HALF A MAN
 

INTRODUCTION

Six years ago I met a young colored man,
a college student recently returned from
Germany where he had been engaged in
graduate work. He was born, he told me,
in one of the Gulf States, and I questioned
him as to whether he intended going back
to the South to teach. His answer was in
the negative. "My father has attained suc¬
cess in his native state," he said, "but when
I ceased to be a boy, he advised me to live
in the North where my manhood would be
respected. He himself cannot continually
endure the position in which he is placed,
and in the summer he comes North to be a
man. No," correcting himself, "to be half
a man. A Negro is wholly a man only in
Europe."

Half a man! During the six years that I
have been in touch with the problem of the
Negro in New York this characterization has