unningly,
are not large enough to do what America wants; but there is another
group of laborers, 12,000,000 strong, the natural heirs, by every logic
of justice, to the fruits of America's industrial advance. They will be
used simply because they must be used,--but their using means East St.
Louis!

Eastward from St. Louis lie great centers, like Chicago, Indianapolis,
Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, and New York; in every one
of these and in lesser centers there is not only the industrial unrest
of war and revolutionized work, but there is the call for workers, the
coming of black folk, and the deliberate effort to divert the thoughts
of men, and particularly of workingmen, into channels of race hatred
against blacks. In every one of these centers what happened in East St.
Louis has been attempted, with more or less success. Yet the American
Negroes stand today as the greatest strategic group in the world. Their
services are indispensable, their temper and character are fine, and
their souls have seen a vision more beautiful than any other mass of
workers. They may win back culture to the world if their strength can be
used with the forces of the world that make for justice and not against
the hidden hates that fight for barbarism. For fight they must and fight
they will!

Rising on wings we cross again the rivers of St. Louis, winding and
threading between the towers of industry that threaten and drown the
towers of God. Far, far beyond, we sight the green of fields and hills;
but ever below lies the river, blue,--brownish-gray, touched with the
hint of hidden gold. Drifting through half-flooded lowlands, with
shanties and crops and stunted trees, past struggling corn and
straggling village, we rush toward the Battle of the Marne and the West,
from this dread Battle of the East. Westward, dear God, the fire of Thy
Mad World crimsons our Heaven. Our answering Hell rolls eastward from
St. Louis.

* * * * *

Here, in microcosm, is the sort of economic snarl that arose continually
for me and my pupils to solve. We could bring to its unraveling little
of the scholarly aloofness and academic calm of most white universities.
To us this thing was Life and Hope and Death!

How should we think such a problem through, not simply as Negroes, but
as men and women of a new century, helping to build a new world? And
first of all, here is no simple question of race antagonism. There a