way: about a year and a half earlier, the
magazine The Forum had asked Stod-
dard and Alain LeRoy Locke, the black
writer, philosopher, and founding figure
of the Harlem Renaissance, to write on
the subject “Shall We Give the Negro
Cultural Equality?” The magazine also
asked the two to read their pieces live
on the radio. But then Locke, recover-
ing from an unhappy affair with Langston
Hughes, went to Europe, and by Sep-
tember 23, 1927, the day of the broadcast,
he had not returned.
Du Bois agreed to fill in. What he
said on air, elaborating on what Locke
had written, must have been good, be-
cause The Forum’s editor told him that
the debate was “a corker,” and the con-
sensus was that Du Bois had won. The
Forum Council organizers then sug-
gested holding the debate again, before
a paying crowd.
Stoddard had to have known that the
audience would be mostly black. Home-
field advantage would be with Du Bois.
Why did Stoddard agree? Like any au-
thor with books to sell, he probably
thought he could use the publicity. (He
had two new ones, “The Story of Youth”
and “Luck: Your Silent Partner.”) Also,
Stoddard probably believed that he could
overawe any audience of blacks. He had
denied being a member of the Ku Klux
Klan but endorsed its tactics passion-
ately in his books. And, in 1926, he gave
a lecture before two thousand at Tuske-
gee University, in Alabama, informing
them that the Nordic race was superior
to nonwhites and that, for the good of
all races, the world must continue to be
governed by white supremacy. A black
newspaper reported that the students
“sat awestricken during the address, which
terminated without any applause.”
Du Bois, a realist, wondered if Stod-
dard would show up. In letters to Fred
Atkins Moore, the director of the Forum
Council, Du Bois asked if they should
line up an alternate. He suggested in-
viting an egregiously racist senator, like
James Thomas Heflin, of Alabama: “He
would be a scream and you would clean
up if you could get hold of him.” But
Stoddard made positive noises about his
plans to be there. He and Du Bois agreed
in advance on the topic. It was decided
that Du Bois would speak first.
Tickets for the debate sold for fifty
or seventy-five cents. The crowd num-
bered five thousand, four thousand, or
three thousand, according to different
counts. Du Bois, in a letter to his wife,
Nina, said that hundreds could not get
in. The Chicago Defender, the city’s
leading black newspaper, ran a photo
that showed a packed hall—floor seat-
ing, and a wraparound balcony—with
an American-flag-draped stage. “It was
a great occasion,” Du Bois wrote to Nina.M
oore opened the program by tell-
ing the audience that the Forum
Council itself “takes no stand on any
questions whatsoever.” That is, the ques-
tion of whether black people were infe-
rior to whites and therefore not entitled
to full equality remained open. Moore
himself was white. He asked the audi-
ence to refrain from applause. Then he
introduced Du Bois, “one of the ablest
speakers for his race not only in Amer-
ica but in the whole wide world,” and
Stoddard, “whose books and writings
and speaking have made his views known
to many hundreds of thousands of peo-
ple both in this country and abroad.”Du Bois steps to the lectern. He be-
gins by asking what exactly “Negroes”
are, what “cultural equality” is, and how
anyone can be “encouraged” to seek it.
He asks why Negroes or anybody else
should not be encouraged to seek cul-
tural equality. He allows that maybe in
the past Negroes couldn’t have reached
it, but since emancipation they have come
wonderfully far, an accomplishment that
“has few parallels in human history.” For
this they had expected to be applauded,
he says; but instead white America feared
them and said their advance threatened
civilization—as if culture were some
fixed quantity, and Negroes’ having more
of it would mean less of it for others.
Du Bois points out that such a view
imagines culture as if it were material
goods, the best of which belong to only
the few who have leisure to enjoy them;
and then these people begin to see the
universe as made specially for them, and
elect themselves as the “Chosen People”;
and then they think that if the darker
races come forward they “are going to
spoil the divine gifts of the Nordics.” ButMID-CENTURY
MASTER:THE
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OFALFRED
EISENSTAEDT
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