How to Solve the Race Problem: The Proceedings of the Washington Conference on the Race Problem in the United States.

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Proceedings of a conference on the “Race Problem”—including rape, lynching, and segregation—held in 1903 in Washington, D.C. under the auspices of the National Sociological Society and edited by its president, Jesse Lawson. Includes addresses, received correspondence, resolutions, and debates of the three-day meeting.

Includes such addresses as “The Duty of the White American Towards His Colored Fellow-Citizen” by A.D. Mayo, “The Psychology of Race Prejudice” by Richmond Babbitt, and “The Necessity for the Appointment of a Commission to Consider Every Phase of the Ameri-[can] Race Problem” by Assistant Librarian of Congress Daniel Alexander Payne Murray (1852–1925), the black historian and African American bibliographer.

Chapter VII comprises a joint discussion on Race Harmony, Problems of the City Negro, and Rape and Lynching. Booker T. Washington (who arrived late “...and was greeted with prolonged clapping of hands”) gave an overview of the subjects while five other speakers, including Chris. J. Perry, editor of the Philadelphia Tribune, spoke directly to the topics of rape and lynching. One of the latter group proposed a resolution to document these crimes in an effort to show that such crimes were hardly unique to African Americans.

One speaker, Bishop Lucius H. Holsey of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, even made the radical proposition “...that the Government set apart some territory, or parts of some of the public domain, for the specific purpose of forming a State or States for qualified Afro-American Citizens.” (see pp40–58). It is followed by five pages of critical, though respectful, disagreement.

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