Chapter V
THE DEMANDS OF
THE NEGRO LEADERS

I love to watch the rooster crow, He's like so many men I know, Who brag and bluster, rant and shout, And beat their manly breasts, without The first damn thing to crow about. -John K. Bangs COMPLETE political, economic, and social equality with the white people is what the Negroes in this country want. This is the stated demand of the leaders of the colored race on behalf of the 12,865,518 Negroes in the United States. They want all racial barriers abolished throughout the Nation; they want racial segregation completely eliminated; they want to eat in the restaurants with the white people, attend the same schools, churches. and theaters, the same social functions, use the same swimming pools, sleep in the same hotels, use the same barber shops; they want the color line forever and Everywhere abolished; they want intermarriage between whites and blacks, the right to date your daughters and to become your sons-in-law. The demands of the Negro leaders have been stated in fourteen essays which compose the text of the book, What the Negro Wants. (1) In the Publisher's Introduction, W. T. Couch stated that this book was written at the request of the University of North Carolina Press. The idea was that the country, and especially the South, should know what the Negro wants, and that statements from leading Negroes might give needed information on this subject. In the Editor's Preface Rayford W. Logan (colored) says that fourteen Negroes who have devoted many years of study to America's most difficult minority problem have presented their views in this book, their conception of what the Negro wants and the methods by which he can best achieve his aspirations. He states that he selected the contributors, four of whom might be called conservatives, five liberals, and five radicals, and in no way attempted to influence their opinions or conclusions. The purpose of this chapter is to present the demands of the Negroes today in the words of these Negro leaders themselves. Every one of them asks for full and complete equality for the colored minority in this Nation. Economic, political, and social equality is their goal; the abolition of the color line is the ultimate aim of all of them. The reader is urged to give careful attention to the following quotations, one of which was taken from each of the fourteen essays written by a Negro leader and contained in the book, What the Negro Wants. In the opening discussion entitled "The Negro Wants FirstClass Citizenship," the Editor, Rayford W. Logan, Professor of History at Howard University (colored), makes the following statements: (2) Negroes in the United States want first-class citizenship. . . In the name of democracy for all Americans we ask these irreducible fundamentals of first-class citizenship for all Negroes: Equality of opportunity. Equal pay for equal work. Equal protection of the laws. Equality of suffrage. Equal recognition of the dignity of the human being. Abolition of public segregation. The crucial question remains: What should be the ultimate ob- jective of this proposed action on both the national (including the state and the local) and the international scene? Should it be continuation of public segregation or should it be the eventual integration of Negroes into the public life of the American people? The answer to this question, indeed vitally affects the achievement of the immediate steps proposed. Many persons who say that they favor economic, political, and educational equality for the Negro oppose such equality in practice for fear that it will lead to 'social equality,' by which most of them mean intermarriage. And the great majority of those who favor economic, political, and educational equality in practice oppose intermarriage. On no aspect of the race problem are most white Americans, North as well as South, so adamant as they are on their opposition to intermarriage. Now, Southerners especially fear that the abolition of public segregation would result in intermarriage. The fact that mixed schools, mixed employment, even social mingling in the more liberal parts of the United States have resulted in very few mixed marriages does not prevent this real or fancied fear. Mrs. Roosevelt may publicly state that mixed marriages are the personal affair of the couple if they are willing, in communities where they are not prohibited by law, to assume this additional burden upon a happy marriage. Some biologists and anthropologists have concluded that mixed marriages do not necessarily result in an inferior offspring and that, in fact, there is no pure race. Most white Americans remain nonetheless opposed to intermarriage and many of them to the abolition of public segregation as a possible first step toward it. There seems to me to be an essentially sound answer to the fear of ultimate intermarriage whether it should result from the achievement of economic, political, and cultural equality under segregation (if that be possible) or from the abolition of public segregation. If, after either or both of these eventualities, laws or custom still rigidly oppose mixed marriages, there will be few more than there now are. If, on the other hand, laws and public opinion should change and there should be more mixed marriages - why, we shall all be dead in 2044 and the people will do what they wish. After all, most Southerners have accommodated themselves to the abolition of the 'divine institution' of slavery. The author of the second essay in What the Negro Wants is W. E. B. DuBois, who was born in Massachusetts, educated at Fisk University in Tennessee, at Harvard University in Boston, and at the University of Berlin in Germany. For many years, Dr. DuBois was a professor at Atlanta University (colored), Atlanta, Georgia, and