A Hint of Our Reward
The wisdom of our contemporary ancestors, having decided that “We Negroes must make every sacrifice to help win the war and lay aside our just demands for the present that we may win a shining place on the pages of history,” it must be cold comfort to learn that the first after-the-war schoolbook of American history is out, that it is written by Reuben Gold Thwaites and Calvin Noyes Kendall, that it devotes thirty-one pages to the war and America’s part in the war, and that not one word is said of the Negro’s part therein.
Of course, sensible men should feel no surprise at this, for they will realize how little the part played by the Negro in the Civil War is known by the millions of white school children who read the school histories. Yet, if there is a spark of manhood left in the bosoms of our “white men’s niggers” who sold us out during the war they must feel pained and humiliated when the flood of after-the-war school histories, of which this is the first, quietly sink the Negro’s contributions (as chronicled by Mr. Emmett Scott and others) into the back waters of forgetfulness.
The times change, but we don’t change with them.
The Negro at the Peace Congress
Now that they have helped to win the war against Germany, the Negro people in these United States feel the absurdity of the situation in which they find themselves. They have given lavishly of their blood and treasure. They have sent their young men overseas as soldiers, and were willing to send their young women overseas as nurses; but the innate race-prejudice of the American Red Cross prevented them. They have contributed millions of dollars to the funds of this same Red Cross and scores of millions to the four Liberty Loans; and they have done all this to help make the world “safe for democracy” even while in sixteen States of the south in which nine-tenths of them reside, they have no voice in their own government. Naturally they expect that something will have to be done to remove their civil and other disabilities. This expectation of theirs is a just and reasonable one. But— —
Now that the world is getting ready for the Peace Congress which is expected to settle the questions about which the war was fought our Negroes want to know if the Peace Congress will settle such questions as those of lynching, disfranchisement and segregation. IT WILL NOT! And why? Simply because the war was not fought over these questions. Even a fool can see that. Lynching, disfranchisement and Jim-crowing in America are questions of American domestic policy and can be regulated only by American law-making and administrative bodies. Even a fool should be able to see this. And, since it was only by the military aid of the United States that the Allies were able to win the war, why should our people be stupid enough to think that the allied nations will aim a slap at the face of the United States (even if such things were customary) by attempting to interfere in her domestic arrangements and institutions?
We learn that various bodies of Negroes, who do not seem to understand the modern system of political government under which they live, are seeking to get money from the unsuspecting masses of our people “for the purpose of sending delegates to the Peace Congress.” The project is sublimely silly. In the first place, the Peace Congress is not open to anybody who chooses to be sent. A peep into any handbook of modern history would show that Peace Congresses are made up only of delegates chosen by the heads of the governments of the countries which have been at war, and never by civic, propaganda, or other bodies within those nations. Only the President of the United States has power to designate the American delegates to the Peace Congress.