The Appeal., 1914-04-25

he North American Review,
good enough to die alongside of white
men IN saving the day at San Juan
Hill are now learning to know the
gratitude of Republics.
THESE colored people who are thus
branded are not roustabouts, or cor
ner 4oafers, or worthless laborers.
Tney are educated men and women.
college graduates many Of them, from
all over the country who have passed
their civil service examinations and
entered the Governments employ
with FULL faith in it's justice, asking
merely the right to serve on equal
terms with their fellows. The readers
OF Inc North American Review will
understand the bitter humiliation of
the segregation orders if they can i'm
ag1ne themselves set apart as un-
worthy by brute authority, but they
can hardly appreciate the added sense
OF injury which comes from the fact
that this is an act OF the Federal
Government. The colored people have
borne as patiently as the children of
Israel bore ther burdens, the wrongs
OF disfranchisement, the lynchings
ana burnings of innocent and guilty,
the humiliation Of the "Jim Crow"
car, the constant personal insults of
low whites; these were the acts of
INDIVIDUALS or of States lately in re-
bell1on. But that the Federal Gov
ernment, under whose flag they have
fought IN every war, under whose
'aegis they are working, which struck
their fetters from their limbs, should
now take the side of the oppressors
in the year of the fiftieth anniversary
of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclama-
tlon-this is what hurts and rankles
beyond all else. Is it any wonder that
one of the leaders of the race of ma
tional renown writes that he has never
seen his people so discouraged and
so embittered as to-day? ~
They rightly. declare-as must
every fair-minded man free from
prejudice-that this spells caste. They
believe that it is intended to drive
them out Of the public service by rem
derlng it intolerable for Negroes with
self-respect; they assert that one of
the Assistant Secretaries of the Treas
ury has already held up the promo;
ton Of two col0red clerks because of
their color. Segregation is, beyond
doubt. an entering wedge, and here
is the chief significance of it all. Let
a precedent be established, and who
shall say what the outcome will be,
to what lengths despotic officials will
take their way by means of discrimin.
alton, intimidation, by aboveboard or
I'M nrh 1~O
prophesy to what extent this caste
idea may not be developed in the dec
ades to come? If colored people can,
thus be set apart contrary to the spirit
of the civil-service law and of the
Constitution itself, why not others
Jews, for instance? ~ -
Indeed, it may come to pass that Mr..
Wilson will go down to history as the
man who set in motion terrible forces
tor evil without adequate conception
Or provision Of the dangers he was
inviting. -..-s-.s...
And his philosophy,
Il he remains silent and segregates
further, will be wrong, his democracy
gravely at fault; he has given us
beautiful and worthy sentiments in
his book called ssThe New Freedom
and in his various speeches prior to
and since his election to the Presj.
dency. But nowhere thus far do we
find any indication that his democracy
is not limited both by the sex line
and the color line. He fails utterly to
see that to discriminate in his democ-
whole carefully reared edifice crash.
ing to the ground. The principles
upon which our democracy rests must
apply to everybody without ldiscrlm
ination, as exactly as a law of science,
or they are open to doubt al once.
Thus, we should not believe in the law
of gravitation if it did not apply alike
to every human being; we should not
think very much of Mr.. Marconi's
wireless invention if he could trans
nit only the first half of the alpha
bet and not the last. It avails the
apologists for the President not at all
to say that "'!rhe New Freedom" applies
only to political and economic prob
lens, for what IS the whole race prob
lem but e an economic and political
one? It would ertainly be ridiculous
for Mr.. Wilson, '>r his publishers, to
expect any ap7reciative reading
among the milliol of disfran;chised
Americans, whethe1 they be colored
men and women or white men and
women, of his theory of tile coming
of new political freedom at the very
moment when there is placed upon
the colored by two of his own Cabinet
an official stigma which no amount
Of appointing to Office will remove
d 4 hot
does not appreciate is that the slight
est yielding to prejudice on the part.
Of a high Federal official will find
dozen imitators in the lower official
ranks VINO think by outdoing their
masters TO curry favor with those in
power.
= What he does not
see is that if only one colored man
Dr. woman has been segregated it gives
the deliberate lie to Mr.. wilson's
promise to advance the interests OF
the race and violates his pledge Of
absolute fair dealing. The men VINO
are lnjuring the President are not the
defenders of this Governments repu-
station Tor honor and Of the rights or
the colored people, but those subor-
dinates VINO by their official actions
have made lubious the Presidents
word Willingly or unwittingly the
Wilson. Administration has allied it
self with the forces IF reaction, and
put itself on the sioe of every tor.
,turer, of every oppresser, of every per.
petrator Of racial injustice in the
South or the North.
But the folly of,
raising this race issue does cot. stop