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9/4/13

[stamp: THE WHITE HOUSE
SEP 4 1913
RECEIVED]

1251 South 18th Street,
Philadelphia, September 3, 1913.

152a

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

y dear Mr. President:-

Pressure of other matters has prevented me
from long ago writing you in humble protest against the appalling
extent to which some of those in authority at Washington are going
in their efforts to humiliate, repress and intimidate the colored
race. It was the belief that you and other high-minded leaders
would set your faces against aggressive injustice to Negroes that
inspired those of us who supported you at the polls.

But the incessant manner in which Negroes are being not
only segregated and discriminated against as Federal employees,
but absolutely supplanted in the few executive positions which
had hitherto seen freely accorded them by all previous Administra-
tions has struck with consternation those of us who had hoped and
prayed for better, insted of worse, conditions by responding to the
plea of National Democratic leaders for support.

It is not only the direct injustice of this anti-Negro
campaign; it is to a far greater extent the depressing and demoral-
izing effect which it will have on the entire race situation.
There is not a friend of the race and humanity who will not lose
heart, or an enemy who will not become more wantonly oppressive be-
cause of the anti-Negro campaign now centered in the Capital of the
Nation.

You are represented by the daily press as having said
that you approved of segregating colored employees because you had
been advised to do so by some prominent Negro, or Negroes. I cannot
believe that you have given voice to any such hurtful and reaction-
ary statements. Neither can I believe that any Negro who has the
slighetest standing among full-grown men has given you any such ad-
vice. Above all do I know, as I am sure you must, that this pro-
scription of Negroes can have no other effect than to widen the
gulf between the races and to make immeasurably more heary the bur-
dens which they had hither to been forced to carry.

Mr. President, as one who several years ago discovered in
you what I thought was a loftiness of purpose and a breadth of vis-
ion not common to the professional politicians of the day, and gave
you my support accordingly, I most earnestly appeal to you to pro-
tect us in the few rights which we now enjoy, if you do not see your
way clear to granting us more consideration than we formerly injoyed

I have the honor to subscribe myself,

Your humble servant,
James Samuel Stemons

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