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
Of course, sensible men should feel no surprise at this, for they will
realize how little the part played by the Negro in the Civil War is
known by the millions of white school children who read the school
histories. Yet, if there is a spark of manhood left in the bosoms of our
“white men’s niggers” who sold us out during the war they must feel
pained and humiliated when the flood of after-the-war school histories,
of which this is the first, quietly sink the Negro’s contributions (as
chronicled by Mr. Emmett Scott and others) into the back waters of
forgetfulness.
The times change, but we don’t change with them.
_The Negro at the Peace Congress_
Now that they have helped to win the war against Germany, the Negro
people in these United States feel the absurdity of the situation in
which they find themselves. They have given lavishly of their blood and
treasure. They have sent their young men overseas as soldiers, and were
willing to send their young women overseas as nurses; but the innate
race-prejudice of the American Red Cross prevented them. They have
contributed millions of dollars to the funds of this same Red Cross and
scores of millions to the four Liberty Loans; and they have done all
this to help make the world “safe for democracy” even while in sixteen
States of the south in which nine-tenths of them reside, they have no
voice in their own government. Naturally they expect that something will
have to be done to remove their civil and other disabilities. This
expectation of theirs is a just and reasonable one. But— —
Now that the world is getting ready for the Peace Congress which is
expected to settle _the questions about which the war was fought_ our
Negroes want to know if the Peace Congress will settle such questions as
those of lynching, disfranchisement and segregation. IT WILL NOT! And
why? Simply because the war was not fought over these questions. Even a
fool can see that. Lynching, disfranchisement and Jim-crowing in America
are questions of American domestic policy and can be regulated only by
American law-making and administrative bodies. Even a fool should be
able to see this. And, since it was only by the military aid of the
United States that the Allies were able to win the war, why should our
people be stupid enough to think that the allied nations will aim a slap
at the face of the United States (even if such things were customary) by
attempting to interfere in her domestic arrangements and institutions?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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