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AFRICA AT THE PEACE TABLE AND THE
DESCENDANTS OF AFRICANS IN OUR
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.

Address by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON.*

There has been some slight criticism of the Advancement
Association for the steps it has taken to bring Africa to the atten-
tion of the Peace Conference and the civilized world. There
are those who profess to see in such a move a danger to the cause
of the American Negro. I wish to say that these steps have
not been the result of any passing flash of enthusiasm; they
were taken after careful thought and deliberation.

As long ago as the spring of 1915, Dr. Du Bois† published in *The Atlantic Monthly* an article entitled, “The African Roots of War,” in which he showed that when we cut down through the layers of international rivalries and jealousies we found that the roots of the great war were in Africa.

As soon as the armistice was signed, the Association received a large number of letters from organizations and individuals all over the country and even from Canada, asking that some step be taken to influence world opinion regarding the disposition of the former German colonies in Africa.

While these letters were coming in, Dr. Du Bois was already outlining and developing a program. I have here a copy of his memorandum; the whole of it is too long to read. But in order that you may have a fair idea of what he is bringing to the attention of the delegates at Paris and what he is striving to impress upon public opinion centered there, I shall read the four paragraphs in which the salient points are summarized:

> "If the world after the war decided to reconstruct Africa in accordance with the wishes of the Negro race and the best interests of civilization, the process might be carried out as follows: The former German colonies, with one million square miles and twelve and one-half millions of inhabitants, could be internationalized. To this

*Field Secretary, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

†Wm. E. Burghardt Du Bois, Director of Publications and Research, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Editor, "THE CRISIS".

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could be added by negotiation the 800,000 square miles and nine million inhabitants of Portuguese Africa. It is not impossible that Belgium could be persuaded to add to such a state the 900,000 square miles and nine million natives of the Congo, making an international Africa, with over two and one-half million square miles of land and over twenty million people.

"This re-organized Africa could be under the guidance of organized civilization. The Governing International Commission should represent, not simply governments, but modern culture—science, commerce, social reform, and religious philanthropy.

"With these two principles the practical policies to be followed out in the government of the new states should involve a thorough and complete system of modern education built upon the present government, religion and customary law of the natives. There should be no violent tampering with the curiously efficient African institutions of local self-government through the family and the tribe; there should be no attempt at sudden "conversion" by religious propaganda. Obviously deleterious customs and unsanitary usages must gradually be abolished and careful religious teaching given, but the general government set up from without must follow the example of the best colonial administrators and build on recognized established foundations rather than from entirely new and theoretical plans.

"The chief effort to modernize Africa should be through schools. Within ten years twenty million black children ought to be in school. Within a generation young Africa should know the essential outlines of modern culture and groups of bright African students should be going to the world's great universities. From the beginning the actual general government should use both colored and white officials and natives should be gradually worked in. Taxation and industry could follow the newer ideals of industrial democracy avoiding private land monopoly and poverty, promoting co-operation in production and the socialization of income."

When the opportunity arose, the Advancement Association sent Dr. Du Bois to France. He went in a three-fold capacity; as the special correspondent of *The Crisis* at the Peace Conference; also to collect first hand material to go into a history of the Negro in the Great War; and as a representative of the Association for the purpose of bringing to bear all pressure possible on the delegates at the peace table in the interest of the colored people of the United States and of the world.

In the latter capacity it is the intention of Dr. Du Bois to call a Pan-African congress to meet in Paris and press the question of the internationalization of the former German colonies.

The question will arise in the minds of some as to why the demand for self-determination is not included in this program

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for the future of these colonies. It is omitted not because of doubt in either the right of the natives to self-government or their ability for it, but because of the very practical reason that the question of the former German colonies will come up before the Peace Conference in only three forms: their return to Germany, their division among the Allies or their internationalization.

It is idle to hope, even in this era of making the world safe for democracy, that any people will secure self-determination by merely petitioning for it or even as a matter of plain justice. Self-determination will be secured only by those who are in a position to force it. The natives of all the colonies in Africa may have self-determination whenever they are in a position to force it from their overlords. The internationalization of Central Africa holds the promise of being the quickest and least costly step by which the natives can reach that position.

And there is no man more preeminently fitted to press this matter than Dr. Du Bois—not only on account of his individual ability but on account of the experience he gained and the connections he formed at the great Races Congress which met in London in 1911, to which he was a delegate.

There are several reasons that justify the National Association in taking up the question of Africa, and I will give them to you briefly:

In the first place, the race question in the United States is a national question; the peace delegations neither of England, France or Italy, would dare to broach it at the table; and it is hardly probable that the American delegation will voluntarily bring it up. Japan and China may possibly protest against discrimination against Asiatics. But not even these two great colored nations would so far violate international precedent and courtesy as to bring up to the peace table a matter which will be regarded as a domestic question with which only the United States is concerned.

