YEAR BOOK OK THE Northern California Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. MOORFIELD STOREY of Boston, Mass., National President of the National Association, and Chief Coun¬ sel of the Association in the Segregation fight, whose masterly argu¬ ment won the day for Justice and Democracy. ENLIST NOW IN THE CAUSE OF HUMAN FREEDOM. E. Burton Ceruti, noted Los Angeles lawyer and a prom¬ inent member of the National Association for the Ad¬ vancement of Colored People. E. Burton Ceruti, Los Angeles, noted (colored) attorney, will tell why the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Louisville segregation case means more to the futuie of the colored American than any other adjudication by this august body: Other Numbers On The Program Are: Chorus, "America" - - Audience Invocation Rev. J. M. Brown Chorus, "Star-Spangled Banner" Choir of Fifteen Introducing Master of Ceremonies—Attorney Lawrence Sledge Musical Selection .... - Community Orchestra Reri ration - — Mrs. Rebecca Carrington Vocal Solo Miss Lutie Gilbert The Northern California Branch's Work in the Segregation Fight Mrs. H. E. Dehart Address - Attorney E. Burton Ceruti Reasons why you should join THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE Because You are opposed to Discrimination in places open to the public Lack of education for your children Restricted fields of employment Peonage Jim Crow cars Segregation where you live and where you work Taxes without votes Lynching The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is organized To secure your full rights as citizens To obtain equal justice in the courts To prevent repressive legislation To gain for you equality of opportunity everywhere To bring your wrongs before the American public To right these wrongs If you join the Association you are helping to uphold the Constitution of the United States in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln. You are working for a World Brotherhood and for Lincoln's ideal of "all men up and no man down" MEMBERSHIP in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Costs you one Dollar a year Makes you a member of the branch in your city Gives you a vote at the annual meeting of the Association Brings you special announcements of the N. A .A. C. P. and literature on the race question "THE CRISIS" (Magazine) costs you one dollar a year extra It is the only magazine of its kind in the world It tells the truth on the race question It gives live news It leads public opinion EMBLEMS of the N.A.A.C.P., pins or buttons, cost twenty-five cents FOREWORD THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION-An Interpretation The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was organized for the purpose of awakening to consciousness the real democratic ideal of the con¬ trolling element of the American people. It was fathered by and is still controlled by those idealists of both races who believe in the Fatherhood of God, and the Brotherhood of Man. Both the Colored and the White Idealists realized that the mere assertion of their ideals would not bring about the reformation desired; they therefore banded them¬ selves together into the above-named Association with the avowed object of bringing their ideals into realization by co-operative endeavor, which would enlist the services of the best element of both races in a combined effoit to educate the masses to a bet¬ ter understanding of the principles of Justice, Liberty, and the equal right to the pur¬ suit of happiness due them, which is a God-given right and is inalienable to all man¬ kind. The status of the Colored people in the United States at the present time is any¬ thing but permanent. The conditions both at home and abroad are changing the eco¬ nomic and the political map of the world over night, and the present war has brought to the Colored people in America an opportunity for Advancement such as no previous condition has ever brought to any subject people. If they will but conscientiously open their eyes to these opportunities, the next five years will not only revolutionize the thought of the American public toward its colored citizens, but will revolutionize the thought of the Colored people to the under¬ standing of the fact that they are real American citizens and that they must and shall work out their own salvation. The elements necessary to working out this salvation are many, the chief of which may be stated as these:—An understanding of their needs, a determination to acquire the knowledge necessary to meet them, and an unswa-vering activity to retain the ad¬ vantages gained from the hardships through which they have formerly passed and are now passing. A calm and candid review of the actual political, economic and educational condi¬ tion of the Colored people in the United States will convince any member of the race that we do really enjoy all of the rights to the pursuit of happiness and of liberty as far as the Government is concerned. The great injustices which have come to them and whicn may come to them is clearly not a part of the National Government but is a result of that condition which obtained at the time of the reconstruction period of '65 and afterwards, fostered by personal and not legal prejudice. Those who would be free must first strike the blow themselves, but in the case of the Colored people of America the blow which they must strike must be intelligent, forceful and based on those rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States and promulgated in every State paper now being uttered by any official of this Govern¬ ment. The desire of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and all fair-minded and intelligent workers of the entire nation is that the Colored people shall recognize the above facts and be willing to:— HOLD ON If the thing you want seems far away, Perhaps your task is small and mean. Hold on. Hold on. If the plodding hurts you day by day, For you is the joy of being clean, Hold on. Hold on. The better things of life are won Hold on and fight for you must advance, By patient striving sun to sun. The goal may not be seen at a glance; Rewards will come when the work is done, Nothing worth winning is left to chance, Hold on. Hold on. If the way be long and cold and dark, Hold on. You have set your pace and know your mark, Hold on. Your grip may loosen, your heart may quail, You may be harmed by a truthless tale; Eut grit and faith must at last prevail! Hold on. William Nauns Ricks. MRS. F. L. WILLIAMS, Treasurer Local Officers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People From left to right MRS. TOBE WILLIAMS, Director WALTER A. BUTLER, President MRS. T. C. DeHART, Secretary MRS. CHAS. TILGHMAN, Director REV. D. R. WALLACE, Vice-Pres. J. HOWARD BUTLER, Director Lb ^ „ II I lli — — il | °oo£>oo oo<3ooo ooog>oo oo<3ooo p, ^ JIP ^ ^=J1 A Short Review of the Year's Work of the Northern California Branch of the National Asso¬ ciation for the Advancement of Colored People The year just passed has witnessed the remarkable growth of the local branch. One hundred and twenty-nine new members joined the branch. In addition to the active membership campaign, under the able leadership of Mrs. Tobe Williams, the branch held a meeting in every month during the year, and handled the following cases: A case in Sacramento, Cal., caused by the withholding of certain money from a race woman by a white lawyer, was settled satisfactorily to the woman. By protests filed with the Commis¬ sioner of Public Safety, Mr. F. F. Jackson, caused the removal of discrim¬ inating signs in semi-public places in Oakland, Cal. Made a strong fight for the retention of Colonel Young on the active list in the army. Secured de¬ cent treatment for colored patrons at the new T. & D. playhouse in Oak¬ land. Investigated the case of a condemned murderer at San Quentin, Cal., who alleged discrimination in his trial. Protested to the City Commission¬ ers of Oakland against the proposed segregation ordinance, and contributed to the expenses of the Louisville segregation case. And, in addition to the foregoing cases enumerated above, the branch sent numerous letters to members of Congress protesting against various measures that were intro¬ duced during the sessions, and which affected the civil rights of colored Am¬ ericans. 6 FIGHTING PREJUDICES OUR BOYS OFFICERS IN THE SELECTED ARMY When the Secretary of War commissioned 700 colored officers, grad¬ uates of the First Separate Training Camp, located at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, his act but added another brilliant page to the history of the year's accomplishments of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In the face of the bitter opposition of Southern reactionaries and of colored people who did not understand, the Association, under the leader¬ ship of Dr. Spingan and Dr. Duboies persevered in their attempt to have col¬ ored men admitted to the various Reserve Officers' Training Camps until the War Department acceded to our request and granted us Fort Des Moines. FIGHTING PREJUDICES 7 A HISTORY OF THE ANTI-SEGREGATION FIGHT THE PLEA When the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, under the brilliant leadership of Moorfield Storey, won the now celebrated Louisville Segregation Case before the United States Supreme Court, it sounded the death-knell of a new and sinister form of persecution of colored people in the U. S., and again proved itself the main bulwark of the colored American against the forces of reaction that are ever seeking to deprive him of his manhood rights. EXTRACTS FROM THE BRIEF No one outside a court room would imagine for an instant that the predominant purpose of this ordinance was not to pre¬ vent the Negro citizens of Louisville, how¬ ever industrious, thrifty and well-educated they might be, from approaching that con¬ dition vaguely described as "social equal¬ ity." Here again, all doubt is removed by the frank admissions in the defendant's brief, which says: "The ordinance will only affect that re¬ latively small percentage of . . . Negroes, who to gratify their new-born social aspira¬ tions, seek to move into white neighbor¬ hoods." "Can it be that a Negro has the consti¬ tutional right, which cannot be restricted in the slightest degree, whatever the conse¬ quence to move into a block occupied by white families . . . simply to gratify his inordinate social aspirations to live with his family on a basis of social equality with white people?" "This law only seeks to regulate that natural and normal segregation which has always existed and to prevent a few of each race from overstepping the racial barriers which Providence and not human law has erected, and which, whenever they are over¬ stepped, result inevitably in most serious clashes, and often bloodshed, and in this particular instance ateo In the most de¬ structive consequences^to the white man's property, thereby only accentuating the ex¬ isting race antagonism." We may fairly disregard the few of the white race who are forbidden to move into Negro blocks and who are described by the defendant as "almost invariably the worst element of the race." These men are ob¬ liged by the