The Crisis 1926-12: Vol 33 Iss 2

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{ ) 1%; - iE CRisl emaoel ‘ies XMAS I926 CEMBER, 1926 — Double Number — 15 Cents a Cop:

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SOUTHERN AID SOCIETY OF VA., Inc. best typifies the ability of the American Negro to stick successfully to his last. For 34 years it has cultivated intensive- ly its home territory—State of Virginia and District of Columbia—and _pro- sects tek Ot. duced the following surprising results Richmond, Va. for such a limited insurance field. Over $4,000,000.00 Paid in Claims to Policyholders Over $1,000,000.00 Gross Income during 1925 Over $500,000.00 Invested in Real Estate Mortgages and Bonds. Over $250,000.00 On deposit in Banks and Trust Companies $275,000.00 Policy Reserve It has developed a Superior Three-in-One Insurance Policy, providing for One Small Premium, protection against Sickness, Accident and Death. Testimonial from a well-known Physician and Surgeon 900 5th Street, Lynchburg, Va. To whom these greetings may come: This is to state that I have had the pleasure of filling blanks for the Southern Aid Society of Va., Inc., for sixteen years, and have found them unfailingly straightforward and honest in their dealings with the people. I therefore take this opportunity to extend to them my every good wish for continued success in the well merited favor they have thus far received. Very respectfully, ( Signed ) R. W. Lomax, M.D. Southern Aid Society of Va., Inc. Home Office: 525-27-29 N. Second St., Richmond, Va. Insures against Sickness, Accident and Death

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CHRISTMAS DOUBLE NUMBER Che Crisis cA ‘Record of the ‘Darker ‘Races ((onTENTS FOR ] DECEMBER, 1926 COVER “‘And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field.” Aaron Douglas. Page OPINION “Peace”, “Christmas, 1926’’, “N. A. A. C. P. Funds’, “Travel”, ‘““My Recent Journey”, “The Sesquicentennial Exposition’, ‘Eugene Debs”. 59 NOCTURNE AT BETHESDA. A Prize Poem. Arna Bontemps........ 66 SWAMP MOCCASIN. A Prize Story. John F. Matheus................ 67 A’ WOMAN SPEAKS OF PAIN. A Poem. E. Ralph Cheyney............ 69 KRIGWA. CRISIS Prizes in Literature and Art, 1926. Illustrated...... 70 THE SHAMBLES OF SOUTH CAROLINA. Walter White.............. 72 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE. Illustrated .......... THOUGHTS IN A ZOO. A Prize Poem. Countée Cullen.............. 78 Tae tee: FPRIEUDD,, WAETA, AGS 5a biel oo ee ka ek ped ie 0's HO WS 79 NS oy RAI IN oo 56) 5. 61d. 6 5.5 dive 6 oes Wek Meas e sia DQ we +9 81 NTO THIS LAST. A.Poem: Ede Low Waltom: «i clciccwes eee reecses 82 ne ea Rie aad a wan Amt a ate kb es 83 THE NEGRO COMMON SCHOOL: MISSISSIPPI. Illustrated.......... 90 Se ee og 6 oe in gars. kop ai Mclord S00’ gd goatee Ws 0 Mamaia 103 ee I nk chs oe a ws oe Oe CEM ROSS Me belch eon ort 108 Vol. 33, No. 2 Whole No. 194 DECEMBER, 1926 THe Crists MAGAZINE: Published monthly and copyrighted by the National Association for the Advancement of Col- ored People at 69 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. Conducted by W. E. Burg- hardt Du Bois; Jessie Redmon Fauset, Contributing Editor; Augustus Granville Dill, Business Manager. 15 cents a copy, $1.50 a year. Foreign subscriptions $1.75. The date of expiration of each subscrip- tion is printed on the wrapper. When the subscription is due a blue renewal blank is enclosed. The address of a sub- scriber may be changed as often as de- sired, but both the old and new address must be given and two weeks’ notice is necessary. Manuscripts and drawings re- lating to colored people are desired. They must be accompanied by return postage and while THe Crisis uses every care it assumes no responsibility for their safety in transit. Entered as second class mat- ter November 2, 1910, at the post office "at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. For 1927 THE CRISIS will distrib- ute the largest and most varied num- ber of prizes ever offered to Negro authors; we shall publish 5 or 6 of the Garland Fund reports on Negro public schools of the South; we shall have a series of articles on Russia and the Race Problems beside a number of other interesting mat- ters. Of course, Effie Lee Newsome will cater to CRISIS kiddies in her own lovely way.

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THE CRISIS ADVERTISER The North Carolina College for Negroes FORMERLY The Durham State Normal School Opened its fall session September 14, 1926 THE FOLLOWING COURSES WILL BE OFFERED: THE LIBERAL ARTS COURSE Leading to the A. B. Degree and offering sufficient work in Secondary Educa- tion to enable students to secure High School Teachers’ Certificates, Class A, and High School Principals’ Certificates at the cempletion of the course. THE SCIENTIFIC COURSE Leading to the B. S. Degree. THE PRE-MEDICAL COURSE A two-year pre-medical course preparing students for entrance into medical colleges will be given. SPECIAL COURSES IN COMMERCE AND MUSIC ———+ +e i oe —_—_ The faculty will consist of men and women from the best colleges and uni- versities in the country and will meet the requirements of the Nerth Carolina College Conference. For Catalog and further information address: THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLEGE FOR NEGROES James E. Shepard, President Durham, N. C. Virginia Union University RICHMOND, VIRGINIA Rated as a class A college by the State Boards of Education in Virginia and North Carolina. In addition to the general college curriculum, work is offered in the following departments: THEOLOGICAL, TEACHERS COLLEGE, PRE-MEDICAL, LAW, COMMERCIAL. For additional information address THE PRESIDENT School of High Standards and a Rigorous Pace WILEY COLLEGE Marshall, Texas Recognized as a Class *‘A’’ Cellege by 8 universities represented on its faculty. hundred and fifty enrolled in college department. $85,000 invested in scientifie laboratory and library research equipment. Due prominenee given te muste and te whelesome athletics. M. W. DOGAN, President. Lincoln University Pioneer in Collegiate and Theological Education Accredited by the Association of Colleges of the Middle States and Maryland. Lincoln Graduates are Leaders in the various professions and in all parts of the country. Address: The Dean of the University LINCOLN UNIVERSITY CHESTER COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA The Cheyney Training School for Teachers (A State Normal School) Cheyney, Pa. A Pennsylvania State Normal School offering, in addition to the regular Normal Academic Course of two years, professional three year courses in Home Economics and Shop Work. A diploma from any of these courses makes a graduate eligible to teach in the public schools of Pennsylvania. First semester began Wednes- day, September 15, 1926. For further information and catalog, write LESLIE PINCKNEY HILL, Principal Cheyney, Pa. Mention Tue Crisis

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_ THE CRISIS ~ Vol. 33, No. 2 DECEMBER, 1926 ‘Whole No. 194 parr ¢ OPINION oOcsos % hase ‘o PEACE ND there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night— ignorant, black and striving shepherds—poor silly sheep all a-crying, in the gloom; fields of harm and hunger. And lo, the angel of the Lord, Mahatma Gandhi, came upon them, brown and poor and the glory of the Lord shone round about them and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them: Fear not: for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people and nations and races and colors. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour which is Peace. And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall not find Peace in the Palaces and Chancelleries, nor even in the League of Nations and last of all in the Church; but wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, down among lowly black folk and brown and yellow and among the poor whites is and ever will be; Wealth rules. God is with the big guns and the largest armies; the costliest battleships, the swiftest airplanes and the loudest boasters of superior races. And suddenly—and suddenly! there was with the angel— the lone, lean, brown and conquered angel—a multitude of the Heavenly Host praising God and saying, : who work. | Impossible! cried the sheep and their shepherds. War was, Glory to God in the highest and on earth, Peace! 59

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CHRISTMAS, 1926 ON THE OPPOSITE PAGE is a Christmas card. We have it on heavy card board done daintily in colors. Would you like us to send you one of these cards in order that you may give THE CRISIS as a Christmas pres- ent to a friend or an enemy? Think it over. For cheapness and singular appropriateness and for support of a cause that needs assistance, what would be better than twelve numbers of this magazine? It has a great claim upon you. THE CRISIS is the only Negro magazine in the world that is supported by its readers and does not have to depend upon subsidy in order to pay its bills. There is nothing wrong about subsidies. Many of the world’s greatest causes depend on them. But none are free who ac- cept them. Let us keep this freedom. We cannot keep it without your sup- port. Here then are the two birds: The support of THE CRISIS and a Christmas present quite worth while. On the opposite page is the stone, Why not throw it now? N. A. A. C. P. FUNDS IT IS THE RIGHT of any person, journal or organization to ask of a public institution like the N. A. A. C. P. or a magazine like THE CRISIS how the funds intrusted to their care have been expended. Recently it has been said: (1) That the N. A. A. C. P. has received from the Garland Fund $34,918.30 toward its Defense Fund. (2) That THE CRISIS has received from the same fund $5,000 for a study of education in South Carolina. (3) That the N. A. A. C. P. hav- ing set out to raise a $50,000 fund for the defense of Dr. Sweet and others in the Detroit cases increased the amount to be collected to $75,000. (4) That the capital of the Gar- land Fund is not being preserved but both capital and income is being given away and that various colored or- CRISIS ganizations have shared in its dis- sipation to the extent of $60,000. (5) That the N. A. A. C. P. de- cides as to which cases shall be de- fended with its Defense Fund and which shall not. These statements have been the basis of considerable comment and they have received from time to time detailed answers. It is only neces- sary that here we should recapitu- late these answers. (1) The Garland Fund contributed $26,552.80 to the N. A. A. C. P. De- fense Fund. They regarded the de- fense of the Negroes’ right to resi- dence as a fundamental matter and therefore when we appealed to them to help in our raising of money, they gave $5,000 outright and offered to give, in addition to this, one dollar for every two dollars raised by the N. A. A.C. P. The result was a total contribution of the sum mentioned above. (2) In the fall of 1924 the editor of THE CRISIS appealed to the American Fund for an appropriation to study Negro education in the South. He proposed that the appropriation be used for an “intensive study of South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama and a more general study of North Caro- lina, Mississippi and Louisiana.” He estimated the cost of such a study to be $5,000. In November, 1925, THE CRISIS said in a leading editorial, ‘““We take pleasure in announcing that the American Fund for Public Service has granted the sum of $5,000 to THE Crisis Magazine for special work in research. . This study is now going on under expert students and the publication of the results in THE CRISIS and in other forms will be an- nounced later.” Nothing further was said about this investigation for the reason that we did not wish the Southern states to know that we were studying their school systems. In the June CRISIS 1926 in an editorial on the “American Fund” we said:

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62 THE “This Fund has helped to secure justice for the Virgin Islands; has contributed to- ward the trade union movement to organize Negro workers; has appropriated money to the National Urban League to study the re- lations of Negroes to trade unions; has ap- propriated money to THE CrIsIs to study Negro common school education; and has helped the anti-lynching campaign and the Defense Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.” In THE Crisis for July, 1926, we announced that “‘the first of the series of studies on Negro education car- ried out by THE CRISIS with the help of the Garland Fund” would be pub- lished in September. In the August CRISIS we made a similar announce- ment and in the September CRISIS we published the first report of the in- vestigation in a special double num- ber of THE CRISIS under the title of The Negro Common _ School in Georgia. In the introduction to this report we again explained our plans. In the present CRISIS we publish the second installment on The Negro Public School in Mississippi. In fu- ture numbers of THE CRISIS we shall publish studies of the Negro public schools in North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma and probably Louisiana and Texas which will finish the series. The appropriation was not made for “South Carolina,” it was made for the South and the records of the Gar- land Fund and THE CRISIS show this plainly. Finally Dr. Du Bois did not go to Russia at the expense of the Garland Fund nor out of this appropriation. (3) The Defense Fund has been explained several times. When the Sweet case came to our attention, we started out to raise a Defense Fund. We called it a “Defense Fund.” We intended it should be a fund primar- ily for the defense of Dr. Sweet and afterward for general legal defense. This was said plainly and clearly from the very beginning. We placed the goal first at $50,000 but the responses carried the amount to $75,000. This was not a new idea. As far back CRISIS as the time of the Afro-American Council and in every crisis since, the need of a permanent fund for the self- defense of Negroes has been recog- nized and attempts have been made to raise such funds. The colored peo- ple of the United States*consented to put such a fund in the hands of the N. A. A. C. P. because they believed it would be honestly and effectively spent and in this respect they have not been deceived. From the begin- ning the N. A. A. C. P. has been dis- Linguished from similar attempted or- ganizations among us by the fact that its funds have been handled with the greatest care. A financial report is published every year, in the Annual Report, in THE CRISIS and is sent out to the press. There was left in our treasury Oc- tober 31, 1926, $38,699.02, a sum to- tally inadequate to safe-guard the legal rights of 12,000,000 people. If the N. A. A. C. P. is honest and effi- cient, it should administer a fund ten times this size. If it is not honest and efficient, some other repository for the fund should be found. (4) When Charles Garland estab- lished a fund of $900,000, he intended that this fund should be used for the promotion of social uplift especially in unpopular causes. He intended and asked that the fund should not be kept intact and only the income be spent because he feared that such a permanent foundation might eventu- ally be turned from its original pur- pose. He asked therefore that both income and principal should be given away after a reasonable time. It was fair and proper that so unpopular a cause as the defense of the Ameri- can Negro should be helped by this fund and the fact that the Secretary of the N. A. A. C. P. was made a member of the Board showed that the Directors believed that the N. A. A. C. P. was the best organization repre- senting the uplift of the American Negro. If Mr. Johnson had not

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DECEMBER, 1926 63 secured from the American Fund something for our causes, he would have been derelict in his duty. Negro causes have been aided to the amount of over $80,000 which is far less than our needs demand. The portion of the fund given to Negroes has been used for legal de- fense, for study of education, for the organization of Pullman porters and for the investigation of Negro labor. (5) The problem of defending the legal rights of American Negroes is an extremely difficult one. Gradually through the years the N. A. A. C. P. has laid down certain rules. With their Defense Fund they do not at- tempt to help the unfortunate and the needy. A defense fund should be used for legal rights and not for charity. In the matter of legal rights we do not attempt to defend all those who have suffered injustice. Only in cases where the injustice arises clearly from race prejudice does the N. A. A. C. P. step in. Even in these last cases we only select cases that are good cases from a legal point of view. Every lawyer knows that ninety-nine out of one hundred cases are not cal- culated to settle the real principle in dispute. Even when we get these good, clear cases arising from race prejudice and involving the funda- mental rights of Negroes, we can take only a few, because litigation is very costly. Someone therefore must choose which cases shall be under- taken at the expense of our Defense Fund. For this purpose we have a legal committee composed of some of the best lawyers both colored and white in the United States. We fol- low their advice. These are the charges made against the N. A. A. C. P. and THE CRIsIs and these are the answers. Coupled with the charges have been a number of vague insinuations and the use of ad- jectives libelous in intent and unfair. There has been, however, no open, clear charge from any responsible source that the funds intrusted to the N. A. A. C. P. and THE CRISIS have not been used for the objects desig- nated and have not been honestly and efficiently administered. TRAVEL IT WAS A BRILLIANT IDEA when the Walker Manufacturing Company conceived the free trip around the world method of adver- tising. They have sent now for the third year groups of from four to six popular persons traveling over Eu- rope and Asia and in so doing they have impressed upon certain of our leading citizens the fact that prob- lems of race and color are problems of the world and not simply of the United States. It has been for the purpose of real- izing and teaching this fact that I have visited the old world eight times. First, in my young manhood to Ger- many on a fellowship. Second, to the Paris Exposition at my own ex- pense. Third, to England and Scot- lgnd through the gift of an English friend. Fourth, to the Races Con- gress at the expense of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and John E. Millhol- land. Fifth and sixth, to the First and Second Pan-African Congresses at the expense of the National As- sociation for the Advancement of Colored People. Seventh, to the Third. Pan-African Congress at the expense of the Circle for Negro War Relief, then a committee of the N. A. C. W. My recent trip I had planned for revisiting Germany and I had hoped to pay for it by certain lectures in Switzerland and Germany and by magazine articles in the United States. Just before I started an American citizen of Russian descent offered to pay the expense if I would go to Russia. I replied: “T am not at all satisfied with the knowl- edge that I have of the Russian revolution.

