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DEMOCRATS AND CIVIL RIGHTS
From The Louisville Defender
Mr. Paul Butler, chairman of the Na¬
tional Democratic Committee, has an¬
nounced that the first order of business
of his party’s presidential candidate will
be the issue of civil rights.
This position of Mr. Butler is consis¬
tent with his previous stand and it. is
heartening for those persons who follow
the Democratic Party label.
Senator Hubert Humphrey declared in
Washington two weeks ago that the Dem¬
ocrats cannot win the presidency with-
ont its candidate taking a firm stand on
the rights issue. The senior Senator
fom Minnesota said that the Democrats
may nominate a conservative, but they
cannot, get him elected. He said for his
ADAM POWELL SEEKS TO ANSWER CRITICS
From the Cleveland Call-Post
One of the most controversial men in
Congress is Rev. Adam Clayton Powell,
of New',,York Naturally colorful with a
flair f<»r publicity, Cong. Powell has add¬
ed to his natural ability bis disregard for
strict,compliance with some laws, moral
and legal. He is scheduled to come to
trial m a Federal charge in the next two
months.
Because of his seniority, Cong. Powell
is slated to head the House Committee
on Education and Labor when Cong. Bar¬
den, of North Carolina, retires. Since
this is a major committee, the anti-Negro
forces are screaming to high heaven over
the thought of a Negro, and especially
Cong. Powell, heading this committee.
Answering his critics, Cong. Powell said
last \Wedk, ‘‘I challenge any member of
Bates Newspaper Criticized
By Los Angeles Editor
LOS AN0E1.ES — (ANP) —
Daisey Bates and the paper she
and her husband edited in Little
Rock, Ark., were severly criticised
recently by sharp toneued Almena
Lomax, editor of the Tribune here.
Miss Lomax, apparently annoy¬
ed by calls from readers wonder¬
ing why she hadn't started a fund
to help the Bates who were forced
to close their paper last October
had the following to say:
“Mr. and Mrs. Bates went out
of the newspaper business in Little
Rock because they published, in
their State Press, what was, with¬
out a doubt, one of the worst Ne¬
gro newspapers in the entire Unit¬
ed States.
“Judging by what was in the
State Press, neither one of them
had any concept of news coverage
nor of editorial responsibility.
“Week after week, while the
Centra! High School conflagra¬
tion raged in Little Rock, we used
to reacji for the State Press,
among the 80 or 40 Negro news¬
papers which we get from about
the country in exchange for our
own, hoping for a firsthand, aut¬
hentic account of the historical
and dramatic eventstaking place
there.
“You would think that if the
State Press had carried no other
story worth reading — and it
didn’t — it would have carried
the Central high story in com¬
plete detail since the editor, Mrs.
Bates, was one of those making it.
“But it didn’t.
‘What coverage there was, ap¬
peared to be a re-hash of what
was in the daily papers of Little
Rock, and we would already have
had that carefully expurgated,
downgraded, and biased version
from the wire stories of our own
Cancer Can Be Cured
Six types of cancer caused one
third of all deaths from that dis¬
ease in the United States last
year, Wilton C. Scott, local vice
president of Public Education, for
the Georgia Colored Division
American Cancer Society’s 1958
educational and funds crusade de¬
clared today. Scott is director of
Public Relations and Alumni Af¬
fairs, Savannah State College.
He identified the six killers as
uterine, breast, rectal, mouth, skin,
and lung cancers.
National Advertising Representative*
Associated Publishers
65 West 42nd Street
New York 36, New York
166 W. Washington St.
Chicago 2, 111.
Mr. Robert Whaley
Whaley-Simpson Company
6608 Selma Ave.
Los Angeles 28, C alifornia
Mr. Gordon Simpson
Whaley-Simpson Company
700 Montgomery 8t.
San francisco 11, California
“ L= - L "------=
T
party to adopt the mantle of conser¬
vatism in its candidate, will be nothing
more than “an excuse in futility.”
Between the views of Mr. Butler and
Senator Humphrey, we believe the Demo¬
crats have valued food for thought.
To surmise — if a position on civil
rights is a necessary issue for campaign
debate, one needs only to review the his¬
tory of the past few' years. The ques¬
tion of racial minorities has been a con¬
sistent burning issue. In view of the
gravity of this matter, racial minorities
and the South as well, have a right to
know how the President-to-be stands on
this question.
Congress to demonstrate a more demo¬
cratic. non-racial attitude than I do.’ In
defending his attendance record Mr. Pow¬
ell said, “May I point out that I am now’
Chairman of the Committee on Interior
and Insular Affairs—as chairman of this
subcommittee, I have not missed a meet¬
ing, nor have I been late.”
It is too had that Conk Powell has been
put on the defensive. We hope he can
satisfactorily explain the criticisms
against him. Few men are better pre¬
pared for service in Congress than Rev.
Powell; however, be has not at all times
used good judgment, and he certainly
should improve his general attendance at
sessions of Congress. Pehaps the criti¬
cism of him will cause him to put his own
house in order.
Los Angeles metropolitan dailies,
“And the fighting heart of Mr.
and Mrs. Bates . . . and we don’t
doubt that both of them had one,
particularly since we caught its
heat first hand in Mrs. Bates when
the NAACP brought her here to
speak at a rally, was only faintly
to Ik 1 detected in the State Press.
“Knowing the hours you have
to spend over a hot typewriter to
publish a newspaper, we used to
look at the pictures of Mrs. Bates,
the- editor, flitting about the coun¬
try in mink stole, and cocktail
dress, and gardenias, working
overtime at being a public figure,
and wonder how she expected her
newspaper to survive. At best —
and we wouldn’t know anything
about it ‘at its best’—it is an
operation requiring a tremendous
outlay of energy and capital, and
existence without the latter, is
ever precarious.
“Without a doubt, Mrs. Bates
was an inspirational figure whom
people wanted to see. But if she
chose to sacrifice her business and
her original area of service, which
was editing a newspaper, for this
superficial type of leadership, she
had no one to blame tint herself
for her business failure.
‘It would have been far more
beneficial to the Little Rock com¬
munity. to Mr. and Mrs. Bates, as
business people and newspaper
publishers, and to the civil rights
cause, had Mrs. Bates resisted the
temptation to lie up and away
everytime she received an award
somewhere, and showed a
follow-through on the job she had
begun in Little Rock, ot publish¬
ing an articulate work-manlike,
and courageous newspaper.”
“These forms of cancer,” Scott
explained, “are receiving special
emphasis in the Cancer Society’s
educational program because their
combined present death toll could
be cut more than 50 per cent if
all cases were treated soon enough.
Cancer in those six sites can be
detected by physicians in an ini¬
tial or ‘silent’ stage in time for
a possible cure.
It is estimated that lung cancer
killed 24,000 last year; breast can¬
cer, 20,000; and uterine cancer,
Integration will give them a free choice in learning
NEGRO EDITORS- Seventh In A Series
EDUCATE FOR FREEDOM
John Sengstacke Proves That
A Negro-Owned Daily Newspaper
Can Succeed In The North
The publisher making the great
est leap in Negro journalism since
its momentous beginning in 1827
with John Russwurm’s FREEDOM
JOURNAL, is the youthful, dy¬
namic editor and publisher of the |
incredible CHICAGO DEFEND¬
ER, John H. II. Sengstacke.
John II. Sengstacke
Sengstacke’s bold break with the
>* wpekly ” publishing traditions of
most Negro newspapers has firm-
, y pstat)lishini th( , De f en der as the
fh . st SU( . cess ful Negro daily to exist
in a major Northern metropolis
and has opened unprecedented po¬
tentialities for Negro publications.
Sengstacke made bis historic
1950 announcement that the De¬
fender would publish a daily and
embark on a $1,000,000 expansion
program at a time when most of
the nation’s Negro and white news¬
papers were suffering circulation
lossps and conducting drastic re-
trenchment programs. Many lead-
ers friendly to Negro journalism
v j ewpd the young publisher’s ven-
ture with cautious skepticism, and
opponents of the free Negro press
gleefully hoped that the Defender
had “overstepped its bounds.”
Behind the announcement, how¬
ever, were years of careful prep¬
aration and planning by the talent-
ed nephew of the Defender’s foun-
public during the Society’s April
educational-funds crusade.
|
1 Moslems
Win Police
Brutality
i (Continued from Page One*
and Yvonne Mollette, because of
the injuries and damages suffer¬
ed by«the couple at the hands of
the policemen.
The Moslems, who regard theii
victory as a triumph for Negroes
all over the nation, whether Mos¬
lems or not. scored n court, win
i that will serve as a precedent in
15,000. Procedures for diagnosing
these three types of that disease
in an early stage are being widely
publicized by the American Cancer
Society.
