The Crisis 1924-09: Vol 28 Iss 5

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cents | p| pose ONAN AMG 96 1924 OE TRON. ab | | \ 1 \ Ss EX = a SEPTEMBER, phat Pee noth Oe a a i ae

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Evidence of Good Judgment in Selection of Investments for Funds of The Southern Aid Society of Va., Inc. At the recent annual exaini- nation of the records and busi- ness of the Corporation, by the Insurance Departments of Vir- ginia and District of Columbia, the examiners had an appraisal by an expert on realty values of the 12 pieces of property owned by the Corporation at Richmond, Va. These prop- erties cost the Corporation — $108,000.00. The appraiser gave them a value of $208,- 000.00 — an enhancement of $100,000.00 over cost price. That’s evidence of good judg- ment on the part of those in charge of the affairs of the Co1- poration and, likewise, of the stable quality of the assets be- hind each Policy issued by the Corporation. HOME OFFICE THE SOUTHERN AID SOCIETY OF VA., INC., by its Superior Policy of Protection to its Policyholders, its employ- ment of 500 race women and men and by furnishing modernly equipped office buildings for the conduct of the race’s profes- sional and business enterprises, is in deed and in truth a worthy servant of the people. Southern Aid Society of Va., Inc. Home Offices: 527-529 N. 2nd St. Richmond, Virginia- < -ee———_ Operating in State of Virginia and District of Columbia

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THE CRISIS A RECORD OF THE DARKER RACES PUBLISHED MONTHLY AND COPYRIGHTED BY THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE AT 69 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, N. Y., CONDUCTED BY W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS; JESSIE REDMON FAUSET, LITERARY EDITOR; AUGUSTUS GRANVILLE DILL, BUSINESS MANAGER. Vol. 28 No. 5 SEPTEMBER, 1924 Whole No. 167 COVER “THE STRENGTH OF AFRICA.” A Drawing. Laura Wheeler. OPINION “Our Babies’; “The Amy Spingarn Prizes”; “The N. A. A. C. P. and Parties”; “The Maud Cuney Hare Exhibit”; “Tuskegee and Moton”; “Travel” Page THE NEGRO IN LITERATURE. William Stanley Braithwaite........ PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL ACTION. William Pickens.... THE HORIZON. Ulustrated: ....cccccccccdasiass AN ARRAY OF BOOKS. Semi-Annual Book Review cn THE SONG, POEM, THIS SORROW. Poetry. Crawford Davis THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COL.- ORED PEOPLE ......... THE OUTER POCKET ...... A MOSCOW LADY. Claud McKay THE LOST CITY. A Poem. Amy Einstein THE LOOKING GLASS THE OCTOBER CRISIS The October issue belongs to our Babies. There will be articles by Willem Van Loon and E. Franklin Frazier. FIFTEEN CENTS A COPY; ONE DOLLAR AND A HALF A YEAR FOREIGN SUBSCRIPTION TWENTY-FIVE CENTS EXTRA RENEWALS: The date of expiration of each subscription is printed on the wrapper. When the subscription is due, a blue renewal blank is enclosed. 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 November 2, 1910, at the post office at New York, New York, under the Act of March 3, 1879.

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THE CRISIS ADVERTISER PAINE COLLEGE AUGUSTA, GA. STANDARD COLLEGE COURSES Approved Two-Year Normal Accredited Senior High School Up-to-Date Junior High School “To develop leaders you must have the best possible equipment for literary training and that is what we are striving for at Paine College”, said one of the leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. This Church contributes largely to the support of Paine College. A Good School at Reasonable Rates For further information, address RAY S. TOMLIN, President, PAINE COLLEGE. Virginia Union University is now a Class A College Excellent courses are offered in College as well as in Theology and in High School Work. The summer session is for college students only. For full information address the President at Richmond, Virginia. WILEY UNIVERSITY MARSHALL, TEXAS Recognized as a college of the first class by Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma Boards of Education. Leading Colleges and | Universities represented on its faculty. More | than two hundred enrolled in College Depart- | ment this year. Library and laboratories | strengthened. High standard of scholarship | maintained, Due prominence given athletes. M. W. DOGAN, President Mention I Lincoln University Pioneer in Collegiate and Theological Education Aceniiet by the Association of a of Middle States and Mary! Lincoln Graduates are Leaders in the various professions and in all parts of the country. Address: JOHN B. RENDALL, D. D., LINCOLN UNIVERSITY CHESTER COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA The Cheyney Training School for Teachers Cheyney, Pa. A Pennsylvania State Ne real Behe ol offering, in addition to the regular Normal Cours = two years. professional three year courses in Home Ki momics coe Shop Work. A os vylioma from any of the irs makes a graduate gible to teac h in the public aia »Is of ve ennsy lvania A three-year High Sx ho 1 Course is oftere to have completed the eighth grammar grace. _ gistration Day, Tuesday, September 16. Dormitories are ot ready for st ui nts before that date. The work of the firs t semester begins Septe canes r 17 24. For further particulars and all who catales og, write Leslie Pinckney Hill, Principal Cheyney, _——————————— THe Crisis

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‘ rm a THE CRISIS Vol. 28. No. 5 SEPTEMBER, 1924 Whole No. 167 oS WED Du Bois OUR BABIES HE October number of THE CRISIS is our annual children’s ® number. This number goes to press September tenth and all pictures designed for this number must reach us before that date. We want all the good clear pictures of healthy human babies that we can get. We do not promise to print all of them or to put your baby on the cover; but we are going to do the best we can with limited space and money. THE AMY SPINGARN PRIZES wa) Y husband and I have long had a deep interest and faith in the contribution of the American Negro to American art and literature. It is with the hope of assisting THE CRI- sis, that I should like to offer through THE CRISIS a.series of prizes for literary and possibly also artistic con- tributions. I am accordingly enclos- ing my check for three hundred dol- lars ($300) for this purpose. The cir- cumstances and conditions under which the prizes are to be awarded should be left entirely to the decision of the Board of Directors of the Na- tional Association for the Advance- ment of Colored People after consul- tation with the editor of THE CRISIS. “Amy E. SPINGARN, “(Mrs. J. Et SPINGARN).” THE N. A. A. C. P. AND PARTIES mam) NUMBER of newspapers an- } xious to get in line for 1 campaign funds have been throwing fits over the alleged endorsing of a Third Party by this Association. What the National Association for ‘the Advancement of Colored People in anntal conference actually said was printed in the plainest sort of English in the last Crisis. The Na- tional Association for the Advance- ment of Colored People does not at- tempt to tell its members or anyone else how to*vote. It does attempt to put the facts before them and to urge them to consider the facts and vote with their brains and not with their prejudices. It has said repeat- edly and says again: Any black man who votes for the present Republican party out of gratitude or with any hope that it will do a single thing for the Negro that it is not forced to do, is a born fool. Equally no Negro democrat can for a moment forget that his party depends primarily on the lynching, mobbing, disfranchising South. Toward any Third Party advocates the intelligent Negro must be receptive, hoping they are not ene- mies, seeking to make them friends, and trying to balance the prospects oi good and ill in supporting them. Facing such facts one Negro may decide to support Coolidge in the present campaign, not because he is so good but because others are so bad; another Negro considering the same facts may decide to support Davis because in his Negro attitude he represents the best of a bad crowd; or again a black man may well say: “LaFollette’s industrial program will help me as a laborer more than his silence on the Negro problem hurts me.” 199

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200 THE All of these positions are under- standable and the National Associa- tion for the Advancement of Colored People has on its Board of Directors and in its executive office persons who represent every one of these at- titudes and we still co-operate and re- spect each other’s reasons and deci- sions. But some things we do not under- stand and bitterly resent: One is the old “Jim Crow,” “Grand Old Party” jackass who brays every time the black man criticizes the mass of priv- ilege, monopoly and condescension which now masquerades as the party of Abraham Lincoln. Another is the gentleman who ac- cuses everybody who differs with him of being a scoundrel. In every cam- paign the attempt of self-respecting Negroes to vote as men and not as puppets is met with a flood of filth and abuse from. certain Negro news- papers which are either paid to sup- port the Republicans or expect to be paid. Unless we overwhelm these venal editors by our discountenance and contempt we will but weld our political slavery on our children. The base of our trouble is that still, to a large number of prominent Negroes, “politics” is simply a meth- od of private gain. They sell their votes, their opinions, their influence; and they think that this is what vot- ing means. They did not originate this sordid business, God knows, but they have proven apt scholars and even some of our new women voters from whom we expected so much are joining in the hunt for loot and bribes, for pay and petty. place. What we need in this campaign is non-partisan centers of discussion and information; debate, facts, state- ments and re-statements of the high function of the voter and the deep eternal significance of Democracy. Let us in God’s name vote next No- CRISIS vember with our heads and not with our heels, as freemen and not as slaves, for racial and human uplift and not for contributions from the party slush fund. THE MAUD CUNEY HARE EXHIBIT ~—ame)) the annual conference of } the National Association for i the Advancement of Colored : People there was a quiet and effective piece of propaganda, which the Association carried out at its own expense. In Wanamaker’s great store on the second floor a beautiful room was filled with things that illustrated the rise and development of Negro music. There were African musical instruments, pictures of Negro artists and composers, musical scores and programs, books and _ articles—so many and so carefully gathered mat- ters that picture the mighty work of the black man in music. Hundreds of people entered daily, asked questions and lingered. It was an education for white Philadelphia and the teacher and founder was Maud Cuney Hare of Boston who has made this exhibit in many places and ought to be encour- aged to add to it and carry it over the nation. TUSKEGEE AND MOTON UR hats are in the air to Tus- kegee and Moton. The vic- tory at Tuskegee over the Ku Klux Klan and the Bourbons of the Southern South cannot be over estimated. First the South asked Sep- aration. Then they demanded the right to step on our side of the color line and order us around, tell us what to think and to do. They claimed es- pecially that State and Nation be- longed to them and that anything done for us by the government was a boon to outsiders and to be supervised and directed by white Southerners. Southern Negroes led by Tuskegee

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OPINION yielded and yielded and yielded. They depended on the “good white folks” and the good white folks continually lied to them and betrayed them. At last they stood with backs to the wall. Tuskegee could not yield, neither to threats, to punishment nor to death. And the white cowards threatened. They promised murder and disgrace; they used every scheme to make Mo- ton yield. And Moton wavered, hesi- tated—and stood. Stood firmly and calmly with his back to the wall. He and the Negro world demanded that the Government Hospital at Tus- kegee be under Negro control. To- day, at last, it is. The South has learned something which it would better not forget. Moton has learned something too. The South has learned that the day has passed when it can do as it will with the black man simply because a New Black man has risen—a Joseph who knew not Pharaoh. Moton has learned that not all rich white Northern philanthropists nor professional Southern “friends” of the Negro can be trusted. Some of them betray the most sacred trusts. The only salvation of the Negro is to stop yielding supinely to every demand of Northern bribery and Southern bluff and fight and fight and fight for right. Moton is learning this slowly and in bitter disillusion. But for every white and condescend- ing flatterer whom he loses in his new-found manhood he will gain a hundred staunch of loyal black fol- lowers, And what better time than this can we take to publish two letters which we gained possession of in unrevealed ways and which we are publishing without Dr. Moton’s knowledge or consent. Dr. Mott is general secre- tary of the International Committee of the Y. M. C. A. Dr. Moton is a member of the Executive Committee, which met in Washington last year. 201 March 2, 1923. Dr. John R. Mott Now there is one problem that I haven’t discussed with you and that is the care of Dr. Moton. It will be quite impossible to have him at any conference at which there is food served. Of course he will be entirely welcome to attend the sessions of the conference in the conference room. It would be equally impossible to arrange to accommodate him in any hotel, unless in a private dining room and at the rate which has been made for us, we shall have to use a part of the main dining room screened off from the other diners. It would be, of course, possible to persuade the hotel authorities to al- low us to accommodate Dr. Moton behind the screen, but I would be afraid the fact would become known and this would precipitate an issue which should be avoided. I would suggest, therefore, that Dr. Moton arrange accommodations with his personal friends in town, of whom there are many, and attend the ses- sions of the conference only. It may interest you to know that it was necessary to telephone to a num- ber of the hotels before we could find accommodations for Mr. Swamidoss of India, and finally we were obliged to take one of the smaller and remote hotels. Very sincerely, (Signed) WM. KNOWLES COOPER, General Secretary, Washington, Y. M. C. A. March 23, 1923. Dr. John R. Mott My dear Dr. Mott: I have your personal letter of March 10th and the form letter of the same date advising me of the ap- proaching meeting of the Committee of Thirty-Three to be held in Wash- ington, D. C. After very careful re-

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flection over all the matters involved, I have reached the conclusion that it will be best all round that I do not at- tend this meeting. The continued re- currence of this question of how I may co-operate with the Committee in its various deliberations and dis- cussions operates to create a situation that is embarrassing, not alone to my associates on the Committee, but even more so to me. For the sake of the work in which we are engaged, and because of my strong confidence in the sincerity and integrity of all of the members of this Committee, and of the International Comittee as a whole, I have in the past accommodated myself to the in- conveniences entailed by the circum- stances to which your letter refers. But when the situation comes to the place where you must make the apolo- gies which are contained in your let- ter of the 10th, and where I must ap- proach my friends with the apologies which Mr. Cooper suggests in his let- ter of the 2nd, I am moved to the con- clusion that the persistence of such a situation can no longer be supported without compromising the Christian principles of all of us who may be a party to it. I fain would be possessed of the largeness of soul with which you credit me, but there are others who look at this matter from an angle quite different from your own. They are not without appreciation of the difficulties involved in the process of winning others to greater tolerance and larger sympathy. But for them, as for myself, there comes a time when their self-respect compels them to withdraw from a situation which, THE CRISIS THE HOSPITAL AT TUSKEGEE if entered into voluntarily must be ac- cepted only with humiliation and self- reproach, There need not, however, be any change in the place of this meeting on my account. Such matters as I am interested in can be handled in some other way that may suggest itself to you. I shall gladly acquiesce in all conclusions reached by the Commit- tee, who I am sure, will be less em- barrassed by my entire absence from the conference than they would be by my coming and going under the ar- rangements which the circumstances impose. Always sincerely yours, (Signed) R. R. MOTON. TRAVEL DO not travel. I sit very still with half-closed eyes. There is at first silence and then the ) roar of the world. The uni- verse whirls, fields fly, houses build, mountains rise and rivers. run, strange cities come and go, old friends arise from the dead and approach with out-stretched arms and laughing eyes, new friends tower, secretive, calm, with mysterious eyes and hearts that burst with word and song and new messages. Time turns back- ward. I see what was in years gone by: old homes and monuments and clustered peoples, prairies, oceans, mighty spires and graves. Then time runs ahead and I see what will be: thoughts and plans and poems and music, spirits that walk with the mighty. All this happens in minutes, years and centuries and then again the silence. I open wide my eyes. Iam at my desk and the mirage is gone.

