The Crisis 1926-07: Vol 32 Iss 3

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iotical lhe CRISIS PUBLIC Liang JULY, 1926 15c a Copy

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Southern Aid Society’s Su- perior Policy and Insurance Service, a Bulwark of Pro- tection to Policyholders Claim payments for the Winter and Spring exceeded $200,000.00, a New Home Office High Record for our limited territory. 525-7-9 N. 2nd St., Richmond, Va. Our Three-in-One Policy Contract, providing for one small premium, protec- tion against Sickness, Accident and Death, offers the greatest Insurance Service and Protection to the Public. ——_—+—— oe i Here is another example of thousands of cases carried by the Society: 1210 Garland Street, Lynchburg, Virginia. April 21, 1926. Southern Aid Society of Va., Inc., 527 N. Second Street, Richmond, Virginia. Gentlemen: While standing on the sidewalk on October 21, 1924, I was struck by an auto- mobile and was mashed through the body and hip, and I have been unable to work since that date. Your Company, through its representative, has paid me every week, which is seventy-seven weeks, including the week of April 23, 1926, or one year and twenty-five weeks. I can truthfully say the SOUTHERN AID SOCIETY OF VA., Inc., has a Superior Policy for accident and sickness and I recommend its contract to all who may desire insurance. (Signed) SYLVESTER CAMM. Southern Aid Society of Va., Inc. Home Office: 525-27-29 N. Second St., Richmond, Va. Insures Against Sickness, Accident and Death. Operating in Virginia and District of Columbia.

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Che Crisis eA ‘Record of the Darker ‘Races (oNTENTS FOR Juzy, 1926 A Colored Graduate of the Philippine Normal School. Page COVER OPINION “Insanity”, “W. I. L. P. F.”, “The Reverend Mr. King’’, “Cotton”, “Africa’, ‘Murder’, “A Moral Dilemma’’, “The Satisfied South’, “Foreign Languages’, “Mr. Archibald’, “The Sweet Trial’, “The Backward Peoples”, ‘““‘The Segregation Case’, ‘““‘The Month’s News’’.. 111 DETROIT Illustrated. James Weldon Johnson..................2.05% 117 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED ORNS 3 as, hud cts e la ate NS Ge chs Ste, o SON ie ob aw ca GO WS atdlge sa 120 See a. Ah OI: RE POMURIB ease 0-4 453) 6 odin nao 00 6 Sie newine emailer 121 FOR UNBORN CHILDREN. A,Prize Play. Illustrated. Myrtle A. Smith RMI 05) O7ENG tas na chctiel ane @ lalasiels 9 aly) Wihera a tee wibiguele Glath AleLeie weenie 122 rT)" RIES eye ee gs CW gies OCS wie Oe clos 2. hw wie See ol 125 Re I AS ow) ona Swi case ae Wiles, ai © min ape aie Oe wie evens 128 THE LITTLE PAGE. Illustrated. Effie Lee Newsome ................ 133 “KRIGWA PLAYERS LITTLE NEGRO THEATRE?”’. Illustrated........ 134 NEGRO STREET SERENADE. A Poem. Effie Lee Newsome.......... 136 SOME HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS OF NEW YORK CITY. Illustrated.. 137 ONE LONELY DREAMER. A Poem. Lucia Trent .................4.-. 140 HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES. llustrated. .. 2.2 cc ccs cos scascsess 141 EN cig ctcn Sn'e Bitech ro dik ai pio PRIA go Re ao Sele eS WIRE SN ee CW kb ele oe aS 142 THE LOOKING GLASS. Iliustrated Vol. 32, No. 3 Whole No. 189 July, 1926

THe Crisis Macazine: Published monthly and copyrighted by the National Association for the Advancement of Col- ored People at 69 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. Conducted by W. E. Burg- hardt Du Bois; Jessie Redmon Fauset, Contributing Editor; Augustus Granville Dill, Business Manager. 15 cents a copy, $1.50 a year. Foreign subscriptions $1.75. The date of expiration of each subscrip- tion is printed on the wrapper. When the subscription is due a blue renewal blank is enclosed. The address of a sub- scriber may be changed as often as de- sired, but both the old and new address must be given and two weeks’ notice is necessary. Manuscripts and drawings re- lating to colored people are desired. They must be accompanied by return postage and while THE CrisIs uses every care it assumes no responsibility for their safety in transit. Entered as second class mat- ter November 2, 1910, at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3,. 1879, <r“ The Augus? CRISIS is our EDU- CATION Number; the September CRISIS will be a double number with the first of the series of studies of NEGRO EDUCATION carried out by THE CRISIS with the help of the Garland Fund.

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THE CRISIS ADVERTISER The North Carolina College for Negroes FORMERLY The Durham State Normal School FALL SESSION OPENS SEPTEMBER, 1926 _ As our courses are soon to be limited to work of College Grade, the school beginning September 15, 1925, will offer only the third and fourth years of high school work and Senior Normal work. THE FOLLOWING COURSES WILL BE OFFERED: “1. THE LIBERAL ARTS COURSE Leading to the A. B. Degree and offering sufficient work in Secondary Education to enable students to secure High School Teachers’ Certificates, Class A, and High School Principals’ Cer- tificates at the completion of the course. 2. THE SCIENTIFIC COURSE Leading to the B. S. Degree. 3. THE PRE-MEDICAL COURSE _ A two-year pre-medical course preparing students for entrance into medical colleges will be given. 4. SPECIAL COURSES IN COMMERCE AND MUSIC The faculty will consist of men and women from the best Colleges and Uni- versities in the country and will meet the requirements of the Nurth Carolina College Conference. For Catalog and further information address: THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLEGE FOR NEGROES James E. Shepard, President Durhan, N. C. 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. School of High Standards and a Rigorous Pace WILEY COLLEGE Marshall, Texas Recognized as a Class “‘A’’ Cellege by Standardizing Agencies. Has operated on the basis of four quarters ® year since June, 1921. Graduation in June and August. Entrance any quarter. Leading colleges and universities represented on its faculty. More than twe hundred and fifty enrolled in college department. $35,000 invested in scientific laboratory and library research equipment. Due prominence given te musie and te wholesome athietics. M. W. DOGAN, President. Lincoln University Pioneer in Collegiate and Theological Education Accredited by the Association of Colleges of the Middle States and Moryland. Lincoln Graduates are Leaders in the various professions and in all parts of the country. Address: The Dean of the University LINCOLN UNIVERSITY CHESTER COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA The Cheyney Training School for Teachers (A State Normal School) Cheyney, Pa. A Pennsylvania State Normal School offering, in addition to the regular Normal Academic Course of two years, professional three year courses in Home Economics and Shop Work. A diploma from any of these courses makes a graduate eligible to teach in the public schools of Pennsylvania. Registration Day, Tuesday, September 14, 1926. First semester will begin Wednesday, September 15, 1926. For further information and catalog, write LESLIE PINCKNEY HILL, Principal Cheyney, Pa. Mention Tue Crisis

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THE CRISIS Vol. 32 No. 3 JULY, 1926 ay ; ¢OPINION Whole No. 189 a 2% of W. E. B. DU BOIS ee INSANITY IT IS A LITTLE DIFFICULT to please all of our friends either simul- taneously or successively. Once upon a time the United States Census showed comparatively little insanity or suicide among colored people. “Na- turally,” said American Science, “for Negroes have not enough brains to go insane with and are too good-natured to kill themselves.” Recently statistics have veered the other way. We find considerable Ne- gro insanity and a mounting rate of suicide. But American Science is un- perturbed. “Naturally, for the Negro cannot stand the strain of modern civilization. He is giving way before ae And there you are. How can we possibly satisfy our friends? Wik. Bak THE WOMEN’S INTERNATION- AL LEAGUE for Peace and Free- dom, under the presidency of Jane Addams, differs from most peace movements. Its first article is “to pro- mote peace between nations, races and classes”. Well do I remember the great Peace Society under Andrew Carnegie before the war. Its presi- dent announced in a public meeting at the Hotel Astor that the peace they sought had nothing to do with little nations in the Balkans and colored breeds. Verily they had their re- ward! 111 This league is not only watching Mexico and Morocco but has recently sent to Haiti a committee of investi- gation, with Mrs. Addie W. Hunton and Miss Cnarlotte Atwood as the colored representatives. At their meetings in many cities Negroes are not only tolerated but sought. This is the true highway to world peace. But tell it neither in Gath nor in the a CA THE REVEREND MR. KING THE REVEREND GEORGE WALTON KING has been pastor of the white Presbyterian church at 141 West 115th Street, New York, since 1906. Last Sunday he resigned and said, “This section is now almost completely taken by Jews, Catholics and Negro people, so there is no pos- sibility for the accomplishment of any real Christian work’. We like Mr. King. He is one of the most hon- est Christian ministers that it has been our fortune to meet. He says exactly what he means and what tens of thousands of other white ministers mean. The detail that the Lord God will probably kick him out of Heaven for his attitude does not keep us from appreciating Mr. King’s honesty. COTTON MR. W. M. JARDINE, Secretary of Agriculture in President Cool- idge’s cabinet, has shown an agility in mental gymnastics for which we

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112 had scarcely given him credit. Speak- ing in Charleston, South Carolina, on cotton, he succeeded in talking for an hour or so and saying nothing about the American Negro, his labor in raising cotton, his remuneration, the methods of selling forced upon him and the social surroundings which distress him. No, Mr. Jardine con- fined his speech to high and lofty things and succeeded in saying just about as near nothing as one would expect of a public official who did not dare to tell the truth. AFRICA AN INTERNATIONAL CON- FERENCE on African missions will convene at Le Zoute, Belgium, Sep- tember 14-21. For some obscure reasons this is going to be a closed conference and particularly closed against American Negroes. Mem- bership is restricted to 250 persons of Europe and South America, of whom 200 are to be selected by mis- sionary societies of the United States, Great Britain and South America, and 50 places are left for government officials—and African “guests”. Dr. Fraser, a white African missionary, is to preside. Among the Americans who will take part are Dr. Anson Phelps-Stokes and Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones. J. E. Aggrey, formerly of Livingstone College, will be there and Mr. Jabavu of South Africa. The only American Negro who has been invited, so far as we have been able to learn, is Dr. John Hope of More- house College, MURDER FEW AMERICANS REALIZE how many homicides take place in the United States. During 1925, 10,100 murders were done in this country and our murder rate is 14 times the murder rate in England. There were more murders in Chicago THE CRISIS last year with its population of 3,- 000,000 than took place in England and Wales with a population of 40,- 000,000. Our rate is six times the rate of Canada. In the South, and especially in Southern cities like Memphis, the murder rate is worse than the rate in Chicago. Life is cheap in the United States because we despise our neighbors, and we do not greatly care who is killed if it is not one of us or one of ourfriends. We have been killing Negroes, Italians, Hungarians, Indians and what not with such impunity that the habit of killing has grown upon us. In the South it is a species of public amuse- ment to which certain back districts and city slums are regularly treated. Lynching is, of course, but one phase of this widespread phenomenon. War and Militarism contribute the state of mind. We area nation of murder- ers. A MORAL DILEMMA A GIRL WAITED to see me in my office. She was blonde, white and petite. She smiled at something which she saw or something which she thought she saw in my face: “I am colored,” she explained. Then we both smiled. She explained further: There was a convention of social workers at a New York hotel with representatives drawn from all over the United States. For the first time in its history a colored girl was ad- mitted as a member. At her home it was known that she was of Negro descent and she was sent as repre- senting the colored race. The officials of the conference in New York knew who and what she was. She care- fully ordered a single room at the hotel but, arriving, she found that on account of the special rates she must occupy a room with two other girls, one from Wisconsin, the other from Tennessee. What should the “col-

