The Journal of Race Development. April 1917
Vol. 7, No. 4. pp. 467-488.
Accessed via JSTOR:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/29738215

Psychic Factors in the New American Race Situation

George W. Ellis

The race question is the most important social situation with which the American people have had to deal. Like a cancer it has gnawed at the very vitals of American social culture and institutions. It imperilled the adoption of the American constitution. It menaced the concord and cooperation of the Northern and Southern states for threequarters of a century. And finally with such violence it attacked the life and perpetuity of the American Union that an operation was unavoidable, and for its extirpation the country was thrown into one of the greatest civil wars of modern times. And notwithstanding the great individual and national pain, suffering and sacrifice which attended the operation, the injustice and evil of American race subjection and slavery were so enormous and far-reaching, that the race question lingers with us still, in violent antagonism to the ideals of the founders of the American nation and as an open and avowed enemy of the principles of true democracy.

New Slavery in The South

Although after the Civil War the Negro people were made citizens and secured in their personal freedom by federal constitutional enactment, and the states were prohibited from discriminating against citizens on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude, yet in certain Southern states, by force or fraud, the governments have been seized by the leaders of the white race and a new system of race subjection and slavery has been fastened upon the Negro people and finally given the sanction of public law.

Embittered toward the North because of defeat in arms and the loss of hundreds of millions in the freedom of the slaves, and further embittered by the new spectacle of the Negro in the rôle of citizen and freeman, with all the rights by law of other citizens, the whites of the South resolved to secure at any cost the complete control of the Southern state governments and to use the functions of government to force the Negro people as near as possible to serve the whites in the new condition of emancipation as they did under the old system of slavery.

In this new program of race subjection and slavery of the Negro, as soon as the whites obtained control of the state governments, they proceeded to eliminate the Negro from politics by either intimidation, force or fraud, until finally the North could be convinced of Southern justification under the peculiar conditions supposed to be known only to the Southern people, when they perpetuated their anti-Negro political plans by legislative and constitutional provisions.

Having deprived the Negro in the South in certain states of the privilege and right to vote and hold office in the state governments, Southern whites continued to protest through their senators and congressmen at Washington and their anti-Negro propaganda through the press until it was finally accepted as the policy to be adopted that the Negro should not henceforth be appointed to any Federal position in the South against the wishes of the whites, sure to object.

A citizen without the ballot is like a soldier without arms. Armed with all the powers of all the branches of the state governments and having deprived the Negro of the privilege to vote, Southern whites continued their assault upon the Negro disarmed as a freeman and continued in their work to fix by force and law a subject and slave status for the Negro in Southern States.

Under this new slave régime the education of the Negro has been seriously affected. From the South efforts were made to discourage the North in giving funds for the education of the Negro children. By law attempts have been made to prohibit whites from teaching Negro pupils. The facilities of schools for Negro children are inferior to those for whites and the terms are often shorter outside of the large cities. It is the purpose to give to the Negro just such education as will enable the race to best serve the whites and as will keep the Negro satisfied in his new status of semi-serfdom.

The idea of education for truth, virtue, development, freedom and service and for one's highest and best contribution to society, as applied to the Negro, has little or no place in general Southern educational polity. The dominant idea for Negro education South is such as will best fit him to obey and serve the white race, with all its inherited and acquired psychic antipathy and sociological prejudice against the darker races.

By law or public opinion the Negro of the South is separated by what are called "Jim Crow Cars" with indecent and inferior accommodations. He is denied service as other citizens at places of public entertainment and amusement upon any terms. Without the privilege to vote, to sit upon the jury or to be represented in the government in any way the Negro in the South has been reduced to that social and political plane, where he and his family and property are only safe so long as the white race feels that he is in the special and inferior sphere prepared for all Negroes without regard to character, culture, intellect or attainments.

With possibly the exception of the tariff interests, the old slave system grew to be the most powerful economic institution in the history of the country. It was developed, maintained and fought for because of the economic profits which it yielded together with the social ease, comfort and power which it afforded to the master classes. For similar reasons the white South has built a new system of race subjection and slavery upon the backs of the Negroes.

