Miss Nerney in 1916 was received by the Board of Directors with deep regret. When Miss Nerney joined the Association we had four branches and three hundred members. At present we have sixty-seven branches and locals and nearly ten thousand members. No small part of this in- crease has been due to Miss Nerney’s energy and devotion Section 14. Branches s) E have at present fifty-four branches, nine locals and four col- lege chapters—sixty-seven organizations in all, varying from twenty to eleven hundred members. The following are the twenty largest branches: District of Columbia, 1,164; Boston, 764; Pittsburgh, 636; Baltimore, 540; St. Louis, 350; Colum- bus, 300; Cleveland, 300; Chicago, 275; Des Moines, 222; Indianapolis, 200; Providence, 200; the two Kansas Cities, 175; Northern California, 150; Cincinnati, 140; Orange, 140; Toledo, 140; St. Paul, 135; Buffalo, 100; Philadelphia, 100; Springfield, O., 100. The nine locals are organiza-
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256 THE CRISIS tions affiliated with us which will eventually be transformed into branches as they show activity and efficiency. It is difficult in small space to show how far reaching and efficient the work of these branches has been. A brief resume of their work follows: 1. The Albuquerque, N. Mex., Branch (Mr. T. C. Woodland, Presi- dent; Mr. A. L. Mitchell, Secretary) has a membership of 51 and has been engaged in quieting race troubles at Gallup, N. Mex., in keeping out the photoplay, “The Birth of a Nation,’ and in eliminating race distinctions in the city directory. 2. The Alton, Jll., Branch (Dr. George L. Samuels, President; Mrs. Anna Gillis, Secretary), with forty members, has held a series of meet- ings and protested against “The Birth of a Nation” film. 3. The Baltimore, Md., Branch with 540 members (Mr. W. Ashbie Hawkins, President; Miss Ethel Lewis, Secretary) has held five public meetings and a concert. It has joined in protests against hostile legisla- tion in Congress and has taken up the matter of discrimination at Johns Hopkins University and in the social service bureau. The Baltimore Branch has been especially active in bringing the matter of segregation to the courts. One case was won last year, a sec- ond case was started but had to be dropped on account of technicalities, and a third case has been argued before the Court of Appeals and awaits decision. 4. The Boston, Mass., Branch (Mr. Joseph P. Loud, President; Mr. 3utler R. Wilson, Secretary) has since November 9, 1914, added 324 new members, making a total of 764 of whom 615 have paid their membership dues. 150 parlor meetings have been held and two mass meetings. The mass meeting at Tremont Temple, March 7, was a protest against segregation of colored people in the federal departments at Washington. Among the speakers were Congressman Madden and Dr. J. E. Spingarn. On May 2 a meeting of protest against the photoplay, ‘“‘The Birth of - ” a Nation,” was held at Tremont Temple. Dr. Charles W. Eliot, Dr. Sam- uel McChord Crothers and other distinguished speakers took part. The - campaign of which this meeting was a part resulted in an amended cen- sor bill for the City of Boston, but the newly appointed censors refused to prohibit the film. At the succeeding city election three city counsellors who opposed the film were re-elected by large majorities. The Mayor of Quincy who favored it was defeated. State Senator Doyle who was unusually offen- sive was also badly beaten at the primaries. Lawrence, Springfield, West Springfield, Everett and Chelsea re- fused permits to the film while the State Chief of District Police refused a license for any Sunday exhibition in the State. The whole campaign united the colored people and brought to our assistance thousands of friends. On June 14 a reception in honor of Miss Elizabeth C. Putnam was held with addresses by Mr. Garrison, Mrs. Edwin D. Mead, Dr. Ernest Gruening, Dr. Horace Bumstead and others. The Secretary compiled and published a pamphlet entitled “Fighting a Vicious Film” which has been widely circulated. With this also has been sent out a pamphlet containing addresses by Pre by Lov to | dis' foll Re! ine $84 the per Bre lic lyn Pre anc at
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SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT 257 Professor Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard and others, and a pamphlet by Richard P. Hallowell generously contributed by Mrs. May Hallowell Loud. These pamphlets were sent to the various branches of the N. A. A. Cc. P., to two hundred and sixty-seven high schools in Massachusetts and to city officials and various state officers. Altogether 4,500 copies were distributed. The Boston Branch has also helped to fight “The Birth of a Nation’ in Providence and New Bedford. The net income of the Boston Branch for four years has been as follows: Remitted to New York. Expended in Boston. 1912 $412 1912 $81 1913 780 1913 365 1914 525 1914 596 1915 842 1915 1,871 Krom November 11, 1914, to December 6, 1915, a total of $3,013.12, including balances from the previous year, has been available. Of this $842 has been sent to the central office, $997 used in the general work of the Boston Branch, and $545.94 in special educational work. Office ex- penses, rent, etc., have taken $175, leaving $298.18 on hand. 5. The Buffalo, N. Y., Branch with 100 members (Mr. John E. Brent, President; Miss Amelia G. Anderson, Secretary) has held six pub- lic meetings. 6. The Cairo, Jll., Branch (Mr. A. A. Martin, President; Miss Eve- lyn L. Lyons, Secretary) has 20 members. 7. The Carbondale, Ill., Branch (Rev. A. W. White, President; Mr. Frank B. Jackson, Secretary) has 31 members. 8. The Chicago, [ll., Branch with 275 members (Judge E. O. Brown, President; Mr. T. W. Allinson, Secretary) has taken cognizance of griev- ances in connection with Post Office employees and residential] segregation at Oak Park. 9. The Cincinnati, O., Branch (Mr. William Stevenson, President; Mrs. Andrew W. Lee, Secretary) has 140 members. 10. The Cleveland, O., Branch with 300 members (Rev. H. C. Bailey, President; Mr. S. P. Keeble, Secretary) has co-operated in protests against two picture films, secured the dismissal of a teacher in the public schools for insulting language to colored pupils, compelled a restaurant keeper to remove discriminatory signs, and held four large mass meetings and five parlor meetings. $165 was raised during the year. 11. The Columbus, O., Branch with 300 members (Hon. George D. Jones, President; Mrs. Minnie B. Mosby, Secretary) has secured the dis- missal of certain policemen for acts of oppression against colored people and has been especially successful in keeping the film, “The Birth of a Nation,” out of the State of Ohio. Several mass meetings have been held. 12. The Dayton, O., Branch with 75 members (Mr. James C. Far- row, President; Mrs. D. Richardson, Secretary) has held eleven meetings and has been trying to stop attempts at segregation in public schools. $96 has been raised during the year. 13. The Decatur, Jll., Branch (Mr. Houston Singleton, President; Miss Marie A. Gray, Secretary) has 50 members.
