National Affairs: Washington Flayed

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Bernarr Macfadden's New York Evening ("Porno") Graphic has been publishing a series of articles on the Negro, spiced up with intimate glimpses of Harlem and faked pictures of lynchings. Obviously, such material was intended to boost the Negro circulation of the Graphic. But the sheetlet, in its exuberance for the sensational, went too far and stepped on the toes of many a Negro when it set about to flay Booker Taliaferro Washington. Said the Graphic: "There are not lacking thousands of intelligent Negroes who believe that Booker T. Washington, consciously or unwittingly, betrayed his color and his kind. . . .

"Booker T. Washington once told members of his race not to strive for social recognition. The noted Negro educator further advised his people to give up aspirations toward political power, complete civil rights, and higher education."

"An infamous attack, a gross distortion," replied the Pittsburgh Courier, famed Negro weekly newspaper, as its correspondent started an anti-Graphic movement in Manhattan last week. Negroes object to having their hero and educator bandied about in the columns of a pornographic sheetlet.