13. Separate colored churches, colored pastors and colored bishops represent more or less a voluntary action of colored people and are indicative of racial solidarity in just the same way as Jewish churches having Jewish rabbis represent Jewish solidarity.
14. As a slave the Negro was welcome to worship at the white church. As a citizen he is not. The white church is a semi-public institution, being more social than religious in its tone. Since Negroes are not wanted, their only recourse is to have their own churches. And if their own churches, why a white pastor or bishop, when Negro preachers quite as competent can be found?
OPINION-MAKING
Question: On what instruments ordinarily responsible for the making of public opinion do you rely for your opinions? With what reservations do you accept what you read in the white press? To what degree are you influenced by the opinions of colored persons?
Answers:
1. Of course I read daily papers, magazines and books and attend lectures and seek every possible means to learn the trend of thought and philosophy of life as it develops throughout civilization. However, whenever the Negro question is treated, I always approach with suspicion the arguments presented by white people. I always read expressions forecasting the approach of democracy with the knowledge that but few white writers and speakers think of the colored races in their utterances. The colored newspapers are much more fair than the whites, but even they, at times, are inclined to bias.
2. Magazines, colored and white papers, public speakers. I accept with great reservation what I read in the white press. I am influenced to a small degree by the opinions of the colored papers.
3. The daily papers, the Nation, the New Republic, the Crisis, the Messenger, the Literary Digest, the Socialist Review, the colored papers, and other scattered organs from here, there and everywhere. The dependence I put upon these white papers is hard to state in words. If in a white paper I see something favorable to the Negro on a question of fact, I take it at face value. On questions of opinion, I draw my own conclusions from my own study and experience, wherever possible. Likewise in a colored paper I take at face value on a question of fact anything favorable to the white view. Otherwise I draw my own conclusions.
4. (a) Daily papers, lectures and magazines. (b) Always with reservations on any subject, especially on race records. (c) Not very much outside of a few good magazines.
5. Every article in white or Negro press is read with the idea that the bias of the writer must be discounted and that the conclusions cannot be accepted, but that one's conclusions must be made from the aggregate of the facts gleaned from every available source bearing upon the subject under discussion.