3. The Negro maintains his self-respect and dignity in the face of intolerable conditions because of his natural optimism and his hope for and belief in the approach of a better day. I teach my children that they should not seek companionship with any other children who reluctantly associate with them, not that my children should consider themselves in any way inferior or unequal, but that they should be possessed of too much personal pride to wish association with those who would not be pleasant and agreeable.

4. My philosophy is a pessimistic one. There is often a sense of hopelessness. To live in the white group makes it incumbent on me to overcome many presumptions on their part. On the other hand, to create mutual understandability is a phase of aggressive conduct I follow. To conduct one's self in a more socially acceptable way, viz., to do a certain thing better than any member of the dominant group, is another excellent mode of enhancing social values. But the best way of all is to assume an offensive attack, and place the white group or individual on the defensive at all times. This can be accomplished only by a superior type of mind.

5. Never submit passively to unnecessary indignities. Keep alive the spirit of protest against all injustice from black or white. I am just as good or at least my right to decent treatment is as good as that of any other man. I am what I think and do, not what some other person does to me or thinks about me.

6. My experience with the segregation tendency has taught me to look down upon the system. It bristles with contradictions, being foolishly fastidious, fanatically unreasonable, and usually carried out by the uncultured element. Moreover, the promoters of the system are not ready to discuss the matter; it is simply taboo. The immoral forays of members of this super-sensitive "superior race" coupled with criminal economical advantages maintained by intimidation aside from being tragic lends a subtle hypocrisy which does not escape even the casual observer. Add to this the hysteria of the thing and you have a medley of the ludicrous hypocritical, illogical, and hysterical. Any man then who is honest and self-respecting easily comes to feel himself superior to the promoters of the institutions. One moves among these conditions with a feeling probably not unlike that of Socrates among the Athenians, although, if he chances to be a man of color, with far less freedom of conduct and speech.

7. My philosophy would be that by our conduct as a group we will be able to disprove the principles upon which the white man's intolerance is based; we should assert our rights and use propaganda to change the white man's point of view civically, morally and in the economic world.

8. I am firmly convinced that a dignified friendly attitude towards the white race is the wisest course for the Negro: education, industry, and good manners will win for us more real tolerance and consideration than continued agitation and bitterness. Truth and justice will demand fair play in time, and sentiment must be molded by appeal to intelligence and finer sentiments through undisputable facts.

9. Cultivate a wholesome discontent with untoward conditions and use every lawful means to improve these conditions, so that it may not be said that we are satisfied with unjust discriminations. "The talent for misery is the fulcrum of progress."

SEGREGATION AND RACIAL SOLIDARITY

Question: What, to your mind, is the distinction, either in point of view or definite racial aim, between segregation and "racial solidarity"?

Answers: