Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

VOLUME XXIX Citizens Discuss Social Wor WERE ADDRESSED BY MR.' EUGENE KINCKLE JONES OF NEW YORK CITY Work of National League on Urban Conditions Among Ne groes Explained—Very Rep resentative Body Present— Temporary Organization Formed—Mr. Jones Investi gates Local Conditions At an informal meeting held Thursday night at the WageEaro ers Bank, Mr. Eugene Kinckle Jones, associate director of the National League on Urban Ccmil lions among Negroes, addressed a gathering of representative Negro •itizens on the work of the organi zation which he represents. Mr. Jones is making an investi gation of the conditions of the Negroes in several cites of the south and arrived in the city on Wednesday. Thursday he had a •onference with the Directors of the Associated Charities and with Mr. Joseph E. Gray, executive •slicer of the Chamber of Com merce. and Col. G. Arthur Gordon. Mr. Jones said at the meeting Thursday night that he found the leading white men of this city to be of the finest type he has met and that they are very desirous of doing all in their power to assist in bettering the conditions of the Negroes here. After explaining in detail the work which the league with which he is connected has been doing in New York, Richmond, St- Louis and other places he presented to those present what he thought would be the best way in begining a similar work here. The ideas offered by Mr. Jones were widely discussed and those present formed themselves into a temporary organization with Sol. C. Johnson as president and Prof. 8. A. Grant as secretary. Mr. Jones made it plain that the work of this league did not in any way conflict with that con ducted by any other agency, but it took up those features of the social settlement work which were not attended to by other organiza tions designed to better conditions •f the Negro in the city. That Mr- Jones’ investigations here will be productive of much good to local Negroes is the opin ion of all who have been fortunate enough to learn of his work here. All day yesterday he continued his search into local conditions and will probably leave to-day for Au gusta, where he will make an in vestigation of the conditions of the Negro, Odd Fellows Executive Board Reversed At the session of the District Grand Lodge No. 18 of Georgia •f Odd Fellows held in this city Dr. B. W. S- Daniels was elected and installed Grand Medical Di rector. At a subsequent meeting of the Executive Board he was not recognized and the incumbent continued in office. An appeal was made to the Sub-Committee of Management and at its meeting held last week the Executive Board of this state was ordered to recog nize Dr. Daniels as its Medical Director. This order will likely effect the other officers similarly treated. Dr. Pritchett in Virginia Dr. W. T. Pritchett of the East Side Pharmacy, formerly of Au gusta, recently left the city for Cascade Va , on account of ill health. Dr. Pritchett's friends throughout the state will be glad to learn that he is improving. An Ommission In giving the list of the direc tors of the Wage Earners Loan and Investment Company, we omitted through mistake the name of Mr. J- M. Ferrebee. Donations to Charity Hospital. Recent donations received for the “Building Fund” of Charity Hospital were as follows: Mrs. M. Sengstacke Thomas, $2.75; Miss Alice Cole, .25c; Mrs. Priscilla Harmond, .25c; Mrs. A. B. G. Carr, 25c. erty and weakness invite and en courage the stronger race to act unjustly toward the weak, and that so long as this condition remains, the young white men of the South will have a fearful handicap in teh battle of life.” Bwiatutafy Brtbnia? WHAT I AM TRYING TO DO Ry Dr, Booker T. Washington j the “World’s Work Mag azine,” New York City, November 1913—Explains the Tuskegee Ide a —Writes of Racial Relationship in the South Dr. Booker T. Washington, Principal of the Tuskegee Insti tute, writes a special article, “What I am Trying to Do,” for the November issue of the World’s Work New York City; a series of twelve articles under this title have been published in the World’s Work during the past twelve months. The contributors to the series so far have represented every phase of business and educational life — captains of industry and leaders of one kind and another in every field of activity. The World’s Work is quite the most representative business magazine published in this country and surveys the whole field of progress from one end of the earth to the other In the particular article here re ferred to, Dr. Washington sum marizes his life work at Tuskegee Institute, explaining in detail just what he has been "trying to do - ’ in helping to bring about the pres ent progress of the Negro people in the United States- The whole scheme of what has come to be known as the “Tuskegee Idea” is explained so that one can get a pretty good idea of the work being accomplished through Tuskegee Institute. With particular reference to the matter of racial relationships in the South, Dr. Washington writes: “Another thing that I have tried to do has been to bring the white people in the Southern States and throughout the country into what seems to me a proper and practical attitude toward the Negro in his efforts to go forward and make progress. lam seeking to do this not only in the interest of my race, but also in the interest of “the the white race. “There are in the Southern States nine million Negroes. There are three million Negro children of school age. Fifty three per cent, or more than half, never go to school only from three to four months