AMERICA’S COLORED FOLK.

Western Star, 20 April 1920, Page 4

AMERICA’S COLORED FOLK.

A DANGEROUS PROBLEM. BULLETS AND BROKEN HEADS. The problem which one generation's act may leave swell into monstrous menacing; proportions is well illustrated in America’s negro problem. “It is the most serious danger ahead of America,” says one writer. “It is becoming more serious because of the effects of the war the great .increase in negro population and the growing immigration of black laborers into northern cities, where they are competing seriously with the white man. This summer there have been serious race riots in Washington, Chicago, and elsewhere. ‘We want full liberty and equality of rights as the fruit of the world war,’ say the black leaders. They are getting bullet boles and broken heads instead. —Southerners and Necktie Parties. — The Southerners despise the black as. much as ever, and cannot imagine him as a real menace . “Niggers!” cried a South Curolinan friend of mine contemptuously. “Governor Tillman summed up cur negro policy. If yon damned Northerners will only keep your long noses out of our business, we’ll settle our own nigger question. When the niggers get saucy we have a. necktie party and teach them manners.” A “ necktie party ’’ is a polite term for lynching. The average Southerner .'living in country districts still regards the blacks as oattle, as his fathers regarded them.

“They say the whites are going to make more trouble here,” said the negro newsagent in Washington who supplied me with my morning papers. He spoke bitterly. “They are looking for some excuse to' beat us up and shoot us again. Well we are getting ready for them. Let them try it, and we will shoot back. Better die fighting than live in that fashion. “Some white men sedan to think we want to mix with them, .to eat at their tables,.'and be friends. We no more want to. mix with them than they want to mix with us. Leave us, alone is all we ask. Our colored soldiers did so fine during, the war that he is afraid of us.” r. —Eleven Millions of Them.—•

The migration of the colored folk to the north has during the last few years reached a degree unknown before. They are largely replacing European immigration in the Chicago stock yards. They are becoming a big, factor in the steel industry and in mining and, dock labor. There are so many In New V qrk that a. second great negro -colony “ up-town lias arisen during the last lew 1 , years, with its colored police, black theatres, and black officials, a city.

Down south the “nigger” dare nob vote. In 'the northern cities political bosses arc using his .massed rote to entrench- themselves in power. The Federation of Labor this year had to admit Die negroes to equal membership. Negro labor is one of the big powers ' used by capital in fighting trade unionism; hence race riots. There is to-day probably fully 11,000,000 colored folk in the Tinted States. They are- increasing at the rate of considerably over 100,000 a year. There are 120,000 in the New York and 100,000 in the Slate of Mississippi, where they outnumber the white by four to three. They are all dreaming of a. new emancipation which will give tharrii the real equaliyt they hoped for when Lincoln made his famous m-oclannation.