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ored” girl do? Should She announce to her room-mates dramatically, “I am a Negro”? or should she say noth- ing? And if she said nothing would she be accused of “deception” when others present at the conference, who knew the facts, revealed to an aston- ished world that this pretty little blonde lady had a great-great grand- father who was a Negro slave? So she came down to consult me. What advice would you have given her, gentlest of readers? THE SATISFIED SOUTH THERE IS A CERTAIN class of white Southerners which requires for its spiritual satisfaction only the knowledge that the North sins against the Negro just as it does. That apparently proves to its mind that sinning is righteous. Nothing perhaps shows better the inferiority complex of the white South. For in- stance, many Southerners are gloat- ing over Carteret, New Jersey, and even preening themselves a bit. The Houston, Texas, Post-Dispatch de- clares that “in the South, while indi- vidual Negroes are attacked, the Ne- gro race as such is never molested’’. The Little Rock, Arkansas, Gazette is sure that race clashes in the South “do not spring from economic roots”, and that Southern mob victims are “almost invariably guilty of an atro- cious crime”. And the News-Scimitar of Memphis, Tennessee, declares that the Southern white draws lines be- tween races but “accepts the indi- vidual Negro for what he is”. All three of these statements are false. Southern mobs do not start against crime; they start against Negroes. The victims of lynchers are not necessarily criminals: only yes- terday an absolutely innocent black man was done to death in Florida. And finally, the South does not ac- cept the individual Negro for what he is but treats every man of Negro JULY, 1926 113 descent as a pariah, no matter what his deserts. All this everybody knows. What is gained by lying about it? FOREIGN LANGUAGES ONE OF THE WEAK places in our high schools and colleges has been the teaching of languages. The dead languages have developed a teaching technique, usually a dry-as- dust, indefensible method of teaching human speech. For a long time the teaching of living languages fol- lowed the same path and today in most colored schools and colleges the persons who teach French, German and Spanish can neither understand nor be understood in those languages. They teach them, not as languages, but as cross-word puzzles and the re- sult is what one would expect. There are, however, a few institutions like Howard University and Livingstone College where men born on French soil are teaching French and per- sons who can speak and write Span- ish are teaching Spanish; and these languages are being taught in the only way that languages can be taught and that is by having the classes speak, read and write them. The time must speedily come when any person who has studied French and cannot use the French language will be recognized as having done the impossible. On the other hand, no man is educated who cannot speak, read and understand a foreign lan- guage. American Negroes ought to be able to visit Europe and the West Indies and talk to their fellows there. If our schools are not preparing for this, they are not schools, MR. ARCHIBALD WHEN OUR ROBERT BAGNALiu was in Youngstown, Ohio, he talked frankly and simply about race inter- marriage. The Reverend A. C. Archi- bald of the First Baptist Church did

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114 THE said so. Mr. Archibald admitted that there was no scientific or biological argument against inter-marriage, but he discovered a ‘‘tremendous so- cial instinct”? and, as he believed, ‘“‘a God-implanted determination that racial barriers shall not be demol- ished”; and that the “Great White Race’’—and so forth and so on. Per- haps. But by the same token we might remark that there is in this world a “tremendous social instinct” to merge human races and “a God- implanted determination”, at least in the white South and in South Africa and in India, to cross racial barriers, and that foremost in this business has been this same “Great White Race’. So far as we can see, the only objection which the Great God White has to racial intermingling is making it legal. On the other hand, our Great God Brown says simply, if you don’t want to marry us, don’t; but if you must have mulatto chil- dren, they’ll be born in wedlock or we'll know the reason why. Where- fore the N. A. A. C. P. regards all anti-marriage restrictions as encour- agements to bastardy and prostitu- tion and disgraceful attacks upon all decent womanhood. To this Mr. Archibald replies with the irrelevant remark, “Be what you are and be proud of it!” To which we venture to retort,—That depends, Mr. Archi- bald, entirely upon what you are. THE SWEET TRIAL WE ARE NOT SURE that even in their rejoicing most colored Ameri- cans appreciate the significance of the acquittal of Henry Sweet. The eleven defendants in Detroit were doomed. The police deliberately lied. Many of the witnesses for the prosecution lied. This was evident to every hon- est onlooker. The newspapers were prejudiced and biased and the prose- ention attorney stooped to appeal to not fully agree with Mr. Bagnall and CRISIS the worst racial antipathy in the com- munity. Under such circumstances the natural thing would have been to convict some, if not all of these de- fendants of first degree murder. There are thousands of dead Negroes in the United States who have thus been victimized and the jails and penitentiaries are today full of black men just as innocent as these eleven defendants. In most previous cases the Amer- ican Negro was in no position to make organized defense. Even in cases where a Defense Fund of moderate proportions might have been raised, the surroundings were such that no white attorney had the courage to take the defense and no black attor- ney could secure a decent hearing. In Detroit two things happened: First, the American Negro went down in his pocket and for the first time in his history put into the treas- ury of the N. A. A. C. P. an amount of money that meant that these de- fendants would have a chance for a fair trial. Justice in the United States costs money. No pauper need apply at the barred gates of our criminal courts. Secondly, we found in Clarence Darrow a man _ who dared ; whose whole life has been dar- ing; who has had the rare moral courage to stand up and defend, with his singular sincerity, unpopular causes. This was the combination that won in Detroit and it is the com- bination that is going to win through- out wide futures. It was well that when the quick, dramatic verdict of acquittal came the audience quivered and sobbed. Charles Edward Russell writes: “I was in Detroit last week and attended the Sweet trial. My dear Doctor, that was one of the great revelations —I wish you could have seen it. You would have thought better than ever of your people.”

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JULY, 1926 THE BACKWARD PEOPLES MRS. NANNIE JACKSON MY- ERS of Chicago is a lady quite to our liking. When she gets an idea in her head she keeps at it and she pro- ceeds to make the world uncomforta- ble until something happens. There is in use in the public schools of Chi- cago a “Community Life and Civic Problems” by a certain H. C. Hill. Mr. Hill says in so many words that the Negroes as a race are shiftless and that Mr. Booker T. Washington recognized the fact. Mrs. Myers read this paragraph and did not believe it. She sat down and wrote to the Board of Education and she wrote fourteen typewritten pages on the subject. The Board referred the letter to Pro- fessor Parks of the University of Chicago who thought that the para- graph was simply a “statement of fact”. The Assistant Superintendent of Schools then looked into the text and acknowledged that “the para- graph is absurd, in bad taste and clearly out of place in a high school text”. “All right,” replied Mrs. Myers, “and what are you going to do about it?” The President of the Board of Education suggested to the pub- lisher and author that the textbook be modified and finally, after a couple of months of correspondence, the fol- lowing change was made: Present Para- graph, page 333 Hill’s Comm unity Life and Civic Prob- lems: “Indeed, one of the chief causes of the Paragraph with changes which Hill suggests making: “Indeed, one of the chief causes of the lack of progress among the backward that they would change their shift- less ways and be- come industrious cit- izens. A noted trav- eler tells of an Afri- can Negro lad whose chief desire seems to have been to save enough money to buy several wives; that done, he would quit his job as guide and let them work for him the rest of fortable or beautiful surroundings. A no- ted traveler tells of a primitive tribes- man whose chief de- sire seems to have been to save enough money to buy sev- eral slaves; that done, he would quit his job as guide and let them work for him the rest of his life. But one day he lack of progress among the backward peoples of the earth is the fact that their wants are limited largely to their bod- ily needs. The fa- mous Negro leader, Booker T. Washina- ton, tried constantly to make the members of his race dissatis- fied with their one- room log cabins so peoples of the earth is the fact that their wants are limited to their bodily needs. They are usually satisfied with rude huts to protect them from heat and cold and, as long as they remain content with the bare necessities, they will make no effort toward ac- quiring more com- saw a steamer chair; immediately a new want arose, his life. But one day he saw a _ steamer chair; immediately a new want arose, (Changed portions of paragraph are in Italic). THE SEGREGATION CASE OF COURSE we understood at the beginning that we were in danger on the point of jurisdiction and Mr. Marshall made an attempt to avoid the difficulty . Mr. Marshall writes me a letter in which he dis- cusses the opinion and concludes by saying “The validity of such a cove- nant [not to sell property to Colored people] is therefore in every sense an open question. The court did not as- sume to pass upon it. It felt itself precluded from doing so because of lack of jurisdiction. The saving claus- es contained in the paragraph just quoted clearly show that the court advisedly exercised the precaution of disclaiming the purpose of passing on that fundamental question. I there- fore felt encouraged rather than dis- couraged, especially since the court held the case for five months”. MOORFIELD STOREY. THE MONTH’S NEWS LOOKING OVER A MONTH of world history we note, first, the British strike. It was a gesture of warning which threatened Civil War. We cannot too often repeat that its meaning was simply this: the dis- tribution of income among owners of property, merchants, directors of in- dustry and laborers is today so un-

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116 fair that large numbers of laborers in civilized countries are threatened with degradation and even starvation, and they are determined not to sub- mit to it. One of the reasons for the small income of laborers is the large expense for war and prepara- tion for war. This makes the pre- liminary Conference of International Disarmament which is now being held at the seat of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, of great significance. The significance arises, however, not because this Con- ference is going to do anything; in fact it is going to do next to nothing; but the progress of disarmament lies in the fact of this Conference which recognizes disarmament as a pressing world problem. Eventually, some- thing must be done. There is on earth today no more idiotic anomaly than the sight of a world, that wants peace, facing bankcuptcy because of preparations for war. There has been revolution in Poland. Po- land is a new state resurrected out of its murder and disruption in 1772, 1792 and 1796. The Congress of Versailles made a new State on paper, and the real question is Who is the Polish state? Is it the land owner, the captain of industry, the city la- borer or the peasant? It is this ques- tion which Poland is trying to answer by the ancient and silly method of shooting Poles. Which brings us phonetically if not logically to the North Pole. Matthew Henson, the black man who was first at the Pole with Peary, isa clerk inthe New York Custom House. A young Southern white man has flown to the Pole in an aeroplane, but he flew so fast he did not have time to drop a flag. A dirigible has: flown over the Pole and to Alaska and in the end all but per- ished with wind and cold. And what good is all this, ask some? Tobe sure it yields no dividends as yet; but it increases human knowledge and THE CRISIS thereon civilization is built. The real leader of the dirigible flight was an Italian. There are two Italians in jail in Massachusetts and the Su- preme Court there says they must die. This seems to us a miserable mis- carriage of justice. Sacco and Van- zetti were arrested and convicted in war hysteria. The evidence that marked them for death then would not be credible today, yet they are doomed.———War is on again in North Africa and Syria, between white imperialism and brown inde- pendence. The whites may win but the price may be the hegemony of Europe in the world. France follows in both these cases the World Will of modern industrial imperialism and she pays a heavy price. She bore the brunt of the war; she suffered the worst destruction in men and proper- ty; her Allies are demanding blood money for their debts; and her cur- rency is falling in value. Only in the demand of the French women for the suffrage, which is being made ar- ticulate by a great international meet- ing today, is there a sign of return- ing sanity and hope. Listen, black folk, and see the millions that Jews are raising for the succor of Jews: twenty-five millions of money in this one latest call; and yet there are only three and a half millions of Jews in the United States. When we 12,000,000 Negroes raised $75,000 for self defense right here, there were some critics who had fits. * + * THE AUGUST NUMBER of THE CRISIS is our Education Number. We want before July 1st photographs of college and professional graduates of Northern colleges and group pic- tures of college graduating classes in Southern colleges. No pictures used can be returned but we appreciate the courtesy of co-operation,

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Detroit JAMES WELDON JOHNSON OR eight months the National Office has been steeped in the Sweet case. It has whipped up every energy and drawn upon every resource to carry the fight through to victory. All of us at the office realized the responsibility involved, and carried the whole matter on our hearts. But when I entered the Recorder’s Court of Detroit on Monday morning, May 83, in the midst of the second trial, I felt myself thrust suddenly, as an individual, into an arena of vital conflict and personally engaged in the struggle. I was at once so gripped by the tense drama being enacted before my eyes that I became a part of the tragedy. And tragedy it was. The atmosphere was tragic. The serried rows of colored faces that packed the courtroom from the rail to the back wall, watching and waiting, were like so many tragic masks. Thé mild, soft- spoken boy being tried for murder in the first degree and, for the time, carrying the onus of the other ten defendants, and upon whose fate hung the right of the black man to defend himself in his home, was an ex- tremely tragic figure. The twelve white men sitting over against him, under oath to disregard prejudice and to render a true and just verdict between black and white in a land wher race prejudice is far more vital than religion, also became tragic fig- ures. The rugged face of Clarence Dar- row, more haggard and lined by the anx- ious days, with the deep, brooding eyes, heightened the intense effect of the whole. For a week I listened to testimony and the examination of witnesses. Each day the courtroom on the other side of the rail was packed as tightly as the space would permit. First, the witnesses for the prose- cution, most of them members of the police force, evading the truth, distorting the truth, actually lying. And why? Because they were opposed to a Negro moving into a white neighborhood? Not primarily. The policemen who testified felt, even though a man’s liberty was at stake, that they had to justify the course which the police had followed in the case. And so policeman after policeman, under oath, testified that on the night of the shooting, the streets around the Sweet house were almost de- 117 serted. From their description of the scene the vicinity was like Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village”. And thus they showed themselves willing to swear away a man’s liberty for life in order to save the face of the Police Department. For if it was shown that there was a mob around the ’ Sweet home on that fateful night the Po- lice Department would become responsi- ble for all the consequences, because it al- lowed that mob to assemble. But it was proven that there was a mob of five hun- dred persons or more. This was proven by disinterested witnesses for the defense; and the police did nothing to prevent the gath- ering of that mob. From their own testi- mony they did not ask a single person what he was doing there or to move away. The witnesses for the prosecution who were not policemen were admittedly preju- diced against colored people and opposed to their living in white neighborhoods. They were for the most part members of the Waterworks Improvement Association, or- ganized for the purpose of keeping colored people out of white neighborhoods, and home owners in the vicinity in which Dr. Sweet had purchased. And so, like the po- licemen, they were interested witnesses, They did not have their faces to save but they felt that they had their property to save. One of these witnesses with a Ger- manic name and the face of a moron, on Mr. Darrow’s cross-examination, stated” that he and his neighbors were organized to keep “undesirables” out of the neighbor- hood. He, of course, listed Negroes at the head of the “undesirables”. When further pressed by Mr. Darrow he added “Italians”. When still further pressed he stated that they did not want anybody but Americans. When Mr. Darrow asked him if he knew that Negroes had been in America fv * more than three hundred years, longer than any of his ancestors, and that America was dis- covered by a great Italian, he had no words for answer. Witnesses for the defense restored my faith in human nature—and not because they were for the defense but because they showed they were telling the truth. The white witnesses for the defense were ab-