of the year- lam trying to get the white peope to see that, both from an economic point of view and as a matter of justice and fair play, these condi tions must be changed. lam try ing to get the white people to see that sending ignorant Negroes to jails and penitentiaries, putting them in the chaingang, hanging and lynching them does not civil ize, but on the contrary, though it brutalizes the Negro, it at the same time bluntsand dulls the con science of the white man’ “I want the white people to see that it is unfair to expect a black man who goes to school only three months in the year to produce as much on the farm as a white man who has been in school eight or nine months in the year; that it is unjust to let the Negro remain ig norant, with nothing between him and the temptation to fill his body with whiskey and cocaine and then expect him, in his ignorance, to be able to know the law and be able to exefcise that degree of self control which shah enable him to keep it. “Still another thing that I am trying to get the people of the whole country to realize is that education of the Negro should be considered not as a matter of charity, but as a matter of busi ness, that, like any other business, should be thoroughly studied, or ganized, and systematized. The money that has already been spent by states, institutions, and individ uals would have done vastly more good if there had been years ago, more thorough organization and co-operation between the different isolated and detached members of the Negro school system in the Southern States. “I am trying to get the white people to realize that since no col or line is drawn in the punishment for crime, no color Ime should be drawn in the proporation for life, in the kind of education, in other words, that makes for useful clean living. I am trying to get the white people to see that in hun dreds of counties in the South it is costing more to punish colored people for crime than it wou!d cost to educate them. lam trying to get all to see that ignorance, pov- BAVAJTKAH, GEORGIA, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1913 Colored Citizens Pro test to President l DELEGATION INTRODUCED BY CONGRESSMAN THATCHER Petition of Colored Citizen* Laid Particular Stress Upon Order of Secretary McAdoo Requiring Separate Eating Tables, and on Segregation in tbe Auditor’s Rooms of Post Office Department Washington, D. C., November 8 —A delegation of colored citizens representing the Natidhal Inde pendent Political League, bearing a protest and petition directed against race segregation in the government service, visited the President on Thursday, and had an audience with him. The petition bore about twenty thousand signa tures, from 38 States, mostly col ored people, about equally divided between the South and tbe North. The delegation was introduced by Thatcher of Massa chusetts- The delegation was composed of W. Monroe Trotter of Boston, Rev- Dr. Byron Gunner of Hill burn, N. Y., President of the League, Dr. William A. Sinclair of Philadelphia, VV. Maurice Spen cer of Deleware, Thomas Walker of District of Columbia. F. H. M. Murray of Virginia, and Mrs. Ida Wells Barnett of Chicago. W. Monroe Trotter, editor of the Boston Guardian, was spokes man. He made an extended state ment and gave instances of dis crimination which had been dis covered and insisted that these were calculated to “humiliate and degrade our race and bring it into scorn and contempt,” and that it was all the worse since it is being done under the authority of the National government. The President was impressed by the protestjand commented on its strength and stated that it was de serving of, and should receive careful consideration. The delegation said that the President seemed at first inclined to doubt if the matters complained of had any official sanction. But he was handed a copy of an order issued by the auditor for the Interior Department which explic itly ordered separation on account of color in lavatories. Other or ders of similar import which had been issued in other bureaus were embodied in the matter left with the President. He then stated that perhaps he was not well posted on the matter- He said that he would go into the matter thor oughly and would endeavor to find a solution satisfactory to all con cerned, and gave assurance that segregation had not been decided upon as an administration policy. In their protest the spokesman of the delegation insisted that it was the principal of segregation that was objected to and not the manner in which it was adminis tered. He quoted a letter written by Mr. Wilson before election as follows: “It is my earnest wish to see justice done colored people in ev ery matter, and not mere grudg ing justice, but justice executed with liberality and cordial good feeling. Every principle of our Constitution commends this, and our sympathies should also make it easy ” Commenting on this the petitioners said to the President: “Fairer words were never writ ten and their readers could not possibly have expected their author to countenance the institution of any new policy in his own branch of the Government, now admitted ly based on racial prejudice, against them: a policy of caste which no president would dare even hint for citizens of any of the many other racial extractions which make up our heterogeneous population ” The petitioners laid particular stress upon the order of Secretary McAdoo requiring separate eating tables, and on the segregation in auditor’s rooms of the Postoffice Department, the Navy, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and