This rare, early Oklahoma imprint is an appeal by George F. Nave (1884-1939) to fellow Black Americans to support the United States’ entry into World War One and simultaneously argues for their equal treatment.
Nave spends the first part of the work discussing fair education, the prospect of “one, strong, united country of all its people” (instead of a country partly belonging to the “white,” “black,” or “red” man), and asserting that “the Negro is not asking special acts of government nor state for his special benefit.” He argues that the “New Negro” has developed into a “full grown man” after “fifty years of freedom, fifty years of actual contact with the business world, and fifty years of commercial activity and education.”
As such, he asks for “a chance to play a man’s part in the material construction of things,” “a chance to earn an honest living among all avenues and channels that are open to other men and women of his skill and ability,” “to bear the burdens as well as enjoy the blessings of his country,” “fairness in every particular, and justice everywhere,” and not least “to shed his blood along with the blood of other citizens, when the shedding of blood is required to preserve and protect his country.”
Indeed, the first page states: “He will not prove a traitor to the cause of his country, no a coward in the face of it’s enemies.” And concludes “[h]e asks that his country appreciate his general worth, that it depend upon his ability and endurance, that it trust his honestly, that it believe in his integrity and that it call upon him, when a man is needed to do a man’s work in a man’s way.”
George Nave was a “Cherokee by blood” and descendant of a Cherokee Freedman. In a varied career, he was an estate agent, businessman, teacher and author. He served as the steward of the Colored High School of the Cherokee Nation from 1899 to 1901, one of several Cherokee leaders to fulfill a two-year post at the school. He then later moved from Tahlequah to Muskogee, where he worked in the real estate business, during which he often represented Cherokee minors as a guardian in real estate transactions.
This pamphlet apparently brought Nave some measure of renown at the time of its publication. His concept of the “New Negro” based on racial pride, self-determination, and cultural consciousness, emerged around the same time as Hubert Henry Harrison’s similar writings in The Voice and then Alain Locke during the Harlem Renaissance.
The title page carries a different title than the front wrapper, reading He Will Not Prove a Traitor to the Cause of His Country. In addition, there seem to be two different editions of this work. The first, and likely earlier edition (that we have here), is titled simply The New Negro’s Attitude Toward His Government on the front wrapper and totals five pages. Another, probable later edition, is titled The New Negro’s Attitude Toward His Government at a Time Like This and is twice the length.
Not in Work, Blockson, or the Library Company’s Afro-Americana collection.