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OPINION Then my world of here and now comes back aglow and the commonplace is new. They say, “You have been away.” I answer, ““No, Away has been with me.” My last trip in May and June was singularly impressing. I travelled over nineteen states, North, West and South and spoke to nineteen different groups of people in eighteen cities. I began in Washington. Heaven must be a singularly soul-satisfying place if it is more beautiful than Washing- ton in May. There is so dainty a touch of loveliness in the air and so many happy people. The sense of race is then perhaps at its lowest and all human things, but especially chil- dren, seem good, A touch of culture came at Dover where a home, dainty and new and blossoming with dogwood is rebuild- ing a school secluded for thirty years. In Virginia it rained but there were hundreds at South Boston and nearly a thousand at Roanoke with the Ku Klux Klan vigilantly watch- ing. “Going to hear that man? Naw, Sir. They’ll be a riot,” suggested one. At Petersburg I glimpsed the beginning of a new Negro college of fifty and then I saw “Chahlston” and the “Bahtry,” most charming and lov- able of cities. There were roses and nasturtia and music at Avery and pictures at Harleston’s and all about the fair faces of good women. At Savannah I got a glimpse of the faces of friends and then knew Georgia again from the Sea, past At- lanta to Dalton. At Knoxville I saw a scientist measuring the thoughts of a mouse with ‘his fascinated class looking on and at Terre Haute I dis- turbed a baby and finished the lecture course. Then I went down to Pulaski County in Southern Illinois and saw unusual prosperity; rushed back again to Cleveland and through the blur of Chicago down to St. Louis. I must not forget Detroit with its children and flowers and the crowd in the rain at Bradby’s church and all the young people whom Beulah Young had organized. There was Dayton with its banquet and kindly friends; and over there in St. Louis, Poro. It is an astonish- ing place, quiet and clean, a manufacturing establishment, a res- taurant, a school and hotel and a philanthropy. For the first time I saw a Mississippi that was beau- tiful with bluffs and hills and isl- ands and Memphis glistening afar. Then through Mississippi to Alabama, to Birmingham where there is a de- pot that provides every inconvenience for colored people. But the homes that black Birmingham is buying can scarcely be counted and two great business blocks are already in brick. The minister was a bit afraid to have me speak at his church but he finally consented. There was Louisville with its vast meeting of colored and white Bap- tists each outdoing the other in as- tonishing eloquence and finally there was Fisk University but of that I shall speak again. Of that I shall speak again and many times; for it was to me a place of sorrow, of infinite regret; a place where the’dreams of great souls lay dusty and forgotten.

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THE NEGRO IN LITERATURE i pave of his origin on this continent, the Negro was projected into literature by his neighbor. He was in American litera- ture long before he was a part of it as a creator. I ought to qualify this last, per- haps, by saying, that as a racial unit during more than two centuries of an enslaved peasantry, the Nezgro’s creative qualities were affirmed in the Spirituals. In these, as was true of the European folk-stock, the race gave evidence of an artistic psychology; without this artistic psychology no race can develop vision which becomes articulate in the sophisticated forms and symbols of cul- tivated expression. Expressing itself with poignancy and a symbolic imagery unsur- passed, indeed, often unmatched, by any folk-group, the race in servitude was at the same time both the finished shaping of emotion and imagination, and also the most precious mass of raw material for literature America was producing. Quoting the first, third and fifth stanzas of James Weldon Johnson’s “O Black and Unknown Bards,” I want you to take it as the point in the assertion of the Negro’s way into litera- ture: O black and unknown bards of long ago, now seme your lips to touch the sacred re? How, in your darkness, did you come to now The power and beauty of the minstrel’s yre? Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes? Who first from out the still watch, lone and long, Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song? What merely living clod, what captive thing, Could up toward God through all its dark- ness grope, And find within its deadened heart to sing These songs of sorrow, love, and faith and hope? How did it catch that subtle undertone, That nate in music heard not with the ears? How sound the elusive reed so seldom lown, Which stirs the soul or melts the heart to tears? - WILLAAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE fi Sh There is a wide, wide wonder in it all, That from degraded rest and servile toil The fiery spirit of the seer should call These simple children of the sun and soil. O black slave singers, gone, forgot, unfamed, You—you, alone, of all the long, long line Of those who’ve sung untaught, unknown, unnamed, Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine. Because it was possible to sing thus of a race: of a race oppressed, illiterate, and toil-ridden, it became also by some divine paradox irresistibly urgent to make literary material out of the imagination and emotion it possessed in such abundance. I can do no more than outline the Negro in literature as he has been treated by American writers of mixed nationalities. I present this word nationalities because, though American by a declaration of a unity, one must not overlook the deep and subtle atavistic impulses and energies which have directed, or misdirected, the imagination, in creating character and experience, atmos- phere and traits, in the use of the Negro as literary material. The first conspicuous example, and one which has more profoundly influenced the world than any other, of the Negro in literature was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Here was a sentimentalized sympathy for a down- trodden Race, but one in which was pro- jected a character, in Uncle Tom himself, which has been unequalled to this day. The Negro in literature had its starting point with this book. Published in 1852, it fore- ran for many years the body of literature which began during Reconstruction and lasted until the publication of Thomas Dixon’s “The Leopard’s Spots,” which be- gan, and was the exponent, of an era of riot and lawlessness in literary expression. Between the Civil War and the end of the century the subject of the Negro in litera- ture is one that will some day inspire the literary historian with a magnificent theme. It will be magnificent not because there is any sharp emergence of character or inci- dents, but because of the immense paradox of racial life which came up thunderingly 204

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THE NEGRO against the principles and doctrines of Democracy and put them to the severest test that they had known. It was a period when, in literature, Negro life was a shuttlecock between the two extremes of humor and pathos. The Negro was free, and was not free. The writers who dealt with him for the most part, refused to see the tragedy of his situation and capitalized his traits of humor. These writers did not see that his humor was a mask for the tragedies which were constantly a turbulent factor in his consciousness. If any of the authors who dealt with the Negro during this period had possessed gifts anywhere near approaching to genius, they would have penetrated this deceiving exterior of Negro life, sounded the depths of tragedy in it, and have produced a masterpiece. Irwin Russell was the first to versify the superficial humor of this Race, and, though all but forgotten today by the reading world, is given the characteristic credit by literary historians for discover- ing and recording the phantasies of Negro humor. Thomas Nelson Page, a kindly gentleman with a purely local imagination, painted an ante-bellum Negro in his fiction which was infinitely more truthful to the type contemporaneous with his own man- hood during the restitution of the over- lordship of the defeated slave owners in the Eighties. Another writer, who of all Amer- icans made the most permanent contribution in dealing with the Negro, was Joel Chand- ler Harris. Much as we admire this lova- ble personality, the arts of his achievements were not in himself, but in the Race who supplied his servile pen with a store of fertile folk material. Indeed, the Race was its own artist, and only in its illiteracy lacked the power to record its speech. Joel Chandler Harris was the divinely appointed amanuensis to preserve the oral tales and legends of a Race in the “B’rer Rabbit” cycle. The three writers I have mentioned do not by any means exhaust the list of writers who put the Negro into literature during the last half of the Nineteenth century. Mr. Howells added a shadowy note to his social record of American life with “An Impera- tive Duty” and prophesied the Fiction of the “Color Line’. But his moral scruples—the persistent, artistic vice in all his novels— prevented him from consummating a just union between his heroine with a touch of Negro blood and his hero. It is useless to IN LITERATURE 205 consider any others because there were none who succeeded in creating either a great story or a great character out of Negro life. Two writers of greater importance than the three I have named dealing with Negro life, are themselves Negroes, and I am reserving discussion of them for the group of Race writers I shall name present- ly. One ought to say, in justice to the writers I have mentioned, that as white Americans it was incompatible with their conception of the inequalities between the races to glorify the Negro into the serious and leading position of hero or heroine in fiction. Only one man, that I recall, had both the moral and artistic courage to do this and that was Stephen Crane in a short story called “The Monster”. But Stephen Crane was a man of genius and, therefore, could not besmirch the integrity of an ar- tist. With Thomas Dixon, “The Leopard’s Spots”, we reach a distinct stage in the treatment of the Negro in fiction. In this book the Color Line type of fiction is, frankly, and viciously used for purposes of propaganda. This Southern author fore- saw an inevitable consequence of the inti- mate contact and intercourse between the two races, in this country. He had good evidence upon which to base his fears. He was, however, too late with his cry for race purity—which meant, of course, Anglo- Saxon purity. The cry itself ought to have shamed all those critics who approved it; whose consciences must have taken a twinge in recollecting how the Saxon passion had found so sweetly desirable the black body of Africa. Had Dixon been a thinker, had his mind been stored with the complex so- cial history of mankind, he would have saved himself a futile and ridiculous lite- _ rary gesture. Thomas Dixon, of a quarter of a century ago, and Lothrop Stoddard of to-day, are a pair of literary twins whom nature has made sport of, and who will ultimately submerge in a typhoon of. Truth. For Truth is devastating to all who would pervert the ways of nature. Following “The Leopard’s Spots”, it was only occasionally during the next twenty years that the Negro was sincerely treated in fiction by white authors. There were two or three tentative efforts to dramatize him. Sheldon’s “The Nigger,” was the one no- table early effort. And in fiction Paul Kes- ter’s “His Own Country” is from a purely

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206 THE literary point of view, its outstanding per- formance. This type of novel failed, how- ever, to awaken any general interest. This failure was due, I believe, to the illogical ideas and experiences presented, for there is, however indifferent and negative it may seem, a desire on the part of self-respecting readers, to have honesty of purpose, and a full vision in the artist. The first hint that the American artist was looking at this subject with full vision was in Torrence’s “Granny Maumee”. It was drama, conceived and executed for per- formance on the stage, and therefore had a restricted appeal. But even here the artist was concerned with the primitive in- stincts of the Race, and, though, faithful and honest, in his portrayal, the note was still low in the scale of racial life. . It was only a short time, however, before a dis- tinctly new development took place in the treatment of Negro life by white authors. This new class of work honestly strove to endow the Negro with many virtues that were still with one or two exceptions, treat- ing the lower or primitive strata of his existence. With one or two exceptions re- ferred to, the author could only see the Negro as an inferior, superstitious, half- ignorant and servile class of people. They did recognize, however, in a few isolated characters an ambitious impulse,—an im- pulse, nevertheless, always defeated in the force of the story. Again in only one or two instances did these authors categorically admit a cultured, independent layer of so- ciety that was leavening the Race with in- dividuals who had won absolute equality of place and privilege with the best among the civilized group of to-day. George Madden Martin, with her preten- tious foreword to a group of short stories, called “The Children of the Mist,”—and this is an extraordinary volume in many ways—quite believed herself, as a Southern woman, to have elevated the Negro to a higher plane of fictional treatment and in- terest. In succession, followed Mary White Ovington’s “The Shadow,” in which Miss Ovington daringly created the kinship of brother and sister between a black boy and white girl, had it brought to disaster by prejudice, out of which the white girl rose to a sacrifice no white girl in a novel had hitherto accepted and endured; Shands’ CRISIS “White and Black”, as honest a piece of fiction with the Negro as a subject as was ever produced by a Southern pen—and in this story, also, the hero, Robinson, making an equally glorious sacrifice for truth and justice, as Miss Ovington’s heroine; Clement Wood’s “Nigger”, with defects of treatment, but admirable in purpose, wasted though, I think, in the effort to prove its thesis on wholly illogical material; and lastly, T. S. Stribling’s “Birthright”, more significant than any of these other books, in fact, the most significant novel on the Negro written by a white American, and this in spite of its totally false conception of the character of Peter Siner. Mr. Stribling’s book broke new ground for a white author in giving us a Negro hero and heroine. He found in the Race a material for artistic treatment which was worthy of an artist’s respect. His failure was in limiting, unconscious as it was on the part of the author, the capacity of the hero to assimilate culture, and in forcing his rapid reversion to the level of his origin after a perfect Harvard train- ing. On the other hand, no author has pre- sented so severe an indictment as Mr. Strib- ling in his painting of the Southern condi- tions which brought about the disintegration of his hero’s dreams and ideals. Three recent plays should here be men- tioned, of the Negro put into literature by white authors: I refer to O’Neill’s “Em- peror Jones,” and “All God’s Chillun Got Wings,” and “Goat Alley”. In all these plays, disregarding the artistic quality of achievement, they are the sordid aspects of life and undesirable types of character which are dramatized. The best and high- est class of racial life has not yet been dis- covered for literary treatment by white American authors; that’s a task left for Negro writers to perform, and the start has been made. In closing this phase of my paper let me quote in extenuation of much that I have said in the foregoing a passage from an article in a recent number of “The Inde- pendent,” which reads: “During the past few years stories about Negroes have been extremely popular. A Magazine without a Negro story is hardly living up to its opportunities. But almost every one of these stories is written in a tone of condescension. The artists have caught the contagion from the writers and the illustrations are ninety-nine times out