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258 THE CRISIS 14. The Des Moines, Ja., Branch (Mr. S. Joe Brown, President; Mrs. Jessye E. McClain, Secretary) has 222 members. It has held three mass meetings, presented a play and given thirty-three CRISIS sub- scriptions to prominent white men and women. Good publicity work has been done through the newspapers. An anti-intermarriage bill was de- feated in the Legislature and an insulting film modified. An effort is being made to stop discrimination in local theatres. The Governor of the State and many high officials are members of this branch. 15. The Detroit, Mich., Branch (Mr. William Osby, President; Miss Hattie Dixon, Secretary) has 90 members. This branch made a de- termined and successful fight against an anti-intermarriage bill. Five hundred copies of the Detroit Jowrnal which contained an able article were distributed and a public debate held. A Lincoln-Douglass celebra- tion was held and five thousand copies of Judge Brown’s speech distrib- uted. A determined fight against discrimination in theatres and moving picture shows has been prosecuted. ‘The Birth of a Nation” film was modified and minors excluded. 16. The District of Columbia Branch (Hon. Archibald H. Grimké, President; W. B. Hartgrove, Secretary) occupies a unique position and is really a national vigilance committee to watch legislation in Congress and lead the fight for Negro manhood rights at the capital of the nation. The branch raised last year $1,746 of which $825 was sent to the National Office directly and $525 also in memberships. This branch has made a special effort to get a large and representa- tive membership. A systematic canvas of the whole city through churches and clubs, lodges and other social units has been made until the member- ship has been brought up to a total of 1,164. Two public meetings have been held during the year, one to cele- brate the birth of Wendell Phillips, and a number of branch and commit- tee meetings. Among the specific things accomplished have been: The forcing of a department store to cease discrimination in the public dining room. The bringing of a white criminal to justice who seemed about to escape. The hastening of the slow completion of the new colored high school and the broadening of its plans. A forestalling of various movements towards segregation in the civil service. Efforts which led to the enforcement of the eligibility rules of the civil service. Work against residential segregation. 17. The East St. Louis, Ill., Branch (Dr. W. H. A. Barrett, Presi- dent; Miss Mary V. Campbell, Secretary) has 18 members. 18. The El Paso, Tex., Branch (Mr. Jasper B. Williams, President; Mr. F. D. Clopton, Secretary) has 45 members and has been protesting against discrimination in certain stores and in street cars. 19. The Evansville, Ind., Branch (Rev. W. D. Shannon, President; Mrs. Logan H. Stewart, Secretary) has been opposing vicious film plays. Its membership is 25. 20. The Harrisburg, Pa., Branch (Dr. C. L. Carter, President; Dr. Stephen J. Lewis, Secretary) has 103 members. It has held regular quarterly meetings and one mass meeting with Miss Caroline M. Dexter an. ing the and but hig bee’ den Mr: den bee! Lin cut Pre Mrs bers has mit has peo Mr. posi wer den’ has dent visit dent and Wes dent eral the unit
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SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT 259 as speaker. On November 17 a memorial to the late Booker T. Wash- ington was held. A case of theatre discrimination has been carried by the Branch through the local courts, then to the State Superior Court, and finally to the Supreme Court. The case was won in the local court but lost in the two upper courts. Another case of discrimination in a high school is now in court. The “Birth of a Nation” picture film has been opposed quietly. 21. The Indianapolis, Ind., Branch (Mr. R. L. Brokenburr, Presi- dent; Mrs. S. B. Henderson, Secretary) has 200 members. 22. The Jacksonville, Ill., Branch (Rev. E. L. Scruggs, President; Mrs. Laura Allen, Secretary) has 33 members. 23. The Kansas City, Kan., Branch (Prof. John A. Hodge, Presi- dent; Mr. George K. Williams, Secretary) has 75 members. 24. The Kansas City, Mo., Branch with 110 members (Dr. Howard M Smith, President; Mr. H. O. Cook, Secretary) has raised $259. It has been fighting an agitation to interfere with Negro home owners in the Linwood District. It succeeded in having some objectionable features cut from the “Birth of a Nation’ film. 25. The Los Angeles, Cal., Branch (Dr. Charles Edward Locke, President; Mr. E. Burton Ceruti, Secretary) has 52 members. 26. The Louisville, Ky., Branch (Dr. A. C. McIntyre, President; Mrs. W. Nolan King, Secretary) has been seeking to punish the mem- bers of a lynching mob and especially pushing the segregation case which has now reached the Supreme Court of the United States. Their Com- mittee of One Hundred has raised $596 for this latter case. The Branch has aided in the organization of a ‘Boosters’ Club” to encourage colored people to patronize colored business enterprises. 27. The Minneapolis, Minn., Branch (Dr. S. N. Deinard, President; Mr. Gale P. Hilyer, Secretary) has 70 members. 28. The Muskogee, Okla., Branch (Mr. J. R. Stewart, President; Mr. W. E. Brown, Secretary) has 50 members. 29. The Newark, N. J., Branch (Mr. R. W. Stewart, President; Mr. V. B. Powell, Secretary) has had two mass meetings and has been op- posing the “Birth of a Nation” film. They were partially successful but were overcome by court injunction. The branch has 100 members. 30. The New Orleans, La., Branch (Mr. H. C. Casa Calvo, Presi- dent; Mr. Louis G. King, Secretary) was organized in July, 1915, and has 20 members. They are planning their first mass meeting. 31. The Northern California Branch (Mr. Walter A. Butler, Presi- dent; Mrs. H. E. De Hart, Secretary) has entertained a number of the visitors from the East during the Exposition. They have 150 members. 32. The Branch of the Oranges, N. J. (Rev. R. G. Waters, Presi- dent; Mrs. Lottie M. Cooper, Secretary) has held several mass meetings and protested against film plays. It has 185 members. 83. The Peoria, Ill., Branch (Mr. C. H. Ruff, President; Mrs. B. H. West, Secretary) has 25 members. 34. The Philadelphia, Pa., Branch (Mr. Ellwood Heacock, Presi- dent; Mr. Isadore Martin, Secretary) has 100 members and has held sev- eral public meetings. It tried hard to get an equal rights bill through the Pennsylvania Legislature but the bill was defeated. The branch united with other organizations in trying to prevent “The Birth of a
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260 THE CRISIS Nation” from being shown. Three white men were, through efforts of the branch, convicted for crime against a friendless colored girl. The attempt to get the Wanamaker store to refrain from discharging its colored help in the dining room was only partially successful. 35. The Pittsburgh, Pa., Branch (Mr. William M. Randolph, Presi- dent; Miss Jennie M. Proctor, Secretary) has 636 members and gained the prize scholarship of $200 for the largest amount remitted to the Na- tional Office between September 1 and November 28. One of the largest department stores has been induced to stop discrimination in its dining room and the “Boys’ Brigade” to adopt a fairer attitude toward colored boys. Protests have been sent to certain publishers against misrepre- sentation of the facts of history in their books. A number of public meet- ings have been held and publicity secured in the local papers. 36. The Portland, Ore., Branch (Mr. E. J. Minor, President; Mrs. E. D. Cannady, Secretary) has protested against the “Birth of a Nation” film and held one public meeting. The Branch has 49 members. 37. The Providence, R. I., Branch (Dr. J. J. Robinson, President: Miss Reberta J. Dunbar, Secretary) has held five public meetings and is endeavoring to secure a civil rights clause in the new State constitution now being drawn up. The Educational Committee has been distributing facts concerning the Ku Klux Klan and has been fighting ‘““The Birth of a Nation.” The membership of the branch is 232. 38. The Quincy, Ill., Branch (Mr. Wilson Cobb, President; Mrs. Florence E. Cook, Secretary) has 20 members and raised $28.80 during the year. 39. The St. Joseph, Mo., Branch (Rev. G. L. Prince, President; Mr. W. F. Neil, Secretary) has 55 members. 