Carl Sandburg

“ At the time of the greatest labor shortage in the history of this country, colored women were the last to be employed. They did the most menial and by far the most underpaid work. They were the marginal workers all through the war, and yet during those perilous times, the colored woman made just as genuine a contribution to the cause of democracy as her white sister in the munitions factory or her brother in the trench. ”

“ Hence the Negro who desires to be an imitation white man. Hence again the determination to suppress the Negro who attempts to imitate the white man. For so long as the status of the white man is in every way superior to that of the colored, the advancement of the colored man can mean nothing but an attempt to share the white man's social privileges. ”

“ The bombing of the homes of colored citizens is futile. This will neither intimidate any considerable number of them nor stop their moving into a given district. The most certain result is bitter racial antagonism.
"White citizens must be educated out of all hysteria over actual or prospective arrival of colored neighbors. All colored citizens do not make bad neighbors, although in some cases they will not make good ones. It is of the greatest importance, however, both to white and colored people, that real estate dealers should cease to make a business of commercializing racial antagonisms." ”

“ The southern neglect of the negro is a national problem. All the conditions of life that tend to degrade the negro in the south immediately come into evidence the moment there is a shift of negro population from south to north. Every circumstance of bad housing, bad sanitation, school neglect and economic inequality that exists in the southern states must be regarded as a national problem, this more especially in view of the shifts of population that are so easy now and which are sometimes an absolute necessity for the conduct of industry. ”

“ So on the one hand we have blind lawless government failing to function through policemen ignorant of Lincoln, the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and a theory sanctioned and baptized in a storm of red blood. And on the other hand we have a gaunt involuntary poverty from which issues the hoodlum. ”

“ The intelligent white man who is not informed on the neglect and wrong training of the negro in the south is as dangerous to future peace and law and order as is the so-called bad negro. I have fought for my country two years as a major of infantry and I wish to give it as my mature judgment that no barbarities committed by the Prussians in Belgium will compare with the brutalities and atrocities committed on negroes in the south. ”

“ Until we have learned to house everybody, employ everybody at decent wages In a self-respecting status, guarantee his civil liberties, and bring education and play to him, the bulk of our talk about "the race problem" will remain a sinister mythology. In a dirty civilization the relation between black men and white will be a dirty one. In a clean civilization the two races can conduct their business together cleanly, and not until then. ”

“ That when we are introducing negro labor into industries in which the white workers are not unionized, we advise negroes, in case the effort is made to unionize the industry, to join with their white comrades.
3. That we strongly urge the organizers of all the unions in industries which may be opened to colored labor, not only to permit, but actively to assist in incorporating negroes into the unions.
4. In cases where negroes are prevented from joining the unions, the right is reserved of complete liberty of action as to the advice that will be given to negro working men. ”

“ Under the pressure of the biggest over-crowding problem any race or nation has faced in a Chicago neighborhood, the population of the district is spilling over, or rather is being irresistibly squeezed out into other residence districts. ”

“ There has never been any organized effort on our part to bring the negro here. The packers' percentage of increase of negro employes is not greater than that of any other industry during the war. The steel plants, the railroads and others increased about the same percentage we did. High wages was the inducement that drew them north. We expect that the negro will continue to be the chief source of surplus labor. In all our experience there have been no race clashes, no strictly racial trouble, inside of the yards while the men are working. ”

“ Soldiers, ministers, lawyers, doctors, politicians, machinists, teamsters, day laborers—this is the inevitable outstanding thought they offer when consulted about tomorrow, next week, next year or the next century for the colored race in America, There is no approaching the matters of housing, jobs or political relations of the colored people to-day without taking consideration of their own vivid conception of what they consider their unquestioned Americanism. ”

“ The demands for quarters, the higher rentals paid by colored people and other factors were responsible for thirty-six new localities being opened up within three months, these localities having formerly been exclusively white. This increase in rents was from 5 to 30 per cent, and in a few cases 50 per cent.
"To-day we are beginning to realize that to become a good citizen, it is necessary to own a home, and that those who are renting cannot be considered other than floaters," is the comment of Jesse Binga, banker, the oldest established colored real estate dealer in Chicago. ”

“ In one millinery shop, however, the superintendent said that every colored worker in his shop preferred machine operation to hand work.
"Replacement for colored women, however, does not mean advancement in the same sense as for white women. Because the white woman has been in industry for a long time, and is more familiar with industrial practices, she is less willing to accept bad working conditions. The colored woman, on the other hand, is handicapped by industrial ignorance and drifts into conditions of work rejected by white workers. ”

“ We must fight as a national danger the race hatred that exists in the south. That particular form of race hatred, which was one fundamental cause of the civil war, should not be permitted to spread to other sections. ”