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64 THE CRISIS ‘ * i > THE JOURNEY OF DR. DU BOIS TO RUSSIA 2. Franfort-on-Main, 3. Berlin, 4. Leningrad, 5. Moscow, 6. Nijni Novgorad, 7. Kiev, 8. Odessa, 9. Constanti- nople, 10. Skutari, 11. Athens, 12. Naples, 13. Gibraltar. I should like to learn, if possible, at. first hand just what has taken place in Russia and just what the development is at pres- ent. I do not know that I could learn anys thing that would be of advantage to the colored people of the United States, but if there is anything to learn I am eager to learn it. On the other hand, in undertak- ing this or any other trip I should not want to obligate myself to come to any particu- lar conclusions or to follow any line of ac- tiou or to see the facts with any other eyes except my own.” My friend accepted these conditions and I went to Russia. MY RECENT JOURNEY I WENT TO ANTWERP to see Rubens. Then I ascended the Rhine looking at the great vaulted cathedral at Cologne, at the Lorelei, at the Rheinfels, glancing at the old street of the Jews in Frankfort. I went up into the Thuringian forest where I first learned to know the old world and its culture, a quarter century ago. Then I saw Berlin, that giant city which has become since the day I knew it one of the few centers of the world. Taking a little boat at Stettin I sailed three days through the Baltic and the Gulf of Finland until I came to the city that was once St. Peters- burg and to the street which was once the Nevski Prospeckt. I saw the dark red mass of the Winter Palace and went out to the gorgeous park that was once the Czar’s village, (Tsars- koe-Selo) and is now called by the Bolsheviks—the Children’s village,— happy word! Staying here but a few days I went on to Moscow where I lived a month. My home was in Revo- lution Square where I could look upon the walls of the Kremlin. A few steps brought me to Red Square and the Mausoleum of Lenin. I wan- dered into all the nooks and crannies of the city unattended. Not being an official visitor, I met few officials and did not join the excursions arranged for foreigners. But after all, Moscow is bureau- cracy. Real Russia lies outside. I had always wanted to see Nijni Nov- gorod, far out on the Volga. I want- ed to see the Ukraine. Then at Kiev,

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I started to return through Poland and Berlin, but scanning my geo- graphy I figured out a bit of almost impossible romance at no greater cost, and said to myself, “Why not return by the Black Sea and Constan- tinople and Greece, Naples and Gi- bralter?” I hesitated. It seemed al- most fantastic and yet at last I ven- tured. I did it. But always the center of all this was Russia, and of Russia I have much to tell in days to come. THE SESQUICENTENNIAL EXPOSITION THE UNITED STATES has not celebrated 150 years of freedom with the enthusiasm which one had the right to expect. Possibly this is be- cause the freedom which we now en- joy in this country is perilously cur- tailed. The man who has an idea is not free to express it. The Western farmers are far from free. The Southern tenants are practically slaves. Most of the laborers outside the trade unions are serfs and even the members of the trade unions could easily envisage greater free- dom; and, of course, we Negroes are not and never have been free in this land. Under such circumstances, our celebration of freedom is natural- ly half-hearted. Indeed if it had not been for the generous services of two distinguished American gentlemen, Mr. Jack Dempsey and Mr. Gene Tun- ney, both of them wearied from elud- ing Mr. Harry Wills, it seems likely that the Philadelphia fair would have been quite bankrupt. Their fight was the best recent illustration and typifi- cation of American culture of 1926. It brought in more cash than Phila- delphia spends in books and religion. In Russia a capable work of science has thirty thousand readers. In the United States, six thousand is a high water mark. But imagine the mil- lions of readers that the reams of paper reporting this prize fight se- DECEMBER, 1926 65 cured in America and the world! Finally and in support of the new freedom that is following this 150 years, we are welcoming with wild demonstrations the ruling monarch of one of the most disgustingly reaction- ary lands in the world. Our snobbery and social wrig- gling over titled foreigners is in the worst possible taste and has set the world laughing. Roumania has a population but little larger than the number of American Negroes and much poorer, more ignorant and less efficient. Neither their literature nor art can compare with that of our black folk and in the late war their open opportunism put even Italy to shame; yet we acclaim Queen Marie and let Eugene Debs die in moral exile. EUGENE DEBS EUGENE DEBS was one of the few leaders of organized labor in the United States who realized that a large part of the laboring force in this country is of Negro descent. Most labor leaders are either too ig- norant or too prejudiced to acknowl- edge this. Debs knew that no real emancipation of laboring classes in the United States can come: as long as black laborers are in partial serf- dom. He realized that that emanci- pation called for effort on the part of both black people and white; that black people must recognize that their future lies not on a foundation of wealth and luxury but with the people who work and save; that only by a united effort on the part of labor can organized wealth be kept from autocracy and the degradation of vast portions of mankind. On the other hand, unless white labor recog- nizes the brotherhood of man, it be- comes the helpless tool of modern in- dustrial imperialism. The death of so great a mind and so brave a heart as that of Eugene Debs is a calamity to this poor na- tion.

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Nocturne at Bethesda ARNA BONTEMPS This poem won the first prize of $75 in THE CRISIS prize contest of 1926. THOUGHT I saw an angel flying low, I thought I saw the flicker of a wing Above the mulberry trees; but not again. Bethesda sleeps. This ancient pool that healed A host of bearded Jews does not awake. ol This pool that once the angels troubled does not move. , No angel stirs it now, no Saviour comes With healing in his hands to raise the sick And bid the lame man leap upon the ground. oi ~he golden days are gone. wait So long upon the marble steps, blood Falling from our open wounds? and why Do our black faces search the empty sky? Is there something we have forgotten? some precious thing We have lost, wandering in strange lands? Why do we oh There was a day, I remember now, Leébeat my breast and cried, ““Wash me God, Wash me with a wave of wind upon The barley; O quiet One, draw near, draw near! Walk upon the hills with lovely feet And in the waterfall stand and speak. uF oJ “Dip white hands in the lily pool and mourn Upon the harps still hanging in the trees Near Babylon along the river’s edge. But, oh, remember me I pray before The summer goes and rose leaves loose their red.” An ancient terror takes my heart, the fear Of quiet waters and of faint twilights. There will be better days when I am gone And healing pools where I cannot be healed. Fragrant stars will gleam forever and ever Above the place where I lie desolate. oi Yet I hope, still I long to live; And if there be returning after death I shall come back. But it will not be here; If you want me you must search for me Beneath the palms of Africa. Or if I am not there then you may call to me Across the shining dunes, perhaps I shall Be following a desert caravan. ci I may pass through centuries of death With quiet eyes but I’ll remember still A jungle tree with burning scarlet birds. There is something I have forgotten, some precious thing. I shall be seeking ornaments of ivory, I shall be dying for a jungle fruit. Ci. You do not hear, Bethesda. Oh still green water in a stagnant pool Love abandoned you and me alike. There was a day you held a rich full moon Upon your heart and listened to the words Of men now dead-and saw the angels fly. oF There is a simple story on your face; Years have wrinkled you. I know, Bethesda! You are sad. It is the same with me.

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Swamp Moccasin A Story JOHN F. MATHEUS This story received the first prize of $100 in THE CRISIS contest of 1926. ..CRussy palmettoes bent under the clammy dampness that settles on the Gulf Coast before the rising of the sun. Myriad forms of life stirred from the slee}: of a sultry night, buzzing flies, humming insects and dogs, an uncounted and mon- grel brood. All night in road wagon cages derelict human being had slept. With the dogs and flying and crawling creatures they, too, were opening eyes upon a waking world, save their gaze was weary and their world was without cheer. They saw only swamp tangles, labyrinth of long-leaved pines, flashing whitish splotches a few feet from the ground above trough-like cups into which coagulated the resin from the splotched trees. At dawn and in the twi- light these spots sometimes assumed weird shapes, like faces, mocking and grinning. They were often blaring replicas of that face, the terrible visage, the prison boss’s. The night shift of guards exchanged greetings with those of the day shift and crawled under squat tents beyond the wagon cages to snatch a bit of sleep before the burning heat descended. The marsh chill enveloped and subdued. The stagnation of the morass decayed cour- age and rotted the joy of living. The smell of coffee assaulted the dank air. The sole white prisoner was the camp cook. He could be heard ordering his convict assist- ant in the kitchen wagon. The cages had been unlocked and twen- ty-three Negro convicts shuffled from their living tombs. They wore prison stripes day and night. Like the dogs they had but to grunt and stretch themselves and be ready to eat. Some drew water from a well and washed their faces hastily. Others drank out of their cupped hands eagerly. Twen- ty-three black bodies they were, long, short, lean, fat, muscular, hardened, just bodies, worth not much, but something to the tur- pentine interests. The presence of the guards was an ever- present pain. Guns that killed, eyes that seemed always to watch,—what chance had an unarmed nigger anyhow! une-two; one-two. Single file they stepped to get their morning rations. Tins of coffee steaming, hunks of bacon, chunks of corn bread. Gulps! Smacking of thick lips! They must fill their bellies or die. The guards ate too; ate and watched. The first glimmer of day spread over the pine tops. The shadows clinging still to the trees are streaked with color, green leaves, brown cones. Beneath, green grass, green skum, black faces, white faces, black stripes, white stripes, human zebras. The prisoners ate more or less silently, moody and dejected. -The tedium of the lack of things of joy overwhelmed even the guards. No change of scenery—always tangled swamp growth and tall trees hiding the sunlight; no letters—save when the commissary wagon brought supplies from ninety miles; no relaxation—save sleep; no women—no church. The guards to rest and watch; the convicts to work and be watched But men must live. Other jobs there were, but many worse than holding in check unarmed niggers. And one can make up pleasures long withheld, for there would be an end some day. The prisoners found solace in the thought. Number One had been sent up for bootlegging—six months. He knew his white patrons would see that he was released after the Law had been sat- isfied. Number Three was not so sure. Thirteen had killed his rival in a brothel. “Manslaughter”, the jury called it. “Two years at hard labor” said the Judge. It was whispered around that as long as the Camp was going, that is, as long as the trees could be profitably worked, a cer- tain quota of hands had to be maintained willy-nilly. Sentence periods were often lost or forgotten. The cook was feeding the dogs. Every meal this was a bit of diversion. Their barks and snarls and growlings drowned the deep murmur of Negro voices.

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68 THE CRISIS Said Twenty-three to Twenty-two, “Some o’ us got tuh lef’ heah, either me o’ the Boss”’. Whispered Twenty-two to Twenty-three, warningly wagging his bullet head, “Us all ain’t got no chanct”. In a circle, heads level with the ground, gnawing, haunches up, the gargoyles of ‘ the swamp yelped, howled, made thick, gu!- let noises. In convict eyes suppressed ex- citement glints. The guards enjoy the fight. The big dogs want more. They must have more. Their bellies are bigger. A colossal white dog chews his way to vic- tory. The vanquished limp away, yowling, licking their wounds. “Skeered as a passel o’ niggers”, laughed a guard. Twenty-two African prisoners smirked and grinned and laughed an African laugh, “Kyah! Kyah! Hyah! Hyah!” But Twenty-three, wiry, black,- fearless, clenched his fists. The sun was higher now. Rays of light darted somehow through the gloomy tree tops, scattering the gloom more effectively, falling into the eyes of the prisoners. Un- combed woolly heads turned abruptly aside; gnarled, black hands shaded bloodshot eyes. Twenty-three stared unblinkingly ahead. The shadows departing from the tree- tops seemed to have infiltrated his being, drying up his saliva, piercing the aura of, his wretchedness, joining the perpetual shadow of Fear that blanketed his com- panions. Over them the pall of inhibitions depressed and smothered. Some vegetated, the past and present forgotten, the future unknown; others grew dull and bestial, not vegetating, but dehumanizing. Circe of the Swamp was metamorphosing them into beasts—hogs, possums, skunks, wolves. The Camp Boss, whose very foot- steps struck terror, whose glance petrified, who wielded force and power unchecked, was her visible agent. He was the giant white dog, the bully of the pack. Among dogs as among men there are in- stincts stronger than fear. Hunger is one and hunger it was that made the half- starved smaller and weaker beasts snatch a morsel and run. “Yee-ow!”, one was not stealthy nor cuick enough. His temerity brought him death. The big dog throttled, tore, clawed him into pieces. His legs were kicking convulsively, as a guard shouted, “Hurrah for white folks”. “Har! red mouths. “Huh! that irony. Ail was attention now. for a moment. The prisoners shrank back from the dangerous animal. All except number Twenty-three. He picked up a pine knot lying nearby and brained the brute. It was sickening. “Quick! Quick! there.” Every convict was covered with a gun. Came from his tent the Boss, striding heavily, his thick boots kicking up the earth. “What t’hell!” he cursed, running like a tornado, a Hercules of a man,—massive shoulders, bull neck, red hair, red face, steel blue eyes, automatic pistol in one hand, whip in the other. “Lanky niggah, theah, numbah Twenty-three, killed the bes’ hound o’ the pack. Brained him afore ouah eyes.” “Nigger,” hissed the white man, fairly foaming in his rage, gun aimed, finger on the trigger, “Nigger, tek off them clothes.” “Us all ain’t got no chanct’, the echo of a whisper. The prison stripes littered earth. Then the whip fell. “Nigger, say yo’ prayahs! Dull thuds and sickening silence. “IT won’t kill you this mornin’, nigger. Damn you get to work.” Turning to the guards he ordered, ‘Work ’em, work ’em to the limit. Headquarter’s hollerin’ for scrape. Letter last night.” Limp, bleeding, the beaten man _ stooped to pick up his prison rags. “A bullet in your guts, if you put on a stitch”. Ahead the long-leaved pines stretched an avenue, ghastly cicatrices gleaming yellow- ish white in the mounting sunlight. The precious sap oozed forth from which is given to civilization turpentine, for drug- gist, painter, artist; rosin for ships that carry the commerce of the world. Into the swamp they plunged, where there were creeping and clinging worms and bugs, scorpions hiding behind old bark of dead trees and far above all in terror the pitiless, ferocious viper snake of the morasses, the swamp moccasin. He is as deadly as the rattlesnake and swifter be- cause he gives no warning. He never has Haw!” laughed grinning ” Humph!” some convict groaned inimitable intoned grunt of Negro Tedium had fled A dangerous nigger the dewy ”

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DECEMBER, 1926 69 been tamed. He is man’s relentless and ruthless enemy. He asks no quarter and gives none. “Sing us a song, nigger,” shouted the Boss, knowing the psychology of dispersing lazy discontent by adding the stimulus of song that spurs along Negro laborers. Always there is a leader among black stevedores, longshoremen, road hands, farm- ers, turpentiners, to improvise words and melody for song. He creates from the inspiration of the moment. The black race responds readily to vibration, perhaps be- cause jt is closer to Nature. A voice, as though separated from body, so mournful and unearthly did it sound, burst forth chanting, “Swamp Moccasin! Swa-a-amp Moccasin!” From the far end of the avenue of pines, from unseen shadows, came an answering refrain, “Swamp moccasin! Swa-a-amp Moccasin!” All the tragedy of the Swamp Terror was in that refrain and lurking hatred of the white man’s society, an ach- ing sense of wrong. . The leader improvised,— “Swamp Moccasin, hidin’ in de mud, Hab Muhcy on us niggahs to-day, We’s a tryin’ to keep out yo’ way, Swamp Moccasin, hidin’ in de mud.” The refrain rose, beating wierdly against the trees, as the scrape piled up in the buckets from the virgin beauties of the pines. “Swamp Moccasin, ain’t skeered o’ no man, Layin’ on a log, cotton white mouf, Tongue a lickin’, norf an’ souf, Swamp Moccasin, air’t skeered 0’ no man. “Rattle snake rattles when he jumps to bite, Moccasin eyes is a fearisome sight, Look out, niggah, as sho’ as you’se bo’n, Swamp’s goin’ to git yo’ till Jedgment mo’n.” Back and forth, staggering, bending, rising, the naked black man moaned, a swimming in his head, a ringing in his ears. His African forbears thus wandered in the Congo jungles. Noon. The sun in the center of the sky burns like a furnace. Bellies are empty again, throats are parched and dry. End- less chain of eating, toiling, sleeping, wak- ing, eating, toiling, sleeping. Why not starve, then no cage, no toil, eternal sleep. The weary convicts lie panting in the shade. The dogs are too worn to fight. The odor of scorching beans and the smell of clean rosin. The heat of the sun has burned brown the fungus on a decayed log. No it is not brown it is copperish. Is it fungus? It moves! A sinuous gliding. Ah! A swamp moccasin basking in the sun. The dogs have seen him. They whine and back away. The Boss will have some fun. “Nigger, dog-killin’ nigger, ketch that snake, fo’ I plug yo’ black hide.” “Fo’ Gawd!—” “Yo heard me, nigger.” The pistol clicked. Eyes began to pop. A shiver trembled in the frame of the doomed man. Then as if possessed by some jungle ancestor, he suddenly stiffened, his muscles alert, responding with fine pve7i- sion to his will, quicker than the serpent he pounced upon it, one vice-grip behind the wicked head, another struggling with the thick, ugly body, wriggling nastily. There he stood a black Laocoon, fascinat- ing the lookers-on. One lightning motion and four feet of writhing venom flashed in the air, showing a slick black belly, blotched with old ivory white. Around the neck of the Camp Boss the writhing loops entwined and the cotton-white mouth struck twice in his face. Somehow, involuntarily his pistol spat a bullet through the black convict’s head. He fell heavily and as the dogs licked his blood, the Camp guards heard their boss muttering, while his face was turning pur- ple and swelling as big as three: “God—must be—a nigger! He looks so black.” A Woman Speaks of Pain E. RALPH CHEYNEY I much distrust my lover, Pain, Voluptuous but far too warm. Too strident is his pet refrain, Too gaudy quite his uniform. But, as he makes me keenly feel, Hail, Passion’s twin and Death’s best foe! Far worse than wounds that never heal Is callousness. So, “Inward ho”!

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Krigwa Crisis Prizes in Literature and Art, 1926 7. ee the kindness of Mrs. Amy E. Spingarn, THE CRISIS was enabled for a second year to offer prizes in literature and art. Over six hundred manuscripts and drawings were submitted. The judges and the prize-winners in the various divi- sions were as follows: PLAYS Judges: Lester A. Walton, staff of the New York World. Montgomery Gregory, former head, De- partment of Dramatics, Howard Univer- sity; Supervisor of Schools, Atlantic City, New Jersey. Charles Burroughs, reader; director of the Krigwa Players’ Little Negro Thea- ter. Prize Winners: 1st Prize, $100: “Boot-Black Lover” by “Marchbanks”; Willis Richardson, Wash- ington, D. C. 2nd Prize, $50: “Foreign “Carolyn Hopper”; Eulalie Brooklyn, New York. Honorable Mention: “Adam _ Stout”; Oberlin, Ohio. “Tllicit Love” by “Adam Stout”; dolph Edmunds, Oberlin, Ohio. Mail” by Spence, “Peter Stith” by Randolph Edmunds, Ran- SHORT STORIES Judges: Charles W. Chesnutt, author. Ernest Poole, author and playwright. Otelia Cromwell, head of the Depart- ment of English, Colored High Schools, Washington, D. C. Prize Winners: Ist Prize, $100: “Swamp Moccasin” by “Robert Fren”’; John F. Matheus, In- stitute, West Va. 2nd Prize, $50: “Zerless”; Edmund Chicago, Illinois. Honorable Mention: “Flaming by “Annie Hawkins”; Anita Scott Cole- man, Silver City, New Mexico. “In Houses of Glass” by Ethel R. Clark, Attleboro, Massachusetts. “Death Game” by Drummond Shean, Flame” Judges: POETRY Babette Deutsch, poet, winner of The Nation Poetry Prize, 1925. James Weldon Johnson, poet, author, sec- retary of the N. A. A. C. P. Langston Hughes, poet, winner of the 1st Witter Bynner Prize, 1926. Prize Winners: lst Prize, $75: “A Nocturne at Bethesda” by “Lee Carter’; Arna Bontemps, New York City. 2nd Prize, $25: “Thoughts in a Zoo” by “Jonathan Edwards”; Countée Cullen, New York City. Honorable Mention: “The Bird in the Cage” by “Johnson Ward”; Effie I.ee Newsome, Birmingham, Alabama. “That Hill” by Blanche Taylor Dicki» son, Sewickley, Pennsylvania. Judges: ESSAYS J. E. Spingarn, critic, treasurer of the N. AS AS CoP. Mary White Ovington, author, chairman of the Board of Directors of the N. A. A. C. P. W. E. B. Du Bois, editor of THE CRISIS. Prize Winners: lst Prize, $75: “College” by “John Jones”; Lorin R. Miller, Topeka, Kansas. 2nd Prize, $25: “Masterpieces” by “Wil- liam Henry”; Anita Scott Coleman, Sil- ver City, New Mexico. Honorable Mention: “Vagabonding in a City of Opera Seats” by “L. D. Evans”; Julian Elihu Bagley, San Francisco, California. “Seribblers Errant” by “Xavier”; Dr. Frank Horne, New York City. Judges: ILLUSTRATIONS Louis Mayer, artist. Louise R. Latimer, artist. Herbert J. Seligman, Director of Pub- licity, N..A. A; GC. P. Prize Winners: Ist Prize, $75: “African Chief” by Aaron Douglas, New York City. 2nd Prize, $25: Portrait by Hale Wood- ruff, Indianapolis, Indiana. Honorable Mention: Cartoon by Albert Smith, Paris, France.