he has been universally recognized as the head spokesman for the thoughts and ambitions of the Negroes in this country. In presenting "My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom," Dr. DuBois, who is now Director of Special Research for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, says: (3) Finally and in summation, what is it that in sixty years of purposive endeavor, I have wanted for my people? Just what do I mean by 'Freedom'? Proceeding from the vague and general plans of youth, through the more particular program of active middle life, and on to the general and at the same time more specific plans of the days of reflexion, I can see, with overlappings and contradictions, these things: By 'Freedom' for Negroes, I meant and still mean, full economic, political and Social equality with American citizens, in thought, expression and action, with no discrimination based on race or color. A statement such as this challenges immediate criticism. Economic equality is today widely advocated as the basis for real political power: men are beginning to demand for all persons, the right to work at a wage which will maintain a decent standard of living. Beyond that the right to vote is the demand that all persons governed should have some voice in government. Beyond these two demands, so widely admitted, what does one mean by a demand for 'social equality'? The phrase is unhappy because of the vague meaning of both 'social' and 'equality.' Yet it is in too common use to be discarded, and it stands especially for an attitude toward the Negro. 'social' is used to refer not only to the intimate contacts of the family group and of personal companions, but also and increasingly to the whole vast complex of human relationships through which we carry out our cultural patterns. We may list the activities called 'social' roughly as follows: A. private social intercourse (marriage, friendships, home entertainment). B. public services (residence areas, travel, recreation and information, hotels and restaurants). C. Social uplift (education, religion, science and art). Here are three categories of social activities calling for three interpretations of equality. In the matter of purely personal contacts like marriage, intimate friendships and sociable gatherings, 'equality' means the right to select one's own mates and close companions. The basis of choice may be cultured taste or vacant whim, but it is an unquestionable right so long as my free choice does not deny equal freedom on the part of others. No one can for a moment question the preference of a white man to marry a white woman or invite only white friends to dinner. But by the same token if a white desdemona prefers a black othello; or if theodore roosevelt includes among his dinner guests booker t. Washington, their right also is undeniable and its restriction by law or custom an inadmissible infringement of civil rights. Naturally, if an individual choice like intermarriage is proven to be a social injury, society must forbid it. It has been the contention of the white South that the social body always suffers from miscegenation, and that miscegenation is always possible where there is friendship and often where there is mere courtesy. This belief, modern science (4) has effectively answered. There is no scientific reason why there should not be intermarriage between two human beings who happen to be of different race or color. This does mean any forcible limitation of individual preference based on race, color, or any other reason; it does limit any compulsion of persons who do not accept the validity of such reasons not to follow their own choices. The marriage of Frederick Douglass to a white woman did not injure society. The marriage of the Negro Greek scholar, William Scarborough, to Sarah Bierce, principal of the Wilberforce Normal School was not a social catastrophe. The mulatto descendants of Louise Dumas and the Marquis de la Pailleterie were a great gift to mankind. The determination of any white person not to have children with Negro, Chinese, or Irish blood is a desire which demands respect. In like manner, the tastes of others, no matter how few or many, who disagree, demand equal respect. Notwithstanding the foregoing pronouncements by Dr. DuBois, who is the real leader of the Negro intelligentsia in America. you will often find Negro leaders who are not yet so bold as their number one spokesman. This group will deny that social equality is the ultimate aim, dream, and purpose of ninety-nine per cent of the Negroes of the United States. For policy's sake, perhaps through fear of public condemnation, they make their denials when as a matter of fact the sweetest dream of their lives is to live to see complete social equality-the right and daily custom for a Negro man to marry a white woman without criticism or any form of condemnation. As the summary to his discussion of "What the Negro Wants and How to Get It: The Inward Power of the Masses," Leslie P. Hill (colored), President of State Teachers College, Cheyney, Pennsylvania, says: (5) What does the American Negro want? Full citizen status in our American democracy. How shall he reach that goal? By the inward power of the masses. And how shall that power be acquired? Fundamentally, on the highest plane and on the humblest, by a leadership motivated by a world-encompassing philosophy which is rooted in the will of God - a leadership which, itself a vital part of the force of events, is consecrated in humility to the immediate and practical education of the people. Let me say in response to the hypocritical statement of President Hill that the real and true white man is willing to accept the Negro as his brother in Christ. However, he does not prefer to take him on as a son-in-law in his