The Crisis 1925-08: Vol 30 Iss 4
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Vacation Time Ease of mind and freedom from physical ailments are essential to a real vacation. ‘Therefore pay par- ticular attention to the water supply and other sanitary arrangements of Home Office Group _— tlie place where you plan to spend -7-9 N. 2nd St. : your vacation—And be sure to eliminate all worries about tomor- row by securing one of the Southern Aid Society’s Superior Policy Contracts, providing, for One Small Premium, Protection against Sickness, “Accident and Death. They have stood the acid test of time—Look! Over $3,500,000.00 Paid to Policyholders Over $700,000.00 in Assets Over $800,000.00 Annual Income Over $500,000.00 Invested in Modern Office Buildings and Loans on Homes to our Group Over $150,000.00 Cash in Banks and Trust Companies Over 32 Years of Satisfactory Service to Policyholders and the Race Over 500 Women and Men given dignified Employment Southern Aid Society of Va., Inc. Home Offices: 525-27-29 N. 2nd St., Richmond, Va. Operating in State of Virginia and District of Columbia. 2? i! ‘ —
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THE CRISIS A RECORD OF THE DARKER RACES PUBLISHED MONTHLY AND COPYRIGHTED BY THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE AT 698 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, N. Y. CONDUCTED BY W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS; JESSIE REDMON FAUSET, LITERARY EDITOR; AUGUSTUS GRANVILLE DILL, BUSINESS MANAGER. Vol. 30 No. 4 AUGUST, 1925 Whole No. 178 COVER Page An Etching by Albert Smith PICTURES OF 312 NEGRO GRADUATES OPINION “Fake Degrees”; “The Gospel According to Robert”; “Kelly Miller”; “ ‘Free’ Schools”; “The Virgin Islands”; “Georgia”................ 163 NEGRO EDUCATION, 1925. Illustrated 166 COMPANION. A Poem. Georgia Douglass Johnson................... 180 THE DENVER CONFERENCE, Illustrated ..................00005. 181 IS THE JEW A FRIEND OF THE NEGRQ? David H. Pierce............ 184 NEGERE SOM DIGTERE. Karl Kjersmeier ...................++0-: 186 THE HORIZON. Illustrated .................. 191 FIFTEEN CENTS A COPY; ONE DOLLAR AND A HALF A YEAR FOREIGN SUBSCRIPTION TWENTY-FIVE CENTS EXTRA RENEWALS: The date of expiration of each subscription is printed on the wrapper. When, the subscription is due, a blue renewal blank is enclosed. CHANGE OF ADDRESS: The address of a subscriber can be changed as often as desired. In ordering a change of address, bota the old and the new address must be given. Two weeks’ notice is required. MANUSCRIPTS and drawings relating to colored people are desired. They must be accom- panied by return postage. If found unavailable they will be mailed carefully to the sender but we assume no responsibility. Entered as second class matter November 2, 1918, at the post office at New York, New York, under the Act of March 3, 1879. ‘ q t
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160 THE CRISIS ADVERTISER PAINE COLLEGE AUGUSTA, GA. STANDARD COLLEGE COURSES Approved Two-Year Normal Accredited Senior High School Up-to-Date Junior High School “To develop leaders you must have the best possible equipment for literary training and that is what we are striving for at Paine College”, said one of the leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. This Church contributes largely to the support of Paine College. A Good School at Reasonable Rates For further information, address RAY S. TOMLIN, President, PAINE COLLEGE. Virginia Union University is now a Class A College Excellent courses are offered in College as well as in Theology and in High School Work. The summer session is for college students only. For full information address the . President at Richmond, Virginia. Lincoln University Pioneer in Collegiate and Theological Education by the Association of of the Middle States and Lincoln Graduates are Leaders in the various professions and in “al parts of the country. Addrees: The Dean of the University LINCOLN UNIVERSITY CHESTER COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA School of High Standards and a Rigorous Pace WILEY COLLEGE Marshall, Texas Agencies. Has operated on the basis of a year since June, 1921. Graduation in yey and August. Entrance any quarter. Leading colleges and universities on ite faculty. More than twe hundred and rolled in college $35,000 invested in cotentific and research equipment. prominence given te musie and to wholesome W. DOGAN, President. = 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 15, 1925. First semester begins Wednesday, September 16, 1925. For further information and catalog, write LESLIE PINCKNEY HILL, Principal yney, Pa. Mention Tue Crisis.
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Tt THE CRISIS Vol. 30 No. 4 AUGUST, 1925 Whole No. 178 FAKE DEGREES RINCETON UNIVERSITY has conferred one of the highest honors upon Rey. I. | W. Williams, the pastor of the Shiloh Baptist Church, Sumter, S. C., that any university can give. He received this degree Summa Cum Laude with the highest honors in Moral Science. Princeton University con- ferred the degree Ph.D. upon Rev. I. W. Williams. Rev. Williams is one of the Greatest preachers in all Amer- ica and well deserves this high honor. “(REv.) F. C. WILLIAMS,” Buffalo, New York. “T have your inquiry of July eighth addressed to the Dean of Princeton University. In reply to it I would state that the Reverend I. W. Wil- liams, Sumter, South Carolnia, has no degree from Princeton University. “Yours very truly, HOWARD McCCLENAHAN, Dean of the College.” “Dear Dr. DuBois :— Your letter of July 8, has been re- ceived and in reply to same will say that you are perfectly right to find out this information. Remember that this Princeton University is not in the State of New Jersey but in Prince- ton, /ndiana. “(REv.) F. C. WILLIAMS.” Buffalo, New York. oS WEB Du Bois “Department of State, Indianapolis, Ind. Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, Dear Sir:—Replying to your in- quiry of July 16th, 1 beg to advise that I fail to find in this office any record of the incorporation of an in- stitution known as Princeton Uni- versity, and I am therefore unable to give you any information concerning the university. “Yours truly, E. D. JACKSON, Secretary of State.’’ THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ROBERT E have just discovered in the archives of THE CRISIS an ancient manuscript, grown yellow with age, which we strongly suspect ought to have been published several centuries ago, but we are going to publish it now because it seems to have a cer- tain appropriateness in view of the number of large and important ap- pointments made by Calvin Coolidge from among the faithful: Of Black Politicians and the N.A.A.C.P. In the reign of Calvin, the Silent, there arose among the conclave of black seekers of office, known as Negro politicians, a mighty and furious anger. It waxed might- ily against the organization known in the land by the mystic letters N.A.A.C.P. It happened in this wise: The people of the land made a counting to determine whether Calvin, the Silent, or John, the Able, or Robert, the Warrior, should rule in the land. And at that time the N.A.A.C.P., so sayeth the Negro politicians, was guilty of a grievous wrong in that it not only did 163 ‘ = | | ~ || | | on
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164 THE not advise the blacks of the land to support Calvin, but urged them to free themselves from all party yokes and to cast their lots for those whom they believed to be their friends and against their enemies regard- less of party names. Further, the N.A.A. C.P. dared to criticise the rule of the house of Calvin, the Silent, and to proclaim the things in which he had neglected to min- ister to the needs of the blacks. (That the N.A.A.C.P. also published the things in which the other houses fell short is imma- terial sayeth these men whose brows are brass.) Therefore the Negro politicians gathered together, and Benjamin of Atlan- ta, who advised the blacks of the land of Indiana to vote for a Ku Klux Klan Gov- ernor, and “Link” of Georgia, who pro- nounced an anathema against educated blacks because they thought for themselves, and Perry, who in the reign of Warren Gamaliel sought to destroy the Dyer Anti- Lynching Bill, and Robert of Pittsburgh, whose desire for office causes him to detest all who would think for themselves in poli- tics, and Roscoe, surnamed “The Wind Bag’’, entered into a conspiracy. “This N. A.A.C.P.”, they said, “waxeth great and ‘the people are listening to its word and soon, if we do naught, they will follow its advice and demand that the soldiers in Leavenworth be set free, that segregation in the government be ended and that the Anti-Lynching Bill be passed rather than that we get jobs. If we allow it to con- tinue no longer can we use the people as our pawns. We cannot harm it by the truth for it hath accomplished mighty deeds; and its affairs are not done in a cor- ner but thrown open to all the world to be seen. “Let us therefore spread the tale, that the N.A.A.C.P. ceased to be non-partisan and supported the third Party and the Democrats and spent the money of the people in such support. Of a truth we know that this is a lie, but perchance the people are simple and will be deceived thereby, and hurt will come to our adver- sary.” And so the Negro politicians published abroad their lies—for such ones have ever cared only that they might prey upon the people for their own advantage. But their lies shall be a pit unto them into which they themselves shall fall. R. W. B. CRISIS KELLY MILLER HE dismissal of Kelly Miller from Howard University after a life time spent unselfishly in the service is a disgrace so y an and hateful that J. Stanley Dur- kee must answer to an indignant pub- lic opinion for its perpetration. He cannot hide behind the opinion of “experts”. No matter what their judgment may be, the fact remains that for forty years Howard Univer- sity has been well content to suck the life blood of this man at a compensa- tion less than that of a good brick- layer. He has toiled with smiling face and high heart in the midst of poverty. He has raised five bright children and clung to a brave good wife and dispensed a genuine hospi- tality to friend and acquaintance. He has been the spiritual father of thousands upon thousands of young men and women of Negro descent. His keen mind has leaped to every human problem. In a terribly im- perfect world he has had his imper- fections but God knows there are plenty of us who have more than he. If the alumni of Howard University allow this man to be kicked into the street in his age they write them- selves down as a set of ungrateful cowards. (This was written before the news comes that Mr. Durkee has discovered methods of retaining Mr. Miller’s ser- vices; which is in our opinion exceed- ingly lucky—for Mr. Durkee. But it does not end the matter.) “FREE” SCHOOLS E, the “Better School League” of Johnson, have on a better school drive, and we are seeking aid from every source. We have no pub- lic school of any worth in Johnson. Our enrollment now exceeds two hun- dred ninety and only three teachers at present. Our rooms are very
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AUGUST, shabby with poor accommodations for our students. We try to teach from the primary department through eighth grade. At present the “League” has purchased a plot of land for the erection of a building which will be finished by the County and Rosenwald Fund. The estimated cost is about seven thousand dollars. If you can possibly give us any aid we will greatly appreciate it. Yours truly, C. O. McINTOSH, Principal of the Johnson School. Johnson, South Carolina. GEORGIA INE eyes have seen the Pageant of the Progress of Georgia, from Atlanta to 4 the sea. First come the mil- lionaires—strong, quick and tailored men. Their faces are white-washed walls. Their brains are counting machines clicking unchanging and immutable Truth. Their hearts are chips from that Stone Mountain where Daughters of the Confederacy are making the memory of the War for Slavery eternal. After the millionaires hurry the Harlots—skeletons in rags of silk with gold and jewels rattling on their bones. Whether their faces were black or white one may not know; but on their gaping skulls lie powder, paint and tears. After the Harlots come the Chil- dren—children of the mills, children of the fields, all the thousands and thousands of children whom there are no school-rooms to hold. There is no laughter in these children’s eyes. They trudge along. The white ones despise the black. The black ones hate the white. Both starve in body and soul. . After the Children—the Church. First the church that is White, with grave and silent men, with pious and silent women; with Bible and gospel 1925 165 hymn book and Fundamental Creed. They ignore the church that is Black with mighty ignorance. They carry a long noosed rope and the rope lash- ing backward cafesses a Cross. Be- neath the Cross staggers an old and weary Jew whom once the World lynched. He was called the Christ. Behind the Christ dances the church that is Black. It smiles at the church that is White. It helps Christ carry his Cross. Behind the Church float shadows. Within the shadows soft voices sing a great Music wherein the murmur of all the rivers of Georgia blend in. sombre sympathy with the Sorrow Song of slaves. Above the shadows I see the rising sun. THE VIRGIN ISLANDS HE fight that is going on in the Virgin Islands calls for the sympathy and co-opera- Sag tion of American Negroes. It is being pushed today by the Civil Liberties Union and it rests upon the fact that Philip Williams, an American politician of the most offen- sive sort, has been made governor of the islands under the autocratic Naval régime and has been insulting and persecuting the natives. Particularly has he tried to put Rothschild Francis, an editor, in jail simply for criticis- ing him. The case is to come up for final trial in the United States and should be watched with interest. Meantime the withholding of citizen- ship from the inhabitants of the Vir- gin Islands is one of the most dis- graceful things in modern imperial- ism. Here are thousands of men without a country, bought for a few paltry dollars, pauperized by new in- dustrial laws, disfranchised and in- sulted and not allowed even to be citi- zens of the country which has an- nexed them. And_all because most of them are of Negro descent. |
