DEPLORES ATTACKS ON NEGROES

Mordecat Wyatt Johnson gr.Dv. of Charlestown, W. Va., followed W. C. Phelps with the graduate English part of the Commencement Exercises. Johnson discussed the present condition of the negroes in the United States, deploring the ever-increasing attacks made against their political and social right and life, especially since the Great War. He asserted that the Negro's faith in the rightcons purpose of the Federal Government was sagging as the black population found itself ever more closely surrounded with a sentiment of antagonism intentionally unfair.

He said in part: "Since their emancipation from slavery the masses of American Negroes have lived by the light of a simple but deeply moving faith. They have believed in the love and providence of a just and holy God; they have believed in the principles of democracy and in the righteous purpose of the Federal Government; and they have believed in the disposition of the American people as a whole and in the long run to be fair in all their dealings.

"In spite of disfranchisement and peonage, mob violence and public contempt, they have kept this faith and have allowed themselves to hope with the optimism of Booker T. Washington that in proportion as they grew in intelligence, wealth, and self-respect, they should win the confidence and esteem of their fellow white Americans, and should gradually acquire the responsibilities and privileges of full American citizenship.

"In recent years, and especially since the Great War, this simple faith has suffered a widespread disintegration.

Hopes of Negroes Dashed to Ground

"At the close of the war, however, the Negro's hopes were suddenly dashed to the ground. Southern newspapers began at once to tell the Negio soldiers that the war was over, and the sooner they forgot it the better. 'Pull off your uniform,' they said, 'find the place you had before the war and stay in it'. 'Act like a Negro should act,' said one newspaper, 'work like a Negro should work. Talk like a Negro should talk. Study like a Negro should study. Dismiss all ideas of independence or of being lifted up to the plane of the white man. Understand the Necessity of keeping a Negro's place.' In connection with such admonitions there came the great collective attacks on Negro life and property in Washington, Omaha, Elaine, and Tulsa. There came the increasing boldness of lynchers who advertised their purposes in advance and had their photographs taken as they stood around the burning bodies of their victims. There came vain appeals by the colored people to the President of the United States and to the Houses of Congress. And finally there came the reorganization and rapid growth of the Ku Klux Klan. . . .

"From those terrible days until this day the Negro's faith in the righteous purpose of the Federal Government has sagged. Some have laid the blame on the parties in power, and some have laid it elsewhere, but all the colored people in every section of the United States believe that there is something wrong, and not accidentally wrong, at the very heart of the government.

"Some of our young men are giving up the Christian religion, thinking that their fathers were fools to have believed it so long. One group among us repudiates entirely the simple faith of former days.

"Another and larger group among us believes in religion and believes in the principles of democracy, but not in the white man's religion and not in the white man's democracy.

Majority Retain Their Traditions

"The larger masses of the colored people do not belong to these more radical movements. They retain their belief in the Christian God, they love their country, and hope to work out their salvation within its bounds; but they are completely disillusioned. They see themselves surrounded on every hand by a sentiment of antagonism which does not intend to be fair. They see themselves partly reduced to peonage, shut out from labor unions, forced to an inferior status before the courts, made subjects of public contempt, lynched and mobbed with impunity, and deprived of the ballot, their only means of social defense.

"The Negro people of America have been with us here for three hundred years. They have cut out forests, tilled our fields, built our railroads, fought our battles, and in all their trials until now they have manifested a simple faith, a grateful heart, a cheerful spirit and an undivided loyalty to our nation that has been a thing of beauty to behold. Now they have come to the place where their faith can no longer feed on the bread of repression and violence. They ask for the bread of liberty, of public equality, and public responsibility. It must not be denied them. . . .