family, and this decision comes under the head of an honest and true white man's business. No decent white man who has any regard for racial integrity is called upon to sacrifice the purity of his white blood in order to admit the spiritual truth of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. In his article entitled "The Negro Has Always Wanted the Four Freedoms," Charles H. Wesley, President of Wilberforce University (colored), declares: (6) The Negro wants a revision of the concept of race and of racism. Discriminations in industry, labor unions, education, the Jim Crow pattern for the Army and Navy are based upon facist racism. The white people of the United States have strong and positive ideas about racial equality. They use these justifications for discriminations. Before the latter can be removed, there must be some change in the former. The Negro is pressing forward against these barriers but the assumption of racial equality is being resisted. The war, with its emphasis upon democracy and its apparent opposition to racial superiority, is continuing to raise the issue, and it will have to be met with sincerity. Speeches and well-meaning committees cannot solve it by themselves. There will have to be education on the subject of race. We shall have to learn that the doctrine of racism has no scientific foundations . . . The Negro wants a realistic interpretation of religion in terms of brotherhood. The church is seen consistently to practise segregation and division, although its theory is universal. If it were not for the Negro Church, it is probable that there would be thousands of enemies of Christianity among Negroes. If the church does not desire to be known as a hypocrite in history and in fact, it must cleanse itself of segregation, discrimination and exclusion and begin to minister to all groups without the long-handled spoon. If the church would save itself, it must develop a crusading ardor for Christianity in relation to all men. The church can give the people the will to do, for facts will not suffice in this situation. (7) "The Negro Wants Full Equality" is the title and the theme of the article by Roy Wilkins, Assistant Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and editor of The Crisis. Wilkins says: (8) It has been said that not all the armored divisions of both the Axis and Allied armies can force the South to revise its system of social segregation. It has been said again that if such a demand is made seriously. every white male below the Potomac will spring to arms and another civil war will rend the nation. Certain it is that the Negro soldiers are not fighting and dying to maintain the status quo for their race. Their place now is in the front of the bullets of the enemy, and below the bombs in enemy planes. Bullets, or threats of bullets, are not likely to cause them to bow and scrape once they are home. No, the threats of civil war will not turn the trick. The American demands of the Negro are there, made in the American manner, rooted in the American ideal. They are not to be brushed aside, and something more than fulmination and bluster is indicated from the opposition. The next move is up to white Americans, and particularly white Southern Americans. Let me say to Roy Wilkins, and I am speaking the sentiments and convictions of the true, decent, self-respecting white men and women North and South of the Mason and Dixon Line, that this last war was not fought to change one whit the definition or meaning of true democracy and true Americanism. We fought to preserve what we already had, and those who may have had any other motive constituted a subversive element that was as dangerous to our cause as the enemies we fought. If some over-zealous person or persons or ill-informed Negro intelligentsia or documents compiled by white Quislings to be used in the orientation courses given in some sections of the Army set-up or unreliable newspapers and magazines written by Negroes and white Quislings left colored Americans under the impression that a victory in this recent war meant the breaking down of the color line in the South or social equality and intermarriage with the white race, then I am sorry. World War II and all its great victories will not in any way or in any manner change the views and sentiments of white America on the questions of social equality and intermarriage of the Negro with the white race. The integrity of the blood of white Americans must be preserved at all hazards regardless of how many wars we might be forced to wage. A. Philip Randolph, President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and organizer of the March on Washington Movement, is the author of the next essay, which is entitled "March on Washington Movement Presents Program for the Negro." Before reading the hereinafter direct quotation from this Negro, let it be known by all Americans that he is the most vigorous, audacious, ambitious, and dangerous Negro in America today. Randolph is the type who believes in force and who has bragged about the technique of force which he used in the threatened march on Washington in 1941. This was the time when he intimidated the President of the United States with the threat of riotous conditions in the Nation's Capital at a moment when the whole Nation was preparing for World War II. Using this method, he and his collaborators secured the President's signature to the famous Executive Order No. 8802, which was the birth of the unAmerican bastard known as the Fair Employment Practice Committee. The word "reason" is not in his vocabulary. He does not know how to plead or ask for anything that he wants for the Negro people. Using the communistic pattern, he vociferously and obstreperously DEMANDS. The following are his words: (9) We in the March on