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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 35. The Negro Protest - 4. The Spirit of Niagara and Harper’s Ferry - 5. The Protest Is Still Rising
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744 ’A.n American Dilemma
segregation in practice if it meant greater material advantage for Negroes.
For example, he accepted segregation in the Army in order to get any
Negro officers among the fighting forces at all. But the First World War
and the post-war development fundamentally changed the psychology of
the Negro people and the basic conditions for both accommodation and
protest.
By the year 1 909-1 910, the Niagara movement had ceased to be an
effective organization.^^ At this time, however, the stage was already set for
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which
we shall consider in Chapter 39, and the Niagara movement merged
with it. The N.A.A.C.P. has, since its foundation, been the central organ-
ization of Negro protest, carried on in the spirit of the Abolitionists
and in collaboration with Northern white liberals. But the protest motive
has also gone—to a varying degree—into the policy of all the other Negro
betterment organizations. It has, in fact, become part of the ideology of
the entire Negro people to an ever increasing extent.
5. The Protest Is Still Rising
It cannot be doubted that the spirit of American Negroes in all classes
is different today from what it was a generation ago. The protest motive
is still rising. It is bound to change considerably the conditions under which
Negro leadership functions.
The main factors in this development toward greater ^^race conscious-
ness” and increasing dissatisfaction with the caste position will be dealt
with in later chapters in so far as they have not already been touched upon.
The Negro betterment organizations have themselves helped this develop-
ment even when the Negro protest has not been their central theme.
When Negroes are brought together to discuss and plan for any purpose,
this by itself makes them feel a new courage to voice, or at least to
formulate to themselves, their protest. They cannot avoid reminding each
other of the actually existing reasons for serious complaints.
The Negro press, which is reaching ever deeper down into the Negro
masses, has, as one of its chief aims, to give a national account of the injus-
tices against Negroes and of the accomplishments and aspirations of Negroes.
Its existence, its popular spread, and its content are a testimony of Negro
unrest. Its cumulative effect in spurring race consciousness must be tre-
mendous.
Negro churches and lodges often may have served an escape purpose by
deflecting attention from worldly ills and by diverting social dissatisfaction.
On a more fundamental plane, however, they are vehicles for a teaching
which is equalitarian. Christianity is a radical creed, even if its radical
potentialities are kept suppressed. These institutions also move along with
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