RACE CONSCIOUSNESS 147 gave them a feeling of brotherhood. This spirit of race consciousness was strengthened by freedom, education, injustice, and racial segregation. It developed along the color line. It threatens to overwhelm the line and to widen the area of Negro achievements. It was fostered during the Great War when Negroes fought "to make the world safe for democracy." Grouped in colored units, often under officers of color, they learned racial solidarity. When they returned home, they expected some practical application of the ideal for which they fought. They were met by the color line. Forced back into themselves, they asked a question to which no reply has yet been made: "Was the democracy for which we fought for white men only?" The same spirit of race consciousness is manifested whenever a race riot occurs and the Negro as a race strikes back as in the Tulsa, Chicago, Elaine, and Washington riots. It shows itself in the growing prosperity of the race, in property ownership, in literary and artistic productions, in the growth of the Negro press, business enterprises, and Negro educational institutions. In 1866 Negroes owned some 12,000 homes, operated some 20,000 farms, conducted about 2,100 businesses, and were said to be worth about $20,000,000. In 1922 they owned over 600,000 homes or one-fourth of all the Negro homes established; operated some 930,000 farms; conducted about 60,000 businesses; were said to be worth over a billion dollars, and to own about 22,000,000 acres of land, an area greater than the combined area of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. There were in 1920 over 40,000 Negro churches where there had been less than 700 in 1866. The two newspapers published by Negroes in 1863 had grown to 400 odd newspapers, magazines, and periodicals published by or for Negroes in 1920. The 15 Negro colleges and normal schools existent in 1866 had been increased by 485 in 1922. Instead of 600 Negro teachers there were approximately 43,000.2 A league of Negro business men, known as the National Negro Business League, had been formed and held annual meetings. In their gatherings for 1919, 1920, and 1921 they resolved to increase the number of representatives of large Negro business enterprises, to promote Negro coöperative enterprises, to devise ways of securing large amounts of capital. Negro laborers denied admission to white unions or impatient with their attitude show an increasing tendency to organize in independent Negro unions. 2 "Negro Year Book," 1921-1922, passim. All so-called Negro colleges are not, however, up to the standards of white colleges. An important phase of this movement is the organization of Negro railroad employees and the meetings of their representatives to formulate plans to improve working conditions for Negroes and to do away with industrial discrimination. The developing race consciousness is seen in the pride Negroes have in their own exploits. For instance, the "Negro Year Book" for 1921-1922 contains page after page listing the achievements of the Negro race and of Negroes as individuals. contains such headlines as: "NEGRO MAKES NEW WORLD RECORD "NEGRO CHILD AWARDED PRIZE FOR BEING PHYSICALLY MOST PERFECT PRE-SCHOOL CHILD." "FIRST HONORS IN MIXED SCHOOLS NEGRO "GRADUATES CUM LAUDE RADCLIFFE "NEGRO STUDENTS ELECTED PHI BETA KAPPA." NEGRO "THE YOUNGEST PERSON TO RECEIVE PH.D. DEGREE THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA." "NEGRO PHYSICIAN SECOND ON LIST OF 200 "BEST FRENCH NOVEL OF THE YEAR WRITTEN It "NEGRO ACCORDED PLACE AMONG TEN MOST DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTORS TO DRAMATIC ART, 1921." "NEGRO FOOTBALL STAR GIVEN A PLACE ON 1921 ALL-AMERICAN TEAM.” "GREATEST LONG DISTANCE RUNNER IN COUNTRY A NEGRO." DETROIT NEGRO "IN 48 YEARS TAKES OUT "SELF-STARTER FOR AIRPLANE MOTORS DEVISED" BY NEGRO. THE PROBLEM CONTRIBUTION OF WHITE MAN TOWARD NEGRO'S PROGRESS 149 The progress made by the Negro since the Civil War is commendable, but it cannot all be credited to the Negro alone. While the white has placed racial barriers in the Negro's path and has discriminated against him, the Negro has had the benefit of the white man's experience and of the social and educational institutions developed by him. A stable government, the product of the white man's brain, has protected him. He has had the white man's friendly aid, his money contributions. The Negro, it is true, was brought to this land by force, but even in slavery he was allowed to partake to a certain degree of the civilization which the white man had laboriously built up. Since slavery the white man has both aided and restrained him. He is willing to help the Negro and to teach him but unwilling to see him graduate and to give a favorable answer to the independent, educated human being's request for equality. THE PROBLEM The white man drives the Negro back to his own race, to achievements within the color line. There the Negro learns race feeling, confidence, pride. He asks not only for himself but for his brothers, ". . equal opportunity to develop himself by his own labors equal opportunity to compete with every other American for the identical fruits and blessings achieved by any other American under the American form of government equal opportunity to acquire any and everything