40. The St. Louis, Mo., Branch (Mr. Gustavus Tuckerman, Presi- dent; Mrs. H. A. Smith, Secretary) has been chiefly occupied in fighting a proposed segregation ordinance. In the primary election it secured pledges from candidates by letter. Of the twenty-eight members of the Board of Aldermen, twenty-three thus declared themselves as not favor- ing residential segregation. The Branch has joined in protests against proposed legislation in Congress and several mass meetings have been held. 41. The St. Paul, Minn., Branch (Hon. J. A. Burnquist, President; Miss Charlotte Gillard, Secretary) has had two mass meetings and has protested against the “Birth of a Nation” film. The new Governor of the State is President of the Branch. Its membership is 135. 42. The Seattle, Wash., Branch (Mr. F. Fritz Keeble, President; Mrs. W. L. Presto, Secretary) has 34 members. It held a mass meeting with Senator Jones as speaker. 43. The Shreveport, La., Branch with 75 members (Mr. George Lewis, President; Mr. A. W. Hill, Secretary) has held two public meetings. 44. The Springfield, Jll., Branch (Major G. W. Ford, President; Mrs. Alice E. Williams, Se¢retary) has 33 members. 45. The Springfield, O., Branch (Dr. S. S. Jordan, President; Miss M. Sula Butler, Secretary) has 100 members. This branch has had ob- jectionable features removed from a film play and held two mass meetings. 46. The Tacoma, Wash., Branch (Mr. S. A. Johnson, President; Mr. Allen Mack, Secretary) succeeded in stopping the “Birth of a Nation” film from being shown in the city. It has held two public meetings. The Branch has 45 members. dent Dell of } oluli the Mrs of a this Mr. E. I Mrs Mis. held City bety den’ six mer enc M. Mr: film fro! tigs Mr has Ma Mr nu: Ge
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SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT 261 47. The Talladega, Ala., Branch has a membership of 15. 48. The Terre Haute, Ind., Branch (Mr. John E. Roundtree, Presi- dent; Mr. David Jenkins, Secretary) has 45 members. 49. The Toledo, O., Branch (Mr. Albertus Brown, President; Mrs. Della H. Fields, Secretary) has held three mass meetings, one in honor of Hon. Charles A. Cottrill, for four years collector of the Port of Hon- olulu. One objectionable film play was suppressed. The membership of the Branch is 140. 50. The Topeka, Kan., Branch (Hon. Arthur Capper, President; Mrs. Julia B. Roundtree, Secretary) has succeeded in keeping “The Birth of a Nation” out of the State. The Governor of the State is President of this Branch. It has 53 members. 51. The Trenton, N. J., Branch (Rev. John A. White, President; Mr. T. Edward Kinney, Secretary) has 50 members. 52. The Twin City Branch of Champaign and Urbana, Ill. (Dr. H. E. Rowen, President; Mrs. I. B. Thompson, Secretary) has 27 members. 53. The Vincennes, Ind., Branch (Mr. Richard Nash, President; Mrs. M. J. Burress, Secretary) has 18 members. 54. The Wilmington, Del., Branch (Dr. George J. Sykes, President; Miss Alice G. Baldwin, Secretary) has 240 members. The Branch has held six mass meetings and has secured an ordinance in the Wilmington City Council to prohibit moving picture plays likely to stir up bad feeling between the races. A committee on housing conditions is at work. 55. The Baltimore County, Md., Local (Rev. William Brown, Presi- dent; Miss Amanda Carroll, Secretary) has held four public meetings and six parlor meetings. It has distributed copies of THE CRISIS and has 31 members. 56. The Danville, Ill., Local (Mr. Eli Brown, President; Miss Flor- ence C. Pamplin, Secretary) has 25 members. 57. The Denver, Colo., Local (Mr. George W. Gross, President; Mr. L. H. Lightner, Secretary) has 35 members. 58. The Galesburg, Ill., Local (Mr. Axel Gabrielson, President; Mrs. M. E. Watkins, Secretary) has 23 members. 59. The Gary, Ind., Local (Judge William M. Dunn, President; Mrs. Elizabeth Lytle, Secretary) succeeded in excluding two objectionable film plays and prevented a colored boy from being unfairly discharged from his position. Race discrimination in public schools has been inves- tigated. The membership of the Local is 30. 60. The Key West, Fla., Local (Mr. Charles F. Dupont, President; Mr. B. V. Gonzalez, Secretary) was organized in December, 1915, and has 15 members. 61. The Milwaukee, Wis., Local (Mr. John A. Hall, President; Miss Marie A. Burgette, Secretary) has 20 members. 62. The Mounds, Ill., Local (Mr. S. J. Carr, President; Professor QO. I. Mitchell, Secretary) has 15 members. 63. The Walla Walla, Wash., Local (Mr. A. R. Baker, President; Mr. W. E. Cranshaw, Secretary) has a membership of 12. 64. The Cornell University, N. Y., Chapter has not yet held its an- nual election. 65. The Howard University, D. C., Chapter with 185 members (Mr. George E. Hall, President; Miss Eulalia Lane, Secretary) helped in se-
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262 THE CRISIS curing participants for the pageant, “The Star of Ethiopia,’ and joined in a protest against “The Birth of a Nation.” The Chapter held a num- ber of meetings for discussion. Professor William Pickens and Mr. Charles Edward Russell have addressed the Chapter and a memorial meeting for the late Booker T. Washington has been held. 66. The Lincoln University, Pa., Chapter (Mr. Clarence W. Wood, President; Mr. G. C. Branch, Secretary) has 27 members. 67. The Virginia Union University, Va., Chapter (Mr. Joseph C. Carroll, President; Mr. George W. C. Brown, Secretary) entered pro- test against “The Birth of a Nation.” Section 13. The Vision HESE facts in a general manner illustrate the kind of work which the Association is doing. We are trying to stop the in- crease of discrimination against colored people and as far as possible to do away with present discriminations. We hold hard and fast to the fundamental ideas of American democracy, viz., that all citizens must be equal before the law and that no special privileges shall be granted on account of race or color. We have refused for a moment to contemplate a great democracy like this, with all its wealth and power and aspiration, turning back in the onward furrow when once it has set its hand to the plow. Great as are the forces of reaction and race and class hatred at all times, and bitter as is the concerted and organized effort to increase color prejudice in this land and beat back the struggling sons of the freedmen, we are still confident that the inherent justice and sense of fair play in the American people both North and South is never going to permit the past crime of slavery to be increased by future caste regulations lead- ing straight to oligarchy and spiritual death. If it be not possible in the twentieth century of the Prince of Peace for a cultured people to extend justice and freedom to men whom they have cruelly wronged, but who, despite that, have done their hard work, fought their battles, saved their Union, upheld their democratic ideals, and showed themselves capable of modern culture—if it be not possible for America to yield these men what they have justly earned and deserve, then America herself is impossible and the dreams of Washington, Jeffer- son and Lincoln are vain. But it is not so. We can be just, we can be law-abiding, we can be decent. All we need to know and realize is the truth about this failure to live up to our ideals. The ideas of this Association are directly in line with the develop- ment of human civilization. If in this Republic we are going to set aside a part of our citizenship for special treatment, this means a step back- ward in the development of the world. Moreover, our treatment of colored races is an example to the world for the future treatment of the great mass of colored folk in Africa, Asia and America. We have a chance to take high ground and to fight in a noble cause for humanity. Sec sor of ' $12 Salis Gen Pri Tra Post Leg Priz Bad Dep Cas Acc Pin Fu lov 191 191 19) 19} 1S)
