Harlow's Weekly (Oklahoma City, Okla.), Vol. 20, No. 20, Ed. 1 Friday, June 10, 1921 Page: 1 of 16
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EDITORIAL
LET US RETURN TO A REIGN OF LAW
A certain very wise man once rebuked a generation for
being able to understand the meaning of weather signals,
but entirely unable to “discern the signs of the times.”
The criticism was applicable to Palestine and to an age
1900 years ago, but is also as precise in its application
to our own country and our own time.
Even such a tragedy as that which marred the good
name of the state a few days ago in lulsa is scaicely suf
ficient to arouse a people, filled with pursuit of pleasure
or immediate gain, to recognize tendencies and directions
in our social development which carry deep threats excn
to the perpetuity of our institutions. Yet to the really
thoughtful person those tendencies are so obvious and the
danger so great as to cause one to recoil before the picture
of the future which must be painted by honest apprehen-
sion.
The Tulsa terror is a perfect exemplification of two
facts which are becoming every day more manifest and
more threatening. The first is that there is a great change in
the negro in this country.
The time wits when the negro was an abject, timid,
shrinking mass of population, held in thorough control, not
merely physically but mentally, by the dominant white race.
Here and there an individual, under the stress of uncon-
trollable impulse, was guilty of an outrage, the punishment
of which, terrible and immediate, went a long way in Pre-
venting the repetition of similar crime. There was no racial
response to these events except one of terror and unspeak-
able dread. As a race the negro was unlearned, unorganized,
spiritless, submissive, his only danger was in the sporadic
outbreak of individual crime.
Today that race is much changed. Aided and urged bv
the white man, a steadily increasing proportion of the black
race are acquiring trained minds and skilled hands, intel-
lectual and economic independence. And the crux of the
whole matter—with this increasing independence is coming
a feeling of tremendous resentment toward the white race;
a resentment based on memories of previous racial injus
tice and present restriction of racial opportunity, a resen
ment that is based upon a conception of conditions and <4
present relative racial rights and capacities which is fun<
nmentallv incorrect and not admitted bv the white man. but
is an abiding article of faith with the negro. It w a re,
sentment which is gradually absorbing all the possibility ot
comfortable and confidential relations between the two
races, is a resentment which upon provocation flashes out
in a flaming blast, of hatred—a hatred which is not com-
prehensible by the white man, with his centuries of com-
plete freedom behind him, but which is the deepest of all
hatreds, the hatred of the oppressed for the oppressor.
It is a hatred which many times is sufficient to sub-
merge fear of personal danger. I remember very distinctly
the answer of a bright young negro who was publishing a
newspaper of agitation for his own race, wiien he was re-
minded that since the whites out number the negroes in this
country ten to one, anything which would provoke the tdo
races to conflict merely mans disaster to the black man and
is consequently unfriendly to the truest interest of the black
man. His reply was, “Sneaking for myself, 1 have about
reached the conclusion that I would as soon be dead as to
continue to live out my life under the conditions under
which apparently I am to be compelled to live, and I am
willing to die whenever necessary, providing I can take with
me a sufficient number of those who oppress me.” He was
merely franker than most negroes. There are increasing
thousands of educated negroes whose resentment goes as
deep. That it is a dangerous feeling, a feeling based upon
emotion and misconceptions, rather than cool judgment, does
not change the fact: it exists.
After the experience of the negro in war. which has
familiarized him with violence and has accustomed him to
believe in his own capacity in a conflict, from an unorgan-
ized. unled mass, the negro race in this country is rapidly
changing to a definitely led and increasingly organized body.
More and more with everv year we shall see realized among
them that tendency which in Tulsa found its realization in
armed and officered mobs, in general distribution of mod-
ern fire arms, in offices and churches converted into ar-
sonals. All over this United States at this present moment
investigation will reveal conditions absolutely identical with
those conditions which prevailed in Tulsa just prior to the
outburst. Wherever a large negro population exists in these
United States, side by side with it exists the possibility of
the same kind of armed resistance, the same sudden and
deadly flame of ultimately impotent but widely destructive
rage.
Parallel and closely associated is the tact of the increa>
ingness of our population to submit to white mob domina-
tion Many times in past years have the<e columns referred
to the deadly danger contained in the increasing eagerness
of a certain element of white men to revert to primitive
savagery under the form of a mob. It may he said with rel-
ative accuracy that in Oklahoma among thousands of people
it is not considered a crime for a mob to kill a negro, no
matter what it might be for an individual to do the same
thing. The feeling seems to be that when a number of peo-
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Harlow, Victor E. Harlow's Weekly (Oklahoma City, Okla.), Vol. 20, No. 20, Ed. 1 Friday, June 10, 1921, newspaper, June 10, 1921; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc1601116/m1/1/: accessed July 17, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.