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his own effort - as have all the great souls of the past, and not by rank laziness and charity and leaning and depen ding on the white man to pull him up. The Negroe race body is a dying grace and the sooner it dies the better for the whole of humanity and itself — for nature and for nature's God who seeks men not scalawags to manifest through.
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It took me but two
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minutes in Boston to call down a big burly [?] negroe in a restaurant who attempted to sit next me, and though he nagged the waiters he sat "a mile away" from me.
With my sincere sympathy in the loss of your very esteem able wife, Mrs. Wilson and with my hearty desire for your safe [ground?], good health and prosperity allow me to subscribe myself.
yours very truly Joseph Maille P. O. Box 246
84927 Pass Christian Miss.
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ONE WEEK . . . . . .15 ONE MONTH . . . . 65
NEGRO CHAIRMAN GETS CALL DOWN FROM PRESIDENT
Blacks Threaten Mass Meeting to Protest Against Segregation
EXECUTIVE RESENTS TONE OF REMARKS
Not Addressed Before in Such a Manner Since Entering the White House
Washington, NOV. 12.—Offended by the tone and manner of their chairman, W. M. Trotter of Boston, President Wilson to-day ended an interview with a delegation of negroes who called at the White House to protest against race segregation in government departments, with a warning that if the negroes wanted to see him again they would have to get another spokesman. The President said he had not been addressed in such fashion since he entered the White House.
Trotter came to the White House with a prepared speech, to which the President listened. It was after delivering this address, however, that Trotter made remarks in a tone which displeased President Wilson.
In the address Trotter reminded the President that the delegation called on Mr. Wilson a year ago, at which time he had promised to investigate the question.
"We stated," said Trotter, "that there could be no freedom, no respect from others, and no equality of citizenship under segregation of races. For such placement of employees means a charge, by the governnment, of physical indecency or infection, or of being a lower order of beings, or a subjection to the prejudice of other citizens, which constitutes inferiority of status.
"We stated that such segregation was a public humiliation and degradation entirely unmerited and far-reaching in its injurious effects. Now, after the lapse of a year, we have come back, having found that all the forms of segregation of government employees of African extraction are still being practiced in the Treasury and Post Office Department buildings, and to a certain extent have spread into other government buildings."
The delegation charged that Secretary McAdoo and Comptroller Williams in the Treasury and Postmaster-general Burleson had enforced segregation rules in their offices. President Wilson replied that he had investigated the question and had been assured that there had been no discrimination in the comforts and surroundings given to the negroes. He added he had been informed by officials that the segregation had been started to avoid friction between the races, and not with the object of injuring the negroes.
The President said that he was deeply interested in the negro race, and greatly admired its progress. He declared the thing to be sought by the negro people was complete independence of white peole, and that he felt the white race was willing to do everything possible to assist them.
Trotter and other members at once took issue with the President, declaring the negro people did not seek charity or assistance, but that they took the position that the negroes had equal rights with the whites and that those rights should be respected. They denied there had been any friction between the two races before segregation was begun.
President Wilson listened to what they had to say, and then told the delegation that Trotter was losing control of his temper, and that he (the President) would not discuss the matter further with him.
After leaving the President's private office Trotter, Maurice V. Spencer and others of the delegation declared their talk had been "thoroughly disappointing."
They declared they would hold a mass meeting in Washington Sunday to discuss the question.
Mr. Wilson is understood to have told ittee the question w e, and as he would olitical grounds.
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racial relations. It has come [?] we believe and [?] to stay, for the good of both [parties?] and in spite of the rantings of negro agitators who seek political preferment via the race issue, or racial social equality, or both. The right adjustment of race relations in this country is earnestly desired by whites and intelligent negroes as well. We do not believe that the agitators of Trotter's stripe can prevent it, though they may, by continued beating of the racial tomtoms, provoke further race friction and hostility in the Northern States.
So far as yesterday's episode at the White House is concerned, however, the question of segregation bears only incidentally upon, what happened to Trotter. It appears from the published accounts that he went there to make himself unpleasant—and succeeded The same rebuke, we have no doubt, would have been administered to any man, whatever his race, who resorted to the same offensive tactics. This is, we believe, the first episode of the kind that has occurred during Mr. Wilson's administration. So that Trotter seems to have established his own inferiority to the thousands of others who have been given hearing at the White House during that period.
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RACE SEGREGATION AT WASHINGTON
The rebuke administered by President Wilson yesterday to the spokesman of a negro delegation was so thoroughly just and deserved that it will be approved by the vast majority of Americans irrespective of political affiliations or sectional lines. The delegation asked and was granted the courtesy of a hearing. Mr. Wilson listened patiently to the recitation of a prepared speech by the offending spokesman. It is evident that his own conclusions, stated in answer to the harangue of the agitator, were neither patiently nor courteously received. When the man Trotter became offensive the President very promptly and properly cut the interview short.
While agitators of the Trotter stripe and certain of their political inciters will doubtless strive to make capital of it, the episode will react to the sole injury of the Trotter cause. Race instinct has quickened wonderfully throughout the white North of recent years. Insistent and offensive demands for racial social equality by self-styled negro leaders, and the attempts at offensive assertion of their imagined "rights," are largely responsible for the race clashes recorded in more than a few Northern States. In a few cities, notably in Boston and Washington, these so-called leaders have been "humored" for sentimental or political reasons. In Boston, only the other day, a book of classical folksongs, compiled for use in the public schools, provoked a violent protest from Boston blacks because one of the old songs contained the word "nigger," though the song is doubtless loved and chanted by thousands of negroes. And the school authorities obligingly ordered the song "eliminated." In Washington, where Republican administrations long catered to the "negro vote," the presence of negro undesirables in and out of the Federal service is shown by the police records. Race friction began there long before Mr. Wilson entered the White House. Epidemics of negro crimes more than once have produced mass meetings of protest among the white citizens. Conditions caused by mixture of the races in the Federal departments were complained of, and were giving trouble years before this administration. In spite of the negro delegation's denials, the existence of race friction before the segregation order of which they complain was a fact established past dispute. 84930
The segregation effected during this administration can be justified on any one of a number of grounds. It makes for efficiency in the public service, and for better