other men acquire through honest toil and sacrifice." It is this request and the white man's refusal, based on his traditions, his heritage, his race pride, his belief in Negro inferiority, his racial antagonism, which creates the Negro problem to-day and raises certain questions as to the ultimate result. Will Negroes be overwhelmed by numbers and racial prejudice until, like American Indians, they gradually disappear and the remaining few amalgamate with the white? Will they be strictly confined in a race group, developing along separate lines and nourishing a spirit of race consciousness and race antagonism? Will the races be able to advance together, mutually coöperative, maintaining their separate identity yet eliminating discriminations? If discriminations are eliminated will that mean the disappearance of a color line and the final amalgamation of the Negro race? ΧΙ PROPOSED REMEDIES FOR THE NEGRO QUESTION PRESIDENT HARDING'S ADDRESS ON THE STATUS OF THE NEGRO President Harding, on October 26, 1921, spoke before a large audience of white people and Negroes in Birmingham, Alabama. As supreme executive of the United States he gave his views concerning the race problem. He pled for the political and economic equality of the Negro, at the same time repudiating social equality. Economic equality he defined as "equality proportioned to the honest capacities and deserts of the individuals." He described political equality as the right to vote when a man is fit to vote regardless of color. Social equality he stated was an impossibility but suggested that the word "equality" be eliminated and the social status of the two races be regarded rather as based on a "fundamental, eternal, inescapable difference." Racial amalgamation, there could not be. President Harding praised the developing race consciousness of the Negro and urged him to grow as a distinct race with ambitions, aspirations, traditions, and heredity of his own. A definite race feeling on the part of Negro as well as white would, he thought, bring about natural segregation and eliminate the necessity of artificial bars set up to keep the races apart. The Negro must not try to be a white man but must try to be the best black man possible. The President then stood firmly for political and economic equality and the doctrine of the separate development of the two races. He was strongly against racial amalgamation and social equality. Much comment followed the President's address for few of his predecessors had had the temerity to publicly express their ideas on so controversial a subject as the race question. Newspapers and periodicals vied with each other in criticism and praise. The opinions drawn forth from the public and its organ, the press, are all indicative of the different schools of thought in the United States concerning the Negro question. The white north, the Negro himself, and the white south are all represented. ATTITUDE OF WHITE NORTH THE WHITE NORTH 151 President Harding expressed the majority view of the white north which is unprepared to give the Negro greater rights than those outlined by the President. Race feeling has proved itself as strong in the north as in the south when any considerable number of the two races are thrown into close proximity. It is even doubtful whether the north would support the President's theory of political equality if such equality meant in any northern state a majority of Negro votes and possibly Negro control. The Negro has never received economic equality in the north. He has had greater competition from white labor than in the south where he supplies most of the unskilled agricultural labor. He has suffered from the same prejudice on the part of labor unions in both north and south. Would the white northern laborer support Mr. Harding's plea for economic equality? There is little race feeling against the Negro in the north as long as his numbers are few. But in any place where Negroes are numerous the demon, “race,” is liable to appear with resultant friction. There is really little difference in the fundamental feelings of white northerner or white southerner. The question is largely one of numbers and proximity. Liberal or strict treatment varies in ratio to these two factors. THE NEGRO The Negro himself had much to say regarding Harding's speech. The Negro papers were full of comments. The New York Age was scathing in its interpretation of the President's stand on social equality. It claimed the position was taken to solve the uneasy conscience of the whites, the men who in the past had done much to bring about a "quasi social equality" by mixing the blood of the two races. In the New York Crusader, a Negro monthly paper, Dr. Cyril Briggs, executive head of the African Blood Brotherhood, condemned President Harding's speech. According to Dr. Briggs it supported the worst "negrophobist” element in the south. This element stands for denial of social equality. It supports Negro leaders who acquiesce in such denial. It gives tacit acknowledgement to the claim that the Negro is inherently inferior. It promotes the doctrine that black men should not try to be white men, a doctrine resolving itself into a denial of the white man's rights and privileges to the Negro, and the prohibition of racial amalgamation which results in ap |