The NEW INTER-RACE 
 RELATIONS in the SOUTH 
 
 Address of Will W inton jdlexander 
 before the Seventy-sixth Jjnnual 
 Convention of the A merican Missionary 
 Association, November 8, 1 922 
 
 (Commission on 3httm*acial (Cooperation 
 409 Palmer IfnttlMnii 
 Atlanta, Oia. 
 
WILL WINTON ALEXANDER 
 
 Director, Commission on Interracial Cooperation 
 
 WILL WINTON ALEXANDER, born Morrisville, Mo., July 15, 1884. A.B., 
 Scarritt-Morrisville College; B.D. Vanderbilt. Licensed Minister M. E. Church, 
 South, 1901; Pastor Belmont Church, Nashville, Tenn.; First Church, Mur- 
 freesboro, Tenn.; Assoc. Exec., Army Y. M. C. A., Southern Military Dept.; 
 Director Field Dept., Inter-Ch., World Movement of N. Amer. in Southeastern 
 States since 1919. Vice-Pres. Tenn. Conf. Charities and Corrections; Sec. 
 Tenn. Conf. Social Service Commn. (M. E. Ch. S.), mem. Ex. Com., Com. on 
 After-War Cooperation between Races. Mason (K.T.). 
 
 From “Who’s Who.” 
 
<Uhe NEW INTER-RACE 
 RELATIONS in the SOUTH 
 
 By WILL WINTON ALEXANDER 
 
 I AM conscious as I stand here that the work which I represent 
 was in part made possible by this Association. When it became 
 apparent that it should be continued, you were the first church 
 organization to which we turned for money. Pioneers as you have 
 always been, you had faith in the idea and made an appropriation. 
 About half a dozen of the church boards now support the work, 
 but as has so often been the case in enterprising work for Negroes 
 in America you were first among the churches. 
 
 The last week of the world war I traveled from Memphis to 
 the end of the Yazoo Delta, speaking in towns, villages, at cross- 
 roads stores, and on scores of plantations, to the typical pepper- 
 and-salt audiences of that section. In many instances the pepper 
 was very much more in evidence than the salt, for that is the Black 
 Belt of Mississippi, and in most of the counties the Negro population 
 exceeds the white. 
 
 I saw during those days what I had never expected to see: 
 White and colored people from those Delta plantations, crowded 
 around a truck on a plantation, or packed to suffocation in a court 
 house or a church, listening as one man to the story of the Nation 
 at war. 
 
 I never spoke to those audiences but that there came to my 
 mind the Negro boys over the South — as I had seen them go into 
 the camps. Each time I had a word to say about them as I had 
 seen them and heard from others the story of their life in camp and 
 overseas. Of course the colored people were interested, because I 
 said the very best word I could — and it was a good word, — but I 
 was greatly surprised to find that many of the better white people 
 in the Delta seemed quite as much interested and quite as kindly 
 disposed to those colored boys in the army as towards the white 
 boys who had gone out from the same communities. For a moment, 
 at least, they had found a new interest and a new value in colored 
 boys. I came out of the Delta country conscious of two things: 
 First, I was conscious of the wonderful patriotism of the un- 
 privileged Negro of the Mississippi Delta. In all the trip, no man 
 
 3 
 
THE NEW INTER-RACE 
 
 ever suggested that the Negroes would not do their part in every 
 war enterprise. In every community I heard stories of their self- 
 sacrifice; of the amount of Liberty Bonds they had bought; of the 
 amount of Red Cross money they had given ; and of their willingness 
 to send their boys into the camps. 
 
 I was conscious, moreover, of the wonderful unity that had 
 come to these Delta communities. As white and black crowded to- 
 gether to hear of the war, they were not race conscious. For a mo- 
 ment something greater than race had been laid upon their hearts, 
 and as one man the people of these communities stood face to face 
 with the great task. 
 