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SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT 263 Section 14. Money Matters Naturally, the great difficulty in carrying out any movement of this sort is the money difficulty. This Association raised this year for its general expenses (outside of THE CRISIS) $13,094.36. It spent, including depreciation on furniture, $12,751.62. The revenue and expense accounts follow: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People REVENUE AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT, 1915 EXPENSES REVENUE ER Seite odie eatela cael e SG,158.14 Donations oo ccccccecaccdes $7,308.16 General Expense ........... 2,010.42 Memberships ............... 5,621.47 INES chasis scdin. aoa s VRS OMY 2 1,625.17 Profit on Pins and Badges... 121.29 Traveling. Expense ......... 1,355.85 Sale of Literature.......... 43.44 I nis conan s aate<aie ns Sas 941.68 Legal Redress .............. 412.27 REE eon rcvaie! Pistavoacd oe asia ls 186.35 STINE 6 5 0 ox 64.h odie keene 15.25 Depreciation on Furniture... 46.49 $12,751.62 DN NE io hs pic Sind oo 4 ale aee 342.74 $13,094.36 $13,094.36 BALANCE SHEET, DECEMBER 30, 1915 ASSETS LIABILITIES IR ais tah he red a a EG) ee oh | a $ 79.63 Accounts Receivable (Pins) .. 53.50 Owe for Prizes to Branches... 243.85 Pins and Badges on hand.... 216.56 Special Funds: RMNNRERIINE 65565 reseassrnsleisignia 5. 883.36 Maclean Fund ............ 273.35 POMOEGR BIG 656 adic ccisaae 196.63 $ 792.46 EO TUE ea cins oo ade ked wows 2,260.12 $3,052.58 $3,052.58 Certified by FRANCIS J. BATCHELDER, Certified Public Accountant, 220 Broadway, New York. During the existence of the Association we have raised funds as fol- lows (not counting the income of THE CRISIS) : Rese taro Seay. 3 to Decaraher SE) sce icc iivceccacevingc nevinceseawecaces ves $ 5,108.90 SS a a a a a a ro fe ee 11,815.15 i ag rg Rg a ata 16,841.73 Rea I lia lah er ats nara gl Ae 14,030.70 = hr ez at aly tag ai i MRS a ate ca alae hn Soa ad a 13,094.36 NN reset cp ciondaaleies aku was ols ARMS Rey yb oc ee eee $60,890.84 The Association should have in 1916 a total income of at least $15,000. Of this $7,000 should come from memberships and $8,000 from donations. Surely there can be no more effective way of helping the establishment of justice among men than by contributing to this budget.
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264 THE CRISIS OFFICERS National President Mr. MOORFIELD STOREY, Boston Vice-Presidents Mr. OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, New York Rev. JOHN HAYNES HOLMES, New York Mr. JOHN E. MILHOLLAND, New York Mr. ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE, Washington Miss MARY WHITE OVINGTON, Brooklyn Rev. GARNETT R. WALLER, Springfield, Mass. Chairman of the Board of Directors Dr. J. E. SPINGARN, New York Director of Publications and Research Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, New York Treasurer Mr. OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, New York Secretary Miss MARY CHILDS NERNEY, New York* BOARD OF DIRECTORS Terms expire 1917 Miss JANE ADDAMS, Chicago Dr. W. E. B. Du Boils, New York Dr. C. E. BENTLEY, Chicago Mrs.. FLORENCE KELLEY, New York Rev. HuTcHINS C. BisHoP, New Miss MARY WHITE OVINGTON, York Brooklyn Rev. W. H. Brooks, New York Mr. CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL, Dr. F. N. CarpDoz0, Baltimore New York. Dr. JOHN G. UNDERHILL, New York Terms expire 1918 Prof. GEORGE WILLIAM CooK, Wash- Mr. JOHN E. MILHOLLAND, New ington York Mr. ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE, Wash- Dr. J. E. SPINGARN, New York ington Mr. MOORFIELD STOREY, Boston Rev. JOHN HAYNES HOLMES, New Mr. OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, York New York Dr. V. MORTON JONES, Brooklyn Dr. O. M. WALLER, Brooklyn Mr. WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING, New York Terms expire 1919 Mr. GEORGE W. CRAWFORD, New Mr. ARTHUR B. SPINGARN, New Haven York Bishop JOHN Hurst, Baltimore Mr. CHARLES H. STUDIN, New York Mr. PAUL KENNADAY, New York Miss LILLIAN D. WALD, New York Mr. JOSEPH PRINCE LOUD, Boston Rev. G.- R. WALLER, Springfield, Dr. WILLIAM A. SINCLAIR, Philadel- Mass. phia Mr. BUTLER R. WILSON, Boston * Resigned January 3, 1916.
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THE CHEROKEE FIRES An N. A. A. C. P. Investigation fA Sh By Royal Freeman Nash Gi BA HEROKEE COUNTY, Georgia, suf- fered four incendiary fires during the twenty-four hours commencing at one-thirty on the morning of Sunday, December 5, 1915. At that hour two barns belonging to Gus Coggins, on the outskirts of Can- ton, the county seat, were set on fire. Mr. Coggins is one of the largest stock dealers in the South. In one barn 159 mules and two horses perished; in the other 16,000 bush- els of corn, many tons of hay, seven car- loads of cottonseed hulls, and a car and a half of cottonseed meal, together with farm- ing implements of every description, were consumed. Out of the largest corn crop ever produced in north Georgia and the great- est number of stock gathered under one roof, nothing was saved but Coggins’ cele- brated racer, Sledmer. At almost the same hour, a tenant house belonging to W. F. Bell, five miles east of Canton, which had been vacated by a Ne- gro tenant named Parks Bates the Wed- nesday previous, was burned. Bates had for some reason departed too suddenly to take with him his household goods, which were burned with the building. In a split board placed in a wire fence nearby were three matches covered with a printed card bearing the inscription “move rapidly.” About one o’clock Monday morning the residence and barn of Otto Sherman, one- half mile east of Hickory Flat, were set on fire and totally consumed. Housed in the barn were eight fine mules. Mr. Sher- man was in south Georgia at the time. When neighbors reached the fire and liberated the animals it was discovered that “plugs” had been substituted for the Sherman mules and the good stock run off. Within a few minutes after the Sher- man fire, the torch was applied to the resi- dence and barn of Guy Stringer who lives only a short distance from Sherman. Be- sides his crops and household effects, seven head of live stock perished in the Stringer blaze. Two old plugs were rescued from the burning barn which did not belong to Stringer. 265 The Governor of Georgia immediately is- sued a proclamation offering $250 reward. The insurance companies sent in detec- tives to work on the theory that the own- ers of the barns near Hickory Flat set them afire to get the insurance. The find- ing of six of the mules by the sheriff, aban- doned in a pasture up in Pickens County, led some to believe that the fires were but a blind to cover plain horse stealing. The belief hela by the average man one talks to, however, carries directly back to the anti-Negro “pogrom” of 1912 in Forsyth County. Forsyth County is a sparsely settled Piedmont section wherein scattered hard- woods alternate with fields of cotton and corn. At the time of the Terror the popu- lation was 12,000, of whom 2,000 were col- ored. No railroad touches the county, nor the counties to the north. The region is in all respects backward, but decidedly the most backward thing in the county was the cracker who came into direct competition with the Negro. These two classes were alike either tenants of the larger landhold- ers, day laborers, or one-mule farmers of their own land. White and colored were paid alike from $.75 to $1 a day, but no one would hire a cracker for farm labor or teaming when he could get a Negro. The colored people, too, had a monopoly of the household positions, and the independent Negro farmers had established credit with the bank and the stores to a much larger degree than the crackers. This third class of small capitalists unanimously testifies that Forsyth County for the most part had an industrious, law-abiding, reliable lot of “niggers.” Three of them, however, in the neigh- borhood of Brown’s bridge in eastern For- syth, raped a white girl named Crow on a Sunday in October, 1912. They had her during one night and a part of the next day. At the end of the orgy they beat her on the head with a rock and left her for dead in the woods covered with boughs, al-