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DECEMBER, 1926 CRISIS PRIZE WINNERS PRESENT AT INTERNATIONAL HOUSE, OCTOBER 25, 1926. Messrs. Bontemps, Horne, Matheus, Richardson and Douglas and Miss Spence The distribution of prizes took place at International House, New York City, Octo- ber 25. The following programme was car- ried out. 1. The Krigwa Players’ Little Negro Theater presented the second CRISIS Prize Play: “Foreign Mail’ by Eulalie Spence. . Mr. Arna Bontemps read his CRISIS Prize Poem: “A Nocturne at Bethesda.” . The Negro String Quartet played. . Dr. Du Bois awarded the Prizes of 1926 and announced those of 1927. . Mr. John F. Matheus read his Crisis Prize Story. . The Krigwa Players’ Little Negro Theater presented “Mandy”, a play submitted to THE CRISIS Contest by W. J. Jefferson. . The Negro String Quartet played. 8. There was dancing until 11:59 P. M. A third contest will be held by THE Crisis in 1927. There will be prizes for plays, short stories, essays, poetry, covers for THE CRISIS and songs. An aggregate of over $1000 in prizes will be offered. Per- sons who have received two first or second prizes in any class of entries will not be eligible to enter the contest in that same class of work but will be named as members of the Krigwa Academy and may be asked to serve as judges. All persons who wish to enter this contest must send a stamped self-addressed envelope for our entry blank and detailed directions. Further information will appear in our January number. We trust that all entrants will remember that the prizes are the least valuable part of a prize contest. The great object of these contests is to stimu'ste effort, set a standard of taste and enable persons. to discover in themselves capabilities.

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OUR men went down the darkened cor- ridor of the Aiken, S. C., jail towards the cell where slept a colored woman. Through the brick and steel structure, there had grown all night a sense of impending terror. Here and there, prison- ers unable to sleep with the shadow over them, moved restlessly about their cells, sensing vaguely the form of Tragedy stand- ing nearby. Before the woman’s cell the four men paused. One of them unlocked the door and two others went in and shook the sleep- ing figure. Bertha Lowman awoke. “What do you want now?” she demanded. The answer was a gruff demand that she get on her clothes and go downstairs. She knew instinctively that something was wrong and refused to go. In nearby cells, other prisoners saw her seized by two of the men and dragged from the iron-barred room. Downstairs, Bertha Lowman, her brother, Demon, twenty-two years of age and her fifteen-year-old cousin, Clarence, were taken by the mob numbering between thirty and forty out York Street on the Dixie Highway, past darkened houses and luxuriant flower beds yet untouched by the frost. The cars hurried. On the way, Clarence, knowing what the end of the journey would be, jumped from the car. A shot brought him to the ground, blood pour- ing from his wound. No tell-tale blood marks must get on the car. A rope was taken from under the rear seat, one end of it was tied to the rear axle of the auto- mobile, the other circled Clarence’s body. The pilgrimage was resumed, the body of the boy bumping ludicrously along the road behind the car. A mile and a half from town near an old tourist camp were gathered a thousand people and the two hundred cars which had brought them there. The three Negroes were lined up. The man to whom had been assigned the “honor” of executioner stood sickened by the task before him. He quailed and shook his head. Angrily he was brushed aside and three men took his place with two others aiding. The Negroes were told to run. Off they started. Shots rang out and they fell, the The Shambles of South Carolina By WALTER WHITE bullets having gone into their backs. The two boys were dead; the woman was not. She thrashed about on the ground begging piteously for life. ‘“She’s bleating like a goat.” One of the mob members laughed derisively as he said it. The sight was too much for some of the mob and they turned their heads away. Others, less ten- der hearted, fired shot after shot at the squirming figure. «At last one bullet found a vital spot. A spasmodic suiver and the body was still. ; This was the end on October 8th, 1926, of a story which began early in 1925. Sam Lowman and his wife, Annie, were hard working, industrious, law-abiding Christian people. All their lives they had lived in Saluda County with their children, where no member of the family had ever been in- volved in trouble of any sort. In an effort to better their lot, as the family was miser- ably poor, Sam Lowman and his wife de- cided to move to Aiken in 1924. They en- tered there into negotiations with a white man by the name of William Hartley who had bought the old Stevens place thirteen miles from Aiken. The Lowmans agreed to farm this place on shares. Hartley was a man of considerable wealth measured by the standards of rural South Carolina. He was not a very popular man for, being in- dependently rich, he could and did speak his mind freely. Often these opinions were acrimonious for most of his life Hartley had suffered from nervous indigestion. Hartley, as was said, had enemies. These sought in many ways to avenge themselves upon him. Early in April, 1925, a crowd of robed and hooded klansmen went to the home of Hartley’s tenants, the Lowmans, called Demon Lowman outside and whipped him severely. Two weeks later, Sheriff H. H. Howard of Aiken received an anony- mous letter—at least he said he did. The letter declared that Sam Lowman was sell- ing whiskey. Out to the Lowmans’ house Howard started, taking with him his depu- ties, Nollie Robinson, A. D. Sheppard and Robert L. McElheney. They did not know where the Lowmans lived except in a gen- eral way. Nearing the house, they saw two boys plowing in a field who, when asked, said that the Lowmans lived across

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DECEMBER, 1926 73 the road in the house that could be seen from where the four sheriffs stood. The four white men, clad in civilian clothes, started towards the house. In the back yard, fifty-five-year-old Annie Lowman, the mother, and Bertha were working. Mrs. Annie Lowman was making soap in an iron pot; Bertha was sweeping the yard with a home-made brush broom. Bertha looked up and saw the four men approaching. Through her mind flashed the terror of the Sunday night two weeks before when other white men had come to their home. Softly she spoke to her mother who agreed with her that it was wisest to go inside the house until the white men had gone by. The white men saw them. They drew their revolvers and started running to- wards the house to surround it. Sheriff Howard and Bertha Lowman reached the back steps at the same time. Pistol in right hand, the sheriff struck Bertha Low- man in the mouth with the back of his left and ordered her to “stand back!”. Mrs. Lowman saw her daughter being struck and heard her scream. Older and slower, she had not had time to escape into the house. She picked up an axe and started to her daughter’s assistance. Deputy Sher- iff Nollie Robinson emptied his gun into her body and she crumpled into an inert and lifeless heap. Demon and Clarence Lowman heard their sister’s cry of pain and fright and ran to- wards the house. Demon got a revolver and Clarence a shot gun. The two depu- ties at the front of the house started fir- ing at Demon and he returned the fire. No one ever knew exactly what Clarence did. In a few seconds, however, the sheriff was dead, Bertha was shot twice through the left breast just above the heart and once through the left abdomen, Clarence was gravely wounded, and Demon was shot in a less vital spot. Five of the Lowmans were arrested and placed in the Aiken jail. Sam Lowman, away at the mill having meal ground when the shooting took place, came home later in the day to find himself a widower and four of his children and a nephew in jail. Three days later, three-fourths of a quart of li- quor was found buried in the yard of the Lowman home. Sam Lowman was sen- tenced to two years. on the chain gang. Rumors spread around the town that the Klan was going to lynch the Lowman chil- dren. Bertha and Clarence were near death from their wounds, but all five of them were rushed away to the penitentiary at Columbia to escape the impending lynch- ing. The shooting took place on April 25, 1925. Howard’s funeral on April 26th was a huge affair at which some two hundred members of the Ku Klux Klan in full re- galia participated. An inquest was held on the 27th. Court convened and the Low- mans were indicted on May 4th. Arraign- ment took place on May 9th. The trial be- gan ou May 12th. Judge H. F. Rice, pre- siding, assigned attorneys to defend the prisoners. The courtroom atmosphere was tense. The crowd was in an ugly mood. Defense attorneys went through the mo- tions of a trial. Not a soul but knew what the verdict would be. The farcical trial nearly over, Judge Rice arose to charge the jury. First he entered into a long eulogy of the deceased sheriff. Then he apologized for the defense attorneys to the jury: Don’t hold it against them because they defended these Negroes, he said in effect. They were ordered by the Court to take the case; the ethics of their profession force them to defend a man when the courts assign them such a task “None of them wanted to do it,” was the final plea. Only one verdict could have been expected after such a trial and such a charge to the jury. Demon and Clarence Lowman were found guilty of murder and sentenced to die on June 12th. Bertha was found guilty of murder with the recommendation of mercy. Life imprisonment was her pen- ance. In Columbia there lives a brave, intelli- gent and well prepared Negro lawyer, N. J. Frederick by name. He had read of the case in the newspapers and his every sensi- bility was shocked by the travesty of such a trial. Mr. Frederick looked into the rec- ord and was further amazed. He could not rest until he had filed with the Su- preme Court of the State of South Car- olina a bill of exceptions. The execution of the two Lowmans was held up. In No- vember, Mr. Fdererick argued the case be- fore the Supreme Court. Month after month went by with no word from the Court. On April 25, 1926, the an- niversary of the death of the sheriff, the Ku Klux Klan held a great celebration in the little Graniteville cemetery. The Col-

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74 THE CRISIS umbia State said there were 1500 people present. Others who were there esti- mated the crowd between four and five thousand. Free lemonade and lunches were served, eulogies to the late sheriff were ut- tered and a Klan cross of flowers placed on his grave. All this while the Supreme Court of the State was passing upon the legality of the trial of those accused of conspiring to cause the death of the late sheriff. Two days later the decision was handed down. The conviction was set aside and new trials ordered. Mildly the Supreme Court rebuked Judge Rice for his unethical hostility to the prisoners before him in the first trial. October came and a new term of court. Mr. Frederick was there and with him L. G. Southard, a white lawyer from Spartan- burg whose father and grandfather were Confederate veterans and one of them a general in the Confederate Army. Alert, intelligent, courageous were the two of them. They hammered away at the case which the State had prepared against the prisoners. Time and again the State tried to re-inject into the trial that there had been a conspiracy to murder the sher- iff even though the Supreme Court’s de- cision had said definitely that there was no evidence whatever establishing the fact that the three had conspired together to do mur- der. Every time the State attempted to re- inject this issue which had been settled, Frederick and Southard blocked their at- tempts. The testimony of witness after witness showed that the sheriff and his deputies had never notified the Lowmans in any manner that they were officers of the law. The balance swung the other way until Mr. Southard argued that the crim- inals in the case were the sheriffs; that they were trespassers upon the property of a peaceable, law-abiding family; that, “a man’s home being his castle”, the Lowmans had every legal and human right to repel invaders of that home. On the afternoon of October 7th, a mo- tion was made to Judge Lanhan, presiding, for a directed verdict of “not guilty” for the three defendants since the State had clearly failed to make out a case of con- spiracy to commit murder against them. Judge Lanham took the matter under ad- visement. At five o’clock, he announced his decision. The motion for a directed verdict for Demon Lowman was granted. The motion for such a ruling in Bertha and Clarence Lowman’s cases was denied. Demon Lowman was immediately re-ar- rested on a charge of assault and battery with intent to kill; a little knot of men sit- ting in the back of the dingy court, who had eagerly followed the trial, got up and hastily left the court house. All arrangements had been made to re- move the prisoners hastily if they were convicted. The murder charge against one dismissed and the other two certain to be freed if there was the slightest atom of decency and fair play in the minds of the twelve jurors, the plans were abandoned for some unexplained reason. They were taken back to jail and one man left there to guard them. Out of the courtroom streamed the crowd. Here and there men detached themselves from the clusters of talkers and went to the office of a lawyer who a month before had been elected -to the South Carolina State Legislature. And every man who met in that office was a member of the Ku Klux Klan! In this office, plans were hastily made. Telephone calls went out to Columbia, to Warrenville, to Graniteville, to Bath and other towns all over the State. An hour after Judge Lanham delivered his decision, a white man in Columbia was talking to his lawyer, also white. “T am sorry,” the client said, rising, “but I will have to finish talking this over with you some other time.” ; ‘“What’s your hurry?” the lawyer asked. “Got to go over to Aiken right away.” “What’s going to happen there and why are you in such a hurry?” “They are going to lynch three niggers over there tonight. Don’t you want to Ooms BIORET . a. + ts ss It was a few days later that I reached South Carolina. In some of the towns where I went tracing information, gather- ing clues, they said to me, “Don’t go to Aiken! If you do go, I wouldn’t insure your life for a nickel.” But Aiken is not all bad. I talked with men cf character, of distinction, who bit- terly, though privately, denounced the lynching and the lynchers. One afternoon when the sun had almost set, J drove along a lonely road with one of these men. We went to the house of a man whom we knew could give us valuable

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DECEMBER, 1926 information. I was introduced as the rep- resentative of a New York daily newspa- per. “What does your paper want, Mr. White? The story of this lynching or of the Ku Klux Klan, or both?” “Both,” I answered, “but particularly the Klan’s connection with the lynching.” “Wait a minute,” he told me and he left me in the room. Two minutes later, the door through which he had gone opened again. I was reading a document he had given me and from that paper I leoked up. There stood a man in the full regalia of the Ku Klux Klan! “T show you this,” he said to me, “so that you may know what I tell you about the Klan is authentic.” Back and forth through the mill towns owned by the Graniteville Manufacturing Company whose mi!'s are large and pros- perous through the use of under-nourished, play-deprived white boys and girls and their parents, we rode. A bit of informa- tion here and there and corroborative evi- dence poured in confirming details which at first seemed too horrible for belief. Tales of desperate gangs of moonshiners; tales of floggings and of murders of white men and women as well as of Negroes; the tale of William Hartley, (on whose land the Lowmans lived), wealthy, influential, but driven away from his home and forced to take refuge with a son-in-law when he dared condemn the way the Lowmains had been treated; the tales of postmasters who are members of the Klan and who open the mails of persons known to oppose the Klan; pitiful tales of exploitation of child labor; tales so horrible that the faint voices of the few who oppose the lawless regime make the picture seem all the blacker. All these stories were woven together and the story of the murder of the Lowmans corroborated in every detail. Back in New York, I sent a seven-page letter to Governor Thomas G. McLeod of South Carolina. Sher- iffs, deputy sheriffs, policemen, lawyers, members of the South Carolina Legislature, relatives of the Governor—all these to- gether with their names, addresses, occu- pations, were furnished the Governor as being members of the mob. The names and addresses, too, of responsible white citi- _ (All of the documents obtained by Mr. World and formed the basis of its exposé of the lynching situation in South Carolina.) 75 zens, as well as colored, who knew these facts to be true, were offered to the Gov- ernor if he would guarantee them protec- tion from the vengeance of the mob. The Governor was told how in his own State after the lynching, an attempt was made to manufacture a race riot to cover the guilt of the murderers. Agents of the Klan went around Aiken and the neighboring towns saying, “The niggers are armed; they are going to rise in the night and kill all the white people.” The Governor was told how the mob even planned to castrate Lawyer Southard and to tar and feather Lawyer Frederick for daring to defend the Lowmans and to do it well. All these things were told him. Not ‘yet do we know whether any action will come of it. The Grand Jury which investigated the lynching and one of whose members is known to have been a member of the mob and an- other strongly suspected of having been in it, has reported, strangely enough, that no evidence whatever could be found against any of the lynchers. Governor McLeod, as many citizens of his State told me, is a very weak man. He is a “pussy-footer” they say, who is always quoting the scrip- tures. He will do nothing. The Governor has the authority under the law to offer a reward for the apprehen- sion of the lynchers. The Lowmans were lynched on October 8th. When I left South Carolina on October 25th, he had offered no reward even though, conditions being what they are, there there would be little liklihood of the State ever being forced to pay this sum. But three more names have been added to the black roll of victims of mob mur- der. White people in South Carolina have learned that they have sown the dragon’s teeth. Man after man of them, respect- able, respected, law-abiding, are today liv- ing in fear of their lives. The seeds of lawlessness have been sown when black men were lynched and nothing done about it. Today white men are suffering and white women too. And I heard in South Carolina a new note. “We have been op- posed to the Dyer Anti-lynching Bill but we realize now that the only hope lies in Federal action. For a time the states would not end lynching. Now the states of the South cannot.” White were turned over to the New York

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FREEDOM OF THE PRESS FOR NEGRO NEWSPAPERS The National Office has sent its check for five hundred dollars from the Legal De- fense Fund to cover the legal fee in the trial of William Warley, editor of the Louisville News, and I. Willis Cole, editor of the Louisville Leader. The trial took place at Madisonville, Kentucky, on indict- ments for alleged libel, the charge growing out of strong protests printed by these two editors against farcical trials of colored men accused of crime in Kentucky. The circumstances were as follows: Three colored men, Columbus Hollins, Bunyan Fleming and Nathan Bard, were arrested in Madisonville, Kentucky, on April 7, 1926, charged with assault on a young white woman. There was some doubt as to the guilt of these men, not- withstanding the fact that one of them, Hollis, “confessed”, throwing the blame on the other two. During the month of January, 1926, a colored man killed a white man in Lexing- ton, Kentucky, stray shots killing two of the white man’s children and wounding his wife. It was claimed also that he assaulted the white woman. He was tried for rape and hanged within sixty days afterwards. Within the next thirty days a white man assaulted an eleven-year-old colored girl, in Lexington. This white man was tried be- fore the same court, and while his guilt was not questioned he was declared insane. For fear that the courts might act, in the case of the three colored men in Madi- sonville, so as to bring about another “legal lynching”, the two editors carried articles warning against anything but a fair trial for these men. The County Attorney at Madisonville did not like what was said by Messrs. Warley and Cole, and first brought indictment against them for creating race friction and race hatred. Finding that this charge did . not hold good, an attempt was made to charge them with contempt of court. The National Association for the Advance- ment of Colored People 76 = Ea Grand Jury finally brought an indictment against them for libel. The National Office has been interested in this case from the beginning. Last April Mr. Warley informed the N. A. A. C. P. Secretary over long distance telephone that he and Mr. Cole had been indicted for libel. Since that time the National Office has been following the case closely. Arguments in the case were heard at Madisonville on October 6 at which time briefs were submitted. At this time of writing a decision is expected daily. The case against these two editors is one of the most important and far reaching the . N. A. A. C. P. has ever taken part in. It involves the freedom of colored editors to express their honest opinions on racial in- justices, even in the South, unmuzzled by threats of imprisonment. The outcome of this trial will be vital to the colored press and the colored people. AN APPEAL TO THE BRANCHES : November 1, 1926. Now is the time when every branch offi- cer and every member of the N. A. A. C. P. should set ardently to work to show their loyalty towards and love for this one or- ganization successfully working for the civil and constitutional rights of the race. Never has there been greater need for the Asso- ciation and never has it done more efficient work. Encouraged by the apathy of the Republican administration the South has revived lynching and mob rule to a horri- fying degree, and in the North there have been repeated attempts to force Negroes into ghettos and to deny them civil rights. The Association has met this rising tide of prejudice by winning in « cecisive man- ner its victory in the case of Henry Sweet; by securing the freedom of Luther Collins who for five years has faced death; by bringing two new cases before the United States Supreme Court to test residential segregation, and by attacking disfranchise- ment in the South through the white pri-

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DECEMBER, 1926 WINNERS IN N. A. A. C. P. BRANCH POPULARITY CONTESTS Miss Voliet Houston Miss Juanita E. Pearman Miss R. Olive Browne 2nd Prize 2nd Prize 3rd Prize Albuquerque, N. M. Verona, N. J. Verona, N. J. Miss Venera Richards Miss Hilda Harris Miss E. M. Cleveland 3rd Prize ist Prize ist Prize Albuquerque, N. M. Mt. Clemens, Mich. Albuquerque, N. M. Miss Olive Upshaw Miss Martha Tucker Miss Constance Jordon 3rd Prize ist Prize 2nd Prize Mt. Clemens, Mich. Montclair, N. J. Mt. Clemens, Mich.

