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[stamp: THE WHITE HOUSE
JULY 7 1914
RECEIVED]

New York City, July 4, 1914.

Ackgd
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Hon. Woodrow Wilson, President
of the United States,

Mr. President:-

If it should be the pleasure of the President to ap-
point colored men to federal positions, strictly upon the ground of
worth and patriotic merit, in places held by men of color, who have
followed different public teachings, we most humbly beg, in the name
of our organization, formed in New York fifteen years ago for the
purpose of destroying race prejudices throughout the land, to pre-
sent a name, worthy of your high consideration. John B. Syphax was
born at Arlington, Va., lived there and in Washington, D. C. He
served in the State Legislature from Alexandria, while Gen. Kemper
was governor of the State.

Encouraged by the governor by Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, and
others, he began the work of causing confidence and friendship to
exist between the white and colored people of Virginia. When he had
finished his work, through four colored conventions, had broken the
solid colored vote, and helped to elect Gen. Fitzhugh Lee governor,
that brave and generous Virginian sent Mr. Syphax with a colored del-
egation to President Cleveland with these noble words, "I hope to
live to see the day, when the people of this country will not be
divided on account of race or color, but as to what should best be done
to promote the growth and glory of this Republic.

To prove the race feeling in Virginia, it is the boast
of Mr. Syphax, that in a regular State convention of the Democratic
party, at Roanoke, he occupied a seat in the same district delegation
with Mayor Smoot of Alexandria and Gen. W. H. F. Lee, and never re-
ceived an unpleasant look.

He sold a parcel of land left to him by his mother at
Arlington, to whom it was given by G. W. P. Custis, in order to be able
to come to New York and help elect Mr. Cleveland to the Presidency.

He has sought to relieve the colored race of the North,
East and West from false political teachings and suspicions kept
alive by Republican Politicians.

In the last election, for President, he was assigned by
the National Democratic Comittee to the State of West Virginia.
He was kicked and beaten in the night at Wellsburg, eighteen miles from
Wheeling, by a number of negroes led by a Republican office seeker.
In an address through the columns of the Wheeling Register he appealed
"to every brave and honest white man in West Virginia to vote for
Woodrow Wilson".

Mr. Syphax is a strict follower of the teachings of
Thomas Jefferson, holding that the great Virginian stood alone, in dark
days, for freedom and justice to the colored race.

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