ordinance to live in white blocks (unless perchance they already live in Negro blocks), but nothing can show more clearly the prejudice which is the sole foundation of this enactment than the fact that the most degraded white man is con¬ sidered a better neighbor than a Booker Washington. ***** The ordinance in this case seeks to pre¬ serve the semblance of equality among the races by forbidding white men to reside in blocks where the colored residents prepond¬ erate, though the whole segregation move¬ ment rests on the assumption that white men will not live in such neighborhoods. This provision cannot disguise the purpose of the enactment, which is to establish a Ghetto for the colored people of Louisville. It is an attempt to prescribe the district or districts within which they must reside and beyond which they cannot take up their abodes. After white and colored people have lived side by side all over the country for nearly fifty years since the Civil War, there has come an attack of race prej¬ udice, and legislation like the ordinance un¬ der consideration has been attempted in various cities. It is a disease which is spreading as new political devices constant¬ ly spread from State to State. ***** It is suggested that it is necessary to pre¬ serve "race purity and integrity." If this danger arises from proximity, it is not re¬ moved. The two races may live under the same roof as master and servant, a relation which has never assured race purity. They may live as the closest neighbors back to back, but such a fence as divides them has never proved an impassable barrier. Surely the danger is far less when two families are separated by a wide street, and it is no greater if they live side fyy side. It is suggested that dwelling as neigh¬ bors on the same street means social in- 8 FIGHTING PREJUDICES t.iraaey. Even if this were a reason for taking away men's rights, nothing is more contrary to daily experience. The closest neighbors in a city are in most cases strangers. Men cannot force their friend¬ ship on others or establish social relations with persons who do not desire them. There is no foundation for either of these excuses. It is the prejudice of race and color—a prejudice that would keep Booker Washington, received by the Queen of Eng¬ land and honored at the Commencement of Harvard College, from living on the same street with any white man in Louisville— which is the sole reason for this ordinance, intended, as its defenders expressly admit, only "to prevent a few of each race from overstepping the racial barriers which Pro¬ vidence and not human law has erected." Had Providence in fact erected such a barrier, it would have been impassable and no human law would have been needed, but the authors of the ordinance are not will¬ ing to trust the Providence whom they in¬ voke. It is because no divine barrier ex¬ ists that they seek to establish one by human legislation. Counsel for the defendant are right in saying that the Fourteenth Amendment does not compel social equality, and that, as this Court said in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, the Negro under the Fourteenth Amendment "takes the rank of a mere citi¬ zen, and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws." But no one is complaining of the ordinance because the Negro is not treated more favorably than are other citi¬ zens. The ordinance was manifestly drawn with great ingenuity in order to place the Negro citizens of Louisville in as inferior a position as possible with respect to their right of residence and to violate the spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment without transgressing the letter. If one of those who enacted the ordinance were defending his course before his constitutents, he would ask their approval just because he had suc¬ ceeded so well in establishing a permanent superiority for the white race. This Court, it is apprehended, cannot shut its eyes to these obvious facts, but must recognize in the ordinance a palpable attempt to destroy those fundamental rights which the Amend¬ ment guarantees. * * * # * In the present case it is contended that the difficulty is met by the provision that white persons shall not occupy buildings in "colored blocks." As well argue that an ordinance which prevented a denizen of the Five Points from moving into Fifth Avenue could be sustained because it forbade the dweller on Fifth Avenue to move into the Five Points. Anatole France has com¬ mented upon the absolute justice of the laws which prevent rich and poor alike from sleeping under the arches of the bridges which cross the Seine and from beg¬ ging in the public streets. A law which for¬ bids a Negro to rise is not made just be¬ cause it forbids a white man to fall. The defendant's counsel on page 16 of their brief suggest that it is the duty of the educated and successful Negro to reside with his poor brethren and by his example uplift them. This cannot be serious, for we cannot believe that counsel would set up for the race which they believe inferior a higher standard of duty than they recognize for their own. If allHhe rich and educated white men recognized this obligation, there would be no fashionable quarters and no slums. When the peers of England make their homes in Whitechapel, when Vander- bilts, Astors and Carnegies move into the Tenderloin district, when any white men who can live in a healthy, pleasant place forsake it for a squalid and dirty one, this argument may be used, but not until then. When the higher race sets the example, the lower may be asked to follow. But the plain answer to the defendant's whole argument on this aspect of the case is that two wrongs do not make one right. The common law right of every landowner is to occupy his own house or to sell or let it to whomsoever he pleases. The ordi¬ nance, as it stands, forbids the owner of land in many parts of thp city to live on his land if he happens to be a Negro, although he would be free to live on the same land if he were white. This inequality is not re¬ moved by forbidding white owners to live on their own land in other parts of the city. In the "colored blocks" there is a dis¬ crimination against an entirely different set of white owners from those in whose favor the discrimination is made in the "white blocks." In the same way, the owners against whom discrimination is made in the "white blocks" are entirely different from those who are left in the enjoyment of their rights in the "colored blocks." Sfc * * Jfc * The result is that the ordinance cannot be upheld except on the theory that the equality required by the Fourteenth Amend¬ ment is attained by imposing a penalty up¬ on Negroes for doing something which white citizens are left free to do, provided Negroes are left free to do some entirely different thing which is forbidden to white persons—if, for example, J.'egroes, but not whites, are forbidden to maintain laundries in wooden buildings, whereas whites, but not Negroes, are not allowed to maintain bakeries in similar buildings. It is sub¬ mitted that the Constitution cannot be sat- FIGHTING PREJUDICES 9 isfied by any such offsetting of inequalities and that a discrimination against one race is not one whit less a discrimination because in some other matter a discrimination is made against the other race. ***** It may be said that, if the quarters in¬ habited by Negroes are undesirable, it is because their inhabitants have made them so. In so far as this undesirability results from the natural features of the localities to which the Negro population has been largely confined by extra-legal influences, the allegation is obviously untrue. In so far as it results from the habits of the less thrifty among the Negro citizens, the fact is irrelevant, unless it be assumed that the Fourteenth Amendment warrants us in visiting the shortcoming of the fathers up¬ on the children, not unto the third and fourth generations alone, but for all time. * * * * * We rest our case upon the fundamental principle that, while a State may make police regulations which forbid many acts which would otherwise be lawful and may add restrictions respecting the use of prop¬ erty to those existing at common law, such restrictions must affect all citizens without discrimination. It will hardly be pretended that a State, for example, could require Negroes to obtain licenses in order to prac¬ tice medicine unless white persons were re¬ quired to do the same, or could forbid the use of wooden buildings by Negroes in a given area when the use of such buildings by white persons in the same area was per¬ mitted. Only a few authorities need be cited in support of this proposition. ***** The Negro is colored by no act of his. He is a citizen of the United States and entitled to every right that any other citi¬ zen has. The white men, because they do not like him as a neighbor, pass an ordi¬ nance depriving him of his right to live where he pleases, and they justify it on the ground that it is necessary to protect them from being tempted to assault him if he exercises that right. If he does any wrong act he may be punished, but to say that he can be deprived of the right to live on his own land, because his white neighbors do not like his color, is to punish him not for his fault but for their prejudice, to deprive him of his rights in order to prevent their lawless and criminal attacks upon him. Such legislation is a mockery of the police power, and if it can be sustained the con¬ sequences are disastrous. At Palm Beach in Florida, Negroes act as chauffeurs; if they appear in Miami they are mobbed and the result is a breach or the public peace. In some places they are attacked if they engage in certain employ¬ ments which the whites wish to monopolize and violence may be "used in the effort to prevent them. Would the police power jus¬ tify a law forbidding them to act as chauf¬ feurs in Miami, or to engage in any lawful employment anywhere, because they might be attacked if they did so? If so, they have no rights. If not, this ordinance cannot be sustained, for it is defended on the ground that one body of citizens may take from another their clear rights in order to pre¬ vent lawless attacks upon the latter by the former. The only policeman who ever fancied that such a police power existed was the wolf in his dealings with the lamb. The question is whether the majority of the people dwelling in any locality may say to the minority, "You shall not have the rights of other men to live where you please, but shall be limited to certain localities, not because you have violated any laws human or divine, or have done anything to make you bad neighbors, but because you are what God made you and because we con¬ sider ourselves your natural superiors, no matter what our habits or our qualities, be¬ cause our complexion is different." ***** No more important question can be pre¬ sented to this Court. The interests of ten million citizens are at stake. In their ef¬ forts to rise from slavery to equality_with their fellow-men they are everywhere met by the effort to keep them down and to deny them that equal opportunity which the Con¬ stitution secures to us all. If they can be forbidden to live on their own land they can be forbidden to work at their own trade. If this is possible, the prejudice against which the Fourteenth Amendment was framed to defend the Negroes triumphs over it, and the amendment itself becomes a dead letter. If it does not protect the rights of all citizens, it does not protect the rights of any, since it knows no distinction of race or color. CLAYTON B. BLAKEY, MOORFIELD STOREY. Once more the National Association for the^ Advanceiment of Colored People has proven itself the main bulwark of the col¬ ored man against those sinister enemies of Democracy that are at work in America seeking to deprive him of his manhood rights. (Taken from The Crisis.) 