I am not now speaking of what is right and of what ought to be done; I am speaking of what, according to all the probabilities and in accordance with international law, precedent, courtesy and *international red tape*, will and will not be done. I am facing the cold, hard facts.

On the other hand, the question of Africa is an international question; it belongs at the peace table; every nation represented

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there, from England to Liberia, can freely discuss it. Africa as I have said, is at the bottom of this war and I tell you we may form all the leagues of nations that can be formed, but if the African question is not settled justly, we will have wars and wars. Therefore, the African question being an international question, we had sense enough to know that we could bring it before this international body, and perhaps by that step pursue the very wisest and best means of focusing the attention of the peace delegates and the entire civilized world on the question of the just claims of the Negro everywhere.

There is another reason that justifies our interest in Africa, which is not so practical or material as the one I have just stated, but which is nevertheless vital in its effects. It will be a lamen-
table condition when the American Negro grows so narrow and so self-centered in his own wrongs and sufferings that he has no sympathy for the wrongs and sufferings of others, not even his blood brothers in Africa. When he reaches the state where he wants everybody to be interested in his condition, but has no interest in the condition of others, he will have forfeited the right to demand that others be interested in him.

Still another valid reason for taking up the cause of Africa is the dense ignorance about that land; not only dense ignorance, but criminal ignorance. There has been and still is a historical conspiracy against Africa which has successfully stripped the entire Negro race of all credit for what it contributed in past ages to the birth and growth of civilization.

Makers of history have taught the world that from the beginning of time the Negro has never been anything but a race of savages and slaves. Anyone who is willing to dig out the truth can learn that civilization was born in the upper valley of the River Nile; that in the misty ages of the past pure black men in Africa were observing the stars, were turning human speech into song, were discovering religious truths and laying the foundations of government, were utilizing the metals, developing agriculture and inventing the primitive tools; in fact, giving the impulse which started man on his upward climb; while the progenitors of present-day Anglo-Saxons and Teutons and Slavs were hairy savages living in dark caves and crunching on raw bones; savages that had not yet the faintest glimmer of a knowledge either of religion or letters or government.

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Of course, the makers of history take cognizance of Egyptian civilization; but at the same time they claim that the ancient Egyptians were white people. This claim is made for obvious reasons, but it is made in spite of the fact that the features of the Sphynx and other early Egyptian monuments are as Negroid as the features of the typical deck hand of a Mississippi River steamboat.

And in the same manner these makers of history have claimed as white other black and dark races who have accomplished something. The Arabs and the Hindus and the Moors are "white people." Efforts have been made to prove even that the Zulus on account of their bravery and prowess in battle are not really Negroes. We can all remember how, shortly after the close of the Russo-Japanese war, a number of scientists and pseudo-scientifics sought to show that the Japanese people, after all, were a branch of the white race. It is a wonder that somebody didn't try to prove, after he licked Jim Jefferies, that Jack Johnson was a white man. Perhaps in the far future, when pugilism is a lost and forgotten art, some writer on the subject will try to prove it.

By these methods and means the Negro has been raped of all credit that is due him as a contributor to civilization. The truth is: the torch of civilization was lighted on the banks of the Nile, and we can trace the course of that torch, sometimes flaming, sometimes flickering, and at times all but extinguished— we can trace it from Egypt around the borders of the Mediterranean, through Greece and Italy, and Spain, on into Northern Europe. In the hands of each people that held it, the torch of civilization has grown brighter and brighter, and then died down until it was passed on to other hands.

The fact that dark ages fell upon Africa and her people is no more of a discredit than the fact that dark ages fell upon the buried empires of Asia Minor, of Asia, and of ancient Greece. Races and peoples have in their turn carried this torch of civilization to a certain height, and then sunk back under the weight of their own exertions.

It seems that there is more truth than mythology in the story of Antaeus and Hercules. Hercules in wrestling with Antaeus found that each time the giant was thrown he arose stronger. The secret lay in the fact that the earth was his mother, and each

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time he came in contact with her he gained renewed strength. Hercules then resorted to the strategem of holding him off the earth until his strength was exhausted. So with races and peoples; it seems that after they have climbed to a certain height, they must fall back and lie close to the earth.

And this reminds us of the truth that all things in the uni-
verse move in cycles; so who knows but that in the whirl of
God's great wheel the torch may not again flame in the upper
valley of the Nile?

We ought to know more about Africa, and if we did we
would not be ashamed of it but proud of it. A knowledge of its
history would give the background which would enable the
Negro to hold up his head among the peoples of the world.

