http://dl.lib.brown.edu/repository2/repoman.php?verb=render&id=130270396...
http://dl.lib.brown.edu/repository2/repoman.php?verb=render&id=130270396...
On pages 11 and 12 of The Crisis I found a interesting section titled "The Ghetto". It seems to be a recent list of discriminations against African Americans. One of the most striking cases of discrimination is one on page 11 that says, "A year ago, Arthur Little...married Alma Wade. Two months ago Mr. Little refused to live with her longer, alleging that she is colored. Mrs. Little is now trying to find out whether she is 'white' or 'black". Today, this seems an absurd reason to leave a woman. It seems completley unreasonable to suddenly no longer want to be with your wife because you think, seemingly out of nowhere, that she is African American. How is this something that one just suddenly stumbles upon? Were there set behaviors that were seen as only white actions or only black actions, and taking part in one or the other dictated how others classified your race. Also, this seems reflect on a problem outside of intense racial discriminations: it appears that some people were having an identity crisis. Since being either white or being black had such strong consequences, individuals would have probably been faced with a dilemna if they were darker skinned than the average white person, perhaps had different hair, or different face and body shapes from a typical caucasion person.
The paragraph that addresses opposition to having a moving pictures show in a certain neighborhood reminded me of a scene from one of my favorite TV series, Parks and Recreation. During a town hall meeting, an elderly woman expresses her adament desire to keep a basketball course off of a park that is being built by her home because basketball courts attract certain "undesireable" individuals that she doesn't care to have around. These is clearly satirizing these same old, and frankly insane prejudices that are being expressed in The Crisis. To me, this sort of publication humanzies Africans Americans during a time when they were seen as less than human, or at least less human than a white person. Nowadays these sorts of claims seem totally absurd and it is hard to believe people once thought this way.