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78 THE mary in a case now on the docket of the Supreme Court; by defending the Ken- tucky Negro editors who are being tried for frankly expressing their opinions of injustice to Negroes in the courts of that state; by its attempt to bring to justice the Florida lynchers, and by laying plans to make a fresh issue of the federal anti- lynching legislation. An important step in these plans has been the investigation of the terrible lynchings which recently took place in Aiken, South Carolina, an ac- count of which appears in this issue. Certainly this work merits the enthus- iastic and undivided support of all friends of the race and members of the Associa- tion. That this work may go forward there must be adequate funds for operating ex- penses such as clerk hire, rent, salaries, postage, printing, etc., none of which can be paid out of the Defense Fund of the Association. We, therefore, urge that our branches set to work to gain as many mem- bers as possible and to raise and pay in full their apportionment before the year closes. This will best answer the attacks of the enemies of the Association and of the race, and will enable the N. A. A. C. P. to do even greater work. Thoughts COUNTEE 5 This poem won the second prize of $2: _ in their cruel traps, and we in ours, Survey each other’s rage, and pass the hours Commiserating each the other’s woe, To mitigate his own pain’s fiery glow. Man could but little proffer in exchange Save that his cages have a larger range. That lion with his lordly, untamed heart Has in some man his human counterpart, Some lofty soul wrapped, in dreams and visions But in the stifling flesh securely trapped. CRISIS May we count on our officers and mem- bers to do their utmost to make the record of 1926 the best in the life of the Associa- tion? ANNUAL MEETING The Annual Meeting of the N. A. A. C. P. will be held on Monday, January 3, 1927, at 2:30 P. M., at the offices of the Association, 69 Fifth Avenue, New York City. At this meeting the annual re- ports of the Secretary, the Director of Pub- lications and Research, the Director of Branches and the Treasurer will be read and voted upon. At the same time twelve members of the National Board of Directors will be elected. The following persons have been nominated: New York, N. Y. Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. Washington, D. C. Cleveland, hio New York, uv. Y. Detroit, Mich. New York, N. Y. Philadelphia, Pa. J. E. Spingarn New York, N. Y. Moorfield Storey Boston, Mass. William English Walling New York, N. Y. Lillian A. Alexander Nannie H. Burroughs Hon. James A. Cobb Prof. George W. Cook Hon. Harry E. Davis Rev. John Haynes Holmes Hon. Ira W. Jayne Louis Marshall Isadore Martin in a Zoo CULLEN in THE CRISIS prize contest of 1926. Gaunt eagle whose raw pinions stain the bars That prison you, so men cry for the stars! Some delve down like the mole far under- ground, (Their nature is to burrow, not to bound) Some like the snakes, with changeless, slothful eye, Stir not, but sleep and smoulder where they lie. Who is most wretched, these caged ones, or we Caught in a vastness beyond our sight to see?

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The Julius Rosenwald Fund ONE of the astonishing developments in the United States is the work which one Amer- ican citizen is doing for Negro education to balance the refusal and neglect of the South in furnishing school-houses for colored children. It is doubtful if a parallel case can be found in modern history, certainly not in the history of a so-called great and rich republic. Mr. Rosenwald’s interest in Negro school-houses is a monument to the late Booker T. Washington. Beginning as an experiment with the construction of a few school-houses, the enterprise has grown to the stupendous results shown in the accom- panying map. Mr. Rosenwald has laid down the following plan for distributing aid in the building of rural school-houses for the year ending June 30, 1927. 1. The Julius Rosenwald Fund will co-operate through the public school authorities in efforts to provide and equip better rural school-houses for the Negroes of the Southern States. Such equipment as desks, blackboards, heating apparatus, libraries and sanitary privies is deemed of equal importance with the schoo]-houses themselves. 2. The Fund will deposit with every co-operating State Department of Education a sum of money recommended by the General Field Agent to constitute working capital, from which the proper State official may make disbursements as required. Whenever the State Department reports to the General Field Agent any amount or amounts dis- bursed with a statement showing that the work has been inspected and approved by an authorized representative of the Department, The Fund will replenish its deposits in the amount disbursed, if the inspection report is approved. 3. The amount appropriated by The Fund shall not exceed $400 for a one-teacher school, $700 for a two-teacher, $900 for a three-teacher, $1,100 for a four-teacher, $1,300 for a five-teacher, $1,500 for a six-teacher or larger, $700 for a four-room teachers’ home, $900 for a five-room teachers’ home or larger, and $200 a room for the addition of one or more class rooms to a Rosenwald School, provided such school has not already received the maximum aid. 4. The Trustees of The Fund and the State Department of Education have agreed as to the number of new buildings in the construction of which they will co-operate. 5. Aid will be granted toward the construction and paneer of only those schools where the term runs at least five consecutive months, six months or more being preferred. 6. It is a condition precedent to receiving the aid to The Fund that the people of the several communities shall secure, from other sources to wit—from public school funds, private contributions, etc., an amount equal to or greater than that provided by The Fund. Labor, land and material may be counted as cash at current market values. Money provided by The Fund will be available only when the amount otherwise raised, with that to be given by The Fund, is sufficient to complete and equip the building, in- cluding modern desks and two sanitary privies. 7. The site and buildings of each school aided by The Fund shall be the property of the public school authorities. 8. The school site must include ample space for playgrounds and for such agricul- tural work as is necessary for the best service of the community. Aid will be granted only when the site meets the approval of the State Department of Education and the General Field Agent of The Fund. The minimum acceptable for a school is two acres. For the larger school more land is desirable. 9. Plans and specifications for every building shall be approved by the General Field Agent before construction is begun. On request from the State Department of Educa- tion, The Fund will consider it a privilege to furnish general suggestions, plans and specifications for school houses, teachers’ homes and sanitary privies. 10. In connection with a Rosenwald School of two-teacher type or larger, where the annual school term is eight months or more, The Fund will co-operate in the construc- tion of a teachers’ home to be completed and furnished to correspond with the school building. The amount of aid to be given on a teachers’ home shall not exceed one-half of the total cost, the maximum allotment from The Fund for such purpose being $700 for a four-room home and $900 for a five-room or larger, provided that the aid for a home at a two-teacher school shall not exceed $700. Just as in the case of school build- ings, the teachers’ home must be deeded to the public school authorities. 79

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THE JULIUS ROSENWALD FUND SCHOOLHOUSE CONSTRUCTION MAP 34335 COMPLETED BUILDINGS JULY 1.1926 2 2 % 0 wy = ke The Jutius Rosenwatp FuND Caamece or Commence Busine Naswvure Teaeste

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DECEMBER, 1926 81 11. In response to requests of the various states in building county training schools or county high schools larger than a six-teacher type in order to meet state require- ments for high school standardization, the maximum has been changed for such schools only, allowing $1,700 for a seven-teacher, $1,900 for an eight-teacher, and $2,100 for a nine-teacher or larger. Where The Fund has already contributed the maximum amount for a six-teacher county training school’or a county high school, and where the school authorities desire to build additional rooms to meet state requirements for high school” standardization, an addition of not to exceed three rooms at $200 a room is authorized. This new maximum will be allowed only after careful investigation in each case. 12. Application for aid on a building will be made through the County Superintendent to the State Department of Education on blank forms furnished by the State Depart- ment. signed by the General Field Agent. The Fund is not obligated to aid on any project until the application has been Every community where an application has been approved agrees to complete and equip its school building with modern desks before June 15,1927; otherwise such application automatically cancels itself. For further information persons interested should write either to their State De- partment of Education or to the Julius Rosenwald Fund, Chamber of Commerce Build- ing, Nashville, Tenn. a Books ARL Van Vechten’s “Nigger Heaven” is a blow in the face. It is an affront to the hospitality of black folk and to the in- telligence of white. First, as to its title: my objection is based on no provincial dislike of the nickname. “Nigger” is an English word of wide use and definite connotation. As employed by Conrad, Sheldon, Allen and even Firbanks, its use was justifiable. But the phrase, “Nigger Heaven”, as applied to Harlem is a misnomer, “Nigger Heaven” does not mean, as Van Vechten once or twice intimates, (pages 15, 199) a haven for Negroes—a city of refuge for dark and tired souls; it means in common parlance, a nasty, sordid corner into which black folk are herded, and yet a place which they in crass ignorance are fools enough to en- joy. Harlem is no such place as that, and no one knows this better than Carl Van Vechten. But after all, a title is only a title, and a book must be judged eventually by“its fidel- ity to truth and its artistic merit. I find this novel neither truthful nor artistic. It is not a true picture of Harlem life, even allowing for some justifiable impressionistic exaggeration. It is a caricature. It is worse than untruth because it is a mass of half-truths. Probably some time and somewhere in Harlem every incident of the book has happened; and yet the resultant picture built out of these parts is ludic- rously out of focus and undeniably mislead- ing. The author counts among his friends numbers of Negroes of all classes. He is an authority on dives and cabarets. But he masses this knowledge without rule or reason and seeks to express all of Harlem life in its cabarets. To him the black cabaret is Harlem; around it all his char- acters gravitate. Here is their stage of action. Such a theory of Harlem is non- sense. The overwhelming majority of black folk there never go to cabarets. The average colored man in Harlem is an every- day laborer, attending church, lodge and movie and as conservative and as conven- tional as ordinary working folk every- where. Something they have which is racial, something distinctively Negroid can be found; but it is expressed by subtle, almost delicate nuance, and not by the wildly, bar- baric drunken orgy in whose details Van Vechten revels. There is laughter, color and spontaneity at Harlem’s core, but in the current cabaret, financed and support- ed largely by white New York, this core is so overlaid and enwrapped with cheaper stuff that no one but a fool could mistake

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82 THE it for the genuine exhibition of the spirit of the people. To all this the author has a right to re- ply that even if the title is an unhappy catch-phrase for penny purposes and his picture of truth untruthful, that his book has a right to be judged primarily as a work of art. Does it please? Does it en- tertain? Is it a good and human story? In my opinion it is not; and I am one who likes stories and I do not insist that they be written solely for my point of view. “Nigger Heaven” is to me an astonishing and wearisome hodgepodge of laboriously stated facts, quotations and expressions, il- luminated here and there with something that comes near to being nothing but cheap melodrama. Real human feelings are laughed at. Love is degraded. The love of Byron and Mary is stark cruelty and that of Lasca and Byron is simply nasty. Com- pare this slum picture with Porgy. In his degradation, Porgy is human and interest- ing. But in “Nigger Heaven” there is not a single loveable character. There is scarcely a generous impulse or a beautiful ideal. ° The characters are singularly wood- en and inhuman. Van Vechten is not the great artist who with remorseless scalpel probes the awful depths of life. To him there are no depths. It is the surface mud he slops about in. His women’s bodies have no souls; no children palpitate upon his hands; he has never looked upon his dead with bitter tears. Life to him is just one damned orgy after another, with hate, hurt, gin and sadism. Both Langston Hughes and Carl Van CRISIS Vechten know Harlem cabarets; but it is Hughes who whispers “One said he heard the jazz band sob When the little dawn was grey”. Van Vechten never heard a sob in a cabaret. All he hears is noise and brawling. Again and again with singular lack of invention he reverts to the same climax of two crea- tures tearing and scratching over ‘mah man”; lost souls who once had women’s bodies; and to Van Vechten this spells com- edy, not tragedy. I seem to see that Mr. Van Vechten began a good tale with the promising figure of Anatol, but that he keeps turning aside to write in from his notebook every fact he has heard about Negroes and their prob- lems; singularly irrelevant quotations, Haitian history, Chesnutt’s novels, race- poetry, “blues” written by white folk. Into this mass he drops characters which are in most cases thin disguises; and those who know the originals have only to compare their life and this death, to realize the fail- ure in truth and human interest. The final climax is an utterly senseless murder which appears without preparation or reason from the clouds. I cannot for the life of me see in this work either sincerity or art, deep thought, or truthful industry. It seems to me that Mr. Van Vechten tried to do something bizarre and he certainly succeeded. I read “Nigger Heaven” and read it through be- cause I had to. But I advise others who are impelled by a sense of duty or curiosity to drop the book gently in the grate and to try the Police Gazette. W. E. D. B. Unto This Last EDA LOU WALTON Unto this last, Dear Love, unto this last; When it is past, then it is past. So comes the end as the end of winter, Flowers on limbs ice winds may splinter. But the tree that has borne her flowers and fruits And died from her leafless boughs unto her roots, Thirsts not for grass nor the robin’s quick wing, Cares not for spring, cares not for spring.

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r~Xnr———Se owes eee The Horizon Wh @ The Reverend Tobia-Abd-El-Masieh is a Sudanese preacher born in Egypt. He was trained at the American College at Assuit and graduated from the Seminary. He was ordained pastor of the American United Presbyterian Mission at Omdurman, Sudan, in 1919. He is six feet in height and has eight children. The eldest boy has entered the secondary college in Egypt and the eldest girl has just graduated from the American School for Girls at Halfia. @ Charles S. Smith has seen thirty-one years of public ser- vice and has been secretary for five successive Chiefs of Police in Cleveland, Ohio. He was born in Oberlin, Ohio, and studied at Ober- lin College. Practic- ally all the paper work of the Police Department of Cleveland passes through his hands. He approves all bills and issues the Pen- sion Fund checks. @ Robert Winston has won a four-year scholarship in the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania by competitive examina- tion. Three scholarships were awarded. Mr. Winston was the only Negro com- petitor and is the second Negro to ob- tain this scholarship. Dr. W. H. Barnes was the first one to win it in 1908. Win- ston was graduated from the Central High School of Philadelphia and won a four- year scholarship in the College Department of the University of Pennsylvania, finish- ing in June, 1926, with an A.B. degree. He has helped support himself by working in the Post Office. He is 24 years old, was THE REV. MASIEH AND FAMILY ¥ Ue born in Hampton, Virginia, and has been self-supporting since he was 15 when his father died. @ Dr. William A. Sinclair who died last spring at the age of 70 years, was born in South Carolina, educated at Howard, and began his career as Financial Agent of that institution. He studied medicine but never practiced to any great extent. In spite of a certain slowness of action and of thought he was a man who early grasped certain basic principles upon which the ad- vance of the Negro race must be based. He clung to this - knowledge through- out his life with a dogmatic persist- ence that sometimes annoyed his friends and exasperated his enemies. Although naturally conserva- tive, he was continu- ally identified with radical movements. He joined the Ni- agara Movement; he was a strong sup- porter of William A. Trotter; he was the right hand of John A. Milholland in his Negro work and he was one of the founders and long a member of the Board of Directors of the N. A. A. C. P. But the great monument to Dr. Sinclair is the re- cent revolution at Howard University and the installation of a Negro President for the first time in its history. For the eman- cipation of Howard, Dr. Sinclair strove in season and out, losing friends and endur- ing ridicule, but keeping everlasting at it. He died just as triumph dawned. @ Edwin B. Henderson has been re-elected mayor of Highland Beach, Maryland, a 83

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84 THE CRISIS W. A. SINCLAIR town incorporated by colored people. @ Herbert S. Chauncey has been elected President of the Empire Savings and Loan Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Chauncey has been secretary of this organization since 1920. He is interested also in the Peoples Realty Company, a pioneer pub- lishing company which publishes the Cleve- land Call, the Murrell Printing Company and the Eternal Bond and Investment Com- pany. He is a member of the law firm of Chauncey and McGhee. « A memorial building in honor of the Negro soldiers of Missouri is to be erected W. TUNNELL T. GANDY c. S. SMITH R. WINSTON on the campus of Lincoln University, Mis- souri. The building is to cost $50,000. C Atlantic City, N. J., has four colored captains in its fire department. They are: William B. Tunnel, Daniel Preston, Russell A. Allen and Theodore Gandy. These men head two fire companies: No. 9 and 6 with an entirely colored personnel. Twelve men of Engine Company No. 9 receive a salary of $2,100 per year. The twelve men of Truck Company No. 6 re- ceive $1,500, getting increases of $200 a year until they reach the maximum of $2,100. The four captains are paid $2,600 a year. R. A. ALLEN

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DECEMBER, 1926 ie mas Ee be HOTEL. : Pa RESIDENCE AND HOTEL OF J. ADDO VANDERPUYE, FOURTH GENERATION OF A MERCHANT FAMILY, ACCRA, GOLD COAST, WEST AFRICA @ The St. Louis chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha awards a hundred dollar scholar- ship annually to a worthy male graduate of the Sumner High School. This year Louis B. White of the University of Iowa received the scholarship. C The fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Meharry Medical College was commem- erated in a five-day celebration beginning October 24, at Nashville. The State Com- missioner of Public Education, the Mayor of the city and the heads of white colleges made addresses. Among those present dur- ing the celebration were Dr. Dan Williams, Mr. Julius Rosenwald and Dr. G. C. Hall of Chicago, Dr. Edwin Mims and numbers of others. Meharry has appealed for larger resources to carry on her work. C “Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay” was _ intro- duced to America, not by Lottie Collins, but by George Thacher, at the Park Theatre on October 5, 1891. It was arranged by Henry Sagers who heard Babe Connors, a colored woman, sing it in St. Louis. The version made famous by Lottie Collins was a spe- cial one prepared by Richard Morton. @ J. A. Reese has been for twelve years secretary of the letter carriers of Venice, California. He is the only colored man among the twenty-six employees of the of- fice and was recently sent to the State Con- vention of Letter Carriers to represent his branch. @ M. Hannibal Price, Haitian Minister to the United States, recently assisted in plac- ing a wreath on the-tomb of Pulaski of Washington. Pulaski was mortally wound- ed in the attack on Savannah where 800 Haitians saved the American Army in 1779. @ Dr. C. I. Cain of Rome, Georgia, died last summer. He was one of the pioneer Negro physicians of the South and gave long years of service not only in his profes- sion but in various civic movements. He was trained at Claflin and Meharry and began his professional career in Rome in 1890. He leaves three children and a widow. @ The Talcott. Street Congregational Church of Hartford, Connecticut, celebrat- ed its hundredth anniversary in June. The Reverend James A. Wright is minister.