And it is only just that in the settlement to follow the war
provisions should be made to secure the soil of Africa and the
resources thereof for the benefit primarily of the natives; and for
the establishment of governments that may insure them self-
determination as rapidly as possible.

But the main interest of the Advancement Association, notwithstanding its broad sympathies for all oppressed peoples, is not in Africa and Africans, but in America and colored Americans. And the Advancement Association knows enough to realize that the problem of the Negro in the United States is not going to be settled around the peace table at Versailles. It knows that the Powers of Europe are not going to do very much, even if they could, to change the laws and the disregard of laws in Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi.

And so, although the Advancement Association is willing to
accomplish as much as is possible by bringing Africa, which is
an international question, before this international body, it
realizes that the fight for the democratic rights of the American
Negro must be fought at close quarters right here at home.

In fact, the fight for democracy for native Africans and
the fight for democracy for people of African descent in the United
States are not on the same plane. The truth of the matter is,
the question of the democratic rights of the American Negro has
no recognized place at the peace table. The Negro in the United
States is not a subject race and does not accept the status of a
subject race. He is a citizen of the United States, with all the
rights of American citizenship guaranteed him by the Constitu-

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tion. Subject races all over the world are today struggling to
have certain rights of citizenship written for them in the laws
of the nations to which they bear allegiance; therefore their
cases naturally go for consideration before the international
tribunal which is now assembling. But the American Negro is
contending for the fulfillment of rights already guaranteed him
by the Constitution and for the impartial interpretation and
application of existing laws.

In other words, the American Negro is not asking a favor;
he is not asking for something that belongs to somebody else;
he is demanding only that which is legally his; he is laying claim
to that of which he is being wrongfully deprived. The question
as to the wisdom of writing the Negro down in the Constitution
as a citizen is aside from the point; what is written is written,
and these laws are law. And the righteousness, the morality,
the self-respect and the common decency of the nation are in-
volved in seeing that these laws are carried out.

This is the battle ground on which the forces of the Advance-
ment Association are entrenched, and it is on this front that we
intend to fight it out without hesitation, without fear and without
compromise until the end is achieved.

The National Association realizes that our fight is here at
home and must be fought at close quarters—not over there, but
right here. And that is the big job before us; that is the job
which we have been tackling for ten years, with increasing force
and increasing earnestness. It is a big job. There are many
phases of it; it is complicated; it is complex. There is an econo-
mic side. A great many people hold that all of this question is
economic; that it is simply a question of exploitation, just as the
European countries exploit natives in Africa. That is good
as far as it goes but it does not entirely cover this problem of
ours in the United States.

I cannot take up this whole question but there are two phases
of which I shall speak. There is a bitter race hatred and there
is a national apathy and indifference with which we have to
contend. I hardly know which is the more dangerous and which
works the greater damage. Bitter race hatred is limited but
makes up in activity for its limitation. But the apathy on this
question of human rights as it concerns the American Negro is
general, it is widespread. It is a sort of inertia, it is a thing

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difficult to move. But that is one of the jobs this Association believes it has before it, and that is a job we are tackling.

To do this, we are using every rightful means that we can command. This nation is indifferent; it is not thinking about us as it should be made to think and as it was made to think sixty years ago. The country is very much concerned about democracy abroad, but not very much interested in democracy at home, so far as it applies to more than ten million Negro citizens. But I will tell you what we are going to do—and this Association has mapped it out as one of its lines of attack. It is our intention to carry on an intelligent, persistent and aggressive agitation until we educate this nation, more than educate it, until we whip and sting its conscience, until we awaken it, until we startle it into a realization that we know what we want, we know what we are entitled to, and that we are determined by all that is sacred to have it and be satisfied with nothing less.

We have just finished the great war for democracy. There were those in my own race who thought and taught that all we needed to do while black boys were fighting over there was to buy Liberty Bonds and Thrift Stamps, to assist in Red Cross drives and other activities, keep our mouths shut, and the war would do the rest. I did not suffer from any such hallucination. The war is over, and no miracle has happened. And no miracle is going to happen. Miracles of that kind never happen. If loyalty to the nation and fighting its battles could give the American Negro his full rights he would have had them long ago.

Only a couple of weeks ago the newspapers recorded the lynching of an honorably discharged Negro soldier in Kentucky. And what was the crime for which he was lynched? He had resisted arrest by a constable. He did not even kill the con-stable; he merely knocked him down and walked off, claiming that a civil officer had no right to arrest a man in uniform. That is an idea about the law which is common among soldiers and sailors. But the mob got him and lynched him.

I want to say to my own people that the main thing we have thus far gotten out of this war was not the chance to fight in France, but the right to fight more effectively here at home for the things in the name of which this war was waged.

