Some things never change

Sep 29, 2014 13:59

Cut for dated, racist language:

This issue is a fair sample of many issues of this publication [The Crisis] and all other negro publications published in various parts of the country which have been brought to the attention of this office. Most of them play up in startling head lines all reports of violence against negroes at the hands of the Southerners and other whites. In the narratives the publications rarely, if ever, mention the provocations furnished by the victims and if such provocations are mentioned they are usually discredited. The victim is always characterized as an innocent victim of race prejudice or race hatred. Such articles can have but one effect on the negro and that is to cause him to hate the whites and the “white man’s government.” Any good that might be accomplished by matter of a loyal nature carried in these papers, is offset by this rotten race-hatred breeding stuff. The
fomenting of race hatred among negroes at this time is extremely unfortunate and flavors strongly of German propaganda."

Federal Attorney Charles E. Boles, in a legal memo for the U.S. Post Office during WWI, on the black paper's reportings of lynchings.

*shudder*
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