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Ji an ot eae oy . std i } PL! a : 7 ead il rn THE COLORED DOUGLASS HIGH SCHOOL, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND (@ Alexander J. Grosbeck, Governor of Michigan, has appointed a State Interracial Commission composed of ten members, five colored and five white. The colored mem- bers are: Mr. Oscar W. Baker, Attorney at Bay City; Mr. Carl Ash, prominent civic worker of Cass County, Dowagiac; Mr. Charles Handy, successful business man of Flint; Mr. Cecil Rowlette, attorney in De- troit and an experienced worker on racial relations programs; and Mr. Donald Mar- shall, welfare worker at the Ford plant in Detroit. ( There are three colored life guards at Atlantic City: Peter Turner, who has served thirteen years, Richard Ourboys and Robert Fitzgerald, who have each served two years. Theodore Gandy, who resigned last year, served five years. @ Mrs. Corette Arle-Tietz is an American colored singer who is mar- ried and lives in Russia where she has been for 20 years. She is interested in spreading the knowledge of the Negro folk songs in her adopted country. She has received unusual commenda- tion from the critics. C Fritz Cansler, executive secretary of the Colored Branch Y. M. C. A. of Den- ver, Colorado, was elected secretary of the convention at the recent State Conven- tion held at Colorado Springs. THE CRISIS MRS. ARLE-TIETZ @ Thomas B. James, of Hackensack, N. J., has been awarded a verdict of $300 against the Prudential Amusement Company op- erating the Ora Theatre at Newark, N. J. He was refused admission to the theatre because of color. q@ A survey of the United States Bureau of Education for the State of Delaware shows that colored adult students enrolled in the night schools excelled in regularity of at- tendance. Says a part of the report: “In one place at least, where the school house was not wired for electricity, the pupils brought their own lamps and lanterns in order to make night study possible.” C Randall H. Hampton, a graduate of Cor- nell and an art student at Syracuse and Chicago, is dead at Baltimore. He taught science in the Sumner High School, St. Louis, but his chief interest was painting in oils. He held exhibits in New York City and Durham, North Carolina. @ Harry Brown, a colored guard, prevented seven pri- soners from escaping from the Cook County Jail in IIli- nois. They had sawed their way out of their cells and had over-powered the jailer and seized the keys. They were about to beat another jailer into submission when Brown came on the run un- armed. He showed rare cour- age and resourcefulness in the emergency. He put his

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DECEMBER, 1926 SOME MEMBERS OF THE FACULTY hand to his hip as if to draw a pistol and cowed the prisoners into surrender. He has been recommended by the Warden for promotion. @ Nick Childs, well known colored news- paper publisher in Topeka, was a rival of Senator Charles Curtis for the recent Kansas senatorial nomination. He had no chance of defeating the leader of the Senate majority, although 20 to 30 per cent of the Republican vote in centers like To- peka, Kansas City and Wichita is a colored contingent. Childs is the second Negro to aspire to a senatorial nomination this year. The other is Dr. Norrell, an Indianapolis physician, who opposed Senator Arthur R. Robinson in the recent Indiana primaries. Norrell obtained only 15,000 votes in the whole state. C A hotel to cost $60,000, with forty-four hotel rooms and housing a theatre with a capacity of 580, is to be built in Asheville, North Carolina. L. M. Frady is President of the Negro corporation which is backing this project. ( The Chelsea Bank, 135th Street and 7th Avenue, New York City, has 15,000 Negro depositors whose interest accounts are ap- proximately $2,500,000, or 85 per cent of the total deposits of that branch. @ The Odd Fellows have completed a state building at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, at a cost of $100,000. @ At the last commencement of Wilber- OF MEHARRY MEDICAL COLLEGE force University Shorter Hall was dedicat- ed when 15,000 people from far and near were gathered on the campus. The build- ing cost more than $600,000, and contains an auditorium seating 2,800. @ Abram S. Harris, Jr., has entered upon a scholarship at Columbia University. He already holds the degree of Master of Arts in economics from the University of Pittsburgh. At Columbia he will-continue his work in economics toward the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Mr. Harris has written on economics for a number of the leading magazines. @ Eta Chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority at the University of Minnesota has distinguished itself this year by obtaining first place in a scholastic record which in- cludes the twenty-two white sororities of the campus. @ American Negro show girls, members of the “Blackbirds” company, now playing in London, have been engaged as models by Frank Brangwyn who is doing a series of panels representing various racial types in the “Pageant of the Empire”. @ St. Augustines P. E. Church, Brooklyn, has celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The Rev. George Frazier Miller is rector. @ Two additional murders in Florida, classed as lynchings now raise the total for the year 1926 thus far, to 27, the total to date being already nine more than for the entire year 1925.

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THE CRISIS STUDENTS OF ATLANTA UNIVERSITY PRESENT “MILESTONES” UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF MRS. CAROLINE BOND DAY ogy A COLORED HABERDASHER IN CANADA

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INIIOSSNW SLAAUD VOINAV HLYON NMOUA

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The Negro Common School, Mississippi INTRODUCTION N the September number of THE CRISIS we published a report of sixteen pages on THE NEGRO COMMON SCHOOL, GEORGIA, and we noted the fact that it is very difficult to get exact statistics or in- formation concerning free, elementary schools for Negroes in the South. “Nevertheless, each one of the Southern states has a separate system of Negro schools conducted by Negro teachers; and in many cases there are special supervising officers for these schools. It would be a very easy matter, if the authorities wished, to publish from year to year complete de- tails as to the working, income and ex- penditure of these schools. Since this is not done it has seemed necessary that a special inquiry into the condition of Ne- gro schools in certain states should be made. THE Crisis MAGAZINE laid a plan for such a study before the Board of Di- rectors of the American Fund for Public Service and a grant of $5,000 for this study was made in 1925. We have tried to use this sum as economically as possible and with it we have employed experts to study school conditions in a half dozen typical states. We have endeavored to pick out not all of the worse states but some of the best, although for the most part we have confined ourselves to the Southern South.” We are publishing this month a second study which covers the state of Mississippi and is based upon a study of school re- ports issued by the state and by counties and municipalities. This has been supple- mented by personal visits and inspection made by persons familiar with the general school situation in the state. The study is incomplete and fragmentary but it gives at least a partial picture of the Negro school conditions in Mississippi. I. History Before the war the free public schools of Mississippi were practically non-existent although some were supposed to be main- tained out of the “sixteenth section” lands granted to the various states by Congress. In thirty years after the gift, the proceeds of this land in Mississippi were embezzled to the amount of at least one million and a half dollars, so that the public schools 90 practically had no benefit from the fund. One report in 1876 says that there were one thousand public schools in 1860 with thirty-one thousand white pupils but this is evidently a gross exaggeration. Before the Civil War Mississippi practically had no public schools. The public schools start- ed with the coming of the Federal troops. Schools for Negroes were opened at Corinth when the town was captured in 1862. Mis- sionary associations followed with schools at Vicksburg and Joseph Warren, a chap- lain in the Negro regiment, was made Su- perintendent of Schools under the Freed- men’s Bureau. March 6, 1865, Warren re- ported the following schools for Negroes: School Teachers Enrollment . it 22 1854 Vicksburg ‘aves Camps near Vicksburg 4 9 Davis Bend Colony ...... 4 9 Natchez ll Garner* says: “The Reconstruction con- vention, many of whose members were freedmen or Northern white men, was thoroughly imbued with the idea of educa- tion for the Negro race. The constitution which they adopted made it the duty of the legislature to encourage by all suitable means the promotion of intellectual, scien- tific, moral and agricultural improvement by establishing a uniform system of public schools for all children between the ages of five and twenty-one years. Constitutional provision was made for a permanent school fund, and the legislature was empowered to levy a poll tax not exceeding $2 per capita.” The constitution of 1868 made it the duty of the legislature to establish a uniform system of free public schools by taxation or otherwise for all children between the ages of five and twenty-one years. On the fourth of July, 1870, the legislature passed an act to regulate a uniform system of pub- lic education for the state. The law pro- vided for a State Superintendent to be elected by the people and a State Board of Education which was to appoint County Superintendents and there were to be six School Directors in each school district. The system was centralized in the state government and provided for the education of colored children as well as white. It aroused a great deal of opposition among * Reconstruction in Mississippi. Garner is a Southern white man.

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— we wee the white land owners because of its cost and because of the local magnates who had little power in its administration. Teachers too were scarce. Southern whites would not teach Negro schools; very few Negroes were sufficiently trained and _ northern whites had to be brought in. The new system went into operation in October, 1870 and mob law ensued. In Monroe county, the Ku Klux Klan attempt- ed to break up the schools; in Lowndes county, several teachers were whipped and schools broken up; in Noxubie, three or four school houses were burned and the County Superintendent ordered to resign; every school house in Winston except one was burned and in Chickasaw county, a young Irishman who taught a Negro school was severely whipped. Similar outrages took place in other counties. Nevertheless the results of the first year of public schools in Mississippi showed that three thousand schools had been opened with an attendance of 66,257 pupils at a total cost of $869,766. The public school system was re-organ- ized by the law of 1873. This allowed the School Directors to be elected by the pa- trons and limited the salaries. By 1876 the cost of the system was greatly reduced. “Thus the expenditures on account of the State Superintendent’s office in 1874 were $17,816; in 1877 they were $3768. The cost of clerk hire was reduced from $2000 to nothing; the cost of printing was reduced from $13,000 in 1874 to $1000 in 1876. The aggregate salaries of County Superinten- dents were reduced from $48,350 in 1875 to $9760 in 1876.” Nevertheless the Ne- groes and their friends succeeded in estab- lishing a public school system in Missis- sippi and handed it over to the white usurpers in 1876 “firmly established” and “its efficiency increased”. II. GROWTH OF COLORED SCHOOLS The growth of the colored school system is seen in the following table: Per School Daily Cent of Population Enroll- Per Cent Attend- Enroll- Date Colored ment Enrolled ance ment 1880 _ ......251,438 123,710 49 1885-86 .... 260,000 158,300 60.90 59.32 1890-91 .... 284,200 173,378 61.01 104,298 60.16 1894-95 ....309,800 187,785 60.61 103,635 55.19 1900-01 ....312,400 192,493 61.62 102,898 53.45 1905-06 ... .332,141 210,766 63.45 118,096 56.03 1908-09 - 360,925 238,639 66.11 145,153 60.83 The ‘recent figures of school attendance and population are of doubtful value. In ° 1910, it was reported in the United States Census that 67% of the Negro children, seven to thirteen years of age, were at- DECEMBER, 1926 91 tending school, and in 1920, 71.5% or 124,574 were in school. If we take the population, seven to twenty years of age, Mississippi reports in 1920, 180,166 Ne- groes in school or 55.8%, which is either a falling off from 1909 or a different basis of computation. Perhaps in the per capita expenditure of children attending school, as reported by counties, we get nearer the real truth. These figures for all the counties of Mis- sissippi for 1920-21 are shown in the follow- ing tables: THE SCHOOL FUND IN THE BLACK BELT*. Expenditure Per Capita of Total Per Attendance Popu- Cent of ——— ee, County lation Negroes Whites Negroes Claiborne , 13,019 78.2 $4.12 $1.00 De Soto . 24,359 76 14.34 2.00 Hinds .... 57,110 71.3. . 24.37 4.77 Issaquena ....... 7,618 94.2 39.00 3.00 Jefferson .. . 15,946 78.4 5.95 -84 Lowndes . ..+ 27,632 71 3.90 .68 Madison . 29,292 81.5 41.36 2.79 Marshall . 26,105 72.2 12.00 3.15 Noxubie a gcate, 84 60.32 4.80 Oktibbeha . .. 16,872 64.4 25.50 3.82 Panola . .. 27,845 67.9 22.93 3.24 Quitman ; 19,861 76.5 50.00 6.12 Sharkey . Ae 89 38.04 4.31 Sunflower ....... 46,374 80.9 18.16 6.74 Tallahatchie ..... 35,953 69.4 30.55 3.50 Tunica . .. 20,386 90.7 72.19 4.56 Washington ..... 51,092 85 64.42 4.79 Wilkinson . 15,319 76.9 25.08 4.27 Yazoo .. wee 76.1 22.00 3.77 THE SCHOOL FUND IN THE WHITE BELT. Exnenditure Per Capita of Total Per Attendance Popu- Cent of ———— A, County lation Negroes Whites Negroes Calhoun . 16,823 21.5 $11.73 $3.70 Greene... 10,430 22.3 3.50 2.25 Itawomba . . 15,647 8.2 12.00 11.00 Neshoba . 19,303 16.4 13.47 3.78 Pearl River 15,468 22.9 3.75 1.25 Pontotoc . 19,962 24 16.27 7.73 Prentiss . 17,606 17 16.65 4.06 Smith . . 16,178 17.5 3.19 1.20 Tippah .. 15,419 19.1 15.74 6.21 Tishomingo . 15,091 8.3 12.30 6.80 Union ‘ .. 20,044 22.2 2.75 1.50 Webster «.+ee 13,644 22.1 14.56 6.81 THE SCHOOL FUND IN CITIES OF 10,000 OR MORE INHABITANTS**. Expenditure Per Capita of Total Per Attendance Popu- Cent of — —_A———— Cities lation Negroes Whites Negroes Columbus ....... 10,501 49.0 $50.00 $8.55 Greenville ....... 11,560 62.5 84.81 17.10 Hattiesburg . 13,270 37.1 Jackson .. . 22,817 49.6 42.89 13.00 Laurel ..... 13,037 36.7 48.90 10.95 Natchez . 12,608 56.8 36.79 11.33 Vicksburg ..... 18,072 57.9 41.37 19.03 III. PRESENT CONDITIONS As to present conditions, there are pe- culiar difficulties in getting hold of the truth. One of our agents writes: “I have. *Certain Black Belt counties like Amite give no report. ** No figures published for Meridian or Biloxi.

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92 THE done the best I could under the circum- stances and I trust it will be satisfactory. Cooperation on the part of the Negro teachers is impossible, since they seem to feel that they would be held criminally lia- ble should they dare attempt to expose the situation and one is looked upon by the whites with suspicion and as a meddler.” First as to the school law: The state pays for a school term of from four to six months and the municipalities and counties and other “separate” school districts must bear the rest of the expense if they desire nine months’ school. Often they bear this expense for white schools but not for Ne- gro schools. In cities and separate districts bonds may be issued if the qualified voters so direct.. This means, of course, that as most of the Negroes are disfranchised for various reasons, that they have no voice in this election. Nevertheless their property is assessed for school purposes and the income from the taxes is divided between the white and colored schools as the white officials and the white voters direct. Outside of the municipalities, qualified vot- ers may order imposition of a special tax and may issue bonds. In the same way schools may be consolidated even though lying in different counties. The salaries for public school teachers in 1916 were fixed as follows: third grade, twenty to thirty dollars a month; second grade, thirty to forty dollars a month; first grade, thirty to one hundred and fifty dollars a month. These wages are for teachers in the general districts and are obligatory upon the County Superinten- dent. In the separate school districts, the salaries are fixed by the Trustees and in the schools of the consolidated districts by the Trustees and the County Superintendent. As these officials are all white, it is possible to make the salaries of the colored teachers low either by giving them second or third grade certificates or by fixing the salaries in the separate districts. By the law of 1924 the County School Board in each county is “authorized and empowered” to establish not more than two agricultural high schools, one for white youths, and the other for colored youths. Forty-eight such schools have been estab- lished for whites and one for colored. Such schools receive from two to five thousand dollars from the state according to the number of pupils. Consolidated school dis- tricts may issue bonds erecting and estab- CRISIS lishing school buildings, teachers homes, school barns, vehicles and for buying land. There has been almost no consolidation as far as Negro districts are concerned. The law of 1924 also provided that sepa- rate school districts in the cities with a population of not less than ten thousand may extend the curriculum so as to in- clude studies of the freshmen and sopho- more years’ college work. No such high schools can be established unless the city is at least twenty miles away from a state col- lege. An exception is made of Alcorn Col- lege which is a Negro school. The law di- rects that Negro schools should be pre- sided over by Negro Trustees and that the Trustees and County Superintendent shall fix the salaries of teachers but none of the Negro schools have Negro Trustees except rural schools and even there the Negroes are Trustees in name only and the County Superintendent appoints the teachers and fixes the pay. In the towns the Trustees of the schools are white although the law says that all Trustees of schools must be patrons of that school. The law also says that there shall be a white and colored school in each school district but in case that both can not be arranged for at the same time, one shall be built for the white and one for the colored as soon thereafter as possible. In this way many districts not only have no col- ored school but they have recently passed a law which permits the placing of white schools and Negro schools in different dis- tricts; whites as the only voters are under no obligation to provide for -the Negro schools. The legislature of 1924 made the follow- ing appropriations for agricultural high schools: $350,000, this sum to be supple- mented by the county in which the school is located. The white agricultural and mechanical college receives $503,975.72 and in addition to that it gets $14,387.36 an- nually from the United States government Land-script and Land-sales Funds. Alcorn, the only colored school for higher educa- tion receives $35,537 and in addition to that it receives $12,592.27 from the United States Land-script and Land-sales Funds. The Mississippi State College for white women receives $326,578.64. There is no similar college for Negro women. The school for feeble-minded for whites re- ceives $60,000. There is no such school for Negroes. The Mississippi Industrial School

