Hellraisers Journal: News Year’s Greetings from The Crisis Magazine; Editorial On “Old Desires” for Peace and Democracy

Quote DuBois, WWI We Return, The Crisis, May 1919 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 1, 1919
News Years Greetings from The Crisis & an Editorial on “Old Desires”

From The Crisis of January 1919:

From the Editorial Page:

OLD DESIRES

“THE NEW YEAR,” sang the Persian poet, “awakens Old Desires.” Certainly at no time during the year does the realization of unfulfilled hopes weigh so heavily. Today when the whole world waits while the delegates at the Peace Table formulate the new rights of man, we are conscious that for us discrimination still lowers. All Europe rejoices in its new gifts—the British proletariat is promised a liberal labor program; the Czecho-Slovaks are tasting the joys of nationalism; France is rid of the Prussian menace; Belgium is bidden to bind up her wounds. But our men, who have helped mightily to awaken and preserve the spirit which makes these things possible, are returning to what?

To a country whose plea for a democracy includes white men only; to a South which says openly that the Negro need not because of services in this war expect greater privileges, that he must be kept “in his place,” and that the South intends to define that place. POLITICAL EQUALITY, ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY, CIVIL RIGHTS, JUSTICE before the law, all these, our “old desires,” are as far away as ever, unless we take a desperate, unflinching stand.

One thing is in our favor and that is the awakening of the social conscience. Hartley Withers says, “Hitherto it has always been assumed, except by a few voices crying in the wilderness, that by the force of inexorable economic laws, every nation must have its human dregs, living in a state of half-clad, half-fed misery and making a mockery of the civilization which allows their existence.” The world knows better now. However desirable, how ever expedient, men may deem such a state, society is conscious that no scheme of life can be right or complete which dooms those who toil hardest, to get the meanest share of the good things of life and to have no chance of living in the fullest sense.

But this social conscience can avail nothing without our own deliberate and concerted effort. In this year of general reconstruction we black Americans must fight, must push forward, with steadier heart and nerve than ever before, until we are well over the top. We must do combat on our own Western Front. And in order to win, we have got to put aside bickering and factionalism, trivial jealousies and disputes. See what the Southern States, by pooling their race prejudice, have been able to accomplish since that other Reconstruction. On, then, black Americans, and remember the pass-word—Organization and Co-operation!

Meanwhile — Happy New Year!

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THE PEACE CONFERENCE

DR. W. E. B. DuBOIS sailed for France, December 1, on the United States transport, Orizaba. The Orizaba made a special trip to carry the accredited correspondents of American newspapers and magazines, who will report the Peace Conference. Dr. DuBois goes in a three-fold capacity: he goes as special representative of THE CRISIS at the Peace Conference; to collect first-hand material to go into a History of the American Negro in the Great War; and finally as the representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for the purpose of bringing to bear all pressure possible on the delegates at the Peace Table in the interest of the colored peoples of the United States and of the world.

As the representative of the N. A. A. C. P., Dr. DuBois will summon a Pan-African Congress, to meet in Paris, to press the question of inter-nationalization of the former German colonies. He has for some time been making a study of this question; his views on the subject are printed in this issue of THE CRISIS.

A conference held to consider the disposition of the former German colonies in Africa will serve, perhaps, better than any other means that could be taken, to focus the attention of the peace delegates and the civilized world on the just claims of the Negro everywhere. Dr. DuBois is preeminently fitted to call such a conference, because of the experience he gained and the connections he formed at The Races’ Congress in London, in 1911, to which he was a delegate.