 Was it strange that many said, “Surely the war has brought 
 to us here in the South one good thing, at least. We shall never 
 again have the racial suspicions and misgivings that have too often 
 marked the previous years. The Negroes have surely demonstrated 
 their right to a larger and better place in our life — to a man’s place, 
 for they have played a man’s part in the war.” This feeling was 
 genuine and general. Then the Armistice was signed, and all of 
 that good-will, which had been such a reality, seemed to have been 
 but a dream. With other reactions from the wartime idealism ra- 
 cial good-will began to recede. From every quarter of the South 
 there came rumors indicating that instead of the war leaving our 
 race relations better, it had left them submerged in a fog of sus- 
 picion which nobody on the outside could understand and which 
 grew daily more perplexing to those of us who were near at hand. 
 
 There were in the South a number of men who had been very 
 closely related to Negro soldiers and civilians during the war. Dr. 
 M. Ashby Jones, a son of General Lee’s chaplain, had been related 
 to the War Department as a special adviser as to the Negro churches 
 and their contributions to the winning of the war. Mr. John J. 
 Eagan, who for many years had manifested a generous interest in 
 the Negro laborer in his plant, was made an assistant to the Secre- 
 tary of the Navy, and was closely related to the Negro boys in that 
 branch of the service. 
 
 There were others, and all of them shared the feeling that the 
 war had brought a larger viewpoint in race relations. This group 
 was therefore easily conscious of the almost complete reversal of 
 sentiment at the signing of the armistice. It was not unnatural 
 that having had this common viewpoint, these Southern men should 
 come together and try to understand what had happened. Little 
 by little the group was enlarged, colored men were turned to, and 
 
 4 
 
RELATIONS IN THE SOUTH 
 
 for about three months the discussion went on. It was finally de- 
 cided that the first need was to find out just what the facts were. 
 
 A sufficient amount of money for beginning was secured from 
 the War Work Council of the Y. M. C. A. As a first step the at- 
 tempt was made to secure a cross-section of the thinking of our 
 people on this question. Twelve hundred white men were gathered 
 from all over the South. They were brought together in groups 
 of a hundred. They were the men who make public opinion in our 
 Southern communities. They talked freely and frankly. 
 
 At the same time at another place there were brought together 
 750 Negroes, about a hundred in each group, the thoughtful men 
 of their race. They talked for a week. (There wasn’t any difficulty 
 in those days in getting Negroes to talk.) Notes were made of what 
 was said. The Negroes when they assembled, appointed a com- 
 mittee called an interpreting committee. At the end of each meet- 
 ing there were not only notes on all that had been said, but the 
 interpretation by the Committee. It was a voluminous and impor- 
 tant mass of material. 
 
 There are some things which Negroes do not say except as they 
 are provoked to say them by white people. A sufficient number of 
 white people spoke in the Negro meetings to provoke full discussion 
 of vexed points. That volume of notes, therefore, represented the 
 heart and mind of seven hundred-fifty of the most intelligent Ne- 
 groes that could be gathered together in the South. 
 
 Out of all this there began to emerge interesting facts, already 
 known to some but with a new significance. One was that the more 
 intelligent Negro and the more intelligent white people of the South 
 had little or no point of contact, or means by which they could un- 
 derstand one another; that they knew little about one another, — 
 particularly white people regarding Negroes of education and cul- 
 ture. (This class of Negroes know white people better than white 
 people know them.) 
 
 The racial situation was like this: At the top, where there 
 
 was intelligence, good-will, moderation, and self-control, the races 
 were far apart, and as they began to drop in intelligence, in oppor- 
 tunity, in self-control, in religion, their contacts were multiplied. 
 There is a place in the lower realms of economic competition, cul- 
 ture and community life, where the races mingle. Race contacts 
 in the South were largely at that lower level, and were contacts that 
 make trouble and could make nothing else. 
 