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THE NEGRO of a hundred purely slapstick stuff. Stories and pictures make a Roman holiday for the millions who are convinced that the most important fact about the Negro is that his skin is black. Many of these writers live in the South or are from the South. Pre- sumably they are well acquainted with the Negro, but it is a remarkable fact that they almost never tell us anything vital about nim, about the real human being in the black man’s skin. Their most frequent method.is to laugh at the colored man and woman, to catalogue their idiosyncrasies, their departure from the norm, that is, from the ways of the whites. There seems to be no suspicion in the minds of the writers that there may be a fascinating thought life in the minds of the Negroes, whether of the cultivated or of the most ignorant type. Always the Negro is interpreted in the terms of the white man. White-man psychology is applied and ic is no wonder that the result often shows the Nezro in a ludicrous light.’ I shall have to run back over the years to where I began to survey the achieve- ment of Negro authorship. The Negro as a creator in American literature is of com- paratively recent importance. All that was accomplished between Phyllis Wheatley and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, considered by critical standards, is negligible, and of his- torical interest only. Historically it is a great tribute to the Race to have produced in Phyllis Wheatly not only the slave poetess in 18th century Colonial America, but to know she was as good, if not a better poetess, than Ann Bradstreet whom literary historians give the honor of being the first person of her sex to win fame as a poet in America. Negro authorship may, for clearer state- ment, be classified into three main activi- ties: Poetry, Fiction, and the Essay, with an occasional excursion into other branches. In the drama, practically nothing has been achieved, with the exception of Angelina Grimké’s “Rachel,” which is notable for its sombre craftsmanship. Biography has given us a notable life story, told by him- self, of Booker T. Washington. Frederick Douglass’s story of his life is eloquent as a human document, but not in the graces of narration and psychologic portraiture which has definitely put this form of litera- ture in the domain of the fine arts. In philosophic speculation the Negro has made a valuable contribution to American thought; indeed, with Einstein endeavored to solve the complicated secrets of infinity, in Robert Brown’s “The Mystery of Space,” IN LITERATURE 207 a work, which, but for the discernment of a few perceptive critics, has failed to win the recognition it deserves. In aesthetic theory and criticism the Negro has not yet made any worth-while contribution though a Ne- gro scholar, Professor W. S. Scarborough, has published a Greek grammar which ‘was adopted as a standard text book. In his- tory and the historical monograph there has been in recent years a growing distinction of performance. It is now almost a half century since Williams’s history of the Ne- gro Race was published, and Trotter’s vol- ume on the Negro in music. The historical studies of to-day by Dr. Carter Woodson are of inestimable service in the documenting of the obscure past character and activity of Negro life; and Benjamin Brawley, who, beside his social history of the Negro, has written a study of the Negro in art and literature and a valuable “History of the English Drama.” The literary contribu- tions of the Negro have only begun, but the beginning is significant. His accomplish- ment has been chiefly in imaginative litera- ture, with poetry, by far, the prominent practice. Next to poetry, comes fiction; and though his preoccupation runs back nearly a century, he gives promise in the future of a greater accomplishment in prose fiction. In the third field of the Negro’s literary endeavor, the essay, and discursive article, dealing chiefly with racial problems, there has been produced a group of able writers assaulting and clearing the impeded pathway of racial progress. Let us survey briefly the advance of the Negro in poetry. Behind Dunbar, there is nothing that can stand the cr:tical test. We shall always have a sentimental and his- torical interest in those forlorn and pa- thetic figures who cried in the wilderness of their ignorance and oppression. With Dun- bar we have our first authentic lyric ut- terance, an utterance more authentic, I should say, for its faithful rendition of Negro life and character than for any rare or subtle artistry of expression. When Mr. Howells, in his famous introduction to the “Lyrics of Lowly Life,” remarked that Dunbar was the first black man to express the life of his people lyrically, he summed up Dunbar’s achievement and transported him to a place beside the peasant poet of Scotland, not for his art, but precisely be- cause he made a people articulate in verse.

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208 THE The two chief qualities in Dunbar’s work are humour and pathos, and in these with an inimitable portrayal, he ex- pressed that era of conscious indecision disturbing the Race between the Civil War and the nineteenth century. No agitated visions of prophecy burn and surge in his poems. His dreams were anchored to the minor whimsies, to the ineffectual tears of his people deluded by the Torch of a Liberty that was leading them back into abstract bondage. He expressed what he felt and knew to be the temper and con- dition of his people. Into his dialect work he poured a spirit, which, for the first time, was the soul of a people. By his dialect work he will survive, not so much because out of this broken English speech he shaped the symbols of beauty or the haunt- ing. strains of melody, but because into it he poured the plaintive, poignant tears and laughter of the soul of a Race. After Dunbar many versifiers appeared all largely dominated by his successful dia- lect work; I cannot parade them here for tag or comment. Not until James W. John- son published his Fiftieth Anniversary Ode on the emancipation in 1913, did a poet of the Race disengage himself from the back- ground of mediocrity. Mr. Johnson’s work is based upon a broader contemplation of life, life that was not wholly confined with- in any racial experience, but through the racial he made articulate that universality of the emotions felt by all mankind. His verse possesses a vigor which definitely breaks away from the brooding minor un- dercurrents of feeling which has previously characterized the verse of Race poets. Mr. Johnson brought, indeed, the first intellec- tual substance to the content of poetry and a craftsmanship which, less spontaneous — than that of Dunbar’s, was more balanced and precise. Two other poets have distinguished them- selves, though not to the same degree as Mr. Johnson. Fenton Johnson is one of those who began with a very uncertain measure of gifts, but made a brief and sudden development, only to retire as sud- denly into the silence; the other poet, Les- lie Pinckney Hill, has published one credit- able book which has won for him a place among Negro poets, but which is the result of an intellectual determination to verse- making rather than the outpouring of a CRISIS spontaneous poetic spirit. Let me here pay tribute to a woman who has proven herself the foremost of all wo- men poets the Race has so far produced: Georgia Douglas Johnson is a lyricist who has achieved much and who ought to achieve a great deal more. She has the equipment which nature gives in endowing the poetic spirit; her art is adequate but to say this is not to be satisfied with the best use of her gifts. A capture by her of some of the illusive secrets of form would often transmute her substance into the golden miracle of art. I come now to Claude McKay, who un- questionably is a poet whose potentialities would place him supreme above all poets of the Negro Race. But I am afraid he will never justify that high distinction. His work may be easily divided into two classes: first,, when he is the pure dreamer, con- templating life and nature, with a wistful and sympathetic passion, giving expression with subtle and figurative music to his dreams; secondly, when he is the violent and angry propagandist, using his natural poetic gifts to clothe arrogant and defiant thoughts. When the mood of “Spring in New Hampshire” or the sonnet “The Har- lem Dancer” possesses him, he is full of that desire, of those flames of beauty which flower above any or all men’s harming; in these are the white dreams which shine over the Promised Land of the Race’s conquest over its enemies; it is the literature of those magnificent Psalms against which all the assaults of time dissolve, and whose music and whose vision wash clean with the radiance of beauty. How different, in spite of the admirable spirit of courage and de- fiance, are his poems of which the sonnet “If We Must Die” is’ a typical example. Passion is not a thing of words,—it is an essence of the spirit! He who slaves and burns with beauty is a more triumphant conqueror than he who slaves with a sword that the victim might break. * * * Too green the springing April grass, Too blue the silver speckled sky, For me to linger here, alas, While happy winds go laughing by, Wasting the golden hours indoors, Washing windows and scrubbing floors. Too wonderful the April night, Too faintly sweet the first May flowers, The stars too gloriously bright,

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THE NEGRO For me to spend the evening hours, When fields are fresh and streams are leap- ing, Weary, cakaunied. dully sleeping. K 6 . Let me refer briefly to a type of litera- ture in which there have been many pens with all the glory going to one man. Dr. Du Bois is the most variously gifted writer which the Race has produced. Poet, nov- elist, sociologist, historian and essayist, he has produced books in all these branches of literature—with the exception I believe, of a formal book of poems,—and being a man of indomitable courage I have often won- dered why,—and gave to each the distinc- tion of his clear and exact thinking, and of his sensitive imagination and passionate vision. “The Souls of the Black Folk” was the book of an era; it was a painful book, a book of tortured dreams woven into the fabric of the sociologist’s document. In this book, as well as in many of Dr. DuBois’s essays, is often my personal feeling that I am witnessing the birth of a poet, phoenix- like, out of a scholar. Between “The Souls of the Black Folk” and “Darkwater,” pub- lished three years ago, Dr. Du Bois has written a number of books, none more nota- ble, in my opinion, than his novel “The Quest of the Silver Fleece” in which he made cotton the great protagonist of fate in the lives of the Southern people, both white and black. In European literature nature and her minions have long been represented in literature as dominating the destinies of man; but in America I know of only two conspicuous accomplishments of this kind—one, Frank Norris in his dramatization of the influence of wheat and the other, Dr. Du Bois’s in his dramatiza- tion of the influence of cotton. Let me again quote a passage from the afore-mentioned article from The Inde- pendent: “The white writer seems to stand baffled before the enigma and so he expends all his energies on dialect and in general on the Negro’s minstrel characteristics.... We shall have to look to the Negro himself to go all the way. It is quite likely that no white man can do it. It is reasonable to suppose that his white psychology will always be in his way. I am not thinking at all about a Negro novelist who shall arouse the world to the horror of the de- liberate killings by white mobs, to the wrongs that condemn a free people to po- litical serfdom. I am not thinking at all of the propaganda novel, although there is IN LITERATURE 209 enough horror and enough drama in the bald statistics of each one of the annual Moton letters to keep the whole army of writers busy. But the Negro novelist, if he ever comes, must reveal to us much more than what a Negro thinks about when he is being tied to a stake and the torch is being applied to his living flesh; much more than what he feels when he is being crowded off the sidewalk by a drunken rowdy who may be his intellectual inferior by a thousand leagues. Such a writer, to succeed in a big sense, would have to forget that there are white readers; he would have to lose self-consciousness and forget that his work would be placed before a white jury. He would have to be careless as to what the white critic might think of it; he would need the self-assurance to be his own critic. He would have to forget for the cime being, at least, that any white man ever attempted to dissect the soul of a Negro.” What I here quote is both an inquiry and a challenge! Well informed as the writer is, he does not seem to detect the forces which are surely gathering tc produce what he longs for. The development of fiction among Negro authors has been, I might almost say, one of the repressed activities of his literary life. A fair start was made the last de- cade of the Nineteenth century when Chesnutt and Dunbar were turning out bo‘h short stories and novels. In Dunbar’s case, had he lived, I think his literary growth would have been in the evolution of the Race novel as indicated in “The Uncalled” and the “Sport of the Gods.” The former was, I think, the most ambitious literary effort of Dunbar; the latter was his most significant; significant because, thrown against the background of New York City, it displayed the life of the Race as a unit, swayed by the currents of existence, of which it was and was not a part. The story was touched with that shadow of destiny which gave to it a purpose more important than the mere racial machinery of its plot. In all his fiction, Dunbar dealt with the same world which gave him the inspiration for his dialect poems. It was a world he knew and loved and became the historian of without any revising influence from the world which was its political and social enemies. His contemporary, Charles W. Chesnutt, was to supply the conflict between the two worlds and establish with the pre- cision of a true artist, the fiction of the Color Line. Charles W. Chesnutt is one of the enigmas in American literature. There are five vol-

