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Chapter 5. To Awaken the Conscience of America
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C h a p t e r 5 To Awaken the Conscience of America Hail to this Council for inspiration, For undaunted manhood, for equal rights, A product—the black man’s own creation Led by such as Walters, as Arnett, White Midst outrage, opposition and labor, As a race let us struggle for the right, Thus educate the hearts of our neighbor Our oppressor, yea our brother in white. —J. Francis Lee It is because of our equality by nature that we appeal to the conscience of the nation to recognize our manhood and treat us as they treat other men, be they ever so white. —Alexander Walters As the twentieth century dawned, African Americans found themselves in a precarious situation. Throughout the country, black civil and political rights were being violated systematically while white vigilantes murdered roughly a hundred individuals annually. This growing system of Jim Crow and unmitigated racial violence was reinforced by, among other things, the increasing number of “scientific” studies of race and ethnicity—often categorizing the world according to its different ethnic groups and ranking them in terms of superiority—that suggested racism was justified. African American activists responded to this white supremacy in numerous ways, but only one 136 Chapter 5 organization, the Afro-American Council, stood in firm opposition to this racial Armageddon. Building on the model set forth by the Afro-American League, the Council was an organization based in local and state branches throughout the country whose mandate was to fight not only racism in general, but to contest discrimination and mob violence working through the local, state, and federal courts and legislatures. Though historians have paid scant attention to them throughout the years, the Council’s activities during this period were extremely important. A vast majority of the individuals who scholars have deemed leaders of the race at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were active in the organization at one point or another. Additionally, the activities of the group during the period on both the national and local levels highlight the daily grind of organizing. It was a slow and arduous process to build a test case to challenge the spread of disfranchisement while at the same time continuing constant lobbying of the federal government to gain favorable legislation to counter the disfranchising and discriminatory actions of the southern states. This action was maintained alongside multilayered attempts to end the disgraceful act of lynching by pursuing legislation, propaganda, and legal action on the national and local levels. All this took place while the Council tried to raise money and calibrate messages that would properly inform both the white and black communities, thus raising their consciousness on the necessity of righting these wrongs. Coming off the successful December 1900 Executive Committee meeting , members of the Council took their leading role in this struggle very seriously . While interested in addressing issues deemed central to overturning the current situation, finding a means to finance political activity took precedence in the early days of 1900. Though the organization had successfully gained support throughout the country from a small cadre of budding black businessmen, entrepreneurs, ministers, and other professionals, it had not overcome the financial strains that plagued its predecessor, the Afro-American League. Like the League, the Council failed to gain mass support, and its members, though significant in number, seemed unwilling—or unable—to financially support the ambitious activities of the organization. The leaders of the Council understood their dilemma and did not want the organization to falter on the national level as the League had done. The Council needed to firmly plant itself in the nation’s consciousness to show the public that the group would do more than other organizations in the past. This mission was extremely difficult and without precedent. Years before [44.210.240.31] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:20 GMT) To Awaken the Conscience of America 137 the existence of a national civil rights organization with a paid staff of advocates , the Afro-American Council called on African Americans to place their hard-earned and often meager resources into an organization that could not promise immediate results. A strategy of challenging disfranchisement, the brutality of lynching, and the restriction of African American civil and social rights through legal means was not a glamorous struggle. Rather, the Council ’s work promised to be a laborious, time-consuming war of attrition that needed a steady flow of money and...