devilishly difficult to boost him up again.” “Just Crabs” was a delightful inspiration in the course of defending, not Mr. Garvey personally, but the principles of the New Negro Manhood Movement, a portion of which had been incorporated by him and his followers of the U.N.I.A. and A.C. L. It was the opening gun of the defense, of which some other salvos were given in the serial satire of The Crab Barrel—which I have been kind enough to omit from this record. This controversy also gave rise to the three first editorials of chapter 6.]

Our Professional “Friends”

This country of ours has produced many curious lines of endeavor, not the least curious of which is the business known as “being the Negro’s friend.” It was first invented by politicians, but was taken up later by “good” men, six-per-cent philanthropists, millionaire believers in “industrial education,” benevolent newspapers like the Evening Post, and a host of smaller fry of the “superior race.” Just at this time the business is being worked to death, and we wish to contribute our mite toward the killing-by showing what it means.

The first great “friend” of the Negro was the Southern politician, Henry Clay, who, in the first half of the nineteenth century organized the American Colonization Society. This society befriended the “free men of color” by raising funds to ship them away to Liberia, which was accepted by many free Negroes as a high proof of the white man’s “friendship.” But Frederick Douglass, William Still, James McCune Smith, Martin R. Delaney, and other wide-awake Negroes were able to show (by transcripts of its proceedings) that its real purpose was to get rid of the free Negroes because, so long as they continued to live here, their freedom was an inducement to the slaves to run away from slavery, and their accomplishments demonstrated to all white people that the Negro (contrary to the claims of the slave-holders) was capable of a higher human destiny than that of being chattels—and this was helping to make American slavery odious in the eyes of the civilized world.

Since that time the dismal farce of “friendship” has been played many times, by politicians, millionaires and their editorial adherents, who have been profuse in giving good advice to the Negro people. They have advised them to “go slow,” that “Rome was not built in a day,” and that “half a loaf is better than no bread,” that “respect could not be demanded,” and, in a thousand different ways have advised them that if they would only follow the counsels of “the good white people” who really had their interests at heart, 

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