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210 THE umes to his credit, not including his life of Frederick Douglass for the Beacon Biog- raphy Series. From first to last, he re- vealed himself as a fictional artist of a very high order. The two volumes of short stories, “The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories,” and “The Conjure Woman,” are exquisite examples of the short story form equal to the best in American literature. Primarily a short story writer, Mr. Ches- nutt showed defects in his long novels which were scarcely redeemed by the mastery of style which made them a joy to read. I recall the shock a certain incident in “The House Behind the Cedars” gave me when I first read the book at the time it was pub- lished, puzzled that human nature should betray its own most passionate instincts at a moment of the intensest crisis. I realized later, or at least my admiration for Mr. Chesnutt’s art, led me to believe that the fault was not so much his art as the prob- lem of the Color Line. This problem, in its most acute details, was woven into the best novel Mr. Chesnutt has written called “The Marrow of Tradition.” Certainly he did in that work an epic of riot and lawlessness which has served for mere pictorial detail as a standard example. In 1905 Mr. Ches- nutt published “The Colonel’s Dream,” and thereafter silence fell upon him. I have heard it said that disappointment because his stories failed to win popularity was the cause of his following the classic example of Thomas Hardy by refusing to publish another novel. The cases are not exactly parallel because, while Hardy has refused to write another novel following the publi- cation of “Jude, the Obscure,” I have heard it rumored that Mr. Chesnutt has written other stories but will not permit their pub- lication. From the publication of Chesnutt’s last novel until the present year there has been no fiction by the Race of any importance, with the exception of Dr. Du Bois’s “The Quest of the Silver Fleece,” which was pub- lished in 1911. This year of 1924 will have given four new books by writers, which seem to promise the inauguration of an era that is likely to produce the major novelists. Joshua Henry Jones’s “By Sanction of Law,” is a book that will hold the attention of readers who demand a thrilling story; it designs no new pattern of fiction, pro- CRISIS duces no new texture of expression. A vig- orous narrative, it piles incident upon inci- dent, with dialogue, love and violence. Mr. Walter White’s novel ‘The Fire in the Flint,” is a swift moving story built upon the authentic experience of the author, with the terrors and pities of racial con- flict. Two outstanding achievements in the en- tire range of fiction are the books by Jessie Redmon Fauset and Jean Toomer. Miss Fauset in her novel “There is Confusion,” has created an entirely new milieu in the treatment of the Race in fiction. She has taken a class within the Race, given it an established social standing, tradition, cul- ture, and shown that its predilections are very much like those of any civilized group of human beings. In her story Race fiction emerges from the color line and is incor- porated into that general and universal art which detaches itself from prejudice of propaganda and stands out the objective vision of artistic creation. Her beginning is conspicuous; her development may well be surprising. These rambling remarks on the Negro in literature I may well bring to a close with this public confession that I believe that of all the writers I have mentioned, the one who is most surely touched with genius is Jean Toomer the author of “Cane.” I believe this, not only on ac- count of what he has actually accomplished in “Cane,” but for something which is partly in the accomplishment and partly in the half articulate sense and impression of his powers. This young man is an artist; the very first artist in his Race who, with all an artist’s passion and sympathy for life, its hurts, its sympathies, its desires, its joys, its defeats, and strange yearnings, can write about the Negro without the sur- render or compromise of the artist’s vision. It’s a mere accident that birth or associa- tion has thrown him into contact with the life that he has written about. He would write just as well, just as poignantly, just as transmutingly, about the peasants of Russia, or the peasants of Ireland, had ex- perience but given him the knowledge of their existence. “Cane” is a book of gold and bronze, of dusk and flame, of ecstacy and pain, and Jean Toomer is a bright. morning star of a new day of the Race in literature!

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pe a reading of the platform adopted by the Progressives in Cleveland it would not seem that much advance was made, except in the call for public owner- ship of necessary monopolies and large- power enterprises, such as railroads and mines. But in the immediate presence of the Progressive personnel one could get the impression that they are miles ahead of the average cog-wheel politicians of the “two old parties.” There were perhaps some un- necessarily cautious tactics to avoid wran- gles over divisive domestic issues, and some very unconcealable efforts on the part of # those who managed the convention to carry out preconceived ideas and prearranged pro- grams. And yet withal there was an at- mosphere of honesty and sincerity in every procedure which is seldom or almost never found in a gathering of professional politi- cians. For example, they had evidently decided before they came to Cleveland not to bring up the Klan issue, because, as they claimed, such a religious and racial issue might be- cloud the more essential economic issues,— and also because, as we claim, they had ob- served what a happy time the blessed Demo- crats were having over the Klan in Madison Square Garden. But while a majority in the Democratic convention voted in favor of the Klan when the matter came to a roll call, the best information that could be .gathered about the Progressive convention, where an actual “show-down” was prevent- ed by the exclusion of the Ku Klux issue, was that not more than about ten per cent of the Progressive delegates were favorable to the Klan. This estimate was made by a prominent Socialist, and the Socialists were actively and decidedly anti-Klan. It was they who in a separate and subsequent meeting of their own wing of Progressives declared unequivocally against the Klan and in favor of the impartial recognition of Ne- groes in all labor unions. In this one ex- hibition of courage and consistency, the Socialists therefore hold the palm among all party groups. And as to the Negro question, and more “PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL ACTION” 211 us us WILLIAM PICKENS us uS particularly as to his relationship to the labor unions,—one felt the same strange contradiction: that as to personnel here was a group of people who would be in the main fairer and juster and squarer with the Ne- gro than any other group that had gathered in political convention since Reconstruction days, and yet that they (and especially their leadership) were unwilling or afraid to specify the Negro or to allow his case to become an issue in their effort to get together. Those who know the power and inclination, and the present distribution of the Negro vote, will count this omission a blunder in practical politics, that could only be offset by some very decided and straight pronouncements on the part of the Pro- gressive presidential nominees, and some unmistakable recognition of colored people in the campaign of election. LaFollette must talk plain and straight and to the point, if he expects the unselfish and thoughtful part of the Negro vote, which is admittedly impatient with the “old parties,” to have any feeling of conviction that his leader- ship and his party are more decently Amer- ican than the others. Nothing was said then, about the Negro in the office platform adopted in the Pro- gressive Convention, for the reason that, as they say, the Negro is an American citizen and is included in all that the Progressives seek for American citizens; but it might have been well for the convention to specific- ally include the Negro, because, as we say, the four Railroad Brotherhoods which domi- nated the convention, do specifically exclude the Negro from their union rights. The N. A. A. C. P. sent an observer to the Progressive Convention, simply to let the Progressives know that the Association and all intelligent colored people look upon the new political organization as upon all other parties, that they are inclined to give the new group the same chance to be heard, and that they are determined to act upon the merits of the case rather than upon any party name or party symbol,—whether Elephants, Jackasses or other respectable creatures.

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A. L. Gaines @ The African M. E. Church elected as Bishops three well-known men of unusually high standing. Dr. A. L. Gaines is the nephew of the late Bishop Gaines and a graduate of Atlanta and Gammon. Dr. R. C. Ransom has long been editor of the A. M. E. Quarterly and is one of the most forceful speakers on the platform. Dr. J. A. Gregg was president of Wilberforce Uni- versity and formerly was a pastor in Flor- ida. Seldom in recent years have elections to the bishopric in this church so well re- flected the best public opinion. Cc, C. Alleyne 212 R. C, Ransom B. G. Shaw J. A. Gregg @ The A. M. E. Zion Church elected five new bishops. Bishop C. C. Alleyne has been for some years editor of the A. M. E. Zion Quarterly. Bishop E. D. W. Jones was the son of a bishop and was born in Washing- ton. He was educated at Livingstone. Bishop W. J. Walls was born in North Caro- lina and graduated from Livingstone. He has been editor of the Star of Zion. Bishop J. W. Martin was Secretary of Educat’on before his election. Bishop B. G. Shaw, a prominent pastor, was the fifth member of this quintette. E. D. W. Jones

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THE ee W. N. De Berry Joseph H. Ward @ Major Joseph H. Ward of Indianapolis, has been appointed Medical Officer in charge of the U. S. Veterans’ Hospital at Tuskegee. More than 300 employees are under his di- rect supervision. Major Ward is a native of Wilson, N. C. Later he was graduated from the Indiana Medical College and es- tablished the “Ward Sanitarium” of Indian- apolis. During the war he entered the army as a private, was transferred to the Medical Corps and promoted successively to the rank of lieutenant, captain and major. @ W. J. Yerby of the American Consular service has been on active duty on the West African coast for more than seventeen years. He was given a post in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 1906 and transferred to Dakar, Senegal, in 1915. His term of service in the difficult West African climate is quite with- out precedent. @ For more than forty years the late Henry Rucker was a powerful factor in the po- litical life of Atlanta. From 1897 until 1910 he held the position of Collector of Internal Revenue, the highest federal posi- CRISIS | 7 H. R. Rucker tion in the state of Georgia. He was born a slave so that his career marks one of those curious possibilities of democracy which America was meant originally to illustrate. G@ Below are the pictures of six of the tennis champions of 1923. This year in August the National Tournament was held in Baltimore. @ The twenty-fifth anniversary of the pastorate of the Rev. Dr. William DeBerry of Springfield, Mass., emphasizes afresh his service to the Congregational Church and to the community. His church, St. John’s, is not only a church and a social center but it owns groups of well-kept houses for colored families, a four-story building hous- ing the Parish Home for working girls and a fifty-four acre farm in East Brookfield. The church has domestic science, arts, crafts and physical culture classes, boys’ clubs, a double male quartet, a glee club and a brass band. Dr. DeBerry is an honorary member of the American Board of the Congrega- tional Church; a life member of the Ameri- can Missionary Association and vice-mod-

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THE HORIZON erator of the National Congregational Coun- cil. He is also a trustee of Fisk University. ( The teaching staff of Howard University now numbers one hundred and seventy-five. Among newly appointed members of the fac- ulty are: Charles S. Houston, a graduate of Amherst and of the Harvard Law School who has just completed a year’s graduate work in Spain; W. Stuart Nelson, a gradu- ate of Howard and of Union Theological Seminary who has done graduate work at the University of Paris and the University of Berlin, and who was the recipient this year of the degree of Bachelor of Divinity ST. JOHN’S CHURCH TENEMENTS from Yale; Louis K. Downing, graduate of Howard and the Massachusetts School of Technology, and Gwendolyn Bennett a Co- lumbia graduate with the degree of B. S. in Art. ( Laura Wheeler, Lillian Evans Tibbs and Helen Wheatland are studying in Paris. Miss Wheeler and Miss Wheatland hope to put in at least a year of work. 215 Cd A colored branch of the Y.M.C.A. is to be constructed in Wichita, Kansas. The build- ing, which is to cost $25,000 has been un- derwritten by a business man on the condi- tion that other supporters of the Y.M.C.A. join him in raising this amount. @ Dyett, Hall and Patterson, New York counsellors-at-law have been retained to handle the legal matters of the Chelsea Ex- change Bank, Harlem branch. This is prob- ably the only colored firm handling the affairs of a white bank in the country. @ The new administration hall of Texas College, Tyler, Texas, has just been com- pleted at a cost of $100,000. The General Education Board of New York contributed . ST. JOHN’S CHURCH TENEMENTS $20,000 toward this sum and the M. E. Church South, white, $30,000. C In Memphis the Fraternal Savings Bank will occupy a new building at Beale Avenue and Hernando Street. The interior is fin- ished in natural gum and Alabama marble. There will be five bronze grill cages and a reénforced concrete and steel-lined vault. The president is A. F. Boyd; the architect W. T. Bailey. @ Albert A. Smith, whose work is often seen in the pages of THE Crisis, has held an ‘ST. JOHN’S CHURCH TENEMENTS

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THE CRISIS Fe 3 ner Ne MASS AT ST. NICHOLAS’ CATHOLIC CHURCH, ST. LOUIS The Rev. Joseph John, Celebrant; Rev. Simon Tang, Deacon; Rev, William M. Markoe, Sub-deacon exposition of his etchings and oil paintings in Brussels. @ The death of the late John Boyer Vashon, late principal of Delaney School, St. Louis, recalls many interesting facts connected with his life. He was the first colored college graduate of Oberlin College and at one time professor of the English language at the College Faustin in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. His grandfather, John V. Vashon was a veteran of the War of 1812 and a great uncle, Thomas Paul, was the first colored graduate of Dartmouth College. He also counted among his ancestors Jean Pierre Boyer, once president of Haiti and Francois Vashon, Chevalier in the American company of the Marquis de Lafayette. q Arthur D. Fortune, mail carrier of Rome, Georgia, has retired on a pension from a service of twenty-five years. On his retire- ment he was féted by his friends and given many valuable gifts. @ The Shady Rest Country Club at West- field, New Jersey, is situated on land em- bracing 31 acres of ground with a nine-hole golf course, tennis courts and base ball grounds. The clubhouse, which has been recently improved, is equipped with shower baths, locker rooms, dining room and ball room. @ Mfumu Louis of the Belgian Congo is dead. He was well known among Belgian col- onists, having helped Belgian explorers for many years in equipping the Congo with modern methods of transportation. @ Three members of the Citizens’ Military Camp held at Del Monte, California, were Emmett M. Sims of Santa Monica, and W. Prince and James Price of Pasadena. They completed the “advance red course”, cavalry branch and have been recommended to con- tinue training in the “white course.” ( The degree of Doctor of Philosophy was

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VAS THE HORIZON i i From Uruguay De Hart Hubba rd, U. S. A. COLORED ATHLETES AT THE OLYMPICS conferred at the Yale commencement upon the Rev. William Yancey Bell. His work was done in the department of Semitic languages and letters. ( The new auditor of the Supreme Life and Casualty Company, Columbus, Ohio, is Miss Bernice Saunders, a graduate of Wilber- force University and a graduate student of Radcliffe and Ohio State Universities; she received the degree of Master of Arts from this last named school in 1922. She is also a member of the Mathmatical Association of America. @ Mr. George L. Gaines has been elected General Manager of the Industrial Life de- partment of the Supreme Life and Casualty Company. He has received a wide ex- perience through executive positions held at Wilberforce and in the management of the Hotel Berry, Athens, Ohio. C A three-story commercial building has been designed as the home of the new $250,- 000 Metropolitan and People’s Church in Chicago. - The center will have a gym- nasium, lecture room and Sunday School rooms. There is already a membership of 3,000. The pastor is W. D. Cook, D.D., and " THE INSTITUTE FOR A CHRISTIAN BASIS OF WORLD RELATIONS HELD AT VASSAR the architects are Charles D. Faulkner and Charles S. Duke. @ The winner of the first place in the broad jump competition at the Olympic Games was De Hart Hubbard, star broad jumper of the University of Michigan. His leap covered 24 feet, 6 inches. Edward Gourdin, former Harvard star won second place. @ The National Benefit Life Insurance Com- pany during the present year has opened forty-two new districts covering twelve ad- ditional states. The company is licensed to do business in twenty-six states and is actually operating in twenty-three states. General offices are at 609 F Street, N. W., Washington, D. C. @ When the ship Boston of the Eastern Steamship Company was rammed by the oil tanker Swift Arrow recently off the New England Coast, fifty colored men employed in various capacities on the Boston took upon themselves the task of arousing the passengers to their danger. There were only four casualties. qdDr. C. H. Patrick, a druggist of Buffalo, New York, has made a gift of a thousand dollars to the colored branch of the Y.M.C.A.

