THE NEW POLITICS.
_The New Politics for the New Negro_
The world of the future will look upon the world of today as an
essentially new turning point in the path of human progress. All over
the world the spirit of democratic striving is making itself felt. The
new issues have brought forth new ideas of freedom, politics, industry
and society at large. The new Negro living in this new world is just as
responsive to these new impulses as other people are.
In the “good old days” it was quite easy to tell the Negro to follow in
the footsteps of those who had gone before. The mere mention of the name
Lincoln or the Republican party was sufficient to secure his allegiance
to that party which had seen him stripped of all political power and of
civil rights without protest—effective or otherwise.
Things are different now. The new Negro is demanding elective
representation in Baltimore, Chicago and other places. He is demanding
it in New York. The pith of the present occasion is, that he is no
longer begging or asking. He is demanding as a right that which he is in
position to enforce.
In the presence of this new demand the old political leaders are
bewildered, and afraid; for the old idea of Negro leadership by virtue
of the white man’s selection has collapsed. The new Negro leader must be
chosen by his fellows—by those whose strivings he is supposed to
represent.
Any man today who aspires to lead the Negro race must set squarely
before his face the idea of “Race First” Just as the white men of these
and other lands are white men before they are Christians, Anglo-Saxons
or Republicans; so the Negroes of this and other lands are intent upon
being Negroes before they are Christians, Englishmen, or Republicans.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Charity begins at home, and
our first duty is to ourselves. It is not what we wish but what we must,
that we are concerned with. The world, as it ought to be, is still for
us, as for others, the world that does not exist. The world as it is, is
the real world, and it is to that real world that we address ourselves.
Striving to be men, and finding no effective aid in government or in
politics, the Negro of the Western world must follow the path of the
Swadesha movement of India and the Sinn Fein movement of Ireland. The
meaning of both these terms is “ourselves first.” This is the mental
background of the new politics of the New Negro, and we commend it to
the consideration of all the political parties. For it is upon this
background that we will predicate such policies as shall seem to us
necessary and desirable.
In the British Parliament the Irish Home Rule party clubbed its full
strength and devoted itself so exclusively to the cause of Free Ireland
that it virtually dictated for a time the policies of Liberals and
Conservatives alike. The new Negro race in America will not achieve
political self-respect until it is in a position to organize itself as
politically independent party and follow the example of the Irish Home
Rulers. This is what will happen in American politics. —September, 1917.
_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 backbone of democracy—“for white people only,” and the civil service
says that Negroes must keep their place—at the bottom. So that they can
hardly be blamed for looking askance at any new gospel of freedom.
Freedom to them has been like one of
“those juggling fiends
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope.”
In this connection, some explanation of the former political solidarity
of those Negroes who were voters may be of service. Up to six years ago
the one great obstacle to the political progress of the colored people
was their sheep-like allegiance to the Republican party. They were
taught to believe that God had raised up a peculiar race of men called
Republicans who had loved the slaves so tenderly that they had taken
guns in their hands and rushed on the ranks of the southern slaveholders
to free the slaves; that this race of men was still in existence,
marching under the banner of the Republican party and showing their
great love for Negroes by appointing from six to sixteen near-Negroes to
soft political snaps. Today that great political superstition is falling
to pieces before the advance of intelligence among Negroes. They begin
to realize that they were sold out by the Republican party in 1876; that
in the last twenty-five years lynchings have increased, disfranchisement
has spread all over the South and “Jim-crow” cars run even into the
national capitol—with the continuing consent of a Republican Congress, a
Republican Supreme Court and Republican President.
Ever since the Brownsville affair, but more clearly since Taft declared
and put in force the policy of pushing out the few near-Negro
officeholders, the rank and file have come to see that the Republican
party is a great big sham. Many went over to the Democratic party
because, as the _Amsterdam News_ puts it, “They had nowhere else to go.”
Twenty years ago the colored men who joined that party were ostracized
as scalawags and crooks. But today, the defection to the Democrats of
such men as Bishop Walters, Wood, Morton, Carr and Langston—whose uncle
was a colored Republican Congressman from Virginia—has made the colored
democracy respectable and given quite a tone to political heterdoxy.