10 FIGHTING PREJUDICES THE DECISION The first city ordinance to segregate Negroes in residential districts was passed in Baltimore, Md.( December 10, 1910. In less than a month this law was declared un¬ constitutional by the Supreme Court of Maryland in a case brought by an N. A. A. C. P. attorney, Mr, Ashbie Hawkins. A second ordinance was enacted April 7, 1911, and re- enacted May 15. In June, 1913, this enactment was declared unconstitutional. A third ordinance was introduced and the final decision in the Court of Appeals was withheld, pending the decision of the Supreme Court. Meantime, ordinances were passed in various parts of the country as follows: 1912—Winston-Salerm and Mooresville, N.C. 1913—Madisonville, Ky., Birmingham, Ala., Atlanta, Ga., Richmond, Norfolk and Roanoke, Va., Ashville, N. C. 1914—Louisville, Ky. 1916—St. Louis, Mo., Dallas, Tex., and since then ordinances have been passed in various cities of Texas and Oklahoma. These ordinances have been upheld by the courts of Georgia and Kentucky and thrown out by the courts of North Caroli na» Georgia., and Missouri^ Finally, the Louisville case reached the Supreme Court of the United States. It was argued April 11, 1916, and re-argued April 27, 1917. The unanimous decision of the Court, which follows in full, was handed down November 5, 1917. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES No. 33—October Term, 1917. Charles H. Buchanan, Plaintiff in Error, Jin Error to the Court of vs. ? ' Appeals of the State of William Warley. J Kentucky. [November 5, 1917.] Mr. Justice Day delivered the opinion of the Court. Buchanan, plaintiff in error, brought an action in the Chancery Branch of Jefferson Circuit Court of Kentucky for the specific performance of a contract for the sale of certain real estate situated in the City of Louisville at the corner of 37th Street and Pflanz Avenue. The offer in writing to purchase the property contained a proviso: "It is understood that I am purchasing the above property for the purpose of having erected thereon a house which I propose to make my residence, and it is a distinct part of this agreement that I shall not be required to accept a deed to the above property or to pay for said property unless I have the right under the laws of the State of Kentucky and the City of Louisville to occupy said property as a residence." This offer was ac¬ cepted by the plaintiff. To the action for specific performance the defendant by way of answer set up the condition above set forth, that he is a colored person, and that on the block of which the lot in controversy is a part, there are ten residences, eight of which at the time of the making of the contract were occupied by white people, and only two (those nearest the lot in question) were occupied by colored people, and that under and by virtue of the ordinance of the City of Louisville, approved May 11, 1914, he would not be allowed to occupy the Jot as a place of residence. In reply to this answer the plaintiff set up, among other things, that the ordinance was in conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and hence no defense to the action for specific performance of the contract. In the court of original jurisdiction in Kentucky, and in the Court of Appeals of that State, the case was made to turn upon the constitutional validity of the ordinance. The Court of Appeals of Kentucky, 165 Ky. 559, held the ordinance valid and of itself a complete defense to the action. FIGHTING PREJUDICES 11 The title of the ordinance is: "An ordinance to prevent conflict and ill-feeling be¬ tween the white and colored races in the City of Louisville, and to preserve the public peace and promote the general welfare by making reasonable provisions requiring as far as practicable, the use of separate blocks for residences, places of abode, and places of assembly by white and colored people respectively.'- By the first section of the ordinance it is made unlawful for any colored person to move into and occupy as a residence, place of abode, or to establish and maintain as a place of public assembly any house upon any block upon which a greater number of houses are occupied as residences, places of abode, or places of public assembly by white people than are occupied as residences, places of abode, or places of public as¬ sembly by colored people. Section 2 provides that it shall be unlawful for any white person to move into and occupy as a residence, place of abode, or to establish and maintain as a place of pub¬ lic assembly any house upon any block upon which a greater number of houses are oc¬ cupied as residences, places of abode or places of public assembly by colored people than are occupied as residences, places of abode or places of public assembly by white people. Section 4 provides that nothing in the ordinance shall affect the location of resi¬ dences, places of abode or places of assembly made previous to its approval; that no¬ thing contained therein shall be construed so as to prevent the occupancy of residences, places of abode or places of assembly by white or coloxed servants or employees of oc¬ cupants of such residences, places of abode or places of public assembly on the block on which they are so employed, and that nothing therein contained shall be construed to prevent any person who, at the date of the passage oe Case it was recognized that the chief in¬ ducement to the passage of the amendment was the desire to extend Federal protection to the recently emancipated race from unfriendly and discriminating legislation by the states. In Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303, this court held that a colored person charged with an offense was denied due process of law by a statute which prevented colored men from sitting on the jury which tried him. Mr. Justice Strong, speaking for the court, again reviewed the history of the Amendments, and among other things, in speaking of the Fourteenth Amendment, said: "It (the Fourteenth Amendment) was designed to assure to the colored race the en¬ joyment of all the civil rights that under the law are enjoyed by white persons, and to give to that race the protection of the general government, in that enjoyment, whenever it should be denied by the States. It not only gave citizenship and privileges of citizen¬ ship to persons of color, but it denied to any State the power to withhold from them the equal protection of the laws, and authorized Congress to enforce its provisions by ap¬ propriate legislation. ... It ordains that no State shall make or enforce any laws which may abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. . . . It ordains that no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. "What is this but declaring that the laws in the States shall be the same for the black as for the white, that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal be¬ fore the laws of the States, and, in regard to the colored race, (for whose protection the Amendment was primarily designed) that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color? . . . "The Fourteenth Amendment makes no attempt to enumerate the rights it designs to protect. It speaks in general terms and those are as comprehensive as possible. Its language is prohibitory; but every prohibition implies the existence of rights and im¬ munities, prominent among which is an immunity from inequality of legal protection either for life, liberty or property. Any State action which denies this immunity to a colored man is in conflict with the Constitution." Again this court in Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339, 347, speaking of the Fourteenth Amendment, said: "Whoever, by virtue of public position under a State Government, deprives another of property, life or liberty, without due process of law, or denies or takes away the equal protection"of the laws, violates the constitutional inhibition; and as he acts in the name and for the State and is clothed with the State's power, his act is that of the State." In giving legislative aid to these constitutional provisions Congress enacted in 1866, Chap. 31, Sec. 1, 14th Stat. 27, that: "All citizens of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territorv as is enjoyed by white citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, seH, hold, and convey real and personal property." And in 1870, by Chap. 114, Sec. 16, 16th Stat. 144, that: 14 FIGHTING PREJUDICES "All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses and exactions of every kind, and no other." In the face of these constitutional and statutory provisions, can a white man be de¬ nied, consistently with due process of law, the right to dispose of his property to a purchaser by prohibiting the occupation of it for the sole reason that the purchaser is a person or color intending to occupy the premises as a place of residence? The statute of 1866, originally passed under sanction of the Thirteenth Amendment, 14 Stat. 27, and practically reenacted after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, 16 Stat. 144, expressly provided that all citizens of the United States in any state shall have the same right to purchase property as is enjoyed by white citizens. Colored per¬ sons are citizens of the United States and have the right to purchase property and en¬ joy and use the same without laws discriminating against them solely on account of color. Hall v. DeCuir, 95 U. S. 485, 508. These enactments did not deal with the social rights of men, but with those fundamental rights in property which it was intended to secure upon the same terms to citizens of every race and color. Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 22. The Fourteenth Amendment and these statutes enacted in furtherance of its purpose operate to qualify and entitle a colored man to acquire property without state legislation discriminating against him solely because of color. The defendant in error insists that Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, is controlling in principal in favor of the judgment of the court below. In that case this court held that a provision of a statute of Louisiana requiring railway companies carrying passengers to provide in their coaches equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races did not run counter to the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. It is to be observed that in that case there was no attempt to deprive persons of color of trans¬ portation in the coaches of the public carrier, and the express requirements were for equal though separate accommodations for the white and colored races. In Plessy v. Ferguson, classification of accommodation was permitted upon the basis of equality for both races. In the Berea College Case, 211 U. S. 45, a state statute was sustained in the courts of Kentucky, which, while permitting the education of white persons and Negroes in different localities by the same incorporated institution, prohibited their attendance at the same place, and in this court the judgment of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky was affirmed solely upon the reserved authority of the legislature of Kentucky to alter, amend, or repeal charters of its own corporations, and the question here involved was neither discussed nor decided. In Carey v. City of Atlanta, 143 Ga. 192, the Supreme Court of Georgia, holding an ordinance, similar in principle to the one herein involved, to be invalid, dealt with Plessy v. Ferguson, and The Berea College Case, in language so apposite that we quote a por¬ tion of it: "In each instance the complaining person was afforded the opportunity to ride, or to attend institutions of learning, or afforded the thing of whatever nature to which in the particular case he was entitled. The most that was done was to require him as a member of a class to conform with reasonable rules in regard to the separation of the races. In none of them was he denied the right to use, control, or dispose of his prop¬ erty, as in this case. Property of a person, whether as a member of a class or as an individual, cannot be taken without due process of law. In the recent case of McCabe v. Atchison, etc., Ry. Co., 235 U. S. 151, where the court had under consideration a statute which allowed railroad companies to furnish dining-cars for white people and to refuse to furnish dining-cars altogether for colored persons, this language was used in reference to the contention of the attorney-general: 'This argument with respect to volume of traffic seems to us to be without merit. It makes the constitutional right depend upon the number of persons who may be discriminated against, whereas the essence of the constitutional right is that it is a personal one.' . . . "The effect of the ordinance under consideration was not merely to regulate a busi¬ ness or the like, but was to destroy the right of the individual to acquire, enjoy, and dispose of his property. Being of this character it was void as being opposed to the due-process clause of the constitution." That there exists a serious and difficult problem arising from a feeling of race hos¬ tility which the law is powerless to control, and to which it must give a measure of con¬ sideration, may be freely admitted. But its solution cannot be promoted by depriving FIGHTING PREJUDICES 15 citizens of their constitutional rights and privileges. As we have seen, this court has held laws valid which separated the races on the basis of equal accommodations in public conveyances, and courts of high authority have held enactments lawful which provide for separation in the public schools of white and colored pupils where equal privileges are given. But in view of the right secured by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution such legislation must have its limitations, and cannot be sustained where the exercise of authority exceeds the re¬ straints of the Constitution. We think these limitations are exceeded in laws and ordi¬ nances of the character now before us. It is the purpose of such enactments, and, it is frankly avowed it will be their ul¬ timate effect, to require by law, at least in residential districts, the compulsory separa¬ tion of the races on account of color. Such action is said to be essential to the main¬ tenance of the purity of the races, although it is to be noted in the ordinance under con¬ sideration that the employment of colored servants in white families is permitted, and nearby residences of colored persons not coming within the blocks, as defined in the ordinance, are not prohibited. The case presented does not deal with an attempt to prohibit the amalgamation of the races. The right which the ordinance annulled was the civil right of a white man to dispose of his property if he saw fit to do so to a person of color and of a colored per¬ son to make such dispostion to a white person. It is urged that this proposed segregation will promote the public peace by prevent¬ ing race conflicts. Desirable as this is, and important as is the preservation of the public peace, this aim cannot be accomplished, by laws or ordinances which deny rights created 01 protected by the Federal Constitution. It is said that such acquisitions by colored persons depreciate property owned in the neighborhood by white persons. But property may be acquired by undesirable white neighbors or put to disagreeable though lawful uses with like results. We think this attempt to prevent the alienation of the property in question to a per¬ son of color was not a legitimate exercise of the police power of the State, and is in direct violation of the fundamental law enacted in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution preventing state interference with property rights except by due process of law. That being the case the ordinance cannot stand. Booth v. Illinois, 184 U. S. 425, 429; Otis v. Parker, 187 U. S. 606, 609. Reaching this conclusion it follows that the judgment of the Kentucky Court of Ap¬ peals must be reversed, and the cause remanded to that court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. Reversed. (Taken from The Crisis.) 16 FIGHTING PREJUDICES THE COMMENT A MOMENTOUS DECISION In the excitement of the election the press and public alike have overlooked the vitally important decision handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States on Mon¬ day of last week in the case of Buchanan against Warley. By a unanimous decision, our highest tribunal has declared the Louis¬ ville city ordinance establishing a segregated district for colored people in direct violation of the Constitution, and, therefore, null and void. "I cannot help thinking," writes to us a distinguished member of the bar, "it is the most important decision that has been made since the Dred Scott case, and, happily, this time it is the right way. I had supposed, however, that the prejudice of some judges might lead them to dissent from the con¬ clusion, but the unanimous opinion of the Court is a great victory for the cause." To Mr. Moorfleld Storey, of Boston, who argued the case, and to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which carried it up, congratulations are especially due. When it is recalled that the Chief Jus¬ tice is from Louisiana and that Mr. McRey- nolds is a Tennesseean, the significance of the unanimity of the Court is apparent. It is, of course, not only the Louisville ordinance which is affected, but every other attempt to establish a negro "pale" on Am¬ erican soil. For all time the Supreme Court has laid it down that the most hateful in¬ stitution of the Russian which has passed away shall not be set up under the American flag. What these Southern cities had under¬ taken to do was to draw absolute limits around a given district and to say to the colored people that they could not purchase a foot of land upon which to dwell beyond that. It made no difference what the condi¬ tions of overcrowding were. Unless private enterprise platted entirely new sections, the negroes were to get on as best they could. It was legislation against thrift, against the desire to rise which all Americans hold so dear, against the acquirement of property, against the right to move about freely and to live where one wishes. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness were denied to any negro who desired to leave the segregated district for the dangerous purpose of seek¬ ing better quarters, better light, purer air, better playgrounds, and better associations for his children. Of course, it was sought to disguise the real meaning of this segregation under the pretence that the purpose was to arrest and prevent racial antagonism. The Supreme Court, in the decision read by Justice Day, admitted the existence of "a serious and dif¬ ficult problem arising from a feeling of race hostility"; everybody recognizes that this feeling is often intensified in urban com¬ munities where the races live in close juxta¬ position, and where the pushing into newer sections by a given group may cause finan¬ cial loss. New York city knows it well, in connection not only with our colored citi¬ zens, but with other racial groups and the invasion of trade. What old New Yorker but recalls the city of rage and dismay when the first shop was opened on Fifth Avenue? But, while recognizing the racial difficulty, the Supreme Court brushes it all aside, say¬ ing: "Its solution cannot be promoted by de¬ priving citizens of their Constitutional rights and privileges. The right which the ord¬ inance annulled was the civil right of a white man to dispose of his property, if he saw fit to do so, to a person of color, and of a colored person to make such disposition to a white person." It entirely rejected the theory that the ordinance in question was a legitimate exercise of the police powers of the State, and again upheld the doctrine that the police power cannot, whatever the excuse, override the Constitution—a salutary deliverance just at this time, when magis¬ trates and other officials are deliberately overriding the Constitution under such pre¬ texts as "disorderly conduct." Indeed, it is a cause for no little satisfac¬ tion in this period of flux that we have this remarkable demonstration of the value of a written Constitution. It has been the fashion to abuse it, although we have just seen the curious spectacle of the New York Socialists declaring themselves to be the sole defenders of our organic law. But, as in the case of the "grandfather-clause" laws to disfranchise colored jnen, the Supreme Court has again shown itself a true bulwark of the liberties and rights of the colored population of the United States. By this last decision it has dealt a severe blow to those reactionaries in the South who seek FIGHTING PREJUDICES ever to force the negro into a position of in¬ feriority and to add immeasurably to his difficulties of earning a livelihood and living a useful and respectable life. When the Berea College case was decided by the Supreme Court in favor of the Kentucky law forbidding the co-education of the races, it seemed as if this great tribunal had definite¬ ly placed itself on the side of those who would degrade and depress our colored citi¬ zenship. That decision, Justice Brewer said, made possible a law forbidding Jews from going to market except during certain hours. This latest decision makes it certain that there will be no "reservations" for Jews or negroes or Chinese, or any other of our racial groups. For this there are millions to¬ day giving profound thanks and taking new hope as they bear the heavy burdens of the disadvantaged. (Taken from The Nation.) 