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AN ARRAY OF BOOKS UW wa Ulysse, Cafre, ou UVHistoire Dorée dun Noir. By Marius and Ary Leblond. Les Edi- tions de France, Paris The Negro from Africa to America. By W. D. Weatherford. Doran, New York. From “Superman” to Man. By J. A. Rog- ers. Lenox Publishing Co., New York. Prancing Nigger. By Ronald Firbank. Brentano’s, New York. An Anthology of Verse by American Negroes. By N.I. White and H. C. Jackson. Trinity College Press, Durham, N. C. By Sanction of Law. By Joshua Henry Jones, Jr. B. J. Brimmer Co., Boston. Le Petit Roi de Chimérie. By René Maran. Albin Michel, Editeur, Paris. ULYSSE, CAFRE HE missionary in exotic places meets almost always the substantial resistance of Devil-Worship. And even the quaint al- liance of God, guns and gin never entirely eradicates the primitive’s first terror and, I might say, first comfort. As a matter of fact, this curious mental manifestation is by no means limited to the so-called savage or undeveloped peoples. Over the Euro- pean and American Continents there circu- late by night table-taps and floating guitars which are seriously taken by the most su- perior Nordics. An absorbing literature of spiritism and Black Art has been increas- ing since before the Middle Ages. J. K. Huysmans has not so long ago described in his novel, “Below” what happens at a Black Mass in Paris; and in London. Berlin and New York adult Christian citizens still be- lieve in signs and portents. I do not know what the Church is doing to destroy these practices at home, but in the colonies it is working against them with growing concern. In this novel the Church is attempting to drive Black Art from Ré- union Island, a French possession about four hundred miles east of Madagascar. Here’ as in many other places people are having trouble in being consistently Chris- tian. The three hundred odd thousand black Kafirs and British Indian mystics there do not find it difficult to go through the forms of Catholic ritual, but they do \ not grasp entirely the assuagement of God or the consolation of Christ, and, secretly, they look upon the incantations and ges- tures of the priests as ineffectual. For, they know One who does things very much in the same way, but with results; who prophesies and meets fulfillment; who con- ceives enchantments that actually work. Besides the sorcerer or root-doctor is really a present terror that hounds his unfaithful to insanity or death. Then, he is of their own; one can tell him by the light of the moon what one could never tell the foreign priest by day. He understands and he al- ways has a workable though fantastic way out of human perplexities. So that while the Islanders do not renounce the Church, they cling from some kind of psychological hunger or from fear to this more directly consoling though more terrible priesthood. Ulysse, the Kafir, a cook, neither Chris- tian nor Demonist, has lost his son and is advised by a white pharmacist to consult the Black Oracle of the Island. Five prophe- cies are made to Ulysse which are suc- cessively fulfilled. But in following their bidding he arrives in the home of a priest, as was prophesied, and so admires the char- acter of the priest that he turns Christian. Finally, he finds his son, in the manner that was foretold but through the material help of the priest, so that Ulysse is not certain which was the more helpful, God or Devil. But in the end he remains Christian; for after all the priest was personally a more likeable chap than the sorcerer; and the priest’s brother had given the poor Kafir a European black suit and a gold watch and chain for his baptism. ’ The story itself, the search of Ulysse for his lost Telemachus (Songor) is very poor stuff; but the attendant accounts of the struggle between the rival institutions of Good and Evil are profoundly interesting; particularly because in the contest between them, a similarity in ritual externals is brought out, a similarity that is almost per- fect except for the one considerable differ- ence in Supreme Beings. The authors re- port some advantage for the Church of Good, but not very much. EDWIN MorGan. 218

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AN ARRAY OF BOOKS EATHERFORD’S _ book is the manifesto of that part of the South which is promoting the Inter-Racial movement. It deserves all the praise and blame of that movement. Its attitude toward the Negro is liberal but it is desperately afraid lest it be too liberal. Nearly every praise- worthy statement therefore, with which we could agree, is partially spoiled by a coun- ter-statement which is a partial surrender to the unreconstructed South. Nevertheless in these respects Weatherford has done far better than his predecessors. He is to be blamed chiefly for his timid attitude as to voting by which he advocates further dis- franchisement to cure the disfranchisement of the past. He is all wrong in his inter- pretation of African culture and his hopes of reconciliation between the two races is based too much on mushy sentimentalism and not enough on stern justice and right. Still, the book was worth doing. It is diffi- cult to read but here a white Southerner has tried to see the Vision. THE NEGRO FROM “SUPERMAN” © * TO MAN A. ROGER’S “From ‘Super- man’ to Man” has come to our attention much later than we could wish. Meantime the little book of one hundred and twenty-eight pages has had wide cir- culation and much influence. It might be called “The Conversations of a Pullman Porter with His Various Passengers.” The porter is running west from New York to California and shows wide reading and apt retort. The person who wants in small, compass, in good English and in attractive form, the arguments for the present Negro position, should buy and read and recom- mend to his friends, “From ‘Superman’ to Man.” PRANCING NIGGER OST American Negroes, I fear, will neither read, nor, if they read, will understand Ronald Firbank’s “Pranc- ing Nigger.” In the first place they will condemn it unheard and unseen on account of its title just as they condemned the fin- est play in favor of the Negro yet written, Sheldon’s “The Nigger.” Those who bring themselves to read the book will not under- stand it because it is West Indian. Its whole setting and surrounding is in those beautiful exotic islands which we here so 219 thoroughly misunderstand. But if the reader can forget its title and translate himself to the palms and glorious sunlight of the southern islands and look upon Mr. Firbank as an artist and not a Nordic propagandist they can have a delightful hour with this delicious book. In it the writer is unbound by convention, white or black: Mrs. Mouth assumes her “arange blastams” to marry her husband four years after the birth of her eldest daughter and the rich young white man who is the central figure in the story does not strike a stage attitude before little black Edna. He simply says “exquisite kid” and, the author adds, “she was in his arms.” The whole book is just a delightful revel and now and then reaches a climax of droll humor as when Pappy Paul announces to Mamma Luna: “I have saw God and I have spoke wid de President, too,” to which Mrs. Mouth quietly added, ‘“Dair’s no trute at all in dat report.” I. WHITE and W. C. ¢ Jackson, professors in Trinity College, a Southern white institution of North Carolina, pub- lish “An Anthology of Verse by Ameri- can Negroes.” It is a thoroughly sincere bit of work for which these men should have the thanks of the Negro race. The preface says: “As Southern white men who desire the most cordial relations be- tween the races we hope that this volume will help its white readers more clearly to understand the Negro’s feelings on certain questions that must be settled by the co- cperation of the two races. From the same point of view we hope that Negro readers, too accustomed, perhaps, to a debilitating literary patronage, will not misinterpret as unfriendly a critical attitude in which we have tried to supplant patronage with hon- est, unbiased appraisal.” The only difference between these selec- tions and those of Johnson and Kerlin is perhaps somewhat greater emphasis upon many comparatively unknown Negro poets like Horton, Temple, Allen and others. There is a critical bibliography and exeel- lent indexes. AN ANTHOLOGY W. E. B. Du Bors. A FEW years ago Mr. Jones published a vol- ume of poems under By SANCTION or LAW

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220 THE the title “The Heart of the World.” He has recently joined that as yet smal] but grow- ing number of Negro writers of fiction who are saying their say on the race problem. “By Sanction of Law” is the love story of Lida Lauriston, daughter of “Colonel Lauriston” of South Carolina, and Truman Bennet, a swarthy lad born and reared in a small New England town. Love and violence! There is a great deal of each in Mr. Jones’ novel. Indeed it would be difficult to crowd more of either into the pages of a single book. Near the end of the novel it is discovered that the members of the Lauriston family have a strain of Negro blood, a hang-over from earlier days. So that the story which began as a love-match between two young people of different races turns out to be the story of two young people of the same race. A. G. DILL. Le PETIT Rol DE CHIMERIE ONSIEUR MARAN loses in his “Petit Roi de Chimérie” the stride which he had achieved in “Batouala.” The book is a slim volume of two hundred and thirty-seven pages of which the first fourth is devoted to an in- troduction, or rather a eulogy of Maran by Léon Bocquet, a devoted friend and former school-mate. Of the remaining three- fourths half is spent on an exasperatingly needless account of a fabulous country into which have been introduced the names and CRISIS eccentricities of a score of the standard fabulous characters of all literatures. The range, with no special gain, extends from Gaspar, Balthasar and Melchior, from Mer- lin and Vivian to Puss in Boots, Hop ’o my Thumb and the Sleeping Beauty. Not even the theme is new for it is the old thread- bare one of the disgruntled fairy who lack- ing an invitation to the Prince’s party shows up none the less and in retaliation for the slight casts a curse on the Prince in particular and on the Chimériens in gen- eral. On this slight structure Maran su- perimposes the story of the Great War (presumably the working out of the curse bestowed by the malevolent fairy). And naturally there is nothing new to be said on this subect. So that after having waded through these pages of beautiful words and cleverly turned phrases,—the fairy-tale is rather after the manner of Laboulaye,— one feels that he has very little for his pains. Bocquet, the admiring friend of Maran, designates, grandiosely, the book as “a hymn of faith dedicated to the destinies of France.” But really those destinies de- serve a better fate. And in any event one would so much rather hear of the destinies of the people in those far-flung places— Bangui, Grimari, Fort-Crampel, Fort- Sibut,—whose stories as proved by beauti- ful “Batouala” Monsieur Maran can so in- comparably tell. JESSIE FAUSET. POEMS LE Jo & PIS THE SONG E cannot read the score of life But only haltingly sing on; For at the end the notes grow small And all the words are gone. POEM USK: and I sit by an autumn rain Desperately tired of school; Dusk: and I gaze at a bowl of fish CRAWFORD DAVIS Bi A And think of a sylvan pool. THIS SORROW CREATE this wear it: But after years I shall find it thread-bare, nothing. shall sorrow now and I shall even laugh where you are, And say some pleasant thing about you. And give it back to you.