All this loosens the bonds of their allegiance and breaks the bigotry of
the last forty years. But of this change in their political view-point
the white world knows nothing. The two leading Negro newspapers are
subsidized by the same political pirates who own the title-deeds to the
handful of hirelings holding office in the name of the Negro race. One
of these papers is an organ of Mr. Washington, the other pretends to be
independent—that is, it must be bought on the installment plan, and both
of them are in New York. Despite this “conspiracy of silence” the
Negroes are waking up, are beginning to think for themselves, to look
with more favor on “new doctrines.” ¹
Today the politician who wants the support of the Negro voter will have
to give something more than piecrust promises. The old professional
“friend to the colored people” must have something more solid than the
name of Lincoln and party appointments.
We demand what the Irish and the Jewish voter get: nominations on the
party’s ticket in our own districts. And if we don’t get this we will
smash the party that refuses to give it.
For we are not Republicans, Democrats or Socialists any longer. We are
Negroes first. And we are no longer begging for sops. We demand, not
“recognition,” but representation, and we are out to throw our votes to
any party which gives us this, and withhold them from any party which
refuses to give it. No longer will we follow any leader whose job the
party controls. For we know that no leader so controlled can oppose such
party in our interests beyond a given point.
That is why so much interest attaches to the mass-meeting to be held at
Palace Casino on the 29th where the Citizens’ Committee will make its
report to the Negro voters of Harlem and tell them how it was “turned
down” by the local representatives of the Republican party when it
begged the boon of elective representation. All such rebuffs will make
for manhood-if we are men and will drive us to play in American politics
the same role which the Irish party played in British politics. That is
the new trend in Negro politics, and we must not let any party forget
it. —1917.
_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 Negro.
But a change for the better is approaching. Four years ago, the present
writer was propounding in lectures, indoors and outdoors, the thesis
that the Negro people of America would never amount to anything much
politically until they should see fit to imitate the Irish of Britain
and to organize themselves into a political party of their own whose
leaders, on the basis of this large collective vote, could “hold up”
Republicans, Democrats, Socialists or any other political group of
American whites. As in many other cases, we have lived to see time ripen
the fruits of our own thought for some one else to pluck. Here is the
editor of the _Challenge_ making a campaign along these very lines. His
version of the idea takes the form of advocating the nomination of a
Negro for the Presidency of the United States. In this form we haven’t
the slightest doubt that this idea will meet with a great deal of
ridicule and contempt. Nevertheless, we venture to prophesy that,
whether in the hands of Mr. Bridges or another, it will come to be
ultimately accepted as one of the finest contributions to Negro
statesmanship.
No one pretends, of course, that the votes of Negroes can elect a Negro
to the high office of President of the United States. Nor would any one
expect that the votes of white people will be forthcoming to assist them
in such a project. The only way in which a Negro could be elected
President of the United States would be by virtue of the voters not
knowing that the particular candidate was of Negro ancestry. This, we
believe, has already happened within the memory of living men. But, the
essential intent of this new plan is to furnish a focussing-point around
which the ballots of the Negro voters may be concentrated for the
realization of racial demands for justice and equality of opportunity
and treatment. It would be carrying “Race First” with a vengeance into
the arena of domestic politics. It would take the Negro voter out of the
ranks of the Republican, Democratic and Socialist parties and would
enable their leaders to trade the votes of their followers, openly and
above-board, for those things for which masses of men largely exchange
their votes.
Mr. Bridges will find that the idea of a Negro candidate for President
presupposes the creation of a purely Negro party and upon that
prerequisite he will find himself compelled to concentrate. Doubtless,
most of the political wise-acres of the Negro race will argue that the
idea is impossible because it antagonizes the white politicians of the
various parties. They will close their eyes to the fact that politics
implies antagonism and a conflict of interest. They will fail to see
that the only things which count with politicians are votes, and that,
just as one white man will cheerfully cut another white man’s throat to
get the dollars which a black man has, so will one white politician or
party cut another one’s throat politically to get the votes which black
men may cast at the polls. But these considerations will finally carry
the day. Let there be no mistake. The Negro will never be accepted by
the white American democracy except in so far as he can by the use of
force, financial, political or other, win, seize or maintain in the
teeth of opposition that position which he finds necessary to his own
security and salvation. And we Negroes may as well make up our minds now
that we can’t depend upon the good-will of white men in anything or at
any point where our interests and theirs conflict. Disguise it as we
may, in business, politics, education or other departments of life, we
as Negroes are compelled to fight for what we want to win from the white
world.