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MR. SWEET MR. PERRY solutely without interest. It was plain that they could have no motive for testifying that there was a mob around the Sweet house on that eventful night, except in be- half of truth. And although racial interest might have been imputed to the colored wit- nesses, nevertheless, because they were speaking the truth they carried conviction. And perhaps more impressive still was the fact that the colored witnesses who testified showed themselves far superior intellectual- ly, culturally and socially, to the white wit- nesses who were among those opposed to the Sweets moving into their neighborhood. During all the days of the testimony the court and the crowd listened intently to every word that fell from the lips of the witnesses. The crowd was sensitive, like a barometer, to the ups and downs of the testimony. Whenever Darrow or Chawke scored in their cross-examination a ray of light lit the sea of dark faces, and when the prosecutors won a point sombre tragedy would again settle down. On Saturday night, May 8, both sides rested. On Monday morning the attorneys for the defense made the motions for dismissal or a directed verdict and, as was expected, the motions were denied. The argument for the State was then opened by the Assistant Prosecuting Attorney who made a fierce at- CRISIS MR. CHAWKE MR. DARROW tack upon the Sweets and their motives. He closed by drawing for the jury a pic- ture of the cold, stark body of Leon Breiner, the white man who had been killed. He stressed the words, “I hold a brief for Leon Breiner”. He was followed in the afternoon by Mr. Chawke for the Defense. Mr. Chawke spoke with all of the skill and power of the great criminal lawyer that he is. On Tuesday morning every available space in the courtroom was taken up. Even within the railing spectators were closely packed together. There were hundreds of colored people and a large number of in- terested whites. There were prominent lawyers and jurists of Detroit. When the court opened not another person could be squeezed into the courtroom. Clarence Dar- row was to speak. For nearly seven hours he talked to the jury. I sat where I could catch every word and every expression of his face. It was the most wonderful flow of words I ever heard from a man’s lips. Clarence Darrow, the veteran criminal lawyer, the psychol- ogist, the philosopher, the great humanist, the great apostle of liberty, was bringing into play every bit of skill, drawing upon all the knowledge, and using every power that he possessed. Court and jury and spectators had unrolled before them a com-

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JULY, plete panorama of the experiences, physical and spiritual, of the American Negro, be- ginning with his African background, down to the present—a panorama of his suffer- ings, his struggles, his achievements, his aspirations. Mr. Darrow’s argument was at once an appeal for the Negro because of the injustice he has suffered, a tribute to him for what he has achieved in spite of handicaps and obstacles, and an indictment of the morality and civilization of America because of the hypocrisies and brutalities of race prejudice. At times his voice was as low as though he were coaxing a reluctant child. At such times the strain upon the jisteners to catch his words made them ap- pear almost rigid. At other times his words came like flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder. He closed his argument with an appeal that did not leave a dry eye in the courtroom. When he finished I walked over to him to express in behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Col- ored People my appreciation and thanks. His eyes were shining and wet. He placed his hands on my shoulders. I stammered out a few words but broke down and wept, and I was not ashamed of my tears. On the following morning the Prosecutor closed the argument for the State. He be- gan as though he intended to rival Mr. Darrow in paying a tribute to the Negro race, but his beginning was only a back- ground to set off what he really meant to say. Some of the things he said brought quick and firm objections from our lawyers. He spoke in rather high terms of the Na- tional Association for the Advancement of Colored People and then added that if he had a mind like some people he would say it was an organization for the purpose of foisting colored people into white neighbor- hoods, for the purpose of promoting social equality, and for the purpose of bringing about an amalgamation of the races. The defense attorneys objected and the Judge admonished, but this appeal to prejudice the jury had already heard. At another time he virtually asked the jury what would they as twelve white men, if they brought in a verdict of not guilty, answer to white men who asked them about their verdict. Here again the defense lawyers objected, but the jury again had heard. In his zeal to convict, the Prosecutor overstepped legal lines and called the jury’s attention to the fact that the defendant had not taken the 1926 119 stand and testified in his own behalf to contradict certain statements which had been made. Mr. Chawke was immediately on his feet and objected. The objection was sustained and the grounds were laid for a reversible error. The point was one which has been several times sustained by the Su- preme Court of Michigan and the courts of various other states. When the Prosecutor finished the court adjourned for the day. The next morning, Thursday, the court- room was again crowded, to hear the charge of the Judge. For two and a half hours Judge Murphy charged the jury. The charge contemplated the law involved from every point and yet it was not the dry dust of the law books. It was eloquent and mov- ing. In his charge, as in presiding over the case, Judge Murphy showed himself abso- lutely fair and impartial. Indeed, he was in the highest degree the just judge. The jury went into deliberation immediately after lunch. We were hopeful but not san- guine. We counted that the worst we could get would be another mistrial. It was com- monly expressed that a mistrial was the probable verdict. We were heartened by the fact that, in case of a verdict of guilty in any degree, we held in our hands the ace of a reversible error. I left the courtroom after the charge to the jury and sent a telegram to the Na- tional Office. I walked over to Judge Jayne’s court and talked with him for a while. Then, feeling not at all like eating, I went back to the courtroom to wait. The crowd that had waited patiently for days was still waiting. Suddenly there was a pounding on the jury room door. The officer in charge of the jury answered and found that the jury wanted further instructions. Neither the Judge nor the attorneys had yet re- turned from lunch. There was nothing to indicate the need of hurry. Everybody ex- pected the jury would ask for further in- structions and be locked up for the night. A little later the Judge and the attorneys returned to the court. The attorneys began to draft instructions that would be accepta- ble to both sides on the point raised by the jury. I sat in the Judge’s ante-chamber and watched them while they worked. Mr. Chawke made the first draft on a yellow pad. The Prosecuting Attorney revised and amended. Mr. Darrow and the Assist- ant Prosecuting Attorney expressed their views. The draft was at last agreed upon

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120 by the four attorneys. The Prosecutor had just torn from the pad the sheets that contained the written words to pass them in to the Judge when the officer in charge of the jury entered the room and announced that a verdict had been reached. Every- body in the room was amazed. We for the defense, in spite of ourselves, were seized with apprehension. The probabilities were that a verdict so quickly reached was a compromise verdict. There was even the possibility of a verdict of guilty as charged. These thoughts ran through all-our minds. They showed themselves in the quickly changing expressions of the Prosecutors. Both attorneys for the prosecution, perhaps unconsciously, assumed a magnanimous air. It was as much as to say, “We are sorry; it is too bad; but we had to do our official duty”. These thoughts were quickly trans- mitted to the waiting crowd in the court- room and with the crowd the fears and apprehensions were magnified. The court re-convened. The Judge as- cended to the bench. Mr. Chawke came over and whispered a word of encourage- ment to Henry Sweet. I sat next to Henry Sweet. I put my hand on his arm and said, “No matter what happens the Na- tional Association will stand by you to the end”. THE CHICAGO CONFERENCE HORTLY after this issue of THE CRISIS reaches its readers, the Seventeenth Annual Conference will convene at Chicago. Delegates and members will reach that city during the day of Wednesday, June 23rd, which will be given over to registration, assignment to stopping places, and other such details. The Opening Mass Meeting will be eld that evening at 8:00 o’clock at Bethesda Baptist Church, 53rd Street and Michigan Avenue, when the musical pro- gram will last from 8:00 o’clock until 8:30. Promptly at the latter hour the speeches will begin with addresses of welcome by THE CRISIS National Association for the Advance- ment of Colored People The jury was called in. They filed in solemnly and took their places facing the bench. The clerk asked, “Gentlemen, have you arrived at a verdict?” The answer was, “We have’. I then began to live the most intense thirty seconds of my whole life. The verdict was pronounced by the fore- man in a strong, clear voice which filled the courtroom, “Not Guilty”. The effect is electrical. We are trans- ported in a flash from the depths to the heights. Someone starts to applaud but brings his hands together only once. A simultaneous sigh of relief goes up from the hundreds outside the rail. I look around. Women are sobbing convulsively, and tears are running down the cheeks of men. I get a confused vision of Henry Sweet, Dr. Sweet and his wife shaking hands with the jury and thanking them, shaking hands with Mr. Darrow and Mr. Chawke and thanking them. They are followed by others. It seems that everybody is shaking hands and giving thanks. The verdict was recorded upon the oath of the jury and thus was reached what we believe to be the end of the most dramatic court trial involving the fundamental rights of the Negro in his whole history in this country. Dr. Herbert A. Turner, President of the Chicago Branch, Mayor William E. Dever of Chicago, the reading of an address by Moorfield Storey, and speeches by United States Senator Charles S. Deneen and Wil- liam Pickens. The Thursday evening mass meeting will be held at Ebenezer Baptist Church, 45th Street and Vincennes Avenue; the mass meeting on Friday evening, June 25th, at Pilgrim Baptist Church, 33rd Street and Indiana Avenue; the mass meeting on Sun- day, June 27th, at which Clarence Darrow will be the feature speaker, at the Audito- rium Theatre, Congress Street at Wabash

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cet eee oe —sS = OO JULY, Avenue; the mass meeting on Monday eve- ning at Pilgrim Baptist Church; and on Tuesday evening when the Spingarn Medal will be presented, at Wendell Phillips High School Auditorium, Pershing Road and Prairie Avenue. Conference Headquarters will be at the Pilgrim Baptist Church, 33rd Street and In- diana Avenue. All business sessions which will be held morning and afternoon on Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday of the Conference week, will be at this church. Here also will be registration and infor- mation bureaus, book booth and the Con- ference office. Among the national characters who will speak at the Conference are Mrs. Addie W. Hunton, former Field Secretary of the N. A. A. C. P. and now President of the Empire State Federation of Women’s Clubs; Dr. John Haynes Holmes, Pastor of the Community Church of New York City and one of the great platform orators of America; President John Hope of More- house College, Atlanta; Judge Albert F. George, Chicago’s Negro Magistrate; Harry E. Davis of Cleveland, member of the Ohio State Legislature; Congressman Martin B. Madden; Bishop Archibald J. Carey of the A. M. E. Church; Senator Adelbert H. Rob- erts, Negro member of the Illinois State Senate; Arthur B. Spingarn, Vice-Presi- dent of the N. A. A. C. P. and Chairman of the National Committee of the Association; Paul Robeson, distinguished singer and actor (if engagements permit); Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, Mary White Ovington, William Pickens, Robert W. Bagnall, and numerous others. The business sessions will feature dele- gates and speakers from all parts of the United States. These sessions will be de- voted to the discussion of and action upon concrete problems like the issue of segrega- tion, disfranchisement and other pressing questions. Delegates have been reported 1926 121 from all parts of the United States and there will be at Chicago the largest gath- ering of any Annual Conference of the Association. Delegates, members and friends are urged to register immediately upon reaching Chicago and a most cordial invitation is extended to all interested per- sons to meet with us. All sessions are open to the public and there is no admission charged. HE Supreme Court of the United States handed down on May 24th its decision in the now famous case of Curtis and Cor- rigan v. Buckley, et al. In its decision the court, because of lack of jurisdiction, re- fused to pass on the case which involved the right of white property owners to en- force an agreement barring Negroes from owning and occupying houses in certain residential sections. The full text of the decision has not been received from Washington at the time that this is being, written. When, however, it has been printed the legal committee of the N. A. A. C. P. will be called together and will determine the next steps to be taken. It is gathered from the excerpts from the opinion published in the daily press that the Supreme Court left open two questions, one, that of public policy and the other, the constitutional question. This means sim- ply that this case or another like it must be carried back to the Supreme Court and so framed that the court cannot evade meet- ing the issue squarely. Pending the announcement of further ac- tion by the N. A. A. C. P. attorneys in this most vital case, the National Office an- nounces that it has “just begun to fight’! The case will be resolutely pushed until it is won. Twelve CRISIS prize babies have been crowded out by Detroit this month and the college graduates of August. We shall wel- come them in September. Holiday ARNA BONTEMPS When I consider all the people on this street I am sad. I am pained With thoughts of little feet, Black, brown, and yellow feet Walking up and down, Going nowhere. My heart breaks When I think of people on this lonely street.

