The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1914-11-28
J. SILAS HARRIS DEAD WRONG
Says Prof. ]. Dallas Bowser.

l Sndn ulSulSS Ine dTJlCle Oh INIT
#. W. H. Williams with the remark
that he doubtless means well, but he
is quite harmless. For any colored
man who would refuse to read the
Crisis and would hold up to ridicule
the followers of the n. A. A. c. p.
have no mantle broad enough to GOV
er him except with my silence But
Mr. Harris is not the first in history
to be accused of bartering his birth
right for a mess of pottage. When
a Negro, fully cognizant of the damn
able outrages against the colored peo
by Negro hating white persons rushes
into print with an uncalled for apol-
ogy for race segregation, Jim Crow
cars, the abrogation of Constitutional
amendments affecting the voting priv
ileges of the Negro and the N. A. A.
G. p, which was organized to right
those wronged, we may we'll call in
question his motives for such unwar-
ranted apostasy. l repeat Mr.. Har-
ris is not the first to be accused of
sacrificing an important principle to
a supposed political expediency.
There was Esau, the hungry, barter
ing his birthright for a dinner of ba-
con and green's; Judas, hungry for a
handful of silver, betraying the Sa-
vior Benedict Arnold surrendering to
the British the Continental soldiery
for a command of Red Coats; the
truculent Negro in slave time at Gin
cinnati and elsewhere along the Ohio
river, keeping watch for runaway
slaves to betray them to their mas
ters and back into slavery; Daniel
Webster, who for a possible presiden-
tial nomination, sacrificed his convic-
tions in his memorable March Z
speech in 1850 in favor of the Mis-
souri, compromise. Their treason was
the death knell of each of them. Esau
earned the contempt of all posterity;
Judas hanged himself; Arnold fled to
England and his epitaph is preserved
in that matchless classic by Edward
Everett Hale, "a Man Without a Coun-
try" Webster, failing of the presi-
dency, died the following year of a
broken heart, distrusted alike by
friend and foe. Whittier, in his poem,
'Ichabod," written of Webster at the
time, has we'll characterized not only
the great orator but all like him who
court favor with the enemies of man
kind with view to personal glorifi-
cation. 1 quote two of the nine stan
zas:
'Revile him not-the tempter hath
A snare for all;
And plying tears, not scorn and
wrath
Befit his fall.
"Then pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;
Walk backward with averted gaze,
And hide his shame"
The National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People which
Mr.. Harris goes out of his way to
disparage, is no new thing under the
sun. It is but the extension and com
bination of the first anti-slavery So
ciety formed at Trenton, N. j., in 1876,
and which secured the passage for
the gradual emancipation Of the slaves
of that state. It's purposes today are
what they have ever been through all
the crucial periods of the nation
liberty to all, justice and square deal
to all.
Oswald Garrison Willard is but a
rnp1yao of is ~ Orfa ndfathar-
William Lloyd Garrison, who was
dragged by a rope through the streets
of Boston and lodged in jail because
of his pleadings for the Negro. Prof.
Dubois is but the counterpart of the
martyr Lovejoy, murdered at Alton,
ILL.,, and his peers thrown into the
Mississippi river because his paper
was an uncompromising advocate for
freedom to the slave. Mary White
Ovington and Mary Childs Nerney are
but disciples of Harriet Beecher
Stowe and Mary A. Livermore con-
temporaries of Frederick Douglass
skeaking fom the same platform, with
him, Wendell Phillips and Gfrett
Smith in their thunderings against the
ramparts of slavery until God sent
John Brown whose pulpit at Harper
Ferry made more converts for free
dom to the slave than all the preach
ers since the birth of the Republic
A million bayonets was the answer
TO his martyrdom.
But for this courage and sacrifice
this faith in God and man, this sym
pathy for the oppressed, the Negro
might still be picking cotton in the
delta of the Mississippi, the slave OF
white master. But for this the proc
lamation of emancipation might never
have been written. And unless this
new abolitionism which was revived
to champion anew the cause of the
Negro, which is fighting segregation
in Washington, Baltimore, Louisville
and Kansas City; the grandfather law
in Oklahoma; the chain gang in Geor
gia; Jim Grow legislation in Missouri
and which has forced restaurants In
Detroit and schools in Massachusetts
to comply with the civil right laws
relating thereto. Unless this move
ment shall prosper and become as
great a power for good as the modern
caste spirit has become a power fol
evil, yea, unless the Negro himsel
shall manifest an interest in his Owl
behalf equal to that of his white fel
low citizens, then alas, and alack fol
the Negro everywhere in this broad
land. For not only shall segregation