Washington Movement are disturbed by these things. We call on our fellow Americans to fight with us to wipe out these practices which violate both in spirit and in letter the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We demand a democratic army and call upon the President as Commander-in-Chief to enforce the Draft Law which forbids discrimination. We demand that Negroes be employed on the basis of their skill and intelligence in all branches of our federal service in every public and private industry. This means a functioning FEPC with power to end discrimination in training, in placement, in wages, in promotions and in membership in labor organizations. We demand equal education opportunities with equal access for the Negro student to all public tax-supported institutions. We demand the democratic right to vote without poll-taxes, white primaries and other devices which keep the majority of Southern Negroes a voteless group with no voice either in the selection of their representatives or a check on unjust public policies. We demand an end to segregation in transportation, in housing, in health and recreational facilities and in all other social service. We demand the enforcement of that provision of the Constitution which provides that 'No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.' We demand the abrogation of every law which makes a distinction in treatment between citizens based on religion, creed, color or national origin. We demand Negro and minority group representation on all administrative agencies so that these groups may help to determine policies for all people. In his article entitled "One American Problem and a Possible Solution," Willard S. Townsend, President of the United Transport Service Employees of America (Red Caps) and a member of the General Executive Board of the CIO, states: (10) While the problem maintains a surface sectionalism in many ways, its real solution lies within the framework of our total national economy. It is intellectually indecent for many of our 'liberal spokesmen' in the North to spend the greater portion of their time berating the South for its obvious shortcomings while at the same time accepting the basic concept of inequities found hidden beneath the surface of such trivial innocent sounding phrases as 'individual initiative and incentive' and the recently revived hoax of 'free enterprise' emanating from the well paid public relations experts of the National Association of Manufacturers. Discussing "Freedom-Through Victory in War and Peace," Doxey A. Wilkerson, Editor of People's Voice and a member of the National Committee of the Communist Political Association, says: (11) The Negro wants to be free. He wants freedom from every form of discrimination on account of race or color. He wants complete economic, political and social equality-in short, full democratic rights. And they shall attain their goal of full democratic rights- far sooner than many people think. This Negro, Doxey Wilkerson, is a pal of Benjamin Davis who led the fight along with Communist William Z. Foster against the ex-convict, Earl Browder, in the reorganization and reorientation of the Communist Party in the United States and made Foster the new head of the Party. They have been leading the Negroes to believe that through the Communist Party they will soon seize the deep South, drive out the native whites, and convert the land of Dixie into a soviet republic owned, controlled, and dominated alone by the American Negro. The American people would be surprised at the number of Negroes in this country who believe that this grand and glorious negrophile dream will come true. However, let me assure these poor, deluded fellow-travelers of the darker skin that they will hear Gabriel "toot his tooter" and will see the "Sweet Chariot swing low" before they take possession of the deep South. Gordon B. Hancock, Professor of Economics and Sociology at Virginia Union University (colored), selects as his subject "Race Relations in the United States: A Summary." He declares: (12) There is no way to avoid a head-on collision with the color question. It has been raised everywhere by the white man who dominates the Twentieth Century world, in which color considerations have assumed a major importance. Common sense precludes the possibility that Negroes in these war times make a frontal attack for full citizenship without a frontal counter-attack by the resisting white elements who in sheer desperation are threatening again to throw the color question into the politics of the South; and who are at present rumor-mongering in a manner that would provide excuses for a revival of their Reconstruction methods of dealing with the Negroes of the South. The above quotation from Gordon B. Hancock (colored) Professor at Virginia Union University, Richmond, Virginia, is a very subtle admission that Negroes have made in these war times a frontal attack for full citizenship which to them means social equality. This is further evidenced by the two hundred or more books which have been written in the past four years by Negroes and Quislings of the white race together with the flaming, sensational, irritating, and inflammatory articles appearing in almost every Negro newspaper in the Nation arousing hatred and animosity in the minds and hearts of the Negro population against the whites, North, South, East, and West, while at the same time demanding social equality under the newly-defined definitions of democracy and Americanism. During these same four years, less than six books have been written in the interest of the integrity of the white blood of America, and these books are apologetic in the extreme. In other words, while the white people of the Nation were absorbed in fighting the World War at home and