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NEGRO EDUCATION, 1925 UJ NCOMPLETE returfs& give an enroll- ment of 1,038 Negro students in North- ern institutions. Several institutions are missing which should bring this number up to 1,200 or more. From these institutions there were graduated in 1925 177 Bach- elors of Arts, Science and Philosophy (6 of these were elected to the Phi Beta Kappa and 1 to the Delta Sigma Rho); 27 Masters of Arts and Science, 1 Master of Humanics, 2 Doctors of Philosophy, 1 Bachelor of Fine Arts, 1 in Physical Training. In the pro- fessions there were graduated 2 Masters of Business Administration, 1 Master of Laws, 1 Doctor of Laws, 1 Doctor of Juridical Sci- ence, 3 Bachelors of Music, 2 Bachelors of Sacred Theology, 1 Bachelor of Secretarial Science, 23 Doctors of Dental Surgery, 2 Doctors of Medical Dentistry, 23 Doctors of Medicine, 1 Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, 20 Graduates of Pharmacy, 1 Electrical Engineer, 1 Civil Engineer, 1 Bachelor of Engineering, 3 Bachelors of Divinity, 20 Bachelors of Laws. From Negro institutions there were grad- uated 574 Bachelors of Arts and Science 16 Masters of Arts and Science, 2 Doctors of Science, 1 Doctor of Letters, and 12 nurses. There were the following professional grad- uates: 9 Bachelors of Music, 2 Bachelors of Civil Engineering, 1 Electrical Engineer, 1 Architect, 36 Bachelors of Theology, 27 Bachelors of Laws, 97 Doctors of Medicine, 79 Doctors of Dental Surgery, 33 Pharma- cists and 1 Master of Laws. This makes in all 752 students who have taken the first degree in arts and 44 Mas- ters as compared with 675 Bachelors and 30 Masters in 1924, and 643 Bachelors and 23 Masters in 1923. There were in 1925 in all 392 professional graduates as compared with 446 in 1924 and 486 in 1923. Harvard University graduates 4 Bach- elors of Arts, 2 Masters of Arts, 1 Doctor of Philosophy, 1 Doctor of Dental Surgery, and 2 Bachelors of Science. J. Q. Adams was awarded the National Urban League Fellowship to do graduate work in Social Ethics at Harvard. Emmett J. Scott re- ceives the degree of Doctor of Medical Den- tistry cum laude. Radcliffe College has five Negro students and one special student, and graduates 1 Master of Arts, Elizabeth B. Lewis. Yale University graduates 3 Bachelors of Divinity and 1 Bachelor of Laws. Columbia University graduates 6 Masters of Arts, 1 Bachelor of Laws, 2 Doctors of Dental Surgery, 6 Bachelors of Science, 2 Bachelors of Art. Miss Iva R. Marshall is a special examiner of history for the Board of Regents of New York. New York University graduates 2 Mas- ters of Business Administration, 3 Doctors of Medicine, 2 Bachelors of Laws, 1 Doctor of Juridical Science, 2 Bachelors of Sci- ence, and 1 Bachelor of Arts. Mr. Countée P. Cullen was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa, College of the City of New York has 45 Negro students and graduates 3 Bachelors of Science. Joel Bolden completed the reg- ular four years course in three and one-half years. Miss Catherine Wales received a graduate diploma in accounting. This is the equivalent in credits to a degree of Bachelor in Commercial Science which is given by other colleges. Fordham Unversity graduates 2 Bach- elors of Laws and 1 Graduate of Pharmacy. Syracuse University has 33 Negro stu- dents and graduates 2 Bachelors of Arts, 1 Electrical Engineer, 1 Doctor of Medicine and 1 Bachelor of Science. University of Buffalo graduates 1 Bach- elor of Science, Miss Jeannette M. Ander- son. The University of Pennsylvania has 58 Negro students and graduates 4 Doctors of Dental Surgery, 1 Master of Arts, 1 Bach- elor of Fine Arts, 1 Bachelor of Science, and 2 Bachelors of Arts. The University of Pittsburgh has 96 Ne- gro students and graduates 1 Master of Arts, 1 Bachelor of Laws, 1 Bachelor of Science, one Graduate of Pharmacy, and 1 Bachelor of Arts. Temple University graduates 1 Bachelor of Laws, 7 Doctors of Dentistry, 11 Grad- uates of Pharmacy, 4 Doctors of Medicine, 1 Bachelor of Arts, and 1 Bachelor of Science. University of Chicago graduates 2 Mas- ters of Arts, 1 Doctor of Philosophy, 1 Doc- tor of Medicine, and 4 Bachelors of Phi- losophy. The Unversity of Michigan has 60 Negro students and graduates 1 Master of Science in Architecture, 1 Doctor of Medicine, 2 Doctors of Dentistry, 1 Graduate of Phar- macy, 5 Bachelors of Arts, and 1 Bachelor of Science. The University of Cincinnati has about 50 Negro students and graduates 3 Masters of Arts, 2 Bachelors of Arts, 1 Bachelor of Science. and 7 Bachelors of Education. Laura C. Knight is the youngest graduate in the class. She is 18 years old. The Ohio State University graduates 3 166
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AUGUST, ANNA J. COOPER, Ph.D. Sorbonne, Paris Masters of Arts, 1 Doctor of Laws, 1 Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, 2 Doctors of Dental Surgery, 6 Bachelors of Arts, and 8 Bach- elors of Science. The University of Minnesota has 30 Ne- vro students and graduates 3 Doctors of Dental.Surgery and 1 Bachelor of Science. St. Paul College of Law graduates James A. Harris with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. Purdue University has 11 Negro students and graduates 3 Bachelors of Science and 1 Graduate in Pharmacy. Northwestern College of Law graduates Felton G. Clark, A.M. Columbia Shamray Columbia Bryant, A.M. N. Yolande DuBois, A.M. 1925 167 James H. Johnston, Jr..A.M. W. A. Daniel, Ph.D. Chicago Chicago John W. Pate and Erroll M. Fassett with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. Mr. Fas- sett maintained an average of 89 for the four years. The Internat-onal Y. M. C. A. College has eight Negro students and graduates D. S. Yarbrough with the degree of Master of Humanics. Ohio University has 22 Negro students and graduates 4 Bachelors of Science in Education, 3 Bachelors of Arts in Commerce and 2 Bachelors of Arts. Drake Univers:ty graduates Miss Burdell Sullivan with the degree of Bachelor of Music. Toledo University graduates W. Adrian Freeman with a Bachelor of Science degree. Washburn College has 36 Negro students and graduates 6 Bachelors of Arts. Mr. Harry K. Atchison is an honor student in the department of science and will work for his degree of Doctor of Medicine. Miss Rose L. Page completed the four year course in three and one-half years. Massachusetts Institute of Technology has 18 Negro students and graduates 4 Bach- B. E. Mays, A.M. Columbia Chicago | | | | | | | aby | | | | |
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THE CRISIS Marjorie E. Parsons, A.B. Smith Aquilla M. Rice, B.S. Columbia Camille Washington, A.B. Illinois Luther M. Fuller, B.S. Boston Maurine G. Young, Ph.B. Chicago Susie Goode, B.S. Ohio State Ruth E. Clement, A.B. Martha A. Wilson, A.B. Northwestern Butler Mary Stokes, A.B. Laura C. Knight, A.B. Butler Cincinnati Vance G. Smith, A.B. Clifford V. Smith, B.E. Butler State University, Ia. 168 Annetta B. Palmer, B.S. Bradley Polytechnic Sarah M. Jeffers, Ph.G. California M. Corine Mathis, A.B. State University, Ia. Roscoe G. Robinson, A.B. Syracuse % | Wer’ a | >
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AUGUST, 1925 Rose L. Page, A.B. Charlotte C. Ellis, B.S. Joel V. Bolden, B.S. Oliver N. LaMorell, Ph.G. Washburn Ohio State New York City Fordham Marguerite E. Norman, A.B. Costella M. Taylor, A.B. Leslie E. Engram, B.S. Lewis K. McMillan, B.D. Washburn Cincinnati Columbia Yale Solomon E. Edwards, A.B. Harry R. Campbell, A.B. Charles S. Sedgewick, S.T.B. Butler Butler Philadelphia Elmer W. Dean, S.T.B. E. M. Wright, B.D. Thompson Terry, Ph.G. Harry Atchison, A.B. Boston Seabury Temple Washburn 169 | | % A | | | | |
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THE CRISIS Wendell P. Green, M.D. James L. Hall, M.D. James L. Elliott, D.D.S. Tee a, Borders, B.S. Northwestern Rush Medical Michigan ichigan James A. Harris, LL.B. Nathaniel S. Duff, M.D. Albertus B. Conn, A.B. Emmett J. Scott, D.M. St. Paul College Law Temple Michigan Harvard Edward Lewis, Ph.B. Raleigh Wilson, A.B. Sa M. ~a A.B. Erroll M. Fassett, LL.B. Chicago State University, la. Illinoi Northwestern College Law J. Quincey Adams, A.B. Harold D. West, A.B. Joseph H. wall D.D.S. E. H. Trezevant, S.T.B. Illinois Temple Boston 170 | - | | | | | "7 |
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D. B.S. Ohio Myrtle W. Knight, B.S. Columbia Redvers Whiteman, B.S. New York City John B. Robinson, B.S. Mass. Institute Tech AUGUST, 1925 Clementine M. Hedges, B.S. Luevenia B. Sullivan,B.Mus. Ohio Drake Bertha C. Stephens, B.S. Ruth L. Herod, B.S. Ohio Bradley Polytechnic Lee A. Toney, B.S. G. Hamilton Martin, A.B. Ohio Colgate Aubrey B. Adams, M.S. Garrett T. Wiggins, A.B. Illinois Syracuse 171 He'en Cantrell, A.B. Illinois H'lda H. Anderson, A.B. Smith William T. Wells, B.S. lowa State George E. Allen, A.B. Colgate | j 4 q « | | | a — | | q | |
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172 THE elors of Science. George Leward Washing- ton was educated by the Rotary Club of Boston, which was attracted by his scholas- tic record while he was attending Rindge Technical School, where he was awarded the Albert L. Ware Memorial Prize. Mr. Wash- ington is the first Negro to be educated by this Club. The Detroit City College graduates Wil- liam Boyd with a Bachelor of Science de- gree. Mr. Boyd is the first Negro to grad- uate from this institution. Armour Institute of Technology has three Negro students and graduates 1 Bachelor of Science, Mr. Frank Waver. Middlebury College has two Negro stu- dents and graduates Emile T. Holley with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Mr. Holley was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa. Allegheny College has three Negro stu- dents and graduates 1 Bachelor of Arts, Samuel E. Warren. Indiana University has 29 Negro students and graduates 1 Bachelor of Arts, Green- ville S. Smith. The State University of Iowa has 95 Negro students and graduates 1 Civil Engi- neer, 1 Master of Science, 1 Master of Arts, 3 Doctors of Medicine, 1 Doctor of Dental Surgery, 3 Bachelors of Arts, 1 Bachelor of Engineering, and 2 Graduates of Pharmacy. Mr. A. A. Alexander received an honorary degree in Civil Engineering, a degree given to former graduates of the engineering school who have met with signal success since their graduation. Mr. Alexander is the first Negro in Iowa to be thus honored. Smith College has five Negro students and graduates 2 Bachelors of Arts. Miss Marjorie E. Parsons graduates cum laude. The University of Illinois graduates 1 Master of Science, 2 Doctors of Medicine, 1 Bachelor of Science, and 14 Bachelors of Arts. Walter R. Thornhill was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa and won honors in French and Spanish. His average for the four years was above “B”. Harold West took the highest course in chemistry offered by the university. Butler College graduates 7 Bachelors o Arts. Miss Mary Stokes is graduating magna cum laude and has been elected to the Phi Kappa Phi. Michigan State University graduates Benjamin L. Goode with the degree of Bachelor of Science. Mr. Goode played 3 years on the Varsity football team and is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi. Williams College has 5 students of Negro descent and graduates 1 Bachelor of Arts, Mortimer G, Weaver. Mr. Weaver won the class oratorical prize for three years, was a member of the Varsity debating team, the Delta Sigma Rho and Phi Beta Kappa. This year he won the Graves prize for oratorical eSSAYS. Kansas State Agricultural College has 29 Negro students and graduates