# The Crisis (magazine)/Volume 1/Issue 1/Opinion

OPINION
THE only thing that makes me afraid is what you call the race problem here in America. It's a hard thing to contend with. The colored people should have been educated first, and then gradually emancipated. It was a mistake to set them free untutored and helpless.—Cardinal Logue in the N. Y. Evening Journal.
Probably the new census will show that there are ten millions of Negroes in the United States to-day; that more than one-tenth of our total population is colored. Statesmen, educators and economists realize that this mighty force must be reckoned with soberly; that it must be guided aright or else the consequences to the nation will be catastrophic.—Troy Press.
What is the Democratic oligarchy doing in educating the white masses in the South to-day? For example, let us investigate the conditions in Alabama. There were, at the taking of the census of 1900, 731,599 children of from five to twenty years of age, inclusive, in this state. The total school enrollment in Alabama, as shown in the report of the department of education for 1906-7, was 386,478.
Of those enrolled, and this does not imply attendance, there were 258,998 white children. There were, therefore, 133,618 white children who did not even so much as enroll, inasmuch as there were 392,616 white children of school age in Alabama in 1900. Of the 338,980 Negro children of school age there was an enrollment of 127,480, leaving just 111,500 Negro children without the experience of a school enrollment.—Joseph Manning in Original Rights Magazine.
The Negro who is trained to work with his hands, to become industrious, to own property and to acquire a "stake in the country," has been presented with an insurance policy against vagrancy and its product—crime.—Atlanta Constitution.
A colored man said in regard to the Baltimore segregation ordinance:
"This ordinance will keep the colored citizens in the alleys and put the race back where it was 40 years ago. The streets that have been conceded to the colored people have been Biddle Street, Druid Hill Avenue, Etting Street, Division Street and Argyle Avenue. How can you get 100,000 intelligent colored citizens into this small area?"
Mr. Jacob M. Levy, representing the Socialist party, spoke next, saying the party protested against any measure that would prohibit a man of any race or color from changing his environment. He said:
"Believing as we do that the whole human family is one brotherhood, without distinction of race, color or creed, and that all of them contribute their share to the sum total of our development and civilization, we are unalterably opposed to any measure that may deprive the least of them of the same privileges and opportunities granted to others. On the face of this ordinance is stamped iniquity, injustice, hypocrisy and special privilege to the few. Property rights are placed above human rights. We stand for human rights first.
"Although I own property on Druid Hill Avenue and on Lombard Street, the former occupied by colored people, I would rather see my property become absolutely valueless than to see human rights placed below the interests of property."
Mr. Charles Kemper, secretary of the Socialist party in Baltimore, followed Mr. Levy. He declared the ordinance to be ridiculous and said the whole question was not a racial one, but one of property.
"The colored man has been paid such a low wage that he has for years been unable to live as well as he wished," he said. "Now that he has become able to improve his living conditions, do you propose to prevent him? The last clause of the ordinance gives the whole measure the lie. It does not prohibit the buying of property by white or black. Do you think you can prevent a man from living in the house that belongs to him?"—Baltimore Sun, report of hearings on segregation ordinance.
To the Editor of The Evening Sun:
On behalf of our glorious sons and sires, on behalf of our virtuous wives and daughters, on behalf of that dominant and peerless race nurtured and reared upon the sacred soil of "Maryland, my Maryland," I protest, in the name of white supremacy and white manhood, against the false and dishonoring sentiment "that it is no humiliation nor disgrace to live next door to a Negro!"—Baltimore Sun.
If a Negro went into a white restaurant in our town and sat at a table and ordered a meal our citizens would want to lynch him, or he would be arrested and a heavy fine imposed upon him. The same should be done to a white person that would go into a Negro restaurant and sit at a table and eat a meal. Last Sunday night while returning home from the depot after the excursion train left we saw two white men and women sitting at a table in a Negro restaurant on Suwannee street and eating supper and seemed to be just as contented as if they were in a first-class white restaurant.—White Springs (Fla.) Messenger.
