173

Ackgd
12/26/14

December 22, 1914.

Personal.

Hon. Joseph Tumulty,
Secretary to the President,
Washington, D. C.

152a

Sir:

Enclosed herewith please find an advertisement clipped
from the New York News of Thursday, December 10th, and an announce-
ment clipped from the same paper of December 17th, together with
an announcement from the Amsterdam News of the same date. As you
will notice, they refer to an advertised meeting at which Mr.
William Monroe Trotter was to speak, on the evening of December
21st. Feeling that this effort to commercialise an interview with
the President of the United States would do great harm to my race,
I invited a number of the sanest and most influential colored men
of this city to my residence for the purpose of organizing an
opposition to this unfortunate movement. At this meeting I employed
all the resources of language at my command to convince the gentlemen
present that the race was in great danger of losing the friendship
of that large group of people in this country, both in the North
and in the South, who have come to realize that good men, whether
black or white are pretty close together; and bad ones of both

varieties, are not very far apart. The gentlemen present agreed with

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