Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 209, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1919 — DEMAND RACE BAR BE LIFTED [ARTICLE]

DEMAND RACE BAR BE LIFTED

NEGROES WARN OF TROUBLE AHEAD IF THEY ARE NOT GIVEN EQUAL RIGHTS.

Washington, Aug. 28.—Asking for an amendment to the peace treaty to provide for racial equality, a delegation of negroes, speaking for the National Equal Rights League, told the senate foreign relations committee today that serious trouble ’ might ibe expected unless better treatment was accorded the negroes in the United States. “The black man has given notice,” said A. Whaley, a New York negro, “that what has been suffered in the past will not be endured in the. future. He means business now. There can be no compromise.” William Monroe Trotter, of Boston, secretary of the league, said the “oppression” of the negro in America was reaching a point where no one could be sure “that our land will be a land of peace.” Only five of the seventeen committee members, all of them republicans, attended the meeting. An amendment to give the United States a mandate over the Kamerun, a German colony in Africa, was requested by Joseph T. Thomas, a negro of Cleveland, representing the national race congress. American negroes, he said, could be recruited to police territory under white officers.

A petition that all the- African colonies . taken from Germany be “divided between Egypt, Abyssinia and Liberia” was filed by the League of Darker Peoples of the World. Two amendments were proposed by the Equal Rights League. One would provide in the league of nations covenant that the members would vouchsafe to their citizens full liberty, rights of democracy and protection of life, “without restriction or distinction based on race, color, creed or previous conditions.” The other would add a similar guarantee as a separate section of the treaty.