IE 01 -mj 280011^0.13618 LIBRARY RULES This book may be kept W.V^.O....weeks. A fine of two cents will be charged for each day books or magazines are kept overtime. Two books may be borrowed from the Library at one time. Any book injured or lost shall be paid for by the person to whom it is charged. No member shall transfer his right to use the Library toi other person. THE VOICE OF THE NEGRO 1- THE VOICE OF THE NEGRO 1919 .J^ BY ROBERT T. KERLIN PROFESSOR OP ENGLISH, VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 68i FIFTH AVENUE t Copyright, 1920, By E. p. DUTTON COMPANY All Rights Reserved Printed In the United States of America PREFACE The following work is a compilation from the colored press of America for the four months immediately succeeding the Washington riot. It is designed to show the Negro's reaction to that and like events following, and to the World War and the discussion of the Treaty. It may, in the editor's estimation, be regarded as a primary document in promoting a knowledge of the Negro, his point of view, his way of thinking upon race relations, his grievances, his aspirations, his demands. Vir- tually the entire Afro-American press, consisting of two dailies, a dozen magazines, and nearly three hundred weeklies, has been drawn upon. Here is the voice of the Negro, and his heart and mind. Here the Negro race speaks as it thinks on the question of questions for America—the race question. The like of this utterance, in angry protest and prayerful pleading, the entire rest of the world does not offer. When I told a publisher that I was making this compilation he remarked that my book would make disagreeable reading. There are worse things than disagreeable reading. The Editor. Lexington, Va., January i, 1920. aeis ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To the Associated Negro Press and to the various magazines that I have quoted I wish to make grateful acknowledgment of their kindness in freely permitting me to use their copyright matter. To scores of weeklies beyond those for which I subscribed I am indebted for numerous free copies kindly supplied me on my application. VI Wux TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER PAGE I. THE COLORED PRESS i 1. Its Comments on Itself i 2. Its Comments on the White Press .... 4 3. Radicalism and Conservatism 9 II. THE NEW ERA 24 1. The New Negro and the Old 24 2. New Leadership 25 3. Race Traitors 26 4. "GooD-BY, Black Mammy" 29 III. THE NEGRO'S REACTIONS TO THE WORLD WAR . 31 1. Valor and Sacrifice 31 2. Discriminations Against Colored Service Men . 35 3. The Treaty and the League of Nations ... 39 4. The Afro-American Tercentenary .... 41 5. Negro Congresses 44 IV. THE NEGRO'S GRIEVANCES AND DEMANDS . 51 1. The Ballot 56 2. Participation in Government 58 3. The Administration of Justice 61 4. Social Equality 65 5. Segregation and Proscription 70 V. RIOTS 75 1. Longview 75 2. Washington 76 3. Chicago 79 4. Knoxville 83 5. Omaha 85 6. Elaine 87 VI. LYNCHINGS 100 1. Number, Causes, Instances 100 2. The Negro and the Crime of Rape . 117 3. The White Man and the Crime of Rape ... 120 vii Vlll Table of Contents CHAPTER PAGE VII. THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 126 With special reference to economic and living con- ditions. VIII. THE NEGRO AND LABOR UNIONISM AND BOL- SHEVISM 149 nx)] NEGRO PROGRESS 157 — Examples. Agencies for Uplift I. Miscellaneous 157 Business 162 Art and Literature 165 Colored Womanhood 168 Schools 170 Lodges 171 Churches I75 X. THE LYRIC CRY 183 <;^^^4o-X*v»t. INTRODUCTION The colored people of America are going to their own papers in these days for the news and for their guidance in thinking. These papers are coming to them from a score of Northern cities—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland; they are coming to them from the great border cities —Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis; they are com- ing to them from every Southern city. Wherever in all the land there is a considerable Negro population there is a Negro newspaper. Little Rock has four, Louisville five, Indianapolis six, New York City ten; the State of Georgia has nine, Mississippi nineteen, Illinois eleven, California seven. To these numbers must be added the publications of churches, societies, and schools. For example, Mississippi has eleven re- ligious weeklies, eight school periodicals, and two lodge papers, making a total, with the nineteen newspapers, of forty period- icals. And all classes of these contain articles on racial strife, outcries against wrongs and persecutions. You cannot take up even a missionary