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This play won the third prize of $10 in THE Crisis Contest of 1925. It cannot be reproduced without permission. Persons interested may write THE CRISIS. “IT was born in Holly Grove, Arkansas, on May 8, 1902, but have lived in Denver, Colorado, since I was eight years old, re- ceiving a part of my education in the public schools there. I at- tended Howard Univer- sity, Washington, D. C., for two years, where I was a member of the Rho Psi Phi Medical Sorority. I am now a senior student at Colo- rado Teachers College, Greeley, Colo., where I was a partner in the or- ganization and presenta- tion of a dance rhythm, and am a member of a writers’ association, ‘The Modern Wills’. I married in June, 1925.” The scene of the play is “Somewhere’ in the South”; the characters are all of Negro descent except the “young white girl” and the members of the mob. The time is the present. CHARACTERS: Lemey Carlson. ...<s..cesss a young lawyer SONNE NOREEN, ns c's 5.00 ss emwreres his sister ee his grandmother Selma Frazier.......... a young white girl A mob. A living room is tastefully, though not richly, furnished, denoting the occupancy of a refined family, evidently of the middle class. There is a sofa to one side, a table in the center, and a leather comfort-chair in the corner; another leather chair sits in the upper part of the room. A window is in the rear. There are two entrances, one right and one left. Marion is seen sitting on the sofa reading the evening paper as the curtain rises. After perusing it quietly for a minute, she throws it down and goes to the window, peering out into the night. For Unborn Children A Play in One Act MYRTLE A. SMITH LIVINGSTON

MRS. SMITH LIVINGSTON 122

Her grandmother, a gentle, well-bred, old lady enters. Grandma Carlson—Hasn’t Roy come yet, Marion? Marion—No, he hasn’t, grandmother; and I’m beginning to get worried; it’s al- most 9 o’clock now and he said he’d be here by 6. Grandma _ Carlson —Did you telephone the office for him? Marion—Yes; he left about 5:30, they said. Grandma Carlson —(with a sigh sits in the comfort-chair) I sup- pose he’s somewhere with that girl again. Marion—Oh! If he would only let her alone! He knows what it will mean if they find it out; it’s awful for him to keep us in this terrible suspense! Grandma Carlson —Do you suppose talk- ing to Ler would do any good? Do you know her? Marion—Yes, by sight; as far as I know she’s a nice enough girl all right, but then she’s white and she ought to stay in her own race; she hasn’t any right to be run- ning around after our men. I know it wouldn’t be of any use to talk to her; and Roy—! Grandma Carlson—Yes, dear, I know; we hardly dare to say anything to him about it; but, Marion, we’ve got to do something! Marion—But, grandmother, what? ‘I’m at my wit’s end! Since they can’t be mar- ried here, they’re going to run away and go north someplace where they can, and (despairingly) I don’t see anything we can do to stop them! Grandma Carlson—(sadly and _ preoccu- pied) I suppose I’ll have to tell him;—well, if it will stop him— Marion—tTell him what? Grandma Carlson—(with a start as she

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JULY, realizes she has said something she didn’t intend to) Oh, nothing, child; look again; don’t you see him yet? Marion—No. Oh! It’s. terrible not knowing whether he’s all right or if some mob has—(buries her face in her hands). Grandma Carlson—(wincing) No,—no— don’t say that! Marion—But you know that’s what will happen if it’s found out before they get away! Grandma Carlson—(moaning) Oh, my child! I don’t know which would be the hardest to bear! I’d almost rather that he should die now than to mary a _ white _woman, but O! Dear Lord! Not such a death as that! (The noise of a door being unlocked is heard outside; it is opened and then shut.) Marion—(relieved) Here he is now; well, thank goodness, it hasn’t happened yet. (Her nervous tension relaxes and her an- ger rises throughout the following scene.) LeRoy enters. LeRoy—(throws cap on table) Hello; (smiles sheepishly) been giving me “Hail Columbia”, I guess, haven’t you? Marion—(sarcastically) This is what you call 6 o’clock, I suppose, is it? LeRoy—I’m sorry, sis; I had an en- gagement and I couldn’t make it here by then; I meant to call you and let you know, but,—well, I’m sorry. Grandma Carlson—We were just worried; you know we can’t feel very easy these days, Roy, when we don’t know where you are; you know the sentiment down here. Marion—(bitterly) What does he care about how we feel? His family and his career too, for that matter, mean nothing to him now; and his whole heart and soul are wrapped up in his girl,—a white girl! I guess your engagement this evening was with her; I know it was! LeRoy—(trying to control his temper) Yes, it was; I still have the liberty of mak- ing an engagement with anyone I choose, Marion. Grandma Carlson—But you haven’t the right, son, to cause us unnecessary worry and pain. You know how much your sister and I both care about you, and it wouldn’t be much to just let us know where you are. LeRoy—(contritely) I didn’t mean to worry, you, Granny; I was on my way home when—her note was brought to me, and I didn’t have time to call you then. 1926 123 But you won’t have to worry about me much longer now, anyway; we’ve decided to leave tomorrow night. Marion—(shocked) Good Heavens, Roy! You can’t go through with it! Have you lost all your manhood? Gandma Carlson—(her voice throbs with pain) Ah, boy, you’ve forgotten us! Don’t you love us at all anymore since she came into your life? LeRoy—O, Granny, I hate to leave you and sis; but you know we can’t stay here and marry, confound these laws! It will be better for us to go some place where we aren’t known, anyway. I wish you and Marion could go with us. Marion—(almost hysterical) I wouldn’t go a step with you and your white woman if I was going to be killed for it! If you’ve lost your self-respect, I still have mine! I wouldn’t spit on a woman like her! There must be something terribly wrong with her, for white women don’t marry colored men when they can get anybody else! You poor fool! If it’s color you want, why couldn’t you stay in your own race? We have women who are as white as any white per- son could be! My God! What is to be- come of us when our own men throw us down? Even if you do love her can’t you find your backbone to conquer it for the sake of your race? I know they’re as much to blame as we are, but intermarriage doesn’t hurt them as much as it does us; laws would never have been passed against it if the states could have believed white women would turn Negro men down, but they knew they wouldn’t; they can make fools out of them too easily, and you’re too much of a dupe to see it! Well, if you marry her, may God help me never to breathe your name again! (runs from the room sobbing). LeRoy—(sorrowfully and pleadingly) Oh, Granny, you don’t feel that way too, do you? Selma and I can’t help it because we don’t belong to the same race, and we have the right to be happy together if we love each other, haven’t we? Grandma Carlson—(sadly) We have the right to be happy, child, only when our hap- piness doesn’t hurt anybody else; and when a colored man marries a white woman, he hurts every member of the Negro race! LeRoy—(perplexed) But,—I don’t un- derstand ;—how? Grandma Carlson—He adds another link Tomorrow night?

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124 THE to the chain that binds them; before we can gain that perfect Freedom to which we have every right, we’ve got to prove that we’re better than they! And we can’t do it when our men place white women above their own! LeRoy—(imploringly) But, Grand- mother, I love her so much! Not because she’s white, but just for herself alone; I’d love her just the same if she were black! And she loves me too! Oh! I can’t believe it would be wrong for us to marry! Grandma—Sometimes we best prove our love by giving up the object of it. You can’t make her happy, Roy; she’ll be satis- fied for a while, but after that the call of her blood will be stronger than her love for you, and you'll both be miserable; she’ll long for her own people; you won’t be enough. LeRoy— (miserably) Oh, Lord, have mercy! Granny, I can’t give her up! I couldn’t live without her! Grandma—(with tears in her eyes) Think of the unborn children that you sin against by marrying her, baby! Oh, you can’t know the misery that awaits them if you give them a white mother! Every child has a right to a mother who will love it better than life itself; and a white woman cannot mother a Negro baby! LeRoy—But, Granny— Grandma — (pathetically) I know, Honey! I’ve never told you this,—I didn’t want you to know,—but your mother was a white woman, and she made your father’s life miserable as long as he lived. She never could stand the sight of you and Marion; she hated you because you weren’t white! I was there to care for you, but I’m getting old, Honey, and I couldn’t go through it again! Boy, you can’t make the same mistake your father did! LeRoy—(in repugnance) Oh, Granny, why didn’t you tell me before? My mother, white! I’ve wondered why you never spoke of her! And she hated us!’ My God! That makes it different! (Grandma rises and kisses him on the forehead, holding his face between her hands, and looking deep into his eyes.) Grandma—I’ll leave you alone with God and your conscience, and whatever you de- cide, I’ll be satisfied (goes out). (LeRoy sits with his head bowed in his hands; presently a light tapping is heard at the window, which finally attracts his What shall I do? CRISIS attention; he crosses to it, and seeing who is there, motions toward the door, going to open it; Selma enters, almost exhausted.) Selma—(breathless and terrorized) A mob! — Hurry! — They’re — coming—here —after—you. —You—must—go! —Hurry! LeRoy—(in amazement) A mob—after me? Selma—Hurry and go!—They’re coming now! (a rumble of voices is heard in the distance) (despairingly) Oh! It’s too late! (sobs) What shall I do? Oh, they’ll— they’ll—kill you! (The rumble grows louder as it nears the house; cries of “Lynch him!” “The dirty nigger!” “We'll show him how to fool around a white woman!” are heard.) (Grandma Carlson and Marion enter, fearfully apprehensive.) Marion—(seeing Selma) What’s the mat- ter? What’s that noise? Grandma—(as realization dawns upon her; clutches her heart) Oh! It can’t be! (falls on her knees and prays) Dear God! have mercy! Oh, Father in Heaven! Do not desert us now! Hear my prayer and save my boy! LeRoy—(a light breaks over his face and he is transfigured; a gleam of holiness comes into his eyes; looking heavenward he says): Thy will be done, O Lord! (he turns and takes Selma’s hands in his) It has to be, sweetheart, and it is the better way; even though we love each other we couldn’t have found happiness together. Forget me, and mary a man of your own race; you'll be happier, and I will too, up there. Good- bye. (He turns to Marion) Forgive me, sis, if you can. Marion—(sobs _heartbrokenly) isn’t anything to forgive, Roy! should forgive! I’m sorry for everything IT said! Oh, God! I can’t stand this! LeRoy—(soothingly) Dont’ cry, sis; what you said was right; and I want you to know that even if this hadn’t happened, I was going to give her up (kisses her ten- derly). (Picks his grandmother up from the floor and holds her close in his arms) It’s better this way, Granny; don’t grieve so; just think of it as a sacrifice for UNBORN CHILDREN! A voice is heard outside:—Come out, you damned nigger, or we'll burn the house down! r There It’s I you

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JULY, Marion—(clings to him, sobbing) Don’t go, Roy! We’ll all die together! LeRoy—(puts her from him gently) -No. (Loud and clear) I’m coming, gentlemen! 1926 125 (With a last, long, loving look at the three of them he walks out to his death victorious and unafraid.) CURTAIN. Haiti What We Are Really Doing There A HAITIAN TENNIS CLUB Some “Barbarians” we are “civilizing’’! RESIDENT BORNO “in a_ statement scintillating with frankness and sin- cerity, expresses the hope that the United States will continue its supervision over Haitian affairs”, according to the inspired news from Washington; and the New York Times adds solemnly, “The United States is committed to educating nations in self- government, meanwhile putting their house in order”. In just what respect are we putting this nation’s house in order? First, gradually, but very carefully and persistently, we are stealing the land of Haiti and expropriating the peasants in a country which led modern governments in the widespread distribution of the owner- ship of its soil. But this is only a begin- ning. We are arranging in Haiti for the debt-slavery of this island to the United States. In a period of 111 years, Haiti floated in France four loans: First, in 1825, a loan of 24,000,000 francs. This was to pay the “indemnity” which France demanded on be- half of the slave owners after the success- ful Haiti revolution. This loan was paid in full. A second loan of 21,000,000 francs in 1875 went chiefly for the same purpose. In 1896, Haiti borrowed 50,000,000 francs and in 1910, 65,000,000 francs. These loans were for the consolidation of internal and external debts, for the payment of claims and for redeeming the inflated paper money. Interest and amortization on these debts were paid regularly although the European War, beginning in 1914, interfered some- what with the sinking fund. In other words, from 1825 to 1910, Haiti borrowed about $31,000,000 from France and was paying it up, principal and inter- est, so that in June, 1915, her total indebt- edness amounted to 127,811,060 francs or about $25,000,000. As soon as the marines landed in Haiti, Admiral Caperton sus- pended the payment of all interest and amortization on Haiti’s foreign and do- mestic debt, and for five years not a cent was paid. Thus, in November, 1920, Haiti’s total debt had increased to over $30,000,000. In December, 1922, seven years after the