abroad, the Negro leaders and intelligentsia were working and are still working assiduously and indefatigably to force their integration into the white society of America regardless of costs and consequences. Even during the most perilous days of the War, these Negro leaders cared not at all if their equality campaign retarded the war effort. Unless the Negro social equality seekers learn their lesson before it is too late, Professor Hancock will find out that the white people not only of the South but of the entire Nation will rise to resist this united effort on the part of the Negroes to mongrelize the white race and will present a solid front against this greatest menace which has ever confronted white America. In the next essay in this collection, "Certain Unalienable Rights," Mary McLeod Bethune (colored) President of the National Council of Negro Women says: (13) Here, then, is a program for racial advancement and national unity. lt adds up to the sum of the rights, privileges and responsibilities of full American citizenship. This is all that the Negro asks. He will not willingly accept less. As long as America offers less, she will be that much less a democracy. The whole way is the American way. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt's special friend, associate, and coworker, Mary McLeod Bethune, failed to elaborate on her pronouncement of what the Negro wants, but when she says that America will not be a full democracy until complete racial equality is granted, that the "sum of the rights, privileges and responsibilities of full American citizenship" is all the Negro asks, and that "the whole way is the American way," you can be assured that she meant to ask for total social equality between the two races. Surely, any one would know that this would in the end mean miscegenation, bastardization, amalgamation, and intermarriage of the races. Regardless of what Mrs. Roosevelt and her associate, Mary McLeod Bethune, have actually said or may say about social equality of whites and Negroes and the complete intermingling of the two races, their preachments and practices will eventually lead to the amalgamation, mongrelization, and destruction of both the white and black races. And they might well exclaim: "Oh, what a great day is coming when all Americans will be covered with tan, sunkissed, brown skins!" "The Negro Wants Full Participation in the American Democracy" is the name of the article by Frederick D. Patterson (colored), President of Tuskegee Institute. He proclaims: (14) Any form or segregation based on race, creed or color is discriminatory and imposes a penalty inconsistent with the guaranties of American democracy. The more conservative element of Negroes differ from those who hold the most radical views in opposition to segregation only in terms of time and technique of its elimination. In my statement which attempts to speak unequivocally in terms of ultimates, all Negroes must condemn any form of segregation based on race, creed or color anywhere in our nation. My kind and gentle reader, please let me especially direct your re-reading and analyzing with all its implications the foregoing pronouncement of Dr. Frederick D. Patterson, President of Tuskegee Institute, at Tuskegee, Alabama, in the heart of Dixie in the deep South. I would not pick one laurel from the crown which the American people have placed upon the head of that great, sane, sound teacher and leader of the Negro race, Booker T. Washington, who founded and administered during his lifetime this great Negro Institution. His teachings, philosophies, and convictions on the race question permeated every room on the campus at Tuskegee Institute. The lives, thoughts, and visions of the tens of thousands of his students, who left their alma mater knowing how to live and succeed as they pursued life's journey living in a white man's country where they are out-numbered ten to one, have been a memorial to him. Everywhere in this broad land where Booker T. Washington's students are found, they are living, succeeding, happy on their way, reflecting credit to the great Negro leader and teacher at whose feet they learned the "Negro's place." A great misfortune has overtaken Tuskegee Institute in that it now has a president who holds and announces such views on the race question in America as we have just read and noted. Figuratively speaking, Booker T. Washington would turn over in his grave if he could read the apostasy of his successor at this Institution where he spent his life in a consecrated work safely to steer and guide the course of the sons and daughters of his race along life's journey. Frederick Patterson, for the sake of the future of the Negro race, should be instantly transplanted to Brooklyn, New York, where there are some whites who have concluded that they are no better than the Negro, or to Harlem where he would not have the opportunity to contaminate and corrupt the minds and hearts of the boys and girls of the Negro race of the entire Southland. Dr. Patterson either willingly, willfully, or with no care, thought or vision of the future of his race prevaricates when he says that segregation of race or color is discrimination. Again, he prevaricates when he announces that segregation "imposes a penalty inconsistent with the guaranties of American democracy." By his own statement, he admits that he does not know what American democracy means. The evil of his declaration that in any attempt "to speak unequivocally in terms of ultimates all Negroes must condemn any form of segregation based on race, creed or color anywhere in our nation" is indescribable. With this one statement, he deliberately plants in the hearts and minds of his students and the members of his race a craving for a condition that will not only bring on