elsewhere. “Necessity,” says the petition, “can not be pleaded as an excuse for this affront and injury. Afro-Americans and other Ameri can employees have been working together, eating at the same ta bles, and using the same lavitories and toilets for two generations. They have worked in peace and I Continued On Page J White and Colored Baptists to Unite WILL LAUNCH THE NATION. AL THEOLOGICAL SEM INARY Location ox svnool Not Yet De cided Upon—Representatives Os Southern Baptist Coaven* tion Recommend That That Body Donate $50,000 Toward School—Reasons Why Cities Should Desire School For the first time in history, two religious organizations in the South,the one white and the other colored, are to unite in an educa tional project for the Negroes. It is an event that marks the be ginning of a new era in the atti tude of the two races toward each other. Sutton E- Griggs, educational secretary of the National Baptist Convention, has issued the follow ing statement concerning the movement to daily papers of citir s directly concerned: To the Public: The Southern Baptist Conven tion, white, through a resolution unanimously adopted at its icu: t session held at St. Louis, Mo., in May 1913, has tendered its aid, moral and financial, to the Nation al Baptist Convention, colored, for the purpose of insuring the successful launching of a Nation al Theological Seminary to en- ! gage in the work of furnishing a better prepared ministry to lead the Negro people. The representatives chosen by the Southern Baptist Convention to eotafer with representatives of the National Baptist Convention have recommended that the Southern Baptist Convention do nate fifty thousand dollars as the initial contribution of the white Baptists of the South toward the founding and equipment of the school. the purpose of those au thorized to act in the matter to locate the school in one of the following five cities: Memphis, Tenn-; Birmingham, Ala.; Atlan ta, Ga.; Nashville, Tenn.; or Louisville, Ky. It is hoped that the philanthropic citizens of the cities named will make offers for a site for the school, and tender such other help as their generosi ty may dictate. The character of the offers made will have a bear ing on the final decision as to the location of the school. Theie are strong reasons justi fying activity on the part of citi zens to secure the selection of their city as the home of the proposed school. 1 Beginning with the business side of the matter, attention is called to the fact that the con struction and equipment of build ing, calling for material and la bor, and later the feeding and clothing of teachers and Students, the business transactions of the thousands who shall have occasion to visit the city because of the presence of the school, will mean ultimately the increase of busi ness done in the city to the ex tent of hundreds of thousands of dollars. 2 The experience of other cities having Negro institutions of a high order is that such schools help to raise the standard of living, improve the general tone of the life of the race, and greatly reduce the need of police activity in the regions affected. 3 A vital need where there is a mixed population is sympathy and understanding between the races. The co-operation of the two races in the operation of the school will furnish a point of con tact that will be a standing in fluence for peace and good will- 4 The foregoing are inciden tal benefits. The cause itself for which the school is founded is great. Only through high moral purpose can the Negro ’-ace hold its own in American civilization It is to be the mission of this school to furnish to the Negro race a ministry and a leadership rooted and grounded in the prin ciples of righteousness, able. by life and word, to lead their peo pie upward At the present time the Negro minister seems to be the largest hope of the world ft r. the effective leadership of his people. There has been but little th«* Negro to acquire dist.iivtion in the political mid, RAID HOUSES UNDER WAR. RANT Sheriff Dixon Says Must Have Authority to Act * “Under warrants properly signed and made out, I would raid every road house from one end of Chatham bounty to the other,” said sheriff Meritt W. Dixon to day "but I cannot, on my own initiative, make any raids.” Sheriff Dixon had been told that many complaints had been heard lately about the alleged illegal sale of liquor and of dis orderly conduct at road nouses near Savannah. He was asked if he intended to raid any of these houses, if the complaints were made to him. HOUSE A C A SILK. “It is not left to me to say whether I would or not,” said Sheriff Dixon. "I cannot go and break down doors and enter a man’s house without a warrant, no matter what the complaint. A man’s house is his castle. But, under warrants signed by the solicitor general or any other citi zen of Chatham county, I would clean out all of the road houses near Savannah.” UP TO COM PLAINTS. So this put it squarely up to whoever complains about the al leged misconduct at the road houses. All they have to do is to sign the proper warrants, and the sheriff of the county is ready to do the rest. “I could not issue any warning to those who keep the road houses,” said Sheriff Dixon. Such would be outside of my power.” From the expressions of many who have been complaining about the road houses it is thought un less there is a decided change in the way things are conducted at these houses, that raids may be pulled off in the near future. — Press. and as a consequence leadership for the race will hardly come in large measure from that quarter. In