Page:The Voice of the Negro 1919 - Robert T. Kerlin - 1920.djvu/18

x editorial comment do they make? What kind of cartoons do they contain? What instruction do they give their readers? After some months of close perusal of dozens and scores of colored weeklies, published North, South, East, and West, it seemed to the present writer that it would be a service to the country to make a compilation from them that should fairly represent their contents, their presentation of the news, and their discussions and comments. That the Negro himself has this right to be heard in the court of the world will not be denied except by the hopelessly prejudiced and constitutionally unjust. We have too frequently heard foolish vaunts about "knowing the Negro," the context of such boasting invariably convicting the speaker of dangerous conceit and the harsh spirit of suppression. Those who would honestly seek to know the Negro must read his papers. It is in them the Negro speaks out with freedom, with sincerity, with justice to himself, for there he speaks as a Negro to Negroes, and he is aware that the white people do not so much as know of the existence of his papers.

To know the Negro do not quiz the cook in your kitchen, or the odd-job, all-service menial about your premises, or the local school-teacher or preacher. In general they will tell you what they know you wish to hear, or, on difficult matters, remain non-committal. To know the Negro do not fall foul of two or three publications of Chicago or New York: there are some pretty radical and rather bolshevistically inclined white papers, according to the Post Office Department, in those quarters. We do not regard them as representing White America. To know the Negro read his papers extensively, particularly those that issue from Atlanta, and Richmond, and Little Rock, and New Orleans, and Dallas, and Raleigh, and Louisville, and Chattanooga, and a score of other cities south of the Mason and Dixon Line, as well as those of the emigres in the North. Read their editorials, their sermons and addresses, and their news items; read their reports of the proceedings of their congresses, conventions, and conferences, their petitions and resolutions; read their poems and stories and dramatic sketches; look at their cartoons. This thing I have been doing, assiduously, and, I trust, with an open mind and friendly disposition, since mid-summer, 1919. After the riot in our nation's capital it seemed to me that the Negro's version of the story, whatever it was, should be heard. The riots that followed, North and South, East and West, confirmed