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of those high ideals for which it is striving. America has believed that in di¤erentiation , not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. Acting on this belief, it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered. —Louis D. Brandeis served as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939. Murdering Negroes Robert M. La Follette august 1919 The mobbing of harmless, helpless Negroes in the capital of this country is the nation’s everlasting shame. The responsibility for starting the riots, which ruled Washington for days, rests upon disorderly lawless whites. Peaceable, uno¤ending colored men and boys were beaten up and murdered by brutes who boast of our white civilization. A reign of hysteria and terror prevailed throughout the sections of the city where the colored population resides. They feared a “new East St. Louis.” They armed themselves as best they could and barricaded their homes. There were colored soldiers among them who had served with distinction in France, some of whom had been wounded “Wghting to make the world safe for democracy.” While the United States Senate is debating the League of Nations, which would make us the custodians of peace and the instructors in democratic ideals to less enlightened peoples, we were murdering innocent, intelligent, God-fearing, law-abiding colored citizens at the back door of the White House. Lynching Punishes the Community Anna Howard Shaw november 1919 Whenever I hear the claim made that we are unWt for self-government in this country, I feel that it is somewhat justiWed by our supine attitude toward lynching. A community controlled by a mob is not a civilized community, and should be placed under the control of a more civilized part of the country. One great objection to lynching is its e¤ect upon the community itself, particularly upon the young, and the lawlessness and disregard for order which underlies lynching, when nine times out of ten it is not because of abhorrence of the crime committed, but a desire on the part of the mob to 104 p a r t 5 the civil rights movement ...

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