he attitude of the whole race
toward the blacks. The white people could be more easily reached, and
very soon there was brought about a better understanding between
the races. Cities gave attention to the improvement of the sanitary
condition of the negro sections, which had so long been neglected;
negroes were invited to take part in the clean-up week; the Women's
Health League called special meetings of colored women, conferred with
them and urged them to organize community clubs. Committees of leading
negroes dared to take up with their employers the questions of better
accommodations and better treatment of negro labor. Members of these
committees went before chambers of commerce to set forth their claims.
Others dared boldly to explain to them that the negroes were leaving
the South because they had not been given the treatment which should
be accorded men.

Instead of expressing their indignation at such efforts on the part
of the negroes, the whites listened to them attentively. Accordingly,
joint meetings of the whites and blacks were held to hear frank
statements of the case from speakers of both races. One of the most
interesting of these meetings was the one held in Birmingham, Alabama.
The negroes addressing the audience frankly declared that it was
impossible to bring back from the North the migrants who were making
good there, but that the immediate problem requiring solution was how
to hold in the South those who had not gone. These negroes made it
clear that it was impossible for negro leaders through the pulpit and
press to check the movement, but that only through a change in the
attitude of the whites to the blacks could the latter be made to feel
that the Southland is safe for them.

Here we see the coming to pass of a thing long desired by those
interested in the welfare of the South and long rejected by those who
have always prized the peculiar interest of one race more highly than
the welfare of all. White men, for the first time, were talking on
the streets with negroes just as white men talk with each other. The
merchants gave their negro patrons more attention and consideration. A
prominent white man said, "I have never seen such changes as have come
about within the last four months. I know of white men and negroes
who have not dared to speak to one another on the streets to converse
freely." The suspension of harsh treatment was so marked in some
places that few negroes neglected to mention