When Africa Awakes - free ebook by Hubert H. Harrison

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When Africa Awakes

Hubert H. Harrison

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WHEN AFRICA AWAKES The “inside Story” of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World

WHEN AFRICA AWAKES The “inside Story” of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World

By HUBERT H. HARRISON, D.S.C. Author of “The Negro and the Nation,” “Lincoln and Liberty,” and Associate Editor of the Negro World COPYRIGHTED By HUBERT H. HARRISON, 1920. PUBLISHED BY THE PORRO PRESS 513 Lenox Avenue NEW YORK CITY 1920 1920 The Great War of 1914–1918 has served to liberate many new ideas undreamt of by those who rushed humanity into that bath of blood. During that war the idea of democracy was widely advertised, especially in the English-speaking world; mainly as a convenient c

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INTRODUCTORY

INTRODUCTORY

(From The Voice of July 4, 1917.) The Liberty League of Negro-Americans, which was recently organized by the Negroes of New York, presents the most startling program of any organization of Negroes in the country today. This is nothing less than the demand that the Negroes of the United States be given a chance to enthuse over democracy for themselves in America before they are expected to enthuse over democracy in Europe. The League is composed of “Negro-Americans, loyal to their country in ever

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Launching the Liberty League

Launching the Liberty League

After the Rev. Dr. Cooper, the pastor of Bethel, had addressed the meeting, the following resolutions were adopted and a petition to Congress was prepared and circulated. In addition the meeting sent a telegram to the Jews of Russia, congratulating them upon the acquisition of full political and civil rights and expressing the hope that the United States might soon follow the democratic example of Russia....

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Resolutions Passed at the Liberty League Meeting

Resolutions Passed at the Liberty League Meeting

Two thousand Negro-Americans assembled in mass-meeting at Bethel A.M.E. Church to protest against lynching in the land of liberty, and disfranchisement in the home of democracy have, after due deliberation, adopted the following resolutions and make them known to the world at large in the earnest hope that whenever the world shall be made safe for democracy our corner of that world will not be forgotten. We believe that this world war will and must result in a larger measure of democracy for the

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The Liberty League’s Petition to the House of Representatives of the United States, July 4, 1917

The Liberty League’s Petition to the House of Representatives of the United States, July 4, 1917

We, the Negro people of the United States, loyal to our country in every respect, and obedient to her laws, respectfully petition your honorable body for a redress of the specific grievances and flagrant violations of your own laws as set forth in this statement. We beg to call your attention to the discrepancy which exists between the public profession of the government that we are lavishing our resources of men and money in this war in order to make the world safe for democracy, and the just a

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The East St. Louis Horror

The East St. Louis Horror

The occurrence should serve to enlarge rapidly the membership of The Liberty League of Negro-Americans which was organized to take practical steps to help our people all over the land in the protection of their lives and liberties. —July 4th, 1917....

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“Arms and the Man”

“Arms and the Man”

In its editorial on “The East St. Louis Horror” The Voice said: How can America hold up its hands in hypocritical horror at foreign barbarism while the red blood of the Negro is clinging to those hands? So long as the President and Congress of the United States remain dumb in the presence of barbarities in their own land which would tip their tongues with righteous indignation if they had been done in Belgium, Ireland or Galicia? And what are the Negroes to do? Are they expected to re-echo with

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The Negro and the Labor Unions

The Negro and the Labor Unions

There are two kinds of labor unionism; the A.F. of L. kind and the other kind. So far, the Negro has been taught to think that all unionism was like the unionism of the American Federation of Labor, and because of this ignorance, his attitude toward organized labor has been that of the scab. For this no member of the A.F. of L. can blame the Negro. The policy of that organization toward the Negro has been damnable. It has kept him out of work and out of the unions as long as it could; and when i

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Lynching: Its Cause and Cure

Lynching: Its Cause and Cure

Last week we had occasion to comment on the resignation of Mr. John R. Shillady from the secretaryship of the N.A.A.C.P. Mr. Shillady’s statement accompanying his resignation contains these significant words:— “I am less confident than heretofore of the speedy success of the association’s full program and of the probability of overcoming within a reasonable period the forces opposed to Negro equality by the means and methods which are within the association’s power to employ.” That the N.A.A.C.P

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Why Is the Red Cross?