I can never forget what I felt on the day that I saw New York's own black regiment, "The Buffaloes," march up Fifth

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Avenue to receive a stand of colors to be presented by the Union League Club. I remember how I thrilled at the sight of them as they swung out of Madison Square into the finest street in the world; how New York looked on, perhaps, with some wonder that these men could march away so bravely to die to gain for others a thing which they themselves were yet denied. I saw them stop in front of the Union League Club, and heard a thousand voices sing "The Star Spangled Banner" as New York had never heard it sung. Then from the balcony of the club the Governor of the State came down and presented the colors. And as he gave the flag into their keeping he raised his voice, trembling with emotion, and cried out, "Bring it back! Bring it back, boys! Bring it back!" And the answer welled up in my heart: Never you fear, Mr. Governor, never you fear, gentlemen of the Union League Club, they will bring it back; perhaps tattered and torn, but they will bring it back. And they will bring it back as they have always done whenever it has been entrusted to their hands, without once letting it trail in the dust, without putting a single stain of dishonor upon it. Then it will be for you, Mr. Governor, for you, gentlemen of the Union League Club, for you, people of America, to remove the only stains that are upon it, stains that are upon it as these men carry it into battle, the stains of lynching, of disfranchisement, of Jim Crowism, of injustice and oppression. The record of black men on the fields of France and Flanders give us the greater right to point to that flag and say to the nation, "Those stains are still upon it; they dim its stars and soil its stripes; wash them out! Wash them out!"

A great deal has been said about the atrocities committed during this terrible war by Huns and Turks; but there are millions of intelligent Americans who do not know, who are not concerned with the fact that every year atrocities are committed in this enlightened land that would cause envy in the heart of the most benighted Turk.

Only a few days ago four Negroes were lynched in Mississippi, accused of having killed a white physician. Two of them were young men in their early twenties, and the other two were girls still in their teens, sisters they were, one of them only sixteen. And this younger sister was about to become a mother. That fact I learned from the account of the lynching given in the principal white newspaper of Mississippi. I believe when the truth

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about this case is known it will show that the white man who was killed was the father of the unborn babe that was lynched.

There is the case of Jim McIlheron less than a year ago in Tennessee, accused of killing two white men in a street fight, and tortured with red-hot irons, then burned alive at the stake. Jim McIlheron was one of three Negroes who within nine months were tortured and burned alive in the single state of Tennessee.

The records as kept by the department of research at Tuskegee Institute show that during 1918, while white and black Americans were fighting side by side to make the world safe for democracy, white mobs here at home were lynching 58 Negroes, 5 of them being women. These records also show that in only one-fourth of these cases was there even a charge of assault or attempted assault on women. Eighteen of these lynchings occurred in the State of Georgia.

I ask not only black Americans but white Americans, are you not ashamed of lynching? Do you not hang your head in humiliation to think that this is the only civilized country in the world, no, more than that, the only spot on earth where a human being may be tortured with hot irons and then burned alive. The nation is today striving to lead the moral forces of the world in the support of the weak against the strong; well, I'll tell you it can't do it until it conquers and crushes out this monster in its own midst.

When I had the honor of going before the President of the United States to plead for those colored soldiers who were concerned in the Houston affair, I told him of the case of Jim McIlheron, describing it in detail to him, and when I had finished my recital the President said to me, "I had not heard about it," and he had not heard about it. But that is the sad commentary—that in this great, free, enlightened democracy a human being could be burned alive at the stake and the head of the nation not even hear about it. But we are going to make them hear about it, not only the head of the nation, but we are going to put the raw, naked, brutal facts of this question before the conscience of the whole nation until we make it sick.

Our President is in Europe endeavoring to establish his lofty ideals and principles: The guarantee of peace, the spread of democracy, the safeguarding of liberty and the protection of the weak; we are praying that he will succeed, for our own wel-

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fare is involved in his success. But if he does not succeed in bringing the whole world around to his enlightened views, we hope he will not feel absolutely discouraged; he still has a vast field in the nation over which he presides.

Talk about democracy, and human brotherhood and the protection of the weak, it will all result in sheer hypocrisy, in what St. Paul calls a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, unless we apply those principles here at home.

And now, if you are ashamed of these things, there is something that you can do and that is join and support this great movement. I claim that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the only absolutely democratic movement in the United States. It is a great American movement. This is not a race movement. If anyone has the idea that the plan of this organization is merely a race movement, he is mistaken. The platform of this organization is so broad that every man, woman and child who loves justice, who loves liberty, can stand upon it, regardless of race or color. And so I appeal to white men and white women everywhere, North and South; to my own people everywhere; to all white people who love justice and to all black people who love liberty, to join the ranks, the fighting ranks of this Association and help to make America a democracy in deeds as well as in words.