The national forum., 1910-11-12

dc ocquevllle down to Won Halle, DE
Lavcleys, Archer and Johnston, is that il
forms the gravest of American problems.
We black men who live and suffer I'M
der present conditions, and who have no
reason, and refuse to accept reasons, for
silence, can substantiate this unanimous
testimony.
Our people were emancipated in a
whirl of passion, and then left naked to
the mercies OF their enraged and impov-
erished eX-masters. AS our sole means
of defence we were given the ballot, and
we used it SO as to secure the real fruits
of the war. Without it we would have
returned to slavery; with it we struggled
toward freedom. No sooner, however,
had we rid ourselves of nearly two-t thirds
of our illiteracy, and accumulated $6oo-
100000 worth of property in genera
ton, than this ballot, which had become
increasingly necessary to the defence Of
our civil and property rights, was taken
from us by force and fraud.
Today in eight States where the bulk of
the Negroes live, black men of property
and university training can be, and us
ually are, by law denied the ballot, while
the most ignorant white man votes. This
attempt to put the personal and property
rights of the best of the blacks at the
absolute political mercy of the worst pf
the whites is spreading each day.
Along with this has gone systematic
attempt to curtail the education of the
black race. Under widely
system of universal education, not one
black boy in three today has in the United
States chance to learn to read and
write, The proportion of school funds
due to black children are often spent on
whites, and the burden on private charity
to support education, which is public
duty, has become almost intolerabe
In every walk of life we meet discrimi-
nation based solely OH race and color,
but continually and persistently misrepre-
sented to the world as the natural diff
ference due to condition,
We are, for instance, usually forced
to live in the worst quarters, and our
consequent death rate is noted as race
trait, and reason for further discrmina-
ton. When we seek to buy property in
better quarters we are sometimes in dam
ger Of mob violence, or, as now in Balti,
more, of actual legislation TO prevent
We are forced to take lower wages for
equal work, and our standard of living
is then criticised. Fully half the labor
unions refuse us admittance, and then
claim that as "scabs" we lower the price
of labor.
A persistent caste prescription seeks
to force lis and conhne us to menial oc
cupations, where the conditions of work
are worst.
Our women in the South are without
protection in law and custom, and are
then derided as lewd. A widespread sys-
TEN of deliberate public insult is GUS
tomary, which trains, restaurants and
theaters and even in the Christian
Church we are in most cases given to un
derstand that we are unwelcome unless
segregated.
Worse than all this is the wilfull mis-
carriage OF justice in the courts. Not
only have $500 black men been lynched
publicly by mobs in the last rs years
without semblance or pretense of trial,
but regularly every day throughout the
South the machinery of the courts is
used, not to prevent crime and correct
the wayward among Negroes, but to
wreak public dislike and vengeance, and
to raise public funds. This dealing in
crime as a means of public revenue is a
system wellnigh universal in the South,
and while its glaring brutality through
private lease has been checked, the un-
derlying principle is still unchanged.
Everywhere in the United States the
old democratic doctrine of recognizing
fitness wherever it occurs is losing
ground before reactionary policy Of
denying preferment in political OF indus
trial life to competent men if they have
a trace of Negro blood, and of using the
weapons of public insult and humiliation
to keep such men down. 1t is today a
universal demand in the South that on
all occasions social courtesies shall be
denied any person of known Negro de-
scent, even to the extent of refusing TO
apply the titles Of mr." Mrs" and
Miss"
Against this dominant tendency, strong
and brave Americans, white and black,
are fighting, but they need, and need
sadly the moral support of England and
of Europe in this crusade for the recogni-
ton of manhood, despite adventitious
a; ;6araocae Nf roca apd a &c lilo - hIou,