Mordecai Wyatt Johnson Quotes
When the Negro cries with pain from his deep hurt and lays his petition for elemental justice before the nation, he is calling upon the American people to kindle about that crucible of race relationships the fires of American faith.
In the middle of WWII where Black soldiers were fighting and dying on the war front. Some had an expectation that they would, when they returned, would have their civil rights and an end to discrimination. Southerners did nothing but perpetuate the racist customs and laws of the South and it was not until the 1963 Civil Rights Act that there was to be major change.
William Z. Foster, the 1928 communist presidential candidate, was arrested because his party’s leaflet contained this “inflammatory” slogan.
In the 1930s African Americans who traveled were subject to countless humiliations whenever the sought hotels, rooming houses, restaurants and other accommodations. Gas stations would not allow them to use bathrooms and they were reduced to using open fields. Traveling and vacationing was, for Blacks, humiliating. Wikipedia: “Green reviewed hotels and restaurants that did business with African Americans during the time of Jim Crow laws and racial segregation in the United States. He printed 15,000 copies each year. In the 1930s, Green began his work by compiling data on stores in the New York area that accepted black travelers, and published his first guide in 1936. Similar guides had been published for Jewish travelers, who sometimes faced discrimination. Green's guide was so popular that he immediately began to expand its coverage the next year to other US destinations, adding hotel and restaurants as well.”
Mordecai Wyatt Johnson was an American educator and pastor. He served as the first African-American president of Howard University, from 1926 until 1960. Johnson has been considered one of the three leading African-American preachers of the early 20th-century, along with Vernon Johns and Howard Thurman.
