610

August 5, 1913

152a

Hon. Woodrow Wilson
President of the United States.
Washington, D.C.

Mr. President, Sir;-

On behalf of the United Colored Democracy as a
political organization and in order to voice the feeling and thought
of the ten million persons of Negro blood who justly aspire to the
maintenance of their privileges as citizens in this great democracy,
I am reluctantly compelled to express to you a respectful, but none
the less earnest, protest at the course your administration is pur-
suing with regard to the status of the colored people of this coun-
try.

In taking this step I have in mind the fact that
never, perhaps, since the first term of Abraham Lincoln has a Presi-
dent of the United States found himself obliged to face, immediate-
ly after his inauguration, questions of such momentous importance as
have successively occupied your attention since the Fourth of March,
last. But while the Tariff, the California Alien Lan Laws, the
Mexican Government, the compensation of the family of an Italian who
was lynched in Florida are certainly matters deserving of the consi-
deration of the Chief Executive of the Nation, I feel that no question
can be of more urgent concern to you than the future of ten million
citizens within the borders of the United States. The apparent
complacency which has marked the attitude of the colored people to-
wards the campaign for their reduction to serfdom which certain re-
actionary elements in the Democratic Party have inaugurated coinci-
dentably with your assumption of the Presidency cannot by any means
be regarded as an indication of our satisfaction with the movement
to place us in the condition which was ours before the Civil War.
Your scholarly training and your breadth of observation have made
you cognizant of the wonderful change that has taken place in the
condition of the colored people in this country during the past fifty
years. Your clear perception of the importance of this progressive

84415