770

Personal

[stamp: THE WHITE HOUSE
APR 29, 1913
RECEIVED

152

April 26, 1913.

Recvd
4/29/13

The Honorable,
The Secretary to the President,
White House,
Washington, D.C.

Dear Sir:

I[m]have the honor to lay before you the enclosed carbon
copy of my letter of even date to Dr. I. W. L. Roundtree. It speaks
for itself.

As to whether or not President Wilson will or will not ap-
point any Negro or Negroes to office is a matter concerning which I
have not one word to say. That, of course, is for him to decide and I
have no doubt that he will decide it the way it suits him to decide it.
But when a member of the Negro race writes to you and tells you that
right thinking Negroes agree that it is right to withhold from Negroes
a thing which men of all nations celebrate as a sacred gift of freedom,
then I feel it is time to let you know that such Negroes do not repre-
sent the best and the innermost thought of the Negro race on the sub-
ject herein referred to.,

Jean Finot, the distinguished French savant, has given to the
world in his "Race Prejudice" the most notable work extant on that ter-
rible subject. In that masterpiece he shows that race prejudice is
above all things unreasoning. That being true, it ill behooves a mem-
ber of a race which notoriously suffers from the injustice of race pre-
judice to strike a truce with [Molesh?] by admitting that a state of mind
which is shown to be devoid of every vestige of reasonableness, is the
right state of mind to apply in formulating a policy toward upwards of
ten million human beings.

I denonce I. W. L. Roundtree (may his tribe decrease) for
the miserable letter he wrote you under date of the 15th inst., and I ask
that these papers be filed as a solemn (if also impotent) protest against
the destructive doctrine laid down by him. If he does not realise what
his letter means then he is an idiot; if he does realise it, then he is
a caitiff.

Very respectfully,
Your most humble servant,
James C. Waters, Jr..
1339 T Street, N. W.

1 enclosure.

83445