review or a Sunday school quarterly without being confronted by such an outcry. As for the prosperity of these periodicals there is abun- dant evidence. As for their influence the evidence is no less. The Negro seems to have newly discovered his fourth estate, to have realized the extraordinary power of his press. Mighty as the pulpit has been with him, the press now seems to be foremost. It is freer than the pulpit, and there is a peculiar authority in printer's ink. His newspaper is the voice of the Negro. Into every town and village of the land, and into many a log cabin in the mountains, come the colored papers, from all parts of the country, and these papers are read, and passed from hand to hand, and re-read until they are worn out. What do these papers contain? What is their tone, their spirit? How do they report the happenings of the day—the lynchings of Negroes, the riots, or mob-assaults? What manner of X Introduction editorial comment do they make? What kind of cartoons do they contain? What instruction do they give their readers? After some months of close perusal of dozens and scores of colored weeklies, published North, South, East, and West, it seemed to the present writer that it would be a service to the country to make a compilation from them that should fairly represent their contents, their presentation of the news, and their discussions and comments. That the Negro him- self has this right to be heard in the court of the world will not be denied except by the hopelessly prejudiced and constitutionally unjust. We have too frequently heard foolish vaunts about "knowing the Negro," the context of such boasting invariably convicting the speaker of dangerous conceit and the harsh spirit of suppression. Those who would honestly seek to know the Negro must read his papers. It is in them the Negro speaks out with freedom, with sincerity, with justice to himself, for there he speaks as a Negro to Negroes, and he is aware that the white people do not so much as know of 'le existence of his papers. To know the Negro do not quiz the cook in your kitchen, or the odd-job, all-service menial about your premises, or the local school-teacher or preacher. In general they will tell you what they know you wish to hear, or, on difficult mat- ters, remain non-committal. To know the Negro do not fall foul of two or three publications of Chicago or New York: there are some pretty radical and rather bolshevistically in- clined white papers, according to the Post Office Department, in those quarters. We do not regard them as representing White America. To know the Negro read his papers ex- tensively, particularly those that issue from Atlanta, and Rich- mond, and Little Rock, and New Orleans, and Dallas, and Raleigh, and Louisville, and Chattanooga, and a score of other cities south of the Mason and Dixon Line, as well as those of the emigres in the North. Read their editorials, their sermons and addresses, and their news items; read their reports of the proceedings of their congresses, conventions, and conferences, their petitions and resolutions; read their poems and stories and dramatic sketches; look at their cartoons. This thing I have been doing, assiduously, and, I trust, with an open mind and friendly disposition, since mid-summer, 1919. After the riot in our nation's capital it seemed to me that the Negro's version of the story, whatever it was, should be heard. The riots that followed. North and South, East and West, confirmed : ' Introduction xi me in my purpose to get at that story and present it to the white public, if that public would accept it. Obtaining a full list of colored papers and magazines, I applied to them for copies dating onward from July the first. My study table was soon heaped with copies of hundreds of publications. I made a selection of fifty-three, which, after much study, I judged to be the most representative, and sub- scribed for them. The extracts which constitute the body of this book are made, I may therefore say, from the entire range of current Negro publications, but in the main from the half hundred that seemed to be the ablest, most prosperous, most independent, and most representative. My list of quoted papers, however, numbers eighty, and I studied twice as many. For the scope of the work, the range of topics dealt with in the excerpts, I refer the reader to the Table of Contents. But to indicate more completely the character of the work I will set down here the following notes A period of four months, from July I to November i, is covered. For information on one or two topics I have gone beyond the latter date.