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DECEMBER, TYPICAL COUNTRY AND TOWN SCHOOLS IN COAHOMA, NESHOBE AND HINDS COUNTIES AND AT STALLO AND PHILADELPHIA, MISSISSIPPI

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94 THE CRISIS for delinquent whites receives $169,000. $68,000 was appropriated for white teach- ers’ homes; none for Negroes. The Uni- versity of Mississippi receives an appro- priation of $297,056.98. There is no similar institution for Negroes. The institution for the blind among the whites receives $74,- 550. There is no provision for the colored blind; $838,000 was appropriated for the state insane. There was no provision as to how this should be divided between whites and Negroes. The Negroes are now housed in the back yard of the hospital in dilapi- dated quarters. The white deaf and dumb receive an appropriation of $120,000. There is a small building in the back yard of the institution where there are about forty- eight Negroes who act as servants for the whites. The total appropriations for public schools for 1925 were as follows: By the state, $3,383,256, by the counties, $2,841,256 and by the municipalities, $5,823,199.78. These funds are very largely augmented by special levies from consolidated school dis- tricts and from agricultural high schools. “T inquired at the State Superintendent’s office for the amount spent for the education of Negroes and was told that no such record was kept as to the amounts spent for Ne- gro education.” The number of children of legal school age is reported at present to be 440,000 and 370,000 are said to be enrolled in school. The appropriations are made as a whole and the Negro is allowed whatever those in local authority see fit to give him. No record is kept and no full report made as to just what is expended on Negro schools. The per capita expenditure for white and colored children in certain typical counties for 1925 is as follows: Amite County—white $13.64 Bolivar County-—white $43.33 Coahoma County—white $42.85 Noxubee County—white $31.55 Washington County—white $43.09 Tunica County—white $63.12 Warren County-—white $44.50 colored—$2.58 colored—$2.26 colored—$3.21 colored—$3.00 colored—$2.97 colored—$4.40 colored—$2.03 Churches and lodge rooms are used as school houses in most of the eighty coun- ties of Mississippi. In eight counties Rosenwald schools have replaced the churches. As a rule the Negro schools are unequipped, only a few having desks, maps and tables. The report on the Rosenwald schools for 1924 is as follows: At the close of the fiscal year, June 30th, 1924, the total cost of buildings assisted by Julius Rosenwald funds amounted to $1,- 302,011; that of this amount the Negroes contributed $445,357; by white people, pri- vate donations $142,212; by public school authorities, bond issues and tax levies $142,212; by the Julius Rosenwald Fund $261,100; that this money was spent on 298 buildings, which have a teacher capac- ity of 822 teachers and will accommodate 36,990 pupils. At the present time all available Rosen- wald funds have been exhausted and there are thirty applications on the waiting list. The total value of school property for 1925 was reported to be $3,058,570. The white public schools are valued at $25,- 249,477. In 1925 $3,357,792 was spent in building and equipping white schools and $353,079 in building and equipping Negro schools. Thirty-five years ago there was much talk and discussion in Mississippi as to the most feasible basis for a division of the public school funds between the races, many advocating the application to the Negro schools of that part only, paid by Negro tax payers, but the Negro having been so completely disfranchised later, such a dis- cussion ceased altogether and as one has said, instead of dividing it, in many in- stances, “they just decided to take it all”. The comment of the State Superintendent (1920) on the compulsory attendance law is most informing: “This law has been in operation in every County of the State except Claiborn, Jefferson, Franklin, and Wilkinson, where it was voted out without being given a trial. Reports from the other 78 counties show that this law has done a great deal of good, and that it has been endorsed almost unanimously by the people. in several counties it brought to school from 1,000 to 1,500 white children over seven years of age who had never been to school. Altogether 33,186 white children over seven years of age who had never been to school be- fore were brought into our schools by this law.” IV. TEACHERS There are about 5250 Negro teachers in the public schools of Mississippi. County Superintendents seldom visit Negro schools but lecture to the teachers on certain Sat- urdays. The average preparation of the teachers is the seventh grade. The aver- age wage paid teachers in certain typical counties was as follows during 1925: Calhoun County, white teachers, $71.85; Negro teach- ers, $22.96. George County, white teachers, $74.00; Negro teach- ers, $20.13. Coahoma County, white, $133.76; Negro, $40.75. Lowndes County, white, $89.07; Negro, $27.78. Warren County, white, $150.00; Negro, $33.00 The State Superintendent reports that about one-fourth of the teachers drop out every year. This is probably due to in- adequate pay.

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DECEMBER, 1926 ROSENWALD SCHOOL, GOODMAN, MISS. Section 79, Laws of 1924, among other things says: “In fixing salaries the County Superintendent and the Board of Trustees must take into consideration the character, professional training, executive ability, and the teaching capacity of the teacher.” When it comes to Negro teachers, judged from the pay awarded them, they have none of these qualifications, however ex- perienced or learned. And it is through this wide latitude given the Superintendents and Boards of Trustees, that the Negro teacher and Negro pupil are both starved to death, the former financially and the latter mentally. Of course, the pay fixed under Section 78 of the laws of 1924, applies to rural schools only and not to municipal, consoli- dated, high, nor agricultural high schools. In all of these schools, except the old-time unconsolidated country school, white teach- ers receive from $1200 to $2500 or more. Seventeen summer normals are run for six weeks each summer for the purpose of training Negro teachers and while it is supposed to be obligatory upon all colored teachers to attend these normals, the rec- ords show the largest number ever in at- tendance to have been 2483, in 1923. These seventeen normals all together cost $15,480 annually for the seventeen and the $15,480 is made up from the fol- lowing sources: From the General Edu- cational Board, New York, $3000; from the State of Mississippi, $1270; from tuition paid by the teachers, $11,187.50. It costs the State only $1270.50 annually, total, to operate all of its summer normals for Negroes. It is compulsory that the Negro teachers travel over the state, pay railroad fare, give six weeks time free and attend these normals and pay tuition 1or their maintenance out of the approxi- mately $30 per month salary they receive. White teachers are trained in teachers Col- leges nine months in the year, tuition free. Also there are ten Summer Normals run by the State for white teachers. The State contributes $5000 to the white nor- mals and the counties are supposed to aug- ment this. V. CONSOLIDATED SCHOOLS Under Section 105—Laws of 1924,—in order to obtain a consolidated rural school, those desiring the school must first present a petition, signed by the majority of the “qualified electors” of that district, but the colored man not being permitted to regis- ter and thereby “qualify”, is unable to pre- sent a,“petition” even and the white man who is permitted to qualify is not disposed to invite an increase of his taxes in this way when he can obtain one for his own children without providing one for the Negro child. This is an obvious violation of the fourteenth amendment to the Fed- eral Constitution, but that amendment is now generally ignored, unless a white man wants to use it for his own benefit. ROSENWALD SCHOOL, CANTON, MISSISSIPPI

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96 There are about 950 Consolidated Rural Schools for whites, but not one for Negroes. At Mound Bayou the Negroes voted a fund of $115,000 on their own property and built themselves a beautiful school house. Value of Consolidated school property for whites, $9,461,051.00. Value of Consolidated school property for Negroes, nothing. There is no comparison whatever between the Rural Consolidated school and the old time dilapidated, leaky, cold, lop-sided, half-fallen, one room, one or two teacher school-house, used by Negroes; the Consoli- dated school is both a grammar and high school combined, of the most modern type and comfort. The white man’s idea in these matters is that the Rosenwald school, the product of distant charity and the Negroes’ double tax, is all the Negro is entitled to. While Mississippi boasts about the “Rosenwald school for Negroes”, these are paid for largely out of the Negroes’ own private funds, as against the Consolidated Rural school built and operated out of the com- mon public fund to which the Negro is a larger contributor in fact than the white man. “A party has just talked with Prof. W. F. Bond, State Superintendent of Educa- tion, this afternoon, and asked him how many Consolidated rural schools there were in the State for white, and after he gave the number, and was asked how many of these schools there were for colored, his reply was: ‘None, we have the Rosenwald schools for them’.” “Notwithstanding the fact that the Ros- enwald schools are doing much good, and the very greatest praise should be given Mr. Rosenwald, nevertheless I consider every Rosenwald school in Mississippi a disgrace to the state and nation which al- lows a private citizen to do the state’s work.” ; The state has expended for white teach- ers’ homes altogether $729,750. It has given nothing for Negro teachers’ homes but the Rosenwald Fund has expended $48,- 700 for homes for colored teachers. There are about 400 Teachers’ homes which are furnished by the State, rent free, to white teachers in Consolidated Schools. None are known to be furnished by the State for Negro teachers. Practically all High School work in the Consolidated Schools is said to be of stand- ard grade. All consolidated schools which THE CRISIS are for whites, do from one to four years accredited high school work. Forty-seven of these schools have been approved by the Federal Government as qualified to do vocational work and receive Federal aid. Negroes get no benefit from Federal aid for Consolidated schools. “Many of the counties of Mississippi run Negro schools only four months in the year though only a very short distance away in the same county may be found a Con- solidated Rural school for whites running nine months and teaching everything from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. This is excused on the ground that the white school is in a “separate school dis- trict and that a special levy has been voted for that district”; but because he is not allowed to vote, the Negro’s school is left out. The “separate school district propo- sition” is made of rubber most flexible in- deed and is calculated to meet any emer- gency. The white school flourishes on one side of the road in a magnificent building modernly equipped in every detail with its pupils brought to and fro in automobiles furnished by the county and state; and the Negro school pines in a leaning one room shack on the other side of the road only a few yards away with the Negro boys and girls trudging four or five miles home through the mud and rain as they dodge automobile-loads of white boys and girls hauled to and from school on taxes paid by the Negro boys’ and girls’ fathers under the guise of the ‘separate school district’.” Negro property-holders pay more taxes to support their white neighbors’ school, in proportion to the property owned by the Negro than whites, but when the Negro wants a school, he must depend upon char- ity pass the hat around and apply his meager private funds. The kind of school he is able to obtain in that way is wholly inadequate and is but a makeshift as a rule. VI. HicH SCHOOLS There are 48 Agricultural High Schools in Mississippi, January 1st, 1924, for whites from which schools 1400 graduated in 1923. In these Agricultural high schools are about 6000 boarding students. There is but one agricultural high school for Negroes in the State, and it was just es- tablished in 1924. This school is in Coa- homa County, at Clarksdale, and cost, it is said, $40,000. The white agricultural high

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DECEMBER, 1926 97 ‘ NEGRO SCHOOL, HOLLY SPRINGS, MISS. schools mean an outlay of several hun- dred thousand dollars each. Twenty-three of the white agricultural high schools have been approved by the Federal Government and are receiving financial aid under the provisions of the Smith-Hughes law. Some counties have as many as five Agri- cultural High Schools for white, but none for Negroes; for example, Warren County. Vocational schools, all white, also give evening and part-time courses to those un- able to attend the regular sessions. There are 147 white vocational schools distributed in this State, over sixty-eight counties, receiving State and Federal aid. Under the terms of the Smith-Hughes law, Mississippi received $103,561.05 in 1925 for these schools, and will receive $120,871.42 for the year ending June 30, 1926. The Federal act provides that the state must appropriate a like amount for this purpose. There were 1020 High Schools in the State January ist, 1924, for whites, valued at $13,338,623 with furniture and equipment valued at $1,- 759,331.50. At that time, there were only about three public schools in the State attempt- ing to do high school work among Negroes; namely, Vicks- burg, Mound Bayou and Ya- zoo City. Bar- ring the Mound Bayou school which cost about $115,000, built altogether with Negro money, the value of the other two schools doing high school work is quite small. Since that time, Jackson has built a Negro high school at a cost of $125,000. Natchez has built one, at a cost of $115,000, the Coahoma County Agricul- tural High School has been built; also sev- eral Teachers County Training Schools are doing some high school work. The number of whites enrolled in public high schools of the State in 1924 was 80,036. The number of Negroes doing high school work in accredited public high schools in 1924, none, There are today seventeen of what are termed colored County Training Schools for teachers. These schools are the regu- lar town school of several years standing to which has been recently added a gradu- ate from Alcorn College, the State College for Negroes, and a woman who has had some training in home economics at Tus- kegee or Hampton, and these two teach- ers, with the regular staff of the usual grammar school, constitute the faculty of the “County Training School”. These schools receive the usual allowance WHITE SCHOOL, HOLLY SPRINGS, MISS.

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98 THE extended Negro schools from the State and County and all of them receive from $100 to $500 annually from the Slater Fund, most of them about $300 from this fund; some of them receive from $100 to $400 annually from the General Educational Board, though most of them, only about $250 from this source, and some none. Seven of them receive from $400 to $600 annually from the Smith-Hughes Fund; one $843 from this source: the others, nothing. (See Bond’s Report to the Legislature, 1924). The total support given these seventeen schools for maintenance for the year 1923 from the state and county combined was $48,642. There are 5000 pupils enrolled in these schools, about 400 of them are said to be doing high school work. Each of these schools is expected ultimately to maintain twelve grades of work, “as per the state course of study for colored high schools”, says State Superintendent Bond. As regu- lar elementary schools, most of the work is of primary grade at present. Before these schools can obtain aid from the Slater Fund, they must own ten acres of land and have a home economics teacher. Teaching must extend through eight grades of primary work and they must maintain at least an eight months session. VII. TRANSPORTATION AND ILLITERACY Two years ago the State was spending $105,100 per month, or a million dollars a year for the transportation of white chil- dren to and from school, but not one dol- lar was spent on Negro children for this purpose and it is estimated that this trans- portation paid by the State for white chil- dren amounts to more than $1,300,000 per annum at present. Under Section 308 of the Laws of 1924, Junior Colleges in various parts of the state may be established and many have been established for whites, but none for Negroes. Some effort has been made by Negroes in the way of establishing night schools for the illiterate. The expenses of these schools are borne from private Negro funds. Under Section 292, Laws of 1924, an II- literacy Commission has been established, but the efforts of this commission have been directed altogether to the wiping out of illiteracy among the whites and the Ne- groes have been ignored. CRISIS Negro schools have received Federal aid for the teaching of home economics only in seven schools, while the whites received it in 47 Agricultural High schools and 23 Consolidated Rural schools, (State Supt. Bond’s Report to Mississippi Legislature, 1924) though the Negroes constitute 54.4 per cent of the educable children of Missis- sippi. The State also receives $17,009.27 an- nually from the Federal Government for what is known as Civilian Industrial Re- habilitation, provided the State appropri- ates a like amount. This is merely for dis- abled citizens who are treated free and trained industrially. This, of course, is separate and distinct from rehabilitation of disabled veterans as carried on by the Veterans Bureau. The Negroes receive no benefit from these funds, although they sent more soldiers to war than the whites. VIII. HIGHER EDUCATION Alcorn A. and M. College, the only “col- lege” maintained in Mississippi for Ne- groes by the state and that only partially, is mostly a makeshift when we consider what it should be and what it is qualified to do. It is in dire need of funds, receiving from the state less than eight cents per capita of Negro population for didactic work. The General Education Board of New York knowing this condition offered the last session of the Mississippi Legisla- ture to give Alcorn $150,000 if the leg- islature would appropriate a like sum. The legislature refused. Another benevo- lent organization offered to give Alcorn $100,000 on condition that the State would duplicate the ameunt. The legislature re- fused though it appropriated about five million dollars for the white colleges of the State. IX. Loca, CONDITIONS At Grenado there are six hundred Ne- gro children and seven hundred white chil- dren. The colored principal gets $1200 and the white principal gets $3600 a year. The white assistants get from $900 to $1800 a year. The colored assistants get from $50 to $60 per month. There are twelve grades in the white schools and ten grades in the colored schools. The colored school is included in the statistics with the seven- teen “County Training Schools” but this training school is the town school with two industrial teachers attached.