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266 THE CRISIS though as a matter of fact she lived for two weeks after and died of pneumonia ra- ther than of her wounds. The sheriff from Cumming brought in one particularly “sorry nigger” that public opinion adjudged guilty, together with sev- eral suspects. Those of the Brown’s bridge neighborhood who escaped arrest began to find themselves in limp heaps of two or three along the roadside. Cumming, the county seat, with its popu- lation of 300, is built around the four sides of Court House Square. On one corner are the bank and the hotel; diagonally op- posite is the lock-up, a red brick, one-story box about thirty feet square. On Wed- nesday (October 17) the mob went to the house of the sheriff and demanded the keys. He told them they would have to find them, and they proceeded to search his house, without success. So they procured a sledge, led aside the deputy who was on duty in front of the jail, and smashed in the locks and the Negro’s skull with a hammer. With a pair of new harness reins taken from the buggy of the rural mail carrier they dragged the Negro around Court House Square by the heels, and hanged him to the cross-arm of the telegraph pole in front of the bank. There was just a quiver of life in the body when they strung him up at three o’clock in the afternoon. A colored teamster driving his mules around the corner into the square, seeing that symbol dangling in front of the most respectable institution in the county, quit his wagon and ran. “Let’s run ’em all out,” the wielder of the hammer suggested. By the time they cut the body down at sunset the exodus from Forsyth County had commenced. “Those of us who should have known bet- ter,” a well-to-do Cumming merchant told me, standing there in that peaceful back- woods market place, “looked on and said the niggers deserved to be killed. We didn’t mean it, and we didn’t foresee the consequences. But that low-down gang took it as literally as they do the advice of Tom Watson.” They started in to rid Forsyth County of the last one of those two thousand col- ored people. A Negro would receive an anonymous letter giving him twenty-four, thirty-six hours, occasionally ten days to quit the county. That meant in some cases precipitate flight and the abandonment of everything owned in the world. In other cases it meant a sale at a few days’ notice, at which a cow worth $25 would bring $8-9, and hogs worth $15-20 sold for $4-6. House and land brought nothing. If the Negro owned a mule he moved out his fur- niture, otherwise it was burned after his departure. Failure to vacate on the date set meant a stealthy visit in the night and either dynamite or the torch. The result was a state of terror which caused one Negro family to accept a twenty-four hour notice from two children aged five and six respectively who had learned the game from their elders. At the hotel in Cumming the owner kept one servant on until January after repeated notices, but let her go then for fear of inability longer to protect the servant’s life. A genial, poverty-stricken white farmer named Bagwell described the final incident: “Old man Roper yonder had a nigger he well nigh couldn’t live without, knew every stone and stump on the farm. The boys warned him time and again to get shet of him, but Roper would keep him on. So one night they jest had to put a stick of dynamite under the nigger’s house. Blew him clean through the roof. No, it didn’t kill him, but it started him for Hall County right smart. . I reckon they won’t be back; you see the young fellers are grow- ing up sort of with the idea that this is a white man’s county.” The return to law and order in Forsyth County was celebrated by a triumph as im- pressive as the spectacle of the 17th Octo- ber. Two Negroes who were in jail -on that date as witnesses of the raping were taken to‘Atlanta by an escort of militia, returned to Cumming guarded by the troops, and were convicted on the testi- mony of the sister of one of the men who turned State’s evidence and swore to hold- ing a lantern while her brother ravished the Crow girl. (She was shot shortly after the trial.) A hundred and fifty militiamen were brought in for the hanging to see that the convicts arrived at the scaffold alive. In exchange for the lumber used to con- struct the blinds about the scaffold, a Cum- ming doctor offered the use of his pasture on the edge of the town for the execution. The night before, however, he was cheated of his reward by the gang which burned down actua State mule: form: to th Th son, |] but t south Etow line, corn in tl groes a hu seat comn forty unde Colle terec $5,0( ber unus none such Cour crac lead vier the on t not and ther As wer who be ¢ and Not Dav Dov ley mil! and adv on whe sta’ bon me
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THE CHEROKEE FIRES down the blinds. The following day, by actual count, over 10,000 citizens of the State parked their Fords and tethered their mules in the doctor’s pasture to witness the formal dedication of Forsyth County, Ga., to the white race. The county to the north of Forsyth, Daw- son, produces nothing in the northern parts but timber and “blockade” whisky. In the southeastern corner, however, along the Etowah River from Palmour to the county line, are exceedingly rich alluvial flats. The corn of this region requires field labor, and in this rich section had settled what Ne- groes there were in Dawson County, about a hundred all told. According to “Colonel” A. W. Vandiviere, a lawyer at the county seat who was for years the county school commissioner, there was a maximum of forty children enrolled at the colored school under one of the graduates of Morehouse College. Eighteen of the men were regis- tered voters, and they paid taxes on about $5,000 worth of property, most of the num- ber being tenants. He says they were an unusually industrious, responsible group, none of whom had ever been accused of any such crime as that committed in Forsyth County. Nevertheless, a gang of about a dozen crackers, with one John Jackson as the leading spirit (according to Col. Vandi- viere) took advantage of the situation in the next county and began serving notice on the Negroes in Dawson. As they had nothing against them excepting their color and competition, however, they did give them generally two weeks in which to leave. As in Forsyth County, the night-riders were poverty-stricken, cowardly crackers who hoped by driving the Negroes out to be able to rent whatever land they desired, and to command their own price for labor. Not one in the gang, according to Robert A. Gober, paid over $2 a year taxes. This Robert Gober is the strong man of Dawson County. He is postmaster at Dougherty, the center of the Etowah Val- ley district, owns the only store and grist- mill in the region, is a large landholder, and had over $5,000 at stake in provisions advanced and money loaned to colored men on ungathered crops in the two counties when the trouble started. It should be stated equally distinctly that he is a big- boned, big-hearted mountaineer with a rudi- mentary sense of justice and five well edu- 267 cated sons to his credit. He is the one man in the two counties who had the cour- age to fight. Mr. Gober told his colored tenants and laborers that he would protect them as long as they would stay. From Gaines- ville he sent one of the Hall County offi- cials down to Atlanta to try and get help from the Federal Governnient. “If we could have gotten a few detec- tives sent in here right at the start and obtained the evidence to convict one or two of them, the rest would have been fright- ened out,” he believes. Failing to get help from outside, he went to the life insurance agent, told the com- pany exactly what he proposed to do, and persuaded them to take him as a special risk for five years. Night after night for months, while the colored women and children fled to the woods, afraid even to light a fire, he slept with loaded guns handy in the hope of detaining some tangible evidence when they came to blow up his ten- ants’ houses or burn down his store. A neighbor who followed his example in paying no heed to the warnings to “get shet of your niggers,’ heard a fusillade a hundred yards up the road one dark night, and then, as the Negroes fled, saw the flames licking up the sides of their quar- ters. The gang threw a couple of dogs and a shote into the flames to show their courage and disappeared into the dark. Mr. Gober was unable to keep any of his colored people after this incident except Homer Palmer. “Homer was a nigger that was always ready to do anything I asked of him day or night,” Mr. Gober says. “I would send him to the bank at Gainesville with $500 just as quick as I would my son—he’d a fit for that money. When my son was dy- ing of pneumonia, Homer jumped on a mule in the worst blizzard we ever had in these parts and rode twenty-five miles for the doctor and twenty-five miles back. We had to pry his fingers open to get the reins out of his hands when he rode into that yard in the middle of the night— clothes frozen stiff. That nigger saved my son’s life, and I’d be fighting for him yet if he’d a stayed on.” Homer did stay until the March after the Forsyth lynching, through five months of terror. After the burning at the Roland