There was just one thing lacking at yesterday's session of the National Negro Business League, when those present were told what was expected of them if they hoped to do credit to their race and to their country. A few members of the 25th Infantry in uniform to represent the dismissed battalion, the fate of which received the attention of Congress some time ago, would have furnished a welcome touch of color and reminded the delegates that a grateful nation never forgets. It would have given point also to the following passage in the address (by Mr. Roosevelt):
"I am the last man in the world to slur over the injustice that good Negroes are often subjected to, but I feel that the really substantial way to remedy that injustice is so to carry yourselves that the white man will be compelled to recognize in his colored neighbor a good and honest worker, an effective citizen and a selfrespecting man."
However, judging from the good temper which pervaded the gathering, and the rapture with which the excellent platitudes were received, it is clear that a short memory is one of the useful and comfortable endowments of the Negro race.—N. Y. Sun.
"I gather from your article in the June Crown that you think the negro to be as good as the white man. Am I right? I think you are doing great harm in encouraging the negro in his pretensions. He is all right as long as he keeps in his place. But he is not the equal of the white man and he never will be, and we will take care that he stays where he belongs. We will use force if need be, law or no law. I want to say that I cannot support a publication that encourages the negro.
FRIEND: You ask whether, in my judgment, the Negro is as good as the white man. Now I will not venture to say that the Negro is as good as you, for I do not know how good you are. But I will put it this way: The Negro is as good as I am. You certainly cannot object to my appraising myself; and I say that the Negro is as good as I I also am. that I am as good as you or any other man that lives or has lied or ever will live!
You can draw your own inferences.—The Crown (Newark, N. J.)
To those who have taken the trouble to study the moral, social, intellectual and material progress of the colored people of this country during the past four decades, the advancement must be amazing.—The Banker and Invester.
A white man succeeds a Negro as Collector of Internal Revenue for Georgia. In making this appointment the President follows the policy announced by him early in March, 1909, when he said that Negroes would not be named for office against the wishes of the whites." In every Southern State colored men are thus barred as completely as though citizenship had never been conferred upon them.
In many Northern States the colored vote might easily put it out of the power of the Republicans to elect Presidents at all. Ohio in particular is so situated. That the local politicians recognize the value of the colored contingent is shown by the platform adopted on July 27 last by the Republican State Convention, in which there was the usual demand for the strict enforcement of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, with the familiar phrases about equal rights and opportunities.
There is no uncertainty in these matters except upon one point. We know that so far as resolutions are concerned the great Republican heart is still true to the colored man. We know that all Negroes look alike to the Republican President and that he will have none of them. We are in doubt only as to the ticket that the Northern black man will vote in November, especially in Ohio.—The N. Y. World.
Just because Johnson has succeeded in reaching the top in pugilism, it does not alter the fact that he is a Negro and is not entitled to prestige in the cleaner and better sport of automobile racing.—"Wild Bob" Burman, driver of Buick cars.
The continued existence of the color prejudice that is peculiar to the American people is one of the most singular features of our national life. It is probably due to the lurking consciousness that the white people of the United States owe a debt to the Negro race that can never be repaid. None are so unforgiving as those who are conscious that they have most to be forgiven. It takes more than common magnanimity to cherish a friendly feeling toward those you have wronged, and the American people have hardly attained to that point of magnanimity yet. But we will get there in time, and learn to value men for their own qualities and not on account of their color or their pedigree.—Brooklyn Times.
The recent heated political debates between leading white men of Georgia has for the time being suspended. Party rules based upon race lines will compel contestants to submit to the decision of a vote in the primary that is only partisan to the extent of being anti-Negro. No candidate, whatever his personal feeling toward his colored fellow citizens, has dared to put in a word favorable to them. * * * Taxation without representation was oppressive when the American Colonies declared their purpose to be independent of the English crown, and it is no less so when practiced by the descendants of the men who gave it out to the world. Consider this matter soberly and wisely and then act.—Georgia Baptist (colored.)
One of the biggest tasks awaiting the energetic and intelligent action of the American Socialists is our great Negro problem. It is by no means disposed of by reference to our theoretical declaration for human equality regardless of race, creed or color. The problem is here, a momentous part of the general labor problem. For behind all the antagonism to the Negro lurks the desire of capitalism to keep the colored people down in a state of political helplessness so that they may all the easier be exploited for the benefit of the profit makers.—The Call.
