“Against this dominant tendency, strong and brave Americans, white and black, are fighting, but they need, and need sadly, the moral support of England and of Europe in this crusade for the recognition of manhood, despite adventitious differences of race, and it is like a blow in the face to have one who himself suffers daily insult and humiliation in America give the impression that all is well. It is one thing to be optimistic, self-forgetful and forgiving, but it is quite a different thing, consciously or unconsciously, to misrepresent the truth.”
This appeal has provoked widespread comment all over the world. The Vienna (Austria) Die Zeit, in publishing the document, says:
“During the sojourn in Vienna of Booker T. Washington, the distinguished apostle of the Negro, there appeared in Die Zeit a report from his pen in which he defended the white race of North America against the charge of systematic race prejudice and pictured the condition of the Negro race as on the whole very favorable. This report created great excitement in America and a deep disagreement among the intelligent leaders of the American Negroes. Booker T. Washington was warmly attacked in many American papers by both white and black speakers, and finally the American Negro leaders drew up an outspoken protest against Washington’s declarations.”
The Kölnische Volk Zeitung, Germany, speaks of an article which was “widely printed in Austria and Germany,” in which Mr. Washington “expressed himself in very optimistic words concerning his race in America and the undoubted solution of the problem,” and then reprints a part of the appeal.
In the United States the comment has taken wide range. From the South comes some bitterness when, for instance, the Raleigh News and Courier says:
“It is hard to tell which is the worst enemy of the Negro race—the brute who invites lynching by the basest of crimes, or the social-equality-hunting fellow like Du Bois, who slanders his country. Fortunately for the peaceable and industrious Negroes in the South, the world does not judge them either by Du Bois or the animal, and helps them and is in sympathy with their efforts to better their condition.”
The Richmond Leader adds:
“Efforts on the part of the Negro to give practical expression to the dream of equality may, indeed, cause temporary trouble and discomfort to the whites, but ultimately and necessarily they could not fail to provoke stern repression, and, if necessary, cruel punishment to the blacks. Fortunately, the great bulk of the Negro population in the South realizes this, and, having—at least for the time—accepted it as inevitable, they adjust themselves to the subordinate place to which their race consigns them, and in which the very existence of the superior race makes it absolutely necessary to keep them. There is little friction, therefore, between them and the white people among whom they live.”
The Chattanooga Times regards the document as “treasonable incendiarism,” and many papers denounce it as a demand for “social equality.” The New Orleans Times-Democrat says:
“To the average American the most striking feature is this ‘appeal,’ aside from its attack upon Booker Washington, is its confession, virtually in so many words, that the theory of racial social equality is losing ground ‘everywhere in the United States.’ Thoughtful students of the American race problem long ago noted the steady spread of race instinct, or prejudice, into sections other than the South; but it was hardly to be expected that the blatant Negro agitators would confess that their strident demands for race equality have not only completely failed, but have helped to turn the scale against them. Such progress as the Negro has made is recorded not by aid of these aspirants for social equality, but in spite of them.”