Claude L. Wilson with the degree of Bachelor of Sci- ence in Mechanical Engineering. CRISIS Wesleyan University has three Negro students and graduates H. B. Duncan with the degree of Bachelor of Science. Mr. Dun- can is now studying at Massachusetts In- stitute of Technology. Bradley Polytechnic Institute graduates 2 Bachelors of Science and 1 Bachelor of Arts. Grinnell College graduates 1 Bachelor of Arts, Gordon H. Kitchen. Mr. Kitchen made the honor grade list during his last year. This list consists of students with an average of “B” or higher. The University of Colorado has 3 Negro students. Iowa State University has 12 Negro students and graduates 3 Bachelors of Sci- ence. Dickinson College graduates Harlan A. Carter with the degrees of Master of Arts and Bachelor of Laws. Colgate University graduates 2 Bachelors of Arts, George E. Allen and G. Hamilton Martin. Mr. Allen maintained a “B” aver- age throughout the four years. The University of Oregon graduates 1 Master of Arts, William Sherman Savage. Bonebrake Seminary graduates 1 Bach- elor of Divinity, Thomas J. Smith. Mr. Smith is the first Negro to receive this de- gree from his institution. Divinity School of Philadelphia graduates Charles S. Sedgewick with the degree of Bachelor of Sacred Theology, The University of Nebraska has 19 Negro students and graduates Theodore D. Law- son, Clyde Malone and Gladys Brown with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and James C. McCoy with a Bachelor of Science degree. Northwestern University graduates Con- suelo Mansifee and Ruth Clement with a Bachelor of Arts degree; Joseph E. Clayton, Jr., with a Bachelor of Science degree, Blanche Dix, Wendell H. Bolton, Herman §. Davis and Harrison A. Ferrell with a Mas- ter of Arts degree, Homer D, Jones and Carl Robinson with a Bachelor of Music degree; C. C. Wimbish and Zedrick T. Bra- den with a Bachelor of Laws degree, and Wendell P. Green and Alfred B. Xuma with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Dr. Xuma was born in Cape Colony, Africa, and has worked his way through college and the medical school, John Marshali Law School graduates Edith Sampson and Georgia H. Jones with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. Brown University graduates with the Bachelor’s degree Marguerite L. Lingham, Beatrice E. Coleman, Violet Warfield, Ros- coe Lewis, John Douglas and Clinton L. Henry. Suffolk Law School graduates Captain Holmes and Nathaniel Simmons with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. Amherst College has 12 Negro students and graduates 4 Bachelors of Arts. Mer- cer Cook is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and is the winner of the Simpson $1,500 fellowship to study in Paris. Wil- liam A. Hastie is also a member of the Phi 4
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AUGUST, 1925 John A. Clair, E.E. Alfred M. Lambert, B.D. Lee B. Furgerson, M.D. John W. Pate, LL.B. Syracuse Yale State University, Ia. Northwestern College Law Claudius L. Forney, M.D. George C. Lacy, A.B. William J. Madison, D.D.S. George L. Washington, B.S. Ohio State Ohio State Ohio State Mass. Institute Tech. Cornelius C. Bibb, B.S. Booker W. Harris, D.D.S. Alfred H. Lindo, LL.B. nce Stewart, Ph.G. Iowa State Minnesota Fordham University, la. Frederick D. Johnson, LL.B. Albert M. Butler, D.D.S. William T. McKnight Charles E. Davis, A.B. Columbia Minnesota L.L.B., California 173 | | > J | \ | | - ~ . | | | |
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THE CRISIS Jeannette M. Anderson, B.S. Violet B. Warfield, A.B. Dorothy Warrick, B.S. Virginia M. Alexander, M.D. Buffalo Brown Pennsylvania Women’s Medical W. R. Wells, D_D.S. John R. Randolnh, M.D. James E. Levy, D.D.S. Neville C. M.D. Pennsylvania Vermont Western Reserve Bellevue Mortimer 7 wrenren, A.B. Claude L. Wilson, B.S. Thomas J. Smith, B.D. Harold F. Lee, A.B. Kansas State Bonebrake Oberlin Samuel E. abl A.B. Gomez C. Hamilton, A.B. Gordon H. Kitchen, A.B. Beniam'n L. Goode, B.S. Allegheny Kansas Grinnell Michigan State 174 | | "A ~ 4 fi ‘ & — | * i |
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AUGUST, 1925 COLLEGE GRADUATES, WILEY COLLEGE ° 175 J 4 | fl | | » | : COLLEGE GRADUATES, STRAIGHT COLLEGE a | |
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THE CRISIS COLLEGE GRADUATES, ATLANTA UNIVERSITY Beta Kappa. William Montague Cobb receives the Blod- gett Scholarship awarded by the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity for highest proficiency in biology to the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Mass., during the summer of 1925. Oberlin College has 50 Negro students and graduates Harold F. Lee and Earl R. Moses with the Bachelor of Arts degree. Western Reserve University has 8 Negro students and graduates 1 Bachelor of Arts, 1 Doctor of Dental Surgery and 1 Doctor of Medicine. Dr. Stanley E. Brown won special honors in the Medical school. The University of Vermont has 2 Negro students and graduates John Russel Ran- dolph with the degre of Doctor of Medicine. Seabury Divinity School graduates E. M. Wright with the degree of Bachelor of Di- vinity. The University of Detroit has 3 Negro students and graduates Harold E. Bledsoe and Jerry L. Dixon with the degree of Bach- elor of Laws. Sargeant Physical Training School grad- uates Miss Sydney Taylor. The University of California graduates 6 Bachelors of Arts and 2 Graduates in Pharmacy and 1 Bachelor of Science. Northeastern University graduates 2 Bachelors of Science, 1 Bachelor of Com- mercial Science and 1 Bachelor of Laws. Tufts College graduates 1 Doctor of Med- icine, 1 Doctor of Medical Dentistry and 1 Bachelor of Arts. Boston Teachers Bachelors of Science. Boston University graduates 2 Bachelors of Sacred Theology, 2 Bachelors of Science and 1 Doctor of Medicine, 2 Bachelors of Laws and 1 Bachelor of Secretarial Science. College graduates 2 COLLEGE GRADUATES, MOREHOUSE COLLEGE 176 a ~ if | ‘ | — | | Vigil & FF 7 | j : 4 =
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AUGUST, 1925 COLLEGE GRADUATES, MORGAN COLLEGE Bates College graduates 1 Bachelor of Sci- ence, Eric Chandler. Detroit Teachers College graduates 4 Ne- gro students, The University of Kansas has 88 Negro students and graduates 5 Bachelors of Arts. Massachusetts College of Pharmacy graduates William Calloway with the de- gree of Graduate of Pharmacy. The Woman’s Medical College graduates Miss Virginia Alexander and Miss Mae Mc- Caroll with the degree of Doctor of Medi- cine, There have been the following graduates of Negro institutions: Howard University—There were 73 de- grees of Bachelor of Arts conferred includ- ing the degree magna cum laude given to Miss Velma T. Young and cum laude given to Hilda A. Davis, Myrtle C. Henry, Gladys L. Peters and Anita B. Turpeau. There were 60 Bachelors of Science, including Ro- setta E. Nola, magna cum laude and Julia E. Bailey, John Oscar Cummings and Clar- ence M. Smith, Oliver W. Crump, Lucille Burnett and Carolyn E, Welch, cum laude. There were also the following degrees: Six Bachelors of Music, including Della B. Wil- son and Margaret L. Simmons, magna cum laude, and Margaret Virginia Smith, cum laude, 2 Bachelors of Science in Civil En- gineering, 1 Bachelor of Science in Electri- cal Engineering, 1 Bachelor of Science in Architecture. The number of professional degrees were as follows: From the School of Religion, 3; from the School of Law, 27; from the School of Medicine, 72; from the School of Dentistry, 26; from the School of Pharmacy, 11. Ernest Cornelius Dickson received the degree of Master of Laws. Mel- vin J. Banks, William B. Edelin and Charles G. Williams received the degree of Master of Arts. Russell W. Smith and Frank W. Williams received the degree of Master of Science. The following honorary degrees were given: Master of Arts to Julia Cald- well Frazier of Dallas, Texas, John Russell Hawkins of Washington, D. C., and Emma Frances Merritt of Washington, D. C.; Doc- tor of Science to Edward A. Balloch of Washington, D. C., and Daniel Hale Wil- liams of Chicago, Ill.; Doctor of Laws to Gilbert Haven Jones of Wilberforce, Ohio; COLLEGE GRADUATES, KNOXVILLE COLLEGE 177 4 | ar at -
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178 THE CRISIS \ | GRADUATES, HOWARD UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL Doctor of Letters to James E. Shepard of _ s‘ty has received a half million dollars for Durham, N. C. the School of Medicine and a similar sum Thirty-four Second Lieutenants were for a new building for the school. sworn into the Army as members of the Lincoln University graduates 42 Bach- officers’ reserve corps; 4 others received elors of Arts. A new science building cost- certificates of eligibility. Howard Univer- ing $82,500 is being erected. COLLEGE GRADUATES, SIMMONS. UNIVERSITY - | 4 | | ‘ | | ~ tat ee
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AUGUST, 1925 179 COLLEGE GRADUATES, JOHNSON C. SMITH UNIVERSITY Meharry Medical School graduates 35 Doctors of Medicine, 53 Dentists, 22 Phar- macists and 12 nurses. Meharry Medical School has been raised from affiliated mem- COLLEGE GRADUATES, PAINE COLLEGE bership to full membership of the Associa- tion of American Medical Colleges. The school has also received a gift of $50,000 from the Carnegie Corporation, the in- ——— ~ | | ¢ 4 ® A ‘A | | ‘ | > = ‘ 7 ic -¥ 4." > 2 4
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180 come of which is to be used for Library and hospital facilities. Fisk University graduates 23 Bachelors of Arts and 3 Bachelors of Music. Atlanta University graduates 25 Bach- elors of Arts. Morehouse College graduates 15 Bach- elors of Arts, 1 Bachelor of Science, 2 Bachelors of Science in Education and 4 Masters of Arts. Virginia Theological Seminary and Cel- lege graduates 1 Bachelor of Arts, 1 Bache- lor of Science, 4 Bachelors of Theology. Miss Marian A. Jordan finishes from the college cum laude. Miles Memorial College graduates Maxie Jackson with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Virginia Union University graduates 12 Bachelors of Arts, 15 Bachelors of Science, 3 Bachelors of Divinity and 11 Bachelors of Arts in Education. Edward Waters College graduates 3 Bachelors of Arts. Samuel Houston Bachelors of Arts. Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute graduates 1 Bachelor of Arts and 2 Bach- elors of Science. Livingstome College has the following graduates: From the college department, 20; from the Theological Department, 7; from the Business Department, 3. Lane College graduates 10 Bachelors of Arts and 2 Bachelors of Science. Knoxville College graduates 14 Bachelors of Arts and 3 Bachelors of Science. During the year the college has completed an en- dowment fund of $325,000 Benedict College graduates 6 Bachelors of Arts. The college has a new science hall and a practice school building. It also re- ceived a gift of $97,500 from the Educa- tional Board. Morris Brown University graduates 12 Bachelors of Arts. The school celebrated its 40th anniversary during the past year. Morgan College graduates 4 Masters of Arts and 18 Bachelors of Arts, Paine College graduates 5 Dackeiees of Arts and 5 Bachelors of Science. Johnson C. Smith University graduates 14 Bachelors of Arts and 1 Bachelor of Sacred Theology. It has received the Duke endow- ment gift of $1,600,000 and an “A” rating in the state of North Carolina. Shaw University graduates 24 Bachelors of Arts and 3 Bachelors of Theology. College graduates 9 THE CRISIS COLLEGE GRADUATES, NEW ORLEANS UNIVERSITY Arkansas Baptist College graduates 8 Bachelors of Arts, 8 Bachelors of Science and 1 Bachelor of Theology. The college debt has been refunded and the college de- partment made permanent. Wiley College graduates 32 Bachelors of Arts and Science. Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute graduates 6 Bachelors of Science. A $5,- 000,000 endowment has been raised. Talladega College graduates 21 Bachelors of Arts and 1 Bachelor of Divinity. $100,000 has been raised for a Science Building and the Callanan Gymnasium has been opened. Wilberforce University graduates 52 Bachelors of Arts and 9 Bachelors of Di- vinity. The new Shorter Hall has been opened this year. Simmons University graduates 5 Bach- elors of Arts and 4 from the Theological department. A new boys’ dormitory and recitation building has been built and a campaign carried on for the raising of $100,000, Straight College graduates 9 Bachelors of Arts. New Orleans University graduates 5 Bachelors of Arts and 1 Master of Arts, Mr. A. E. Perkins. Mr. Perkins’ thesis was “A Study of the Haitian People”. COMPANION UJ AIS GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON aT, O, never quite alone am I. Of ill why should I borrow? No matter where my footsteps bend There also follows sorrow. And she has taught my lips to sing A rapt and dauntless measure While all the world goes envying My mellow noted treasure. No, I have never walked alone! And as I face tomorrow, If I am still bereft of joy I know there will be sorrow. | | | | pe Lil | 4 A: | IF.