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268 THE CRISIS place he sent his family out. Each night Mr. Gober came over to Homer’s little shack on the other side of the river and the two waited, armed with two rifles and four double-barreled shot-guns, for the night- riders to blow them up. In March, however, the strain and the separation from his peo- ple, the knowledge that he was the only colored man in two counties drove Homer out, and Dawson County was as white as Forsyth. What of the counties into which the Ne- groes were driven? Railroads cross both Cherokee County to the west and Gwinnett and Hall Counties to the east, giving a somewhat different complexion to society. Big capital is invested and dominates the local governments. At Ball Ground and Canton in Cherokee County are large mar- ble finishing works, and the cotton mill at Canton employes between four and five hun- dred hands. Gainesville, the county seat of Hall County, is a town of 6,000. The mod- ern industrial conditions in towns like these need an abundant supply of cheap labor. When the crackers in Hall County started to pass the Forsyth fugitives along and make a sweep of their own county at the same time, the word went out, according to local gossip, to spend ten thousand dollars if necessary to crush the thing in its in- fancy. Hall County realized that it couldn’t afford to let the poor whites meddle with its colored labor supply. Eleven arrests were made within twenty-four hours after the terrorization started, and it subsided in a few days. In Cherokee County the crackers did suc- ceed in driving out several of the “sorriest” Negro families, but public sentiment wouldn’t stand for interference with the others. The crackers who drove the Negroes out of Forsyth and Dawson Counties boasted that they would rent any land they wanted after that, and that they would get any- thing they asked for their labor. They had driven out 2,100 competitors out of a popu- lation of 13,000. So secure they felt in their monopoly of the labor market of the counties that white women in Cumming are reported to have demanded $2.50 a day for their services when asked to do the cook- ing and washing that had previously been done by colored women. Mrs. Gober com- plains that the only white woman who would come to work for her under any conditions insisted that wood and water be brought in for her, although the well is but five or six feet from the kitchen door. The men were equally prone to be dictatorial in laying down the conditions under which they would work. A dealer in fertilizer who had kept six teams with Negro drivers hauling all the time told me the crackers were so shiftless and so touchy that he couldn’t work them. The result with the last named gentleman was that he sold his mules and quit that part of his business rather than try to run it with white labor. “What’s more, I get up before daylight on Monday mornings and do our washing myself now. They drove out a cook who had raised seventeen children out of my kitchen,” he said with some remarks about the class of whites who had brought him to that pass which will not bear repeating. His is a fairly typical case. In every family in the two counties the wives are doing their own housework. The hotel in Cumming is the only place I heard of which boasts a white house servant, whereas for- merly every considerable landholder and the merchant class in town all kept a col- ored menial. It would be difficult to strike a community in a more vital spot. The small capitalist class hit below the belt by the driving out of their servants retaliated on the active instigators of the “pogrom” by refusing them all credit at their stores, by refusing to rent an acre of land to them, and by declining to hire them as day laborers. Mr. Gober said that this policy has literally starved out all but one or two of the dozen men who consti- tuted themselves the vigilance committee in Dawson County; some have gone into neigh- boring counties, one or two have migrated to Texas. Col. Vandiviere said he had declined to recommend a man for a job just recently because it was rumored he had par- ticipated in the Negro baiting. The bleaching of Forsyth and Dawson, so far as I could ascertain, has in no re- spect benefited the poor whites who drove the Negroes out. If the crackers gained nothing but the distinction of living in a “white man’s country,” the counties have lost certain defi- nite items of material prosperity. First and most important is their credit in the money market. A Dawson County farmer who recently refused $12,000 for his farm, went during the month of December to At- ( Continued on page 270.)
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THE CRISIS ADVERTISER Figure It Out For Yourself! If you are an active lodge member you spend at least twenty-four hours in each year attending your lodge. If you are in more than one—most men are—you spend the equivalent of three whole working days in the lodge room within a year. If you are an occasional attendant at one or more you put in at least twelve hours attending meetings. Making liberal allowances your year’s cost works out this way:
Ue BOONE: MERENGIND THBOCNEE 5 5 5<0:56.3.050:0 <5.005sacesomenceees 2.00 ee MER Seo eae iacetas une ced dnwia sca en aena le ese evueasadns 1.20 i i A MMR 2. oo cnich bemeane Woks sabia wares eee 6.00 SE MR. ERUNMIOY o. o c e ccsec heels ease soeba ene’ 3.00 PN I eee cn hitars ct alates casio 594s Bie StU SiO GAS EERE PORN .50 Special death assessments (average)..........ss.eeeceecceeees 1.00 MS BN c nok on baa woken bse kene aa aealaeawanonee ates aid $13.70 The average secret order policy is rarely more than $300.00 as a maximum. It averages $250.00 and starts with $50.00 payable the first year, maturing only after five years. During this time, you are paying for full protection and getting only one-fifth the first year, two-fifths the second, and so on. In five years, you have paid $68.50. If you get behind for three months, you are dropped; and to be re- instated you must start in as a new member. Contrast this with old-line legal reserve life insurance: Your policy calls for, say, $500.00 on the Whole Life Plan. It is in full force the minute it is placed in your hands. If you die next day, the whole amount of the policy is paid to your beneficiary. You get from the beginning all the protection you pay for. At age 25 the premium is $10.85 a year; at age 30, $12.25 a year; at age 35, $14.05 a year. At the last age you pay in five years a total of $70.25. If at the end of that time you desire to quit, we will, as a matter of contract, give you $32.00 cash for the surrender of the policy, and your five years’ insurance has cost only $38.25. Or, we will give you a paid-up policy for $64.00, on which you never have to pay another cent. Or, we will extend your $500.00 policy for five years and ten months without any charge to you. These values increase every year and they are all in the policy. There are no meetings to attend; no long journey to and from lodges; no sitting in cold halls in winter or poorly ventilated sweat boxes in summer. If you change your residence, it makes no difference; for there is no starting over again, as in the lodge, when you move from one state to another. From the standpoint of low cost, convenience, increased value, incomparable safety. a FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR WHOLE LIFE POLICY in STANDARD LIFE beats all the secret order endowments you can find. TAKE YOUR OWN LODGE *% AND YOUR OWN POLICY AND FIGURE IT OUT FOR YOURSELF! ‘ ‘ .
‘ . . ‘ . vate. STANDARD LIFE INSURANCE CO. particulars *,
about + insurance. , 200 Auburn Avenue, ATI ANTA, GEORGIA Amount $...... % eee a Capital Fully Paid - - - $100,000.00 ABC cree crete eee ees % OVER TWO MILLION INSURANCE IN FORCE RP Aakash 9 +5 5a 295s ‘, Issues Policies from $250.00 to $5,000.00 Cecwmitton 6. siccaesicies ‘ es oa aaa cnn aoe ORE poly a HEMAN E. PERRY, President SOR EE CCC ER SCPE ECS . HARRY H. PACE, Secretary (C. Mar. 1916)
Mention Tre Crisis
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270 THE CRISIS lanta to take out a $2,000 mortgage on his place. Atlanta bankers told him his prop- erty was all right except its location—they didn’t care to do business in such lawless parts. The cashier of the bank at Cum- ming corroborated that story and stated frankly that Forsyth County has no credit with the outside world. Secondly, the farm- ers with Negro tenants lost a very large part of the cotton crop the year of the exo- dus because they could get no one to pick it. Mr. Gober told me he lost over $5,000 in money and supplies advanced to Ne- groes against the crops they were prevented from gathering, and other landholders of course lost accordingly. Thirdly, the dis- trict is still losing to the extent that land owned by Negroes who have been unable to sell at any figure lies idle, growing up to weeds as their empty cabins decay. This last is of course an insignificant item in the counties’ resources. And finally, they feel the judgment of the commercial world in the increased insurance rates which are de- manded. In Cherokee County, since the fires of last month, the editor of the Cher- okee Advance stated, the insurance com- panies have refused to issue policies on any terms. It is now easy to understand the explana- tion for the Cherokee County fires of De- cember 5 which is currently accepted in both Forsyth and Cherokee Counties by the average man one talks with. Gus Coggins is one of the largest employers of Negro labor in the county, having taken on sev- eral of the Forsyth fugitives. Sherman and Stringer both employed Forsyth Ne- groes, and both have stated that they re- ceived warning to get rid of their colored help. Parks Bates and one other Negro who thought it time to move again were fugitives from across the Forsyth line. It looks decidedly as though the crackers thought it a good time to kill two birds with one stone by driving out the Negroes with fire while running off some valuable mules under cover of the confusion. The proceedings of the Circuit Court which opens in Canton on February 1, may show the fires to have had no connection with Negro baiting but the general opinion is that they marked the beginning of an effort to drive the Negroes from Cherokee which died after twenty-four hours when the gang saw that the Governor and the sheriff intended to get them if possible. GOOD WORDS FOR THE CRISIS I wish to state that I am iceeeney well pleased with your grand magazine and I use every opportunity to tell others so. After reading your editorial of November I am all the more encouraged in my regard for its triumph and the general success of the association of which it is such a representa- tive organ. Yours truly, Tom Clement, Los Angeles, Cal. You will find enclosed my personal check for the renewal of A. B. McKnight’s subscription. He has been in Laguna, P. I., for the past eight months but is now returning to the United States. As I look for the return of my boy, so I look for the Crisis. That is my criticism. ours, H. D. McKnight, Sumter, S. C. The Poems of Phillis Wheatley the early Negro poetess collected by RICHARD R. WRIGHT, JR.. and CHARLOTTE CROGMAN WRIGHT and arranged in an attractive volume suitable for a birthday gift. Price, One Dollar THE CRISIS 70 Fifth Avenue New York The SLAUGHTER SYSTEM introducing LYDA’S HAIR BEAUTIFIER Guaranteed to Gruw Hair in SIX TREATMENTS or Money Refunded. Price 50 cents per box. Agents Wanted. System Taught by Mail or at College. Mrs. E. Slaughter Gamble 3001 LAWTON AVENUE $T. LOUIS, MO. Hundreds of M\ = ze _—SSsé«éOur': Agents are \N Z P making $10 A DAY in NA their spare time. Mauy are beating even that. Such athirg -_ as failure is. utterly impossibie with our new and complete outfit which we will s.ud you free—all charges prepaid. Progress clothes wear better and are morestylish than any other made-to-meas- ure clothes. Our prices are the lowest. PANTS cut in nmen® 5 thelateststyle PREPAID made to your individual measure, fit and workman- ship guaranteed. No extra charge for peg tops—no matter how extreme you order them. . — LIv Agents Wanted} fefiin i. aoeey town to take orders for our celebrated le-to-measure clothes. Samples of all the latest materiale FREE. We Pay Big Money “0: everywhere. Turn your spare time into cash by taking orders for our stylish clothes. Tite at once for greatest offer ever made. PROGRESS TAILORING CO. Dept 771. Chicago SS Z WN ~ eee > Mention Tre Crrsts
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THE CRISIS ADVERTISER 271 IMPORTANT BOOKS BY NEGROES Prof. Wm. E. Chancellor, Ph.D., the eminent historian and educator, writes: "The Neale Publishing Company to-day represents high-water mark in America for its historical works. Upon its list are to be found the best books upon each and every side of the common issues of our public life. Such is the authority of the list considered as an entirety as to lend luster to each separate title, creating a presumption in its favor.” Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since the Neale house was founded; hundreds of its publications are in active circulation; but none are more vitally important than its works that relate to the Negro and his problems. They comprise a library in themselves. Seid for free catalog. The New Negro; His Political, Civil, and Mental Status. By William Pickens, Lit.D., Dean of Morgan College. Dr. Pickens was graduated from Yale in 1904, with the Phi Beta Kappa Key, and in the highest grade of the class. He also won at Yale the Henry James Ten Eyck Oration on Haiti. Among the foremost educators and writers and orators of the Negro race, Dr. Pickens’s volume of essays here announced comprises an important addition to Negro literature, and a volume otherwise highly important to the Negro race. $1.60 by mail. Negro Culture in West Africa. By George W. Ellis, K. C., F. R. G. S.; recently, and for eight years, Secretary of the United States Legation in Liberia; author of “Liberia in the Political Psychology of West Africa,” “Islam as a Factor in West African Cul- ture,” “Dynamic Factors in the Liberian Situation,” and other works. Profusely il- lustrated. $2.15 by mail. Racial Adjustments in the Methodist Epis- copal Church. By John H. Reed, D.D., K.C. With an introduction by Adna B. Leonard, D.D., LL.D. $1.60 by mail. Redder Blood. By William M. Ashby. The Negro in America has produced but little imaginative work other than poetry. He has told his story by other mediums, which seemed to him, perhaps, better than prose fiction. Mr. Ashby, a Yale man, is a Negro, and “Redder Blood” is a novel of his race, and of the present time. There are situ- ations in it that reach the acme of legitimate dramatic intensity. $1.00 by mail. Haiti: Her History and Her Detractors. By J. N. Leger. Published in two editions: one in English and the other in French. M. Leger is a man of letters and the author of several well-known works. He is a man of public affairs, a statesman, who formerly served as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from Haiti to the United States. Illustrated. $3.20 by mail is the price of each edition. The Key; or, A Tangible Solution of the Negro Problem. By James Samuel Ste- mons, Field Secretary of The Joint Organi- zation of the Association for Equalizing In- dustrial Opportunities and the League of Civic and Political Reform. Mr. Stemons contends that the Negro should be accorded industrial opportunity rather than industrial education. He presents his arguments