877

Ack'd
8/29/13

[stamp]
THE WHITE HOUSE
AUG 29 1913
RECEIVED

August 26, 1913.

His Excellency,
Hon. Woodrow Wilson,
Pres. U. S. A.,
Washington, D. C.,

152

Sir: -- Permit an interruption of your very
busy career to hear a plain statement of facts.

The ten millions of Negroes in this country being without
a single representative in either branch of Congress, or for
that matter in any other representative department of this
nation, must present their troubles to the nation's already
too busy President, in person.

Sir, do you know as a student of political science that
the American Negro is not accorded his full measure of rights
as a citizen? Have you thought of a prevalent tendency to make
of him a legal peon? Every other race in this country is placed
on his back by law. In other words he suffers from legal pro-
scription. This sentiment is afloat on the farm, in the shops,
in the legislatures, in Congress, and is even reflected in ju-
dicial decisions. Can this country have freedom and the lack of
it at the same time? The Negro may be dumb but certainly he is
not deaf nor blind.

Politics has injured his citizenship immeasurably, and
tends to make him unpatriotic. My conclusion may be invalid but
being founded on facts, as I know them, it is certainly allow-
able. Neither am I chargeable with radicalism, for 1 only state
the truth. Denied the right to vote in many sections, leaves

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