853

Oswald Garrison Villars
Refers to his interview with the President in May
at which time he presented the plan for a race commis-
sion to be composed of both white and colored men and
women, to be modeled on lines of the Country Life Com-
mission and the Industrial Commission, and to be financ-
ed by private subscriptions to the extent of $50,000 or
$60,000. Urges that the President approve the printed
plan for the Commission - another copy of which he en-
closes; that is, that the President authorize him to
attempt to raise the necessary funds and to say to possi-
ble subscribers that in the event the full amount is
raised the President will name and appoint the Commission
and, if its report is satisfactory, transmit it to Con-
gress. Such action, he says, will not commit the
President to the names he will suggest for the Commission
or to any program beyond an impartial, non-partisan inves-
tigation of the race situation in the U. S. If the
money is raised by the first of the year, all well and
good; if not the project will be dropped; meanwhile
nothing will be said of it in the public press.

Is particularly urgent that the President act at
once because of the intense dissatisfaction of the
negroes at their treatment by the administration thus
far. Encloses (By permission) a letter from Dr.
Booker T. Washington asserting that never in his life has
he seen the colored people so discouraged and embittered
as they are at present. Thinks that nothing short of
the appointment of such a commission and the prompt ap-
pointment of capable colored men to certain offices will
in any way mitigate this feeling.

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