Commission on Interracial Cooperation An Appeal To The Christian People of the South

One pamphlet entitled An Appeal To The Christian People of the South dated 1920. This is an early publication by a group known as the Commission on Interracial Cooperation (“CIC”). According to the Georgia Encyclopedia online, the CIC was made up of mostly white church leaders and was founded in Atlanta in 1919 to “to oppose lynching, mob violence, and peonage and to educate white southerners concerning the worst aspects of racial abuse.” This report derived from the group's meeting in Blue Ridge, North Carolina in August, 1920. The booklet contains a two page report on how the CIC came about as well as a stated purpose of “to do anything possible to find a way out of the tangled race situation which the War had left.” There's also a three page roster of members by state, a four page list of conference attendees by church affiliation and three pages of short letters from attendees. The appeal itself stated that “it is a matter of common knowledge that grave inustices are often suffered by members of the Negro race in matters of legal procedure, traveling facilities, educational facilities, the public press, domestic service, child welfare and in other relations of life.” Nine observations and suggestions on how to ameliorate the situation follow, with the first beginning, “we unhesitatingly declare lynching to be a crime against the honor of our nation.”