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The poet in him spoke in those days. For instance, in his "The Souls of Black Folk," he wrote:

I sit with Shakespere and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they all come graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil [the color line]. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?

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Third, is what may best be called the Booker Washington school of leadership. This type of leadership covets the best for the race no less than do the two schools just mentioned, but frankly recognizes the existence of race prejudice and puts its faith in evolution rather than in edicts. I can illustrate the ideals of this type of negro leadership no better than by recalling an interview that H. G. Wells had with Booker Washington several years ago when Mr. Wells was making an American tour preparatory to writing his "The Future in America."

The interview took place in Boston. Mr. Wells argued strongly against the idea which Mr. Washington held that blacks and whites might live side by side without mingling and without injustice. Mr. Wells held this to be impossible, and said:

"You must repudiate separation, no peoples have ever yet endured the tension of intermingled distinctness."

"May we not become a peculiar people?" Mr. Washington suggested. "Is n't that possible?" He pointed

Mr. Wells did not agree. out that negroes had no common religion, culture, or racial conceit to hold them together, that the colored people were always ready to disperse and interbreed, that they were not a community in a peculiar racial sense.

All this was so much empty rhetoric to Booker Washington. Mr. Wells might talk lightly of destroying race prejudice. Washington knew better. Statesman that he was, Booker Washington accepted the fact of race prejudice and shaped his policies around that central fact. The color line saddened Washington just as it saddened Du Bois, but he felt that his mission was to achieve all possible progress, and he knew that battering his brains against a stone wall would help very little. So he accepted exclusion as inevitable, and worked out his Tuskegee program of making useful men who would, as skilled engineers and farmers, as trained artisans, make it more and more difficult to launch the charge of incompetence, ignorance, slovenly farming, and careless house management against his race.

"I wish you would tell me," said Mr. Wells, "just what you think of the attitude of white America towards you? Do you think it is generous?"

He looked at Mr. Wells for a moment, and with an evasive smile said:

"No end of people help us." "Yes," said Mr. Wells, "but the ordinary man. Is he fair?"

"Some things are not fair," Mr. Washington replied, evading the general question. "It is n't fair to refuse a colored man a berth on a sleepingcar. ... I happen to be a privileged person, they make an exception for me; but the ordinary educated colored man is n't admitted to a sleeping-car at all. . . . Then in some places, in the hotels and restaurants-it 's all right here in Boston-but southwardly he can't get proper refreshments. All that 's a handicap. . The remedy

lies in education," Mr. Washington said, "ours-and theirs."

"The real thing," Washington later

told Mr. Wells, "is n't to be done by talking and agitation. It's a matter of lives. The only answer to it all is for colored men to be patient, to make themselves competent, to do good work, to live well, to give no occasion against us. We feel that. In a way it 's an inspiration.

"There is a man here in Boston, a negro, who owns and runs some big stores, employs all sorts of people, deals justly. That man has done more good for our people than all the eloquence or argument in the world. . . That is what we have to do-it is all we can do."

Interpreting this point of view in his volume of impressions, Mr. Wells refers to it as a policy that made each educated and efficient negro an ambassador to civilization, a representative and vicarious character, by keeping decent and honorable, doing a little to beat down racial prejudice.

When all is said and done, nothing since his death has invalidated the essential soundness of Booker Washington's policy. In this time of universal unrest and fresh aspirations it will not be easy for the negro to accept the full implications of the policy, but it is the most statesmanlike program that the race has yet evolved, simply because it reckons with facts and looks toward possible progress rather than theoretical perfection.

The poorest friend the negro has is the sentimental philanthropist who, sweeping all of the biological facts in the case aside, thinks to lift the race by according to black men smatterings of classical education and social equality. Some one has suggested that to these well-meaning, but blind, guides the negro might address the words of Andres to Don Quixote: "For the love of God, Signor Knight Errant, if ever you meet me again, though you see me beaten to pieces, do not come to my help, but leave me to my fate, which cannot be so bad but that it will be made worse by your worship." The negro is not a white man with a black skin; he is a different race at a different stage in racial evolution. It is not fair to judge him by the standards of the white race. It is folly to expect him

to respond with white alacrity to the opportunities that white men enjoy. We must remember that the AngloSaxon did not leap to his present supremacy at one bound; he has walked over the slow road of racial evolution. That fact should counsel the negro to patience under certain discriminations that may off-hand appear unjust, and should also throw light upon the white man's program for the negro.

TRAINING THE NEGRO'S HAND

As a nation we must develop and extend the facilities for the industrial education of the negro. It is not higher education that the negro primarily needs. The advantages of higher education should be open for every individual negro who displays the appetite and ability for its attainment, but it is a matter of history that sound racial development demands that the education of the hand precede the education of the head. The races that have built cathedrals and universities and art galleries have first been hewers of wood and drawers of water. The negro cannot take a short cut. The invention and use of tools have been reliable tests of racial advance. As a race the negro has not, to the present, been an inventor and user of tools. This distinction he must achieve through the best industrial education that the nation can give him and help him to acquire. The political and educational statesmanship of the nation, joining hands in this matter, can make a fundamental contribution toward the solution of our race problem.

