The article quoted from Darkwater a chapter, which, by cutting the text, left a suggestion of sex intimacy between a colored bank messenger and a white girl very different from the intention of the author. The entire article was calculated, through its suggestion and insinuation, to rouse racial antagonism. It is doubtful whether the "Abyssinian" leaders, who were ignorant fanatics little known within the Negro group, had read Du Bois' books. With all its wildness and fatuousness the movement was directed away from America and from whites. A photograph of Du Bois was published with the caption:
Karl Marx of Negroes
Noted Colored Philosopher Whose Works Are Used by Agitators to
Stir Race Hatred
Miscegenation.—Similarly dangerous treatment is apparent in an article which appeared in the Tribune of November 6, 1920, under the heading: "Miscegenation is O.K.'d in New Constitution."
The article called attention to a proposed provision in the new state constitution of Illinois against public discrimination on account of color, which was intended to put into the constitution rights already guaranteed by state laws. According to the article this law was tentatively agreed upon "during the newsy days surrounding the Republican National Convention and escaped the notice of the public generally." The article said:
Under the basic law, if adopted, a colored man and woman will be entitled to buy vacant seats of a grand opera box, otherwise occupied by whites. A Mongolian—if a citizen—and a mesochromic bride cannot be denied a vacant flat in the most "exclusive" apartment building.
A law prohibiting the Japanese, as in California, from owning land, will be illegal. Two colored people may take two of the four seats in the Blackstone restaurant beside the wives of two packers.
A member of the convention said yesterday that it is as broad and comprehensive as it can be made. He claimed that this sentence in the constitution will prevent the Legislature from prohibiting in any way the colored citizen from getting all the rights and privileges accorded to other citizens. According to this constitutional delegate and lawyer the new constitution, as now worded, will prevent segregation of the Negroes, Jim-Crow cars, or special schools for the colored.
A Negro lawyer said that the Morris section only recognizes openly the rights of equality which were settled by the Civil War and enunciated in an amendment to the federal Constitution.
The remainder of the article dealt in brief with fifteen other decisions of the Convention. These decisions were merely stated and not commented upon.
Newspaper handling of the "back of the Yards" fire.—At the close of the Chicago riot fire was set to a large number of houses back of the Stock Yards. Since these were the homes of white persons, principally Lithuanians, it was generally assumed that it was an act of retaliation by Negroes. Articles in the newspapers strengthened the belief. The Chicago Daily News article gave a full account of statements made by Fire Marshal O'Connor to the effect that Negroes were responsible. It stated that the police and militia were combing the South Side for a band of eight Negroes, alleged automobile fire bugs. These men, it was said, were stalled in an automobile at West Fifty-fifth and South Wood streets ten blocks south of the fire; when the police reached Fifty-fifth Street the Negroes had repaired their car and fled. John R. McCabe, Fire Department attorney, was reported as being positive that the fire was started by Negroes.