and conclusions in vigorous English of extraor- dinary purity, and the book may easily be classed with the foremost literature of the Negro race. $1.00 by mail. Race Adjustment: Essays on the Negro in America. By Kelly Miller, Dean of the Col- lege of Arts and Sciences and Professor ot Mathematics, Howard University. Third edition. $2.15 by mail. Out of the House of Bondage. By Kelly Miller, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Howard University. $1.65 by mail. The Facts of Reconstruction. By Major John R. Lynch, U. S. A. Fourth thousand. Major Lynch was made temporary chairman of the Republican National Convention of 1884, and presided over that conyention dur- ing the whole of the first day and a part of the second. He was nominated as tem- porary chairman by Henry Cabot Lodge, and his nomination was seconded by Theo- dore Roosevelt and George William Curtis. After his term in Congress, Lynch served as Fourth Auditor of the Treasury. In this his first book, written with extraordinary force and with unusual clarity, he boldly jus- tifies Reconstruction. $1.65 by mail. The Black Man’s Burden. By William H. Holtzclaw, Principal of the Utica Normal and Industrial Institute for the Training of Colored Young Men and Young Women, Utica, Miss. With an introduction by Booker T. Washington. Illustrated. Third thousand. $1.60 by mail. Order through THE NEALE PUBLISHING CO., {fi:¥2v'ss"" or THE CRISIS, #.2"%.4"2% New York, City Mention Tux Crisis
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THE CRISIS ADVERTISER Atlanta University Studies of the Negro Problems 18 Monographs Sold Separately Address ATLANTA UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ATLANTA UNIVERSITY 1s ATLANTA, GA. , The Curse of Race Prejudice By James F. Morton, Jr., A. M. _An aggressive exposure by an Anglo-Saxon cham- pion of equal rights. Startling’ facts and crushing arguments, ‘Fascinating reading. A necessity for clear understanding and up-to-date propaganda. Be- longs in the library of every friend of social justice. Price 25 cents. Send order to JAMES F. MORTON, JR. 211 West 138th Street -:- New York, N. Y. **GLEANINGS FROM DIXIE-LAND”’ Ten poems by Erriz T. Battie, A.M. Battle has an individual gift of melody.” —Springfield Republican. “You owe it to your race to publish your poems in book form.’’—Editer, Southwestern Christian Advo- cate, “Verses are smooth, graceful, high-minded and clear, reverent to all truth, appreciative of all beauty and true inspiration.’ "George W. Cable. PRICE 25 CENTS. Appress: OxoLona InpustriaL ScHOOL, Okolona, Miss. $25.00 PER WEEK may be made in commissions by parties handling “History of Negro Soldiers in Spanish- -American War” combined with “History of the Negro Race.” 400 pages, 50 illustrations, Price $1.25 net. Address: E. A. JOHNSON 154 Nassau Street “Mrs, NEW YORK BOOKS! BOOKS! YOUNG'S BOOK EXCHANGE 135 W. 135th St., New York City WORLD'S FAMOUS NEGRO WRITERS Bargains in Rare Books Mail Orders Solicited 150 no Evans Art Pianos ana Players Factory to You and up can be saved by my plan of selling direct from my factory to you. I can save vou from $12) to $250 on an Evans Artist Model Piano or Player. Theeas kind of terms,week- Freight Paid ly, monthly, quarterly or yearly payments to suit your convenience. All middie- men, jobbers, dealers and agents profits cut out. These are some of the reasons why I can sell the Evans Artist Model Pianos for such little money. Let me send you the other reasons. 30 DAYS FREE TRIAL We allow all freight charges, let you use the beautiful Evans Artist Model Piano for thirty days free. If you are not entirely satisfied, we will take it back without any cost to you—you are the sole judge to decide. If you want to keep it, you may do 80 on our low factory wholesale price on most convenient terms. Music Lessons Without Cost To every customer we will give a two years course of piano instruction free. Ask about our insurance plan. Write today. STORY & CLARK PIANO CO. F. O. EVANS, Gen. Mgr., Dept. B'35 Chicago Envelopes, 150 Letter Heads, 6x9% inches, neatly printed, for only $1.00. Samples free. HERALD CO., Charlotteville, N. Y. Sv Write for Our Gn OFFER @ week —- easy. Get Elegant Compiete Outfit—FREE—then get busy. Clothesso much finer, prices so much lower, that he want for yourself at special es. A Sample} low as $2.25 easy work and rich rewarde. Sod act y the charges on every order— and don’t kee ya cent of ant custom- er’ = aor a - he is weil jpcenes. a oat olay. We oan show you ow to take the most perfect measures re the finest tailoring ¢ and help you get the coin ri THE Cit HICAGS TAILORS ASS'N. Deot. 550 615 So, Franklin St., SOUTHERN COLORED TEACHERS’ AGENCY Formerly TEXAS COLORED TEACHERS’ AGENCY 1025 Boll Street, DALLAS, TEXAS Recommends teachers to Colleges, Universities, School Boards and School Authorities. Write for information. R. O. GOTHARD, Manager Mention Tue Crisis a Size mailed
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A New Book by Dr. Du Bois THE NEGRO By W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS, author of “Souls of Black Folk,” “Quest of the Silver Fleece,” “Select Bibliography of the Negro American,” etc. This is the authentic romance of the black man. It is a history of him at once scholarly, earnest and eloquent. He is considered from the earliest times, and the thread of his fas- cinating story is followed in Africa, America, and wherever else it has appeared. To look at the Negro against the back- ground of his history is to see him in a light fairer than that in which most Americans have seen him. 256 Pages—3 Maps-—Cloth Bound At the low price of 50 cents net—By mail 56 cents Dr. Du Bois’s new book is the latest addition to a remarkable series of low-priced new books with which everybody should be- come acquainted. THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 94 volumes now ready Published by HENRY HOLT & COMPANY, 34 West 33d Street, New York Is made up of new books by leading authorities. The editors are Professors GILBERT MURRAY, H. A. L. FISHER, W. T. BREWSTER and J. ARTHUR THOMSON. Cloth bound, good paper, clear type, 256 pages per volume. Each complete and sold separately - - 50c. net Postage extra “A growing wonder of enterprise and sound judgment. Each volume, entirely new, is furnished by an acknowledged expert; is brief enough and plain enough to be readable or even fascinating, scientific enough to be a condensed authority —and at the nominal price of 50 cents.”—Hartford Courant. SOME SELECTED EARLIER VOLUMES: EVOLUTION By J. A. Thomson LATIN AMERICA By W. R. Shepherd THE FRENCH REVOLUTION VICTORIAN LITERATURE By Hilaire Belloc By G. K. Chesterton ROME By W. Warde Fowler GERMANY OF TODAY PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY By Charles Tower By Bertrand Russell EURIPIDES AND HIS AGE NAPOLEON By H. A. L. Fisher By Gilbert Murray THE CIVIL WAR By F. L. Paxson UNEMPLOYMENT By A. C. Pigou Order through the publishers or through The CRISIS, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York Mention Tue Crisis
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PRINCE HALL Preacher, Race Champion, Abolitionist, Father of Negro Masonry One of the Great Figures in Negro History “The abolition of slavery; participation in the government upon terms and under conditions applicable alike to every other class of citizens; equality before the law; resistance to every form of encroachment upon the rights of, black men; the education af Negro children, the right to be let alone; the iniquity of public insult: such was the platform of this Negro prophet who was bern a whole century before Appomattox.” The character and work of this great man have been admirably set forth in a new book of vital interest to Masons and laymen. The book. is “Prince Hall and His Followers” The author is George W. Crawford, 33° Grand Master of Connecticut Price One Dollar. Postage Extra. ORDER NOW AGENTS WANTED THE CRISIS 70 Fifth Avenue Mention Tue Crisis