18 FIGHTING PREJUDICES The National Association's Investigation of the East St. Louis Riots By MARTHA GRUENING For a week I have been in East St. Louis trying to learn why several hundred inno¬ cent Negroes—men, women and children— were shot, stoned, burned and otherwise tortured to death here on July 2. What I have seen and heard convinces me that the cause of the recent riots lies in the un¬ paralleled cruelty, arrogance and race snob¬ bery of the white American. There were other immediate causes for the outbreak— the Negro influx with the ensuing competi¬ tion between Northern white labor and the Negro, political corruption, criminality among a certain element of both Whites and Negroes. But none of these is in itself sufficient to account for a massacre of such proportions and of such peculiar fiendish- ness. At the worst, competition and sex- viciousness only intensified the base and corroding race hatred, which is the obverse of the patriotism of the ordinary American white man. I came to a fire-stricken and devastated city, but—and I cannot put this too strongly —to one neither horrified nor humbled by its tragedy. I found the white portion of East St. Louis sullen, a little frightened, very anxious to escape the consequences of its acts, in particular and publicity; but not infrequently a little gleeful over the acts themselves. The death of the Negroes and the exodus of the survivors, I found re¬ gretted by several large employers of cheap labor, by two retail merchants who informed me that the Negro buys the best of every¬ thing and pays cash; by a white landlord, most of whose property had been burned; by one minister, who thought the behavior of the mob unchristen, and by three or four white women. It is significant that most of these stated emphatically that they did not wish to be quoted. ' On the other hand, I talked with numer¬ ous men and women on the street—leading citizens, editors, buyers of Liberty Bonds and supporters of the Red Cross, if their buttons did not mislead me—whose sym¬ pathies were, on the whole, with the riot¬ ers; not perhaps to the extent of saying with East St. Louis Postman No. : "The only trouble with the mob was that it didn't get niggers enough. You wait and see what we'll do to the rest when the sol¬ diers go." But to the extent of explaining the riots somewhat as follows: "Well, you see, too many niggers have been coming in here. It's the fault of the capitalists and politicians for bringing them. We've had as many as six thousand (sometimes the figure given was seven or eight thousand) come in the last year. They were taking away white men's jobs. That was one thing —and then when niggers come up North they get insolent. They think they are as good as white men and that makes trouble. They vote and ride on street cars—push in¬ to the cars and sit down next to some white woman. That's the kind of thing that starts bad feeling." East St. Louis is the largest industrial city in Southern Illinois, having a popula¬ tion of approximately 9,000 and the second largest railroad center in the country. Dusty, smoky, filled with the stenches of chemical and fertilizer plants, it sprawls in dreary hideousness over mud flats reclaimed from the Mississippi River and houses the greater part of its working population, both white and colored, in miserable wooden shanties. Into East St. Louis, as into all northern cities, Negroes have been pouring ever since the war cut off the supply of foreign labor. They have come joyously and hopefully to better their condition, leaving wages of $1 and $1.50 a day to make $2.50, $3.50 and even $5 a day as common laborers. They came to get these wages, to join relatives and friends who had come before, to secure better education for their children and greater freedom and consideration than they could enjoy in the South. That is why the Negro laborer came. The Negro criminal came for the same reason that the white criminal did, because East St. Louis was a town notoriously friendly to criminals of any color. Crooked politics is one of the few fields in which the color-line is not drawn, and the Negro gambling den and house of prostitution will get the same police protection where the Negro is a voter as those of his white competitor. There is no evidence that the proportion of Negro criminals to the total Negro population was greater than that among the white people. A far more important element to my mind, and one habitually underestimated, in such FIGHTING PREJUDICES 19 cases, is the unceasing and insiduous propa¬ ganda against the Negro conducted by his RTu-11 enemies of the South; a propaganda which manages always to keep abreast of his movements, to sow distrust of him in ad¬ vance, and to fan into flame any resent¬ ment that may arise on the part of white labor when it meets the Negro as a com¬ petitor. This was never more true than at the present time when the white South wishes above all things to keep its cheap Negro labor. It is charged by the labor forces that cer¬ tain big corporations in East St. Louis, par¬ ticularly the packing houses and the Alum¬ inum Ore Packing Co., imported Negroes by the carload for the purpose of breaking strikes and supplanting white labor. Al¬ though this has been denied by the man¬ agers of the plants in question, it is general¬ ly believed to be true, not only by the labor men, but also by other business men of East St. Louis. The tendency here has been to blame the capitalists unreservedly for such importation. There is no doubt that inso¬ far as they have been guilty of it, their aim has been to undermine labor standards and to stamp out labor organization, but labor itself is not without its share of respon¬ sibility in making a strike-breaker of the Negro. Until the unions cease to discrim¬ inate against him, in fact as well as in theory, he not only will continue to be but ought to be a strikebreaker. The I. W. W. is the only labor organization which has so far had vision enough to see this and wel¬ come the colored working man. These were the general conditions making for unrest in East St. Louis. On April 18 two thousand employees of the Aluminum Ore Packing Co. went on strike, charging the company with failure to live up to an agreement signed with the workers in the previous October. The special grievances of the strikers were low wages and discrimina¬ tion against union men. Within a few days the company, which was working on war contracts for the government, had secured from a Federal Judge an injunction re¬ straining the strikers from picketing the factory, and troops were brought in to guard the plant. Meanwhile the company was im¬ porting strike-breakers, among others, col¬ ored strike-breakers. On April 28 the strik¬ ers and their sympathizers called a meeting at'the City Hall to protest against this im¬ portation, and were assured by Mayor Moll- man that he would do everything in his power to stop it. Several inflammatory speeches against the Negroes were made and one speaker, himself a lawyer, was re¬ sponsible for the suggestion that there was "no law against mob violence." Just as the meeting was breaking up word was received that two white men had been held up by a Negro burglar in a neighboring street, and that one of them who had resisted had been shot. The rougher element in the crowd seized on this opportunity. The cry, "Stop Negro importation," changed to "Drive out the Niggers." Unoffending Negroes were dragged from street cars and beaten and windows of Negro stores smashed. From this point there is every indication of connivance on the part of the city offi¬ cials, if not in the actual massacre, at least, in the wholesale terrorizing and driving out of the Negroes. Though trouble was clearly brewing, the only precaution taken by the authorities was the issuance of an order pre¬ venting the sale of firearms to Negroes, which did not improve the situation. At¬ tacks and reprisals occurred on both sides. Meanwhile the strike had. been lost, the men whose places had not been filled returned to work and the Federal Guard was withdrawn. The Negroes became increasingly uneasy and a movement started among them to se¬ cure arms in spite of the ordinance. An attempt is now being made to show the ex¬ istence of a huge plot among them to mas¬ sacre the white population. No evidence of this has been produced and none will be. If such a plot had indeed existed, the story of the 2d of July would have been a very dif¬ ferent one and more than eight white men would certainly have been killed. The truth of the matter is that the criminal Negro element was already armed just as the white criminal element was and the better element also sought arms for self protec¬ tion, not trusting to the police protection. There is also reason to believe that with the growing tension the Negroes did fear an organized attack and also organized for de¬ fense. On the night of Sunday, July 1st, a Ford automobile full of white men drove rapidly through the streets of the Negro quarter in the southern part of the town, firing into Negro homes. Shortly thereafter a church bell in this quarter was tolled—a danger signal previously agreed on—in re¬ sponse to which a crowd of armed Negroes gathered near the church. Another Ford automobile full of policemen, several of whom were in plain clothes, came to dis¬ perse this crowd and the Negroes opened fire, killing Detectives Coppedge and Wod- leight and wounding four other men. It is the general belief that the Negroes thought this was the same car from which shots were fired earlier in the evening and feared another attack, but there is also conflicting evidence tending to show that they knew Coppedge to be a police officer and killed him deliberately. Whatever the truth of the matter is, it was this incident which fur¬ nished the excuse for the slaughter by the whites on the following day, of several hun- 20 FIGHTING PREJUDICES dred Negroes who had no known connection with this mob. Early next morning the rioting began, but it was desultory and lacked conviction. It could easily have been controlled by a few determined citizens or officials. Mayor Moll- man and Chief of Police Payne, however, ap¬ parently threw up the sponge at the first in¬ dication of serious trouble They both took the attitude that the colored people could expect no protection from the police—which was indeed the case. After telephoning to the Governor to send troops, Mayor Moll- man seems to have thought his responsibil¬ ity was at an end. When horrified citizens called upon him to interfere he stated that he was powerless. Before long word had spread through the crowd that the police were willing they should "Go to it." By ten o'clock companies of militia began to ar¬ rive. The officer in charge, Colonel Tripp, now explains that they were, unfortunately, without ammunition. There are other ver¬ sions that they had ammunition and used it—on the Negroes. I have heard of one or two instances in which police and soldiers offered some assitance and protection to the Negroes who were attacked, but they are far outnumbered by the instances in which they refused such assistance and even lent a hand to the rioters. A dozen eye-witnesses have told me Negroes were searched for weapons by the police and militia and then handed back to the mob to be beaten, robbed