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THE DENVER CONFERENCE W N later years we tend always to say that | our conferences are unusual and the “best ever held”; and there is something of truth in each statement. For the last four or five years each annual conference of the N. A. A. C. P. has in some respects set a higher mark than the preceding. It would perhaps be difficult to say just wherein the Denver Conference surpassed the surprising meeting at Philadelphia. All in all, per- haps, the difference was a matter of moral judgment rather than actual fact. The Den- ver group is so small, six or seven thousand people, compared with the hundred thou- sand in Philadelphia and the grip of black Denver upon white Denver was so man- speech was that of Charles Edward Russell, a speech in which he pointed out that “So- cial Equality” was the center and must be the center of our program and in which he gave interesting sidelights upon the genesis of the N. A. A. C. P. He told how William English Walling and he had thought the thing out and how, very gradually, others came to their support. After talking of segregation and Jim Crow schools, the second meeting brought Florence Kelley and Congressman Dyer— the Far Horizon and the Political Job. Friday was devoted to the branches and at night came three addresses by the Presi- dent of Lincoln Uni- versity, Jeffersor ifest in the courte- sies extended, the decorated streets, the officials and citi- zens willing and eager to co-operate. The great mass meeting of Sunday afternoon in Phila- delphia and in Den- ver differed little as to size but much as to significance. The little Denver group, with a mass of white friends, had poured out and filled the auditorium despite the fact that all around and about them was the shad- ow of the Ku Klux City, Missouri, whom petty politics has not dislodged from his _ position; a fine paper on “Science and Pseudo- Science on the Race Problem”, by Dr. Herbert A. Miller of Columbus, Ohio, Acting President of F isk University, and one on the in- fluence of race prej- udice on those who practice it, by a white Denver pastor. A program of indus- trial development for the Negro was outlined. Saturday all the JAMES WELDON JOHNSON Eleventh Spingarn Medallist Klan. It was a thrilling bit of cour- age. We went West in special cars and the na- tional officers and delegates were enter- tained by Jane Addams with a dinner at the City Club, Chicago; a significant honor and a fine start for the conference. Then at Omaha, Nebraska, the whole branch came down to the train in greeting. So we fared to Denver for the opening meeting, Wednes- day night, June 24. There were addresses of welcome by city officials and messages from the President of the United States and our own president. But the great conference took train and went south to the shadow of Pike’s Peak to be the guests of the Colorado Springs branch, where they spent the day outdoors in one of the loveliest spots of America. On Sunday nearly every church, white and colored, in Denver listened to the mes- sage of the N. A. A. C. P. in the morning; early in the afternon five thousand people crowded the municipal auditorium to hear ex-Governor Sweet and James Weldon John- son. Monday was devoted to THE CrIsIS and 181 , | | : in /
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182 the young people, while at night the Hon- orable Ben B. Lindsey, judge of the Juve- nile Court of Denver, spoke on the “Ku Klux Klan” and knew whereof he spoke. William Pickens and a Catholic priest joined in the program. Tuesday again went to the branches and the whole conference culminated Tuesday night in the bestowal of the 11th Spingarn Medal upon James Weldon Johnson. ANNUAL ADDRESS TO THE PUBLIC We give here the annual address to the public sent out by the 16th Annual Confer- ence: The National Association for the Ad- vancement of Colored People, in its Six- teenth Annual Conference, looks back with a certain pride upon its record. There was a time when American Negroes said, “We cannot organize; we cannot unite; we cannot present a firm front to our ene- mies”. This today is no longer true. WHAT THEN. A.A. C. P. HAS DONE Here is an organization which is spending $112,000 a year in its main office, in addition to what its four hundred branches spend, for the uplift of the American Negro; and over three-quarters of the money which it spends is furnished by American Negroes. Of this money $63,500 is contributed by members and friends for the objects of the Association and one-half of it is spent for the salaries of fifteen persons who give all their time to the work, and one-half for publicity, legal expenses, anti-lynching, rent, postage, printing, travel, etc. The ba'ance of $48,500 is paid by subscribers to THE CrIsIS and advertisers in its pages, and it is spent to publish THe Crisis MAGAZINE, as follows: 40° of it goes to the salaries of 11 persons who give all their time to the publi- cation of the magazine, not including the 700 agents who make six cents on every copy of Tue Crisis sold. The other 60% goes for paper, printing. engraving, rent, postage, supplies, ete. These are the me- chanics of the situation. What has been the result of this money and effort? In a single year 500 cases of legal defense came to us. We have defended those involving race discrimination as far as possible. We have saved men from lynching; we have delivered victims from jail and even from the hangman’s noose; we have protected hard-earned property, defended the rights of property and upheld THE CRISIS the sanctity of Negro womanhood. We have fought privilege and killed unjust laws. We have defended the right to vote and op- posed the ghetto in home and school. Particularly has this organization initi- ated and led the campaign that reduced lynching from 5 or 6 victims a month to fewer than 1, and thus brought the end of this barbarous horror in sight. The record of the Association in this respect and in freeing the soldier victims of the Houston Riots and the persecuted peons of Elaine, Arkansas, and in the segregation cases, alone more than justify its existence, But we have only begun. Out of twelve or more millions of Negroes less than 10% contribute to our support. Out of one hun- dred million white Americans less than one- tenth of 1% are interested in our work or actually sympathetic with our aims. We must work and work long and vigorously to recruit members and supporters for this method of establishing Democracy in Amer- ica. And for this purpose we must empha- size not only what we have done but state clearly what we aim to accomplish. AIMS OF THE ASSOCIATION We have before us today five major aims: 1, the complete abolition of lynch‘n7y and mob law; 2, political freedom; 3, indus- trial democracy; 4, better education; 5, the absolute ending of segregation of all sorts based on race and color. Let no one think that lynching is stopped in America as long as one victim every month is publicly murdered and even burned by mobs. There is no political salvation for the Negro as long as he is owned body and soul by the Republican Party or by any other party. A free, intelligent ballot is our one political salvation and no place, honor or salary is worth its loss. We stretch again hands of fellowship and sympathy to all the working people of this land and the world. We would unite with them as equals and as fellows, striving through organization to make modern indus- try democratic rather than autocratic, to end monopoly and privilege in credit and capital and to make social welfare rather than individual wealth the end of all in- dustry. We are deeply alarmed at the lack of common schools for our children and we see widespread effort to deny us high school
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AUGUST, training and to keep our talented youth out of colleges and professional schools. We believe in humanity; we believe in the social and civic equality of all men; we will fight to the bitter end every effort to separate, segregate and publicly humiliate human beings of any kind, because of race or color. We are fighting residential seg- regation in the last ditch before the Su- preme Court of the United States. We are attacking disfranchisement in the South by bringing the white primary before the bar of national justice, SPECIAL RESOLUTIONS To this statement were added various spe- cial resolutions: On the Southern General who has slandered Negro soldiers; on the continued rape of Haiti; on the necessity of keeping the memory of the Abolitionists green. All this was the work of the conference; but with it, as usual, went an endless num- ber or friendships and understandings, con- versations and conferences, receptions, rides and dancing. The social side of our na- tional conferences is in a sense most im- portant. It is knitting up our national! knowledge of each other; it is making us human and catholic. To this conference had come two hundred and fifteen delegates representing our branches and our work in twenty-eight dif- ferent states of the Union. This group was composed of men and women from both races and together they considered our com- mon problem and our common task. We rode back again in our own Pullman. The dining room steward deftly suggested that perhaps we would all like to eat at one time. “Oh, no,” we said, “we'll drop in when we get hungry.” And we did. Then finally in Chicago, Morris Lewis and his friends came down and greeted us with automobiles and took us to visit Abbott and his Defender and Binga and his bank. We ate in the celebrated Appomatox Club, which for years white Chicago tried to blaw up with bombs; and thus we came home to begin a new and a greater year’s work. 1925 183 THE ELEVENTH SPINGARN MEDALLIST S Row Spingarn Medal for 1925 has gone to James Weldon Johnson, secretary of the N.A.A.C.P. The medal is awarded annually to ‘“‘the man or woman of African descent and American citizenship who shall have made the highest achievement during the preceding year in any honorable field of human endeavor”. It was presented at the annual conference at Denver, Colorado, on June 30. Mr. Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1871. He was graduated from Atlanta University with the degrees of A.B. and A.M., then spent three years in graduate work at Columbia and has re- ceived the honorary degree of LL.D. from Talladega College and from Howard Uni- versity. For several years Mr. Johnson was prin- cipal of the Colored High School in Jack- sonville. In 1897 he was admitted to the Florida bar where he practiced until 1901 when he came to New York to collaborate with his brother J. Rosamond Johnson in writing for the light opera stage. In 1906 he was appointed United States Consul to Puerto Cabella, Venezuela, but was trans- ferred to Carinto, Nicaragua, in 1909, where he looked after the interests of this country during the revolution against Ze- laya and Diaz. For ten years he was con- tributing editor of the New York Age. In the spring of 1920 he was sent to Haiti by the N.A.A.C.P. to make a report on con- dition there, which resulted in a congres- sional investigation. For five years Mr. Johnson been. secretary of the N.A.A.C.P. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Atlanta Univer- sity and of the Board of Directors of the American Fund for Public Service. His published works include: “Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”, “Fifty Years and Other Poems”, “An Anthology of Negro Poetry”; the English libretto of “Goyes- cas” and a pamphlet “Self-determining Haiti”. This fall in collaboration with Roland Hayes, Rosamond Johnson and Lawrence Brown he is publishing a collec- tion of Negro Spirituals.