That the Southern whites have adopted this new system because of prejudice is giving away to the view that they have been more influenced by ideas of economic profit and social ease and advantage. This view is strengthened by the fact that the whites have no objection to the Negro as a servant on the surface and railroad cars or in hotels and other public places; the objection to him is as an independent and free agent, without the badge of subserviency and inferiority.

Intermarriage between the races is prohibited by law, yet the two million or more mulattoes in the country ought to be sufficient to show that the white man has no natural antipathy against the Negro woman but he seeks by law to shield himself against any wrong inflicted upon her, under the guise that he seeks to protect the white woman from the Negro man. The protection of the white women by the Negro men during the war, when the white men were at the front, is the best proof that the white woman needs no such special protection from the Negro man as is indicated by this class of legislation. The purpose of this legislation, therefore, is not to protect the white woman but to degrade by law unnecessarily the Negro man and to exempt the white man from the natural and moral consequences of his too frequent association with Negro women.

This Southern race program includes the subordination of the Negro in every sphere of life and social activity to that of the white race. Having accomplished this in public sentiment, wherever necessary, this public sentiment has taken the form of law.

Psychic Influence of Negro Progress

Notwithstanding the fact that a new system of slavery by law was being fixed upon the Negro by the South, the Negro renewed his faith and has made a steady march of social progress since 1866.

Starting with practically nothing in fifty years the Negro has accumulated over $1,000,000,000; has acquired and conducts 45,000 places of business; operates 981,000 farms; and has bought and owns 600,000 homes.

In education he has reduced his illiteracy from 90 per cent to 25 per cent; has increased his colleges and normal schools from 15 to 500 and public school students from 100,000 to 1,736,000, a gain of over a million and a half. For the higher education of the Negro, the property has increased from $60,000 to $21,500,000; the expenditures for Negro education increased from $700,000 to $14,600,000 and for his own education in 1916 he raised the sum of $1,600,000.

In religion the Negro increased his churches from 700 to 42,000, church communicants from 600,000 to 4,570,000, with some 43,000 Sunday Schools, containing 2,400,000 pupils and with a total valuation of Negro church property of $76,000,000.

With 36,000 teachers in Negro schools and the colleges and universities of the North open to their admission for the most part, in medicine, law and theology, in science, art and literature and other walks of American life, the Negro has produced a splendid array of leaders and professional men, some of whom have become as eminent and as distinguished as any in their sphere of thought and action.

In oratory and statesmanship Frederick Douglass had few equals in American life. During his life Paul Lawrence Dunbar was the most popular of American singers. William Stanley Braithwaite is among the foremost of American poetical critics. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was perhaps first among British composers and musicians of the day. Dr. Edward Wilmot Byden and Dr. W. E. B. DuBois are both recognized as world scholars. As an analytical interpreter of men, thought and things, who in America is the superior of Prof. Kelly Miller. In painting Henry O. Tanner is first among American painters of today. In industrial education Dr. Booker T. Washington had no rival throughout the world.

The great masses of all races have never risen above the mere struggle for bread. Races must be judged by their great men. Through the centuries the white race can boast of but one Plato, Aristotle, and Homer, one Dante, Shakespeare and Milton, one Darwin, Huxley or Edison or Spencer. The masses of the whites can no more attain the heights of these men then can the masses of the blacks or browns. They illustrate not racial attainment, but human possibilities.

Southern leaders are very inventive in statecraft. They are the inventors of nearly every doctrine which came nearly destroying the Union. They invented the doctrine of state sovereignty, squatter sovereignty, and secession. They have likewise invented the doctrine of the Negro in his place, with its rubber meanings to be stretched as occasion may require to cover the white man's limitations in the South.

The unexpected progress of the Negro in almost every walk of life, in spite of the fact that he had been deprived of the power of the ballot, the freeman's only defense in a democracy, and all the functions of Southern States and social power were invoked to keep the Negro in the special status, called "his place," so startled Southern leaders, that they felt it necessary to resort to the savage form of lynching in a vain effort to frighten the Negro to submit without complaint to the Southern program of Negro subjection and slavery.

The result has been that the more the Negro has arisen in the scale of social development the more has he been antagonized in Southern States and the more has he felt the heavy hand of social oppression and political degradation.