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Be EEEESASE ESE OUNES DeTOVe the Americans landed and for which the Americans have done practically nothing. JULY, 1926 127 landing of the marines, interest was first paid on the internal debt and a $40,000,000 joan was negotiated in the United States. Of this loan, $23,660,000 has actually been borrowed and the Haitian treasury has paid as interest and commission upon this amount $1,675,911. With the money thus borrowed, $6,971,874 was used in paying the French debt which amounted to 87,- 023,425 francs. One million dollars was paid to claimants of various sorts and two or three hundred thousand more will be spent thus by the claims commission. A further sum was to be employed in buying live stock, building roads and starting “schools. Most of the live stock imported died. Few roads have been built and few schools started. Nevertheless, on these three projects $16,000,000 has been dis- bursed. Five million dollars was handed over to the International Railroad Com- pany in payment for their utterly unjusti- fiable claims. In other words, when the American troops landed in Port-au-Prince July 28, 1915, Haiti was in better financial condition than most European and American countries and she did not owe the United States a single cent. With the depreciation of the French franc her foreign debt could have been paid up in a few years without resorting to a foreign loan. Her internal debt was about to be consolidated and all other claims against her by foreigners could have been easily settled by arbitration. Already, several protocols had been signed with this nation for the settlement of such claims. Nothwithstanding that this $40,000,- 000 loan was forced upon Haiti and was really an act of international violence. The President agreed to launch that loan in the United States in order to win the support of the American High Commis- sioner and to become President. On the other hand, Haiti’s financial capacity is limited, being based mainly on the coffee export duty of $3 a hundred pounds. Usually about 60,000,000 pounds of coffee are exported annually yielding less than two million dollars in taxes. Nevertheless, expenses are mounting: when- the Inter- national Railroad is completed, the treasury will have to pay 6% guaranteed interest on every kilometer built and accepted, which will amount to $800,000 a year when the railroad is finished. How much of this must be paid this year is not known. Other subsidies must be paid as follows: 6% guarantee of interest on the P. C. S. Railroad, $41,280; subsidy to the Port-au- Prince Wharf Company, $40,200; subsidy to the French Cable Company, $24,000; sub- sidy to the American Electric Company, $97,800; subsidy to the Conaives Electric Company, $24,375; a total of over a quar- ter of a million in annual gifts to foreign corporations. The actual budget for the year 1925-1926, including interest on the public debt, commissions and government expenses, will amount to $6,596,254.72, or nearly as much as the total public debt of Haiti from 1825-1910. ; On top of this, the administration with its puppet President Borno proposes to complete the $40,000,000 loan by borrowing the remaining $16,000,000 in the United States. Thus we have the prospect of this small and poor country saddled with a debt owed to American bankers; and with an extravagant set of American officials receiv- ing high salaries which will soon amount to an annual income of ten million dollars a year or more and will enslave Haiti for a hundred years. It will involve a taxation which will more and more drive the Haitian peasant out of his land ownership, give the American capitalists a monopoly of all in- dustry, mining and shipping that may grow and reduce this island to the same state that the common laborers, miners and steel workers in America have been reduced without the political power to at least at- tempt redress of grievances, without laws against the overwork of women and chil- dren, without the right to strike and with their independent editors in jail. With the profit thus made by the bankers in Haiti and elsewhere in imperial America we shall be able to hold American working men, white and black, in their places for ages to come. Small wonder that the traitor Borno and the white thieves and bullies in Haiti “scintillate with frankness”. * * * One of the most interesting enterprises of THE CRISIS has been a study of the Ne- gro common school system in the southern South. With the aid of a gift from the American Fund for Public Service this in- vestigation has been going on for over a year. The first results will be published in the September number of THE CrIsIS which will be enlarged by 32 pages for this pur- pose.

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( George B. Jones of St. Louis, a janitor at the court house, has been appointed As- sistant to the Circuit Attorney of the City at a salary of $3600. Mr. Jones studied law at night, was admitted to the bar and has been a deputy circuit attorney since 1923. ( Lavender M. Green is the only colored decorator of the Woolworth Five and Ten Cents Stores. Mr. Green was born in Dan- ville, Virginia. He was at first employed as porter in his local store and worked at this position three years and was promoted as decorator of the same store. From Dan- ville he was transferred by the company to Washington, D. C., and served there as decorator five years. He was sent to Lan- caster, Pennsylvania, thence to Harrisburg where he is still located and doing a most excellent work. Aside from his regular em- ployment as local decorator Mr. Green has opened several new stores for the company in such cities as Philadelphia, Scranton and Altoona. He has been employed by the Wool- worth Company twenty-four years. @ Dennis A. Forbes, head of the Science Department of A & I State College, Nash- ville, Tennessee, has won first prize offered by the Science Classroom for an essay en- titled ‘‘How We Made Our Crystal Cor- ner’. There were ten prizes, the others being won by white teachers. Another of Mr. Forbes’ essays also received honorable mention. Mr. Forbes is a graduate of the Baltimore High School and Howard Uni- G. B. JONES L. M. GREEN D. A. FORBES 12% eee The Horizon versity and has studied at the University of Chicago. @ William F. Hutton of Jamaica, L. I., is dead at the age of 81. For 57 years he has been employed as messenger at the Union Trust Company of 73 Broadway, New York. The officers of the trust company attended the funeral. (@ Amos A. Andrews has been a policeman at Sumter, S. C., deputy sheriff for the county, messenger to the Collector of Cus- toms in Charleston, and United States Mar- shall. For the latter part of his life he has been a railroad clerk and recently was retired under the Compensation Act. (. The college class of 1925, Fisk Univer- sity, whose strike forced a reorganization of the institution, were reinstated finally and most of them have now received their degrees. Members of the class have had cheir lives insured in a colored insurance company, the Supreme Life and Casualty Company of Columbus, Ohio, in favor of the university. ( In the South Negroes are almost uni- versally kept from access to the ocean beaches. A colored company in Mississippi at Waveland, headed by Bishop R. E. Jones of the M. E. Church, is developing 300 acres for a resort and chautauqua. @ J. C. Scarborough, a colored funeral di- rector, has given $20,000 worth of property to the colored Ministers Alliance of Durham, N. C., for an orphans home and home for aged colored women. A. A. ANDREWS W. F. HUTTON

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JULY, THE BISHOP OF LIBERIA « The new Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Liberia is Thomas Erskine Campbell who was, when elected, a member of the Order of the Holy Cross and has long been a worker in Liberia. @ In the California Maid Exposition, 6000 songs were sent in to the contest which the California manufacturers instituted. Three colored boys, Leon and Otis René of New Orleans and Benny Ellison of Pittsburgh, wrote the winning song and received the $500 prize. @ Miss Elizabeth Calloway, daughter of Mr. John W. Calloway, an old subscriber to THE CRISIS, was the only American girl graduating from the Philippine Normal School in a class of 534. She is the first Colored graduate of that institution, where she was a brilliant student. She has ac- cepted the position offered her as teacher in one of the city schools of Manila. Her picture is on our cover. C At the Repertory Theatre in Boston, “Minick” by Edna Ferber and George Kaufman was given. Among the players was Alice Davis Crawford whose work was especially commended by the critics. C In 17 Southern states there are 98 public and 52 private high schools with an ac- 1926 129 credited four-year course, for Negroes. @ The Deans of 27 colored schools for higher training have formed a national or- ganization. T. B. McKinney of the North Carolina A. and T. College is President and R. O. Lanier of Florida A. and M. College, Secretary. @ Among the 80 women who appeared be- fore the Senate Committee in defense of the 18th amendment was Mrs. M. Madré Mar- shall, a colored teacher of Washington. (. George Byers, a Negro taxicab driver of Boston, went to the rescue of people trapped in a burning building on Columbus Avenue. He sounded the alarm and then, with Robert H. Cook, another driver, drove his cab on the sidewalk beneath the windows and res- cued many of the inmates from the win- dows. (Dr. John H. Alston of Summerville, 8. C,. is dead. He was a public spirited physician, founded a school and hospital and was widely known. « W. P. Evans of Laurinburg, N. C., has celebrated the 40th anniversary of his de- partment store. It is the oldest business house in Laurinburg and his sales last year amounted to a hundred thousand dollars. ( The great Sennar Dam has been finished in the Sudan, Egypt, and was officially opened in January of this year. It is part of the great irrigation system which the 5 os E | MESSRS. RENE, RENE and ELLISON

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THE CRISIS CEREMONIES AT THE DEDICATION OF THE (Above) The Sudanese Guard; (Center) The military band; (Below) Part of the great dam 130 NN

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JULY, 1926 NNAR DAM, KHARTOUM, EGYPTIAN SUDAN (Above) Decoration of a black Sudanese officer; (Center) The Grand Mufti, chief religious judge of the Mohammedans, reading in Arabic the message of King George; (Below) The English High Commissioner decorates Abd-el Rahman E] Mahdi, the son of the conqueror of General Gordon. 131

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132 THE CRISIS British are carrying out in order to raise cotton and other crops. The dam was be- gun in 1914 and is two miles in length, has a million tons of masonry and iron work, a reservoir 50 miles long with a capacity of 140,000,000 gallons of water. It feeds 3697 miles of canals and 5,589 miles of field channels. The Sudan government paid $65,000,000 for the work. It will be noted in our pictures that all of the great Sudan- ese officials and all of the soldiers are black. ( In the whole city of Baltimore there are only 248 beds for colored people available in the hospitals. @ A five-day social hygiene institute has been held in Atlanta, Ga., for Negro social workers. It was under the Atlanta School of Social Work of which E. Franklin Fra- zier is the head. @ The Silent Worker, published for the deaf, has a note on Mrs. Blanche W. Wil- liams who is a teacher at the Colored Blind and Deaf School, Austin, Texas. She is a graduate of the Minnesota School for the Deaf at Faribault and has taught in many institutions. @ The Rock Island Magazine, published by the railroad of that name, had in December, 1925, a page of pictures devoted to their colored employees. It showed pretty homes, high school students and various artisans. There are 72 Negro employees of the rail- road in Davenport, Iowa, and vicinity who own property valued at $141,700. @ The Older Boys’ Conference for the western section of Kentucky was held at Lincoln Institute in December, 1925. Sev- enty-two boys from seven different high schools attended. Twenty-four towns in the state have Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. com- mittees and are carrying out regular pro- grams. The colored high schools of the state entered the Bible Study Contest. Fif- teen hundred white and colored boys and girls entered the contest and three colored high schools won prizes. C A Negro Southern Baseball League in- cluding Birmingham, Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Montgomery, New Orleans, Atlanta and Albany, Georgia, has been formed. Bert M. Roddy of Memphis is president. @ The Emporia, Kansas, Colored Jubilee Singers gave a concert recently at the Junior High School. The proceeds went to the milk fund for undernourished school children and the committee in charge, com- posed of colored and white people, sub- scribed for THE CRISIS out of the proceeds, for the Carnegie City Library. @ Eleven streets occupied by colored peo- ple in the city of Augusta, Georgia, are at last going to be paved and have sewerage. @ The Knights of Pythias of Louisiana have 183 lodges and paid last year $70,000 in death claims. They have a cash balance of $29,000 besides $67,000 in bonds. @ The Maple Hollow Country Club is be- ing developed on 256 acres of land on the highway running between Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio. The land contains a 43-acre lake. The Hon. Harry E. Davis is president of the Board of Trustees. @ Many camps for colored boys and girls are being established. In the vicinity of New York City both the Brooklyn and New York Colored Y. M. C. A. have camps, also the Y. W. C. A. THE OLDER BOYS’ CONFERENCE, WESTERN KENTUCKY

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The Little Page From the Friend of All Crisis Children EFFIE LEE NEWSOME CALENDAR CHAT I AM going to spell JULY with the birds this time, though this may prove a trifle embarrassing when we get to the U. I find my first letter, J, with ease. There is the Junco. But no, he has gone northward in. search of cold before July arrives. So we shall get our July J from the Jay him- self, for he—with his beautiful blue and gray and black feathers, and saucy top- knot—is almost always on hand, making trouble for the other birds! So much for our J. And now to the dreadful letter U. Let’s see. I rather believe that we must go to South America for the Umbrella Bird, with his gorgeous blue crest over a proud head. He belongs to the crow family in spite of his splendid head-dress or “umbrella”. Then there is the Lark for our next let- ter in July. How he sings in the meadows in July! His wings are so short that he never goes very far from home; and yet he is always well dressed in tan-color with a vest of yellow. Mrs. Lark makes her nests in a hollowed-out spot on the earth. I spoke of the gold vest that Larks wear. Here is some more gold or yellow, the Yel- lowhammer. There is our Y, the last let- ter for July. Yellowhammer, that large hardy bird, has his wings lined with bright yellow. His coat is near the color of the Lark’s. He trots about the lawn after a July rain and pokes his strong beak into the moist earth for worms. J-ay U-mbrella Bird L-ark Y-ellowhammer. And there we have JULY. The first two birds are very much trimmed with blue and the last two have touches of yellow or gold. In July we have the blue sky and the gold sunset. So we may be perfectly correct in spelling the month with the birds that have blue and gold feathers. THE WET PIGEON I saw a baby pigeon wet, One rainy summer day. Its gray wing quills were bristled out In such a funny way. He looked much like the old rough roof, On which he crouched alone Under a right white dripping sky From which raindrops were blown. Bisel Bi Sunflower AUNT SUNFLOWER Aunt Sunflower has a chocolate face, A hood of butter-yellow. Her head turns round to watch the sun— He’s such a lively fellow! HAMMERING Of all the tools a boy can have, The hammer suits me best. You need a hammer more all day Than any of the rest. You always can drive in a tack, Or hammer in a nail, Or tighten boxes on the edge, Or fix the old fence rail. The other tools, except my saw, Don’t make a busy noise. They’re most too still to seem to be Like anything but toys. a ES