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IS THE JEW A FRIEND OF THE NEGRO? & FHS Davip H. PIERCE IL (A young American of Jewish descent who has suffered both for his religion and for his friendship to the Negro race writes frankly concerning the attitude of “Jews toward Negroes.) N his attitude toward the Negro, does the American Jew furnish proof of the accuracy of an observation attributed to the Iron Chancellor, “As the Christian, so goes the Jew”. Has the Jew, contrary to the Imperial Wizard’s belief in his unassim- ilative qualities, become sufficiently one hundred per cent American to accept with- out question the Anglo-Saxon’s color prej- udice? May the Negro count upon the Jewish population of the United States to act as an influence for the betterment of his race? The Jew forms a minority group within the United States. Many Jews have dis- tinguished themselves whole-hearted friends of the black man. Consequently, it is natural for many white Gentiles, judg- ing a minority by the acts of a few, to im- mediately conclude that all Jews support without question the program of the ad- vanced Negro that the black man be ac- corded full political, economic and social equality. In the World’s Work for July, 1924, in an article entitled, “When the Negro Comes North”, Rollin Lynde Hartt writes : Many white aliens live in close contact with Negroes and never having recognized a color line in Europe are slow to recognize the color line here. One whole class of aliens, or descendants of aliens, would seem inclined now and then to disregard it. Jewish tradesmen and pawnbrokers follow the migrants Northward. A Jewish law- yer organized Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has a Jew- ish publicity agent. It was a Jewish labor union that addressed Negroes as “our per- secuted comrades and brothers”, while ‘many of the radicals who fraternize with Negroes are Jews. Enormous sums have been expended for Negro education by the Chicago merchant and philanthropist, Julius Rosenwald. Recently, Otto H. Kahn in- vited the brilliant Negro tenor, Roland Hayes, to sing for guests at his home in New York, and Jews and Negroes show equal interest in David Kollscritta, the black cantor. Another black Jew holds a position in a Jewish bank. Mr. Hartt thus endeavors to prove that a few swallows make a summer. A few Jews have distinguished themselves as staunch advocates of Negro emancipation; ergo, all Jews are the Negro’s~ friends. Were the conclusion true, the Jew could take everlasting pride in his contribution to the solution of American race problems. But in actuality American Jews as a mass have accepted the standards of the Anglo-Saxon. The former may hate with less intensity, but they are by no means united in support of the Negro. No Southern rabbi has jeopardized his position or his life by run- ning counter to the Klan’s dictum that black and white must be forever separate. Individual Jews in the South have indeed distinguished themselves as staunch advo- cates of better treatment for the Negro, among the most notable being Dr. Josiah Morse of the University of South Carolina; but the Jew of the merchant class, the ubiquitous representative, is satisfied to ac- cept the situation as he finds it. He must make money, he must be in the good graces of his Gentile neighbors, and whatever per- sonal inclination he may possess to combat Negro hatred must be suppressed in the more vital and immediate issue of earning a livelihood. It is true that the American Jew has no hereditary dislike for the Negro. But his precarious situation as a business man renders him peculiarly susceptible to the whims of the community in which he lives. Hence, Negro champions among the Jews must be limited to wealthy philanthropists, members of radical labor groups and free- lance intellectuals. The enforced silence of the Jewish merchant soon translates itself into a virtue. With economic security as an impetus and with complete acceptance as a social equal of the Gentile as a goal, 184
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AUGUST, the Jew must shun the black man. And if he lives in the South, the Jew must acqui- esce completely in the assumption that the Negro must confine himself to the hewing of wood and the drawing of water. In the North, the Jew need not go so far, but his desire to act correctly in the eyes of his neighbors prevents him from offering the Negro the hand of friendship. The successful Jewish merchant does not want the Negro as his neighbor. He will move just as speedily as his white, non- Jewish acquaintance from a residential dis- trict invaded by black men. He speaks just as readily of undesirable neighborhoods where only Negroes would live. His sons, who attend universities, enter Jewish fra- ternities, and devote themselves exclusively to imitating the folderol of their Christian classmates, are not to be distinguished for their interest in the Negro problem. Hon- orable exceptions are many, of course; but the further removed the youthful Jew is from contact with old world civilization, the less may he be counted upon to possess a social consciousness sufficiently broad to embrace the color problem. Regardless of the degree of oppression to which a racial group is subjected, within that group will be found a caste system. Indeed the caste system is nowhere stronger than within the Jewish ranks, unless it be inside the Negro milieu. The Jew whom fortune has favored must vent his super- iority upon somebody. He must look down upon the members of his race who have lived in America for a briefer period than himself; he may perhaps despise the con- tact with his brethren who hail from more backward sections of Europe; and he must be careful to avoid debasing contact with any group marked as degrading by the rul- ing Anglo-Saxons. Consequently, he must not know the Negro as an intimate. The Jew must not be condemned by lib- erals for his Negro antipathy. For it must be remembered that within every racial and religious group in the United States there are economic classes, capitalists, small mer- chants and workers. Each subdivision pos- sesses desires and aspirations inimical to the others. The Catholic financier is no more intimate with the Irish laborer than is the Jewish banker with the east-side tail- ors. The antagonism which economic cleav- age engenders, which is manifested within every group, whether it is a racial or reli- 1925 185 gious minority or a dominating majority, is merely accentuated in the attitude of one group toward another which fortune or en- vironment has treated with less cordiality. The bond of race or religion is a softening tie, but in an age of profit-seeking it is easily broken. The Jewish manufacturer does not hesitate to mulct his factory help, even though he may worship with them. The uneducated Negro, unskilled, unorgan- ized, underpaid, is nevertheless at the addi- tional] mercy of designing politicians and shyster lawyers of his own color. Preju- dice is a distinctive characteristic of any society containing classes with divergent economic interests. The presence of ele- ments in a population which may be distin- guished by reason of their color or adher- ence to a faith unlike that acceptable to the conventional majority merely serves to ag- gravate hatred and intolerance. That the Jew has become imbued with Negro prejudice is particularly unfortunate in view of the former’s long record of in- justice at the hands of his white Christian associates. But the bourgeois Jew, who gives color to the Hebraic ingredient in American culture, cannot act contrary to the dictates of his economic interests. The de- velopment of a Negro business class within the United States will necessarily increase antagonism between Jewish and white Gen- tile busincss men on the one hand and Negro merchants on the other. Such an- tipathy can grow apace while at the same time the Gentile can increase his evidences of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism and hatred of the foreigner “who is taking our money away”. There is no better and clearer proof of the concreteness of this tendency than the recrudescence of the Ku Klux Klan. The Invisible Empire typifies in its poli- cies the aspirations and desires of the Protestant merchant. Nothing better exem- plifies the underlying basis of Klan policies than its most recent development, the “T. W.K. lists”, booklets enumerating the mer- chants who are members of the veiled order and with whom the brethren should trade. The Klan has taken a very different atti- tude toward the Negro than toward the Catholic and Jew. Toward the first- named the order has constantly stressed its friendship, verbally, while urging the maintenance of distinct racia] lines. The pretentions to friendship are readily ex- plicable when it is remembered that the
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186 THE Negro merchant is not sufficiently form'- dable to challenge the trade of the white Protestant American cf ether North or South. With economic jealousy constantly ac- centuating prejudice and intolerance, it is idle to expect the Jews in the United States to align themselves in perfect sympathy with the Negro. Likewise it is impossible to expect that Jews and Catholics can form anything but a very temporary and very shaky defensive union against Protestant manifestations of intolerance. Whether it be for good or ill, racial or religious com- binations in the United States will partake of secondary importance to economic align- ments. The Jew in the South will continue to view the Negro in the same light as his Christian acquaintances—with less inten- CRISIS sity of feeling, undoubtedly, but with a shade of difference that contains no mate- rial significance. The Jew in the North, if his interests are those characteristic of Mr. Babbitt of Main Street, will not trouble himself to lift the color barrier in Rotary and Kiwanis clubs. Though necessity may force him to make common cause with the Negro in fighting residential segregation, once the legal battle is won it is doubtful if he will desire colored Americans to grace the street upon which he lives. The Jewish labor leaders will continue to urge the inclusion of colored workers in unions, if such advocates be of radical bent, and will continue to insist upon his exclusion if they are prototypes of Samuel Gompers, himself a Jew. For “As the Christian, so goes the Jew”. NEGERE SOM DIGTERE UJ Ar CARL KJERSMEIER (“Negroes as Poets’ by Carl Kjersmeier, in the Copenhagen Social-Demokraten, Jan- uary 17, 1925. Englished from the Danish by E. Franklin Frazier.) HANKS to the artists’ association, Groning, there is at present in the Free Exhibition Building an opportunity to view side by side with some of the best younger Danish artists’ works a selected group of African Negro Wood Sculpture. It would be a support to this if simultaneously a large daily paper made articulate the rich literature which a despised and oppressed race has created in the old homeland, Afri- ca, as well as in the new world, America. It was perhaps quite paradoxically for- mulated when the great student of races of last century, Gobineau, declared with in- spiration that the source of all art is con- cealed in black blood; and that which Ne- groes have produced in the field of liter- ature, both in Africa, through the centuries, and in America, in the few decades, when in spite of disdain and opposition they have had an opportunity for spiritual affairs, is so outstanding that one must concede to the black race a special aptitude for the poetic art. Let us not forget in this con- nection that Alexandre Dumas the elder was the son of a West Indian Negro and that Pushkin, the creator of Russian literature, was the grandson of a full blooded African Negro whom Peter the Great “imported” for the sake of diversion and made his life guard, but who showed himself in possession of such good powers that he quickly rose to be general. Even in Euro- pean literature, the Negro race’s part has not been entirely negligible. I. Africa Africa is without doubt the world’s rich- est continent in linguistic development. Ac- cording to the reckoning of a French scien- tist there are spoken on this continent in all 591 languages and distinct dialects. Of these, 244 are classed as the essentially Su- dan Negro and 223 as Bantu, while the remainder are divided among the Semitic, Hamitic and Nubian Races, together with the Hottentots and Bushmen. Only a few Negro races possess a written lancuage. like the Swaheli (East Africa) and Haussa (West Africa), both of whom write with the Arabic symbols and have attained a wide distribution over extensive parts of Africa. The remaining Negro languages are on the other hand only fixed in the Biblical translations and scientific writings. During recent years, one has seen the prodigy that there has begun to appear newspapers in Negro languages in the Bel- gian Congo and in British South Africa.
