print previewback 1917 SUITE | SILENT SENTINELS AND THE NIGHT OF TERROR
Calling the Bluff
reprinted from The Masses, September, 1917
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“. . . we suspect it is husbands and press agents, rather than the warriors for democracy themselves, who raised so much furor at the expense of the feelings of an oppressed race.” |
The Congressional Union pickets called the President’s bluff in the matter of “war for democracy” by demanding equal suffrage, and it appears that the warden of the Occquan workhouse called some of the pickets’ bluffs by demanding that they eat at the same board with negro prisoners.
“Gentlewomen,” we read, “compelled to eat with negroes!”
For us, we have always found negroes of any class so much more “gentle,” so much finer in their native instincts than Anglo-Saxons of the same class, that we consider the horror of going to prison not one bit augmented by this circumstance.
And we suspect it is husbands and press agents, rather than the warriors for democracy themselves, who raised so much furor at the expense of the feelings of an oppressed race. 
Silent Sentinels and the Night of Terror
Introduction & Table of Contents
Voices from Occoquan
Introduction & Table of Contents
1917 Suite: A Month, a Year, a Term of Liberty
Introduction & Cross-issue Table of Contents