103

[stamp: THE WHITE HOUSE
NOV 17 1914
RECEIVED]

Nov. 14, 1914.

Ackgd
11/17/14

Honorable Woodrow Wilson, President,
White House,
Washington, D. C.

Dear Mr. President:

152a

I wish most heartily and sincerely to thank you for your
very kind and encouraging letter of November 6th, which was read at our meeting
last Thursday night to an audience of between five and six thousand people of
whom between a thousand and fifteen hundred were white. Negreos came from all
parts of Virginia representing all kinds of organizations among Negroes and, of
course, we had the leading white people of Norfolk present, men and women.

I doubt if you realize, Mr. President, how much encouragment and hope your
letter gave my people. It undoubtedly encouraged our white friends also in the
splendid service they are rendering along the lincs of rational co-operation with
black people for the highest development of all the people in this State and the
South.

Your letter has been copied in several editorials within the past few days,
to show your kindly feeling toward Negroes, as contrasted with the very unfor-
tunate incident of Mr. Trotter, and I want to say that the Negroes, generally, do
not in any way approve of Mr. Trotter's conduct at the White House. You perhaps
don't know that Mr. Trotter was made to serre a jail sentence in Boston some years
ago for breaking up a meeting in which Dr. Booker T. Washington was speaking in
the interest of race co-operation and encouraging his race, as he has always done,
along lines of practical education, and I think the people who selected Mr. Trot-
ter to head a committee to wait on the Chief Executive of the Nation were short-
sighted, to say the least.

Again thanking you for your kindness and expressing my own regrets and the
regrets of ninety-nine percent of the thoughtful Negroes of this land at Mr.

85001