Emmett J. Scott

“ Taxation without representation is just as unjust today as it was in 1776. It is just as unfair for the negro as it is to the white man, and we all, both white and black, know this. We may shut our eyes to this great truth, as sometimes we do, but it is unjust just the same. ”

“ If Georgia is injured, agriculturally and industrially by the negro exodus, the white people here have no one to blame but themselves.
The indictment is true, every word of it. The appeal to humanity, to fairness and justice and right, has been apparently without effect. It is unfortunate for the people of Georgia that an appeal to the pocketbook should be necessary to bring back the enthronement of law, but if moral suasion is powerless, the question of personal interest has entered and in no uncertain degree. ”

“ There is a difference between segregation and separation, especially so in the southern interpretation of segregation as observed in the practice of the South in its enforcement of the idea. Separation in matters social and religious is not necessarily objectionable. Left alone each race group instinctively seeks separation from other race groups. But segregation, as we have it, means more than separation; it means inferiority and humiliation. It means not only another section of the city for the negro, but a section that is inferior in improvement and protection ”

“ The white man should understand that the negro is making progress; that he is getting property and education; that his wants are increasing in common with the white man's wants and that he is not going to be bottled up or hemmed up in any community, so long as there is another community on the face of the earth where he can breathe freely and enjoy the pursuits of life, liberty and happiness in common with other men. ”

“ He could have told how deep down in the negro's heart he has no love for proscription, segregation, lynchings, the petty persecutions and cruelties against him, nor for the arresting of "fifty niggers for what three of 'em done," even if it takes all of this to uphold the scheme of civilization.
From Savannah alone, three thousand negroes went, from sixteen year old boys to men of sixty years. There must be something radically wrong when aged negroes are willing to make the change. There is greater unrest among negroes than those in high places are aware. ”

“ In the city of New York, on the 31st day of January, 1918, we in conference assembled under the auspices of the National League on Urban Conditions among Negroes, while in no way seeking to condone the existence of the worldwide war which has been forced upon our beloved country, wish to express our gratitude for the industrial changes wrought and to record our prayer that the benefits thus far derived by the negro may continue and so enlarge as to embrace full and fair opportunity in all the walks of life. ”

“ We can not expect ignorant people to act like intelligent ones, and no amount of abuse will make them better.
Sometimes we hear it said that the white man of the South knows the negro better than anybody else, but the average white man of the South only knows the ignorant, vicious and criminal negro better than anybody else. He knows little of the best class of negroes. I am glad to say, however, that there are a few southern white men who know the better class, and know them intimately, and are doing what they can to better the negro's condition. ”

“ It is strange that negro labor should stand the oppression of the South for fifty years and suddenly make up its mind to move northward as an evidence of its resentment.
The truth of the matter is that the element of negroes in the South that feel the oppression most is not concerned in the migration movement. Nor are they going to leave their homes and accumulations of half a century as a solution of their problems. ”

“ But the negro must be made to see the value of organization to himself, and he must be incorporated into and made a part of the great labor movement. It is a stupid policy to try to keep him out. Let us work to shift him from his present unhappy position, where he is despised by the big business element, notwithstanding his utility as a strikebreaker, and hated by unionists for his loyalty to the open shop element. Unionism must welcome the negro to its ranks. ”

“ The negroes of this country who go to France to fight, or who replace workingmen who go as soldiers will demand, and justly so, full American rights. The United States can not stand before the world as the champion of freedom and democracy and continue to burn men alive and lynch them without fair trial. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People calls upon this country to 'clear her conscience before she can fight for the world's good,' by abolishing lynching and ceasing all oppression of negroes. This is a national problem and more particularly one of the South. ”

“ Such an upheaval was necessary to set up a reaction in the southern mind to enable its leaders of thought to look beyond themselves into the needs of the man far down. There is in progress, therefore, a reshaping of public opinion, in fact a peaceful revolution in a land cursed by slavery and handicapped by aristocracy. The tendency to maltreat the negroes without cause, the custom of arresting them for petty offenses and the institution of lynching have all been somewhat checked by this change in the attitude of the southern white man towards the negro. ”

“ In the rural districts the negro is not only at the mercy of the lawless white individual citizen, but equally at the mercy of the rural police, the constables and magistrates. There is hardly a record in modern history of greater oppression by judicial officers than that dealt to the negroes by a large majority of the magistrates and other officials who preside over the inferior courts of South Carolina. ”

“ If a million negroes come north, they will soon get sufficient political power, which combined with their economic power will be able to force the South to do some things she is now unwilling to do.
With labor competition for the negro between North and South with the North offering higher wages, better living conditions, better education, protection and a vote, the South must bestir herself if she would keep the best labor in the world. And southern statesmen will see that the South must cease to lynch, begin to educate and finally restore the ballot. ”

“ The trouble incident to the migration of negroes from Georgia and the South is exactly as stated.
There is no secret about what must be done, if Georgia would save herself from threatened disaster, which, in some sections, has already become serious.
In the first place, there must be no more mobs. Mobs and mob spirit must be eliminated completely, so completely that there will be no danger of recurrence. If a negro be charged with a crime, even if it be known that he is guilty, he must be given the same fair treatment before the law that is accorded the white man. ”