a bloody conflict between the true, white Americans and the few million Negroes in this country, but he announces an ambition that the Negroes will possess under his philosophy and teachings that will lead to amalgamation, miscegenation, and mongrelization of both his race and the white man's race - total destruction of both. I do not know whether to blame or to censure Dr. Patterson. He could be just plain stupid and not know what he is doing; but regardless of the reason behind his preachments, he is sowing the seeds that will destroy him and his kind. God give us another Booker T. Washington to save Tuskegee Institute! George S. Schuyler (colored), Associate Editor of the Pittsburgh Courier and of The African and Business Manager of The Crisis, in an article entitled "The Caucasian Problem" has this to say: (15) What chance is there of doing this? It would require a revolutionary program of re-education calling not only for wholesale destruction of the accumulated mass of racialistic propaganda in books, magazines, newspapers, motion pictures and all the present laws and regulations which recognize the racial fiction and are based upon it, but for a complete reorganization of our social system. It would have to include the complete abolition of Jim Crow laws and institutions; the rescinding of all racial pollution laws barring marriage because of so-called race; a complete enforcement of the letter and spirit of the federal constitution, and the ending of every vestige of the color bar in industry, commerce and the professions. The words 'Negro,' 'white,' 'Caucasian,' 'Nordic' and 'Aryan' would have to be permanently taken out of circulation except among scholars and scientists. There would have to be an end of gathering population statistics by so-called race. Government service in all its branches, state and federal, would have to be thrown open to all on the basis solely of merit, and promotions made accordingly. It would probably be necessary to have drastic laws against manifestations of color prejudice and discrimination, just as we have legislated against kidnaping, arson and murder which are certainly no more serious from the viewpoint of national welfare. It is extremely doubtful if the colored people here or anywhere else will accept anything less than this, and if they do it is very likely to prove unsatisfactory. The alternative is to drift toward an international color war. Concerning George S. Schuyler, the writer of the above quoted statement, two things are quite evident. First, he is the best news writer and all-round advocate of total social equality and intermarriage of the races in America today. Second, he is bold and reckless in making clear to the world the consummation and fulfillment of the dream of every Negro man in America regardless of whether he can read or write. (Schuyler has personally realized his dream - he already has a white wife!) Many Negroes, and the South certainly has its portion, are too ignorant to be articulate, and others keep quiet on their ultimate dream because silence is the best policy. However, Schuyler throws discretion to the winds in all his writings and leaves no one in doubt about the things for which all Negroes are working and praying, and he thoroughly agrees with the prophecy of Dr. DuBois that we are drifting toward a world war based on color alone. I have been fighting, I am now fighting, and I shall keep on fighting the plan and pattern of Schuyler and his kind. I beg, plead, and intreat every white man and white woman in this Republic who has any regard for the integrity of the white race and the white man's civilization to see to it that the day never comes when Schuyler's demand shall be complied with and the words "Negro," "white," "Caucasian," "Nordic." and "Aryan" shall be taken out of everyday circulation. The question of race relations and the matter of social equality which leads inevitably to miscegenation, amalgamation, bastardization, mongrelization, and intermarriage of the races should be the concern of every decent, straight-thinking white man and white woman in this land. It is a question about which there can be no compromise. You are either white and want your offspring throughout all the years to come to be just as white, or you are willing to pursue a policy of "doing nothing about it." If you choose the latter, then step by step, day by day, year by year, century by century, both the white and the black races will be destroyed, and nothing but brown-skinned mongrels will be left to inhabit this fair land of ours. This question of social equality which involves the mixing of the white and black bloods is in the same category as vice, and the following words of Pope are just as applicable: Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, That to be hated, needs but to be seen, But seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace! Dear reader, just what stage have you reached? Are you enduring, are you pitying, or are you embracing the African Negro in our midst? In a discussion entitled "My America," Langston Hughes (colored), a writer and member of the Advisory Council of the Writer's War Board, declares: (16) The South opposes the civil rights of Negroes and their protection by law. Witness lynchings where no one is punished, witness the Jim Crow laws that deny the letter and spirit of the Constitution. For democracy to have real meaning, the Negro must have the same civil rights as any other American citizen. It seems obvious that the South does not yet know what this war is all about. As answer Number One to the question, 'What shall we do about the South?' I would suggest an immediate and intensive government-directed program of pro-democratic education, to be put into the schools of the South from the first grades