The Negro and the nation

BY HUBERT H. HARRISON
Cosmo-Advocate Publishing Co. 2305 Seventh Avenue New York
This little book is made up of articles contributed several years ago to radical newspapers and magazines like The Call, The Truth-Seeker, Zukunft, and The International Socialist Review. They are re-published in this form, partly to preserve a portion of the author’s early work, but mainly because they help to throw into strong relief the present situation of the Negro in present day America, and to show how that situation re-acts upon the mind of the Negro. That is the great need of the Negro at this time.
Some time in the near future I hope to write a little book on the New Negro which will set forth the aims and ideals of the new Manhood Movement among American Negroes rich has grown out of the international crusade “for democracy—for the right of those who submit to authority to have A VOICE in their own government”— as President Wilson so sincerely puts it.
Because I wish this little book to have as large a circulation as possible among Negroes and white people, I have preferred publication at a popular price to the doubtful advantage of having a prominent publisher’s name at the foot of the title-page. The present edition consists of five thousand copies. When it is sold off a second edition will be issued.
HUBERT H. HARRISON New York, August, 1917.
NOTE: This article and the next were contributed to the International Socialist Review in 1912 while the author was a member of the Socialist Party. He has since left it (but has joined no other party) partly because, holding as he does by the American doctrine of “Race First,” he wished to put himself in a position to wont among his people along lines of his own choosing.
Providence, according to Mr. Kipling, has been pleased to place upon the white man’s shoulders the tremendous burden of regulating the affairs of men of all other colors, who, for the purpose of his argument, are backward and undeveloped—“half devil and half child.” When one considers that of the sixteen hundred million people living upon this earth, more than twelve hundred million are colored, this seems a truly staggering burden.