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THE WHITE HOUSE AUG 19 1916 RECEIVED
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AN APPEAL FOR JUSTICE FOR THE COLORED MAN IN AN OPEN JOINT ---------LETTER TO PRESIDENT WILSON AND MR. HUGHES.----------------- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To the Honorable Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States and candidate for re-election, and to the Honorable Charles Evan Hughes, also a candidate for the Presidency of the United States.
Honorable Gentlemen:-
Since you are candidates for election to the great office of the Presidency of the United States for the next four uears [years], and are asking the suffrage of all of your fellow citizens, I here jointly and most respectfully take the liberty of calling your attentions to certain grievous conditions in this country confronting my race, and pray that you may be moved to give some expression at this time as to what your efforts would be to remedy these conditions, should you be elected to the Presidency for the next four years.
After serving this country for nearly two hundred and fifty years in chattel slavery, and now after nearly sixty years after its abolition and the adoption of the fifteenth amendment, giving him the rights of citizenship, and it being acknowledged that he having measured up to the highest test of that citizenship, including the laying down of his life, freely and bravely from time to time for this country, the Colored man finds the right to vote taken away from him at the South and denial of priveleges to labor at the North, except in certain fields of employment which are unlucrative or menial fields labor. Is without a position of honor or emolument or an elective representative in the government. Is a subject for lynch law and all manner of unjust discriminations.
These conditions have been the Colored man's burdens as a citizen of this republic since emancipating from two hundred and fifty years of chattel slavery, notwithstanding his good citizenship, proved capacity and marvelous progress.
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I believe that the root of his troubles and the cause of these oppressive conditions clinging so tightly to our country, lies in the discrimination placed in the Colored man’s path to the ballot box.
It is true, that the United States Supreme Court has held, that the various qualifications to vote, enacted by the States, excepting the "Grandfather's Clause" do not discriminate, are legal and are within the power of the sovereign state. But the Colored man’s complaint in regards to this matter is; that in the enforcement, of those laws, the officials so charged with the enforcement, violate those laws by chicanery and even openly in favor of the white man while the Colored man is held to the letter and to the spirit of those laws. So it is impossible for any colored man to satisfactorily qualify as a voter in some of those States, save those whom this oligarichic form of goverman, which this systen has produced, would have qualify.
To me, these conditions seen hideous wrongs in the concrete, contrary to the great principle of democracy and hunanity, affecting the highest development and usefulness of our Country, and yet our Country seens to view then with perfect complacency, and as matters not to be considered for adjustment.
But deep down in every American's heart, I believe that there is a spark of fair play, and I believe that if the realization of these iniquitous conditions, and the unprofitable course to this republic in denying equal opportunities to twelve millions of citizens who know no allegiance or love except to America, could be brought to the Anerican people, these conditions would surely and speedily be righted. And I believe that this realization could be brought to the people through the great office of the Presidency, if they were told
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that oppression has no place in democracy or room in the house of God, and that the security of this republic, lies in an indiscriminate road to the ballot box for all citizens.
For the benefit of our beloved Country and the hope of ny fettered race, I trust that each of you honorable gentlemen may deem it altogether proper at this time to state that you will if elected to the office of the Presidency for the next four years, feel it to be your duty to so declare this truth unto this people concerning these conditions.
Trusting that you may favor me with an early reply, I am
Very sincerely yours, Eugene McIntosh 801 Grant Avenue Bronx, New Tork City
Dated, August 18, 1916.
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LEE, F.D.,
LAYTON, Julia M., Washington, D.C., August 21, 1916.
Ask that arrangements be made for a delegation to call upon the President for the purpose of extending him an invitation to address a meeting of the National Memorial Association for erection of monument to colored soldiers, etc, Washington, D.C., September 15, 1916.
See Inv. [???]
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