“Before it has otherwise betray¬
ed itself, a malignant lung tumor
can be detected by a chest x-ray.
With early treatment, an average
of half of all lung cancers are
curable. Yet the present salvage
is only 5 per cent. That is \\’hy the
American Cancer Society is so
vigorously advocating chest x-rays
yearly for all adults and semi i
annually for men over 45 — the !
age bracket in which cancer at-1
tacks most of its victims.” !
Breast cancer, with present-day
cares of a possible in 35 per 70 cent per of cent, cases can out be j |
discovered by self-examination if !
the subject has learned what
symptoms to watch _ for. To guard
against fatal delay, women are ad¬
vised by the Cancer Society to
examine their breasts once a
month for signs of possible can¬
cer.
“Only 30 per cent of uterine can¬
cer patients are being saved out
of a possible 70 per cent,” Scott
pointed out. “These cancers can
be detected by the Papanicolaou
or ‘cell’ test. Jt requires a doctor j
to prepare the slides and a patho- I
logist to interpret them. All |
adult women are advised to have j
a ‘cell test yearly and all women
over 35, twice a year.
“Combined deaths last year
from skin, mouth, and rectal can¬
cer were little more than those
from uterine cancer alone. Rectal
cancer, with a cure possibility of
70 per cent and a present actual
cure average of 15 per cent killed
10,000; a mouth cancer, with a
possible cure of 65 per cent and
present recovery of 35 per cent,
caused 3,000 deaths; and skin can-
cer, with the highest potential
cure rate of 95 per cent and 85
per cent of victims being saved,
took 3,000 lives.
“Regardless of the sex or age
bracket., alt adults are urged to
have an annual physical check¬
up whether they suspect cancer
symptoms or not.
“The campaign to obtain a larg¬
er percentage of cures in cases in¬
volving the most common six cities
of cancer is part of the over all
cancer control program of the
American Cancer Society, which
also includes research and service
to cancer patienU. Ibis program
is financed by donations, from the
THE SAVANNAH TRIBUNE, SAVANNAH, GEORGIA
der, the crusading Robert S. Ab-
bott whose zealous defense of Ne- I
gro rights literally “made Chicago j j
famous” and caused hundreds of
thousands of Southern Negroes to J
migrate North,
Less than three years after his
daily emerged, the publishing world |
stood amazed at the top-flight |
journalistic engineering. Satisfied
with the of the DAI 1.5 (
progress
I) h F E N D E R, the indomitable
Sengstacke announced the purchase
of a million dollar Michigan Ave-
nue structure, built to house a sky-
scraper, and now the. new home
of The Defender.
The only Northern daily in Ne¬
gro life was not only here to stay,
but its restless founder and pub¬
lisher was methodically preparing
for spectacular growth.
Nowadays when men have made
rockets to reach the moon and are
preparing to land on other distant
planets and stars, he who fails to
venture is lost indeed. “Our peo¬
ple have a date with history, we’ve
got to move to meet it,” says the
Defender publisher.
The son of a Georgia minister
and printer, Sengstacke followed
his graduation at Hampton Col¬
lege, The Chicago School of Print¬
ing and Mergenthaler Linotype
School, with post graduate studies
in business administration and
journalism at Ohio State and
Northwestern Universities.
Practical grass-roots training as
well as a sound theoretical knowl¬
edge of the publishing field has en¬
abled him not only to build and
expand the foundations of the late
Robert S. Abbott, but to infuse his
own creative concepts which today
maintain the Defender as the news-
paper most closely associated with
the outlook and aspirations of
America’s teeming Negro popula-
tion.
V\ hether through his paper’s
outstanding features and crusades
or such unique programs as the
Defender’s annual “Mayor of
Bronzeville” contest which high¬
lights the Negro eitizens aspira-
| tions for top-level representation,
every city where a black man suf-
I * el: ’ indignities through deliberate
I police brutality actions.
Dr. King
Charges
(Continued from Page One)
goniery that King is charged with
lying about failure to report $31,-
000 in personal income during 1956
and 1958.
Salary $5,000 A Year
King’s salary as pastor of the
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in
Montgomery was $5,000 a year.
