Shocked by the fantastic violence of Sunday night, when a United States sailor and a citizen were killed by pseudo-Abyssinian zealots, thoughtful colored leaders began a determined effort yesterday to stamp out anti-white exploitation and to bring about better understanding....
This type of exploitation, they say, is aimed at the more ignorant among the colored masses. It carries the same appeal as the glittering promises of the I.W.W. and the Communists to the illiterate and ignorant among the whites.
According to Negro leaders, this exploitation is based upon the theory of social equality. Its motive can be seen, they say, in recent utterances and writings of Negro intellectuals, in which a high pitch of "social equality" fervor is established as a panacea for the ills of the race. This theory, translated and exaggerated into ambiguous prophecies by the soap-box orator, is slowly being percolated through the masses of a race as yet generally unprepared by education to understand it.
Chief among the writers whose works have been of this intellectual caliber is Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois.... His latest volume, a "best seller" entitled Darkwater, has been widely circulated. It is a volume of almost super-intellectual caliber, and is bitter in tone.
In Darkwater, which is taken simply as a typical volume, are found the teachings, colored leaders say, which have been seized upon by those who, under the shadow of Dr. Du Bois' reputation among colored folk, would seek to incite and exploit.
The "colored leaders" quoted were F. L. Barnett, R. S. Abbott, and A. H. Roberts. They did not impute any such danger to Mr. Du Bois' books. Mr. Barnett, for example, mentioned the exploitation of the "Back to Africa" movement by Jonas and Redding, while Mr. Abbott and Mr. Roberts spoke of the lack of sympathy among Negroes for criminal types like Jonas and Redding. The article then stated the "Du Bois Creed," saying:
The agitators have used considerable skill in exploiting the Negroes by use of doctrines which they have taken from Dr. Du Bois, as expressed in Darkwater. Here are some of them:
"The world market most widely and desperately sought today is the market where labor is cheapest and most helpless and profit is most abundant. This labor is kept cheap and helpless because the white world despises 'darkies.'"
This is given as the underlying premise for the late war.
"But what of the darker world that watches?" the author continues. "Most men belong to this world. With Negro and Negroid, East Indian, Chinese, and Japanese they form two-thirds of the population of the world. A belief in humanity is a belief in colored men. If the uplift in mankind must be done by men, then the destinies of the world will rest ultimately in the hands of darker nations."