Richmond planet. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1883-1938, 1923-02-17

tu'Oiy ioii anu we Jake InlS metnOu Oh
producing such REGULATIONS as may be
available with reference to one OF tins
most damaging phil.ipics ever issued
against a Negro leader during our day
anu time. DR.. Du Bots s,.ys iur,her:
He established a little group OF his
own Jamaica cOuntrymen in Har.enl
and launched his program. He took
no account OF the American Negro
problem; he knew nothing about l..
What he was trying to do was to seC-
tie the Jamaican problem in the Unit
ed States. On the other hand Ameri-
can Negroes knew nothing about the
jamaican problem. and they were ca
cited and indignant at being brought
face to face with a man who was full
of wild talk about Africa and the West
In6ies and steamship lines and rae,
PRIDE but who said nothing and ap.
riently knew nothing about the right
to vote the horrors of lynching and
mob law. and the problem Of racial
equality.
Moreover. they were especially in.
ccnsed at tire new West-Indian con.
had naturally often appeared in color
ell America. but the development hal
early taken far different direction
from that in the West Indies. Mlgra
ton by whites had numcI ically over
whelmed both masters and mulattoes.
and compelled most American masters
to sell their own children into slavery.
Freedom. therefore, rather than color
EpRnnn fyof 90
ton in the American Negro world de-
spite the near-white aristocracies or
cities like Charleston and New Orleans
and despite the fact that the proper
ton OF mu'attoes who were free and
who gained some wealth and education
was greater than that of backs be-
cause of the favor of their white par.
ents.
DR.. Dubois overlooks the fact and
fails to state that his type Of co.ored
people do not in the main affiliate with
the type of people that Hon. Marcus
Garvey represents. 1t is a fact n,s,
while the highly educated class OF Ne.
groes. one hundred per cent Ameri.
cans were excited and indignant over
Garvey's wild talk thousands of others
in the southern States noticeably so in
Texas regarded him as preaching Il
new religion" and they Immediately
became converted. Thousands had prev
iously sold their romesteads to rails.
money to go back to the Fatherland,
where they had been taught to believe
equal and exact Justice was to be enjoy
ed and where every owner of home
stead could live under his own vine
and fig-tree with none to modest him
or make him afraid
lGarvey's plan seems to have been to
furnish the leadership primarily froil
this country and with the African Re.
public citizenship to be in existence III
Africa and America. The discussion
continues. He says:
After emancipation, color caste
.fLded to arise again blu. the darker
group was quickly welded into one
despite color by caste legislation.
which applied to a white man with one
Negro great-grandfather as we'll as to
Il full-blooded Bantu. There were still
Obvious advantages TO the Negro Amer
lean Of lighter hue in passing for
white or posing as Spanish or Portu.
guese. but the pressing demand for
ability and efficiency and honesty with
in this fighting advancing group con
tinually drove the color-line back he.
lore reason and necessity, and it came
20 be generally regarded as the spooti
est possible taste for Negro even 20
1efer to differences Of color. Colored
folk as white as the whitest came to
describe themselves as Negroes I'm.
agine then the surprise and disgust
OF these Americans when Garvey
launched his Jamaican color scheme.
He did this, of course, ignorantly
and with no idea of his mistake and
no wit to read the signs. He meant
we'll He saw what seemed to him the
same color-lines which he hated III
Jamaica, and he sought here as thei Q
20 oppose white supremacy and the
white Ideal by a crude and equally
brutal black supremacy and black
IDEAL. His mistake did not lie in the
utter impossibility OF this program
greater upheavals in ideal have shak
en- the world before,-but rather in its
spiritual bankruptcy and futility; foi
what shall this poor world gain if il
exchange one race supremacy for an.
other?
Garvey soon sensed that somewhere
he was making mistake, and he be.
gan to protest that he was not excIuu
ing mulattoes from his organization
Indeed, he has men Of all colors AMI
bloods i'm his organization. but his
propaganda still remains "all black"
because this brings cash from the
Jamaica peasants. Once he was actual
~ hailed to court and made to apollo
gize for calling disgruntled former
colleague white! His Trades and
twistings have landed him in strange
contradictions. Thus with one voics
he denounced Booker r. Washington
and Frederick Douglass as bastards
and with the next named his boarding
house and first steamship after these
same men!
The above Is written in charitable
Vnin oh 4I,ok