1027

NEGRO SHOULD NOT
QUERY POLITICIANS
SAYS THIS BLACK

Asking Where They Stand
Only Increases Race Feel-
ing, He Asserts.

Just before the election of November
3 a circular was mailed all candidates
to both branches of congress by the
National Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People, a negro organi-
zation, asking where each candidate
stood on the following:

Abrogation of the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth amendments.

Segregation in the federal service.

Segregation in the District of Co-
lumbia.

Anti-intermarriage laws.

Lynching.

Reduction of representation in the
states that disfranchise the negro.

J. Silas Harris, president of the Ne-
gro National Educational congress, has
given The Post a statement concerning
the questions and measures, in which
he says:

"The cost of printing, mailing and
distribution of such a circular must
have been considerable—far more than
the issues it sought to inject merited
or the financial condition of its pro-
moters warranted. There is really no
necessity for such an organization,
since it increases rather than dimin-
ishes the feeling between the two
races.

Up to the Negro.

"The final acceptance or rejection of
the fourteenth and fifteenth amend-
ments is a matter that rests almost en-
tirely with the negro himself. He can so
live as to make their annulment impos-
sible or their abrogation imperative.

The question of segregation in the
federal service and in the District of
Columbia is of trivial importance, and
the enactment of one or both into laws
would in no wise hinder the progress
of the race.

"Jim Crow cars in the District of Co-
lumbia are no worse than Jim Crow
cars in Texas, the Washington negro
being no better than his kinsman in
the Lone Star state.

"The most contemptible of all of the
questions propounded is that which
pertains to the anti-intermarriage
laws; only the negro who is endeavor-
ing to get away from his race opposes
the passage of such a law. The prin-
cipal contenders against such legisla-
tion are to be found among the negro
schoolteachers, many of whom are col-
ored only to the extent of drawing sal-
ary for misinstructing the negro youth,
and who are, in the main, responsible
for the restless condition of the race.

"All lawabiding citizens are unre-
servedly opposed to lynching, but the
causes which lead thereto must be
eliminated before lynching will become
a thing of the past.

83701

"The reduction of representation in
those states in which the negro is dis-
franchised needs no argument. If the
negro will prove himself worthy of
those rights that he now has, he will
soon have but little cause to complain,
of a denial of those rights to which he will
soon have but little cause to complain
of a denial of those rights to which he
feels himself entitled."