The Southern program has been so thoroughly established in public opinion and law, that its advocates have expanded its influence over the country until the Northern people have practically given their consent to the exclusion of the Negro from any representation in the governments South, and to his abandonment in this helpless and defenseless state to the will of the whites, under the influence of an aristocracy founded upon race rather than upon merit and social worth.

The system of old slavery was destroyed in its efforts to cover and extend over the nation. This new slavery is now seeking to have the North adopt its attitude toward the Negro in Northern communities.

In the South two rules of private and public conduct obtain in morals and manners; one that is right and one to be followed toward the Negro. The North has consented to this dual standard of thought and conduct South. Will it consent for its adoption by the nation?

Psychic Influence of War Upon American Race Situation

Before the beginning of the European war the increasing demand for labor for Northern capital and industry was supplied by the hundreds of thousands of foreigners who annually flocked to our shores to free themselves from the aristocratic political and economic régimes which oppress the masses in Europe.

Upon the European nations actually engaging in war this large foreign immigration to the United States suddenly ceased, and Northern capital and industry were forced to secure its labor supply from some other source. They turned to the Negro of the South, as they turned to him to subdue and develop the early American forests and fields, and as they turned to him to help save the Union when the cause seemed hopeless and lost.

As a result of this Northern economic demand the Negro population of the South is rapidly drifting to the North. According to the New York World the Negro has left the South very recently as follows: from Alabama, 60,000; Tennessee, 22,000; Florida, 12,000; Georgia, 10,000; Virginia, 3000; North Carolina, 2000; Kentucky, 3000; South Carolina, 2000; Arkansas, 2000; and Mississippi, 2000. He is still coming and if the war continues the indications are that the Negroes migrating from the South will be greater than at any time in the history of the country.

Just what will be the ultimate effect of this movement North of the Negro population is not definitely determined. It is, however, exciting both comment and great concern in both the North and the South.

On the whole the Southern people are opposed to the Negro leaving and in some cities ordinances have been passed prohibiting labor agents from operating within the city limits. In some states the Negro is refused a ticket to the North and on occasions in other states force has been employed to prevent Negro people from leaving the state.

Yet in spite of Southern opposition the Negro is drawn North by new industrial opportunities and driven from the South by injustice, lynching and cruelty.

The Columbia State expresses the view of some Southern papers in their efforts to retain the Negro people when it said:

The matter is one which chiefly concerns the Southern farmers. If they stand by and tolerate the driving of the Negroes out of the South by crime and cruelty, their complaints about the loss of their labor will hardly command attention.

Every Southern lyncher is an emigration agent working effectively for Northern employers.

Very recently the increase of the Negro population attracted the attention of Chicago and the Chicago Daily News gave space for fourteen consecutive articles concerning the Negro population of the city, which has now been published by that paper in pamphlet form, and which is possibly only a slight indication of the real concern felt about the new Negro arrivals in the North.

In the first of these articles by Mr. Junius B. Wood he had this to say on the situation:

Point de Sable was a free colored man from Santo Domingo. Today the city which that colored man founded is one of opportunity and freedom unexcelled for the man, woman or child of the Negro race.

And in the same article he continues:

The colored portion of Chicago's population is growing more rapidly in proportion to its numbers than any other. Some persons see in it a danger to the future of the city. It is admittedly a very complex problem. The colored population is pushing out farther every day.

What the ultimate effect of this new movement of the Negro population Northward upon the Northern mind will be requires both our hope and labor. The first indications are unfavorable to both democracy and the Negro. The white mind seems alarmed at some threatening and approaching Negro peril. There is a peril and the peril lies in the error in the white man's processes of thinking and this lack of moral foundation in his treatment and conduct toward the Negro group of the human race.

Dr. Frank U. Quillin, professor of sociology and economics at Knox College, wrote a book on The Color Line in Ohio, and which was published in 1913, in which he reached on the interrace situation substantially the same conclusions already independently reached by Alfred Holt Stone, of Mississippi, in his Studies in the American Race Problem, over the country at large.