and killed; Negroes who ran to militia-men for protec¬ tion, forced back into the crowd by the sol¬ diers' bayonets. There is no doubt that soldiers and police preceded the crowd into Negro homes; to search for weapons and then called out to the crowd to come in— it was safe. The current explanation for all this—one that has been offered me several times in all seriousness—is that the major¬ ity of the militia-men came from small towns in Southern Illinois where Negroes were not tolerated; towns whose railroad stations are graced by the sign, "Nigger, don't let the sun set on you," so that there was nothing to make them understand they were really expected to protect Negroes. As to the police, two of their comrades had been murdered by Negroes the night before, so that they, too, could hardly be expected to bestir themselves on behalf of any col¬ ored people. Of course, under such conditions disorder spread like wildfire. Every white criminal was protected. No Negro, however inno¬ cent, was safe. The white element, which was not already armed, broke into pawn¬ shops and looted them of guns and knives without encountering any opposition, while the Negroes' weapons were taken away from them. By noon incoming trolley cars were being pulled from the tracks and searched for Negroes, who were dragged out and beat¬ en and stoned to death. White women joined in these attacks, dragging out black women and beating them with clubs, stones and fists. When at the close of the day these amusements became too tame, the Negroes' homes were fired while the mob stood guard outside to pick off any who might try to escape. Firemen who attempted to quench the blaze were threatened with death and turned back. When the Fire Department of St. Louis came to the rescue the mob cut the fire hose. They cut electric light and telephone wires, cutting off communication with St. Louis and plunging a great part of East St. Louis into darkness. At the City hospitals and in the emergency room opened up in the City Hall, physicians operated on the wounded by the light of candles and police flashlights. A few—very few—white men and women tried to protect the colored people and they did so at the risk of their lives. It is sig¬ nificant that the majority of them prefer to remain unknown, as life is still none too safe for Negroes and their protectors in East St. Louis. One of them, however, Mrs. Luella Cox of the Volunteers of America, is known to have saved the lives of a dozen or more wounded Negroes by sheer nerve, stay¬ ing by them after they were down and pro¬ tecting them against further attack until ambulances could reach them; and this was no small service to render, for finishing off the wounded was one of the mob's favorite diversions. It was Mrs. Cox who told me of seeing a crowd of white women tear a colored woman's baby from her and fling it into a blazing house. The mother herself was shot by the crowd while these women held her and her body also flung into the flames. This is one of the many unbeliev¬ able things I have learned to believe since I came to East St. Louis. For, in spite of myself, I now believe that a crowd of ordinary white Americans in a northern State will set fire to the homes of innocent black Americans and wait outside with guns and rocks to cut off their retreat. I can believe that their victims will be roasted alive in large numbers rather than chance their savagery by coming out and falling into their hands, because I have ac¬ tually talked with some of those who made this choice and were afterwards saved by accident. I know absolutely that they will in cold blood perpetrate cruelties on de¬ fenseless people as vile as any of the atrocities said to have been committed by the Germans in Belgium, and they will do these things in the name of race superiority and economic warfare. I have spent a week FIGHTING PREJUDICES 21 talking with eye-witnesses, with members of the mob, and with its victims, and what I have heard compels me to believe this. I have heard their stories from the lips of peo¬ ple so hideously disfigured that I could not look at them. In St. Mary's Hospital I talked with a woman seventy-one years old, who waited in the burning house in which she had lived peaceably for thirty years, until the walls fell in, because "They were holler¬ ing and shooting outside, and I was scared they would get me," and with another younger woman who escaped after the mob, which broke into her house, had shot her three times, whose twelve-year-old son was shot dead before her eyes, and whose hus¬ band is still missing. I have talked with countless refugees whose families have been killed or scattered, and whose homes and possessions are in ashes; and the other morning I talked with two militia-men who are still standing guard at a bridge over Cahokia Creek, and who laughed as they showed me the spot in the Creek where "they threw in seven Niggers and rocked them every time they came up till they was all drowned." I put to these boys the ques¬ tion I have frequently put to white men in East St. Louis and have found an astonish¬ ingly safe one, if not always rewarding: "How many Niggers did you get?" And they laughed again as one answered: "Well, we ain't giving any numbers, but we didn't shoot to miss any." When I asked if they had seen any Negroes committing crimes, the answer was, "No, all we seen was Nig¬ gers flying." Through all this tangle of horrors I have searched patiently and well-nigh vainly for one expression of real human feeling in East St, Louis. What seems to be cause for con¬ cern is the .fact that in the face of the story of such overwhelming and sickening cruelty on the part of the white race, the seeker for information is generally met with com¬ placent talk about insolent Niggers and colored prostitutes. I say advisedly that there is no real horror in East St. Louis over the atrocities that happened there. There is a clean-up movement headed by an ener¬ getic young minister interested in the up¬ holding of law and order and by some mem¬ bers of the Chamber of Commerce who wish to restore the credit of their city. There is some concern on the part of capital for the protection of its cheap labor, and there is a hope on the part of labor, very mildly ex¬ pressed, that further trouble will not be necessary. Of the rights of the Negro as such to protection and increased oppor¬ tunity, of compensation to him for his losses, and for the injustice done him, I have not heard a word. The race riots in East St. Louis have an economic basis, just as the similar riots which will undoubtedly follow in other northern cities will have, but I cannot help believing that race prejudice, a prejudice entirely irrational, deliberately and malic¬ iously engendered, is the more fundamental cause. The spread of such a prejudice among us indicates the triumph of the re¬ actionary spirit of the white South. For some reason, we have allowed it, the least significant and intellectually vigorous sec¬ tion of the nation an undue influence in shaping our national thought, just as we have given it a disproportionate represen¬ tation in national election. We have become infected with its mis¬ chievous propaganda of race superiority and social inequality until we have come tacitly to accept the fact that the black man has no rights which the white man is bound to respect. In the last thirty years, however, Negroes have been disfranchiesd, segre¬ gated, robbed and murdered with impunity, while under the present administration they have lost the last vestige of protection in their constitutional* rights. While we have plunged into war to pro¬ tect American lives on the high seas, Amer¬ ican Negroes have been butchered in every State from Pennsylvania to Texas without the slightest protest from our national Gov¬ ernment. President Wilson's silence in the face of the present calamity is entirely in keeping with this policy. He has shown no concern over the massacre of the Negroes, and probably feels none. Their protection in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is of no part of the program of the man who has led us into war because "The world must be kept safe for Democ¬ racy." (Taken from Pearson's.) 22 FIGHTING PREJUDICES Houston—Who is to Bear the Guilt? By MARTHA GRUENING The primary cause of the Houston riot w&s the habitual brutality of the white police officers of Houston in their treatment of colored people. Contributing causes were (1) the mistake made in not arming mem¬ bers of the colored provost guard or mili¬ tary police, (2) lax discipline at Camp Logan which permitted promiscuous visiting at the camp and made drinking and immorality possible among the soldiers. Houston is a hustling and progressive southern city having the commission form of government, and, as southern cities go, a fairly liberal one. Its population before the Negro exodus, which has doubtless de¬ creased it by many thousands, was esti¬ mated at 150,000. Harris County, in which it is situated, has never had a lynching, and there are other indications, such as the com¬ parative restraint and self-control of the white citizens after the riot, that the colored people perhaps enjoy a greater degree of freedom with less danger than in many parts of the South. It is, however, a south¬ ern city, and the presence of the Negro troops inevitably stirred its Negrophobe element to protest. There was some feeling against the troops being there at all, but I could not find that it was universal. Most of the white people seem to have wanted the financial advantages to be derived from having the camp in the neighborhood. The sentiment I heard expressed most frequently by them was that they were willing to en¬ dure the colored soldiers if they could be "controlled." I was frequently told that Negroes in uniforms were inevitably "inso¬ lent" and that members of the military police in particular were frequently "inso¬ lent" to the white police of Houston. It was almost universally conceded, however, that the members of the white police force habitually cursed, struck, and otherwise mal¬ treated colored prisoners. One of the im¬ portant results of the riot has been an at¬ tempt on the part of the Mayor and the Chief of Police of Houston to put a stop to this custom. In deference to the southern feeling against the arming of Negroes and because of the expected co-operation of the city Po¬ lice Department, members of the provost guard were not armed, thus creating a situ¬ ation without precedent in the history of this guard. A few carried clubs, but none of them had guns, and most of them were without weapons of any kind. They were supposed to call on white police officers to make arrests. The feeling is strong among the colored people of Houston that this was the real cause of the riot. "You may have observed," one of them said to me, "that Southerners do not like.to fight Negroes on equal terms. This is at the back of all the southern feeling against Negro soldiers. If Corporal Baltimore had been armed, they would never have dared to set upon him and we should not have had a riot." This was the general feeling I found among the colored people of Houston. Several minor encounters took place be¬ tween the military and civil police shortly after the troops arrived. As a result, Chief of Police Brock issued an order calling on his men to co-operate with the military police, to give them full assistance, and to refer to them as "colored" and not as "nig¬ ger" officers. Chief Brock is a northern man and though apparently sincere and well-meaning, does not seem to have the full confidence of all his men for this and other reasons. The order was obeyed in a few instances and more often disregarded. On the afternoon of August 23, two police¬ men, Lee Sparks and Rufe Daniels—the for¬ mer known to the colored people as a brutal bully—entered the house of a respectable colored woman in an alleged search for a colored fugitive accused of crap-shooting. Failing to find him, they arrested the wom¬ an, striking and cursing her and forcing her out into the street only partly clad. While they were waiting for the patrol wagon a crowd gathered about the weeping woman who had become hysterical and was begging to know why she was being arrested. In this crowd was a colored soldier, Private Edwards. Edwards seems to have ques¬ tioned the police officers or remonstrated with them. Accounts differ on this point, but they all agree that the officers imme¬ diately set upon him and beat him to the ground with the butts of their six-shooters, continuing to beat and kick him while he was on the ground, and arrested him. In the words of Sparks himself: "I beat that nigger until his heart got right. He was a good nigger when I got through with him." Later Corporal Baltimore, a member of the military police, approached the officers and inquired for Edwards, as it was his duty to do. Sparks immediately opened fire, and FIGHTING PREJUDICES 23 Baltimore, being unarmed, fled with the two policemen in pursuit shooting as they ran. Baltimore entered a house in the neighbor¬ hood and hid under a bed. They followed, dragged him out, beat him up and arrested him. It was this outrage which infuriated the men of the 24th Infantry to the point of revolt. Following is the story of the arrest as given by its victim, Mrs. Travers, and by eyewitnesses whose names are in the pos¬ session of the Association, but are withheld for their protection. Mrs. Travers, an evidently respectable, hardworking colored woman, said: "I was in my house ironing. I got five children. I heard shooting and I'd run out in my yard to see what was happening. Sparks he came into my house and said, 'Did you see a nigger jumping over that yard? and I said, 'No, sir.' He came in the house and looked all around. Went in back. Then Daniels, the other policeman, he came around the corner on his horse. I called to Mrs. Williams, my friend that lives across the street, and asked her what was the mat¬ ter. She said, 'I don't know; I think they were shooting at crap-shooters.' "He (Sparks) came in again just then and said, 'You're a God damn liar; I shot down in the ground.' I looked at her and she looked at me and he said, 'You all God damn nigger bitches. Since these God damn sons of bitches of nigger soldiers come here you are trying to take the town.' He came into the bedroom then and into the kitchen and I ask him what he want. He replied to me, 'Don't you ask an officer what he want in your house.' He say, 'I'm from Fort Ben and we don't allow niggers to talk back to us. We generally whip them down there.' Then he hauled off and slapped me. I hol¬ lered and the big one—this Daniels—he ran in, and then Sparks said to him, 'I slapped her and what shall we do about it?' Daniels says, 'Take and give her ninety days on the Pea Farm 'cause she's one of these biggety nigger women.' Then they both took me by the arm and commenced dragging me out. I asked them to let me put some clothes on and Sparks says, 'No, we'll take you just as you are. If you was naked we'd take you.' Then I take the baby in my arms and asked him to let me take it. He took it out of my arms and threw it down on the side¬ walk. Took me with my arms behind my back and Daniels, he says, if I didn't come he'd break them. They took me out on Tempson Street. He rung up the Police De¬ partment. Whilst I was standing crowd be¬ gan a-coming (all I had on was this old dress-skirt and a pair panties and a ol rag¬ gedy waist. No shoes or nothing)—crowd and a colored soldier man came. [Private Edwards.] Sparks, he says to me 10U STAND HERE,' and I did and a lady friend brought me shoes and a bonnet and apron and he (Sparks) says, 'Stay here,' and went over, and before the soldier could say a word he said, 'What you got to do with this,' and he raised his six-shooter and he beat him— beat him good. He didn't do a thing but just raise his hand to ward them off. Didn't even tell them to quit, nor nothing. Then another soldier, this Sergeant Somebody, came, and the first one called to him and the policeman said to him, 'If you come here, we'll give you the same.' Edwards said, 'Must I go with them and the second one says, 'Yes, go with them and we'll come along after you.' I hear they shot that second soldier but I didn't see it, for they took me away. They take me to the Police Department and locked me up for using 'abusive language'—but they dismissed the case today. "I ain't never been before no court of in¬ quiry, no ma'am. Only just to the court when they dismissed the case against me, and there ain't no generals nor no one been out to see me or ask anything. I don't know why they don't come to me. They been to most everyone else around here, and I could tell them the truth. Seems like they might ask me, when I'm the one it happened to, and I'm not afraid to tell, even if Sparks do come back afterwards and do some more to me, but you're the only one yet that's come to ask me." When interviewed a second time, Mrs. Travers added the following to her state¬ ment: "I been down to the Prosecutor's office to¬ day. He asked me what did I know about the riot. I said, 'I don't know nothing about it. I was in bed with my children when it happened. Where else would I be at that time of night?' He said to me didn't I know beforehand that the soldiers were coming; didn't none of them tell me beforehand. I told him no, but I could tell him what hap¬ pened before the riot to make it happen, and I started to tell him that Sparks came into my house and hit me. He said he didn't want to hear anything more about that and he sent me home. That's what I had to spend my carfare for." One eye-witness said: "I didn't see them arrest Mrs. Travers. I don't know what happened in the house, but I saw her afterwards and I know she said they slapped her in the house and pinched her arms and threw her baby under the bed. They had her right outside here waiting for the patrol wagon. She hadn't on but two pieces of clothes—and she was hollering and asking what she'd done to be arrested. Then Private Edwards came up and asked if he could take her. I heard the policeman say. 'Stand back,' and landed him on the head 24 FIGHTING PREJUDICES with his six-shooter. Then Baltimore he came and asked him about the other sol¬ dier. They beat him, too, and he ran and they shot after him. I saw Sparks fire after him three times, myself. Daniels shot, too, but I" don't know if it was more than once. Baltimore ran away around the corner, with them firing after him, and his head was bloody. I thought he'd drop any time, but he didn't get hit. They said afterward they fired at the ground—but they didn't. They shot straight at him and (they fired) into a street full of women and children. They haven't found any bullet holes in the side¬ walk either, and it wasn't there that they fired. It was at Baltimore, and no mistake." A second eye-witness said: "I drive a butcher wagon. I make deliv¬ eries all about here and I saw a lot of what happened about here before the riot. When Sparks and Daniels came along that day I was driving past where three boys were shooting craps at the corner of Felipe and Bailey Streets. They fired a shot to scare the boys and they ran. Then the officers couldn't locate them. When I rode by again they had this woman, whose arrest was the cause of the riot, by the patrol box. She was insufficiently dressed to be out on the street and barefoot. There was a young sol¬ dier there (Private Edwards) who came up and asked the officers to let her put on shoes and clothes. The officers struck at him with their six-shooters. He put up his hand and blocked the first blow. The second hit him on the head and made him bloody. They followed that up and beat him to the ground. When he was down, one of them took the muzzle of his gun and punched him in the side, and Sparks said, 'That's the way we do things in the South. We're running things not the d niggers.' "It was later—at the same spot—the po¬ liceman were still there when the military officer (Baltimore) came. I didn't hear what he said, but whatever was said between him and the police officers made him stop about half a block away and fold his arms, and at that one of the officers took out his revolver and commenced firing at him—right at him. He ran away around the corner of Mr. May's place. That's all I saw then." When word of the outrage reached camp, feeling ran high. It was by no means the first incident of the kind that had occurred. A few days before a Negro had been beaten on a car by city detective Ed Stoermer, who, according to his own testimony before the Citizens' Investigating Committee, cleared the car of its white passengers, telling them that he "might have to kill the nigger." I was reliably informed that on another oc¬ casion two colored soldiers were brutally beaten up by city detectives who boarded the car in which they sat from a Ford machine; that this machine drew up along¬ side of the car which was halted by the conductor long enough for the beating to take place, after which the detectives again got into the car and drove off. Baltimore was popular among the men of the 24th Infantry, and for some time the rumor persisted that he had been killed. To quell the excitement Major Shaw telephoned in to Police Headquarters to ascertain the facts and asked that Baltimore be returned to the camp immediately. At roll call that evening Snow addressed the men, telling them what had happened and stating that Sparks was to blame and would be punished. The men, however, were by that time be¬ yond his control. In this connection it has been pointed out several times that Sparks has been suspended and is under indictment for the assault on Baltimore and for murder for the shooting of another Negro. There is no reason to believe that this indictment is anything but a bluff, the purpose of which is to show that there was no excuse for the soldiers taking the law into their hands. Chief Brock, who throughout has given evid¬ ence of good faith, did his duty in suspend¬ ing Sparks, but there is no reason to believe Sparks will receive any punishment at the hands of a white jury, and if he is acquitted, he probably cannot be kept off the police force. "Of course, Sparks will be let off with a fine. Our policemen have to beat the niggers when they are insolent. You can't expect them to let a nigger curse them," one white man told me. The same man, in reply