 5 
 
THE NEW INTER-RACE 
 
 About that time a study was made of Negro homes in one of 
 our Southern towns. It showed that as the economic efficiency of 
 white and colored homes dropped they came closer together. At 
 the top there was no contact. The better white homes did not 
 know that the better colored homes existed. Then, as the scale of 
 Negro home life grew lower — down below a certain economic line — 
 there began to be contacts between that low strata of Negro life 
 and the more prosperous middle and upper classes of white people, 
 from the fact that the latter drew their servant class from the 
 former. The first hand knowledge, therefore, of these better whites 
 came largely from what they were able to gather from the lower 
 strata of Negro life which makes up the mass of the Negro do- 
 mestic servants in Southern communities. 
 
 As a result of this lack of contact, much of the racial talk 
 among white people was not true; at least the things white people 
 who control public opinion said and thought about Negroes had little 
 basis in first hand, adequate information. The popular picture of 
 the Negro mind which the white people have is the picture of a 
 Negro mind that never did exist. Negroes understand whites bet- 
 ter than whites understand Negroes, and yet much that Negroes 
 attribute to whites is not true. The relationships are made diffi- 
 cult by misunderstandings on both sides. 
 
 There is much goodwill among whites in the South for Negroes. 
 The difficulty is that it is good-will towards the type of Negro 
 that no longer exists. Old Uncle Tom on the Southern plantation 
 was perhaps never as docile and submissive and contented as he 
 has been pictured ; anyway, he exists now only in a story-book and 
 in the minds of many of the better people of the South, who do 
 not realize how completely this type has passed. Such people know 
 absolutely nothing of the intelligent, the ambitious, efficient type 
 of present-day Negro. 
 
 Our investigations further revealed that racial difficulties grow 
 largely out of the mental attitudes. We are glad that someone 
 who has authority and wisdom has discovered this also. The study 
 made of the Chicago race riot devotes a long section to the part 
 that rumor and myth played in that affair. Their conclusions agree 
 with ours in this. Because racial difficulties do grow so largely out 
 of mental attitudes, the problem, in so far as there is one, is a prob- 
 lem in racial thinking. 
 
 We discovered that by bringing intelligent colored and white 
 men together in frank and friendly discussion this chasm between 
 
 6 
 
RELATIONS IN THE SOUTH 
 
 them could be bridged. In this way they came to understand one 
 another; and whenever men will sit down in front of a thing and 
 try to understand it, the difficulties are on the way to being re- 
 moved. 
 
 Understanding, therefore, in this as well as in all other human 
 relationships, is the basis of good-will. All we have to do in this 
 country to keep ourselves moving in the direction of the Kingdom 
 of God in relation to this question is to keep the lines clear, to 
 build a sufficient number of contacts, to make a sufficient number 
 of opportunities for men of the two races to understand one an- 
 other. 
 
 We have found a few men in the South who did not want to 
 understand. There are not very many of these. I remember that 
 when we brought a group of white men together to discuss race 
 relations, one very distinguished minister, — a man of great prom- 
 inence in the community, — when he learned what we were asking 
 him to do, said “I never sat down and talked to Negroes in my 
 life, and I shall not do it.” He walked out. You can do nothing 
 for such a man. He hasn’t the will to understand. 
 
 The work of the Commission on Interracial Co-operation has 
 been to try to build a bridge across the gulf that exists between 
 the intelligent white men and intelligent Negroes. There are eight 
 hundred counties in the South that have ten per cent or more of 
 Negro population. We sent a white man and a colored man into 
 each one of those communities to study the general situation and 
 discover who were leaders of the two races, and if there were men 
 in each group who had the confidence of both races. 
 
 This very interesting thing developed : White men that white 
 men believe in are as a rule the white men that Negroes believe in. 
 Negroes that honest, intelligent white men believe in are the Ne- 
 groes that intelligent Negroes believe in. There is no mystery here. 
 Soon we began to discover that in many of the communities we 
 could bring these men together — get them to sit down and talk 
 over the local situation — and that out of that very conversation it- 
 self grew a better race attitude. Whenever the habit of conference 
 grew up, not only could a better racial attitude be maintained, but 
 many of the things that vexed the life of the community could be 
 corrected — things which all right-thinking people knew ought to 
 be corrected. Whenever men set themselves to work to correct in- 
 justices and wrongs the step resulted in better race relationships. 
 