Thetford declined to comment on
(he grand jury's investigation
the finances of the Montgomery
Do 2>rops
By R. W. Gadsden
or through such spectaculars as the
annual “Bud Billiken” parade and
picnic, with its near million par-
ticipants in the only such festival
in the world staged annually for
Negro youth, or while functioning !
in the innumerable civic, fraternal j
or community posts conferred upon
him> the “Sengstacke touch” has
made itself fp , t throughout the life
of the nation and thru the chain
0 f j) t .f t nder publications which in-
c!ude the T ri-Sf»te Defender, the
Michigan Chronicle and, associa-
tidn with the Louisville Defender,
Unti , reC ently Sengstacke publish-
pd thp Npw y 0 rk Age.
A member of the Board of Trus¬
tees of Hampton and Bethune-
Cookrnan College, the imaginative
young Publisher served on Presi¬
dent Truman’s Committee for
Equality of Treatment and Oppor¬
tunities in the Armed Services, and
for seven years was a member of
the Board of Directors of the Vir¬
gin Islands Corporation. He was
awarded an honorary Doctor of
Laws degree by Allen University;
he is recipient of similar academic
honors by Bethune-Cookman Col¬
lege.
In September 1950, he received
t he Urban League TWO-
FRIENDS award “for courage,
skill and teamwork in securing
equal opportunity for all.” He
founded in 1940 the National Ne¬
gro Publishers Association and
served twice as its president. In
his own city, the publisher serves
as Director of the Washington
Park YMCA, as Vice President of
the Chicago Council of the Boy
Scouts, Board of Illinois Federal
SavinKS and T oan Assn ” Mayor’s
! 1 <>tnnlittee ’ etc '
j ’ “The hope of American leader-
ship in a world where Africans
and Asians will play a dominant
role, lies in the fulfillment of the
democratic rights of Negro citi¬
zens. If the Negro press succeeds
in carrying forth its historic func¬
tion, we will not only have done a
service for our children, but for
1 our nation and world,” Sengstacke
characteristically has stated.
Improvement Association, the or-
j ganization King founded and used
to combat segregation.
King went before Fulton County
| Superior Judge J. C. Tanksley
I late Wednesday afternoon and was
arrigned. He said he would re-
I sist efforts to extradite him to
! Alabama.
King moved to Atlanta several
weeks ago from Montgomery, Ala.,
saying Atlanta was better-situated
as headquarters for his integra¬
tion work throughout the South.
Georgia Gov. Ernest Vandiver said
| that King would be kept under
“surveillance” in Atlanta.
Addresses Demonstrators
King 'poke TuF'dav night in
1 Durham, X. C., at a rally of 850
The figures quoted last week
about crime draws all sorts of
reactions. One of the com¬
monest reactions, next to angry
resentment, is the charge that
they represent the wishes and
work of writers to make the (
Negro look bad in the eyes of;
the world; that the statistics!
are made up by • people who
make the laws, interpret them
and enforce them; that they in-1
elude persons w’ho are arrest-
ed, tried and convicted by white
people; that others are ac-
quitted for offenses which draw
conviction when committed by
Nergoes. Another reaction is that, |
one
does not deny so much
truthfulness of the figures, but!
resorts to establishing the rea- \
sons why for them: poor
ing, economic conditions, lack:
of recreation facilities, and family destruc-j life j
tion cf home
during 250 years life” when didn’t the j
southern “way of j
object to “race mixing,” etc. It j
is such lots reactions easier to be content with for |
as excuses
inaction than it is to be up and
doing something to remedy or
correct or prevent the condi-
tions which spawn crime and
the ether ills that weight us
down. Past conditions, ante-
civil war conditions that is,
have no immediate remedial
value. ■
Certainly this a tremendous-1
Between The Lines
By Dean Gordon B. Hancock for ANP
FOR HIS WORKS’ SAKE
The passing of Bishop Chas.
Manuel Grace is an event of
more than ordinary importance.
When Jesus Christ was In the
flesh, there were those who
doubted him and suspected that
he was an imposter and a false
prophet; and his teachings were
seriously questioned by the up¬
per echelons of Judaism. They
refused to believe the miracles
that were being wrought before
their eyes and there was always
the impulse to shrug him off.
But Jesus implored them to
hear him in his teachings, and
if this seemed impossible, to
hear him for his work’s sake. It
is easy to appeal from a man’s
teachings and doctrines, but it
is not so easy to appeal from
his works! In the last analy¬
sis Jesus staked his claim to the
allegiance of the people on the
mighty works he did for the
people.