“ A series of lynchings in Texas at that time gave him examples from which to argue that the north was safer for colored people.
"With many who have come north, the attraction of wages and employment is secondary to the feeling that they are going where there are no lynchings. Others say that while they know they would never be lynched in the south and they are not afraid on that score, they do want to go where they are sure there is more equality and opportunity than in the south. The schools in the north are an attraction to others. ”

“ The Black Belt of Chicago is probably the strongest effective unit of political power, good or bad, in America. It connects directly with a city administration decisive in its refusal to draw the color line, and a mayor whose opponents failed to defeat him with the covert circulation of the epithet of "nigger lover." ”

“ No names are given, no locations, no witnesses—a wild inflammatory tale sent out on the swift wings of rumor and gabbled and tattled for the consumption of a nation of people struggling to set an example to the rest of the world on the value of self control during a great world crisis. ”

“ In nearly all circles the opinion is voiced that Chicago is the most liberal all around town in the country, and the constitution of Illinois the most liberal of all state constitutions. And so if they can't make Chicago a good place for their people to live in the colored people wonder where they can go. ”

“ When the colored man can come into the labor market and bargain for the sale of his services on the same terms as other workers, a great deal of what is termed to-day the 'race question' is going to be settled. ”

“ It is a matter of common knowledge that house after house, flat after flat, whether under white or black agents, comes to the negro at an increased rental. The only available argument, it would seem, which will ever dispel the public impressions is for instances to become just as numerous of charge downward as they now are of charge upward. ”

“ It is a labor union question. We have no objections to the negroes joining the union. We are running an open shop. The unions want us to run a closed shop. That would mean we could hire only union men. The unions have done everything to get the negro into their membership, but they haven't got him. That is the trouble. At one time, we heard, they had about 90 per cent of all the negroes in the yards in the unions. But they don't stay.
"The trouble is that the negro is not naturally a good union man. He doesn't like to pay union dues. ”

“ Facts in this situation to be reckoned with are that practically every organization of colored people, business, political, social and religious, is making propaganda in favor of the right of the colored people to buy real estate "wherever the white man's money is good." On the other hand, the only organized and noticeable propaganda among white organizations in this respect is the movement in real estate organizations and neighborhood improvement clubs. ”

“ Unless such a statement is accompanied by names, dates and locations, and has at least a semblance of such facts as are required when a white man is similarly involved, it should be assumed that the vague allegations are camouflage behind which men are working to defeat the intent of the emancipation proclamation, men who hold to the feudal south's theory that the negro is biologically inferior to the white man. ”

“ The negro real estate man is much fairer, generally speaking, than is supposed, and could means be found whereby he and the tenant could get together and come to an understanding on many things, each about the other, regarding which they are now deluded, the first step would have been taken to the improvement of the lot of the negro renter."
Twenty years ago fewer than fifty families of the colored race were home owners in Chicago. ”

“ And so, from year to year, we find the organizations of colored people checking up, listing the new occupations they have entered, pointing to new doors opening to men on the basis of ability where color does not count one way or the other.
The new doors of opportunity opening in Chicago in the last two years, are told here:
Molders. Every foundry in Chicago, according to the Urban league employment office, which chiefly handles the labor situation for colored people, is ready to hire colored molders, who have no difficulty in getting jobs. ”

“ Better jobs, the right to vote and have the vote counted at elections, no Jim Crow cars, less race discrimination and a more tolerant attitude on the part of the whites, equal rights with white people in education—these are among the attractions that keep up the steady movement of colored people from southern districts to the north. ”

“ Among the employers, executives and superintendents of the packing houses, the clashes between white and colored people in the stockyards and adjacent districts are not a race question so much as a labor union question, according to a prominent official of one of the packing companies. ”

“ I am told that about 60 per cent of the stockyard workers are Poles, and that their leader, John Kirkulski, as well as the secretary and the 500 shop stewards of the organization, are taking a decisive stand against race prejudice, violence and anything else than peace and equality before the law. ”

“ The manufacturer is getting more and more to realize that when the pressure comes, as it came during the war, if he can get the labor he doesn't see any color mark on the bank check or the draft that he gets in payment for his goods. Most of this thing we call a race question is down at rock bottom a labor question. ”

“ Whatever may be the contributing causes, demand and supply, overbidding for coveted places on the part of tenants, inconspicuousness of the negro as an economic factor, guaranteed rentals or what not, the negro in Chicago, paid a lower wage than the white workman and more limited in opportunity, does pay a relatively higher rent. ”

“ The Anti-Vilification society has been organized by colored men in Chicago who believe that the United States as a republic is headed in the right direction, but that there is being carried on persistent propaganda that can bring no good to the nation. ”