knowledge one of the prominent surgeons of New York City
who has an elaborately furnished suite of offices in an exclusive
neighborhood, whose fees run often into four figures, who
moves with his family in society of such standing that the names
of its members appear frequently in the society columns of
the metropolitan press, is a colored man from a Southern city.
There he grew tired of the proscribed life he was forced to
lead, decided to move North and forget he was a colored
man. He met with success, married well and he and his wife
and their children form as happy a family circle as one could
hope to see. O'Neill All God's Chillun Got Wings to the
contrary, his wife loves him but the more for his courage in
telling her of his race when first they met and loved.
This doctor's case is not an exception. Colored people
know many of their own who have done likewise. In New
York there is at least one man high in the field of journalism,
a certain famous singer, several prominent figures of the stage,
in fact, in almost any field that could be mentioned there are
those who are colored but who have left their race for wider
opportunity and for freedom from race prejudice. Just a few
days before this article is being written I received a note from
a woman whose name is far from being obscure in the world
of the arts. The night before, she wrote me, there had been
a party at her studio. Among the guests were three Southern
whites who, in a confidential mood, had told her of a plan the
Ku Klux Klan was devising for capitalizing in New York
prejudice against the Negro. When I asked her why she had
given me the information she told me her father, resident at
the time of her birth in a Southern state, was a Negro.
The other group is made up of the many others who "pass” only occasionally. Some of these do so for business reasons, others when they go out to dine or to the theater.
If a personal reference may be forgiven, I have had the unique experience within the past seven years of investigating some thirty-seven lynchings and eight race riots by the simple method of not telling those whom I was investigating of the Negro blood within my veins.
Large as is the number of those who have crossed the line,