“ They do not understand why they have been made to toil at starvation wages and to pay heavy fines and suffer long prison sentences for stealing food and clothing. They do not understand why no estimate is placed upon negro virtue and the full rights of citizenship are denied to negroes of education, character and worth. If some mysterious Providence has ordained that they support themselves and employers by farming, they do not understand why they are deprived of agricultural schools. ”

“ Philadelphia had for years been pointed to as having a respectable, thrifty and prosperous colored population, enjoying the good will and the cooperation of the best white people in the community. These northern negroes felt then that the coming of their brethren in the rough did them a decided injury in giving rise to a race problem in a northern community where it had not before figured. This unusual influx of other members of the race greatly stimulated that tendency to segregate negro children in the schools, to the deep regret of the older citizens of Philadelphia. ”

“ The treatment which the negroes received at the hands of the courts and the guardians of the peace constituted another cause of the migration. Negroes largely distrust the courts and have to depend on the influence of their aristocratic white friends. When a white man assaults a negro he is not punished. When a white man kills a negro he is usually freed without extended legal proceedings, but the rule as laid down by the southern judge is usually that when a negro kills a white man, whether or not in self-defense, the negro must die. ”

“ In tragic truth it must be confessed that there is in the South—South Carolina, more certainly—no protection for the life or person of any negro of whatever standing, sex, age, against the intent of the bloody-minded white man.
The negro does not ask for special privileges or social legislation in his behalf. He does not ask to be measured by any standard less than the white man's standard, but he insists that the same test shall apply to all men of all races. ”

“ In the beginning such a migration of negroes would increase the present race friction in the North. Within certain limits a racial minority is unpopular directly in proportion to its numbers. Only as it increases to the point where political and economic power makes it formidable, does it overcome opposition. The negro's competition for jobs and homes will probably exacerbate relations. As the negroes increased in numbers they would not only seek menial and unskilled work, but also strive to enter skilled trades where they would meet with antagonism of white workers. ”

“ Liquor in the cities has been a great curse to negroes. Millions of dollars have been made by no account white people selling no account liquor to negroes and thus making a whole lot of negroes no account. Happily this business is being extinguished.
The negroes who are in the South should be encouraged to remain there, and those white people who are in the boll weevil territory should make every sacrifice to keep their negro labor until there can be adjustments to the new and quickly prosperous conditions that will later exist. ”

“ When he went to a nearby Mississippi college and worked in his summer vacations in a local industrial plant, they still thought well of him, but when it was learned that he was being graduated at Oberlin College, and his picture appeared in a college year book, among others, my intimate white friends wanted to know the necessity for so much education and, with a shrug of the shoulder, they let all mention of him drop, as if he had offended the most sacred laws of the community. ”

“ Never again can the negro be ignored. Time and time again the selfish masters of industry have used him to batter your organizations to pieces, and, instead of trying to win him over, you have savagely fought him, because they used him as a strikebreaker. ”

“ The negro does not want to leave the South. The only thing to break this tie is unfair and cruel treatment of the negro on the part of the white man. In this connection our white friends should know that not only in the lynchings, and in the courts and in the unwholesome conditions on the southern railway common carriers (as vital as these are) , but that in the general attitude of many of our southern white people, there is exhibited a contempt for the negro which makes the best of the negroes feel that they are only tolerated in the South. ”

“ Our plantations are large, our climate is peculiar, and we ourselves are not accustomed to doing the work that we ask the negro to do. Serious labor conditions have confronted us before, and it is exceedingly rare to find the native land owning white farmer, who has been accustomed to employ negro labor, taking the negro's place when the negro leaves his neighborhood. The same conditions exist in the industries where we of the South have been depending upon the negroes as artisans in our industries or mines. ”

“ Meetings are, therefore, being held to find out what the negroes want and what may be done to keep them contented. They are told that the negro must be elevated, not exploited; that to make the South what it must needs be, the cooperation of all is needed to train and equip the men of all races for efficiency. The aim of all then must be to reform or get rid of the unfair proprietors who do not give their tenants a fair division of the returns from their labor. ”

“ The business of lynching negroes is bad, and we believe it is declining, but the worst thing is that the wrong negro is often lynched. The negro should be protected in all his legal rights. Furthermore, in some communities, some white people make money at the expense of the negro's lack of intelligence. Unfair dealing with the negro is not a custom in the South. It is not the rule, but here and there the taking of enormous profits from the labor of the negro is known to exist. ”

“ His labor made him a slave and his labor could, if he would, make him free, comfortable and independent. It is more to him than either fire, sword, ballot boxes or bayonets. It touches the heart of the South through its pocket." Knowing that the negro has this silent weapon to be used against his employer or the community, the South is already giving the race better educational facilities, better railway accommodations, and will eventually, if the advocacy of certain southern newspapers be heeded, grant them political privileges. ”

“ With the foreign immigration silently crowding him back into the South, the labor unions, the prejudices of his white fellow workman and the paucity of his number making him ineffective as a competitor, driving him from the door of the factory and workshop, the negro workman, whatever his qualifications, was prior to 1914 forced to enter the field of domestic service in the North and farming in the South. ”

“ The history of the world from the days of Moses to the present shows that where one race has been subjugated, oppressed or proscribed by another and exists in large numbers, permanent relief has come in one or two ways—amalgamation or migration. The thought of amalgamation is not to be entertained. If conditions in the South for the colored man are to be permanently improved, many of those who now live there should migrate and scatter throughout the North, East and West. ”