When Africa awakes: The "inside story" of the stirrings and strivings of the new Negro in the Western worldHarrison, Hubert H.
History
When Africa awakes: The "inside story" of the stirrings and strivings of the new Negro in the Western world
Harrison, Hubert H.
African Americans; African Americans -- Race identity; United States -- Race relations
Is anyone unpatriotic enough to pretend that “cowards” can lick “Huns”?
No, this great world-task can be accomplished only by men—English men,
French men, Italian men, American men. Our country needs men now more
than it ever did before. And those who multiply its reserve of men are
adding to its strength. That is why the true patriots who really love
America and want it to win the war are asking America to change its
Negroes from “niggers” into men. Surely this is a patriotic request; and
any one who says that it isn’t must be prepared to maintain that
lynching, Jim-crow and disfranchisement are consistent with patriotism
and ought to be preserved. Reading the President’s proclamations in
reverent spirit, we deny both of these monstrous conclusions; and we
believe that we have on our side the President of America, the world’s
foremost champion of democracy who defined it as “the right of all those
who submit to authority to have a VOICE in their own government”—whether
it be in Germany or in Georgia. And we believe that the splendid spirit
of our common country, which has buckled on its sword in support of
“democracy” will support us in this reasonable contention. —July, 1918.
_Why Is the Red Cross?_
The Red Cross, or Geneva Association, was the product of a Swiss
infidel. He saw how cruel to man were those who loved God most—the
Christians—and, out of his large humanity and loving kindness, he
evolved an organization which should bring the charity of service to
lessen the lurid horrors of Christian battlefields.
A love that rose above the love of country—the love of human kind: this
was the proud principle of the Red Cross. Its nurses and its surgeons,
stretcher-bearers and assistants were supposed to bring relief to those
who were in pain, regardless of whether they were “friends” or
“enemies.” Discrimination was a word which did not exist for them: and
it is not supposed to exist now even as against the wounded German
aviator who has bombed a Red Cross hospital.
But, alack and alas! The splendid spirit of the Swiss infidel is
seemingly too high for Christian race-prejudice to reach. Where he would
not discriminate even against enemies, the American branch of his
international society is discriminating against most loyal friends and
willing helpers—when they are Negroes. Up to date the American Red Cross
Society, which receives government aid and co-operation to help win the
war, cannot cite the name of a single Negro woman as a nurse. True, it
says that it has “enrolled” some. This we refuse to believe. But even if
that were true, a nurse “enrolled” cannot save the life of any of our
soldiers in France.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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