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DECEMBER, 1926 99 Almost the same conditions exist at Lum- berton where the white and colored teach- ers and the white and colored assistants are paid as above. Here again the regular town grammar school is called a “County Teachers Training School” with two indus- trial teachers attached. At the Winona school the pay of the col- ored principal is $675 a year and the col- ored assistants get $50 a month. There is “practically no building”. Five hundred pupils have five teachers. A report on the Winona school makes the following com- ment. “Built two toilets a few days ago, right in front of the school building, and these toilets for boys and girls, are only about fifteen feet apart, with no screens between them.” At Kosciusko the colored principal gets $900 a year and the assistants $50 a month. The white principal gets $3600 and the white assistants not less than $100 a month. This discrimination in salaries runs right through the school system of the state. Vicksburg has twenty-five hundred Negro children of school age of whom thirteen hundred are reported as attending scho»l. There are two public schools and the school property is estimated as worth $14,000. No one knows the exact amount spent on Negro education. There are 154 Negro pupils in the high school which runs through the twelfth grade. The colored high school principal is paid $1800 a year and the grammar school principal $1500. The assistants get from $600 to $750 a year. ‘There are thirty teachers in the Negro schools. In the Negro schools of Hattiesburg, there are twelve hundred children enrolled and the property is worth $85,000. There are three schools and the appropriation for Negro education in the city is about $12,- 000. Ninety-two colored pupils are in high school grades. The principal of the high school gets $135 a month and the principal of the grammar school gets $75 a month. The assistants receive from $60 to $75 a month. There are twenty-three teachers. The white principals in Hatties- burg receive from $2400 to $4000 a year and the white assistants from $1500 to $2000. “Hattiesburg, ten or twelve years ago, had the reputation of being quite hard on colored people. Its public school for Negroes was a disgrace and shame upon the community and the exodus. practically depopulated the city of Negroes and as a result, as a business expediency, a $75,000 school was built about two years ago, which was the best at that time in the state for Negroes except Mound Bayou.” Meridian has 4282 Negro children of school age of whom 1470 are attending school. There are four schools valued at $130,000. It is not known how much is spent for Negro education. There are 127 doing high school work. The high school principal gets $1500 a year and the gram- mar school principal $750. The assistants get from $500 to $600. Thirty-seven Negro teachers are employed. At Gulfport there are 532 Negro pupils in school. The three Negro schools are valued at $10,000 and the appropriation for Negro education is about $7000 a year. Eighty-seven pupils are doing high school work. The high school principal gets $130 a month and the high school teachers are paid as follows: one $65, three $55, three $50 and three $60. The grammar school principal gets $55 a month and the teachers get $40. There are eleven teachers in the Negro schools. “We have no janitor. The Board has been petitioned several times for one.” The city of Natchez has two schools val- ued at $100,000; $12,000 a year is spent for Negro education; 150 pupils are doing high school work. The principal gets $150 and the teachers get $55. There are twenty teachers in the Negro public schools. Columbus had 1483 pupils in the Negro schools. The two schools are valued at $80,000 and about $7000 is spent for Negro education a year; 160 pupils are doing high school work. There are twenty-two teachers in the public schools and the prin- cipal of the high school receives $1350 a year and his three assistants $50, $60 and $70 a month and the teachers $40 a month. At Hub, Mississippi, Marion County, the Negroes own, it is said, fully 90 per cent of the taxable property in the white school district, and with the Negroes paying 90 per cent of the taxes it is said that the whites have a magnificent school out of the public funds and the Negroes are granted but a makeshift for a school; that the white principal at Hub receives $135 per month and the Negro principal receives only $35 per month. And many other such instances might be cited. At Mount Olive, Mississippi, the colored people upon failing to get the authorities to provide them with ample school facilities

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100 out of the regular fund obtained for school purposes by taxation, appealed to the Board of Supervisors, after having levied a regular tax on both white and colored property, to levy a second and separate tax on Negro property only for the Negro school. This was done and the school now heing operated at Mt. Olive for Negroes is the result. Just as soon as the Jackson Negro High School was established, the city countered by cutting the Negro teachers’ salaries even in the “high” school to the starvation, disgraceful and unthinkable wage of $32.50 per month. Negroes have begun a fight on this disgraceful situation. Anent discrimination in taxation, a col- ored man had to take the city of Jackson to Court this year on the ground of dis- crimination in assessments, for assessing him higher than white persons. On some points, in the lower Court, he won, and au- pealed those on which he lost to the Su- preme Court, where the matter is now pend- ing. Before going to court a petition to the School Board set forth these facts, July 29, 1926: “We, the Colored citizens of Jackson, in mass meeting assembled, realizing the fun- damental necessity of public education for good citizenship among all groups, and at the same time recognizing the fact that the prerequisite of proper education is good tutelage; and further realizing the fact that proper tutelage of the child can neither be expected nor had without just and fair compensation to the teacher; “In view of the fact that the salaries paid the teachers in the Negro schools of Jackson fall woefully short of a just and fair compensation for the work expected, we therefore most respectfully call your THE CRISIS attention to these facts and the general dissatisfaction resulting therefrom, and petition your Honorable Board for an in- crease of the salaries paid Negro teachers to a point in keeping with those paid the white teachers of this city, and the schools of other cities of the country, the size of Jackson. . “We would call your honorable attention to the fact that you will find that in the matter of the payment of teachers, the teachers in the Negro schools of Jackson receive less than one-fourth as much salary as that paid the white. “No city in Mississippi of four thousand population. or more, nor in the United States, the size of Jackson, so far as we have been able to learn (and we have made considerable investigation) pay so low a wage as that paid the Colored teachers of Jackson, the largest city in our State. “Jackson, be it said to her discredit, is in a class altogether to herself. “The highest salary paid an assistant in the Negro schools of Jackson, we are told, is $55.00, and that only two assistants get this figure “The principals of the Negro schools re- ceive as low as $60.00 per month. “There are several assistants in the Col- ore] High School as well as in the Gram- mar Schools, who receive but $30.00 or $35.00 per month. “And since teaching puts one out of line for other work such monthly salary as teacher for nine months, means a yearly average of from $22.50 to $26.25 per month, the year around, under the present high cost of living, out of which they must feed and clothe themselves, pay rent, to say nothing of the fact that these teachers must attend the Summer Normal for a month, and pay tuition; and practically all of them have dependents looking to them for part or whole support.” “T don’t think that there could possibly be a better demonstration of the fate which always comes both swift and sure from those who govern without the consent of NEGRO SCHOOL, RAYMOND, MISSISSIPPI

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DECEMBER, 1926 the governed, to whom they are not com- pelled from time to time to render an ac- counting.” Perhaps the most interesting comment upon colored schools in Mississippi is a 101 crimination in the application of the com- mon school funds of the State, exists today. While the law says that these funds shall be applied equally, we say that though the Nezro children constitute 54 per cent of the educable children of this State, and ABOVE: NEGRO HIGH SCHOOL, JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI BELOW: WHITE HIGH S° 100L, JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI memorial drawn up and submitted to the legislature of Mississippi, January 24, 1924, by Negro citizens. After complaining of lynch law and mob- violence the petition says: “The very widest conceivable gulf of dis- should therefore, under the law, receive 54 per cent of all school funds, if the law means what it says, they receive less than one-twelfth of this fund, as a rule, and in some instances, as little as one-thirtieth, and sometimes only one-thirty-sixth of that received by the whites. a

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102 “In view of the very great discrimination in the application of the public school funds contrary to law, and in event such dis- crimination is to be continued, we would most respectfully ask, in that event, a di- vision on racial lines, of the taxes levied for school purposes, giving to the whites all taxes paid by individual whites, plus their per capita share of school taxes paid by corporations, and let the Negroes re- ceive all taxes paid by them, plus their per capita share of the taxes paid by corpora- tions. “The Negro finds even a greater discrim- ination in the matter of school buildings, in view of the fact that the law says Con- solidated Rural Schools, Agricultural High Schools, ete., shall be established only by a vote of a majority of the qualified elec- tors of the respective school districts, and the Negro not being permitted to qualify, is denied permission to vote. such schools into being for himself, and the white quali- fied elector votes one for himself and quits, votes none for the Negro, but taxes the Negro to pay for the white man’s school. “And in this way comes the Negro’s sec- ond tax, in the form of the “Rosenwald school”, a liability on the Negro instead of an asset; since having already paid gen- eral tax to help build the white school, he must now take his own private funds, if per chance he has any, and build his own school, or add it to some small charitable donation which is only about one-fourth or less of what the little school will cost to build it, and when it is built with the Negro’s second tax, it is but a little one, or two room school, of 5, 6 or 7 grades, all to be taught by one or two teachers, mostly one; while his white neighbor, who paid only a ‘single tax’, has a grammar school and high school all combined, fully equipped with a dozen or more teachers, industrial departments, etc., and the pupils carried to and from school at a public cost of more than a million dollars annually, while noth- ing in this way is spent for the children of Negro double tax payers, and the Negro rural school running a term of about five months, while the white school runs nine. “If that wouldn’t make any kind of tax payer disatisfied, may we not ask, what would? “Of course, the Negroes feel grateful to Mr. Rosenwald, even beyond measure, for his magnificent spirit of philanthropy, but we see no reason on earth why when two people pay taxes, one should derive all the benefits therefrom and the other be thrown on his individual efforts and poverty and the cold wings of charity. “We say that a poor man’s child should be given preference, if preference is to be THE CRISIS given, in matters of public education, since the rich are able to educate their children from their own private funds. “It appearing that no effort whatever is made to enforce the compulsory educational law upon Negro parents, we ask that a Negro probationary officer be appointed in each county, and charged with the duty of the enforcement of the compulsory educa- tional law upon Negro parents and pupils and that it be made a crime to employ a youth of school age during school hours without permission of the court. . “In view of the fact that the maximum and minimum salaries fixed by law for teachers sems to be construed to mean that the maximum is for white teachers and the minimum, or less, is for Negroes, and that such an unfortunate interpretation has driven from the Negro school room most of those as a rule who are qualified to teach, and the pupil and the State are made there- by the sufferers, we therefore, most respect- fully ask that appropriate legislation be enacted whereby Negroes teachers shall re- ceive the same amount of pay, ye white teachers for like service rendered.” This memorial has not as yet brought any definite results. It was, however, re- ceived with attention by the legislature and with commendation from some of the better white people of Mississippi, but the leaders of the rank and file of Mississippi were implacable. For instance, the Missis- sippi Free Lance, edited by Ex-Governor Bilbo and claiming “the largest circulation of any paper published in Mississippi” said: “When Governor Whitfield sent his in- augural address to the Legislature in 1924, he almost crossed the border line in urg- ing recognition of the Negro and his al- leged ‘rights’, He made his demand so strong that a certain bunch of Negroes in Mississippi very boldly and brazenly car- ried before the Mississippi legislature a pe- tition setting out their claims, rights and demands. Some of these demands were so out of harmony with a white man’s country and a white man’s government that a few years ago, if such a thing had been at- tempted by a bunch of Negroes, they would have been bodily thrown out of the halls of the legislature, but, under the influence of the present administration, they were permitted to pass out undisturbed and un- molested.” In the February number of THE CRISIS there will appear “The Negro Common School, North Carolina—the third of the series of the Garland Fund investigation.

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ee ¥ The Looking Glass z A LITERATURE ILLIAM STANLEY BRAITH- WAITE in the Negro Poets’ number of Palms: AGE and AUTUMN Where now is the blaze that hung intense Through summer days? Transmuted into another sense By slanting rays? Is it your keel, O Earth, with a turn sublime Which changes Time And makes the sunshine weary and mellow And the flowers wither, and green leaves yellow? And man, is he a flower—or a green leaf Whose flourish is brief? Old Earth, sailing so even and quiet, Stilling the riot In the blood of youth, is yours the blame?— Or does Time play your game? Are you one, or twain, that makes autumn weather In the body of man, or do you work in the sere together? THE NEGRO DEATH RATE D nee A. TOBEY of the Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writes in Current History: A poaecy that disease would seal the fate of the colored race in this country was made about a quarter of a century ago by a well-known life insurance statistician. In an- elaborate book on the race traits and tendencies of the American Negro he pre- dicted that eventually deaths would so out- number births that the colored population would decrease. As a result of this pessi- mistic opinion many insurance companies ceased to write policies for Negroes, while others made their requirements for the members of this race more severe. It now appears, however, that this prophecy was unjustified, since the Negro population has more than doubled since 1870. The increase has been much slower than for whites, for in 1870 the colored amounted to one-fifth of the total population, whereas in 1920 they ranked as. one-tenth. This difference is due partially to the fact that immigration has swelled the numbers of the whites. Of late years there has also been a notable im- provement in the death rates of the Negro, though the mortality is still far greater than that of the whites. The health of the American Negro is, in fact, about thirty years behind that of the white population. In other words, the average length of life for the colored, which is now about forty-six years, is equivalent to what it was for the white people at the end of the nineteenth century. This does not mean, of course, that most of the colored die at the age of 46, but that the deaths are so distributed between zero and one hundred that the general aver- age is at this figure. A high infant mor- tality rate, as has been characteristic of the colored, will lower such an average. The Negro longevity rate has been in- creasing, however, as is shown by an in- crement of five years since 1920, when the average was only forty-one years. Fur- thermore, these figures for the American Negro compare favorably with those of a number of European countries before the World War and are considerably ahead of the Asiatic countries, such as India, where the expectation of life has been only about twenty-five years for many centuries. The span of life for the whole United States is now about fifty-eight years, the greatest that has been attained, though with promise for even more significant achievements in the future. LOVELY FLORIDA AND ITS HURRICANE COLORED citizen of Miami, Florida, writes: Inclosed herewith is a copy of the order of the Chief of Police of Miami, Florida, following the dismissal of the Marines from Key West, Florida, for abuses to the col- ored people during the four days of “Con- scription of colored labor’, following the great hurricane. The idea of slavery still exists in the minds of many ple down here, conse- quently it was found necessary to “con- script colored labor”. Boys 18 and 20 years of age were employed for that pur- pose. They were marines. Armed with rifles and army revolvers, they pounced upon the colored section of Miami with the frenzy of a hungry lion. Wherever a col- ored man was seen he was attacked. A gun was thrust in his side and he was ordered to “get on that truck”. No exceptions were made, no excuses received. en whose families were out of doors and without food were taken. Men engaged in repairing the roofs of their houses were taken. Men who were trying to erect a makeshift for the protection of their babies were made to quit that work and “get on the truck”. Wo- men were conscripted. The marines forced 103

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104 their way into private homes and conscript- ed men. They were made to work in water neck deep; they were made to work in mud all day; like a chain-gang crew they were guarded by heavily armed marines and even beaten for giving sauce. The colored peo- ple had to get passes as our grandparents did in the time of slavery in order to go anywhere in the city. The half can not be told of the torture suffered by the colored people. A group of colored citizens complained several times to the authorities with no avail. The city authorities said they were not responsible. Yet, when it was reported that a marine was shot by a colored man, all the police force, joined by the sheriff’s force, went out to the colored section, armed with ma- chine guns, rifles, sawed-off shot guns, at break-neck speed, to mow down the re- bellious colored population. We thought that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punish- ment for crime”, could exist in the United States. But it did. One only needs to come here and get the experience of those who were conscripted to be convinced of the facts in this disgraceful affair. The world must know the truth as to hx the colored people fared after this hurri- cane of Sept. 18th, 1926. The colored peo- ple of Miami and other sections of the storm area need redress. The conscripted ones were not given a cent for their forced labor —for leaving their helpless loved ones to provide comfort for white people. What can you do for us? Send down an investi- gator and get the facts first hand. We had better remain quiet. We want government investigation. We want no whitewish. Let the colored people of Miami talk. Our ears are to the ground listening * * Ea The Tampa, Florida, Times complains editorially of the results of Negro segre- gation in Tampa and white lawless oppo- sition even to a segregated Negro district: There must be somewhere in or around Tampa, a place where our Negro residents can make their homes, under surroundings as good as they can be made and sure that they may live peaceably in the homes which they acquire. After due consideration by men who had much rather have been en- gaged at something else and who only un- dertook the task because it seemed a call to civic service, it appeared that the location in dispute was the best possible one for the purpose named. In addition, those who are interested in putting on the development promised certain things—and made sure the fulfillment of their promises—which would make this the model Negro district of the entire United States. It was hoped that they would be left to quietly work out their plans. Instead, they have been hampered at ev- ery turn. Threats have been made, un- seemly things have been done, and every effort put forth to frighten the Negroes THE CRISIS from having anything to do with the propo- sition. rs "+ The remainder of this editorial deserves italics: There are some things worse than a Negro settlement. Among them we would list arson and lesser crimes indulged in to prevent something like a humane and pro- per provision being made for the housing of quiet, inoffensive Negroes. The other sort are entitled to a place nowhere, save in a jail or. penitentiary. HOMES WRITER in the St. Louis Post- Dispatch discusses the housing ques- tion for Negroes: The question concerning Negro housing is one of the most important concerning that particular group of people at this time. If the Negro chooses to live in a house that he is able to pay for why shouldn’t he? If he labors and struggles to have a decent home and a respectable neighborhood to live in, why shouldn’t he have it? If the white man doesn’t care to progress and get himself a better home and is content to live in a rundown neighborhood (such as the Negro generally rents or even buys in) why blame the Negro? The run down second- hand house the Negro generally buys is a treat to him when he manages to get one. For when he is renting he is forced to live in dirty, dilapidated houses and pay big rent at that. Bigger rent than the white people paid who lived in the houses when they were in good condition. There are some just as clean, respectable Negroes east of Grand avenue or in the lower part of the city as there are farther out. But their salary or means of making a living are such as to prevent them from living in other parts of the city. I have a daughter attending Teachers’ College who would be glad-to live in a better house than I now live in but the houses I would like are beyond my means. But if I am fortu- nate enough to better my condition I don’t want to feel that some one can sell or rent me a house and another fellow can come along and run me out because I am a Ne- gro. I am as clean about my home as any of the white neighbors I may have, and cleaner than those whose houses I have rented since they have left. If every fellow tries to progress and will move up it will leave room for the others behind. NEGRO ART HE Bookman of New York City, in speaking of a proposed Negro quarterly writes: As the Negro begins more and more to measure up to the white yardstick of achievement, he will gain a merited posi- tion in American society—however grudg- ingly it may be accorded him. This attain-

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DECEMBER, 1926 ment may conceivably be for the best in- terests of both races. Yet it is a bit tragic to see Negro litera- ture slip over into American iiterature. There is some irony in-considering the Ne- gro’s workmanship as a contribution to American arts and letters. Here, at last, is one time when the Negro should willingly keep in his place—and it is perhaps the one time when the white will not want to keep him there. Certainly the Negro has the basis for a literature which is singular and distinctive, which possesses a breath and animation all its own. No background for intense, emotional writing could be more auriferous than that of the Negro. In form and spirit he has the most desirable of models, for his blues and folk songs have a shapeliness no ingenuity could devise and he has injected into his best writing a blood curdling intensity no cool headed American- ized colored man could ever recapture. Why then must he be patronized and encouraged to become like his colorless brothers in the arts? AERICAN MUSIC HE New York Times quotes Dr. Wil- helm Heinitz in the Frankfurter Zeit- ung, Germany: Its influence on European music inter- ested not only musicologues, but musicians, the folklorist and the general public. In the Cameroons there is a species of hand-harp which has its counterpart in the ancient Egyptian harps dug from thousand- year-old graves. The most primitive of all stringed instruments is found in Africa. The Thorbecke Expedition discovered in East Africa a double marimba, or xylo- phone, which was unique. The typical scale of African music is pentatonic, similar to that known to the ancient Chinese, Celts, Greeks and other primitive folk cultures; it has left its traces in many European folk- songs. In connection with this scale there are intervals which seem to have been in- fluenced by the quarter-tone system of Arabic music. Polyphony, in the European sense, is unknown to the Africans; their music might be called heterophone. On a given theme the players build melodic and rhythmic variations with the greatest free- dom. It was interesting to find partsongs in East Africa which used parallel fourths and fifths in the same way as the European singers of the eighth and ninth centuries used to do. The rhythms of African music are extraordinarily rich and animated, while the chief motif is usually simple and indefatigably repeated. The African talent for diversified rhythms on drums and other percussion instruments is little short of marvelous. The native can keep five or six rhythms going simultaneously on his drums and keep them all sharply differen- tiated. This talent has been developed into drum telegraphy in West Africa. The na- tives can make themselves understood at over a 1,000-kilometer distance. 105 Rebecca Hourwich writes in Colliers: Jazz, as we know it, is unmistakably American. But it is derived directly and indirectly from the music of Africa. If you could hear the native music makers and watch their dances, you would easily recog- nize the strange lyric bond that links the Dark Continent with the New World. Music in Africa had its origin not as an independent art but as an accompanying chant to poetry and dancing, according to Professor Kirby of the Witwatersrand Uni- versity of Johannesburg. From the start this chant held hint of music, for rhythm and melody are as old as man. ‘ We know little of the earliest evolution- ary stages of native music in Africa. From that continent, however, we do know that it traveled to Spain by way of the Moorish occupation. Here it left its stamp in the barbaric abandon of the Spanish dances and in the Spanish music, where there are long stretches without tune or melody—only the rhythmic tum-te-ta sufficient to dance to. In the heyday of Spanish maritime su- premacy Afro-Spanish music spread widely, but intrenched itself most firmly in South America, especially in the Argentine. Thence its subtle influence and appeal reached up to North America, to Mexico and the coast cities of the South. On other continents African music was sugared and dressed so that it became well- nigh unrecognizable. But here in America we had more than the indirect influene of the native music. We had the added weight of the direct effect of the importation of Gold Coast West African natives as slaves. This slave strain has affected not only our dance music, but our whole body of religious tunes. Our Negro minstrelsy and spirituals are more developed, more intense than any tunes evolved from the natives in Africa. This possibly can be explained by the sufferings of the Negroes, their emo- tional conversion to Christianity and the more intimate influence of white over black in the United States. More even than it is a land of flamboy- ant flowers and riotous color, Africa is a land of music. Music is everywhere, and you cannot escape it. Every native has some musical instrument, bought perhaps from slender wages, but more likely fash- ioned out of any material close at hand— from hundred-gallon oil containers to sun- dried calabashcs. DELAWARE COLORED man of Marshallton, Dela- ware, protests in a local paper of the injustice toward Negroes in that state. He says, according to the Wilmington, Dela- ware, Siar: A white man, a leading politician of Sea- ford, was charged with having attacked a colored woman, and despite the efforts to have him arrested and tried, nothing has