 7 
 
THE NEW INTER-RACE 
 
 There are, therefore, two fundamental principles for creatmg 
 better race relations: Conference and Cooperation. 
 
 There had been a conspiracy of silence in the South on this 
 question. Dr. Moton says that Negroes tell white men what they 
 think is safe for white men to know ; and that white men tell 
 Negroes what they think Negroes have sense enough to understand. 
 You cannot get along that way. The first step is to bring this ques- 
 tion to open, frank discussion. There is nothing about it that can- 
 not be discussed. There is nothing that makes for danger more 
 than whisperings behind closed doors. You in the Northern cities 
 need to be warned that secret organizations and secret methods of 
 dealing with this question only tend to spread the hysteria and 
 stir the passion so common to communities where race questions 
 are acute. This question needs daylight. Underground and secret 
 methods lead to confusion and suffering. 
 
 Right race relations are a by-product. If men work together 
 around the concrete task, they will soon change their attitudes to 
 one another. Two men cannot be made to agree by bumping their 
 heads together. Get them together and set them at work on a 
 concrete task, and out of the work will come a better relation. 
 
 One difficulty in the South, and in other sections of the coun- 
 try as well, is that we have too little consciousness among the 
 people of either race of those things that pertain to the whole com 
 munity. The rising tide of community consciousness which n 
 bringing to the proper attention the larger community problems 
 that must be worked at by all will be of great help. 
 
 I said a moment ago that this question was largely a ques^ 
 tion of the way men think. May I briefly sketch to you how we 
 have undertaken to effect public opinion, bearing in mind always 
 that the local community is the unit in which better race relations 
 are built. 
 
 Neither the white press nor the Negro press in this country 
 is helping very much in the solution of this problem. The white 
 press is usually unfair regarding Negroes, and the Negro press is 
 quite as onesided in the views given of whites. 
 
 The white press has been in the habit of playing up every- 
 thing bad that the Negro had done, seeming to discover little that 
 could be commended. 
 
 The Commission on Interracial Cooperation undertook to cor- 
 rect the worst features of the white press. For instance, Dr. 
 
 8 
 
RELATIONS IN THE SOUTH 
 
 Blackwell of Virginia watches all the white papers in that State. 
 Whenever one of them begins to violate public safety and is unfair 
 he writes or sees the editor and shows him that instead of helping 
 with the race problem, as the editor being a good citizen desires 
 to do, he is hindering. He points out the specific article and the 
 way in which it has hindered. There are in each state now a num- 
 ber of people who are trying to do this. We hope ultimately to 
 have in each community more than one person trying to help the 
 press to be of service. 
 
 Here is an example. A riot seemed inevitable in 1919, in At- 
 lanta. The city didn’t want it, but no one knew just what to do. 
 There was great anxiety. One Monday the Constitution, a very 
 progressive and helpful paper, published in flaming headlines, 
 “RACE RIOT BREAKS OUT IN DECATUR.” Those who saw it 
 supposed that the expected had come. Full of misgivings I went 
 down town to discover that there was no race riot. Two Negroes 
 had gotten on the car to ride to Decatur, several miles out; they 
 were drinking and made a disturbance on the car by exhibiting a 
 pistol. They left the car near the courthouse at Decatur. One of 
 them was captured by a deputy sheriff and others who gave chase. 
 The other took to the plowed fields. He found himself pursued by a 
 colored boy and a fat “deputy.” The deputy was soon outdistanced, 
 and the colored boy said, “Give me the gun ; I’ll get him.” The 
 deputy handed over the gun. The boy came within calling distance 
 of the fugitive and said, “They are trying to get me too ; hold on.” 
 The fleeing Negro didn’t stop and the boy shot him in the leg, cap- 
 tured him and took him back to the courthouse. 
 