A BILL OF LABOR RIGHTS

It is not enough, however, to train the negro for industry. Industry must be open to him upon a basis of justice. In the past it has been the industrial part of the color line that has most impeded the negro's progress. He has been barred from the trades to a serious extent by the facts of his being barred from membership in the laborunions of the country. But now a start has been made toward correcting this feature of the race situation. At its

recent Atlantic City meeting the American Federation of Labor voted to grant unconditional membership to the negro. Afro-American periodicals here and there refer to this step as next in importance to the abolition of chattel slavery. Theoretically this decision of the federation makes it possible for the negro workman to enter all of the skilled and better-paid trades and carry on a genuine test of merit unhampered by racial discrimination. This action of the federation was not inspired by any abstract theory of the race problem, but was the inevitable result of conditions brought about by the war. I have already referred to the fact that the withdrawal of many white American workmen from industry for military service, the return of so many Italians and other South-European laborers to their native lands for war duty, and the practical cessation of immigration during the war resulted in a labor shortage in Northern industries; that this resulted in a great influx of negro labor into the Northern States. The American Federation of Labor had to reckon with the presence of this great body of colored workmen already in Northern industry as a result of the migration of the last three years. It saw that the great need for labor during the reconstruction period, coupled with an imminent restriction of immigration by Congressional act, would probably keep a steady stream of negro labor flowing from the South for some time to come. If this mass of colored workmen should be left unorganized or admitted to a qualified membership only, there would be great danger to organized white labor in the use of colored workmen as strike-breakers. If the mass of negro workmen in Northern industries, dissatisfied with discriminatory treatment at the hands of organized labor, were made available as "scab" labor, a complicated situation would obtain. The American Federation of Labor saw this and hastened to throw its doors open to the negro. If this vote can be translated into fact, labor will face the issues of the new era with a solid front.

There are two factors that will make difficult the carrying out of this vote.

In the first place, there is bound to be much friction between white and black workmen as the negro enters the unions and takes his place alongside the white workman. The old race prejudice will not be exorcised by executive order. In the second place, it is not at all certain that negro workmen will readily adapt themselves to a far-reaching program of organization. They may feel that their best interests lie in playing a separate game with capital. Mr. John Mitchell, the editor of a negro periodical in Richmond, Virginia, has stated these two difficulties clearly. He writes:

The greatest menace to organized labor as opposed to organized capital is the black multitude that entered the industrial plants of the country and demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that they could execute and master the tasks assigned. It was organized capital and not organized labor that gave to black labor the position that it now occupies. Will the colored men accept the invitation and join the white labor-unions or will they stand out as independent units under their own leaders and from their respective platforms deal directly with the moneyed interests of the country? On this decision will depend the fate of the white laboring interests of America as represented by the American Federation of Labor.

It is also an interesting question as to whether the American Federation of Labor can hold in leash its own membership should the invitation be generally accepted by the colored men of this country.

Mr. Samuel Gompers said regarding the admission of colored workmen into unqualified membership in the federation that "it is one of the most important steps taken by the federation in many years." It is undoubtedly a challenge to the good temper, the patience, and the statesmanship of the leaders of black and white labor.

JOINT COUNCILS ON RACE RELATIONS

It will materially help the situation if throughout the country, particularly in our industrial centers, there can be organized joint councils on inter-racial adjustment and coöperation, composed

of the best minds of both races. These councils should be permanent bodies and should meet regularly for sustained study and treatment of the race problem in their respective cities. Such bodies could anticipate and discount the sort of crises that have hitherto broken upon cities as out of a clear sky as far as the rank and file of black and white citizens have been concerned. These councils should reckon at the outset with the fact that during the last three or four years multitudes of black men have come into absolutely new civic, social, and industrial environment. The sudden lifting of men out of the restraints of old relations into a new environment is always attended by danger. The negro has been released from repressive conditions in the South and transferred into an atmosphere of. freedom in Northern cities. If many have regarded liberty as license, it is no strange happening, and should be. treated with sympathetic insight. Joint councils of white and black leaders would tend to introduce elements of sympathy and understanding into the situation. These councils should undertake exhaustive surveys of their local conditions and draw up a municipal program for better housing, sanitary, and living conditions for their colored populations, programs for better recreation facilities, better educational advantages, better economic and industrial conditions, better traveling facilities. These councils should see to it that the negro has access to adequate legal aid and advice that will insure his getting a square deal in our courts.

