In the meanwhile, the Ku-Klux after rampaging around under the leadership of that traitor, General Nathaniel B. Forrest, was put down-for good, as it was thought. Today, after the Negro has been stripped of the ballot’s protection by the connivance of white Republicans in Washington and white Democrats at the South, the Ku-Klux dares to raise its ugly head in its ancestral state of Tennessee. This time they want to increase that fine brand of democracy which every coward editor knows that Negroes were getting when they were bidding them to be patriotic. The Ku-Klux means to shoot them into submission and torture them into terror before they get to showing their wounds and asking for the ballot as a recompense.

In this crisis what have the Negro “leaders” got to say on their people’s behalf? Where is Emmett Scott? Where are Mr. Moton and Dr. Du Bois? What will the N.A.A.C.P. do besides writing frantic letters? We fear that they can never rise above the level of appeals. But suppose the common Negro in Tennessee decides to take a hand in the game? Suppose he lets it be known that for the life of every Negro soldier or civilian, two “crackers” will die? Suppose he lets them know that it will be as costly to kill Negroes as it would be to kill real people? Then indeed the Ku-Klux would be met upon its own ground. And why not?

All our laws, even in Tennessee, declare that lynching and white-capping are crimes against the person. All our laws declare that people singly or in groups have the right to kill in defense of their lives. And if the Ku-Klux prevents the officers of the law from enforcing that law, then it is up to Negroes to help the officers by enforcing the law on their own account. Why shouldn’t they do it? Lead and steel, fire and poison are just as potent against “crackers” as they were against Germans, and democracy is as well worth fighting for in Tennessee as ever it was on the plains of France. Not until the Negroes of the south recognize this truth will anybody else recognize it for them.

CHAPTER IV.THE NEW POLITICS.

The New Politics for the New Negro

The world of the future will look upon the world of today as an essentially new turning point in the path of human progress. All over the world the spirit of democratic striving is making itself felt. The new issues have brought forth new ideas of freedom, politics, industry and society at large. The new Negro living in this new world is just as responsive to these new impulses as other people are.

In the “good old days” it was quite easy to tell the Negro to follow in the footsteps of 

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