Mr. Bilbo's Afflatus

Mississippi's Theodore ("The Man") Bilbo arosein the Senate one day last week to display a bulky petition. It bore,said he, the names of 2,500,000 U. S. Negroes who would prefer to live in Africa. For three-and-a-half hours and 26 pages in the Congressional Record, he expanded on a way to make this possible: let the Government establish a Greater Liberia for "repatriated" blacks.

Mr. Bilbo thus returned to a favorite theme and revived an idea older than the U. S. itself. By subsidizing a Negro exodus to Africa, he maintained, the U. S. would rid its whites of a depressed and depressing race, save itself from racial "amalgamation."

"By this separation," droned little Mr. Bilbo, "the blood stream of the white race shall remain uncontaminated and all the . . . blessings of the white man's civilization shall forever remain the priceless possession of the Anglo-Saxon. . . . There is an overmastering impulse, a divine afflatus among the mass of the Negroes of the U. S. for a country of their own. . . ."

In support of his bill to create Greater Liberia, Senator Bilbo quoted Thomas Jefferson, founder-hero of the Democratic Party. He declared that 20,000 mulattoes annually "cross the color line" (pass for whites). If miscegenation goes on unchecked, he predicted the U. S. will become a land of decadent mongrels, "a yellow race yet to come."

Listening in the Senate gallery was Mrs. Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, a portly mulatto from Chicago. Mrs. Gordon raises her cream-coffee arms, shouts to her audiences: "There's amalgamation for you! See what it does to us!" Most of the "signatures" on Mr. Bilbo's petition were gathered from 45 States by her Peace Movement of Ethiopia, a repatriationist cult which has its headquarters at her apartment on Chicago's South Side. Bales of letters, cards, X-ed scraps of paper are stacked in every cranny, and more still pour in. Last week some 300 of her followers, who mostly are on Relief (as is she), arrived in Washington by truck and car, so fagged that they could hardly drag themselves up the Capitol steps to hear their friend from Mississippi.

Mittie Gordon was a follower of famed Negro Marcus Garvey, who in the 19205 aroused millions of Negroes to a frenzy of enthusiasm for life in Africa. Although Jamaica-born Marcus Garvey was convicted of using the mails to sell fraudulent stocks and was deported, Mrs. Gordon still thinks he is the greatest of Negroes. "Garvey Clubs" still exist, and what is left of his Universal Negro Improvement Association backs the Bilbo bill. Chief opposition comes from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, whose pale-skinned President Walter White is denounced as an "amalgamationist" by Senator Bilbo.

Bilbo, Gordon & Co. would have the U. S. wangle 400,000 square African miles from Great Britain and France, accepting it as part payment on their War debts, later would buy supplies for the colony in the same way. The U. S. Treasury would put up $1,000,000,000 and guarantee the colony's bonds. Negro labor battalions would be paid U. S. Army wages ($21 to $30 per month) to prepare the land under U. S. engineers. Senator Bilbo vows that 8,000,000 of the 12,000,000 U. S. Negroes would hop at the chance to escape the white man's yoke, live on the white man's subsidies until they establish farms and businesses. They would progress from a military government to a territorial commonwealth, finally to an independent republic. Their promised land would adjoin little Liberia, which a U. S. society set up for Negro freedmen in 1822.

Many a reputable Negro leader distrusts The Man Bilbo, who was once accused of muzzling Negro pickers in his pecan grove. He tickles the poor-white vote with his back-to-Africa talk, but he appeals to many a poor black as well. Last week he flourished a letter from Harlem: ". . . I, Mack Royal . . . seartnley will go at the word--I and my whole famley. . . . Sir, please inrole my name; please do this with fail. ..."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.