Why Is the Red Cross?

But, alack and alas! The splendid spirit of the Swiss infidel is seemingly too high for Christian race-prejudice to reach. Where he would not discriminate even against enemies, the American branch of his international society is discriminating against most loyal friends and willing helpers—when they are Negroes. Up to date the American Red Cross Society, which receives government aid and co-operation to help win the war, cannot cite the name of a single Negro woman as a nurse. True, it says that

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A Hint of Our Reward

A Hint of Our Reward

The wisdom of our contemporary ancestors, having decided that “We Negroes must make every sacrifice to help win the war and lay aside our just demands for the present that we may win a shining place on the pages of history,” it must be cold comfort to learn that the first after-the-war schoolbook of American history is out, that it is written by Reuben Gold Thwaites and Calvin Noyes Kendall, that it devotes thirty-one pages to the war and America’s part in the war, and that not one word is said

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The Negro at the Peace Congress

The Negro at the Peace Congress

Now that they have helped to win the war against Germany, the Negro people in these United States feel the absurdity of the situation in which they find themselves. They have given lavishly of their blood and treasure. They have sent their young men overseas as soldiers, and were willing to send their young women overseas as nurses; but the innate race-prejudice of the American Red Cross prevented them. They have contributed millions of dollars to the funds of this same Red Cross and scores of m

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Africa and the Peace

Africa and the Peace

“This war, disguise it how we may, is really being fought over African questions.” So said Sir Harry Johnston, one of the foremost authorities on Africa, in the London Sphere in June, 1917. We wonder if the Negroes of the Western world quite realize what this means. Wars are not fought for ideals but for lands whose populations can be put to work, for resources that can be minted into millions, for trade that can be made to enrich the privileged few. When King Leopold of Belgium and Thomas Fortu

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“They Shall Not Pass!”

“They Shall Not Pass!”

When heroic France was holding the Kaiser’s legions at bay her inflexible resolution found expression in the phrase, “Ils ne passeront pas!”—they shall not pass! The white statesmen who run our government in Washington seem to have adopted the poilu’s watchword in a less worthy cause. The seventy-odd Negro “delegates” to the Peace Congress who have got themselves “elected” at mass-meetings and concerts for the purpose of going to France are not going—unless they can walk, swim, or fly. For the g

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A Cure for the Ku-Klux

A Cure for the Ku-Klux

It was in the city of Pulaski in Giles County, Tennessee, that the original Ku-Klux Klan was organized in the latter part of 1865. The war had hardly been declared officially at an end when the cowardly “crackers” who couldn’t lick the Yankees began organizing to take it out of the Negroes. They passed laws declaring that any black man who couldn’t show three hundred dollars should be declared a vagrant; that every vagrant should be put to work in the chain-gang on the public works of their citi

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The Drift in Politics

The Drift in Politics

The Negroes of America—those of them who think—are suspicious of everything that comes from the white people of America. They have seen that every movement for the extension of democracy here has broken down as soon as it reached the color line. Political democracy declared that “all men are created equal,” meant only all white men; the Christian church found that the brotherhood of man did not include God’s bastard children; the public school system proclaimed that the school house was the back

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A Negro for President

A Negro for President

For many years the Negro has been the football of American politics. Kicked from pillar to post, he goes begging, hat in hand, from a Republican convention to a Democratic one. Always is he asking some one else to do something for him. Always is he begging, pleading, demanding or threatening. In all these cases his dependence is on the good will, sense of justice or gratitude of the other fellow. And in none of these cases is the political reaction of the other fellow within the control of the N

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When the Tail Wags the Dog

When the Tail Wags the Dog

Politically, these United States may be roughly divided into two sections, so far as the Negroes are concerned. In the North the Negro population has the vote. In the South it hasn’t. This was not always so. There was a time when the Negro voters of the South sent in to Congress a thin but steady stream of black men who represented their political interests directly. Due to the misadventures of the reconstruction period, this stream was shut off until at the beginning of this century George Whit