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“Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre” The Story of a Little Theatre Movement [’ is customary to regard Negroes as an essentially dramatic race; and it is prob- ably true that tropical and sub-tropical peo- ples have more vivid imagination, are ac- customed to expressing themselves with greater physical and spiritual abandon than most folk. And certainly, life as black and brown and yellow folk have known it is big with tragedy and comedy. ‘The home life of Africans shows this natural dra- matic tendency; the strides of the native African, the ceremony of home and assem- bly, the intense interest in music and play, all attest this. In America, on the other hand, the road to freedom for the Negro lay through reli- gious organization long before physical emancipation came. The Negro church gave the slave almost his only freedom of spirit and of the churches that came to proselyte among the slaves, only those were permanently successful which wei e strongly tinged with Puritanism, namelv: the Bap- tist and the Methodist. These churches frowned upon drama and the play, upon the theatre and the dance; and for this rea- son the American Negro has been hindered in his natural dramatic impulses. Today as the renaissance of art comes among American Negroes, the theatre calls for new birth. But most people do not real- ize just where the novelty must come in. The Negro is already in the theatre and has been there for a long time; but his presence there is not yet thoroughly normal. His audience is mainly a white audience, and the Negro actor has, for a long time, been asked to entertain this more or less alien group. The demands and ideals of the white group and their conception of Negroes have set the norm for the black actor. He has been a minstrel, comedian, singer and lay figure of all sorts. Only re- cently has he begun tentatively to emerge as an ordinary human being with everyday reactions. And here he is still handicapped and put forth with much hesitation, as in the case of “The Nigger”, “Lulu Belle” and “The Emperor Jones”. In all this development naturally then the best of the Negro actor and the most poignant Negro drama have not been called for. This could be evoked only by a Negro audience desiring to see its own life de- picted by its own writers and actors. For this reason, a new Negro theatre is demanded and it is slowly coming. It needs, however, guiding lights. For instance, some excellent groups of colored amateurs are entertaining colored audiences in Cleve- land, in Philadelphia and elsewhere. Al- most invariably, however, they miss the real path. They play Shakespeare or Synge or reset a successful Broadway play with col- ored principals. The movement which has begun this year in Harlem, New York City, lays down four fundamental principles. The plays of a real Negro theatre must be: 1. About us. That is, they must have plots which reveal Negro life as itis. 2. By us. That is, they must be written by Negro authors who un- derstand from birth and continual associa- tion just what it means to be a Negro to- day. 3. For us. That is, the theatre must cater primarily to Negro audiences and be supported and sustained by their enter- tainment and approval. 4. Near us. The theatre must be in a Negro neighborhood near the mass of ordinary Negro people. Only in this way can a real folk-play movement of American Negroes be built up. Even this building encounters certain diffi- culties. First, there is the problem of the plays. Five years ago there were practi- cally no plays that filled the specifications noted. Already, however, this situation has begun to change on account of the prizes offered by THE CRISIS magazine and other agencies and for other reasons. There are available today a dozen or more plays of Negro life worth staging and the quantity and quality will increase very rapidly as the demand grows. The problem of actors is the least of the difficulties presented. In any group of colored people it is possible to get an unusual number of persons gifted with histrionic ability. The only trouble comes when effort is made to select the actors from limited groups or exclusively from among social acquaintances’ or friends. The third difficulty, that of a suit- 134

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136 able playhouse, is real and must be worked out as circumstances permit. There are usually halls that can be used temporarily. Now and then a church is liberal enough to house a play. In the New York movement, advantage is being taken of the fact that in the center of Harlem there is a branch of the New York Public Library which has in its base- ment a lecture room. The administration of this library has in the last few years changed from an attitude of aloofness from its Negro surroundings, and even resent- ment, to an attitude which recognizes that this library is serving a hundred thousand Negroes or more. It specializes on books which Negroes want to read; it subscribes to their periodicals and has lectures and art exhibits which attract them. Some time ago Miss Ernestine Rose, the Librarian, suggested that a Little Theatre movement be started in connection with this library; but other activities interfered. This year the library authorities expressed their willingness to help equip a small and inexpensive stage in the lecture room and a group of 30 persons interested in such a theatre has been organized. Foremost among these is Charles Bur- roughs. Charles Burroughs was trained in the college department of Wilberforce and at the School of Expression in Boston and has been a dramatic reader for many years for the Board of Education in New York City. He has been unusually successful in training actors as was shown by his train- ing the groups which gave the pageant, THE CRISIS “The Star of Ethiopia”, in New York, Washington, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. In the Harlem Little Negro Theatre the library authorities built the stage and dressing rooms and furnished the lighting equipment. The players group furnished the curtain, the scenery, gave the plays and secured the audiences. Three one-act plays were selected, for the initial experiment. Two were tragedies by Willis Richardson: “Compromise”, which was published in The New Negro, and “The Broken Banjo”, which took the first prize in THE Crisis Contest of 1925. The third, “The Church Fight’, by Mrs. R. A. Gaines-Shelton, is a comedy which took the second prize in THE CrISIS Contest of 1925. A cast of 20 persons was required and they rehearsed faithfully. Louise Latimer, assisted by Aaron Douglas, painted the scenery and on May 3, 10 and 17 the plays were given before full houses averaging 200 persons at each performance. The success of the experiment is unques- tioned. The audiences were enthusiastic and wanted more. The price of admission to membership in the group which gave the right to see the performances was only 50 cents and the total expense of staging the plays, not counting expenditures by the Li- brary, was about $165 while the returns were something over $240. The players not only perform plays but they welcome other groups under easy conditions to come and use their playhouse under their patronage. A second K. P. L. N. T. is being organ- ized in Washington, D. C., and it is hoped the movement will spread widely. Negro Street Serenade (In the South) EFFIE LEE NEWSOME HE quavering zigzag of the fiddle’s notes; The thumping “tum-tum” of the banjo and guitar; The gauzy quiver, flutter of the fiddle; The measured muffled thud of that guitar! And then a voice breaks forth— Loose, careless, mellow— A wealth of voice that rolls, soars, Rolls and falls, A reveling, rich voice, Deeper than the banjo’s; With more of melody than fiddles’ trebles, Yet with that subtle minor trembling through Which shakes the viol’s slender vibrance As the winds might— And all of this out in a half-hushed autumn dusk! The autumn air itself is tense, suspended, And into this that most spontaneous song! Which ripples on and floats and floats Midst “thum” of banjo And rhythmic background of that constant taut guitar, And travels with the wavers of the fiddle, To float and rise and rest with moon and star!

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Some High School Teachers of New York City W. N. HUGGINS G. F. NORMAN “He walked erect through the crowd, And ne’er the flash of his bright eye cowed ; And no one asked who his forebears were, And none, on his race, thought to cast a slur.” surging These lines are not an attempt to intro- duce the reader to an imaginary Utopia, nor to pretend that they usher in the oft- mentioned millennium. It is an effort to depict a rather accurate picture of the happy conditions that have prevailed and still continue in the teaching profession in New York City. This almost ideal condition began with the administration of the late Dr. William H. Maxwell as City Superintendent of Greater New York. Under his regime teachers were listed in the Board of Educa- tion with no mark, secret or open, to desig- nate their race. A great deal of credit is due the late Miss Elizabeth Frazier, whose determined pioneer work made this possi- ble. Before long it became the habitual assertion of Dr. Maxwell, when answering inquiries from various sources as to the colored teachers in New York City, to reply: “The Board of Education knows no teach- ers by race or creed”. When Dr. William L. Bulkley, now re- tired, was first installed as principal of the 137 W. RANKIN large and beautiful Public School 65, and some of the teachers in the school, not of his own race, objected vehemently to his appointment as their head, and made threats of resigning if Dr. Bulkley re- mained, Dr. Maxwell very calmly told the press that he was ready to receive the resig- nations of any teachers in that school who desired to tender them. But strange to say no resignations were presented. Dr. Bulk- ley held his post; and by his skillful admin- istration made those who stayed “to scoff” begin “to praise”. This attitude of Dr. Maxwell solved the status of the colored teacher in this cos- mopolitan city, where its teaching corps is drawn from the four quarters of the globe. Here one touches shoulders with English, French, German, Italian, Russian, South American, American teachers—teachers from all the national groups except the Chinese, Japanese and Eskimo. This com- plexity of race exists among the student body as well, and makes for greater diffi- culty in teaching than in most sections of our country. The New York school boy has long been known as a problem peculiar to himself. The precedent set by Dr. Maxwell has been maintained by his successors to the present day. To our group of teachers this situation has been too good to disturb by any act of thoughtlessness on their

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138 part. They are a modest group and dis- claim any credit for accomplishment that is the outgrowth of the cosmopolitan char- acter of the population. With the retirement of Dr. Bulkley, no one was left to represent the race in this position. It is true that for some years we had an assistant to principal in the pérson of the gifted and eloquent Miss Maritcha Lyons, of Brooklyn. But some years after her retirement before an- other was promoted to this position—the earnest, well-known Mrs. Elise McDougald. At the present writing, New York City is in the throes of a campaign to raise the teachers’ salaries, to compensate them for the constantly rising cost of living. As matters now stand, the salary schedule for the high school teacher has a slightly larger maximum than that of assistant to prin- cipal. This may account for the greater popularity of high school teaching over that of assistant. Whatever the cause, more of our group have sought and won appointment to this position, after a most searching competitive examination, than to the assistantship. It will be interesting to mention a few facts about some of the elapsed high school teachers of our group, not from the point of view of race achievement alone, nor of effusive praise of those few, but just as shining examples to bestir the success complex of others to some achievement. This success complex breathes its spirit from page to page of this mazazine and hardened indeed must be the “sinner” who can resist its moving appeal. The infer- iority complex is like the blues—it comes on us at rather frequent intervals, and we need the antidote just mentioned to drive it away. Perhaps the success complex will supply the place of the great traditions treasured so much by the Nordics and oth- ers. It is in this spirit that we introduce the following high school teachers in New York City to your attention. : Miss Lav'e Lane, of Girls High School, graduated from Vineland, N. J., High School in 1912. She holds the degrees of A.B. from Howard University; A.B. from Hunter College, New York; A.M. from Co- lumbia University. She has also studied at City College, Teachers College, Children’s University and the New School of Social Research. Miss Lane has taught in the elementary schools of Guthrie, Oklahoma, and in New THE CRISIS York City. She was appointed to the Girls High School in 19238. She was an active member of the Committee on Experimental Schools of the Teachers Union, which de- vised plans for an experimental school in New York City. She is particularly inter- ested in this phase of education. Mrs. Sara Bailey Moseley, of James Mad- ison High School, was born in Brooklyn. She graduated from the Girls High School and from the Maxwell Training School for Teachers. She was appointed to P. S. 84, and at the same time secured by examina- tion the license for, and successfully taught, English to foreigners. In due time she gained the Promotion License in English by further examination, thus advancing to teacher of the Graduating Class in P. S. 156. Meanwhile she obtained the license to teach English in Evening High School and taught in the Williamsburg Evening High School for Women several years. She has studied extensively in Adelphi College, New York University and City College. Some of this preparation has enabled her to pass the High School examination in Stenogra- phy and Typewriting. On February 1, she was appointed to the James Madison High School. All of her studying in college was done while teaching both day and evening. In 1913 she went abroad, visiting Paris, Switzerland, Belgium, England and Scot- land. ; Miss Melva L. Price, appointed to Wad- leigh High School, graduated from Bush- wick High School in 1920 with a Regents average of 92.3 per cent; and from Hun- ter College in 1924, summa cum laude, win- ning the Wilson G. Hunt gold medal for Latin and Greek, the Kelly silver medal for Methods of Teaching and honorable men- tion for the Classical Club prize. She was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa. In the ex- amination for teacher of elementary schools in June, 1924, she ranked first among more than a thousand successful candidates, at- taining a percentage average of 93.2. She served as teacher-in-training in the Latin Department of Thomas Jefferson High School for a term. Then she was appointed to P. S. 157, Manhattan, teaching there for a year. Meanwhile she successfully passed the High School examination in Latin and was recently appointed to Wad- leigh High School. Owing to decreased reg- istration there, she was temporarily as-