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AUGUST, By far the majority of the Negro’s liter- ature has come down to us through oral tradition, collected and rendered in trans- lation by investigators and explorers; but what wealth, what beauty and humanity in this erormous literature consisting of poems, fables, adventures, myths and nar- ratives, religious as well as secular. There is scarcely found more stimulating reading than the voluminous anthologies of Negro literature which have appeared during re- cent years, notably in France and Germany. A teeming continent gives expression here to its mental life’ The tenderest love poems alternate with religious hymns with mag- nificent pathos; narratives full of stirrinz action or substantial humor with ingenious myths and fables fraught with wisdom. Pithy proverbs, epic heroic poetry, even the beginning of dramatic poetry add each its stone to the colossus, which the black race in Africa has built for itself in the world’s literature. II. America The literary center of gravity among America’s 45 million Negroes and mulattoes lies in the North American commonwealth and in the Republic of Haiti. The literary life among the Negroes here is so strong that one can speak of a peculiar Negro lit- erature written respectively in English and in French or in the dialects of these lan- guages. As in all new literatures, the rule holds here that lyrics play the leading role, while novels and dramas take a more mod- est place. There is scarcely any American Republic or Colony where Negroes have not made a greater or less contribution to literature. First and foremost in importance is the Spanish speaking mulatto republic, Santo Domingo. Although it cannot be denied that here and there Negro blood, especially in the upper classes, is strongly diluted by “white blood”, it is still worthy of notice that in the recently published anthology of modern Dominican lyrics we find specimens of the works of 73 poets. Even if all these lyrics are not equally commendable, still this anthology contains many beautiful poems and the mulattoes Gaston F. De- ligne and Fabio F. Fialla are rightfully ac- corded a place of honor in Spanish-Ameri- can poetry. Known over the entire Spanish speaking world is the Cuban Negro poet, Placido, the beloved martyr for Peace, who in 1844 when only 35 years old was shot 1925 187 by the Spaniards in Havana. A lyric geni- us was stopped in his richest development but his last poem, “Farewell to My Mother’, which is translated into ‘almost every lan- guage, will never fall into oblivion. Best known of all modern Negro poets is perhaps the Brazilian Edgar Poe, Machado de As- sis, whose fantastical romances and nar- ratives are translated into the three lead- ing languages and mark the high tide of Portuguese prose poetry of our century. From Martinique sprang René Maran, whose novel “Batouala”, which portrays life in equatorial Africa where the author held a position in the French administration, was awarded in 1921 the Goncourt prize and was without doubt the most widely read book in the world during that year. The best of Maran’s productions are certainly his poems, which are permeated with the clear soul of Marcus Aurelius and are overwhelming by their thought and rythmic beauty. Admirable is the rich literary life among the North American commonwealth’s 15 million Negroes, who support numerous pe- riodicals and publishing houses, which are operated in the service of Negro literature. It is significant that in the course of the last two years there have appeared not less than three anthologies of Negro lyrics from the United States. It is still only from about the beginning of the century that one can begin to talk of a peculiar North American Negro literature. No doubt there had been even before the aboli- tion of slavery some Negro poets and a single poetess, but their works were re- garded from a literary point of view as worthless and are now as good as forgotten. It was in Paul Laurence Dunbar (187z- 1906) that the Negroes in the United States found their first—and their greatest —poet. Paul Laurence Dunbar was born in Vay- ton, Ohio, as the son of a Negro slave, who had fled from the plantation, where his forefathers had slaved for generations, and now spent a miserable life as a plas- terer. It was only as an old mar that Paul’s father learned to read and his mother never attained as much. After a youth full of want and privation and struggle against race prejudice, which forced him to be content with the worst paid work and hindered him in the natural use 1f his powers, yet Paul Laurence Dunbar
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188 THE who was inspired with superhuman energy succeeded in having published a collection of poems which at one stroke made him a famous man over ‘the whole English-speak- ing world—the first worthwhile attempt to find artistic expression for the North Ameri- can Negro’s life and thought processes. Through a series of collections of poems appearing close upon each other Dunbar fortified his fame as the great singer of his black countrymen. He is not unjustly called the greatest poet in the United States since Walt Whitman. The most beautiful of Dunbar’s poems are written in Negro dialect. They produce a sweetness and cordiality which no culture language can give. Their marvelous mel- ody and gripping humanity have brought it about that many of them are now sung as popular ditties. As a poet, he means to America’s Negroes what Robert Burns means to Scotchmen. Dunbar’s poetry gave an impulse to the luxuriant North American Negro poetry of our day, which includes lyric writers who must be reckoned among the foremost poets of the United States. In the best anthology, by the lyrist, James Weldon Johnson, who has undertaken his selection with the great- est nicety, are brought together 30 writers of North American Negro poetry, published works, all entirely worthy of mentioning; but we must be content in this article with giving some single names. First and fore- most the compiler of the anthology him- self—the Secretary of the “Association for the Advancement of Colored People” which embraces the whole of America. Weldon Johnson’s collection of poetry, “Fifty Years”, gives expression to the highly cultivated Negro’s keen view of mankind and life, and contains a wealth of feeling and thoughts, from flaming protests against oppression of his race to the most spontaneous love lyrics. Likewise, John Wesley Holloway’s and Les- lie Pinckney Hill’s poetry is a_ protest against race prejudice and race hatred; but they give expression also to the Ameri- can Negro’s hope for a brighter future and better conditions. One must name also Ray P. Dandridge, who, although lame from youth in both his legs and right arm, in his poems has given expression to a heroic joy in life, together with the religious poetess, Clara Ann Thompson, who has never left the little town in the Southern States where she was born. CRISIS But the poet who comes the nearest to Dunbar in power and originality is Claude McKay, an entirely modern spirit, universal and cosmopolitan, but full of the primitive strength of his race. He was born in 1889 in Jamaica and published, while a policeman in Kingston, two collections of poems, writ- ten in the Negro-English dialect of his na- tive isle. A deep sympathy with all who are wronged and oppressed permeates these two small books, whose powerful, primitive pictures drawn from a colorful, tropical na- ture immediately won for the author the surname “The West Indian Dunbar”. Na- turally, Claude McKay could not long con- tinue a policeman. He went to the United States, affiliated himself with the Negro workers’ movement and came to play a leading role. He has published in the United States two collections of poems, writ- ten in the official language, still more sig- nificant than his two foregoing books. His sympathy with the poor and subjugated is still the same; but in his poetry there is now such an aggressive and revolting tone against “the white enemies” that it is with- out parallel in any history of race con- flict. Although the French speaking Negro re- public of Haiti can count only two million inhabitants, its contribution to American Negro poetry is not less than that of the North American commonwealth. Scarcely any country in the world possesses com- paratively so many significant poets as this republic. In Louis Morpeau’s “Haitian Anthology” (1920) we establish acquaint- ance with 58 modern poets, and at least a score of these can be called co-equal with the foremost of present day France. The cause for this surprising literary flowering can perhaps be sought in the fact that the Negroes in Haiti have lived for over a hundred years as free citizens and directed their own affairs, without being oppressed by a white upper class, and that Negro poetry could build itself naturally upon the century of French colonial culture. Nor must the French sense for preserving and supporting the French language and liter- ature outside the borders of France be un- derestimated. Many of the best collections of Haitian poems have come from publishers in Paris where many black poets have moved in the literary salons. Haitian literature has developed on the whole under far freer conditions than Negro literature in the
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AUGUST, United States. One may assert with cer- tainty that the Negro literature which will first secure a place of intrinsic worth in the world’s literary history will remain the Haitian. Not less interesting remains the minor portion which has been dedicated to ‘yries written in the beautiful Creole dia- lect. It would carry one too far merely to go through the list of Haitian lyric writers, who have interest beyond the narrow bor- ders of the fatherland. We shall name merely those lyric writers who are so ad- mired in France, Georges Sylvain and Etzer 1925 189 Vilaire, the great national poet Massilou Coicon, who was shot in the uprising in 1908, and whose best poems are written in Creole, the two young lyrists F. Burr Ray- naud and Thimothée Paret, who publish their refined poems through a Parisian pub- lisher. But greatest of all Haitian poets, it seems to me, is Oswald Durand (1840- 1906), a master of language and form, the like of whom only a few are born in each century. It is growing and fermenting among America’s millions of Negroes. The black race has already made itself felt in liter- ature in all its strength! zhe Outer Pocket Nashville, Tenn. Your strong editorial in the April Crisis tells the truth about the Fisk situation. Those of us here on the grounds are united in the conviction that Dr. McKenzie’s con- tinued services are injurious to the useful- ness of the university. All loyal and correct thinking members of our group, and the other groups for all that, are in accord with your views so clearly outlined in THE CRISIS. J. T. PHt.uips, M. D. Iselin, N. J. at was my good fortune yesterday to pur- chase a copy of the April issue of THE Crisis and read with great interest your editorial, “Fisk”. It is seldom that editors these days have the courage to speak the Truth. Particularly, when it strikes at “vested interests”. So I take this oppor- tunity to express my appreciation of your stand and I hope you are able to see the matter through to the end. For as you intimate “Fisk” is going to be made an ex- ample—either for the Powers that furnish the Cash or for the awakening youth and their supporters, who demand self-expres- sion and opportunity to acquire it. A Southerner by birth, a minister by training and an educator by profession, I have, for some time, been interested in Negro education, or rather in your educa- tional institutions. Only this last fall, I visited Hampton and Tuskegee. And re- cently it was my good fortune to speak to more than a thousand colored high school students at the Lincoln High School in Kan- sas City, Missouri. And while I had had some knowledge of the Fisk affair, I was more than pleased to get a complete picture of what it was all about. J. COVINGTON COLEMAN (white). Atlanta, Ga. A friend has just loaned me the January 21st issue of The Nation. As a result of reading it and DuBois’ article in particular, I am sending my check for $7.75 for a year’s subscription to The American Mer- cury, The Nation and 15c extra for a copy of the January 2I1st issue. Perhaps it’s because I’m a misplaced mid- westerner here in a public service work where I can’t say aloud what I think of the place that makes me appreciate his article so much. If only the white folks of Geor- gia would see themselves with the clarity he sees thru their self-deception our work would not be so discouraging. Nevertheless, I’m not the “tired radical” but am willing to keep still and still at it. (white). Philadelphia, Pa. I want to thank you very much for your reference to the value of church organiza- tions to THE Crisis, the N. A. A. C. P. and other Negro organizations in the May issue. I am sure that just that one reference will strengthen the many thousands of friends you have in the ministry among all our denominations. Your friend, W. F. GRAHAM, Pastor Holy Trinity Baptist Church. |
