Reaping the Whirlwind
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Source: Chicago Defender, editorial, 2 August 1919, pg. 16.
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THE RECENT RACE RIOTS at Washington resulting in the death of a number of white and Colored citizens, followed by similar occurrences in Chicago, are a disgrace to American civilization. One does not have to seek very far to find the underlying cause. It is not chargeable, as some writers think, to the general unrest now sweeping the world. Nor are we witnessing anything new in these disgraceful exhibitions of lawlessness. America is known the world over as the land of the lyncher and of the mobocrat. For years she has been sowing the wind and now she is reaping the whirlwind. The Black worm has turned. A Race that has furnished hundreds of thousands of the best soldiers that the world has ever seen is no longer content to turn the left cheek when smitten upon the right.
THE YOUNGER GENERATION of black men are not content to move along the line of least resistance as did their sires. For his awakening, however, the color madness of the American white man alone is responsible. Not content with inflicting upon him every form of humiliation that could be devised at home, he carried his infamous color propaganda to Europe. With the close of the war the returning soldiers brought back the most harrowing tales of abuses at the hands of the American military contingent. These stories have been carried broadcast over the land and have inflamed out people as few things could have done.
WE HAVE LITTLE SYMPATHY with lawlessness, whether those guilty of it be Black or white, but it cannot be denied that we have much in the way of justification for our changed attitude. Under the promise of a square deal our boys went cheerfully into the service of the country hoping that the aftermath of the struggle would find our people in an improved social and industrial condition. All of our speakers and writers held to this view and kept it constantly before our youth as an inducement to enlistment. Industrially our position has undoubtedly been benefited by the war. Socially it has grown decidedly worse. On all sides we have been made to feel the humiliating pressure of the white man's prejudice. In Washington it was a case of "teaching us our place." In Chicago it was a case of limiting our sphere to metes and bounds that had neither sanction of law nor sound common sense. In both cases we resented the assumption. Hence the race riots.
[End of news article]
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Page compiled: 5 November 2001
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