 Here was an opportunity to tell the community of the perfectly 
 fine way in which a colored boy had helped to enforce the law. 
 The Constitution, sincere in its professed desire to help, called it 
 a race-riot. The habit of seeking the sensational and naming it 
 news simply asserted itself. It should be said, however, that the 
 management of the paper regretted the incident when it was called 
 to its attention. There has been improvement. Two or three weeks 
 ago a serious crime was committed by a colored man. I read of it 
 the next morning — inside the paper near the classified advertis- 
 ing page in about an inch of space. This was as it should be, and 
 the Constitution was helping by its news policy to create better 
 race relations. 
 
 To keep the bad things from the headlines is merely negative. 
 The white papers should print the good things which Negroes do, 
 
 9 
 
THE NEW INTER-RACE 
 
 and the Negro papers should give space to constructive things as 
 well as outrages and injustice suffered. The main reason for 
 not doing so is that they do not know of the good things or how 
 to get information about them. The Commission on Interracial 
 Cooperation is sending to 500 white papers in the South twice each 
 month the best things that Negroes are doing, and to a similar 
 number of Negro papers the constructive things being accomplished 
 through cooperation. Little by little, very slowly, there is a per- 
 ceptible change in the attitude of the press. 
 
 It w r as said that Southern women were the “Hindenburg Line” 
 in race relations. There were many things to give weight to this 
 view and to make it difficult for Southern women to think and see 
 straight to the essential thing in race relations. 
 
 One hundred Southern women v r ere brought together in Mem- 
 phis in October, 1919. They represented the leadership of the 
 Christian womanhood of the South ; they w 7 ere among the finest of 
 our Southern women. A hundred women more intelligent or in- 
 fluential could not have been found. A number of Negro women 
 were brought to 1 meet them. One of them is in the audience to- 
 night. For two days they sat quietly together, and for the first 
 time the new Southern womanhood heard an intelligent Negro wife 
 and mother tell the story of her life, the story of her home, and the 
 story of her children, as they find life in the South. It w r as a most 
 remarkable meeting. 
 
 The response of these wiiite women w T as most beautiful. If 
 you will read the little pamphlet, “Southern Women and Race Co- 
 operation,” which condenses their utterances, you will find the 
 most clear-cut Christian statement that has ever come out of the 
 South on this question. The story of the Southern Negro women 
 and children in Negro homes reached the mother heart of these 
 wiiite women. Their emotions were deeply stirred, so deeply in 
 fact that some w r ho saw it w 7 ere afraid of a reaction w T hen the meet- 
 ing had passed. 
 
 Little was done to follow up the Memphis Conference for 
 twelve months afterward. But the women had gone back into 
 their communities with a new 7 viewpoint on this question. The 
 effect of their individual efforts soon began to be manifest. Little 
 by little we began to bring together in their various states the 
 women of the Memphis Conference, together v 7 ith other women of 
 influence. The plan w T as to reach the organized wdiite womanhood 
 of the South with the facts regarding Negro women and children. 
 
 10 
 
RELATIONS IN THE SOUTH 
 
 Today women’s organizations with a million and a half members 
 are cooperating. Missionary societies, women’s clubs, and the like 
 have pledged themselves to fight lynching and are demanding of 
 those who- enforce the law in the South that lynching shall cease. 
 They are pledged to work in their local communities not FOR Negro 
 women but WITH them, that Negro home life and Negro child 
 life may have a better chance. 
 
 The men of the South may accomplish little, but when a mil- 
 lion and a half women in their organizations have set to work for 
 so worthy a cause, we may confidentially expect that in ten years 
 something worth while will have been brought to pass. (Applause.) 
 
 It is difficult for you to understand the meaning of this move- 
 ment among Southern women. Negro womanhood and Negro 
 homelife have not had proper protection and help. When a mil- 
 lion and a half white women in the South understand, as they 
 have not understood before, the things against which Negro home- 
 life battles, there will be a new day for Negro women and Negro 
 homes in the South. (Applause.) 
 
