A transcription of Johnson’s address to the Women’s International League for Peace & Justice, in which he lays blame for the First World War on the European powers’ despoliation of Africa, which had begun with the justification that Native Africans were an inferior race.
While noting that America played no direct role in African colonization, Johnson observes: “… we have the same sort of thing in this country. I judge that the average white American, in so far as he may think about the race problem, thinks, ‘What are we going to do with these Negroes?’ never once thinking of what the Negro is going to do with America, of what he has already done with America … can you estimate the effect inherent in the character of the American people because of the fact that for three hundred years the Negro has offered to a dominant majority the opportunity to practice with impunity hypocrisy, injustice, brutality, and wrong?” A bold and direct attack on American racism, delivered while Johnson was Secretary of the NAACP.
While the address has been collected in various anthologies, this first printing is rare.
OCLC locates copies at Berkeley and Yale only.
Not in Blockson, Work, or LCP Afro-Americana.
