The Omaha guide., 1932-10-15

the modern world, and they have,
therefore, come to regard the Negro
as inferior. Now that some of our
similarly miseducated Negroes are
seeing how they have been deceived
they are awakening to address them
selves to a long neglected task. They
should have been thinking about this
generations ago, for they have a ire
mendous task before them today in
dispelling this error and c-ounteracting
the results of such bias in our litera-
ture.
l have just received also from a
friend in Edinburgh, Scotland, a dire
full account of the increase in race
prejudice in those parts. Sailors who
had f~requented the stronghold of race
prejudice in South Africa undertook
recently to prevent Negro men from
socializing with British women at a
dance; and certain professors of the
University Of Edinburgh with the
same attitude show so much of it in
their teaching that this friend en-
treats us to send them informing
books on the Negro. We are doing it.
Here again, however, the effort to
uproot error and popularize the truth
comes rather late. The Negro since
freedom has gone along grinning,
~whooping, and cutting shines" while
the white nan has applied himself to
the task of defining the status Of the
Negro and compelling him to accept
it as thus settled forever. While the
Negro has been idle, propaganda has
gone far ahead Of history. Unfortu-
nately, too, Negro scholars" have
assisted in the production Of such lit
erature which gives this point of view.
Of this we may cite several exam
PIES Negroes cooperated with Thomas
Jesse Jones in working out his report
on Negro education, which by misrep-
resentation did the race more harm
than any other production of that
period save Thomas Dixon's CLANS
man." A few years ago the Negroes
engaged in the work of the Y. M c..
A. cooperated with W. d. Weatherford
in producing a most scandalous and
hbellous book on the Negro entitled
Present Forces in the Progress of the
Negro" More recently Negroes have
cooperated with T. j. Woofter, who
in his Race Adjustment" justified
segregation and in his report on agri-
cultural conditions makes a good case
for peonage and slavery enforced on
the cotton and sugar plantations. If
the Negroes keep up such cooperation
they will soon be "cooperated" back
into bondage.
Recently l. had to restrain. myself
from lending aid to the same sort of
thing. l was asked to contribute to
the Dictionary of American Biogra-
ply" edited by the late Allen Johnson.
At his request / drew up the list of
Negroes who by all means should be
led. Some of these were accept
ed and some were rejected. l was
called on to write a few sketches for
him, but l soon discovered that the
more important sketches Of Negroes
were being assigned to others to be
written according to order. When
the editor refused to spell Negro with
a capital letter, omiter Benjamin Ban
maker altogether as unworthy of any
mention, and branded John Brown as
a capital letter, omitted Benz. Ban
the staff in protest. l could not afford
to be associated with men who lacked
historic perspective and showed such
disregard for the truth.
This last experience convinced me
more than ever that if the story of the
Negro is yer told it must be done by
scientifically trained Negroes who will
be above writing to obtain money.
Yet | do not take the position that
white men should not write about the
Negro There are certain aspects of
our life which because of ramifications
into theirs, may be better developed b
them than by Negroes themselves. In
the case of presenting the real his