The conclusions are:

1. "That the prejudice of the white man, against the Negro increases according to the growth of the Negro population.
2. That the average Negro is worse off in the North than in the South because he is here so completely shut off from the more advantageous industrial opportunities.
3. That social equality between the races in the North as well as in the South is a myth.
4. That civil rights for whites and Negroes in the North are the same technically, but that actual discriminations are just as numerous as in any Southern state.
5. That there is much more prejudice against the Negro race today than there was at the close of the Civil War.
6. That it is essential to the Northern man, if he would really know the truth of his own section, to get it from the lips and hearts of the colored people themselves."

Whether Professor Quillin is correct in all his conclusions is not material at this point, but we are interested in his conclusion that race prejudice increases with the growth of the Negro population.

And if the word antagonism or hostility is substituted for that of prejudice, it would seem that Professor Quillin had stated a psychological tendency obtaining in American interracial relationship and contact, which has grave concern and importance in this national interracial crisis.

In 1916 the Washington administration was very much exercised over the question as to whether the Northern movement of Negro population was political or industrial.

The American Federation of Labor, however, seems to understand the situation thoroughly from the resolution adopted at the recent Baltimore Convention:

WHEREAS, the emigration of Southern Negroes to Northern labor centers which has occasioned anxiety on the part of the United States Department of Labor, and has occasioned anxiety on the part of the organized labor movement, because of the danger such emigration will cause the workers in the Northern states; and

WHEREAS, the investigation of such emigration and importation of Negroes into the State of Ohio has demonstrated to the satisfaction of the labor leaders in that state, that they are being brought North for the purpose of filling the places of union men demanding better conditions, as in the case of the freight handlers; and

WHEREAS, the shortage of European labor has made the Southern Negro an asset in the labor markets of the North and the conditions that prevail in Ohio may apply in all Northern States; therefore be it.

Resolved, that this thirty-sixth annual convention of the American Federation of Labor instruct the president and executive council to inaugurate a movement looking toward the organization of these men in the Southern States, to the end that they may be instructed and educated along the lines of the trade-union movement, and thereby eliminate this menace to the workers of the Northern States.

Chicago as Indication of New Northern Attitude

That the race question is having its effect in the new situation may be noted by two recent events which occurred in Chicago. One is the case of Dr. Roscoe Giles, the other is that of Marjorie Delbridge.

In the case of Dr. Giles, a Negro physician with several degrees from Cornell, passed the civil service examination for junior physician at the Chicago tuberculosis sanitarium. He stood at the head of the list and after much objection was finally certified and appointed to the position. He was carried through the building, by Dr. Charles P. Caldwell, president of the board of directors, and after what seemed a pre-arranged demonstration of hostility by certain patients, maintained at the expense of the white and black public, Dr. Giles was discharged without ever being permitted to enter upon his duties, for no other reason than that he was a Negro.

Just before the appointment about February 1, A.D. 1917, the Chicago Tribune wrote an editorial on "The Negro Physician" and among other things surrenders to color and race prejudice in these words:

There is strong presumption that Dr. Giles is a capable and thoroughly trained physician. He holds several degrees from Cornell University. He passed the civil service examination. His capabilities has little to do with the situation. His color has created it. If there were the slightest hope or expectation that insistence upon his appointment would in any degree overcome the repugnance of white for colored, the administration's adherence to equal rights might be justified. There is no such hope. Dr. Giles in the hospital will bring nothing but inflamed race prejudice on one side and hurt feelings on the other. Principles or not, such is the fact.

Here is the spectacle of a great daily newspaper in Chicago criticising the government of the city for adherence to legal rights for citizens of Illinois and residents of Chicago, and declaring that color is a sufficient bar to holding certain positions and more important than the qualifications.

How rapidly this paper is drifting toward Southern views is further disclosed in its editorial of January 17, A.D. 1917:

An intelligent majority of the North can be relied upon to defend the South from colored domination. There ought to be a more energetic cooperation to try to work out for the colored American a special status in which at least during what may be called his political and social minority, he could be protected in his civil rights and assured conditions of development, though not granted the political privilege which would make him in his present condition a weight upon Southern progress and a cause of anxiety or race feeling. The political genius of America ought to be able to work out such a compromise.

