The urgent need of speaking out is shown by the following communication from Mr. J. Ellis Barker of London in an interview given to a correspondent of The New York Age and published in that paper on December 29th 1910. “We people in Europe,” says Mr. Barker, “do not understand the race problem, and we do not know the colored people, for the simple reason that there are not any colored people in Europe. In London, where I live, there are only a few hundred colored students whom one does not meet. Before I came to the United States my prejudice against the colored people was as great as that of any Southern planter. My prejudice against your race, as I believe the prejudice of most white people, was due rather to ignorance than to ill-will. I had been told in the books and papers published in Europe that the colored people were a race of barbarians [60] and savages. I had been told that the colored people were a worthless set of people, dressed in rags, working a day or two during the week, and loafing during the rest of the time. I was told that the colored people were idle, diseased and vicious. So I imagined that all of them lived in slums and alleys and that the aristocracy of the race consisted of the waiters and railway porters. [60] I had been told that the colored people only played at science; that their doctors and lawyers were charlatans. I had been told that the people of a mixed race were even worse than pure Negroes; that the mulattoes had lost the primitive virtues of the Negroes and had acquired all of the vices of the whites. A chance encounter with a cultured man of color induced me to look into the race problem and I was perfectly amazed when I discovered how greatly the colored people have been libelled and traduced. I have spent a considerable amount of time with colored people and have met many who are highly cultivated. I have found that among your race you have excellent lawyers, and some of the foremost physicians and surgeons. I have been over a large number of your elementary and higher grade schools and colleges and over Howard University, and I have admired the earnest and resolute determination with which your children try to improve their minds and to raise themselves. In your night schools I have found old men and women, former slaves, who are anxious to learn writing and reading. I have been to the homes of many colored people and I have [61] found them cosy, comfortable, elegant, and peopled by happy and harmonious families. I have come to the conclusion that the race is oppressed and persecuted and very largely because it is not
Prev.
Back
Top