National Association of Teachers for Colored Schools
The National Association of Teachers for Colored Schools is under the scholarly and experienced leadership of Prof. J. M. Gandy. It is due mostly to this organization that the managements and sentiments of the different Southern Colored colleges and schools have come to better understand each other and thereby work in closer conjunction and harmony for the broadest and most practical development of Negro youths in both industrial and higher education. Other officials who have helped to bring about such good feelings are S. X. Floyd and W. H. A. Howard.
Negro Organization Society
Although it has not yet developed into a national organization, the Negro Organization Society of Virginia is making rapid strides in that direction. It was organized several years ago, at the wise suggestion of the late Dr. H. B. Frissell, by Major R. R. Moton, who with the valuable assistance of Captain Allen Washington, Profs. J. M. Gandy, T. C. Erwin, Rev. A. A. Graham, Lawyer T. C. Walker, Hon. Robert. E. Clay and others soon made it a leading source of encouragement and helpfulness throughout the entire State. While its purpose is to unite into one large solid body for more mutual understandings all the church, fraternal and social organizations and societies, big and little, in the State; it has no desires nor intentions whatever of selfishly absorbing within itself or taking away the individuality of any organized body that comes under its advice and help.
One of the chief objects of this society is to gather all such organizations in the state under its guiding wisdom and sheltering arms into one big congenial family, whose members may then be constantly taught how best to work in helpful understandings and harmony among themselves and in brotherhood co-operations with their white neighbors in order to secure “better health, better schools, better homes and better farms” for the Colored people. These efforts have proven so fruitful that this society has already overflown its Virginian cup of uplift influence that is now running and dripping over the sides into surrounding states. And under the continued successful “Whooping-up” campaigns of its present leader, Major Allen Washington, this organ is destined some day to become one of the most helpful national movements in America in aiding to bring about stronger and broader good-will feelings between the two races and at the same time more friendly and solidly uniting all Colored organizations for a more rapid and all-round advancement of the Negro Race.
THE PAN-AFRICAN CONGRESS
On February 19, 1919, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, editor of The Crisis, called a meeting known as The Pan-African Congress that held three days’ session in the Grand Hotel, Paris, France. It was attended by fifty-eight delegates representing sixteen different Negro groups, who passed resolutions of which two of the most important paragraphs are quoted below as follows:
“Whenever persons of African descent are civilized and able to meet the tests of surrounding culture, they shall be accorded the same rights as their fellow citizens: they shall not be denied on account of race or color a voice in their own Government, justice before the courts and economic and social equality according to ability and desert.
“Whenever it is proven that African natives are not receiving just treatment at the hands of any State or that any State deliberately excludes its civilized citizens or subjects of Negro descent from its body politic and cultural, it shall be the duty of the League of Nations to bring the matter to the attention of the civilized world.”
Along with Dr. DuBois, some of the other internationally known persons who attended that first Congress were Boisneuf, Deputy from Guadaloupe; Captain Boutte; Canadace, French Deputy from Guadaloupe; Mme Chapoteau; Mrs. Helen M. Curtis; Diagne, French Deputy from Senegal; Grossilliere, Deputy from Martinique; Mrs. Ida Gibbs Hunt; Mrs. Addie W. Hunton; Dr. John Hope; President King, Peace Delegate from Liberia; B. F. Seldon and Roscoe C. Simmons.