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~ ( Dr. Eugene P. Roberts has been chosen president of the Lincoln Alumni Associa- tion, succeeding the late Dr, George E. Can- non, of Jersey City, N. J. Dr. Roberts has been a practitioner of medicine in New York for more than thirty-one years. Un- der the administration of Mayor Mitchell, he served as a member of the Board of Ed- ucation of New York City. For more than ten years he was a city physician under the Board of Health and is chairman of the Harlem Branch of the Charity Organiza- tion Society. He is also a member of the National Medical Association, of the Coun- ty Medical Society and of the Medical So- ciety of Inspectors of Greater New York, ( Professor Ambrose Caliver, who has re- cently been made assistant Dean of Fisk University, has received a patent from Washington for his invention of a _ hair- dressers cabinet, devised as a labor-saving devise for hair-dressers and beauty cultur- ists. Professor Caliver is a Knoxville Col- lege graduate and has received his Master of Arts degree from the University of Wis- consin. He also studied at Harvard where he received a diploma in employment men- agement and personnel direction. For eight years he has been head of the Manual Arts Department of Fisk University. In a re- cent contest of nearly 600 competitors from the U. S. A., Carada and Porto Rico, Pro- fessor Caliver wen the first prize of $500.00 for the best thesis on Educational Phases of the Manual Arts. € Miss Delilah L. Beasley of Oakland, Cal- ifornia, was a delegate to the Sixth An- nual Convention of the National League of Women Voters, in session in Richmond, Vir- ginia. She was the accredited delegate from the California League of Women Vot- ers, representative of Alameda County League of Colored Women Voters and ac- credited representative of the Oakland Tri- bune. @ The Jubilee Singers of Fisk University sang before the King and Queen of Eng- land at Windsor Castle. Following the per- formance they were heartily praised by the royalty for their entertainment. ( Isaac Fisher, University editor of Fisk Univers'ty, wins one of the Guggenheim fellowships for study abroad during the year 1925-26. Mr. Fisher is the only Nezro on the list of fellowships. The sub- ject of his study will be “Danger Trends in Race Relationships”, (€ The Mills Memorial Home for aged col- ored people in Savannah, Georgia, has re- cently been dedicated. The Home is the gift of Mrs. Sarah Mills Hodge, daughter of the late George J. Mills, who gave the Home as a memorial to her parents. The colored people of the city bought the ground and Mrs. Hodze spent $200,000 in building, equipment and endowment. € During the past school year Juilliard Fellowships in Music, under the Juilliard Musical Foundation in New York City, have been held by Misses Lydia Mason and Ernestine Jessie Covington, pianists, and Mr. Alexander Gatewood, tenor. Their work has been so well done that each has been awarded a fellowship for next year. A similar fellowship has been awarded to Mr. Leviticus Lyon, tenor. DR. E. P. ROBERTS
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AUGUST, Dr. John Hopkins William J. Winchester ( Dr. John Oliver Hopkins and William J. Winchester of Wilmington, Delaware, have been elected to the City Council. It is the seventh consecutive time that Dr. Hopkins has been elected and the first time a colored man has been elected from the ward from which Mr. Winchester comes. ( John T. Gibson of Baltimore, Maryland, has received the honorary degree of LL.D. from Morgan College. Mr. Gibson is the owner of the Standard and Dunbar Thea- tres and of an extensive estate at Meadow- brook, Penn. ( Robert S. Abbott, publisher and editor of the Chicago Defender, has been elected president of the Alumni Association of Hampton Institute to succeed the late Wil- liam M. Reid of Portsmouth, Va. ( The Reverend John W. Lee of the Pres- byterian Church has been appointed as one of the representatives to the World’s Al- liance of Churches holding the Presbyte- rian System at Cardiff, Wales, England. Dr. Lee has done missionary work in the state of Maryland. For seventeen years he was pastor of the African Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, Pa., and has for eight years been Field Representative of the Di- vision of Missions for Colored People. ( The Carnegie Corporation has appro- priated $37,500 toward the establishment of a school for Negroes in Kenya Colony, Af- rica. This school will train natives to serve as visiting teachers in the bush schools in accordance with the system developed in this country by the Jeanes Fund. James W. C. Dougall will establish and direct the new school. ( Miss Lillian Nanette Cole of Athens, Georgia, has graduated from the teachers’ course of the Ancrum School of Music in Boston. 1925 191 ¢ Dr. Charles Carroll of Pittsburgh, Pa., is the new president of the Pennsylvania State Medical, Dental and Pharmaceut‘cal Association. Dr. George Bowles of York, Pa., is a member of the executive board of the same association and also of the Na- tional Medical Association ( George E. Hall, of the law firm of Dye:r, Hall and Patterson of New York City, re- ceived the degree of Doctor of Juridical Science, the highest degree given by the New York University Law School. Mr. Hall is a graduate of Howard University with the college class of 1916 and law 1920. During his year of resident work in the graduate department of the law school of New York University he submitted three theses leading to his degree. ( Tuskegee loses its last immediate link with the late Dr. Booker T. Washington through the recent death of his widow. Mrs. Washington was born at Macon, Miss., was graduated from Fisk in 1889 and be- came Lady Principal of Tuskegee. While serving in this capacity she married Mr. Washington. After her husband’s death Mrs. Washington continued to live at Tus- kegee conferring distinction and benefit on the institution by her rare qualities as or- After funeral ser ganizer and executive. THE LATE MARGARET M. WASHINGTON Widow of Booker T. Washington \ . | | | | | | | Re | 4 | j
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192 vices of exceptional solemnity and honor her body was laid to rest beside that of her husband. ( “The Star of Ethiopia”, a pageant of the history of the Negro Race, was presented in the Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, Cali- fornia. There were more than 500 Negro men and women taking part in the pageant and nearly 5,000 in the audience. The pagent, which was written by Dr. DuBois, was directed by Mr. Charles Burroughs of New York. ( Five Negro physicians have been ap- pointed on the staff of Harlem Hospital in New York City: Dr. Louis Wright, Dr. D. B. Johnson, Dr. Ralph Young, Dr. Lucien Brown and Dr. James Granady. Several Negro doctors will be appointed for work in special departments and at the next examination for internes it is expected that several Negroes will be chosen. ( Services were held on June 21, at St. Philip’s P. E. Church for the unveiling of a tablet in memory of Susan Elizabeth Frazier. Miss Frazier was born in New York in 1864 and educated in the city schools and at Hunter College. For 25 years she taught in the schools of New York. As a result of her popularity she won a contest offered by the Evening Tel- egram and was given a trip to France. During her later years she made her home in Brooklyn and there she died. (| Memorial services were held at Mt. Cal- ‘vary Independent Church, New York City, in memory of the late Sidney Woodward, under the auspices of Mt. Calvary Inde- pendent Church and the National Associa- tion of Negro Musicians. ( The Negro children of Harlem were given a day’s outing on the occasion of the June Walk of the Appomattox Republican Club. The line of march was up Seventh Ave. to 145th Street and across to Franz Seigel Park where games, amusements and refreshments were provided. ( William A. Daniel has recently received his degree as Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago at 30 years of age. While studying for his doctorate he made a survey of Negro Theological Seminaries under the auspices of the Institute of So- cial and Religious Research. Mr. Daniel obtained his M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1923 after receiving his earlier education at Virginia Union University. THE CRISIS ( The students in the Builders’ Courses of Hampton Institute are making rapid prog- ress in both study and practical work. The four-year course in building leads to the degree of Bachelor of Science, the two-year course to a diploma. These students have been trained along the lines of contracting, mechanics, electric wiring, brick-laying, plastering and plumbing. A course in Ap- preciation of Architecture has also been quite successful. All of this work has been accompanied by thorough courses in Ac- counting, Typewriting, English and Mathe- matics. ( Professor G. W. Carver, head of the Department of Science at Tuskegee, has been praised for the success of his exhibit at the Southern Exposition in Grand Cen- tral Palace, New York. His exhibit showed among other things paint made from South- ern clay, shoe blacking.from peanuts, 103 ways of preparing peanuts and 176 ways of using potatoes. The only other repre- sentation of the colored people in the Ex- position was in pictures of them working in the cotton fie!ds. ( Two hundred teachers from all parts of New Jersey met at Atlantic City for the Tenth Annual Meeting of the New Jersey Organization of Teachers of Colored Chil- dren. The Committee on Salary Discrimi- nation reported progress and plans were made to continue the fight. Among the speakers were Dr. Ray Shaffer of the De- partment of Public Instruction, Dr. Charles Wesley of Howard University and President W. R. Valentine of the Bordentown Man- ual Training School. Lester B. Granger of Bordentown was elected president for the coming year. ( Thomas Brooks, the first Negro to be appointed to the uniformed police force in Yonkers, New York, was given a testi- monial dinner by over a hundred citizens of Yonkers headed by Mayor Ulrich Wiesen- danger. Among the speakers were Con- gressman Fairchild, Clayton French, As- sistant Attorney General of the State of New York and the Commissioner of Public Safety, Alfred H. Iles. € Dr. S. C. Snelson of Oklahoma City has been designated as the Assistant Health Officer for Oklahoma City and will work under the direction of Dr. W. N. Miles. Dr. Snelson was in charge of the United States Government Clinic following the war.
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E. Oramay Pate, Ohio State Harlan A. Carter, Dickinson A.M. A.M. Cyril F. kins, M.S. At State University, low William S. Savage, A.M. Oregon AUGUST, 1925 MASTERS OF ARTS L. Beatrice Morton, A.M. Iva R. Marshall, A.M. Jessie M. Watkins, A.M. Columbia P Cincinnati ennsylvania Chauncey R. Hudson, M.B.A. Jennie D. Porter, A.M. Sarah L. Delany, A.M. ew York Cincinnati Columbia Ira D. Reid, A.M. George M. Jones, A.M. Zaid D. Lenoir, A.M. Pittsburgh Michigan State University, lowa Jesse W. Lewis, M.B.A. Prather J. Hauser, A.M. Dean S. Yarbrough, M.H. New York Ohio State Springfield 193 a 4 ; | ad * 4 | | A * 2 ‘ si ‘ | | | ‘
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LITERATURE E it yours to offer yourselves as sacri- fices in the interest of truth and jus- tice, so that your children and your chil- dren’s children may have the fruits of your sufferings.—Das (President of India’s Swaraj Party). NEGRO HISTORY HE author Mrs. George Madden Martin chose an unusual topic on which to address the members of the Kentucky Negro Association. The Louisville, Ky., Post quotes: You of the K. N. E. A. will know for yourselves better than I can tell you that in no textbooks now in use in the forty- eight States is the American Negro shown to the pupil, white and colored, in the just and creditable sense that he with his hon- orable past through four hundred years, 1525-1924, in the development of America deserves. The fairest presentations in any text- books which this committee has been able to find present and consider the Negro in America through the institution of slavery and its present equivalent, labor, only. And here only as slavery and Negro labor have affected white America and its institutions. In no textbooks that the Kentucky Inter- racial Commission has examined is_ the American Negro shown to the pupil, white and colored, as a race group, a people with vn authenticated pact and a history of their own in Africa. Again, no textbook exam- ined tells the pupil that practically every people in the world have been enslaved by some other people at some period in their history; or explains to the pupil, white and colored, that slavery is a condition imposed; endured; not necessarily merited. Nor is he properly credited with his great share in this country, through his labor, as an em- pire builder. * This condit'‘on should be changed, but how? Not only must the aid of public opin- ion be invoked but also the publisher must be won over to depart from certain static myths. But a great deal depends on the Negro element: In aiding the inter-racial commission then in building up a public opinion which shall see the Negro as he is, ask no allowances on the score of race. Instead, ask your fellow citizens, white and colored. to go back with you along the path which the Negro in The Looking Glass 194 America has come s'nce 1525, following the license given in that year for slave traffic in the new world by Philip of Spain; and then, to come forward with you along the path of this slave people to 1864 and the emancipation; a matter that is of three centuries and a quarter in bondage. And then take up your story since the emanci- pation to the present day. Against your rightful background, Af- rica, just as the Anglo-Saxon’s background is Europe, your fellow citizens will see you as a people, a group, a force; as a slave group first, contributing in an _ essential sense to present-day America; and second as an emancipated people, who in sixty years has made a progress not paralleled in a similar time by any people in history; even conceding that the Negro in America had commenced to make this progress be- fore the moment of emancipation. In 1864 a people without property, without hold- ings. In 1920, owning property in the United States taxed at more than a billion five hundred million dollars. Owning in lands twenty-two million acres, or more than thirty-four thousand square miles. With 80 per cent of the race literate; the number of Negro churches, 4,300; of Negro colle7ves and normal schools 500; these figures be- ing taken from the 1920 census reports. * Then Mrs. Martin sounds a note that should be peculiarly appealing to the mod- ern school of Nevro writers: You know the story of Phyllis Wheatley better than I. a story which in itself estab- lishes your potential measure. But may I remind you wherein lay the weakness of this girl poet. this young Phyllis Wheat- ley? It is here: She never sounds a native note. She wrote instead the white man’s poetry of the eighteenth century. She utters no cry out of the bondage of her people. she ives us no picture of. sav—that African bazck- ground from which she by force was borne. She writes no lyric out of the slave’s heart: no sonnet to the brown skins of her people. You see what I would imply! Phyllis Wheatley, bespoken by Washington hims-lf in her day, is unknown even by name to’av by the American white people in general. Whereas the folk-lore of the American Negro, the Uncle Remus stories collected from you, will never be forgotten by the white race. Sound your own, your native note in whatever you do; and the world, white. vel- low. red and brown, will listen, arnraise, and if merited, will applaud and credit you!