of the grammar schools to the universities. Although Langston Hughes is a fair writer and poetically inclined, the Negro race and intelligentsia can not get much consolation out of his literary progress because three of his great grandfathers were white men. However, Hughes is a Negro just the same because one drop of African blood or one limb on the family tree makes a Negro. We are indebted to Langston Hughes for his frankness in telling us what he has up his sleeve in answering the question, "What shall we do about the South?" If we had a white Quisling President, a spineless Congress playing politics for the Negro vote, the first bill Hughes would wish introduced and passed would be to have all the school books from the first grades to the universities rewritten. His purpose in having this done would be to teach the American youth from Maine to California, from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico that the Negro is the equal of the white man and that the type and characteristics, as well as the color of the skin, make absolutely no difference from now until doomsday in white America. The road would then be clear for the immediate and speedy mongrelization of both the white and the Negro races. According to Hughes -- and this is where the Negro mind and blood asserts itself -- World War II was fought for the purpose of mongrelizing White America. If the South and the decent, self-respecting white people of the rest of the Nation had ever entertained the slightest suggestion that World War II was fought to integrate the Negro into the social life of white America, we would have had a nationwide rebellion against the conscription of the 12,000,000 or more men and women who marched and fought in the uniform of our country in order to win this war. Let me say to Langston Hughes that the American Republic is still white, and our civilization is still safe because it is white. The mongrelization of the Nation, as Hughes seems so much to desire, would be far worse than an atomic bomb dropped upon every township of American soil. In the last essay in this book "Count Us In," Sterling A. Brown (colored), Professor of English at Howard University, writes: (17) The black herring of intermarriage has been dragged too often across the trail to justice. 'Would you want your sister to marry a nigger?' is still the question that is supposed to stun any white man who sponsors rights for Negroes. It stirs Negroes to ironic laughter, although on all levels they recognize the white man's fear of intermarriage as deepseated. From the jokes of the people--of Negroes talking to Negroes, where 'Miss Annie's' name is changed to 'Miss Rope' or 'Miss Hemp'-- to the satire of the publicists, this awareness is to be found. A Negro editor, fighting a covenant restricting housing, was asked point blank: 'Do you believe in intermarriage?' to stop his guns of logic and facts. Some Negro public speakers, faced with the question, dodge behind statements like 'Well, I'm married already myself.' Some take refuge in Kipling's line, 'Never the twain shall meet,' without sharing Kipling's assurance or hope. The twain have met and the twain will meet. But negroes are not convinced thereby that they must give up their struggle to share in American democracy. Notwithstanding the fact that Sterling A. Brown, nativeborn citizen of the District of Columbia, had opportunities to acquire knowledge while attending Williams College and Harvard University and while teaching and studying at Virginia Seminary, Fisk University, Lincoln University, and Howard University; yet with all these many vaccinations with the virus of wisdom, none were successful. In common, everyday language, or shall I call it localism, he is just a plain intellectual screw-ball. When any Negro who has even a smattering or a suggestion of intelligence treats lightly and sarcastically the artful tragedy of the commingling of white blood with Negro blood in holy wedlock or in marriage, it is astounding, inexplicable, and beyond the comprehension of a sane and rational mind. It is true that occasionally because of sin, weakness, and infidelity, in violation of all the laws of God and nature, and in total disregard of the purity and the integrity of both the white and black bloods "the twain have met." But by the Eternals, this unpardonable sin against race must stop regardless of cost and consequences; and even though Brown and his kind would have us believe otherwise, it can be stopped without violating in the remotest degree the true principles of American democracy. Here we have parts of the statements of fourteen Negro leaders. Their demands for complete political, economic, and social equality have been openly and frankly stated for all the world to read and understand. They have used every conceivable argument in an attempt to support their appeal for full equality which to them means social equality. These arguments in the name of democracy, of science, and of religion will be answered in the next chapters. We will see that they are merely smokescreens which can not and will not stand under any sane, sound, and logical analysis. Since this chapter has been devoted to quotations from the book "What the Negro Wants", it is only proper that we conclude with a part of the Publisher's Introduction written by W. T. Couch (white) of the University of North Carolina Press. In a forceful and unanswerable statement, Mr. Couch disagrees with the Negro writers in their insistence that all racial barriers be abolished. In conclusion he says: (18) When the Press asked for this book it was hoped that serious attention would be given the possibilities for the Negro in America and elsewhere. The old complaints against the white man may be justified, but more than that, far more, is