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National - Association: for-the --- ‘Colored: People. Advancement. THE FIFTEENTH CONFERENCE NE of the greatest and most influential meetings held by colored people in America was the 15th Annual Conference of the National Association for the Ad- vancement of Colored People in Philadel- phia, lasting six days from June 25th, through July ist. Upwards of 300 dele- gates representing 29 states of the union, in- cluding the far West, the South, the mid- dle West, and the East, were in attendance, and the quiet city of Philadelphia demon- strated the injustice of its reputation for sleepiness by giving the conference a royal welcome. This being a year of presidential election, politics and political action took a major position in the deliberations of the Phila- delphia Conference, but no phase of civic and social life affecting the Negro’s wel- fare was neglected. Especially was the effort made at the Philadelphia Conference to give the delegates from various parts of the country an opportunity to present and to discuss the problems affecting them in their own localities. Thus segregation, with special reference to education and the school situation in the North, was discussed; as was the new form of segregation by agree- ment among property owners, which is now before the courts of Washington, D. C. The question of migration also was thor- oughly canvassed and the Conference made public through the Associated Press and other news distributing agencies not only that the Negro Immigrant to the North had made good, but that it was incumbent upon the white labor to welcome him and work with him. This year’s Philadelphia Conference was particularly rich in its music owing par- ticularly to the presence at many of the evening meetings of the famous composer, Carl Diton, who trained choruses, accom- panied them on the piano, ard contributed much to the enjoyment of the sessions. Other music contributors to the conference were Miss Marian Anderson, contralto and soloist with the Philadelphia Symphony Or- 221 chestra, who gave a recital on the evening of the closing session. Miss Viola Hill gave a recital on Thursday evening, June 26th, before the evening meeting; and Mr. Charles McCabe gave a violin recital on Monday evening, June 30th. THE CONFERENCE Day BY DAY The conference was opened on the eve- ning of Wednesday, June 25th, with Bishop John Hurst of Baltimore presiding; and an address of welcome on behalf of Philadel- phia was delivered by Hon. Charles B. Hall, president of Philadelphia’s City Council; and in behalf of the Philadelphia Branch by Isadore Martin, the branch president. At this meeting a message from President Coolidge to the Conference was read which he concluded with the following words: “I cannot too earnestly express my good wishes to your splendid organization and my hopes for the fullest realization of its high pur- poses.” The speakers at this opening meeting were: Moorfield Storey of Boston, Presi- dent of the N.A.A.C.P.; and Representative L. C. Dyer, Member of Congress from Mis- souri. Mr. Storey reviewed the growth of the N.A.A.C.P. from a small committee to a membership of 100,000, and said that it rested with colored Americans to determine whether the campaign for their full citizen- ship rights was to be carried victoriously onward by the Association. Mr. Dyer struck the keynote of the Conference in re- lation to the Negro’s political independence when he urged colored voters to decline to support any candidate for office endorsed by the Ku Klux Kla::, or who failed to declare himself on the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, and other issues affecting colored people. During the second day, June 26th, the discussion centered upon meeting the chal- lenge of the Klan, and speakers’ urged the co-operation of Jews, Catholics, and Ne- groes in opposing racial and religious in- tolerance. Among the speakers on this sub- ject were: Rev. Garnet R. Waller, Spring- field, Mass.; Dr. W. W. Wolfe, of Newark,

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999 THE N. J.; and the Association’s Director of Publicity, who pointed out that the N.A.A. C.P. was the first body in the United States to conduct an organized systematic cam- paign against the Klan, as it had been the first to conduct a systematic campaign against lynching. With Harry E. Davis, member of the Ohio legislature presiding at the Thursday night meeting, three able speakers discussed the subject, “The Negro Comes North.” The Hon. Ira W. Jayne, Judge of the Wayne County Circuit Court of Detroit, Michigan, for long a member and friend of the N.A. A.C.P., asserted that Negro migrants from the South had made good in northern indus- tries, had broken production records in many trades, and were in northern indus- try to stay. Robert W. Bagnall, Director of Branches of the N.A.A.C.P. and the Hon. James J. Davis, United States Secretary of Labor, discussed other phases of. the migra- tion question. Mr. Davis especially pointed out the need for restricting immigration from foreign countries in order to protect American labor. On Friday, June 27th, the question of residential segregation and of school segre- gation in northern cities was discussed by delegates. Among the speakers were: Shel- by J. Davidson of Washington; W. Hayes McKinney of Detroit; Attorney W. S. Henry of Indianapolis; Mrs. Carrie A. Mc- Clain, of Denver; and Irving T. Nutt, Cam- den, N. J., who was instrumental in the successful fight against school segregation there. With Dr. J. Max Barber in the chair, the Friday night Mass Meeting held in the Union Baptist Church was devoted to “The Rising Tide of Discrimination.” The speak- ers covering the various phases of this ques- tion were: Mrs. Florence Kelley, Secretary of the National Consumers’ League of New York and a member of the Board of Direc- tors of the N.A.A.C.P. who discussed the Sterling-Reed Educational Bill now before Congress; this Bill, she said, would per- petuate and reinforce the present educa- tional discrimination in the South by ap- propriating federal money to be spent, with- out federal control, by state and local au- thorities. James A. Cobb, chairman of the Legal Committee of the Washington Branch N.A.A.C.P., read a scholarly paper on the segregation case now being fought in that city; and Dr. William Lloyd Imes, Pastor CRISIS Central of the Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia delivered an eloquent address urging colored peoplé to stand firm against separate public schools in the North. Dr. Imes insisted that colored teachers must be permitted to teach in any school where white as well as colored children are, and that there should be no discrimination whether against children or teachers on account of color. Saturday, June 28th was given over by the Philadelphia Conference to an excursion in a special all-steel train to Atlantic City, where delegations of citizens, Elks, and boy- scouts met the delegates and friends; took them on a sight-seeing tour, tendered them receptions, and held a Mass Meeting at night. Among the speakers were: The Mayor of Atlantic City and William Pick- ens, Field Secretary of the N.A.A.C.P. On the morning of Sunday, June 29th, the pulpits in many of the leading Phila- delphia Churches were filled by courtesy of the pastors with N. A. A. C. P. speakers. The Sunday afternoon mass meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House of Phila- delphia with an attendance estimated at above five thousand people, was one of the most stirring events of the Philadelphia Conference. With Arthur B. Spingarn of New York City, vice-president of the N. A. A. C. P., presiding, well-known orators dis- cussed “The Political Future of the Negro,” and through the courtesy of Wanamaker’s and Gimbel’s of Philadelphia, the addresses of this meeting were broadcast over the ra- dio from station WIP, with a wave-length of 509 meters. Dr. John Haynes Holmes, New York City, in an address that stirred his audience to repeated demonstrations of en- thusiasm, sounded a call for political inde- pendence on the part of colored voters, criti- cized the Republican Party for its indiffer- ence, and the Democratic Farty for its hos- tility, urging colored people to concentrate on the issues affecting themselves and to make every candidate for office declare him- self on those issues irrespective of party. Dr. Holmes declared by concentrating every effort on the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill the colored people of America could bring about its enactment. Urging freedom for colored voters from allegiance to the Republican Party, Dr. Holmes said: “The party of Abraham Lin- coln is one thing, and the party of Calvin Coolidge is another thing entirely. A new

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N. A. A. C. P. political emancipation is needed to free the Negro from political bondage as once he was freed from Chattel Slavery.” Hon. Theodore E. Burton, representative in Congress from the State of Ohio, and the key-noter at the last Republican Conven- tion, also urged colored Americans to stand together for their common interests. “Organization rules the world these days,” he said, “and men must stand together with a common feeling and a common interest and insist that their opportunity shall be equal to that of any other race.” With reference to the Ku Klux Klan, Representa- tive Burton said, “If you want to repress the Ku Klux Klan, the best way is to sup- port the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, for the Klan is an organization exactly within the promise of a mob or riotous assembly as defined in the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill.” James Weldon Johnson, Secretary of the N. A. A. C. P., the last speaker, severely scored Senator Lodge and other Republican Senators who had let the Dyer Anti-Lynch- ing Bill die because of the Democratic fili- buster against it. Mr. Johnson urged the colored voters of the country to vote irre- spective of party and on the basis of issues, and when he urged the colored voters of Indiana to defeat the Republican candidate for Governor in that state because of his affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, there was a roar of enthusiasm from the five thousand people in the Metropolitan Opera House. The Democratic Senator, David I. Walsh of Massachusetts who was to have spoken at this meeting of the N. A. A. C. P. was unable to attend because he was detained at the sessions of the Democratic National Convention then meeting in New York City. On Monday morning, June 30th, a solemn and impressive ceremony was held at the cradle of American Independence in Inde- pendence Hall, Philadelphia, whither the entire conference proceeded in a fleet of mo- tor buses. In Independence Hall James Weldon Johnson read a part of the Declara- tion of Independence with an appropriate address. Robert W. Bagnall delivered a prayer and benediction, and the delegates and officers adjourned to the outside of the building where group photographs and mo- tion pictures were made of them. At the Monday night Mass Meeting four inspiring addresses were delivered: by Jacob Billikopf, Director of the Federation of 223 Jewish Charities; Dr. Solomon Porter Hood, United States Minister to the Republic of Liberia; Miss Nannie Burroughs, President of the National Training School for Girls, Washington, D. C., and by Dr. W. E. B. DuBois. Mr. Billikopf speaking as a Jew in America, paid a glowing tribute to Dr. DuBois, and other colored leaders of his acquaintance, and spoke of the achievement of colored people in industry and social life. He asserted that he knew of no body pro- ductive of so much good for the race as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Dr. Hood, speaking of the Negro’s prog- ress and of the situation in Liberia said that what were needed in Liberia were people of means, able and willing to work, and craftsmen who were masters of building, farming, and other trades. Dr. DuBois de- livered an eloquent and stirring account of the struggle for independence of the black people in the British Colony, Sierra Leone, on the west coast of Africa and urging that colored people in all parts of the world observe each other’s efforts, keep in touch with each other’s work, and learn from each other’s success and failures. Dr. DuBois stated that the American Negro’s task was not to go back to Africa, but to establish himself and make a success as an American citizen, and that in this way he could be of most service to his brethren in Africa. Miss Burroughs declared that what was needed for the race, and particularly in the Na- tional Association for the advancement of Colored People, were active workers, and she urged that curiosity seekers or obstruc- tionists clear the road for those able and ready to carry on the N. A. A. C. P. pro- gram. The concluding session of the Conference, on Tuesday night July ist, the Spingarn Medal Night, was given over to the presen- tation of the Spingarn Medal to a repre- sentative of Roland Hayes, the great. singer, who was in England, and therefore could not be present in person to receive it. By coin- cidence, the N. A. A. C. P. received a cable announcing that on the night of the presen- tation of the medal in Philadelphia, Roland Hayes had been commanded to sing before the King and Queen of England. The medal was presented by Dr. Josiah H. Penniman, President and Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, who hailed Roland Hayes as

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224 THE an artist and a great musician, and said that in practically every field of humn en- deavor colored people had obtained distinc- tion for themselves as individuals and in behalf of their race. Harry T. Burleigh, distinguished musician, singer at St. George’s Church of New York City, recipient of the Spingarn Medal in for many years 1917, and well-known composer, spoke on “The Negro in Music.” He-also received An- the medal in behalf of Roland Hayes. CRISIS other speaker at this meeting was William Stanley Braithwaite, of Boston, recipient of the Spingarn Medal in 1918, who delivered an eloquent and scholarly address on “The Negro in Literature” closing one of the most successful and stirring conferences ever held by colored people in the United States. It was decided at this conference that the next Annual Conference of the N. A. A. C. P., the 16th, in June, 1925, would be held in Denver, Colorado, at the cordial invitation brought by delegates from that city. zhe Outer Pocket Jersey City, N. J. = response to your recent letter enquiring about certain things relative to Lincoln University, I wish to say that Lincoln Uni- versity has never had a full fledged colored Professor, or a member of the Trustee Board, but for some time past it has been the custom to employ student instructors who assist the Professors, especially in the Freshman class. These number about 12. In addition to that, Mr. M. Bond and Mr. George W. Cox, graduates, have been em- ployed there as Social Science instructors. Mr. U. S. Young was installed last year as Physical Director. This is the first time we have had a Physical Director here. GEORGE E. CANNON. Washington, D. C. I want to add also my congratulations upon the splendid work your magazine is doing in putting before so large a public of both groups of Americans the excellent showing being made year by year in our American Universities and Colleges by the young folks of our group. It is certainly a source of great inspiration for the young and a larger hopefulness for all. I have bought many copies of your recent numbers from our local news stands, sending them to various friends throughout the country. I[ want also to commend most fully your com- ments on the present parties and politicians. Henry E. BAKER. Charleston, S. C. I noticed in this issue of THE Crisis that only one Military Summer Camp for colored youths will operate this year on account of the lack of sufficient applications in other sections. In my mind I am wondering if there were not sufficient applications in other sections. I had some correspondence with Mr. Walter F. White relative to a reply to applications of 82 young men from Charleston to the Fourth Corps Area, C. M. T. C., Atlanta, Ga. I did not investigate further after hearing from him. Thirty- two applications were sent in at one time from Charleston and many more, even to the amount of fifty, would have gone in if the reply were not as it was. I am enclos- ing a copy of the reply to the group ap- plication and another to an individual boy. I am simply forwarding this so that you might have data from all angles in this matter. Many of our school boys whom we interested were very much disappointed. Epwarp C. MICKEY. Camp Meade, Maryland. I am in receipt of your communication of May 29, 1924, in which petition is made by 32 young men for admission to the “Col- ored unit” at 4th Corps Area, C. M. T. C., this year. I regret to inform you that the War Department has made no arrangement for holding a “colored unit” C. M. T. C. in 1924. L. O. MATHEWS, C. M. T. C. Officer, Hq. 4th Corps, Atlanta, Ga. Camp Meade, Maryland. This is simply an effort on my part to call your attention to the conditions exist- ing in the Reserve Officers’ Training Camp

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A MOSCOW LADY here at Camp Meade. Of approximately 656 students here, 43 are colored. We are all from Howard University. After a little agitation for permission to play on the tennis court, as other students, an order has been issued that Company 4 may have the use of the tennis courts on Saturday afternoons. But Company 4 likes to go on week-end passes like anybody else, hence we don’t play on the courts. We have not yet been allowed to enter the swimming pool although our course of in- structions as posted on the bulletin board call for two hours’ instructions in swim- ming. Beckley, West Virginia. The spirit of THE CrIsIs is hurtful. The spirit of challenge, force, “Our rights,” de- fiance, hurts the cause, will continue to hinder. Every one I give a Crisis to is dis- satisfied with its way and spirit. ‘Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. Take my yoke upon you and learn 225 of Me for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest to your souls.” A polite, conciliatory course will win when no other will. You are making en- emies for the very cause you so dogmatically espouse. You stir up the spirit of opposi- tion in those who could be made friends. The old colored man was quite right when he said to his bumptious young master, “The way to go through the world is with your hat in your hand.” W. Ross LuLoyp. Greensburg, Louisiana. On Sunday, March 16, at the Church House door while service was going on a young colored man, twenty-three years old, was taken from the church door by Mr. Powers and Mr. Morgan, two white men. Morgan held him within ten steps of the door while Powers shot his brains out be- cause he had owed him eight dollars and left the place without settling the debt with his father. Neither one of these men was arrested. : A MOSCOW LADY A Study in Prejudices UE) sa PHS NE afternoon in February, 1923, a young student of engineering, in- vited me to see a Social Evening of the students at the gymnasium from which he had graduated. ‘But the teachers and ma- jority of students are all bourgeois,” he laughed over the telephone. I told him I would be delighted and so at 8 o’clock he came for me. The gymnasium was a large building, class-rooms furnished just like an Ameri- can high school. Going upstairs we passed groups of students, boys and girls, on the stairs and along the corridors, conversing animatedly. They were curious upon seeing me but, to my great relief, quite reserved, not at all demonstrative like the proletarian students. In the large hall used for ath- letic exercises and dancing I was introduced to half a dozen members of the Faculty, charming persons and affable. The prin- cipal, a fine, soft spoken man, lisped a few words of English, then turned to introduce the instructor in French and English, a tall vivacious auburn-haired young woman of CLauD McKay —s about 31 years. She was smartly dressed in white, a band of gold around her neck from which hung a sapphire pendant. We sat together through the clever, intricate and splendidly staged exercises, she telling about the work, standing and connections of each individual student. There was an interval of some minutes when the girls, who came first, finished. The tiniest of the lot, the best athlete who had worked with catlike agility was tre- mendously applauded. Her artistry was perfect. And while the space was being re- arranged for the boys’ exercises the teacher kept up her animated conversation, asking me many searching and embarassing ques- tions. “But are you really a Communist?” she inquired. “Very, very, interesting, but you should know that the real thing is dead in Russia. It was a Jewish movement. Now the Jews rule in Moscow and Petrograd where before they couldn’t enter. They are very clever people. The Communist leaders are all Jews.”

