The people of Hayti are being shot, sabred and bombed, while resisting an illegal invasion of their homes, and, if public decency is not dead in America white and black men and women will insist that Congress investigate this American Ireland. When Ireland feels the pressure of the English heel, the Irish in America make their voices heard and help to line up American public opinion on their side. When Paderewski’s government massacres Jews in Poland, the Jews of America raise money, organize committees, put the U. S. Government on the job—and get results. But when Negroes are massacred—not in Africa, but in Hayti, under American control—what do we American Negroes do? So far, nothing. But that inaction will not last. Negroes must write their Congressmen and Senators concerning the atrocity perpetrated at Port au Prince last week. They should organize committees to go before Congress and put the pitiful facts, demanding investigation, redress and punishment. For as long as such things can be done without effective protest or redress, black people every where will refuse to believe that the democracy advertised by lying white politicians can be anything but a ghastly joke. _The Cracker in the Caribbean_ “Meanwhile the feet of civilized slayers have woven across the fair face of the earth a crimson mesh of murder and rapine. The smoke of blazing villages ascends in lurid holocaust to the bloody god of battles from the altar of human hate in the obscene temple of race prejudice.” These words, which we wrote in 1912, come back to our mind eight years later with no abatement of the awful horror which they express. And what gives a special point to them at this moment is the bloody rape of the republics of Hayti and Santo Domingo which is being perpetrated by the bayonets of American sailors and marines, with the silent and shameful acquiescence of 12,000,000 American Negroes too cowardly to lift a voice in effective protest or too ignorant of political affairs to know what is taking place. What boots it that we strike heroic attitudes and talk grandiloquently of Ethiopia stretching forth her hands when we Africans of the dispersion can let the land of L’Ouverture lie like a fallen flower beneath the feet of swine?