The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1922-09-23
SOUTHERN "FoRWARp' BUNK.

Recently there was a laymen's con-
ference of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, held at Lake Juna-
laska, N. c., and one Rev. w. w.
Alexander Of Atlanta, Ca, took the
stage and said:
"The next big forward step in the
inter-racial readjustment is to come
from the South, and the reason for it
is perfectly apparent. The South can
afford to do it. Then too the South
has the social prestige to do this.
The social question figures largely in
the race question. So the South can,
when it will take the leadership in
inter-racial cooperation. I believe
that the South will assume the leader
ship with the same sort of pride and
determination as it led the nation.
1t has been the universal opinion of
those who have come in close touch
with the question that Negro leaders
DO not desire or seek social equality.
They have asked for police protec-
ton, better housing and living con-
ditions and a chance to develop into
useful American citizens with every
determination to maintain their own
social life and the purity of the two
racial stocks"
1t is true that some of the JIM
crow leaders, of the South have said
that they do not want anything but
police protection and do not care TO
vote, ETC., ad nauseam, but the color
ed people of the North will fight to
the last ditch against any scheme Of
the South to impose it's plan of set
Element upon the country.
They know that the South has, in
all its "forward' movements pro-
ceeded like the crab-backward. They
know that the colored citizens of the
South have been disfranchised, dis
eliminated against, segregated, de-
graded in every way, denied educa-
tion, lynched, burned at the stake
There have been riots and lynchings
in the North, but never a. burning,
and for every lynching in the North
there have been so in the South.
Nowhere in the South have the
colored people any part in the local
government, and first of all they wish
the right to vote and participate in
the governments under which they
live. The colored people know that
the so-called Christian church has re-
manned dumb for SO years in spite of
growing anarchy, and now when it
speaks it comes with a jimcrow plan.
And as usual the South talks of
"social equality" The real intelligent
colored people all over the country
do not wish to be segregated from
other American citizens in the eniov-
ment of CIVIL RIGHTS. They do
not wish to be designated as pariahs.
This has nothing to do with inter-
marriage, and it is the veriest rot to
say that it means intermarriage for
white and colored people to- ride in
the same car or to go to the same
library. In the North, where there
are no jimcrow laws, colored and
white people go together in public
places without intermarriage. Mar
riages between white and colored
people are so rare that when they
occur, and that is seldom, there is a
long story in the papers about the
event. In the South, where there are
ly all of the UNLAWFUL mixing
49, OAA do ~ 10 pAO11LOCcu Dy CNo
difference in the social status of the
white and colored people. The surest
way to maintain racial purity" would
be to repeal all of the Southern jim
crow laws. So long as the colored
people are voteless people and on a
lower social and civil plane, the H.
legal racial mixing will continue.
That is history.
In his enuemration of what the
colored people desire, Rev. Alexander
omitted two of the most important
things-the right to vote and the
abolition of public segregation. There
is absolutely no hope of a settlement
OF the race question on just Amer
lean lines if the South is to have the
leadership, especially if that leader
ship is to eb vested in the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South, which has
ever been the foe of the colored peo-
pie from the time of the split over
slavery in the forties up to The pres
ent time when the church refuses to
merge with the Methodist Episcopal
Church, North, because the latter
church elected colored bishops.