the business world competition is so keen and the white race has so much the start that consider able time must elapse before the business life of the Negro will furnish a sufficent amount of ma terial for race leadership. With civic and business avenues fur nishing leadership only here and there, the Negro minister is left to occupy the throne almost alone. All the needs of the race press down upon his shoulders- He should be one of the wisest and most enlightened men of his tin es. The ability of the Negro race to fit into American civiliza tion without affecting it for ill largely depends upon the kind of ministry it has. No work ever undertaken for the Negro race goes more nearly to the core of the whole question of Negro ad vancement than that of the proper training of the ministry. This hour of the practically exclusive leadership of the Negro minis try is the time of all times to grapple with the question of mak ing true religion the basis of Ne gro life- 5 American civilization can ill afford, for its own saae, to have enfolded within itself a laggard or dying element, dying morally and spiritually. Vicious crimes, which are but noxious odors aris ing from moral death, will serve to call forth counter crimes of a vicious order, thus complicating a situation already bad. E-.lightened self-interest, free dom from the danger of a life in fected by the defed soul of a race, dictates that American people help the saved element among the Ne groes —those saved to lives of genuine usefulness, to go forth and save their fellows. It is hoped that this city will make a substantial offer for the school. It is requested that offers assume definite and tangible form, and be placed in the hands of the corresponding secretary of the National Baptist Educational Board on or before March 12, 1914, as shortly thereafter a final decision as to location will be made. Persons desiring further information will be cheerfully fur nished the same. Very respectfully, Sutton E. Griggs, Cor. Sec. National Baptist Ed cational Board. 658 So. Lauderdale, St., Momphi®, Tenn. New Pekin Opens ! Next Week THEATRE ONI- OF PRETTI. ; EST IN COUNTRY OWNED BY NEGROES Large Crowds Will Doubtless Witness Informal Opening— Seating Capacity of New House Nearly 1000—Will be Heated by Steam—Next Week’s Show Said to be a Corker The new Pekin Theatre will be thrown open’to the public during the coming week and the initial performance in the new house will doubtless be attended by a vast crowd. Just what day next week the house will be opened could not be definitely stated, but Manager Stiles is making every possible effort to inaugurate the dew house on Monday night and it is not at all without the range of possibili ty that he will succeed in doing so. However, it can be reason ably assured that if things are not in readiness by Monday night, the middle of the week will un questionably find the new bouse the scene of ail future activity of the Pekin theatre. The carpentry work on the house was finished during the middle part of the week and the painters and decorators expect to have their work finished suffi ciently by Monday to allow use of the house if necessary. The new house is one of the best appointed theatres in the city. It has ample exits, there being ten in all,which can be used by the spectators in case of an emergency. The predominating colors of the interior of the house are deep red, white and mission green. The metal ceiling is white and the wainscoting a deep red, while the wood work is finished in green mission. The house has eight boxes, of the latest design,each accommoda ting eight persons. The boxes will be elaborately furnished and will be draped with beautiful vel vet curtains. Each box is so arranged that parties occupying one box will be entirely seperated from those in another. For the comfort of the patrons in the summer time, the house is adequately supplied with window space and side fans to the num ber of about a dozen will be used when necessary. The upstairs of the house has a unique arrangement for the acco'mraodation of the little boys. They will be kept to themselves in the upper part of the balcony and will therefore not be in posi tion to annoy the adult patrons. The seats in all parts of the nouse have been very advanta geously arranged and an unob structed view of the stage can be had from any angle in the house. Work on converting the pre sent theatre into an arcade, an entrance to the new house, will begin as soon as practicable and when it is completed it will be very attractive. For next week Stage Manager Kenner will produce a musical comedy entitled the “Belle of Ethiopia. There will be about twelve in the cast with Florence Mills and Millie Williams taking off the leadingparts. NEGRO DECLINES $40,000 FOR PLANTATION Mr John Crawford Refuses to Sell His 1,100 Fertile Acres Forty thousand dollars, it is stated, was the round price offered Mr. John Crawford, a worthy and industrious colored farmer, for his fine farm of 1100 acres near Americus, last week, and the offer was at once declined by Crawford. The place is a desirable one and has lone been Crawford’s home, where he works a large force of laborers and makes good crops. Crawfod owns his land and does not owe a dollar upon it, or to anyone else for that matter. He is well off, financially, and with money in the bank he did not see any necessity in selling the old farm to which he is greatly attached. Not many Georgia Negroes have attained the great success John Crawford has attained during his long residence here, or are held in such regard. HUM BEE 9