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2265 THE “No! no!” and I named a number who were not Jews. “The Jews control every- thing,” she insisted. “I read it in their own papers, the Jzvestia and Pravda.” “IT heard that the intelligentzia did not read the Communist papers,” I said. “Oh I do, they are bad enough and untrust- worthy with their ‘Internationalism’ which is only another word for Bolshevism, but as I don’t want to vegetate altogether I read them to form some idea of what is happening in the world.” “You mustn’t mind what I say about the Jews because you are Negro; I suppose if I were a Jew I would be Bolshevist, but thank God I am not, and I don’t like Jews. The Jews can never get away from the tra- dition of giving the world the law.” “Say what you want,” I assured her, “I also don’t like Jews nor Negroes as such. I think subject peoples have some of the very worst faults of the dominant ones, that’s why I am an enemy of the forces that make subject peoples possible and the world an insufferable bedlam with their woes. Some of the most detestable types I have known were Negroes among whom I lived and Jews for whom I worked.” “But it is not so bad for Negroes in America now, is it? I only know as far as ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’—and the lynchings of course. But why do the Negroes rape the white women? Is it revenge for sla- very? Isn’t it better for them to marry with the whites than to rape them? Amer- ica is such a rich, wonderful country. Everybody must have money and be happy. I would not mind marrying a Negro, if he had plenty of money and could talk to me intelligently like you. Pushkin, our na- tional poet, was Negroid and you are a poet, too. That’s strange. Do you like our Russian girls?” “A colored man cannot marry a white woman and live comfortably in America.” “T read two long articles in the Izvestia about the Negro oppression in America, but I doubt the facts. Forgive me, I really think it is Bolshevist propaganda. You are Com- munist, you know and Communists have no conscience. America is too rich, too great to be petty-spirited.” A lively march was struck up on the piano and the boys in white pants and shirts open at the throat, marched in in smart, correct style and began their ex- ercises. The drill master was a handsome CRISIS fine-shouldered lad with reddish, curly hair. I praised him to her. “He is very, very clever in everything,” she remarked. “But I detest him. He is a Jew and a young Communist. He is not working-class either, but is one of the leaders of the Communist Group here. The other students don’t like him much, although they obey him—watch! See how he turns? He is very clever. But we ail must obey the Bolshevists which means we must be slaves of the Jews. They are clever people. Although that boy is a Communist, his father is a nepman* manu- facturing clothes for Soviet Government. His food and clothes are better than the other students! The Jews are very clever. Why is he communist and his father nep? You wouldn’t find that among the Rus- sians. A family is either all for the Bol- shevists or all against them.” I mentioned some pure Russians I had met whose rela- tives were politically estranged from them. One strange, heavy-cheeked mannish girl, who did official work for the Communist Congress, had fought in the Red Army against her father and uncle. She men- tioned to me the “Whites” of her family executed by the “Reds” without a ripple of emotional regret. Then I came nearer home and asked how it was that the young man that had brought me to the school was the only Communist in a family of eight. “That’s the exception,” she explained; “such things are unnatural to us but quite natural to the Jews. “You see that little grave-featured boy, black hair, soft, delicate face? He is the son of. the last Governor of—no, I won’t tell you his name; it is a secret. It is bet- ter that it should not be commonly known who he is.” “Oh, I won’t mention it, please tell me,” I urged her. But she was a teasing person. “No, I wouldn’t take a Communist in my confidence, however nice he is—not after all they have done to Russia.” “You are too prejudiced,” I retorted. “But after all what if it is known that he is a bureaucrat’s son? I have seen bour- geois people here going about their business cheerfully and unafraid, many working for the Government, even in the exclusive For- eign Department.” “You are just like many of our visitors,” she said disdainfully. “The Bolshevists *The term used to designate private business in Russia.

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A MOSCOW LADY treat you decently and you don’t see below the surface. You see a little order and animation here and wax romantic about Russia renascent. But you don’t see the real life. All these students seem fine here now, but the proletarian group is all spies —spying on the rest of the student bodv and the teachers. They are not affected by our school discipline for they have political power over the teachers. A teacher may lose his place, a principal be demoted, some of the best students of our set ousted to make room for those proletarians, and if we investigate we find that the proletarian stu- dents are the cause of the trouble. They are the little lords and tyrants of the school.” She was rather worked up here, not laughingly pleasant as she had been all along. “But you told me before that the prole- tarian students were quite dull and stupid and held back the other students,” I re- minded her, “then how are they clever enough to become spies? Spying isn’t easy.” “Oh, they have not the language basis and so on to carry on with the cultured students, but they are clever in their way. They are very sharp about political things.” “So, I suppose it is for political errors they report the teachers.” “Yes,” she ad- mitted; “it is a sort of political student council, a real nuisance, for it seems to be corrupting even the students of our class by its influence.” “Well, if I must make com- parisons from your statement, academic conditions seem just a little worse in the American Democracy of your admiration. Your trouble appears to be mostly from within while in America it is just the re- verse. In the schools and colleges the rare minority of teachers and students that are articulate in original ideas are constantly spied upon and disciplined by the political business men on the outside. A struggle within such as you relate between teachers and students would not be allowed develop- ment. It would be too independently healthy for America. The duel there is nearly al- ways one of students and teachers against the business men that hold the national trust.” “You cannot shake my faith in America,” she said, “because you have a particular grievance against her. It is the one coun- try left that we in Europe, after our com- plete disintegration, can look to.” I assured her that my particular griev- 227 ance was after all but one phase of the significant social problems of the world more or less interlinked and that, even so, special grievances should not be sneered at, for they have an unpleasant way of shak- ing up and destroying privileged society as she, a Russian lady, knew only too well. “Ah,” she said, “but nothing can happen to America, such a strong, firm country. I want to go there, but the members of my class cannot travel now. Our pay is small and we cannot save, nor exchange the paper rouble for good money. Before the Revo- lution I used to visit France, Germany, and England every year. I was educated abroad and am miserable with no foreign contact and I need the practice in languages for my work. But there is no chance to travel now. Look at the people who are traveling —proletarian agitators, Bolshevist couriers and Jews—people who have no eye for pene- trating observation, no imagination for ar- tistic interpretation. What can they do for culture? We are living in evil times, the old cultural landmarks will be obliterated, modern culture will perish.” “It is fascinating and interesting for me,” I answered, “that members of the vulgar and despised classes should suddenly be lifted to tourist rank and I cannot see why that should hurt culture more than the globe-trotting of the wealthy. It is. this chance that makes it possible for me to sit talking here with you in Moscow and I ‘hope it will be the better for my culture. Prehaps the proletarians may even con- tribute some improvement. Until I was 21, I lived upon a beautiful colonial island of Britain in the West Indies which was much frequented by European visitors at all sea- sons of the year—royalty, nobility, bour- geoisie, the moneyed literati. And who con- siders now the stupid speeches they made, the bad books they wrote? All is forgotten, while the poor Jamaica peasants remain trying to eke out a cultural existence in the grip of the British landlord.” , “You hate the English?” she questioned. “Yes, I hate the Anglo-Saxon world monopolists. Subjection to them was my only inheritance.” “You are too bitter,” she said. not nice.” “But you are more bitter against the Jews?” “Oh, they are not a great nation that conquers and builds like the English and “It is

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228 THE French. They are cunning agitators and businessmen.” “I have romantic instincts,” I replied, “but not so much as to love a man that robs me at the point of his bayonet and hate him that beats me by keen rivalry. I could quite learn to love the latter.” “T don’t think we could agree on any- thing,” she exclaimed, ‘‘you are too preju- diced against the great.” The boys had finished their exercises and split up into groups. The room was being cleared for dancing, and just then the son CRISIS of the former governor ran forward and jumped playfully upon the back of the little drill-master. “Was that due to Bolshevist pressure too?” I asked. “Oh, you ask such funny questions. Let us watch the dancing. The students dance so well.” The band played a popular tune from Coleridge Taylor’s “Hiawatha,” the students paired off and whirled gaily round the room, the dancing punctuated by the vigorous rhythm peculiar to the Russians. THE LOST CITY UH os ss REAT oaks draped with grey moss, Sandy roads, mule teams, Winter-blooming, brown fields, Cotton bolls rusty, Unpainted houses, lolling Negroes, The South. Grey moss hanging on great oaks, Dullness, dreariness, no life; White people sunk in sloth; Stirring black folk Alive, awake, eager, Painting their school house, Making it neat, And little black children Running to school. The store was unpainted, The few houses were scattered, There was no post-office, But a shabby church With plaster peeling off the walls, Falling in flakes on the grass. Grey moss hanging on oak trees. Amy EINSTEIN. Everywhere quiet and silence. Decrepitude stealing over the land; No promise, nothing, Except in the laps of the black folk, In the eager brown hands of the woman who led them. The white mistress of the plantation. Had a garden. But she lived in a shabby house That was unpainted. And her slaves had been sold and her land had been lost. But the black woman teacher Had painted her little school house, And black children came there, And studied American history and arithmetic and sew- ing, And they sang their songs to us as we lis- tened, . And waved their hands to us as we left: This was Statesburg, South Carolina, This was the South. Zhe Looking Glass LITERATURE OW to better the condition of the col- ored race has long been a study which has attracted my serious and careful at- tention; hence I think I am clear and de- cided as to what course I shall pursue in the premises regarding it as a religious duty, as the Nation’s guardian of these people who have so heroically vindicated their manhood on the battlefield, where, in assisting to save the life of the Republic,

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THE LOOKING GLASS THEY HAVE DEMONSTRATED THEIR RIGHT TO THE BALLOT, which is but the humane protection of the flag they have so fearlessly defended—Abraham Lincoln. * * * Some of our readers may be interested in the literary output of the members of THE Crisis and N. A. A. C. P. executive force. Certainly it bids fair to be unusual for this particular year. Dr. Du Bois has given us a new study entitled “The Gift of Black Folk,” published by the Stratford Company (Boston) for the Knights of Columbus, showing that the contribution of the Negro as slave, freedman and citizen has woven itself into the very foundations of American life. Mr. Herbert J. Seligman’s, “The Negro Faces America,” (Harper’s) has _ been brought out in a popular dollar edition by Clarence S. Nathan, Inc., New York. Mr. Pickens promises us for the early fall a unique and original document, the “Ameri- can Aesop,” in which will appear the two or three hundred humorous storiettes with which he has enlivened and illustrated his lectures for the last twenty years. We are all eagerly awaiting Mr. White’s first novel, “The Fire in the Flint,” (Knopf) which will appear in September. Not only does the publisher’s catalogue speak of it as a work of “unusual dramatic power,” but it has al- ready called forth a great deal of attention from important reviewers. Readers of Jessie Fauset’s “There Is Confusion,” will be in- terested perhaps to learn that that book which came out in April has gone into a second edition in America and is now going to have an English printing. The publishers are Chapman and Hall, London, the pub- lishers of Dickens. THE WORLD AND US HE London Conference is another at- tempt to make Germany pay a part of the cost of the Great War. France was the center of the war and suffered most. If Ger- many does not pay France, France cannot pay England and the United States. If Eng- land is to pay the United States France must pay England. The United States does not need the money which France and England owe her nearly as much as the world needs peace and normal industry. The simplest way to settle the whole matter would be for the United States to forgive Europe her debts 229 and let Europe forgive her debtors. In this way the frightful effort to reimburse the white world for its foolish war by the ex- ploitation of Asia and Africa might be stopped. Big business helped by the foreign element in Southern Brazil is rebelling against the Brazilian nation and the north of Brazil which has the largest percentage of Ne- groes. It is the old effort of militarists and immigrants to control cheap labor. It seems at present to have failed. The world celebrates this year the one hundredth anniversary of William Blake and the younger Alexander Dumas, and the 125th anniversary of Pushkin. Blake was the queer English genius, poet, painter and what not. Dumas was the son of the great Alexander Dumas and is chiefly known to us as the author of Camille. Alexander Dumas was the son of General Alexander Dumas and the general was the son of the Marquis de la Pailleterie, a rich colonist of San Domingo and of a black woman whose name was Dumas. In the South African elections Smuts, the great champion of white South Africa and the white world has been defeated by the Separatists united with the labor unions. Neither of the victorious parties is friendly to the natives but they could hardly be greater enemies than Smuts. Civil war is again threatened in Ireland because Ulster, which is not included in new Ireland, wishes to retain within her bound- aries numbers of counties which have ma- jorities of Catholics and threatens to fight if the boundary commission turns these coun- ties over to their fellow religionists in the south of Ireland. Tammany in New York City has a new leader. If he proves as wise in dealing with the Negroes of New York as Murphy, the Democrats will continue to carry Harlem and the State. PUSHKIN, THE MULATTO: o Russia, Alexander Sergeyevich Push- kin is more than her greatest national poet. History knows two Russias: a se- cluded and somnolent Czardom before Push- kin, and an important European center of intellectual life after Pushkin. Before Push- kin Russia had no literature except imitative pseudo-classical tragedies and odes in which moved clumsily Corneillian or Racinian characters, anaemic and colorless in a for- eign climate, having nothing Russian in

