The monitor., 1928-11-02

protest, public and repeated asser-
tons on the platform, in the press,
and by word of mouth, that color and
race constitute in themselves an i'm
putation of guilt and crime.
1t has been said, north and south,
east and west, and by partisans of the
leading candidates:
1. That Negro voters should not
be appealed to, or their support well
coined by the advocates of just
causes.
2. That colored persons should
not hold public office, no matter
what their character may be nor how
well they do their work, nor how
competently they satisfy their con-
stituents.
8. That the contact of white peo-
pie and black people in government,
in business, and in daily life, in com
mon effort and cooperation, calls
for explanation and apology.
a. That the honesty and integrity
of party organization depend on the
complete removal of all Negroes from
voice and authority.
5. That the appointment of pub
lie official is an act which concerns
only white citizens, and that scolored
citizens should have neither voice nor
consideration in such appointments.
These assertions, which sound bald
and almost unbelievable when stated
without establishment, have appear
ed as full page advertisements in the
public press, as the subject of leading
editorials, and as displayed news stor-
les; they have been repeated on the
public platform and in open debate
and over the radio by both republic
cans and democratic speakers, and
they have been received by the ma
ton and by the adherents of these
and others parties in almost complete
silence. A few editors have depre-
Gated this gratuitous Juggling in of
the race problem, but for the most
part, this astonishing campaign of
public insult toward one-tenth of the
nation has evoked no word of protest
from the leading party candidates or
from their official spokesman; and
from few religious ministers, Prot
estant or Roman Catholic, or Jewish,
and from almost no leading social re-
formers.
Much has been said, and rightly,
of the danger in a republic like ours
of making sincere religious belief a
matter of political controversy and of
diverting public attention from great
questions of public policy to petty
matters of private life. But, citizens
of America, bad as religious hatred
and evil personal gossip are, they
have not seeds of evil and disaster
that lie in continued, unlimited and
unrestrained appeal to race preju-
dice. The emphasis of racial con-
tempt and hatred which is being made
in this campaign is an appeal to the
lowest and most primitive of human
motives, and as long as this appeal
can successfully be made, there is for
this land no real peace, no sincere re-
ligion, no national unity, no social
progress, even in matter far removed
from racial controversy.
DO not misunderstood us. We are
not asking equality where there is
no equality. We are not demanding
or even discussing purely social inter
mingling. We have not the slightest
desire for intermarriage between the
races. We frankly recognize that the
aftermath of slavery must involve
long years of poverty, crime and con-
tempt; for all of this that the past
has brought and the present gives, we
have paid in good temper, quiet work
and unfaltering faith. But we do
solemnly affirm that in a civilized
land and in a Christian culture and
among increasingly intelligent people,
somewhere and sometime, limits must
be put to race disparagement and
separation and to campaigns of ra-
cial calumny which seek to set IL
million human beings outside of the
pale of ordinary humanity.
We believe that this nation and
every part Of it must come to admit