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The Grand Old Party

The Grand Old Party

In the early days of 1861, when the Southern Senators and Representatives were relinquishing their seats in the United States Congress and hurling cartels of defiant explanation broadcast, the Republican party in Congress, under the leadership of Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts, organized a joint committee made up of thirteen members of the Senate and thirty-three members of the House to make overtures to the seceding Southerners. The result of this friendly gesture was a proposed thirtee

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Our Professional “Friends”

Our Professional “Friends”

It was as a fairly good representative of the class of “good white friends of the colored people” that Miss Mary White Ovington, the chairman of the New York Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, sent to The Voice the following bossy and dictatorial note: My dear Mr. Harrison, I don’t see any reason for another organization, or another paper. If you printed straight socialism it might be different. Yours truly, MARY W. OVINGTON. These “good white people” must

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Shillady Resigns

Shillady Resigns

Mr. John R. Shillady, ex-secretary of the N.A.A.C.P., states in his letter of resignation that “I am less confident than heretofore of the speedy success of the association’s full program and of the probability of overcoming within a reasonable period the forces opposed to Negro equality by the means and methods which are within the association’s power to employ.” In this one sentence Mr. Shillady, the worker on the inside, puts in suave and serenely diplomatic phrase the truth which people on t

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Our White Friends

Our White Friends

In the good old days when the black man’s highest value in the white man’s eye was that of an object of benevolence especially provided by the Divine mind for calling out those tender out-pourings of charity which were so dear to the self-satisfied Caucasian—in those days the white men who fraternized with black people could do so as their guides, philosophers and friends without incurring any hostility on the part of black folk. Today, however, the white man who mixes with the black brother is

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A Tender Point

A Tender Point

When the convention of turtles assembled on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland it was found absolutely impossible to get a tortoise elected as leader. All turtles, conservative and radical, agreed that a land and water creature, who was half one thing and half another, was not an ideal choice for leader of a group which lived exclusively in the water. Whenever a leader of the Irish has to be selected by the Irish it is an Irishman who is selected. No Irishman would be inclined to dispute the fact t

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The Descent of Du Bois

The Descent of Du Bois

In a recent bulletin of the War Department it was declared that “justifiable grievances” were producing and had produced “not disloyalty, but an amount of unrest and bitterness which even the best efforts of their leaders may not be able always to guide.” This is the simple truth. The essence of the present situation lies in the fact that the people whom our white masters have “recognized” as our leaders (without taking the trouble to consult us) and those who, by our own selection, had actually

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When the Blind Lead

When the Blind Lead

In the February issue of the Crisis its editor begins a brief editorial on “Leadership,” with the touching reminder that “Many a good cause has been killed by suspected leadership.” How strikingly do these words bring back to us Negroes those dark days of 1918! At that time the editor of the Crisis was offering certain unique formulas of leadership that somehow didn’t “take.” His “Close Ranks” editorial and the subsequent slump in the stock of his leadership have again illustrated the truth long

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Just Crabs

Just Crabs

Once upon a time a Greedy Person went rummaging along the lagoon with a basket and a stick in quest of Crabs, which he needed for the Home Market. (Now, this was in the Beginning of Things, Best Beloved.) These were Land Crabs—which, you know, are more luscious than Sea Crabs, being more Primitive and more full of meat. He dug into their holes with his stick, routed them out, packed them on their backs in his basket and took them home. Several trips he made with his basket and his stick, and all

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Race First Versus Class First

Race First Versus Class First

In the days when the Socialist Party of America was respectable, although it never drew lines of racial separation in the North, it permitted those lines to be drawn in the South. It had no word of official condemnation for the Socialists of Tennessee who prevented Theresa Malkiel in 1912 from lecturing to Negroes on Socialism either in the same hall with them or in meetings of their own. It was the national office of the party which in that same presidential year refused to route Eugene V. Debs

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An Open Letter to the Socialist Party of New York City

An Open Letter to the Socialist Party of New York City

Gentlemen: During 1917 the white leaders of the Republican party were warned that the Negroes of this city were in a mood unfavorable to the success of their party at the polls and that this mood was likely to last until they changed their party’s attitude toward the Negro masses. They scouted this warning because the Negroes whom they had selected to interpret Negro sentiment for them still confidently assured them that there had been no change of sentiment on the part of the Negro people, and

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“Patronize Your Own.”