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230 THE them except names. Pushkin was the first writer to draw in his novels, dramatic ex- cerpts and poems unmistakably Russian heroes and heroines. Moreover, his choice was so keen that, as it has been rightly pointed out by Russian critics, almost every person in the enormous portrait gallery of Turgenieff and other later writers can be traced to an “ancestor” brought to light by Pushkin. Furthermore, to a country using in its writings an unnatural and obsolete old-Slavonic “high style,” Pushkin gave its modern literary language, not, in its first and imperfect draft, but in its complete, per- fect and pliant beauty surpassed by no later writer. There is even a more striking feature in Pushkin’s historical réle. Try to elicit from the greatest Russian masterpieces of the nineteenth century the fundamental philoso- phic ideas around which revolved the Rus- sian literature and with it the Russian na- tional spirit, and you will see that they were all clearly formulated by Pushkin. It is impossible to tell in a short article how deep and wide was Pushkin’s influence over all branches of the Russian culture. But here is an example. Abandon the lit- erature and turn to music, and here also you will recognize Pushkin’s hand at every step. Is it not remarkable that the operatic genius of the best Russian composers almost always shone forth through Pushkin’s trag- edies and poems? To enumerate songs, romances, etc., com- posed on Pushkin’s lyrical verses would be literally impossible, for every Russian com- poser of note has borrowed his inspirations from Pushkin. It is only in the light of these and many similar facts that one comes to understand Pushkin’s historical réle. This joyful and happy man who worked and wrote in play- ing and played in working between a ball at the court and a duel, who found time to be seen at all St. Petersburg receptions of his time and who died at 38, had coined the spiritual currency which fears no de- preciation and on which Russia’s national spirit lives until today. If Peter the Great molded Russia’s body, Pushkin blew soul into it. He is literally a sun to which gravitates the Russian planet. In the course of this year, when the 125th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth is being commemorated in the Russian press and literature, the French and German reviews have also contributed their wreath to the grave of the Russian poet. But in America and in England, countries that have the best translations of later Russian prose- writers, only a few fragments of Pushkin are known, and the name still remains a respectable but meaningless sound. —N. Y. Times’ Book Review. THE FRENCH IN AFRICA _ are right when you say that the French manner [of colonizing] is dif- CRISIS ferent from all other methods and that France instead of imposing her civilization, superimposes it. Dear Mr. Locke do be sure to read “My Unknown Neighbors” (Des Inconnus chez moi) by Lucie Cousturier, ‘“Hién le Maboul” by Captain Détanger, late of the Colonial Infantry; “The Long Walk of Samba Diouf” (La Randonnée de Samba Diouf) by the Tharaud brothers; certain excerpts from “Thibaut” by Roger Martin du Gard and a few African stories by Jean Richard Bloch. If these have not already been translated into English get them translated as soon as possible, especially the first mentioned. A reading of them will clear up your and your compatriots’ ideas. You will under- stand then that neither the black nor the brown volunteers go to France as little children go to Jesus. By no means. Very often indeed in certain colonies, by express orders, or acting with the tacit approval of the colonial ministry, under one pretext or another, the officials indulge in man-hunting in order to serve the needs of the recruit- ing office. In a word, dear Mr. Locke, this is the way in which the representatives of French Officialdom superimpose the civilization of France. And how skillfully does official and colonial France bend herself to that task. She even goes so far as to renounce her own history since she forbids the professors whom she sends to West Africa to teach the story of the French Revolution to their black pupils. It is easy to be seen that her civilization is far superior to German civilization, since she has found it possible to send to the Cameroons only five European physicians to combat the sleeping-sickness, whereas the Germans in their barbarousness were employing sixty-five. (But did not Camille Jullian in his Vercingetorix declare that the Gauls were Celtic in origin?) Europeans, Asiatics, Negroes, many of us are employed, hand in hand in working silently toward the same end. Bit by bit we have compiled briefs which are rich in ir- refutable facts. Some of these doubtless will soon be aired in the Chamber of Depu- ties by the white deputies whom we have gained for our cause. Did you notice what I said then? I said: “white deputies”. For it is on them and them alone that we would be able to count. As for their Negro colleagues, the “fair’’

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THE CRISIS ADVERTISER 231 GOING TO SCHOOL THIS FALL ones do not hesitate to renounce their mothers—or their fathers,—so as to be able to declare everywhere that they are of Aryan descent. Of the others, one at least who has arrived at an important position, confines his powers and his intelligence only to discrediting in the presence of white men such members of his own race as have a too strongly marked personality. But that, dear Mr. Locke is, as Kipling says, another story. And this I’ll relate to you another day. An open letter to Alain Le Roy Locke by René Maran in Les Continents directed by Prince Kojo Tovalou-Houénou. FROM THE NEGRO PRESS T= are at least four colored lodges in Texas that are disproving the theory and blasting the argument that the black man cannot put over big programs and that he is utterly incapable of manning and op- erating, successfully, gigantic business ven- tures; for their gross assets exceed the million dollar mark and the end is not yet. With assets (real estate, mortgage loans, etc.,) of $545,836.95 the colored Knights of Pythias, led by W. S. Willis of Dallas, lead the field; the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows and Household of Ruth, with H. G. Goree of Texarkana at the helm, come next with $535,055.53; United Brothers of Friend- ship and Sisters of the Mysterious Ten, whose forces are marshalled by W. F. Bledsoe of Marshall, rank third with $453,- 696.84; the Ancient Order of Pilgrims (a Texas order), whose directing head is B. H. Grimes of Houston, completes the quartet with $203,949.74. Thus, these four colored lodges of Texas have assets in the aggregate of $1,738,- 539.06, excepting the Court of Calanthe, sis- ter order of the Pythians, whose assets ranged around $200,000 at their recent grand session at Ft. Worth. Adding the Calantheans’ assets to these of the other lodges (the figures for the Odd Fellows, United Brothers of Friendship and Pilgrims include both the male and female departments of these fraternities), we have the staggering and startling total of $1,- 938,539.06. In other words, these four colored Texas orders have assets and cash amounting to nearly two million “bones,” and we have not included the Knights and Daughters of Tabor, the Masons, Mosaic Templars and the remaining orders and fraternal bene- ficiary insurance companies... . Perhaps if all figures were available, the fact would be disclosed that the colored peo- ple of Texas have amassed between $2,000,- 000 and $3,000,000 in their lodges and in- surance companies, not including what the local lodges possess in the several communi- ties of the state.—Houston, Texas, Informer. 4 WISE f in FINEST CHOICE EDUCA. LHe TIONAL cme 4 CENTRE TO THE ry NATION’S em AMERICA CAPITAL The National Training School for Women and Girls The best school for ambitious girls who want an all- round education. The atmosphere is Christian—the ideals inspiring—the purpose definite. The girl is not left to drift into her life work. She is assisted in finding herself and developing her native powers. She saves time and money by taking her Vocational and Academic courses simultaneously. COURSES Academic: Elementary 6-8 Standard High School 4 yrs. Normal 2 yrs. Age—Not under 15 Send for a Catalog THE NATIONAL TRAINING SCHOOL FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS, INC. MISS NANNIE H. BURROUGHS, President Lincoln Heights Washington, D. C. Mention Tue Crisis. RESIS Di ECS TS ITED

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THE CRISIS ADVERTISER HAMPTON INSTITUTE JAMES E. GREGG FRANK K. ROGERS Principal Treasurer GEORGE P. PHENIX Hampton, Virginia WILLIAM H. SCOVILLE Vice Principal Secretary Founded in 1868 by General Armstrong to train selected colored youths who should go out to teach and lead their people. Hampton stands for “a sound body, a trained capacity, and an unselfish out- look on life”. Hampton is an industrial village: 1,000 acres; 149 buildings; 901 boarding students, including 75 college students; 385 day pupils in practice-school; 854 summer-school students; 250 teachers and workers. Hampton has over 2512 graduates and over 8800 former students; also numer- ous outgrowths, including Tuskegee, founded by Booker T. Washington. COLLEGIATE DIVISION I THE TEACHERS’ COLLEGE 1. School of Agriculture—offering a four-year course leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science; aims to develop teachers of agriculture, farm-demonstration agents, and farmers. New chemical and biological laboratories have recently been fitted with modern equipment. The Whipple farm of 70 acres is located at the Institute and is equipped with a modern dairy barn, creamery, three green- houses, horse barn, poultry plant, and poultry-breeding station. The Shellbanks Farm of 850 acres is located four miles from the Institute and is easily accessible for agricultural classes. The four-year course offers liberal-arts studies, courses in professional teacher-training work, and intensive work in science and agriculture. —Warren K. Blodgett, Director. 2. School of Education—offering a four-year high-school teachers’ course leading to the degree of _Bachelor of Science and two two-year courses leading to appropriate diplomas; aims to train teachers for high schools, for grammar grades, and for primary grades. In the four-year course for high-school teachers, two majors must be taken by each student. These majors may be selected from the following fields of work: English, French, Industrial Arts, Latin, Mathematics, Music, Physical Education, Science, and Social Studies. Two majors, however, may be taken in industrial arts, or music, or in physical education. The four-year course includes 16 liberal-arts units and professional work in teacher-training.—Wm. Anthony Aery, Director. 8. School of Home Economics—offering a two-year course leading to a diploma; young women to be home makers and teachers of home economics. The equipment is excellent. The home-economics library consists of well-selected books and much illustrative material. A lecture room is so arranged that exhibits and demonstrations can be given. The Practice House, recently given to Hampton by Mrs. Henry A. Strong of Rochester, N. Y., is a simple house of two and a half stories. It has a living-room, dining-room, kitchen, and utility room on the first floor; bedrooms, bath, and sleeping-porch on the second; and a store-room in the half story. It is simply and artistically furnished. It is intended to furnish an ideal home-making experience for the young women.—Mrs. Blanche W. Purcell, Director. 4. Summer School for Teachers; aims to meet the needs of teachers in service—principals, super- visors, high school teachers, elementary teachers, teachers of home economics, and teachers of physical education. It is conducted under the joint auspices of the Virginia State Board of Education and Hampton Institute. It is organized with special reference to the needs of teachers in service—principals, supervisors, high-school pace. elementary teachers, teachers of home economics, and teachers of physical education.—George P. irector. II THE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS —offering a two-year course leading to a diploma; aims to give young men and young women such training in business principles and practice as to prepare them for business positions or to teach business subjects. aims to train It offers two two-year collegiate courses—General Business Course and Secretarial Course. Practical work so planned as to give students the widest possible knowledge of modern business procedure This conducts evening classes for the benefit of high-school graduates who are in the Trade School and who wish to secure a knowledge of the fundamental principles of business. These classes are also open to students in the work-year class who are graduates of high schools—Miss Ethel C. Buckman, Assistant Director. Ill THE TRADE SCHOOL —offering a two-year contractors’ and builders’ course leading to a diploma and a four-year course leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science; aims to train skilled builders by thorough instruc- tion in business methods, field management, building materials, trade practice, structural design, and principles of architecture. A recent and extensive field study made clear the demand for well-trained colored builders. Hampton offers for the first time a four-year builders’ course, open to graduates of standard high schools for which the degrea of Bachelor of Science will be given. Students without trade experience may enter this course, provided they take extra work in a building trade during the first and second years and work at this trade for three summers. Hampton alumni have agreed to see that every graduate of the builders’ courses receives adequate financial backing when he starts out in business. The B.S. course of standard grade will train teachers for high schools and colleges.—Harry J. DeYarmett, Director; H. Whittemore Brown, in charge of Builders’ Courses. is ) Mention Tue Cris!s.

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