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JULY, 1926 signed to James Madison High School, where she is teaching Latin and French. She is a member of Tau Omega Chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. Willis N. Huggins, of Bushwick High School, has received the degrees of Bach- elor of Science and Master of Arts, in Edu- cation, from Columbia University; a certi- ficate in Journalism, Northwestern Univer- sity, Chicago; a certificate in History, Ox- ford University, England; a certificate in History and Geography, University of Paris. He was for two years head of the department of History and Economics, A. and M. College, Normal, Alabama. From 1917 to 1922, he was a teacher in the Wen- dell Phillips High School, Chicago. While in Alabama, he organized a branch of the Urban League and centered in it the wel- fare agencies among colored people. Dur- ing this time he led a fight against the “Birth of a Nation”, then showing in the city, and later made a fight to secure the conviction of a white man charged with criminal as- sault upon a colored girl. His activities were considered too militant by the whites and he was forced to leave the city in 1917. In 1922 he returned to New York and was appointed teacher of History and Economics in Bushwick High School. Last summer he studied at Oxford University, England, and at the University of Paris, at the same time making short trips in England and on the Continent. Mr. G. Torres Colon, of the Commercial High School, holds the teacher’s license from the Insular Normal School, of Rio Piedras, Porto Rico. He studied at Har- vard University in the class of 1909. He taught Spanish in the South Brooklyn Evening High School for some years and was appointed regular teacher of Spanish in the Commercial High School, Brooklyn, in February, 1918. Mr. Colon served as teacher of Spanish in the Harlem Evening High School for Men from 1918 to 1924. He taught Spanish in the Barington High School, Newark, N. J., in the sum- mer of 1918; and in the Summer High Schools of New York City for the seasons of 1922, 1923 and 1924. At present he is also connected with the Borough Hall Preparatory School of Brooklyn. He gave valuable assistance in collecting and ar- ranging the material of the text of “Span- ish Correspondence” by E. S. Harrison, Spanish First Assistant in the Commercial 139 High School, Brooklyn. He is a member of Beta Chapter of Theta Sigma Frater- nity, a member of the Egelloc club, and of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish. Mr. Gerald F. Norman, of Bryant High School, received the degree of B.S., College of the City of New York, in June, 1905. During his undergraduate course there he became President of the Clionia Debating Society, a member of the Class Relay Team, and of the Varsity Lacrosse Team, in 1904- 1905. He has pursued post graduate courses in the College of the City of New York in Mechanic Arts, in Oral English, and in Citizenship and Naturalization. He became teacher of Shopwork in P. S. 32 in 1905. In 1919 he was appointed teacher of Joinery in the Bryant High School, which position he holds at present. He is the first colored teacher to become an in- structor in the day high schools of this city. In addition he has served as teacher of English to foreigners in the Evening Elementary Schools from 1917 to the pres- ent and has taught in Vacation School and Vacation Playground. Mr. Norman is particularly interested in athletics. He was track athlete and basket ball player 1905 to 1910 and is coach of the Bryant High School Basketball Team. He won the Public Parks Tennis Champion- ship in Men’s Doubles (E. K. Jones as part- ner) of Queens Borough in August, 1923. He is one of the founders and charter member of the Alpha Physical Club and a former secretary and president. He has also been a member of the Board of Gov- ernors of the Metropolitan Association of the Amateur Athletic Union for over ten years and for two years has been chairman of its Junior Metropolitan Championship Committee. He is a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity (Eta Chapter), High School Teachers Association, Executive Secretary American Tennis Association, Long Island Automobile Club, Flushing Tennis Club, Flushing Educational Committee, and Uni- tarian Layman’s League. Mr. John S. Brown, Jr., of Thomas Jef- ferson High School, holds the degrees of Ph.B. from Brown University and M.A. from Columbia University. He has also done post graduate work at City College. He taught in P. S. 147 for a number of years, rising by promotion examination to

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140 THE the position of graduating class teacher. He became the leader of the school orches- tra. For a year he served as assistant to principal in P. S. 147. In February, 1925, he was appointed to the Thomas Jefferson High School, Brooklyn, to teach science. But he was borrowed by the Elocution De- partment of the school for two semesters and won praise by the conduct of his class work. During this time he directed one of the dramatic clubs of the school. He is now assigned to his own department teach- ing General Science, Biology and Chemis- try. His great interest is along dramatic lines. For two years he was president of the National Ethiopian Art Theatre, which gave performances and conducted a school with Mrs. Anne Wolter and some of the faculty of the American Academy of Dra- MRS. MOSELEY MISS LANE CRISIS matic Art as instructors. He has written two three-act plays. He is a member of the Signa Pi Phi Fraternity (Zeta Chap- ter) and of the Brooklyn Teachers Associa- tion. ; Other colored teachers in the high schools of Greater New York are Miss Dorothy R. Peterson, who teaches Spanish in Brooklyn and is an A.B. of the University of Porto Rico; James Harris, who teaches manual training in Brooklyn; and Wilfred Rankin, who teaches in the James Monroe High School in the Bronx. Finally it must be remembered that all of these teachers have gained their posi- tions by the same examinations as white teachers and that they teach in mixed schools, most of them having few or no colored children in their classes. MISS PRICE, G. T. COLON One Lonely Dreamer LUCIA TRENT OW God must mourn for all frail hu- man kin, How God must mourn for each frail human sin, Pity the bold young scoffer that decries Men, who have vision of transcending skies. Hlow God must mourn for all frail sons of men, Who hate and slaughter but to reap again The cruel harvest of their plundering. How He must pity commoner and king. How God rejoices when beneath His sky One lonely dreamer passes bravely by, Victor unsung of triumphs never won, A Daedalus, who dares fly toward the sun!

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High School Graduates T is impossible to make any complete survey of the colored high school grad- uates in the United States but we have received data from certain typical cities which we present. In New York City re- ports from 11 of the 15 high schools show 991 colored pupils enrolled and 100 grad- uates in January and June. The missing schools would probably bring this total up to something over a thousand students en- rolled and possibly a total of 110 grad- uates. In Philadelphia we have an account of~1310 students and 113 graduates. In Los Angeles, California, there are 490 en- rolled and 39 graduates. In Cincinnati, Ohio, 239 are enrolled and there are 20 graduates. In Pittsburgh there are 781 en- rolled and 43 graduating in June. These are typical cities where there are mixed high schools, the colored students in all cases being a minority and usually a very small minority of the total enrollment. Notwithstanding this they have won dis- tinctions in many cases. August Moore, for instance, in New York City, is the cham- pion mile runner of all the high schools of the city: “This in spite of serious difficul- ties at home.” Several are members of the Arista which is an honor scholarship or- ganization and one is president of the gen- eral student organization of the school. Of the girls, one school with a large enroll- ment says: “Many of them are fine girls and deserve commendation.” In Los An- geles they have won many distinctions: Viola Baucom won the second prize of $25 in her school in the Constitutional Orator- ical Contest; first prize in this contest for all the Los Angeles high schools and repre- sented Los Angeles in the Southwest elimi- nation contest. In this contest she won third place out of eight contestants and $100 given by the Los Angeles Times. Another, Clifford Gant, is “the most promising athlete in Los Angeles”. Still others have won dis- tinction in music and scholarship. Of the colored high schools, we find in Washington 1788 enrolled in the Dunbar High School with 238 graduates and 1005 in the Armstrong High School with 139 graduates. Baltimore has 2540 enrolled in the Junior and Senior High School of whom 1740 are in the Douglass Senior High VIOLA BAUCOM School. There are 280 graduates. Kansas City, Missouri, has 145 graduates from the Lincoln High School. Richmond, Virginia, has 1273 students enrolled in the high and normal schools with 119 graduates. Atlanta, Georgia, has 2022 students enrolled in her new high school but will not graduate a class until 1927. Birmingham, Alabama, has a total enrollment in the Senior High School of 913 with 181 graduates. Lowis- ville, Kentucky, has 936 enrolled and 105 graduates. Dallas, Texas, graduates 76 out of 800. North Carolina which has made notable educational progress for the South has 43 accredited Negro high schools, including both public and private high schools. Re- ports from -ix of these schools show 1831 enrolled and 234 graduates. The total num- ber of graduates for the state must be im- pressive. Beside the schools from which we have had reports there is, of course, a large en- rollment of colored high school students in Chicago and considerable numbers in De- troit, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Boston and other cities. 141

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Books COLORED CINCINNATI* ENDELL P. DABNEY, Editor of The Union and formerly city paymaster of Cincinnati, known to his friends by none of these titles but rather as an untrammeled editor, an independent politician and an artist on the guitar, has put together a most interesting book of 400 pages. It has set Cincinnati afire. The white people are out- raged because Dabney knows some colored descendants of Thomas Jefferson and the colored people are always outraged when Dabney tells the truth. The nine chapters of the book treat Ante- Bellum Days, the Colored Schools, Churches and Institutions, Fraternities, and Biogra- phies of the large number of colored men and women who have made Cincinnati. One cannot summarize the book. It is a sort of encyclopaedia, scrap book, picture gallery and collection of extraordinarily in- teresting stories. It ought to be widely read and it doubtless will be. W. E. B. D. “FLIGHT” ** EAUTIFUL Creole Mimi in “Flight” from home and race and self and back again at last to race—this is Walter White’s heart-compelling story of a mulatto. the term in its broadest sense. Mr. White pictures accurately and graph- ically the plight in which the mulatto so often finds himself, almost wrecked be- tween the Scylla of ostracism on the part of the white race and the Charybdis of sus- picion on the part of his black race. To the colored reader, probably, there is nothing new in the sociological or psycholog- ical revelations of the colored people in the various communities of Atlanta, Philadel- phia, in Harlem, where Mimi lived and struggled for existence. The novelty lies in the fact that Walter White is proving successfully that life is life; and if the life of the white man can be made interesting in literature so can the colored author make a place for his people in literature. Nor will it be alone the grotesque, unfortunately illiterate Negro who will occupy this place. * Cincinnati’s Colored Citiens. By W. P. Dabney. Dabney Publishing Co., Cin’ti. ** Flight. By Walter White. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. - I use In fact the life of the cultured mulatto pro- vides a far richer field for artistic literary development than the Nordic. A greater variety of complexes, due to his mixed blood, creates an involved psychology often mis- understood. Economic conditions force him into a false racial misrepresentation of him- self and the tragedy and pathos and sar- donic humor concomitant with such a situa- tion provide material for endless “Mimi” stories awaiting the pen of the sympathetic author. Such a story as “Flight”, told with the forceful ingenuousness of Mr. White, can never leave the reader apathetic—he will be either strongly on the offensive or on the defensive. “Flight” to me means “Mimi”. I should have preferred that title—with apologies to Mr. White. Treated less didactically Mimi would have been a stronger character. Mr. White is so very matter of fact that at times he falls back on a natural reportorial style that detracts from the artistry he has attempted to maintain in this his second novel. Mimi is too much the victim of her creator and particularly so in the finale. She seems deprived of her individuality and becomes mechanical accomplice to the plot rather than an intelligent woman striving to break through the whims of fate to a spiritual freedom. However, she is a long- awaited colored heroine. Mimi is through- out a serious, intelligent, tragic figure. She is distinctly an individualist. Behind her is an ancestry of dare-devil adventures, ardent lovers and leisured-gentry. She as- serted, at an early age, her inherited inde- pendence of spirit and a _ precocity of thought that both alarmed and gratified her father who indulged her in both. Small wonder then that when suddenly swept by the fire of early youth she loved intensely and without limit. But later she scorned to allow the weakling who had exploited her love to legalize her prospective mater- nity through marriage. The subsequent ostracism accorded Mimi caused her to take flight North and begin a lone battle to make a living for two. And it is around Mimi in a succession of flights that Mr. White has woven his dramatic tale of colorful American Negro life. NorA E. WARING.

