them horse, foot and artillery. Do the whites organize Greek-letter fraternities and sororities in colleges, with pearl-studded
pins and "houses”? You will find a number of Negro fraternities and sororities with just the same kind of insignia and
"houses.” Negro community centres are attached to the more
prosperous churches just as the same sort of institutions are
connected with white churches. And they do the same sort of
things there; you can see swimming and gymnasium classes
and sewing classes and nutrition talks and open forums and all
the rest of it that we all know so well.
When I visit the Business Men's Association, the difference between this gathering and that of any Rotary Club is imperceptible. And on the other end of the economic scale that equally applies to Negro and white, and which prevails all over the country, we find the Socialist and labor groups. True, once in a while an element peculiarly Negro does manifest itself; thus I remember vividly the bitter complaints of one group of motion picture operators at the prejudices which prevent them from enjoying the benefits of the white union. And, of course, you will meet with this sort of thing whenever the stream of Negro life conflicts with the more general pattern of the color line.” But even here I noticed that the form of the organization of these men was that assumed by their white fellow-workers, and similarly when I attended a Socialist street-meeting in Harlem, I found that the general economic motif comes in for much more attention that the problems which are of interest to the Negro per se.
Perhaps the most striking example of complete acceptance of the general pattern is in the field of sex relations. I shall never forget the storm of indignation which I aroused among a group of Negro men and women with whom I chanced to be talking on one occasion, when, a propos of the question of the treatment of the Negro woman in literature, I inadvertently remarked that even if the sexual looseness generally attributed to her were true, it was nothing of which to be essentially ashamed, since such a refusal to accept the Puritanical modes of procedure generally considered right and proper might contribute a welcome leaven to the convention-