The Negro is not a weight upon the progress of the South; his labor and his industry made the South what it is; take it away and the South would decline and decay, until the Negro was replaced by people not too proud to work.

The Southern whites in the main do have great anxiety about the Negro. They are very uneasy that something may take him away from the South and they will be obliged to lose the profits of his labor and be compelled to work for themselves.

On February 5, A.D. 1917, the Chicago Herald indorsed the discharge of Dr. Giles. Will the North adopt the new slavery of the South based upon race and color? The Herald made this answer in the Giles case:

Obviously Dr. Giles as the high man was entitled to favorable consideration. Other things being equal, he ought to have been given the position. But other things were not equal. Race prejudice made them unequal. Whatever may be the individual opinion of such antipathies, so long as they are facts they must be faced honestly.

Race antagonism is the fact to be faced: but race prejudice is a delusion from which every effort should be made to liberate the white mind in America, for the good of the country. And there will be neither peace, nor security in this land until this is accomplished.

Instead of taxing the genius of the nation to find some special status for the Negro, could it not better be devoted to teaching all American citizens to love their country and to deal justly with all their fellows upon their merits and without regard to race or creed. The Civil War is the price paid by the nation for one special status for the Negro. It should never accept another.

Marjorie Delbridge is a white girl about fourteen years of age. When she was about two weeks old her mother in the South gave her to a Negro woman, Mrs. Camille Jackson. Mrs. Jackson has had the care and custody of this girl during all these years. The girl has grown almost to womanhood with her Negro mother and there is an affection between them which survives the arrest of the girl and the efforts of her pretended friends to force her to disdain all Negro people. The girl has been educated and given music and brought to the best educational facilities of Chicago.

A charge is made against the girl by a white juvenile officer, that the girl is incorrigible, in order to invoke the great and sovereign power of the state of Illinois to take this girl from Mrs. Jackson for no reason except that she is a Negro woman. The charge is a mere pretext. It was openly stated by the prosecution that the motive of the proceedings was to afford an opportunity to take this girl from her Negro home and place her in some white family. And accordingly this was done by a judge from Chicago Heights whom it is claimed was sitting in the Circuit Court without having been designated as the statutes require. An injunction has been filed against the judge and he is now sitting in one of the Municipal Courts of the city. Both the girl and Mrs. Jackson and some white friends are resisting the action of the court to the utmost. And the case will be taken to the Supreme Court.

In the meantime it is well to inquire, are we drifting backward to the days of Dred Scott, when a Negro had no right which a white man was bound to respect?

In these stirring times we may profit by reviewing the error of those who introduced slavery to the Western continent and temporized with its evils for over two hundred and fifty years.

Gradual Introduction of Slavery

The political and economic policies which dominated the European conquest and settlement of the West India Islands and the American continents are chiefly responsible for the present day Negro problem. Those who did not appreciate the moral wrong of taking the lands of the Indians in the West Indies and the Americas and where possible reducing the native inhabitants to slavery were not likely to foresee all the pains and penalties which have followed the substitution of the Negro for the Indian as a slave.

Just how the Negro was enslaved instead of the Indian in the Western world is disclosed by Sir Arthur Helps, page 71, Volume II, Great Epochs in American History, in describing the Spanish scheme for the settlement of the West Indies in the following words:

In connection with the above scheme, Las Casas, unfortunately for his reputation in after ages, added another provision, namely, that each Spanish resident in the island should have license to import a dozen Negro slaves. The origin of this suggestion was, as he informs us, that the Colonists had told him that, if license were given them to import a dozen Negro slaves each, they, the Colonists, would then set free the Indians.

The introduction of Negro slavery in the West Indies and the Americas, therefore, must not be taken for granted that it was either an accident or was inspired by high and humane regard for the Indian. The real reason was economic necessity as disclosed by Sir Arthur Helps on page 74.

In referring further to Las Casas and Negro slavery he said:

This suggestion of his about the Negroes was not an isolated one. Had all his suggestions been carried out, and the Indians thereby been preserved, as I firmly believe they might have been, these Negroes might have remained a very insignificant number in the population. By the destruction of the Indians a void in the laborious part of the community was being constantly created, which had to be filled up by the labor of Negroes. The Negroes could bear the labor in the mines much better than the Indians; and any man who perceived that a race, of whose Christian virtues and capabilities he thought highly, were fading away by reason of being subjected to labor which their natures were incompetent to endure, and which they were most unjustly condemned to, might prefer the misery of the smaller number of another race treated with equal injustice, but more capable of enduring it.

