The Voice of the Negro 1919/Introduction
INTRODUCTION
The colored people of America are going to their own papers in these days for the news and for their guidance in thinking. These papers are coming to them from a score of Northern cities—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland; they are coming to them from the great border cities—Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis; they are coming to them from every Southern city. Wherever in all the land there is a considerable Negro population there is a Negro newspaper. Little Rock has four, Louisville five, Indianapolis six, New York City ten; the State of Georgia has nine, Mississippi nineteen, Illinois eleven, California seven.
To these numbers must be added the publications of churches, societies, and schools. For example, Mississippi has eleven religious weeklies, eight school periodicals, and two lodge papers, making a total, with the nineteen newspapers, of forty periodicals. And all classes of these contain articles on racial strife, outcries against wrongs and persecutions. You cannot take up even a missionary review or a Sunday school quarterly without being confronted by such an outcry.
As for the prosperity of these periodicals there is abundant evidence. As for their influence the evidence is no less. The Negro seems to have newly discovered his fourth estate, to have realized the extraordinary power of his press. Mighty as the pulpit has been with him, the press now seems to be foremost. It is freer than the pulpit, and there is a peculiar authority in printer's ink. His newspaper is the voice of the Negro.
Into every town and village of the land, and into many a log cabin in the mountains, come the colored papers, from all parts of the country, and these papers are read, and passed from hand to hand, and re-read until they are worn out. What do these papers contain? What is their tone, their spirit? How do they report the happenings of the day—the lynchings of Negroes, the riots, or mob-assaults? What manner of editorial comment do they make? What kind of cartoons do they contain? What instruction do they give their readers? After some months of close perusal of dozens and scores of colored weeklies, published North, South, East, and West, it seemed to the present writer that it would be a service to the country to make a compilation from them that should fairly represent their contents, their presentation of the news, and their discussions and comments. That the Negro himself has this right to be heard in the court of the world will not be denied except by the hopelessly prejudiced and constitutionally unjust. We have too frequently heard foolish vaunts about "knowing the Negro," the context of such boasting invariably convicting the speaker of dangerous conceit and the harsh spirit of suppression. Those who would honestly seek to know the Negro must read his papers. It is in them the Negro speaks out with freedom, with sincerity, with justice to himself, for there he speaks as a Negro to Negroes, and he is aware that the white people do not so much as know of the existence of his papers.
To know the Negro do not quiz the cook in your kitchen, or the odd-job, all-service menial about your premises, or the local school-teacher or preacher. In general they will tell you what they know you wish to hear, or, on difficult matters, remain non-committal. To know the Negro do not fall foul of two or three publications of Chicago or New York: there are some pretty radical and rather bolshevistically inclined white papers, according to the Post Office Department, in those quarters. We do not regard them as representing White America. To know the Negro read his papers extensively, particularly those that issue from Atlanta, and Richmond, and Little Rock, and New Orleans, and Dallas, and Raleigh, and Louisville, and Chattanooga, and a score of other cities south of the Mason and Dixon Line, as well as those of the emigres in the North. Read their editorials, their sermons and addresses, and their news items; read their reports of the proceedings of their congresses, conventions, and conferences, their petitions and resolutions; read their poems and stories and dramatic sketches; look at their cartoons. This thing I have been doing, assiduously, and, I trust, with an open mind and friendly disposition, since mid-summer, 1919. After the riot in our nation's capital it seemed to me that the Negro's version of the story, whatever it was, should be heard. The riots that followed, North and South, East and West, confirmed me in my purpose to get at that story and present it to the white public, if that public would accept it.
Obtaining a full list of colored papers and magazines, I applied to them for copies dating onward from July the first. My study table was soon heaped with copies of hundreds of publications. I made a selection of fifty-three, which, after much study, I judged to be the most representative, and subscribed for them. The extracts which constitute the body of this book are made, I may therefore say, from the entire range of current Negro publications, but in the main from the half hundred that seemed to be the ablest, most prosperous, most independent, and most representative. My list of quoted papers, however, numbers eighty, and I studied twice as many.
For the scope of the work, the range of topics dealt with in the excerpts, I refer the reader to the Table of Contents. But to indicate more completely the character of the work I will set down here the following notes:
A period of four months, from July 1 to November 1, is covered. For information on one or two topics I have gone beyond the latter date.
Only colored papers and magazines have been quoted, never any white paper or writer. With three exceptions only has anything been taken second-hand, and these are properly accredited.
A much larger use has been made of Southern papers than of Northern, for obvious reasons.
I have read and re-read my mass of clippings, sifted and resifted them, to reduce their bulk and to select the most typical on the various topics.
All comments, except purely explanatory ones, and all critical remarks have been refrained from. The reader is left to make his own judgments.
No editing except to correct obvious typographical errors has been done.
For every excerpt or article included ten of like character on the same topic have probably been left in my mass of clippings.
The selections are meant to sweep the whole gamut of expression as regards temper and tone from the mildest to the most vigorous. Whatever of "radicalism" and "dangerous tendency" the colored press of America exhibits may be learned from the following pages by all who care to know. Only the unimportant exception is to be made that from the three or four Northern periodicals that have fallen under the condemnation of certain Southern congressmen and the Post Master General, I have not taken any extracts that would prima facie convict them of bolshevism, for the obvious reason that the white press has sufficiently displayed and exploited this news.
In fairness to the colored papers I must state specifically that it lay beyond the design of this compilation to attempt a general exposition of their contents. Their great function as public instructors of their people on all manner of subjects in all the departments of life, could not here be exhibited. The reader is, therefore, warned against concluding that he here obtains a complete view from what was meant to present but a comprehensive view of a single matter.