It is one thing to govern colored peoples. It is another to live with them. The States has the harder problem, and the problem is not of its own making. Until we have a Mr. Roosevelt of our own, we shall not hasten to advise the States, and we shall be as careful in our censure as in our advice.
But we must recognize, for it is of primary importance, this new and violent spirit which is growing in America, under pressure of the Negroes from within and the yellow races from without. This new spirit—the result partly of jealousy, partly of contempt, partly of mere physical repulsion—is crushing, if it has not already crushed, the religious sentiment of the equality of men. How far will the spirit spread? There are those who see in it the foreshadow of the great conflict of the future, when, as they believe, the white races will fight for their existence against the colored races coming up out of the East.—The World (England).
As is well known in South Carolina, the district funds are not divided among the schools of the district in proportion to enrollment, but every Negro child counts as much as a white child in securing funds for the district. The Negro schools afford the best opportunity for padding the rolls. In fact, a contract with Negro teachers is not infrequently made in South Carolina in which the salary to be received by the teacher is dependent on the number of children enrolled.—State Supervisor of Rural Schools in the Charleston (S. C.) News and Courier.
Christian people, in general, at the South, are coming to recognize that the white race cannot pursue a policy of repression toward the Negroes without repressing and degrading their own race. They are coming to realize that the only way for the whites to live with an inferior race all about them, without being injured by the presence of this different race, is to lift that race up as opportunity offers, by the exercise of Christian helpfulness.
The trouble about holding another man down is that one cannot get up to do anything else while he is engaged in the job.—Raleigh (N. C.) Record (white).
It has been noted that the Negro has secured entrance into occupations which had been closed to him. It is the opinion of many who have given the matter attention that the large so-called colored class is developing greater capacity and desire for skilful pursuits, and that many individuals have made great personal advancement. To what extent such conditions have been developed and what future hope there is for the Negro in heretofore barred fields will be made subjects for future inquiry and report in next year's volume.—Annual Report of Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics.
The Times would be astonished if it could only know the division of sentiment among Negroes of this State. Hundreds and hundreds of Negroes "buck" at the lily white Republican ticket, and they have been waiting to see what the regular Democrats would do on October 6, and should the Democrats put out an acceptable and in the least conservative man you will see a larger division of the Negro vote in the State of Tennessee than ever before. Not all the Negroes now can be led into the shambles by the ever-alluring "slush funds."—Colored correspondent in Chattanooga Times.
The white people of a state which does this are hurting themselves. Self-government is the thing that educates men to be citizens, and awakens loyalty to the state or nation. The state that takes away the rights of half its citizens is turning that half into a group that will eventually have no loyalty to the state—why should they have? But education is getting down to all in this land. It will reach these. The papers come to them and they can think. Some day they will organize and then there will be what? Rebellion? No, for those who are not citizens cannot rebel. But there will be clashes, demands of rights, even by blood. And the state that takes away men's votes on race lines deserves all the consequences of race hatred this will inevitably bring.—Christian Work.
The part of him that was Western in his Southwestern origin, Clemens kept to the end, but he was the most dissouthernized Southerner I ever knew. No man more perfectly sensed, and more entirely abhorred, slavery, and no one has ever poured such scorn upon the secondhand, Walter-Scotticised, pseudo-chivalry of the Southern ideal. He held himself responsible for the wrong which the white race had done the black race in slavery, and he explained, in paying the way of a Negro student through Yale, that he was doing it as his part of the reparation due from every white man to every black man. He said he had never seen this student—never wished to see him or know his name; it was quite enough that he was a Negro.—W. D. Howells on "Mark Twain."
The World does not discuss the merits of this question, nor do we. We even agree that many concessions must be made to the prejudices of mankind, and that it may be true that any action that tends to create irritation between the races is unwise. But at the same time the Negro is a citizen, and it seems to us unfair to lay down a general rule the effect of which is to exclude him from office, without any regard whatever to his fitness. But the interesting thing about it all is that this action is that of a Republican President, the President of a party that has always professed great devotion to the Negro.—Indianapolis News.