against
whom there was no evidence, but who had saved money and Liberty Bonds.

Governor Brough in a statement to the press blamed the _Crisis_ and the
Chicago _Defender_ for the trouble. He had served for a number of years
as a professor of economics before becoming governor and had even
identified himself with the forward-looking University Commission on
Southern Race Questions; and it is true that he postponed the executions
in order to allow appeals to be filed in behalf of the condemned men.
That he should thus attempt to shift the burden of blame and overlook
the facts when in a position of grave responsibility was a keen
disappointment to the lovers of progress.

Reference to the monthly periodical and the weekly paper just mentioned,
however, brings us to still another matter--the feeling on the part of
the Negro that, in addition to the outrages visited on the race, the
Government was now, under the cloak of wartime legislation, formally to
attempt to curtail its freedom of speech. For some days the issue of
the _Crisis_ for May, 1919, was held up in the mail; a South Carolina
representative in Congress quoted by way of denunciation from the
editorial "Returning Soldiers" in the same number of the periodical;
and a little later in the year the Department of Justice devoted
twenty-seven pages of the report of the investigation against "Persons
Advising Anarchy, Sedition, and the Forcible Overthrow of the
Government" to a report on "Radicalism and Sedition among the Negroes
as Reflected in Their Publications." Among other periodicals and papers
mentioned were the _Messenger_ and the _Negro World_ of New York; and by
the _Messenger_ indeed, frankly radical in its attitude not only on the
race question but also on fundamental economic principles, even the
_Crisis_ was regarded as conservative in tone. There could be no doubt
that a great spiritual change had come over the Negro people of the
United States. At the very time that their sons and brothers were making
the supreme sacrifice in France they were witnessing such events as
those at East St. Louis or Houston, or reading of three burnings within
a year in Tennessee. A new determination closely akin to consecration
possessed them. Fully to understand the new spirit one would read not
only such publications as those that have been mentioned, but also those
issued in the heart of the South. "Good-by, Black Mammy," said the
_Southwestern Christian Advocate_, tak