to my question whether Sparks did have a reputation as a bully, replied, "Oh, no; at least only among the colored people." The feeling of the colored people in regard to Sparks and the police in general is best illustrated by the state¬ ment of another colored man whose name I was unable to learn: "It's like this, lady—I could talk all right, but I'm afeard. I know a lot, but I live here, and my family lives here, and all I git—all my savings of a lifetime is here—and there's prejudice here—and you see how 'tis. I made up my mind—I took an oath to my¬ self I wouldn't say nothing. I just made up my mind that I didn't know nothing. Only that my friend here says you're all right, I wouldn't say this much—but I got confidence in him. "There's been a lot of dirty work here. I'm not saying nothing, but you find out who it was killed that colored man who was drafted into the army on Washington Street, and who shot that colored man, Williams, in the back, they say was killed in a crap game on Dallas Avenue. They can't find out that no one did it—but we know Sparks was in FIGHTING PREJUDICES 25 the gang that did the shooting. And that o dier man the police shot him running— I saw him and he was hit in the back of the neck. And, what's more, I've seen three more colored men beat up without any cause by the police since the riot. There's a lot more I could say, only I'm afeard." It is the Negro mentioned in this state¬ ment, Williams, for whose murder Sparks has been indicted. While I was in Houston the other Negro fugitive mentioned, who turned out to be an enlisted man under the selective draft law, was shot by a city de¬ tective simply for refusing to halt. The de¬ tective was "amicably" arrested by the Chief of Detectives and almost immediately re¬ leased on a five hundred dollar bond. Sparks is also at liberty and although without the prestige given him by his position on the police force, was, at last report, using that liberty to further molest the colored people. About a week after the riot he entered the house of a respectable colored physician on Robbin Avenue early in the morning while the latter was in his bath and his wife part¬ ly dressed, on the pretext of looking for a fugitive, insulted and bullied them both when they protested, and threatened them with a drawn gun. On the same day he threatened a colored woman that he would "blow her damned head off" because he thought she had laughed at him. It was in pursuit of this woman that he entered several colored houses in this block, threat¬ ening and cursing the colored people. When investigation made it apparent that the police were to blame for the beginning of the riot, a systematic attempt was made to shift the blame for this also on to the colored people. Strange stories began to be circulated in the papers and by word of mouth as to the real cause of the friction between the soldiers and the police. It was again the insolence of the Negro soldiers which in this case took the form of ignoring the "Jim Crow" regulations of Houston, par¬ ticularly on the Houston street cars. Testi¬ mony to this effect, which was obviously absurd, was given and reported apparently in all seriousness before the Citizens' Board of Inquiry. Several motormen and conduc¬ tors were subpoenaed to testify to this ef¬ fect, and one of them told a pathetic story of one occasion on which his car was boarded by a number of Negro soldiers (un¬ armed) who threw the "Jim Crow" screen out of the car window, over-ran the car, forcing white passengers to get up and give them their seats, and who escaped unscathed to tell the tale. He was unable to give the names of any witnesses to this occurrence, although he stated that many of the white passengers left the car in great threatening that he would be reported and lose his job. The legent continued to the effect that white police officers were finally called in to deal with the Negro soldiers who were terrorizing the peaceable white citizens and demoralizing colored civilians, and that the former by merely doing their duty won the undying enmity of the colored soldiers. Another outrageously false impression which was deliberately given by the white press was that Mrs. Travers was a woman of the underworld and that her arrest was the result of drunken and disorderly con¬ duct. Mrs. Travers is unmistakably a hard¬ working, respectable woman. She had no connection with either Edwards or Balti¬ more, whom she had never seen before the day of the riot. The story, however, was never denied, and was still being circulated while I was in Houston, although so many white people who had employed her testified to her good character that it was necessary to acquit her at her trial for "using abusive language." She was. also never called be¬ fore the Citizens' Board of Inquiry. Police brutality and bad discipline among the soldiers led up to the riot, which cost the city of Houston eighteen lives. Among them was that of Daniels, the policeman who had taken part in the beating of Baltimore and Edwards. There was abundant testi¬ mony from both white and colored people that there was excessive drinking and im¬ morality among the soldiers at the camp, and there is testimony by white people to the effect that Edwards was drunk when he was arrested. While this may have been the case, it does not seem to materially ef¬ fect the situation, as Baltimore, who was sober, received even worse treatment at the hands of the police officers. It is also very probable that some of the leaders were in¬ flamed with drink at the time of the out¬ break. That outbreak, according to a state¬ ment made by Major Snow before he re¬ ceived orders not to talk, was not an out and out mutiny, although the men were un¬ doubtedly guilty of repeated disobedience to orders before they left the camp. If they did, as is alleged, shoot at their officers, they did not kill or wound any .of them, though they did wound a colored soldier who was guarding the ammunition supply and who later died of his wounds. When the soldiers left the camp their slogan was, "On to the Police Station," where their idea was to punish the police for their attack on Ed¬ wards and Baltimore. Even the white peo¬ ple of Houston do not believe that their original intention was to shoot up the town. When on the way to the police station they met with opposition, they gave battle with terrible results. As in every riot, innocent bystanders were killed, one very pathetic case being that of a little white girl who was killed by a stray bullet which penetrated 26 FIGHTING PREJUDICES the room where she slept. The bitterness of the white people over this and other casualties is understandable, but the worst features of the Houston riot do not for one moment make it comparable with the mas¬ sacre of East St. Louis. It was not a cold¬ blooded slaughter of innocents but the work of angry men whose endurance of wrong and injustice had been strained to the break¬ ing point, and who in their turn committed injustices. There was no burning of women and children, no hanging, no torturing of innocent victims, the only atrocity reported being the bayoneting of Captain Mattes of the Illinois National Guard, spoken of by the Houston papers as the work of "black fiends," although bayoneting is not a prac¬ tice discouraged by the United States Army. All the men who are alleged to have taken part in the outbreak have been captured and are facing a court martial at El Paso. The one fact which admits of no uncertainty is that if they are found guilty they will be fully and sufficiently punished. After the liot the white citizens of Hous¬ ton behaved with unusual coolness and re¬ straint and they have taken unto them¬ selves full credit for so doing. The presence of United States troops undoubtedly assisted materially in keeping order. A half-hour after the riot started Governor Ferguson had declared martial law, which lasted for sev¬ eral days and order was restored without any lynching or other form of reprisal on the part of the white people. It was not to be expected that martial law or any other kind of law could be enforced impartially under the circumstances, and it was not so enforced. White citizens were given arms "to protect their homes" and the homes of Negro civilians were visited and their arms taken away from them. Many Negroes were also unjustly arrested, locked up for several days, and then dismissed without any charge having been made against them. That further disorder did not occur under such circum¬ stances is one of the most remarkable things about the situation, and credit for it should be given to both races. The Houston Post and the white people generally explained it as another illustration of the well-known fact that "the South is the Negro's best friend"; that race, riot and bloodshed are really indigenous to northern soil; and that the relations between black and white in the South are highly cordial. The colored people of Houston, however, are migrating North, and to this more than to any element in the case I attribute the new restraint in the attitude of white Houstonians. When I was in Houston, 130 colored people left in one day. In June, one labor agent exported more than nine hundred Negroes to points along the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Houston Chamber of Commerce became so alarmed over the Negro exodus that it tele¬ graphed to the head of the railroad asking that this exportation be discontinued. The railroad complied with this request, but the colored people continued to leave. Colored men and women in every walk of life are still selling their homes and household goods at a loss and leaving, because, as one of them, a physician, put it to me, "Having a home is all right, but not when you never know when you leave it in the morning if you will really be able to get back to it that night." White Houston, especially its busi¬ ness men, are beginning to realize this. For the first time they are showing some slight signs of seeking to make the South safe for the Negro. While the northern exodus of the Negroes, which began with the war, is largely responsible for this, occurrences such as the Houston riot must be admitted to quiciten the sense of justice which has so long lain dormant in the white southern breast. However much the riot is to be con¬ demned from the standpoint of justice, hu¬ manity, and military discipline, however badly it may be held to have stained the long and honorable rfecord of Negro soldiers, however necessary it may be that the sol¬ diers should be severely punished, it seems to me an undeniable fact that one of its re¬ sults will be a new respect and consideration for the Negro in the South. (Taken from The Crisis.) This book published by the Educational Committee of the Northern California Branch of the National Association for the Advance¬ ment of Colored People. THOMAS M. JACKSON, Chairman THE FOLLOWING FIRMS ARE MEMBERS OP THE RETAIL DRY GOODS MERCHANTS ASSOCIATION H. C. CAPWELL CO. COSGRAVE'S. EASTERN OUTFITTING CO. S. M. FRIEDMAN CO. KAHN'S. MARYMONT & UPRIGHT. MANHEIM & MAZOR. MOSBACHERS. ROOS BROS. TAFT & PENNOYER. THE TOGGERY. S. N. WOOD & CO. 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