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administrations of President Woodrow Wilson; and not only did the
National Government in the course of these administrations discriminate
openly against persons of Negro descent in the Federal service and fail
to protect those who happened to live in the capital, but its policy
also gave encouragement to outrage in places technically said to be
beyond its jurisdiction. A great war was to give new occasion and
new opportunity for discrimination, defamatory propaganda was to be
circulated on a scale undreamed of before, and the close of the war was
to witness attempts for a new reign of terror in the South. Even beyond
the bounds of continental America the race was now to suffer by reason
of the national policy, and the little republic of Hayti to lift its
bleeding hands to the calm judgment of the world.

Both a cause and a result of the struggle through which the race was now
to pass was its astonishing progress. The fiftieth anniversary of the
Emancipation Proclamation--January 1, 1913--called to mind as did
nothing else the proscription and the mistakes, but also the successes
and the hopes of the Negro people in America. Throughout the South
disfranchisement seemed almost complete; and yet, after many attempts,
the movement finally failed in Maryland in 1911 and in Arkansas in 1912.
In 1915, moreover, the disfranchising act of Oklahoma was declared
unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, and henceforth the
Negro could feel that the highest legal authority was no longer on the
side of those who sought to deprive him of all political voice. Eleven
years before, the Court had taken refuge in technicalities. The year
1911 was also marked by the appointment of the first Negro policeman in
New York, by the election of the first Negro legislator in Pennsylvania,
and by the appointment of a man of the race, William H. Lewis, as
Assistant Attorney General of the United States; and several civil
rights suits were won in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey. Banks,
insurance companies, and commercial and industrial enterprises were
constantly being capitalized; churches erected more and more stately
edifices; and fraternal organizations constantly increased in membership
and wealth. By 1913 the Odd Fellows numbered very nearly half a million
members and owned property worth two and a half million dollars; in
1920 the Dunbar Amusement Corporation of Philadelphia erected a theater
costing $400,000; and the fore