During the recent world war the Negro in America was taught that while white people spoke of patriotism, religion, democracy and other sounding themes, they remained loyal to one concept above all others, and that was the concept of race. Even in the throes of war, and on the battlefields of France it was “race first” with them. Out of this realization was born the new Negro ideal of “race first” for us. And today, whether Negroes be Catholics or Protestants, capitalists or wage workers, Republicans or Democrats, native or foreign-born, they begin life anew on this basis. Alike in their business alignments, their demands on the government and political parties, and in their courageous response to race rioters, they are responding to this sentiment which has been bred by the attitude of white men here and everywhere else where white rules black. To be sure, neither Burleson nor Palmer have told you or the rest of the white world this. The Angle-Saxon white man is a notorious hypocrite; and they have preferred to prate of Bolshevism—your “radicalism”—rather than tell the truth of racialism, our “radicalism,” because this was an easier explanation, more in keeping with official stupidity. But we had supposed that you were intelligent enough to find this out. Evidently, you were not. Your official Negro exponents, on behalf of their bread and butter, have seized on this widely-published official explanation to make you believe that the changed attitude of the Negro masses was due to the propaganda which you were paying them (at their published request) to preach. But this is a lie. Don’t take our word for it. Do some reading on your own account. Get a hundred different Negro newspapers and magazines, outside of those which you have subsidized, and study their editorial and other pronouncements, and you will see that this is so. But let us come nearer home. The propaganda of Socialism has been preached in times past in Harlem by different people without awakening hostility of any sort. Today it elicits a hostility which is outspoken. Send up and see; then ask yourselves the reason. You will find a Negro Harlem reborn, with business enterprises and cultural arrangements. And these things have been established without any help from you or those who eat your bread. Even the work of Socialist propaganda was neglected by you between 1912 and 1917. Consult your own memories and the columns of the Call.