The injustice of seizing the lands of the Indians was followed by the injustice of enslaving them. The injustice of enslaving the Indian led to the injustice of enslaving the Negro instead. The successful enslavement of the Negro in the West Indies led to its expansion and establishment in the United States, with all its subsequent pains and problems.

Sociological Basis of Race Situation

To understand in the smallest way the subtle and complex complications of the present race situation in the United States, with all its absurdities, contradictions and tragedies, it is necessary to bear in mind the great physical facts which constitute the historical basis of American interracial contact and behavior.

It would be very difficult to select language now to convey the true and complete significance of the landing of twenty Negroes at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to remain for two hundred and fifty years in the status of slaves. The moral and social injustice of this apparently simple but far-reaching act has remained ever since a constant challenge against the attainment and realization of a democracy founded on manhood and merit instead of race and color.

One of the important things to remember concerning the introduction of slavery in the United States is that Negro slavery based on ethnic distinctions as it existed in 1860 was no ready-made affair suddenly adopted but was the gradual result of two hundred and fifty years of evolutionary growth and development.

The economic system under which the colonies in 1619 were peopled and developed was that of indentured labor. The development of colonies was a privilege, granted by the crown to some company in which the King was a large share-holder. To protect the company from loss of the expense in transporting labor to the colony the emigrant laborer was required to contract to labor in service for a fixed and definite term of years. This system governed the white labor forces of practically all the colonies.

So that it became very natural to introduce the Negro into America as an indentured laborer, bound to service for a fixed period as the white laborer, and subsequently and gradually to so alter the system that the term of service was extended to life and offspring and the subjects were limited to members of the Negro race.

The terrible injustice and moral injury and outrage of the Negro slave system upon both races were so enormous that it could never have been adopted except as it was by such slow transitions as to disarm the people of their increasing evil and growth. And herein lies the awful warning and great lesson of Negro slavery.

Slavery of the Negro was unsuccessful in the Northern States for a number of reasons: (1) the climate was unfavorable and made slavery too expensive; (2) it was antagonistic to the free labor system indispensable to Northern progress and development; (3) and it was opposed by the moral conscience of the North for a time suppressed for economic considerations. The Northern slave owners, therefore, either emancipated their slaves or sold them to Southern planters.

From the beginning of slavery to 1790, with the exception of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Negro slavery had not been very generally practiced; for in the 17 states and the District of Columbia the total and slave Negro population was only 757,181; and it was the prevailing opinion among the leaders of the nation that slavery was on the decline at the adoption of the Constitution and that in time the institution would naturally disappear.

Anti-slavery sentiment was so strong that the word slave was excluded from the Constitution although the Southern States were finally conceded representation in part in Congress for their slaves based on population, to be "determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to serve for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons," the three-fifths of all other persons having direct reference to Negro slaves.

The decline of slavery seemed so assured that the ordinance of 1787 was passed by Congress forever prohibiting slavery in the Northwest territory, which now includes the states of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and part of Ohio. And Thomas Jefferson persuaded the legislature of the slave state of Virginia, to cede this territory to the General Government with this anti-slavery prohibition.

Although slavery was on the decline the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney about 1793 revived and gave new life to the institution by increasing the economic value of the slave in enlarged capacity to render economic returns to his master. Demand for slaves increased so immediately and they were imported into the country so rapidly that Congress felt the necessity to prohibit their importation after 1808.

Yet notwithstanding this prohibition the Negro population increased from a little less than 800,000 in 1790 to 4,500,000 in 1860.

Soon after the revival of slavery the country began to divide along sectional lines, the North representing antislavery and the South the slave power and both had their representations in Congress.

Henceforth the nation was to witness these two great factors in a struggle for supremacy until the one or the other was to dominate and control the political functions of the American government.