It is easy enough for those colored men whose psychology is shaped by
their white inheritance to argue the ethics of compromise and
inter-racial co-operation. But we whose brains are still unbastardized
must face the frank realities of this situation of racial conflict and
competition. Wherefore, it is well that we marshal our forces to
withstand and make head against the constant racial pressure. Action and
reaction are equal and opposite. Where there is but slight pressure a
slight resistance will suffice. But where, as in our case, that pressure
is grinding and pitiless, the resistance that would re-establish equal
conditions of freedom must of necessity be intense and radical. And it
is this philosophy which must furnish the motive for such a new and
radical departure as is implied in the joint idea of a Negro party in
American politics and a Negro candidate for the Presidency of these
United States. —June, 1920.
_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 White, of North Carolina, was the sole and last representative of
the black man with a ballot in the South.
This result was due largely to the characteristic stupidity of the Negro
voter. He was a Republican, he was. He would do anything with his ballot
for Abraham Lincoln—who was dead—but not a thing for himself and his
family, who were all alive and kicking. For this the Republican party
loved him so much that it permitted the Democrats to disfranchise him
while it controlled Congress and the courts, the army and navy, and all
the machinery of law-enforcement in the United States. With its
continuing consent, Jim-crowism, disfranchisement, segregation and
lynching spread abroad over the land. The end of it all was the
reduction of the Negro in the South to the position of a political serf,
an industrial peon and a social outcast.
Recently there has been developed in the souls of black folk a new
manhood dedicated to the proposition that, if all Americans are equal in
the matter of baring their breasts to foreign bayonets, then all
Americans must, by their own efforts, be made equal in balloting for
Presidents and other officers of the government. This principle is
compelling the Republican party in certain localities to consider the
necessity of nominating Negroes on its local electoral tickets. Yet the
old attitude of that party on the political rights of Negroes remains
substantially the same.
Here, for instance, is the Chicago convention, at which the Negro
delegates were lined up to do their duty by the party. Of course, these
delegates had to deal collectively with the white leaders. This was to
their mutual advantage. But the odd feature of the entire affair was
this, that, _Whereas the Negro people in the South are not free to cast
their votes, it was precisely from these voteless areas that the
national Republican leaders selected the political spokesmen for the
voting Negroes of the North._ Men who will not vote at the coming
election and men who, like Roscoe Simmons, never cast a vote in their
lives were the accredited representatives in whose hands lay the destiny
of a million Negro voters.
But there need be no fear that this insult will annoy the black brother
in the Republican ranks. A Negro Republican generally runs the
rhinoceros and the elephant a close third. In plain English, the average
Negro Republican is too stupid to see and too meek to mind. Then, too,
here is Fate’s retribution for the black man in the North who has never
cared enough to fight (the Republican party) for the political freedom
of his brother in the South, but left him to rot under poll-tax laws and
grandfather clauses. The Northern white Democrats, for letting their
Southern brethren run riot through the Constitution, must pay the
penalty of being led into the ditch by the most ignorant, stupid and
vicious portion of their party. Even so, the Northern Negro Republican,
for letting his Southern brother remain a political ragamuffin, must now
stomach the insult of this same ragamuffin dictating the destiny of the
freer Negroes of the North. In both cases the tail doth wag the dog
because of “the solid South.” Surely, “the judgments of the Lord are
true and righteous altogether!” —July, 1920.
_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 thirteenth amendment, which, if the Southerners
had not been so obstinate, would have bridged the chasm. For this
amendment proposed to make the slavery of the black man in America
eternal and inescapable. It provided that no amendment to the
Constitution, or any other proposition affecting slavery in any way,
could ever be legally presented upon the floor of Congress unless its
mover had secured the previous consent of _every Senator and
Representative from the slave-holding States_. It put teeth into the
Fugitive Slave Law and absolutely gave the Negro over into the keeping
of his oppressors.
Most Negro Americans (and white ones, too) think it fashionable to
maintain the most fervid faith and deepest ignorance about points in
their national history of which they should be informed. We therefore
submit that these facts are open and notorious to those who know
American history. The record will be found slimly and shame-facedly
given in McPherson’s “History of the Rebellion”; at indignant length in
Blaine’s “Twenty Years of Congress” and Horace Greeley’s “The Great
American Conflict.” The document can be examined in Professor
Macdonald’s “Select Documents of United States History.” These works are
to be found in every public library, and we refer to them here because
there are “intellectual” Negroes today who are striving secretly, when
they dare not do so openly, to perpetuate the bonds of serfdom which
bind the Negro Americans to the Republican party. This bond of serfdom,
this debt of gratitude, is supposed to hinge on the love which Abraham
Lincoln and his party are supposed to have borne towards the Negro; and
the object of this appeal to the historical record is to show that that
record demonstrates that if the Negro owes any debt to the Republican
party it is a debt of execration and of punishment rather than one of
gratitude.