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106 been done, outside of a little mock trial held in Milford by his friends. The assault on the colored woman happened just one day before Butler was hanged for attacking a white girl. After hearing these facts I had to think about the geographical location of the first State. It must be one of the lost links of the Democratic South, for such conditions as were presented Tuesday night, belong not to the Middle Atlantic States, but to Georgia, Mississippi, or Alabama. Why should black men be hanged for alleged attacks on white women, and white men be set free in every instance, when a colored woman is the victim? Colored peo- ple cannot forget the Delaware City street car case, where a conductor was alleged to have raped a colored passenger. What was done? Neither can we forget the milkman who attacked a colored woman down the State. What was done? Also the case of the young girl who was attacked by her employer. A woman with affidavit and evidence, yet has to plunder the state one month before she can secure a warrant. And what was done? What is the matter? Just a Negro wo- man. The State needed no warrant to arrest Butler. They just telephoned and highway police scoured the town until they found him. Another young colored youth is al- leged to have attacked a white woman near Frederica. The woman says until this day that she is not sure they have the right man, nevertheless he is serving life time. How can Delaware erase such flagrant injustice? Also Negroes are the only vic- tims of the whipping post. BLACK DEMOCRATS IN TENNESSEE on white Democracy of Shelby County in Tennessee has suffered a shock that will not soon be forgotten. It witnessed 4000 Negroes, professedly Democrats, vote in the Democratic primary. Commenting on the affair the Commercial Appeal of Memphis in an editorial states: * * * McAlister’s “magnificent victory” in Shelby was a magnificent fraud, secured largely by his white leaders in Shelby herd- ing and massing and voting about 4,000 Negro men and women. His own support- ers in this county justified voting the Ne- groes for him under the absurd statement that they proclaimed themselves to be Democrats and stated that they would sup- port the nominee. We do not condemn these poor wretches of Negroes for this. They were herded, hauled about and voted and counted at the instance of McAlister’s supporters, white men, just as if they were cattle. THE CRISIS A dangerous factor, the voting of Negro Republicans in a Democratic primary in droves which was done in Shelby County, has been again injected into our political problem. The shame of it is a part of the campaign that was waged for McAlister, who failed in spite of it, thanks to the votes of the white Democrats of the other counties in Tennessee. * * * The Nashville Tennessean makes this comment on the matter: The Tennessean does not believe that the white democracy of Tennessee is ready to surrender its first and most vital principle of “white supremacy” at the behest of a conscienceless and corrupt machine in Shelby county; it does not believe that the Democratic party of Tennessee is ready to confess that its traditional policy touching the participation in its councils of the Ne- gro race has been wrong and unjustified. For that reason this newspaper has raised the issue and sounded a note of warning to the democracy of Tennessee. It is an issue that challenges the atten- tion and best thought of the democracy of Tennessee. It is one that should engage the serious and solemn attention of the Democrats of the next legislature. Some remedy should and must be devised to the end that it will be impossible at any elec- tion or primary in the future to thwart and defeat and nullify the expressed will of a majority of the white Democrats of Ten- nessee by fraud, intimidation and the ille- gal voting of poor, ignorant and deluded Negroes. This paper speaks not as a fac- tional organ, but for and on behalf of the white democracy of Tennessee regardless of preference expressed in the recent election. * * * The following is part of an answer to the above editorial from a Southern white man: If there was fraud or violation of the election laws in ew, those responsible ought to be punished. (The Banner con- tends that the pictures appearing in your paper were not taken during the last elec- tion. However, of that part I am not in- terested). I will assume that the charges made by the Commercial Appeal and The Tennessean are true. Therefore, all praise to you for denouncing the fraud; but, why do you place the odium of your charge upon the Negro? Why stir the coals of a fire that ought to have died sixty years ago? Why fight over the questions of race su- periority, when the followers of Christ have been announcing for nineteen centuries that he who would be superior must achieve that rank through character, personality and vision: always living in peaceful relations to all men, esteeming himself not above - others—giving himself in useful service to those in need? Along that line superiority

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DECEMBER, 1926 must be sought, and the man is vain who makes a big noise over the color of his skin or his pedigree. I am a Southerner. M and uncles fought and died in the armies of the Confederacy. I am a Democrat, hav- ing been taught that the Republican party is no friend to man in the Routh. I have never voted any other than the Democratic ticket. However, if I am superior to any man, it is because of my ideals, and not because my ancestry lived in a certain latitude. Therefore, as a Southerner, a Democrat, and a man who tries to be true to the high- est within himself, I protest against the plea for a “white supremacy”. That plea is out of. date; contrary to the very word, to say nothing of ideals, of democracy; un- American and un-Christian. If democracy means anything, surely it means that all men should have an opportunity to prepare themselves to participate in the formation and enforcement of the laws of the society in which he lives. Democracy means equal protection in the courts of the land, and an equal. opportunity for each individual to seek his own development and happiness. Such a condition cannot exist when a cer- tain element of society boast of racial “su- periority”, and bend every effort to make that claim a reality. Democracy means grandparents one thing—“white supremacy” the opposite. Why are you not true to your own think- ing and determine for which one you stand? NEGRO ARTISTS 6¢— ES ARTISTES D’AUJOURD’ HUI”, a magazine in Paris devoted to modern art, has published a very interesting account of the young American Negro ar- tist, Albert Smith, together with the repro- ductions of three of his best paintings. We quote in full: “Albert Smith is a happy, carefree man, for his eyes know how to cull joy wherever they find it. But this joy is neither vulgar nor commonplace. It always shows the high artistic culture of the painter. “Still very young—he was born in New York in 1896—Albert Smith has behind him, or better said, for him, a long series of studies. At the National Academy of Design he worked with Kenyon Cox, Doug- las Volk, Blashfield, Joseph Pennell, Meur- bach Levy, the best masters, perhaps, of modern America. The war brought him to France for the first time. He returned to America, only to carry off the first prize in water color. “Moreover—this man is an original—he enters a jazz-band and with it travels all over the world. He goes into Italy and there studies Rubens; he comes to France 107 where his time is divided between the Louvre and Montmartre. “His style feels the effect of this instruc- tion, and so much of his canvases as that hallucinating evocation of dancing called “Syncopation” well belongs to the tenden- cies of the modern school; others, notably his excellent view of the Tibre, originates in an art which is allied to the very great- est. His “Market place of Liege” recalls the “Karmesses” (the country fairs) of the second Flemish school. His picturesque view of Nice might not have refused the signature of a Forain or of a Steinlan. It is the knack of this devil of a fellow to grasp at a stroke the atmosphere of a place and from there to build solidly. One has forcibly observed him at the “Inde- pendents” of New York. Tomorrow one will observe him everywhere. * * * A FRENCH VIEW OF THE RHINELANDERS FRENCH friend sends us this extract from the Paris, France, Quotidien: Monsieur Rhinelander who is an Ameri- can millionaire married one day Miss Alice Jones who is the daughter of a taxi-cab driver. Free Americans have no prejudices. But a month after the marriage Mr. Rhinelander suddenly perceived that he had married a Negress. Then he asked for a divorce. Free Americans have strange prejudices. Mr. Rhinelander’s discovery may well seem astonishing because of its delay. For a husband might put some time into dis- covering that his wife’s father was a taxi- cab driver; but he would need to be aston- ishingly short-sighted, myopic or distracted not to be able to see at once that he was having dealings with a Negress. Doubtless Mrs. Rhinelander isn’t a pure black Negress nor even a coffee-colored one; the blemish in her pedigree is revealed only by a significant mount at the base of her nails and by the suspicious waviness in her hair. But no matter how remote the con- tribution of a Negro to this modern product, no matter how diluted the few drops of black blood in the current of a race, that is sufficient to alarm the susceptibility of a pure-blooded American. Notice that a pure-blooded American de- scends from former convicts deported from England.

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Philadelphia, Pa. The May Crisis came about an hour ago, and after looking over the contents, I turned immediately to the article, “John Work”. Never before has anything ap- pealed to me as more timely or worthy of universal attention. Indeed he was- a “Martyr and Singer” and too few people know it. Only yesterday, I was assisting with the criticism of a pageant written by two High School girls depicting the progress of the Negro and suggested that by all means the name of John Work be included as repre- sentative of the very foundation upon which our present recognition and appre- ciation of Negro Spirituals rest. You have seen by this time that there is no special reason for this letter except as an expression of the very deep emotion that I felt when reading of “John Work— Martyr and Singer”. ELEANOR E. COLEMAN. Medford, Mass. There has always been in my heart a deep love for all my fellowmen, and the experiences of my life have served to in- tensify my opposition to the wrongs men heap upon one another. As a boy in the Wilson Memorial Academy of Nyack, N. Y. (now defunct) I chummed with Charles S. Morris, creator and writer, from whom I learned the injustices done to my brothers of the black skin. In my own little Iowa town I had never developed anything but love and admiration for the two or three friendly “‘darkies” who lived there. It was a shock to learn, at the age of 14, that most white folks thought black folks in- ferior to themselves and not possessing the same rights. But I’ve seen it ever since. I’ve been in Virginia, D. C., Maryland, Missouri, (got my A.B. at University Jewe!!, Liberty) Colorado, Massachusetts, and the intervening states—and everywhere I’ve seen the ignorant pride of whites ex- pressing itself in contempt of men of dif- ferent hues. So I have used my little in- fluence from time to time to teach a needed truth—always I have met some gentle souls who felt with me, but the major portion have flouted me. In college I was ducked for upholding Stitt Wilson in the absolute equality of blacks and whites, in churches I’ve been told that I’d lose my job—that I should preach the “Gospel”, and not “Race equality”. I’ve seen the bitter hatred of men in K. K. K. meetings flash upon me as I said I’d just as soon marry a black girl as a white—that color made no difference. There has always been this fact to en- courage me for the future—our young whites are more sensible—broader, less bound by the ignorance of the past. If our young blacks can preserve a true love for all in the midst of their battle for right the generation to come will see a fellowship now undreamed. JOHN SHADE FRANKLIN. Birmingham, Alabama. I am writing to congratulate you on your article on Tuskegee and Hampton. On my way thru this section to Florida I spent about ten days at Tuskegee Insti- tute arriving there at the time’ of the Farmers and Teachers Conference. There were several white people there and they were all entertained free of charge in Dor- othy Hall, a building put up especially for white guests. In this building the girls get their vocational training, evidently with the idea of impressing white visitors of the ef- fort put forth in that direction. Colored visitors were placed about here and there. I stayed at Douglass Hall, and ate in the teachers’ dining room, and paid for everything I got. On the program, even at open forums, white people were always given preference. I tried to get an opportunity to speak, but failed. One white man was asked to speak —and prefixed his remarks by stating that he had spoken four times that day, and had about talked out. When the vice-president, who presided during Dr. Moton’s illness, refused publicly to give me a hearing, these same white men came to me and expressed regret, saying that they would have given me their time gladly. I feel that colored people need vocational 108

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DECEMBER, 1926 training, along with all other races; but when it has to be gotten at the price of the continual flaunting of the white man’s su- periority into their faces—thus accentuat- ing their own inferiority complex—I won- der whether the good that’s done isn’t en- tirely offset. I saw the same thing happen here [in Birmingham] at the State Teachers Asso- ciation, which closed its session yesterday. Always the platform was filled with white people, who were constantly giving the peo- ple soothing syrup to make them feel that their school system was altogether wonder- ful. But by some means the fact finally came out that only 2 per cent of the teachers in the state are college graduates, only 12 per cent Normal graduates, and that there isn’t a single accredited high school in the state, not even at Tuskegee. So many white people had to be given a chance to speak that I gave up the idea of trying. On my way down I spoke at Fisk, Walden, Roger Williams, State Normal Schools in Nashville, Montgomery, and Tal- lahassee, and a number of other places. All told I have had a very satisfactory hearing except as before mentioned. I hope your article will do good. Heaven knows it is needed—and should be said over and over again. Kansas City, Kansas. We have long hoped that some one would see the situation here at Western Univer- sity and give to the world the facts about Quindaro. No better word could be used— “wretched”—true enough it is. I cannot see how conditions here could be so low as they are. How they ever got down to rock bottom is a puzzle to all of us. Within eight years the student body had decreased from eight hundred to a mere handful of two hundred and fifty. Still there is a great decrease. Boys and girls come here from the south land with great ambition, great aspiration and great desire, to have their wishes crushed within a year’s time and fall into this rut of laziness and dullness, wasting their time, their mothers’ hard earned money, doing nothing but so- cializing from morn till night. No one to cheek them and no one to make them study. Western is a hot bed of politics and has always been. 109 Students have been known to have been graduated out of the institution who were deficient in several subjects and who have not taken all of the required work only be- cause the President wants to make a big showing before the Board. We cannot as leaders have our boys and girls crippled in this way. There is no discipline around the school and members of the Faculty refuse to act on the discipline committee because the President will veto everything they do if it is not in accordance with his wishes. Three boys were slated to go home for creating a disturbance at a_ basket-ball game and for firing off a revolver, menac- ing the lives of students, but the President vetoed the report and reinstated the boys, not forcing them to give up their fire-arms. This is only one condition and one case. In everything that is done the members of the faculty have been put on the same basis with the students. Every chapel day, which is Monday and Friday, some member of the faculty is exposed and criticized be- fore the student body. This of course brings on laughter and scandal. The Presi- dent is not modest at all in his use of words and says some of the most damaging things about his faculty until conditions are so no one dares say anything about or to the student for disorder. We never have faculty meeting. It has met only three times this school year and each time it met to grant a holiday for the students. Most anything takes them from their classes. When the Board of Admin- istration comes down from Topeka, a big dinner is prepared and the band plays and marches around the campus while they eat. The people of Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, consider Western University to be a huge joke. No mother thinks about sending her son or daughter to Western. Out of that large city of Kan- sas, only twelve students come to Western. We have a library of about 100 volumes, and still they can afford to buy a moving picture machine to show pictures in such a poor place as the chapel. This is a disgrace to the people and an injustice to the race. Where the money is going no one knows and had better not ask. (THE CRISIS received the above letter from a teacher in Quindaro. It has no proof as to the allegations but would be very glad to publish answers).

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THE CRISIS Hampton Institute Hampton, Virginia TEACHERS COLLEGE School of tture—four-year course leading to de- gree of Bachelor of Science. School of Education—four-year high-school teacher’s course leading to degree of Bachelor of Science; and two two-year courses for primary, intermedi- ate and upper-grade teachers. School of Home Economics—four-year course leading to degree of Bachelor of Science; and two-year course. Summer School for Teachers—courses leading to degree of Bachelor of Science and State Certificates. SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Offers four-year course leading to degree of Bachelor of Science and two-year course—aims to prepare men and women for business positions or to teach business subjects. LIBRARY SCHOOL Offers one-year, professional course—aims to prepare librarians for normal schools, colleges and branch libraries in city systems. TRADE SCHOOL Offers four-year course leading to degree of Bachelor of Science; and two year course—aims to train skilled builders. ACTS sents and summer school and 2,251; once, Enrollment, includin classes for teachers in a 2,753; and ex-students, over 8, JAMES E. GREGG, Principal. ADVERTISER 1891 1926 AGRICULTURAL TECHNICAL COLLEGE GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA A Technical School of High Grade College courses in Agriculture, En- gineering and Education. A strong Commercial Course, Vo- cational High School and Trade School. Fall Term began September 15, 1926. For further information address F. D. Bluford, President, Dept. C A. & T. COLLEGE Greensboro, N. C. THE TUSKEGEE NORMAL AND INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE Founded by Dr. Booker T. Washington Offers Ex: Opportunities to Negro Youth for Thorough Education in — and in Agriculture, Mechanical Industries and in Industries THE DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL INDUSTRIES for Boys comprises ee ~ trades including meee? Bricklayin Auto-Me- chanics, App Electricity, otography, Printing, Machine Shop eastine and Tailoring. THE _ WOMAN’S INDUSTRIES _ include Home Economics—Courses in Foods, Cting Millinery, Applied Art, Laundering, Househo! id Management in addition to Home Crafts and Ladies’ Tailoring. THE AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT with 2,000 acres of land offers a comprehensive four- oe course in Secondary Agriculture and a full four-year -college course in Adva Agriculture to train young men and women as Farm Demonstration and Home Demonstration Agents, Teachers of Agriculture and as Scien- tific Farmers. TWO-YEAR COLLEGE COURSES are offered in Education for the innieg of Teach- ers in Elementary Schools, for Teachers of Me- chanical Industries and in Business Training. ROBERT R. MOTON, Principal School and College or women. FOUR-YEAR COLLEGE COURSES leading to the Bachelor of Science degree are offered in Agriculture and in Home Economics. THE BIBLE TRAINING SCHOOL offers courses in Theological Training and Christian Service for Active Pastors, Sunday School Workers and Candidates for the Ministry, in- cluding a Summer for Ministers for five Pd beginning July 6th. THE JOHN A. ANDREW MEMORIAL HOSPITAL and Nurse Training School pro- vides a three-year course in Nurse Training which qualifies its graduates for registration in all southern states. A SUMMER SCHOOL FOR TEACHERS, of ten wore divided into two terms, begin- ning June Ist and meeting the requirements of the Boards of Education of all southern states. Location Unsurpassed Information furnished upon application WILLIAM H. CARTER, Treasurer TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE, ALABAMA Mention Tue Crisis

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