Mausiki Scales

“All Negroes are aware of the mass of lies on which the prejudice is built, of the propaganda which is designed to cover the naked economic exploitation. But the negro and his white friends have little chance to stem the propaganda. The main organs of publicity are in the hands of the whites. The millions who watch the films always see the Negroes shining shoes or doing menial work, singing or dancing. Of the thousands of Negro professional men, of the nearly two hundred Negro universities and colleges in America which give degrees in every branch of learning, and are run predominantly by Negro professors…of this the American capitalist takes good care that nothing appears on screen.

Thus the American Negro..literate, Westernized, and American almost from the foundation of America…suffers from his humiliations and discrimination’s to a degree that few whites and even many non-American Negroes can ever understand. The jazz gaiety of the American Negro is a semi-conscious reaction to the fundamental sorrow of the race. Often lynching is not the spontaneous madness of a crowd, but a demonstration carefully organized and announced in the press as being fixed for the next day. The American whites will burn a Negro alive. Less than ten years ago a crowd of white men., women and children danced round a burning Negro singing “Happy days are here again”. Little by little the Negro in the south, particularly in the towns, is fighting his way to better conditions. But the continuity of white policy is unbroken from 1650 to 1930. The Negro must be kept down. That is the background of Negro American life.”