The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1917-03-17
The Wilson Preparation Method
(FrOm the New York News.)

Shocking and disgraceful as is the
bill now offered into Congress by that
Rabid Tennesseean Austin to establish
Jim-Crow West Point, the pronounce
ment of the Administration expert
on whose recommendation Postmaster
Morgan Of New York City was dis
missed-that twelve hundred dollars
year is too much for colored clerk,
is far worse and more dangerous. That
the Woodrow Wilson War Department
should seek to build up armies when
the war clouds began to lower with
the color lines drawn absolutely was
to be expected. That Jim-Crow West
Points and Annapolises should be pro-
posed was but consistent with the Jim
Crow record of the Wilson regime
That was but the logical conclusion of
it's cowardly thwarting of colored citi-
zens' efforts to be equal Americans
We were not prepared, however, for
the National Association for the Ad-
vancement of Colored People to pro-
pose the same thing. We have never
yet been persuadeGAthat it's treasurer,
Oswald Garrison Willard, was advanc-
ing the interests of cOlored people
when he permitted under any circum-
stances his great and influential daily
to aid and abet Woodrow Wilson's re-
election. But what shall we say when
that most stalwart of race equality ad-
vocates, it's chairman of directors, Joel
Il. Splngarn, comes out in a circular
now before us urging Educated Col
ored Men of the United States" into
a military training damp for colored
men," Words fail us. Being CHART
able let us say: Verify the Advance
ment Association has been the first
to lose it's head in the national excite
ment and has gone blindly, bag and
baggage, into the camp of the enemy.
With what precipitate haste and con-
fusion does Prof. Spingarn calmly con-
found the educated colored men,"
He first adjures them ito assume your
right places as leaders of American
life The next paragraph of his mani
festo contradictory per Sc of the first,
urges them to become leaders at the
Jim Crow training camp. The Consti-
tuition of the United States neither
provides for nor permits a Jim-Crow
West Point. Yet Prof. Spingarn rushes
pell-mell into the support of this very
abominable thing. The third para
graph, however, of the Spingarn mani
festo is the piece de resistance of
American equality and race leadership.
The races devout champion rushes
Hastily on thusly:
Il do not believe that colored men
should be separated from other Ameri-
cans in any field of life; but the crisis
IS too near at hand to discuss prin-
clples and opinions, and it seems to
me that there is only one thing for you
to do at this juncture, and that is to
get the training that will fit you to be
officers, however and wherever and
whenever this training may be OBJ
famed all It two hundred Of you do not
send applications Immediately, the op-
portunity may be lost forever"
Better the opportunity lost forever
than that colored men should them
selves set up a national military Jim
crow training camp. The idea is mon
strous. Educated colored men, Profess
sor, are not the type of men you want.
| II the country is III the crisis where
It is in dire need of colored men to
offer up their lives for it, perhaps the
United States will eventually yield to
the point of having them-these "edu-
Gated colored men contaminate other
Americans at West Point and Platts-
Durgh. In the name of all that is just
ana sacred, gentlemen of the National
advancement Association for Colored
People, you really do not want edu-
Gated colored men to set up national
jim Crow institutions in this century
IN America and then go out to lay
down their lives to perpetuate these
Jim-C Crow institutions in the land of
the free and the home of the brave.
II MINIMIZING and unjust as is this
proposition that educated colored men
must accept different training camps
70 prepare for war, it differs not at
all IN practice from this declaration
OF the post Office official that colored
clerks should get different wages from
WHITE clerks. In this crucial hour
these are mad measures, which will
divide and dissipate the patriotism and
energy of the nation black and white.
Concentration and cooperation, har-
mony and union OF the forces of all
the people beneath the Stars and
Stripes, should be the watchwords of
the nations preparation. In bitter.
hours OF direst need the nation will
come to this conclusion. This is not
the Wilson way. The American gov
eminent will eventually come to it..
Why not now? Let the black man
nght when he fights for. q square deal
and for one service, both postal and
military