Takeaways
Several publications reported on the conference with various insights and takeaways, including Bryn Mawr’s The College News, Du Bois’ The Crisis, The Vassar Miscellany News, Howard University’s The Hilltop, the Swarthmore Phoenix, and George Washington University’s The Hatchet.
Over the course of two newspaper editions, The College News provided summaries to each of the speakers' speeches.
Walter White
"The Negro problem must be studied both as an intraracial and a national problem. Until the problem is intelligently discussed, there can be no freedom for labor here or anywhere."
Ira Reid
"The criteria for an accepted economic status are accumulation of wealth, standards of living, political activity, cultural contributions and methods of production and distribution….The Negro's social, economic, political and cultural progress must go together."
Alain Locke
"The value of Negro art has long been recognized in liberal journals. Whether it will filter down to the masses is a question….With cultural and economic equality will come social justice."
Alice Dunbar Nelson
"A few colored women are pioneers in the field of skilled work. They must be more reliable and skillful than white women to succeed….The loss of jobs by Negro men in the present depression has laid the women open to further exploitation because of their great need for jobs. Overwork on the part of the Negro women has as its most serious aspect its effect on the next generation."
Philip Randolph
"The 'color line' in industry keeps the colored worker from almost all but unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. Long hours of work diminish his opportunity for leisure in which to enjoy the good things of life….Lack of organization keeps his bargaining power slight. A unified trade union system in the only effective remedy."
J.B. Matthews
"The domination of the colored peoples by the white capitalist class is not less arrogant for being disguised under such phrases as 'the white man's burden.' It must end. Whether the end will come as the result of cataclysmic events or an evolutionary growth is a question."
W.E.B. Du Bois
"The American attitude toward the race problem is a pessimistic one; the colored attitude is not. Colored people know that eventually they will triumph from sheer force of numbers….Social justice cannot be procured without costs to capitalists."