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AUGUST, Charles Gilpin, the actor, speaks his own, his people’s genius; Roland Hayes sings out of the heart of his own, not another race; Henry Tanner, wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honor of France, member of the Paris Salon, is first a Negro, son of a Meth- odist bishop, then a great painter; Henry Burleigh carried your music with him to the choir of St. George’s church in New York City; he did not bring St. George’s white music to you. Du Bois proclaims his own race; its genius; its contributions; not another race. Professor Carver, scientist, with twenty-eight practical inventions to his credit, winner of the Spingarn medal, cen- ters his activities at Tuskegee, the Negro’s own creation among schools. Will it hearten you, and inspire you to believe in your own capacities, to hear that the first patent ever issued in the United States, by the patent office of the govern- ment, a patent for an improved agricultural implement, was to a Negro? Consider the growing list of your poets; James Johnson, Claude McKay, William Braithwaite, Georgia Johnson, Joseph Cot- ter, Countée Cullen, Junios, and how many more! They are what they are because they speak, not to the white heart, but the Negro heart. Recall for yourselves the growth among you since you established your own press; your newspapers; your magazines. It was a Negro girl sculptor, a student at Peter Cooper, who in 1923 in open competition won the scholarship to Fontainebleau. Bridging the centurics from 1773 to 1923, from Phyllis Wheatley. the second Ameri- can woman poet, to aprear in print. to the present day, Jessie Fauset, who offers to America the first recognized novel written by a Negro woman in America, deals with her own people only; in other words, writes of a life which she herse!f best knows. * * * Repudiate the forms and expressions of the white race, says Mrs. Martin, and de- velop a Negro craftsmanship. How far this would be practicable in a people so far re- moved from native influence is of course an open question. However she continues: Why are not you Negro people with your sense of color, modeling and coloring new and beautiful pottery? Inventing glazes? Creating markets for ware peculiarly your own? Why do you ape the white race’s stand- ardized and factory-made products? Just a= your music is your own, so you should express yourselves in the visible things with which you surround yourselves. Is there no unexpressed architectural sense within you that you continually build your homes after the white man’s pattern? That you paint your houses with his dull grays and whites and browns? Once on a Carribean island I saw a group of Negro homes fashioned 1925 195 of plaster laid on blocks of coquina, a house here colored a pale lemon; there rose; there tawny orange. The banjo is your own invention; its more primitive form is still in use in Guinea now; the Nanga, the earliest harp, a four-string- ed instrument, came up through Egypt out of the heart of Africa. Invent anew for your needs today. You are an old, possibly an older people even than that weary race, the Chinese; but this transplanted group of you here in America are in another sense a young, a new people; there should be something en- ergizing and heartening in the realization that it is in your hands today to make your history in the Western world. All this is as to your future; the Ken- tucky Commission on Inter-racial Co-opera- tion asks your aid in so building up a pub- lic opinion that your past history and its relations to present America may properly be included in the school textbooks of the United States, this with a view to the bet- ter understanding of each other by the pu- pils of both races. FOLKSONGS OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO ARL VAN VECHTEN writes in Vanity Fair: Musicians and musical people have long recognized the rare beauty of these songs which originated on the southern planta- tions during slave days. Other origins have been attributed to them including that of the old “Aunty” who explained: “When Massa Jesus He walked de earth, when He feel tired He set a’restin’ on Jacob’s well an’ make up dese yer spirchuls for His peo- ple.” It is as good an explanation as any. However they came into being, the unpre- tentious sincerity that inspires them makes them the peer or the superior of any folk music the world has yet known. So much has been written in regard to the music that the poetic quality, however crude, of the words is sometimes overlooked. Observe, for example, the poignant symbolism of When Israel was in Egypt’s land,— Let my people go! Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my people go! Go down, Moses! Way down in Egypt’s land! Tell ole Pharaoh Tet my people go! In decided contrast is the scherzo-like Little David, play on your harp, Hallelu! Hallelu! l.ittle David, play on your harp, Hallelu! He killed Goliath with a stone Then clapped his hands and ran home. little David, play on your harp, Hallelu! Or the austere dignity of Weepin’ Mary: If there’s anybody here like Weepin’ Mary, back | | |
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196 Call upon your Jesus, an’ He’ll draw nigh. If there’s anybody here like weepin’ Mary, Call upon your Jesus, an’ He’ll draw nigh. O, glory, glory hallelujah! Glory be to my God, who rules on high! It is not novel to state that the Spirituals are the source of our modern popular mu- sic. They contain, indeed, every element of modern jazz save the instrumentation. Such songs as The Gospel Train (Get on board, children), All God’s Chillun Got Wings, 1 Don’t Feel Noways Tired, and I’m a’Trav'lin’ to the Grave, set to secular words might almost be mistaken for com- positions by George Gershwin, a statement I feel sure, which the composer of /’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise would be very glad to corroborate. An extremely popular song of a season or two ago, Dear Old South- lend, is almost a literal transcription of two Negro Spirituals, Deep River and Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child although the Negro musician whose name appears on the cover made no acknowledg- ment of his indebtedness. » * * There is in these songs a wide variety. It is less generally known that there are quite as many work songs, convict songs, as religious songs, although as yet hardly any of these have been collected. A few, how- ever, such as the ubiquitous Water Boy in Avery Robinson’s arrangement, Mr. Bur- leigh’s version of Scandalize My Name, and the cotton pickin’, corn huskin’, and hammer songs assembled by Natalie Curtis-Burlin, are more or less familiar. Another class of Negro folk song, The Blues, has evolved in the less respectable quarters of Mem- phis. Many of these spontaneous inven- tions of nondescript pianists and cabaret singers have been published (necessarily with new verses!) with no word of credit as to the impudicity of their origin. In his preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry, James Weldon Johnson asserts that the first piece of ragtime to achieve wide popularity was The Bully, sung by May Ir- win. He further avers that this is an ar- rangement of a roustabout song, long fa- miliar on the Mississippi. THE CHURCH AND WAR HE Nation graph: One of the exceptions worth noting in regard to the attitude of the churches to- ward war took place at the recent synod of the Pacific Province of the Episcopal ehurch Berkeley, California. Two churchmen pleaded the cause of just and peaceable human relations; and the Epis- copal Women’s Auxiliary, meeting at the same time, adopted resolutions against ali war as a violation of the teachings of Jesus. Bishop Stevens of Los Angeles accused his fellow-clergy of intolerance and _ indiffer- ence toward other races, particularly the has a forceful para- THE CRISIS Negroes and Japanese, and pointed out the hypocrisy of sending missionaries into the Orient and then refusing fellowship and equal rights to the Oriental—including the Christian Oriental—in America. Another clergyman, the Reverend H. S. Brewster of Modesto, assailed war, preparedness, and the interests behind them, as well as the whole policy of protecting American capi- tal in foreign markets. His words are said to have “caused a stir”. These two ad- dresses, delivered by men who work and preach in the heart of one of our centers of darkest reaction, should cause a stir wher- ever they are repeated. VOTES AND SCHOOLS DUCATIONAL inequalities between white and colored in the South are slowly lessening. This, Carroll Binder, points out in the Chicago, Ill, Tribune: The two most significant forces at work today in the improvement of educational opportunities for the Negro in the South are use by the Negro of his own voting power to force good schools from a be- grudging community and the earnest eiforts made by Southern white men and women to extend to the Negro the opportunities for schooling now accorded whites. Whether by exercise of the franchise or by belated recognition of his right the Negro is getting good schools for his chil- dren in many sections of the South. Dele- gates to the inter-racial commission here brought reports of huge expenditures for schools in their respective communities which were as widely separated as Texas and Virginia. Contrary to a widespread impression the Negro does vote in many sections of the South. In some communities he holds a balance of power which he is exercising in his own interest. There are sections where the “shotgun quarantine” still operates in the vicinity of the polling places and state democratic parties often bar the Negro voter from their primaries which, of course, means from election. It is in local elections and particularly in bond elections that the Negro makes himself felt. Reform forces in a recent Savannah, Ga., municipal elec- tion found themselves thwarted until they invoked the aid of the leading Negro citi- zens who brought out the full Negro vote in support of the reform candidate and made possible the ousting of the corrupt machine. Atlanta itself can testify to the power uw: the Negro vote. The city was desperatety in need of additional school buildings. Pro- posals for bonds to finance the school build- ings were uniformly defeated by a substan- tial majority. It finally dawned upon the friends of education that their bond issues were being defeated by the Negroes, who held the balance of power. In desperation they called upon the Negro leaders to heip The them put over the school bond issue.
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AUGUST, Negroes pointed out that the proposed funds were to be used for white schools only and that no concern was manifested for the Negroes, who were still being taught in sheds of the civil war period. Through the Atlanta inter-racial com- mittee an arrangement was negotiated whereby $1,250,000 of the proposed $4,000,- 000 bond issue was to be devoted to build- ings for Negro children. The bond issue carried overwhelmingly at the next election, and today the city of Atlanta has a Negro high school building which compares favor- ably with the best buildings for whites. New elementary schools have also been completed as part of the program. Bishop George C. Clement of the A. M. E. Zion church, Louisville, told the commis- sion that it is impossible to put through a bond issue in his community without the support of the Negro vote, which is with- held when there is any discrimination against Negroes in measures for new schools, parks or other improvements. Use of the ballot by Negroes forced the city of Louisville to open the doors of the municipal university of Louisville to Negro students. Bond issues were uniformly defeated by the Negroes until the bars were lifted. A state bond issue for educational purposes carries the provision that a fixed percentage shall be used for education of Negro children. FROM THE COLORED PRESS HE Oklahoma City, Okla., Black De- spatch has a strong editorial on Klan methods: “Nigger stay at home election day, this is a white man’s fight.” The Klan might have won in Muskogee in the recent munici- pal election had members of the Invisible Empire not scattered thousands of cards all over the colored sections of the city, bearing the above inscription. Some of these days the white folk who started the Klan are going to discover that this YOUNG NEGRO in America is not bothered about the Klan and the cowards who belong to it. The Klan found this out in Muskogee in the last election, and to its sorrow. Every Negro who could get to the poling places in the city, and who was armed with a registration certificate, pre- sented himself there and voted AGAINST THE KLAN TICKET AND CANDI- DATES. The Muskogee Klan though should be complimented and commended for doing something that no other white folk have ever done. They proclaim on their edict ecards, scattered over in the Negro section, that they have started a “WHITE MAN’S FIGHT” AND DID NOT CARE TO HAVE ANY BLACK FOLKS HELPING OUT. If our recollection serves us right, these are the first white folks in history who did not want to draft the Negroes to do their fighting, if said Negroes were hanging anv- 1925 197 where close around. They made breast- works out of black folk in the Revolution- ary War at Bunker Hill, they piled them behind cotton bales in 1812 at New Orleans. Roosevelt called them at San Juan Hill and Pershing needed them at Carrizal. The recent loud shout and call for help during the World War is too fresh in our memory, as to the attitude of white folk when fight- ing starts. and we are almost certain that one hundred per cent of the membership of the Muskogee Klan should be placed in the insane asylum at Norman, because of having gotten so far away from their well- known traditions. The editor of the Louisville, Ky., News writes wisely: Great oaks from little acorns grow. And so a great deal of prejudice grows from little incidents. That comes to mind in observing colored men and women standing in our street cars when there are seats at their disposal. The other morning we saw a well-known man standing in a street car when there were three seats unoccupied. One-half of each was taken by a white person, but why should our colored friend stand? He had paid his fare, the equal of every other pas- senger, so what did he hope to gain by standing when there were vacant seats? Does he hate white people so that he dis- likes to sit beside them? Does he fear them so he is afraid to _ sit beside them on a public conveyance? Was he afraid of offending some one? We would like to know by what reasoning he chose to stand. If this were an isolated case we would not refer to it. But it is an every-day oc- currence, and it is becoming a serious mat- ter. Such actions only tend to create preju- dice where perhaps none existed before and to increase it if it had existed. White people may stand rather than sit beside their colored fellows—that is their privilege, and they pay for their petty prejudice by that inconvenience. They hurt no one but themselves and make themselves appear small. But when colored people stand when there are places to sit, instead of impress‘ng on- lookers they are snubbing anybody, thev play directly into the hands of prejudiced people and herald to the world théy feel unequal and inferior to other people. That is the way their action is interpreted. The street car is a public conveyance. There is nothing that savors of social con- tact in riding on a street car. White peo- ple ride side by side, colored people ride side by side without ever knowin or caring to know their seatmates. The car fare is the same for all and the colored person who stands when there are seats at hand appears ludicrous and adds to the sum total of race prejudice. SIT DOWN!
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198 THE CRISIS ADVERTISER JAMES E. GREGG FRANK K. ROGERS Principal Treasurer GEORGE P. PHENIX WILLIAM H. SCOVILLE Vice inci retary HAMPTON INSTITUTE HAMPTON, VIRGINIA Founded in 1868 by General Armstrong to train selected colored youths who should go out to teach and lead their people. Hampton stands for “a sound body, a trained capacity, and an unselfish out- look on life”. Hampton is an industrial village: 1,000 acres, 140 buildings; 928 boarding students, including 201 college students; 352 day pupils in practice-school; 1,017 summer-school students; 250 teachers and other workers. Hampton has over 2,622 graduates and more than 8,800 former students; also numerous outgrowths, including Tuskegee, founded by Booker T. Washington. COLLEGIATE DIVISION I-—THE TEACHERS’ COLLEGE School of Agriculture—offcring a four-year course leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science; aims to develop teachers of agriculture, farm-demonstration agents and farmers; Donald F. Fenn, Acting Director. School of Education—offering a four-year high-school teachers’ course leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science and two two-year courses leading to appropriate diplomas; aims to train teachers for high schools, for intermediate and grammar grades and for primary grades; Wm. Anthony Aery, Director. School of Home Economics—offering a four-year course leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science and a two-year course leading to a diploma; aims to train young women to be home makers and teachers of home economics; Blanche W. Purcell, Director. Summer School for Teachers—aims to meet the needs of teachers in service—principals, super- visors, high-school teachers, elementary teachers, teachers of home economics and teachers of physical education; George P. Phenix, Vice Principal and Director. II—THE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS offering a four-year course leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science and a two-year course leading to a diploma; aims to give young men and young women such training in business principles and practice as to prepare them for business positions or to teach business subjects; Clarence D. Stevens, Director. Iti—THE TRADE SCHOOL offering a four-year course leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science and a two-year course leading to a diploma; aims to train skilled builders by thorough instruction in business methods, field management, building materials, trade practice, structural design and principles of architecture; H. J. DeYarmett, Director; H. Whittemore Brown, In Charge of Builders’ Courses. SECONDARY DIVISION I—ACADEMY offering a standard, four-year high-school course, accredited by the Virginia Department of Education; aims to give all-round preparation for college work. Ii—TRADE SCHOOL —offering four-year courses in 11 trades; aims to give four distinct lines of work—academic subjects, business subjects, trade technical subjects and trade practice. Mention Tue Crisis.