 For years under Dr. W. D. Weatherford there have been vol- 
 untary classes in the colleges for the study of this question. A 
 few years ago two annual conferences of college professors began 
 to be held, one East and one West of the Mississippi. Teachers 
 of history, economics, and sociology in Southern colleges came to- 
 gether to seek to answer the question, “What can the colleges of 
 the South do to enable students to deal intelligently with this 
 question ?” 
 
 Today as a result of these conferences and similar efforts, at 
 least fifty colleges of the South have courses in race relations. 
 
 In 1921 a number of intelligent colored men spoke in Southern 
 colleges. They proved in some instances the most popular speakers 
 that came during the year. This year in possibly half our colleges 
 Negroes will speak on what the Negro wants and what he ought 
 to have in American life. In not a few cases this will be at the 
 regular chapel or some other hour which will signify the approval 
 of the college authorities. Here is the report of one of these visits 
 to a state school: “I have just come from the most marvelous ex- 
 perience I have ever had,” said one of the most intelligent Negroes 
 in America. “I spoke Sunday to the students in the State College 
 
 in . They listened attentively as I told them as frankly as I 
 
 coukl what were the dominant hopes of the Negro in America and 
 how they could help secure for the Negro his chance to be a man. 
 
 11 
 
THE NEW INTER-RACE 
 
 Many of them came up to me at the conclusion and said, ‘We believe 
 in what you say and we intend to help make possible the things 
 for which you are striving’.” 
 
 A way must be found to get this subject before high schools, 
 and into lower grades. The study of the pictures of the riot in 
 Chicago will reveal the presence of boys in knickerbockers. How 
 many of the lynchings in America grow out of the easily suscepti- 
 ble psychology of boys? 
 
 The educational authorities in one Southern State are now 
 seeking to get a new text book on civics written from the stand- 
 point of the needs of that State. It will be used in the grades and 
 in high schools. Into it will go a section on what an American’s 
 attitude ought to be towards this question. 
 
 Much of the above is only in the beginning. Most of it is 
 yet to be done. The problem is not solved. Many things are 
 probably about as bad as they have ever been, but these recent 
 years have seen some things emerge. The following are worthy of 
 mention : 
 
 1. In many communities a method has been demonstrated. 
 No community that has had one of these committees for confer- 
 ence and cooperation has had a race riot or a lynching, and in 
 probably forty per cent of the counties of the South there can be 
 found some group seeking to maintain such a committee. 
 
 2. The forces working for racial goodwill in America have 
 been unified. There may be a race war, but there is a group of 
 white and colored men down in the South who will not line up on 
 a race issue. They are working and will continue to work for the 
 good of the whole group. They have come to know one another 
 with a new confidence. Such groups are a foundation upon which 
 can be built race relations. Men talk about it as though it were 
 some abstract thing. Race relations are just human relations. 
 The building up of a constantly enlarging group of white and col- 
 ored men in America, men who stand together, is the only basis 
 upon which can be built better race relationships. Men are persons 
 first. The color is secondary. 
 
 3. Never before since the Civil War has the Negro had such 
 a chance to speak for himself. Dr. Ashby Jones has been saying 
 to his audiences, “Whatever you think about this question, in the 
 
 12 
 
RELATIONS IN THE SOUTH 
 
 interests of good sportsmanship you have got to hear this colored 
 man, and hear with an open mind.” There is hardly an important 
 church gathering in the South now where some Negro is not in- 
 vited to speak. People are studying Negro poetry and music and 
 are giving serious and sympathetic consideration to all these 
 appeals. 
 
 4. Not only have Negroes in these days been speaking for 
 themselves, but they have found new voices to speak for them. I 
 have a book of clippings out of the Georgia press. In news item 
 and editorial there is an insistent demand for justice. This is 
 typical of the best Southern dailies, from the Louisville Courier 
 Journal to the New Orleans Times Picayune. The strong words of 
 Governors Dorsey, Bickett, Roberts and Morrow have not hereto- 
 fore been common among men in their class. The utterances of 
 church bodies and women’s clubs are strong and insistent for jus- 
 tice. The conspiracy of silence has been broken. New and mighty 
 voices join with the Negro in his appeal for a better chance. 
 