“Patronize Your Own.”

The doctrine of “Race First,” although utilized largely by the Negro business men of Harlem, has never received any large general support from them. If we remember rightly, it was the direct product of the out-door and indoor lecturers who flourished in Harlem between 1914 and 1916. Not all who were radical shared this sentiment. For instance, we remember the debate between Mr. Hubert Harrison, then president of the Liberty League, and Mr. Chandler Owen, at Palace Casino in December, 1918, in wh

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The Women of Our Race

The Women of Our Race

America owes much to the foreigner and the Negro in America owes even more. For it was the white foreigner who first proclaimed that the only music which America had produced that was worthy of the name was Negro music. It naturally took some time for this truth to sink in, and, in the meantime, the younger element of Negroes, in their weird worship of everything that was white, neglected and despised their own race-music. More than one college class had walked out, highly insulted, when their w

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To the Young Men of My Race

To the Young Men of My Race

The Negro is already at work on the problems of reconstruction. He finds himself in the midst of a world which is changing to its very foundations. Yet millions of Negroes haven’t now—and have never had—the slightest knowledge or idea of what those foundations are. How can they render effective aid to the world without understanding something of how the world, or society, is arranged, how it runs, and how it is run? No one, friendly or unfriendly, can deny that the Negroes of America do wish to

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U-Need-a Biscuit

U-Need-a Biscuit

Perhaps we are wasting our time in offering an explanation to the white men of this country. It has been proven again and again that the Anglo-Saxon is such a professional liar that with the plain truth before his eyes he will still profess to be seeing something else. Nevertheless we make the attempt because we believe that a double benefit may accrue to us thereby. Does any reader who lived through the years from 1914 to 1919 and is still living remember what “Democracy” was? It was the U-need

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Our Larger Duty

Our Larger Duty

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the Color Line. But what is the Color Line? It is the practice of the theory that the colored and “weaker” races of the earth shall not be free to follow “their own way of life and of allegiance,” but shall live, work and be governed after such fashion as the dominant white race may decide. Consider for a moment the full meaning of this fact. Of the seventeen hundred million people that dwell on our earth today more than twelve hundred milli

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Help Wanted for Hayti

Help Wanted for Hayti

While we were at war our President declared, over and over again, that we were calling upon the flower of our manhood to go to France and make itself into manure in order that the world might be made safe for democracy. Today the deluded people of the earth realize that the accent is on the “moc(k).” Ireland, India and Egypt are living proofs that the world has been lied to. We need not bite our tongues about it. Those who told us that the world would be made safe for democracy have lied to us.

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The Cracker in the Caribbean

The Cracker in the Caribbean

“Meanwhile the feet of civilized slayers have woven across the fair face of the earth a crimson mesh of murder and rapine. The smoke of blazing villages ascends in lurid holocaust to the bloody god of battles from the altar of human hate in the obscene temple of race prejudice.” These words, which we wrote in 1912, come back to our mind eight years later with no abatement of the awful horror which they express. And what gives a special point to them at this moment is the bloody rape of the repub

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When Might Makes Right

When Might Makes Right

A correspondent whose letter appears elsewhere raises the question of the relation between mental competence and property rights. “Does inability to govern destroy title to ownership?” he asks. The white race assumes an affirmative answer in every case in which the national property of darker and weaker races are concerned and deny it in cases in which their own national property interests are involved. It seems strange that whereas the disturbances occurring in our own southern states are never

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Bolshevism in Barbados

Bolshevism in Barbados

Among the newspapers in Barbados there is a charming old lady by the name of the Barbados Standard . From time to time this faded creature gets worried about the signs of awakening observable in those Negroes who happen to be living in the twentieth century. Then she shakes and shivers, throws a few fits, froths at the mouth, and, spasmodically flapping her arms, yells to all and sundry that there is “Bolshevism among Negroes.” Recently this stupid old thing and its congeners have discovered evi

