In 1910, W. E. B. Du Bois began his vision of committing to print the work of the “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People”. The FIRST edition’s masthead gives the Title: “THE CRISIS” with the by-line: “A Record of The Darker Races”. Volume One, November 1910, Number One. The additional Cover credits follow: “Edited by W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS, with the co-operation of Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W. S. Braithwaite and M. D. Maclean.” The Content is also Cover Page: Along the Color Line (Pg.) 3. Opinion 7. Editorial 10. The N.A.A.C.P. 12. Athens and Brownsville 13 (By MOORFIELD STOREY). The Burden 14. What to Read 15.
It is the EDITORIAL section of 3 pages, sub headed THE CRISIS which calls out for attention as this new year 2025 commences Black History Month. In excerpt: “THE object of this publication is to set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people. It takes its name from the fact that the editors believe that this is a critical time in the history of the advancement of men. Catholicity and tolerance, reason and forbearance can today make the world-old dream of human brotherhood approach realization; while bigotry and prejudice, emphasized race consciousness and force can repeat the awful history of the contact of nations and groups in the past.”
“The policy of THE Crisis will be simple and well defined: It will first and foremost be a newspaper: it will record important happenings and movements in the world which bear on the great problem of inter-racial relations, and especially those which affect the Negro-American.”
“Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempt to gain these rights and realize these ideals. The magazine will be the organ of no clique or party and will avoid personal rancor of all sorts.”
“Human contact, human acquaintanceship, human sympathy is the great solvent of human problems. Separate school children by wealth and the result is class misunderstanding and hatred. Separate them by race and the result is war. Separate them by color and they grow up without learning the tremendous truth that it is impossible to judge the mind of a man by the color of his face. Is there any truth that America needs to learn more?”
“Back of this demand for the segregation of black folk in public institutions, or the segregation of Italians, or the segregation of any class, is almost always a shirking of responsibility on the part of the public —a desire to put off on somebody else the work of social uplift, while they themselves enjoy its results.”
“This is the history of color discrimination in general in Philadelphia, New York and Chicago. When the discrimination comes in various lines of life, it does not bear simply on those who are not hurt by it —who do not feel it, and who by their position naturally fall outside the lines of discrimination, but it comes with crushing weight upon those other Negroes to whom the reasons for discrimination do not apply in the slightest respect, and they are thus made to bear a double burden. Further than this, when the discrimination is once established, immediately the public provisions for the segregated portion become worse.”
“If it is discrimination against poor people, then the schools for the poor people become worse than those for the rich —less well equipped and less well supervised. If it is discrimination against colored people, the colored school becomes poor, with less money and less means of efficiency.”
“The argument, then, for color discrimination in schools and in public institutions is an argument against democracy and an attempt to shift public responsibility from the shoulders of the public to the shoulders of some class who are unable to defend themselves.”
note: Published some 6 months prior to William Jasper Hale’s 1911 appointment as founding Principal of The Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School at Nashville; as the last and final of the “19 Morrill Act HBCU Land Grant Institutions”.
All inquiries By email: talk2therev@icloud.com. “Words of Life Study” Wednesdays on Zoom. 12:00 Noon & 6:30 pm CST. Join the Dialogue at my “Swellcast”. At all times: https://SWELLCAST.com/therev