Th.e late Bishop Grace should
be appraised for the construc¬
tive works he did among the
people. Within a generation
he did a marvelous work in the
building of the religious empire
from nothing but a dream to
greatness.
Bishop Grace cannot be
“shrugged off.” When a lead¬
er single-handedly builds an or¬
ganization that proudly boasts
of 500 houses of worship and a
total membership of 4,000,000
and with real estate conserva¬
tively estimated at $ 25 , 000,000
he has something; and that
something is extraordinary.
Today our land is overrun
with cults of one kind or anoth¬
er, but Bishop Grace’s solid
achievements placed him above
the cult level and in the class
of great achievers. Those of
us who have hat! more formal
education are at first inclined
to shrug off Bishop Grace, but
when he shows what he has
done without formal degrees,
and we show what we have
not done with our great de¬
grees, Bishop Grace stands out
in bold relief.
Aside from the possibility that
his religious empire will fall
apart when jealousy among his
subordinates gets in its
work, the fact will note down
that the Negro race can be led
constructively by those who
have the vision and the genius.
Bishop Grace easily built one
of the most powerful religions
organizations to be found in this
country.
The phenomenal rise and
achievement of Bishop Grace
Negroes, supporting passive lunch
counter “sitdown” demonstrations
in the Carolina* and Virginia.
In Durham, he told his audience:
"Do not fear arrests. No great
victory comes without suffering
We are willing to fill the jail-
SATURDAY, FED. 27, 1960
ly big problem and it is most
natural to ask what can we do
about it. One of the first things
to do about it, is to face-up to
the facts. Then start to do
something about correcting
them. Well intentioned people
—workers in ivory towers,
coiners of nice sounding slo-
gans—do not always get out
into the stream of things where
hard and intelligent work is
to be done. Of course, some of
the work is not so hard but re¬
quires constant, steady and pas-
gionate desire to do a thorough-
iy good job. Almost anybody
can say “If the church
home did well their part”
things would be different, would
improve. There is no dispute
The only thing wrong
0 r questionable about it is the
“if.”
Perhaps the family
j s the primary agency or
institution upon which much, if
not most ,of the responsibility
rests for preventing ills that af-
met society but other agencies
must assume, some of the re¬
sponsibility for making the
family the efficient institution
it ought to be or to become.
There is a great deal we can
do about the thing under con¬
sideration that we are not doing,
Further suggestions about what
we can do and ought be doing
will be given later on.
poses a mighty challenge to the
older denominations of Negro
churches. What is it that Bishop
Grace had that they do not
have'.’ Most of his followers
were taken out of other church¬
es. .70
Why did these members
change churches? One of the
outstanding facts of current
church history is the growth
of the Holiness Church among
whites and Negroes, and a sec¬
ond fact is that these Holiness
members were once members of
other churches the mqst im¬
portant of which is the Baptist
denomination.
It must be Observed that Bish¬
op Grace’sgreat boast was that ht
baptized his first convert in a
mud-hole. Almost all of the
Holiness churches are some va¬
riety of Baptists since they all
make much of baptism.
Too often members of Baptist
churches join Holiness churches
and are re-baptized. Just why
people with Baptist inclinations
drift away from Baptist church¬
es is a matter which should
deeply concern the ministry of
the Baptist denomination.
This column deplored a few
weeks ago that our Negro ar¬
tists too invariably sing over
the heads of their audiences,
and we are here venturing the
suspicion that our better edu¬
cated ministers may be preach¬
ing over the heads of certain
segments of their congregation.
As one young minister was
heard to say, “I am an educat¬
ed man with degrees from such
and such colleges and seminaries
and I propose to set the level
of preaching high and the peo¬
ple must come up to my level.
That attitude- invited disaf¬
fection among such people as
built Bishop Grace’s religious
empire. The young educated
minister forgot that the burden
of reaching the common people
is not on them, but on him.
It is a well known fact that
the minister w'ho can draw the
common people as well as these
in the higher echelons of life
will prosper. Bishop Grace
did a mighty work among the
common people and so did Je¬
sus Christ and so do our bus¬
iness and professionals.
Thi writer, like many others,
lias developed a distaste for the
cultist. Bishop Grace was more
than a cultist, he was one of
the great religious leaders of
his generation. His works are
a mighty monument.
Houses of the South to be free.”
King told his Durham audience
that Negroes are “not satisfied”
with token integration in North
Carolina schools.
“It is nothing but a new form of
discrimination covered by niceties.”