needed. More evidence that the white man is not considered responsible for everything, that the Negro himself has some responsibilities would help. Does the Negro have no opportunities in the South? Is the southern white man to blame for everything that happens? Do fate and the Negro have no part? Do Negro leaders have any ideas on how educational processes can be improved? What is the Negro doing of importance in agriculture, in industry, in the professions? What is he inventing, discovering, writing? What is he contributing that is new and valuable, what does he want, what does he need in order to enable him to contribute more? Is there need for a really great university for Negroes in the South? Can it be that Negroes in this region now have all the educational opportunities they can use? Which is the wiser course for the Negro: continuation of efforts to break down segregation in higher education --efforts which have no chance to succeed-- or efforts to get the southern states to co-operate in supporting a first-rate institution for Negroes in some southern center? Can Negroes and whites learn to work together, to develop and use all their talents, to live in peace and mutual respect-- can they discover the meaning of human rights, can they learn to practice what they discover? Can they remain racially separate and distinct and at the same time avoid inflicting disabilities on each other? Does the white man have no right to attempt to separate cultural from biological integration, and help the Negro achieve the first and deny him the second? Can biological integration be regarded as a right? What happens to the case for the Negro if it is tied up with things to which he not only has no right, but which, if granted, would destroy all rights? If any two people have a right to lead their own lives, certainly any two others or ten or twenty million have a right to opinions on what ought to be allowed and what forbidden. To say that the twenty million have no right to make and enforce decisions that they think necessary to the well-being of all is to say that society has no right to govern itself. The assumption of a better, a more valid authority, one that can be understood and that ought to be accepted by all rational beings, one that speaks with the voice of reason and justice, is the only foundation for appeals against majority decisions. To say that two may be right and twenty million wrong is to say that there is a more valid authority, that it is the only trustworthy guide, and that all men ought to act in accord with it. But the spokesman for minorities have followed the fashion of the times and denied the existence of any such authority. In doing so they have destroyed the only possible basis for their arguments, and have abandoned their only opportunity to help create understanding where confusion now exists. What problem would be solved if the white South dropped all barriers and accepted amalgamation? Would anything be gained if overnight the whole population could be made one color? One of man's great problems in this world is to learn what is good, to learn to recognize the good in whatever form, under whatever circumstances, it may appear. Some day the social engineers may be able to make all men alike, indistinguishable from one another, and equally good. But until that has been done, men need most of all to learn to recognize and use good qualities whether they belong to tall or short, round or long skulled, colored or white. Booker Washington came nearer than anyone else to stating the problem of the Negro in its true terms. Envy, jealousy among his own people seriously hampered his efforts, curbed his program. Nothing is more needed in the South today than rebirth of his ideas, restoration of the great leadership that he was giving. I believe that regardless of the Negro's abilities the same justice that is good for the white man is good for the Negro. But this justice does not, cannot operate on the basis of a mechanical equality. To be just, distinctions and discriminations have to be made. If the distinctions and discriminations are made in directions that some people say are wrong-- who can take such charges seriously in a world that denies the existence of any real right and wrong? I can and do, because I believe standards of right and wrong are necessary to civilization. Until the modern intellectual abandons his relativistic dogmas, he cannot criticize without expecting to be reminded that, according to his own doctrine, his opinion is merely his opinion and has no real validity. If he can quote 'authorities,' if something that calls itself 'science' supports his views, if the assertion of opposed views is not intellectually respectable, what of it? What kind of 'science' is it that has to support itself in this manner?

Notes Logan, R. W., What the Negro Wants (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944). Reprinted from What the Negro Wants, edited by Rayford W. Logan, by permission of The University of North Carolina Press. Copyright, 1944, by The University of North Carolina Press. Ibid. The argument presented by Dr. DuBois in the name of "modern science" as well as other arguments in the name of democracy and religion will be answered in Chapters VI, VIII. Reprinted from What the Negro Wants, edited by Rayford W. Logan, by permission of The University of North Carolina Press. Copyright, 1944 by The University of North Carolina Press. Ibid. President Wesley's three arguments for full equality in the name of science, democracy, and religion will be answered in Chapters VI, VII, and VIII. Reprinted from What the Negro Wants, edited by Rayford W. Logan, by permission of The University of North Carolina Press. Copyright 1944 by The University of North Carolina Press. Thru 18. Ibid.