Their first great contest was in 1820, which ended in the Missouri Compromise, and which while admitting Missouri as a slave state, prohibited slavery north of what was called Mason and Dixon's Line, 36° and 30´ north latitude. In this contest the feelings engendered were so strong the bitterness so great and the threat to destroy the Union so evident, that the opinion prevailed that the peace and welfare of the country required that all public agitation and discussion of this question should cease.

Following the revival of slavery by the cotton gin, the admission of Missouri as a slave state in 1820, and the formation of the Abolition Movement by William Lloyd Garrison about 1831, the slave power began to plan for the extension of slave territory.

Under this view the war with Mexico was precipitated in 1846 and the present states of Utah, New Mexico and California were acquired in 1848.

Another crisis was approaching taxing the ability of the nation to survive. California was seeking to be admitted as a free state. The North was demanding her admission and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

The South was opposing the admission of California as a free state and demanding an efficient fugitive-slave law to counteract the growing influence of the radical antislavery agitation with its potent and mysterious underground railroad.

The situation was relieved by what is known as the Compromise of 1850, in accord with which California was admitted as a free state, and slavery abolished in the District of Columbia. The Wilmot proviso as to Utah and New Mexico was defeated and a rigid fugitive-slave law was enacted for the South.

But the beginning of the nation's great crisis was the passage of the Kansas and Nebraska Bill about 1854, which repealed the provisions of the Missouri Compromise as to the introduction of slavery north of 36° 30´north latitude and subjected these territories to the invasion of slavery under the doctrine of squatter sovereignty.

The issue of thus extending slavery into the North and West, as raised by the Kansas and Nebraska Bill, led with increasing complexity to the Civil War.

As a result of the armed clash between the North and South, the South was subdued and the War Amendments were written into the National Constitution. The evident purpose of these amendments was to secure to the Negro citizen the same freedom, protection and legal status as are enjoyed by other citizens of the states and the United States. In accord with these amendments the constitutions and laws of the slave states were reconstructed and the Negro citizen entered upon his new civil duties as an American freeman.

The Psychic Basis of Race Question

Although the progress of the Negro during the past fifty years together with the development of all the sciences, and especially ethnology and anthropology, show how false has been the teaching in America concerning the Negro race, yet there is some psychic and sociological basis for present interracial feeling in the United States.

Habit is one of the strongest forces in nature. It is so in a nation. Habits of long standing are difficult to break and overcome. In slavery for 250 years it was the habit to treat the Negro slave as property with no rights aside from the master's will. The white people are great but they are human and it must take sometime to destroy the race habits of the master practiced toward the Negro as a slave for so long a period.

If the sociological habit of the white race were all there was to the situation it would have been broken with Negro emancipation; but there were certain intellectual errors regarding the races which were established through generations of education and social environment and which are embedded in European and American literature to this day.

If the sociological habit of the white race were all there was to the situation it would have been broken with Negro emancipation; but there were certain intellectual errors regarding the races which were established through generations of education and social environment and which are embedded in European and American literature to this day.The white social mind was inoculated with the diseased germs of the Negro's physical, mental, moral and social inferiority by nature, and intoxicated by the conceited doctrine of the natural superiority of the white race. Upon the authority of science and literature the nations were made to believe that the white race was the sole originator of civilization and the most beautiful and the highest branch of human creation; that the Negro had made no contributions to civilization, was the lowest possible form of man and fit therefore only to be a slave. These false racial philosophies were put forth to conserve the vested slave interest of the world. And although physical slavery is gone, the intellectual slavery of the white race remains.

We can understand, therefore, the statement of Professor Hart, in the Southern South.

Race measured by race the Negro is inferior, and his past history in Africa and in America, leads to the belief that he will remain inferior in race stamina and race achievement.

The scholars of the master classes who employed their scholarship to justify the enslavement of the Negro lost their cause and they are now succeeded by a school which seeks to justify the subserviency of the Negro race.

Of this school, in Retrospection, Mr. H. H. Bancroft shows that he is a fair representative. Speaking of the Negro he says:

He is too incompetent and unreliable for any use; as a citizen of the commonwealth he is an unmitigated nuisance, and judging from the past he will so remain. He depends upon the white men to do his mental work, his thinking and managing for him, preferring himself only to serve. He is by nature and habit a servant, not alone because of his long period of enslavement, but because of his mental inferiority.