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(Ser ea er ae The Looking Glass LITERATURE 667) ®- HUDNUT is pastor of the larg- est church in Youngstown, Ohio, with membership of the wealthy employers of labor in our city. He is chairman of our Interracial Committee and is an outspoken friend of our race. This poem was written for. his Interracial Sunday service which he conducts in his church once each year and has interested other ministers in doing the same. He also suggested and presided over our monster Interracial meeting which was addressed by Mr. Robert Bagnall and Dr. John Timothy Stone last week. Over two thousand people were unable to gain admis- sion to this meeting.” There is neither race nor clan In the measure of a man. Be he black or be he white, These are nothing in God’s sight; It is only—Is he right! Let him prove that, if he can. It is what he is that counts, Only thus his measure mounts; What the contribution made, What the fearful price he paid, And the glory he essayed— Thus God measures man’s accounts. If he rise above the crowd, Let’s acclaim the God-endowed. He will stand upon his worth, Not his nation or his birth, Greatest progeny of earth— He’s a man of whom we’re proud. * * * THE HUMAN RACE ELTON BOYD of Muskingum College, Ohio, says in a recently published pamphlet: I would state an evident fact: however diverse the relations of this audience may be, it has a common bond in its American citizenship. What, then, is the citizenry of America? Who mans this Ship of State? Men from the ports of every race and na- tion have heard her siren of Liberty,—until % Ld Englishman, Chinaman, Negro and Swede have mingled. Above the din of her en- gines we can hear the jangling of mutiny. The Anglo-Saxon masses mutter: ‘Free us from the Yellow Peril!” “What shall we do with the Negro?” “America for Americans!” Then cries the great Unwant- ed: “Down with Nordic domineering!” “Are they Americans more than we?” A fiery cross flares on the left; a flaming circle blazes on the right. In the quandary of the race problem our Leviathan makes slow progress. But despite the circles and the crosses, despite Jim Crow cars and ghettos, these groups are fusing. Do you know that one of every seven marriages is an _ inter- marriage between different races and na- tionalities, and one-fourth of our present population is of a recently blended inheri- tance? These facts are oil on fires of ha- tred. Race war lurks in the masses. Must the Chinese go back to the Celestial Em- pire and the Slav be returned to the Volga? If so, by what right? Or, following a po- litical doctrine, must these factions, like counteracting chemicals, fizz and blend into a neutral state? If so, by what right? As a national policy, must we segregate or amalgamate? Moulded either in the hands of God or in the evolution of a genetic process, was formed man. Neither science nor religion disputes his single origin. As his number increased in the unknown land of his birth, he moved into regions of different foods and climate. We see in the heavily bearded Russian and in the balmy tempered Italian how man took on, in the milleniums that are to us days, the physical and mental characteristics adapted to his habitat. Then, in a second stage of roving in the search for food and plunder. these primordial hordes migrated. As each trekked across the clime of another there was left with the straggler, and on the conquered, the mark of its blood and culture. The passing of centuries saw the fusion of biological traits and the confusion of cultural stamps. Our Nordic forefathers, as the history of man reveals, were to be found among the hordes of proto-Australoids and of proto-Negroids as they mingled with tribes of Europe. The American Anglo-Saxon, the Negro, and the Australian have prehistoric ancestors in common. They are of one blood, modified through the ages in different environment. INTELLIGENCE T is a curious commentary upon Ameri- can science that psychologists have 143

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144 rushed headlong into the job of compelling the new intelligence tests to prove the in- feriority of the Negro race. M. J. Hersko- vits in a recent pamphlet quotes a Mas- ter’s essay in Columbia University: “All investigators agree in placing the Negro below the white although their quan- titative statements of the relative ability of the Negro and white vary enormously; Sunne gives the average retardation as the same in both races; Pressey finds that 36 per cent of the Negroes surpass the white median; Arlitt that six year old Negroes are five points superior to whites of the same age, and that eight to fifteen year old Négroes are 9.7 points inferior. Ferguson considered that Negro efficiency may be placed at about 75 per cent of that of the whites, while the results of Thorndyke’s recent study show only 4 per cent of the Negroes exceeding the median of the whites.” This, of course, is an extraordinary and inconceivable set of differences, and is not ° any difference adequately answered by the social environment of white and black in America and by such contradictory data as is furnished in Los Angeles, and in Louisville where the results were kept from publication? Mr. Herskovits attacks the results from another. point of view, namely, the question of the amount of white blood in the so-called “Negroes” and he comes to the following five conclusions: 1. That the hypothesis of less Negro in- telligence and social efficiency when com- pared to Whites, which has been generally accepted from results in psychological tests, must be further tested by the acceptability of its logical corollaries. 2. That the first of these, that in mix- ture, a group of those individuals having more White blood is innately superior to a croup of those having more Negro blood, is to be severely questioned in the light of the correlations computed in this study. 3. That the second of these,.that it is possible to place individuals on the bases of anthropological traits such as skin color with sufficient accuracy to bring groups to- gether to study the problem of the effects of intermixture in varying degree, without the use of genealogies, is also to be gravely doubted because of the large overlapping in any traits which may be selected as cri- teria. 4. That the assumption that there is not sufficient discrimination within the Negro group against those individuals showing emphasized Negroid traits, particularly skin color, to cause differences in social en- vironment which would affect the mean standings of groups selected on the basis of these traits is also to be highly questioned. 5. That in the licht of the findings in this paper, the basic hypothesis of White su- THE CRISIS periority in general social efficiency and innate intelligence is to be gravely doubted, and that the results obtained by Ferguson are sufficiently contradicted by the results in this paper to render them subject to the most searching criticism and thorough — checking before they may be util- ized. THE BLACK MAN’S RIGHTS HARLES RODEN BUXTON, a de- scendant of the great abolition family, has written a pamphlet for the English Independent Labor Party on the black man’s rights: The white man is sweating the black man. I do not mean merely the white man on the spot; I mean the white races—our- selves. That is the broad and terrible fact which stands out from the innumerable ramifications, and the literature, of what is called the “Native Races Question”. This question is one of wide range and deep significance. We have a tremendous re- sponsibility, which we cannot evade. And we have a direct interest. The white races may profit for a time, but the exploitation of the black man will lead, sooner or later, - the degradation of the white worker also. We must distinguish two periods in the exploitation of Africa. The first, which we may roughly date as lasting from 1880 to 1900, when most of our tropical African territory was acquired, was a stormy period of conquest, of competition with other Powers for spheres of influence, of the ad- venturous pushing forward of missionary enterprise, of the prevention of slave-raid- ing and slave-trading. It was a period in which ample material was afforded for patriotic enthusiasm, for high-minded phil- anthropy, for appreciating and enjoying the romance of Empire. But the state of the public mind was confused to an ex- traordinary degree. No one—except the world of Big Business—seems to have an- alysed the purposes for which all this in- tense activity was being employed. There was a general current running in the di- rection of imperialism, not only in this country, but in France and Germany, Bel- gium and elsewhere. At bottom, the driv- ing force was the need of the white races for tropical products, and the high profits and rates of interest which were to be earned in the process of supplying that need. “It was the realization of this fact” (the need of tropical products) “which led the nations of Europe to compete for the control of the African tropics,” says Sir Frederick Lugard (The Dual Mandate). Economists have demonstrated the intimate connection of this process with the rapid ac- cumulation, at home, of capital which could not be profitably invested there, owing to the maldistribution of wealth, and which therefore demanded an outlet in the unde- veloped quarters of the world.

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JULY, The second period is that in which we are now living. It is not a sensational per- iod. Frontiers are settled. Administration is regulated. The exploitation of Africa has settled down, broadly speaking, into a quiet, orderly, effective system. The fruits of the earlier period are now being reaped. Slavery in its simple forms has largely dis- appeared. But other forms are taking their place. The process has become much more subtle than it was. For that very reason its real meaning is the more likely to escape observation. All the greater is the need for vigilance, if injustice on a world scale is to be met, exposed and prevented. Let us face the question fairly—what is the net result of our actions on the native of Africa? We have robbed him of his land on a colossal scale, and we have es- tablished, over large areas, a condition under which he has to sell his labor to the white man on terms which are not dictated by anything approaching to a free contract. Our methods have broken down the old tribal organization, and irreparably under- mined the ideas which supported it. We have, in certain areas, gravely injured fam- ily life and caused the spread of devastating diseases. While preventing the native from acquiring European firearms for internal warfare, we have introduced him to the immeasurably greater horrors of the Euro- pean War, and taught him to fight for one set of white men against another. SOCIAL EQUALITY HE Haldeman-Julius Weekly of Girard, Kansas, has had a number of interest- ing articles on race relations, characterized by sanity and decency. We quote from one published March 13: From Maury Robinson, come these questions: Do you mean to say that you, a refined, cultured woman, advocate the co-mingling of Whites and Negroes? Their associa- tion together in clubs would, of course, naturally result in their association to- gether socially, eating together, dancing to- gether. You would look with favor upon your dancing with a Negro, or your daugh- ter when she grows older, having Negroes call on her or going driving with them? Yes, Mr. Robinson, I certainly do advo- cate the co-mingling of the white and darker races. Especially do I advocate it in schools and colleges. It is indeed, only by consistent co-mingling that races, funda- mentally different, can hope to come eventually to a thorough understanding and appreciation of each other. And where, I ask you, is such an effort at understanding more properly or more wholly in place than at a university, the whole avowed purpose of which is to further the contacts and deepen the comprehension of its students? But I would not seem to quibble. I be- lieve there should be as free a co-mingling Paris, Texas, 1926 146 of white and darker races throughout this, their common country, as there is at present between all classes of white people. I am very FS to state categorically, once and for all, that just as surely as I believe— not very militantly it is true, but none the less sincerely—in equal political, civil, eco- nomic and social equality between men and women, just-as surely do I believe in equal political, civil, economic and social equality between the white citizens and the darker citizens of the United States. I am en- tirely opposed to the segregation of races. TRAVEL OT much has been said lately of the insult and injustice of “Jim Crow” cars in the South. Gradually, however, complaint is becoming articulate- The Southwestern Christian Advocate, a colored Methodist paper, has a broadside in a re- cent number in which it says: Hundreds of thousands of Negroes pat- ronize the railroads of the South, enriching these great systems by millions of dollars annually. As everywhere, these railway systems are the industrial arteries of this section. Through them thus the Negro makes an incalculable contribution to the South’s well-being. So it is astonishing what meager consideration is given by these roads to the Negro’s comfort or even convenience. Simply because of racial prejudice, we are forced to ride on the slower trains, in- volving loss of much valuable time. In or- der to make long-distance trips, or to fill engagements, we must start earlier than is necessary, and be on the road more hours than should be required, thus encountering extra expense on the trip; also suffering extra nervous strain. Besides, the coaches are generally partitioned into three compart- ments, two thirds of which is given over to separate smokers for white men and col- ored men, with the tobacco fumes pouring easily into the third compartment in which colored women and non-tobacco-using col- ored men are packed as sardines in a box. These “coaches” are highly unsanitary by reason of congestion, and because of the frequent lack of separate toilets for men and women; also because of failure jto sweep and dust and air them at intermedi- ate stations. Temperature regulation at a proper degree is hardly thought of or known. Add to this, nuisances committed by the crews not infrequently, and here is a combination of circumstances intolerable if there were any possible way of escape there- from. Often the conductor and other train- men ride in the colored “coach” smoking, expectorating freely, and with their coarse- ness and boorishness, swearing and telling smutty yarns in presence of colored women, girls, and small children to the chagrin and exasperation of decent passengers.

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146 The vender of trinkets and confection- eries is another nuisance that makes travel in the South irksome to Negroes. With his swaggering air, with his undue famil- iarities toward unprotected Negro female passengers, he disgusts decent patrons. And his frequently exorbitant prices are an out- rage. On a railroad in Florida we saw one sell a small toy glass pistol full of cheap colored candy balls for forty-five cents, and a five-cent package of “Zoo-Zoo” ginger snaps for twenty cents. Such licensed high- way robbery should be eliminated from Southern railroad policies. To avoid these conditions—slow trains, crowded and unsanitary coaches, and nui- sances by certain trainmen—one relief would be to travel generally on Pullman cars. But Pullman facilities are limited, as far as Negroes are concerned. Now and then a Negro gets Pullman accommodations on a train in the South, but it is very sel- dom, and then it is gotten through some “pull” through someone who is “next” to the ticket agent. The policy in the South is to deny to the Negroes the comfort of Pullman cars. To effect this, all types of subterfuges are resorted to: the “space has all been sold”, or the “diagram has been sent from the ticket office to the train con- ductor”, or you may get space “when a cer- tain car is attached further up on the line’, ete., etc., etc. One young Southern ticket seller was heard to say to a Negro applicant for a berth, “I have never sold a N. a Pullman berth, and never intend to”. Flagrant violation of the laws of the land and of the public civil franchise under which public carriers are permitted to op- erate. More flagrant still is this: There are THE CRISIS half-dozen entire trains in the South on which the Negro cannot ride at all. These are exclusive, no coach, solid Pullman, lim- ited trains. They are the time-saving, comfort-yielding palaces on wheels. In his testimony last week before the Senate In- terstate Commerce Committee, Senator Smith, of South Carolina, rightly said, “Pullman travel has become a necessity to the American people”. But the senator did not mean that statement to apply to his fel- low citizens of color in the South. Some Southern white papers like the Greensboro, N. C., News are commenting on the subject and Inter-racial Committees are beginning timidly to discuss the sub- ject. * * * The Guardian, Calcutta, India, writes of the magazines: THE Crisis . . . is “A Record of the Darker Races,” edited by Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, whose “Souls of Black People” has become a classic. His editorial comments alone make the magazine worth having and one would wish that more of our people supported and read it. In the January number he makes the interesting sugges- tion, that much of the anti-Negro hysteria in the United States is due to the fact that “because so many white Americans have black blood which might come to light, they pounce and worry like wolves to prove their spotless family”—a psychologically only too probable explanation. Interesting pictures are also a regular feature of the magazine, as are short stories and book reviews. THE OLDER BOYS’ CONFERENCE, WESTERN KENTUCKY

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