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A New International

A New International

In the eyes of our overlords internationalism is a thing of varying value. When Mr. Morgan wants to float a French or British loan in the United States; when Messrs. Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Orlando want to stabilize their joint credit and commerce; when areas like the Belgian Congo are to be handed over to certain rulers without the consent of their inhabitants—then the pæans of praise go up to the god of “internationalism” in the temple of “civilization.” But when any portion of th

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The Rising Tide of Color

The Rising Tide of Color

Mr. William Randolph Hearst, the ablest white publicist in America, has broken loose, and, in a recent editorial in the New York American , has absolutely endorsed every word of the warning recently issued by Lothrop Stoddard in his book, “The Rising Tide of Color.” In justice to Mr. Hearst, it must be pointed out (as we ourselves did in 1916) that he saw this handwriting on the wall long ago. Mr. Hearst is not particularly famous as a friend of the darker races; but one must give him credit for

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The White War and the Colored Races

The White War and the Colored Races

[The following article was written in 1918 when the Great War still raged. It was written for a certain well known radical magazine; but was found to be “too radical” for publication at that time. It is given now to the Negro public partly because the underlying explanation which it offers of the root-cause of the war has not yet received treatment (even among socialistic radicals) and partly because recent events in China, India, Africa and the United States have proved the accuracy of its fore

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Reading for Knowledge

Reading for Knowledge

“Modern Science and Modern Thought,” by Samuel Laing; “The Origin of Species” and “The Descent of Man,” by Charles Darwin; “The Principles of Sociology” and “First Principles,” by Herbert Spencer; “The Childhood of the World” and “The Childhood of Religion,” by Edward Clodd; “Anthropology,” by E. B. Tylor (very easy to read and a work of standard information on Races, Culture and the origins of Religion, Art and Science); Buckle’s “History of Civilization”; Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roma

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Education and the Race

Education and the Race

In the dark days of Russia, when the iron heel of Czarist despotism was heaviest on the necks of the people, those who wished to rule decreed that the people should remain ignorant. Loyalty to interests that were opposed to theirs was the prevailing public sentiment of the masses. In vain did the pioneers of freedom for the masses perish under the knout and the rigors of Siberia. They sacrificed to move the masses, but the masses, strong in their love of liberty, lacked the head to guide the mov

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The Racial Roots of Culture

The Racial Roots of Culture

Education is the name which we give to that process by which the ripened generation brings to bear upon the rising generation the stored-up knowledge and experience of the past and present generations to fit it for the business of life. If we are not to waste money and energy, our educational systems should shape our youth for what we intend them to become. We Negroes, in a world in which we are the under dog, must shape our youth for living in such a world. Shall we shape them mentally to accep

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The New Knowledge for the New Negro

The New Knowledge for the New Negro

Quite a good deal of unnecessary dispute has been going on these days among the guardians of the inner temple as to just which form of worship is necessary at the shrine of the Goddess Knowledge. In plain English, the pundits seem to be at odds in regard to the kind of education which the Negro should have. Of course, it has long been known that the educational experts of white America were at odds with ours on the same subject; now, however, ours seem to be at odds among themselves. The essence

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“Darkwater”

“Darkwater”

An unwritten law has existed for a long time to the effect that the critical estimates which fix the status of a book by a Negro author shall be written by white men. Praise or blame—. the elementary criticism which expresses only the reviewer’s feelings in reference to the book—has generally been the sole function of the Negro critic. And the results have not been good. For, in the first place, white critics (except in music) have been too prone to judge the product of a Negro author as Dr. Joh

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The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy

The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy

By Lothrop Stoddard About ten years ago Mr. B. L. Putnam Weale in “The Conflict of Color” tried to open the eyes of the white men of the world to the fact that they were acting as their own grave diggers. About the same time Mr. Melville E. Stone, president of the Associated Press, in an address before the Quill Club on “Race Prejudice in the Far East” reinforced the same grisly truth. Five years later “T. Shirby Hodge” wrote “The White Man’s Burden: A Satirical Forecast,” and ended it with thes

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THE BLACK MAN’S BURDEN

THE BLACK MAN’S BURDEN

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources. Except for the changes noted below, misspelling in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained....

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