Psychic Emancipation of The Caucasian

We now have not only learned the error of the scientific and literary advocates of the Caucasian slave vested interests in this country and abroad and their present representatives who plead for Negro race subserviency, but we have learned much truth concerning what are called the Caucasian and Negro races. The real problem is now to get this truth in the present Caucasian mind and to expunge from the literature of this and other countries the false doctrines and statements therein concerning the races of men.

In this splendid work Prof. Franz Boas is without doubt America's foremost scholar and scientist. His The Mind of Primitive Man is in America what the Race Prejudice by Jean Finot is in France.

From these two revolutionary and illuminating books we now know that in nature there is but one race, the human race, for no standard has ever been adopted which included all the so-called members of any race group to the exclusion of all other racial varieties; that there is no naturally superior and inferior races, for in all are to be found examples of the highest and lowest men; that the historical fact of achievement does not prove capacity and ability in any one race, for civilization is the product of all races; that the Caucasian race has no monopoly upon beauty and the human features, which are to be found in all races; that the Negro is an important contributor to civilization; that in the light of the Negro's progress in America and other stimulating environment, his retardation has little or no bearing upon race capacity in view of man's long life on earth and the natural unity of the human race; that the range of difference and variation within race types is greater than the difference between the races; that language is not a sufficient standard for measuring the ability of races for cultural attainment; that all the essentially valuable social activities are found in the native Negro African; that the Negro thrives better in the Caucasian climate than the Caucasian in the African Negro tropics; and that the quality of the hair, the color of the skin or the shape of the head have no bearing upon the intellectual, moral and social worth of men and races, and that all races are naturally equal.

In the exact words of Professor Boas:

We do not know of any demand made on the human body or mind in modern life that anatomical or ethnological evidence would prove beyond the powers of the Negro.

Under the inspiration of this new science Americans of all races are yet to build a new and true democracy. The advocates of Negro and race subserviency, the conformists and temporizers of the day may make the work both dangerous and difficult, but it must be done, if the American democracy is to endure in peace, freedom and prosperity.

The National Race Crisis

The political oligarchy of the South has nullified the national Constitution which guarantees to the citizens of all the states the equal protection of the law. By its doctrines of race orthodoxy the white South has excluded the Negro from any participation in government and has established by state constitutional and other devices a social and political program which forever dooms the Negro citizens to an inferior and helpless status with no rights except to serve the Caucasian race, still dominated by the arrogant and exploiting theories of natural race superiority.

To suppress in the Negro, the rightful and natural ambition to labor, progress and contribute, as other citizens, his best to his community and country, the Southern States have resorted to forms of cruelty and barbarous practices which have brought reproach upon the American people in every quarter of the globe.

By violating the Federal Constitution and by wrongfully reducing the Negro people to a sub-citizen slave caste founded on race, one white voter South is equivalent to from 2 to 5 voters North.

By the unconstitutional and wrongful advantage which the South has secured by the adoption of its un-American and undemocratic political and social systems, the representatives of the Southern political oligarchy and aristocratic régimé were able to name the President of the United States in 1916.

This political oligarchy has always denied the right of the Federal Government to interfere in any manner with elections in Southern States; yet in 1916, it invoked and used the great power of the Federal Government to invade with investigators Northern and Western States and by suspect notices and other devices disfranchised thousands of voters of Northern States.

The white South will tolerate no discussion of its social and political systems in its territory; yet it takes advantage of the freedom of the North to spread its unjust and inhuman propaganda of race orthodoxy and race inferiority.

For the next four years this Southern oligarchy will have in its behalf, the example, the prestige and the power of the government of the United States in every Northern state and in almost every capital of the world.

The nullification of the National Constitution has been accomplished.

The spirit and ideals of the American people and institutions have been violated.

The permanent and free status of the Negro is seriously and dangerously jeopardized.

The subversion of American morality is about to be consummated.

The true principles of American democracy are on trial.

Shall we have the New Slavery, founded on race and color or shall we have the New Democracy, where all men and races are in fact free and equal before the law?

What shall the answer be?