Dr. Moton well says that the laws are made by the white men, enforced and interpreted by them and that it is, therefore, the white man’s primal duty to see to it that his laws are as applied to colored men as fair and impartial as when applied to white men. We know that such a condition does not prevail today. The colored people are all to often discriminated against in the courts of the land. They are denied this social justice for which their leader is a protagonist and that is one of the chief reasons of animosity spring up between the races and of the negro’s general disinclination to co-operate with the officers in the execution of the law.
Dr. Moton was speaking in a community that is above the average in inter-racial relations. He so stated. Here there is never any trouble between the whites and the blacks. There is a spirit of comity between them that prevents open suggestions of hospitality. Leaders of the colored people enjoy in such a pronounced manner the respect of the white people in what they are trying to do for their own race that they bring massive respect for all the negroes, but there is still abundance of room for co-operative efforts even in Charlotte to make the situation better.
Dr. Moton’s suggestion for an interracial council to sit together and to study together the constantly arising problems is good. It ought to be carried out to the end that in this community we may strive to develop the negro along the very best possible lines and to the greater end that the colored man of Charlotte may never have reasonable opportunity for contending that he does not receive social justice. He is entitled to it, and if he does not get it, the blood of it is on the white man’s hands.
From the editorial page of The Charlotte News, Tuesday, March 22, 1921. Dr. Robert Moton was head of the Tuskegee Institute and had spoken in Charlotte. To read the entire editorial, go to https://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn91068256/1921-03-22/ed-1/seq-4/
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