It was the N.A.A.C.P. which was urging us to compromise our manhood by begging eagerly for “Jim Crow” training camps. And the same group is asking, in the November Crisis, that we put a collective power-of-attorney into their hand and leave it to them to shape our national destiny. The N.A.A.C.P. has done much good work for Negroes—splendid work—in fighting lynching and segregation. For that we owe it more gratitude and good will than we owe to the entire Republican party for the last sixty years of its existence. But we cannot, even in this case, abdicate our right to shape more radical policies for ourselves. It was the realization of the need for a more radical policy than that of the N.A.A.C.P. that called into being the Liberty League of Negro Americans. And the N.A.A.C.P., as mother, must forgive its offspring for forging farther ahead. Then, there is the case of the New York Evening Post, of which Mr. Villard is owner. This paper was known far and wide as “a friend to Negroes.” But its friendship has given way to indifference and worse. In the good old days every lynching received editorial condemnation. But the three great lynchings this year which preceded East St. Louis found no editorial of condemnation in the Post. It was more than luke-warm then. But, alack and alas! As soon as the Negro soldiers in Houston, goaded to retaliation by gross indignities, did some shooting on their own account, the Evening Post, which had no condemnation of the conduct of the lynchers, joined the chorus of those who were screaming for “punishment” and death. Here is its brief editorial on August 25th: CONTENTS As no provocation could justify the crimes committed by mutinous Negro soldiers at Houston, Texas, so no condemnation of their conduct can be too severe. It may be that the local authorities were not wholly blameless, and that the commanding officers were at fault in not foreseeing the trouble and taking steps to guard against it. But nothing can really palliate the offence of the soldiers. They were false to their uniform; they were false to their race. In one sense, this is the most deplorable aspect of the whole riotous outbreak. It will play straight into the hands of men like Senator Vardaman who have been saying that it was dangerous to draft colored men into the army. And the feeling against having colored troops encamped in the South will be intensified. The grievous harm which they might do to their own people should have been all along in the minds of the colored soldiers, and made them doubly circumspect. They were under special obligation, in addition to their military oath, to conduct
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