It is an astounding fact that in his First Inaugural Address Abraham
Lincoln gave his explicit approval to the substance of the Crittenden
resolutions which the joint committee referred to above had collectively
taken over. This demonstrates that the Republican party at the very
beginning of its contact with the Negro was willing to sell the Negro,
bound hand and foot, for the substance of its own political control.
This Thirteenth Amendment was adopted by six or eight Northern States,
including Pennsylvania and Illinois; and if Fort Sumter had not been
fired upon it would have become by State action the law of the land.
The Republican party did not fight for the freedom of the Negro, but for
the maintenance of its own grip on the government which the election of
Abraham Lincoln had secured. If any one wants to know for what the
Republican party fought he will find it in such facts as this: That
thousands of square miles of the people’s property were given away to
Wall Street magnates who had corrupted the Legislature in their effort
to build railroads on the government’s money. The sordid story is given
in “Forty Years in Wall Street,” by the banker, Henry Clews, and others
who took part in this raid upon the resources of a great but stupid
people.
But the Civil War phase of the Republican party’s treason to the Negro
is not the only outstanding one, as was shown by the late General
Tremaine in his “Sectionalism Unmasked.” Not only was General Grant
elected in 1868 by the newly created Negro vote, as the official records
prove, but his re-election in 1872 was effected by the same means. So
was the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. Yet when the election
of Hayes had been taken before the overwhelmingly Republican Congress
this shameless party made a deal whereby, in order to pacify the white
“crackers” of the South, the Negro was given over into the hands of the
triumphant Ku-Klux; the soldiers who protected their access to the
ballot box in the worst southern states were withdrawn, while the
“crackers” agreed as the price of this favor to withdraw their
opposition to the election of Hayes. For this there exists ample proof
which will be presented upon the challenge of any politician or editor.
As a Republican Senator from New England shamelessly said, it was a
matter of “Root, hog, or die” for the helpless Negro whose ballots had
buttressed the Republican party’s temple of graft and corruption. So was
reconstruction settled against the Negro by the aid and abetting of the
Republican party.
And since that time lynching, disfranchisement and segregation have
grown with the Republican party in continuous control of the government
from 1861 to 1920—with the exception of eight years of Woodrow Wilson
and eight years of Grover Cleveland. With their continuing consent the
South has been made solid, so that at every Republican convention
delegates who do not represent a voting constituency but a grafting
collection of white postmasters and their Negro lackeys can turn the
scales of nomination in favor of any person whom the central clique of
the party, controlled as it has always been by Wall Street financiers,
may foist upon a disgusted people, as they have done in the case of
Harding. So long as the South remains solid, so long will the Republican
delegates from the South consist of only this handful of hirelings; so
long will they be amenable to the “discipline” which means the pressure
of the jobs by which they get their bread. Therefore the Republican
leaders will know that the solidarity of the South is their most
valuable asset; and they are least likely to do anything that will break
that solidarity. The Republican party’s only interest in the Negro is to
get his vote for nothing; and so long as Negro Republican leaders remain
the contemptible grafters and political procurers that they are at
present, so long will it get Negro votes for nothing.
Through it all the Republican party remains the most corrupt influence
among Negro Americans. It buys up by jobs, appointments and gifts those
Negroes who in politics should be the free and independent spokesmen of
Negro Americans. But worse than this is its private work in which it
secretly subsidizes men who pose before the public as independent
radicals. These intellectual pimps draw private supplementary incomes
from the Republican party to sell out the influence of any movement,
church or newspaper with which they are connected. Of the enormity of
this mode of procedure and the extent to which it saps the very springs
of Negro integrity the average Negro knows nothing. Its blighting,
baleful influence is known only to those who have trained ears to hear
and trained eyes to see.
And now in this election the standards will advance and the cohorts go
forward under the simple impulse of the same corrupting influence. But
whether the new movement for a Negro party comes to a head or not, the
new Negro in America will never amount to anything politically until he
enfranchises himself from the Grand Old Party which has made a political
joke of him. —July, 1920.
1. The first part of this editorial is reprinted from an article
written in 1912.