 5. I hold in my hand a story. It is printed in black and 
 white. It is a map of the lynchings in Georgia for the thirty-five 
 years previous to 1922. There had been in that time about 439 
 lynchings. There are the black spots on the map showing where 
 those lynchings occurred. Less than one-third of the geographical 
 territory of Georgia has had lynchings and less than one-fourth of 
 the population of the State live within that territory. During the 
 thirty-five years previous to 1922, with 439 lynchings, there had 
 been but ONE indictment, so far as the records show. A cam- 
 paign against lynching in Georgia began with the issue of Governor 
 Dorsey’s pamphlet in 1921, covering 135 cases of injustice that 
 had come to his knowledge, and setting forth the difficulties he had 
 encountered in dealing with them. In 1922, there have been eight 
 lynchings in the State and there have been twenty-two indictments. 
 Four men are already in prison for long prison terms. Fifteen 
 others await trial. The greater number of these will be tried, not 
 for mob violence, but for murder, a thing unheard of before in the 
 history of that State. 
 
 How has this been done? A lynching took place in a particu- 
 lar county in Georgia. A competent man who understood Georgia 
 spent six weeks working with the local Interracial Committee gath- 
 ering evidence. They brought before the grand jury the names 
 
 13 
 
THE NEW INTER-RACE 
 
 of fifty-six witnesses who were ready to testify against the mob. 
 Four of them were called and as a result six men were indicted. 
 
 6. The poor and ignorant everywhere have a hard time in 
 the courts. The Negroes in the South as a class are very poor 
 and very ignorant. During the last year the Interracial State 
 Secretaries helped out with many of these cases of injustice. Some 
 of the victims had been driven away from their homes; some had 
 property taken away without process of law; some had been held 
 for debt, etc. 
 
 This work requires funds. In Georgia about $3,500 was raised 
 for this legal aid. The best lawyers are willing to advise and give 
 money to pay for advice. To fight these cases is to win them. It 
 is significant that the fight has begun. It will be finished when 
 the nation builds a better functioning judicial system. As it is 
 now justice is too largely a luxury for the man who can pay for it. 
 
 7. Possibly the thing which has mattered most has been 
 the changed attitude which has come to the white people who 
 have been doing the work. The other day a hospital in a small town 
 in one of the western States lost the little vial of radium it owned. 
 After a very diligent search it was decided that it must have gone 
 out with the soiled bandages from the operating room down into 
 the incinerator and thence into the ash heap. Those ashes were 
 sent half-way across the continent to a chemist that he might 
 rescue the radium which they contained. 
 
 Radium in ashes make a very great deal of difference in their 
 value. To many the Negro had been the social ash heap in America. 
 He had been talked of as a problem. But many saw the Negro dur- 
 ing the war, how much he contributed and how much of an Amer- 
 ican he had become. Some went into the laboratory of George 
 Carver at Tuskegee, and realized that he, a black man, had for 
 twenty-eight years worked quietly there, and in that time had 
 probably made more contributions to the scientific development of 
 agriculture than any other Southern scientist, black or white. In 
 the light of such examples, this ash heap was seen to have values 
 greater than radium. The voices of the Fisk singers, the lives of 
 Negro doctors, ministers and farmers, many of whom were trained 
 in the schools that you established a generation ago, today have a 
 
 14 
 
RELATIONS IN THE SOUTH 
 
 new meaning. With many others I am convinced that the millions 
 of Negroes in America have something of great value to contribute 
 to American life. 
 
 The Negro is not a menace to America. He has proved him- 
 self worthy of confidence. He has been and may continue to be a 
 blessing. In the years that are to come he needs the help of those 
 who have voices of influence. He needs unnecessary barriers out 
 of his way, and a chance to demonstrate that under God he is a 
 man and can play a man’s part. 
 
For Further Information Address 
 
 Commission on Interracial Cooperation 
 
 409 Palmer Building 
 
 Atlanta, Georgia