MORE ETHICS, LESS EMOTION

The churches that minister to the negro have a great responsibility and a great opportunity in this time of vexed race relations. Benjamin Brawley, in his "The Negro in Literature and Art," speaking of the negro's susceptibility to religious ecstasy, says that "the negro is thrilled not so much by the moral as by the artistic and pictorial elements in religion." In the average negro susceptibility to religious emotion and blindness to moral obligations may frequently be found.

side by side. The churches that minister to the colored populations of America should studiously avoid the highly emotional type of preaching frequently indulged in by those who preach to negroes. These great denominations should emphasize the ethical at the expense of the emotional. Every time a preacher plays recklessly upon the emotions of a negro audience he is further cultivating a racial weakness and defeating, or at least delaying, the ultimate ethical purpose of Christianity among our colored folk. The white denominations should carry out an extensive program, beyond anything yet undertaken, for the selection and education of negro preachers. The emotional type that displays an uncertain perception of ethical values should be ruthlessly weeded out. Better that colored districts be less churched for a while than that this type predominate. The negro clergyman's preparation should include a good industrial education as well as classical and theological instruction, so that he may be a leader of the total life of his people.

THE NEGRO AT THE BALLOT BOX

The question of the negro and the ballot is a matter we shall be forced to consider, and concerning which we must come to some common understanding. Most students of the problem are agreed that the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to our Constitution was a blunder. As John R. Commons wrote several years ago:

The very qualities of intelligence and manliness which are essential for citizenship in a democracy were systematically expunged from the negro race through two hundred years of slavery. And then, by the cataclysm of a war of emancipation in which it took no part, this race, after many thousand year of savagery and two centuries of slavery, was suddenly let loose into the liberty of citizenship and the electoral suffrage. The world never before had seen such a triumph of dogmatism and partisanship. It was dogmatism because a theory of abstract equality and inalienable rights of man took the place of education and the slow evolution of moral character.

It was partisanship because a political party, taking advantage of its triumph in civil war, sought to perpetuate itself through amendments to the constitution.

In those Southern States where the blacks outnumbered the whites the threat of black ascendancy was met by an actual nullification of the fifteenth amendment by intimidation, murder, ballot-box stuffing, and false counting. This is frankly admitted. The negro vote virtually disappeared in many regions. Then the white ascendancy that had been regained by force was fortified by legal enactments. Educational tests were introduced and interpreted in a manner that would enable the most illiterate white man to vote and prevent the negro regardless of his intelligence from voting. The "grandfather" and "understanding" clauses were other legal quibbles used to defeat the fifteenth amendment, counting out the negro without technically discriminating against him on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The negro is to-day clamoring with renewed vigor for the unrestricted right of suffrage. What are we to do about it? Shall we take as our platform the conception that "the cost of liberty is less than the price of repression" and attempt by federal action to sweep away every state restriction upon the negro ballot? Or shall we honestly accept as our platform the principle that "the suffrage must be earned, and not merely conferred, if it is to be an instrument of self-protection" and start over again the education of the negro for citizenship, making that education contribute toward that mastery of tools and industrial processes, that selfcontrol, and that coöperative capacity which must underlie an intelligent use of the privileges of citizenship? We white men have no moral right to adopt educational tests for negro suffrage unless we make a genuine effort to equip every negro in the United States to pass those tests.

It is the height of folly, however, to criticize the white men of the South for their circumvention of the fifteenth amendment. Any man of us placed in the same position would have done like

wise. As in so many cases, unwise legislation made inevitable practices that were in the abstract unjust and even criminal. Until the negro as a race is equipped to use wisely the suffrage, white men will, wherever there are large colored populations, find ways to circumvent any legislative enactment granting unrestricted suffrage to all negroes. The way out lies through the frank acceptance of this fact and a sustained coöperative effort by the leaders of both races to equip the negro for a wise and safe use of the ballot.

A NEW CHAPTER IN ANTHROPOLOGY

So far as I know, history records but three results when inferior and superior races have lived together in the same country: (1) Amalgamation; (2) Slavery; (3) Extinction. Is America shut up to a choice of one of these three? Who dares propose the first? Even though race prejudice did not stand in the way, biology lifts its warning finger. When an inferior and superior race inter-breed, the inferior pulls the superior down to its level. The quality of the race, like water, seeks the lowest level in the process of amalgamation. We fought a civil war in vindication of the negro's right to emancipation from physical slavery. We are taking the first steps toward his industrial freedom. Let us hope that we can put through an educational program that will mean an end to his political servitude. And the third outcome small we permit congestion, disease, vice, and lynching to kill off the race in America?

It is true, as I stated earlier, that there is no royal, easy, and quick solution to this race problem. As in the practice of medicine, our best effort will be the removal of every artificial and unjust restriction that impedes the evolution of the race, so that the biological and educational forces of our civilization may do their just and perfect work. White men must abjure the picturesque charlatanry of a Vardaman as the black folk must reject the poetic frenzy of a Du Bois, and join in the effort to write a new chapter in anthropology.

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