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About The monitor. (Omaha, Neb.) 1915-1928 | View Entire Issue (April 28, 1917)
The Monitor A National Weekly > ^0$' .per Devoted to the Interests of the Colored / ans of Nebraska and the West .HE REV. JOHN ALBERT WILLIAMS, Editor $1.50 a Year. 5c a Copy Omaha, Nebraska, April 28, 1917 Vol. II. No. 43 (Whole No. 95) Pledge Loyalty On Part of Negro National Equal Rights League Issues a Praiseworthy Memorial to the American People. ASKS SIMPLY FOR FAIR PLAY Pleads That Negroes Be Treated As All Other Classes of Citizens, According to Merit. Boston, Mass., April 19.—The Na tional Equal Rights League has is sued a memorial to the American people pledging loyalty on the part of the Negro and asking justice and fair play for the race. The memorial reads: “When this European war began the world involuntarily speculated whether the Irish would be loyal and the Russian Jews, because of the denial of,home rule by England and of civil and political rights by Rus sia. As the United States of America enters this awful war the world spec ulates whether Americans of color will be loyal because of the denial of rights to a majority of them. “Since Colored Americans in the past have offered their lives in every way for the country, if Germany is seeking to induce them to revolt it but proves how notorious is their proscription. If this nation, knowing the active loyalty of the Colored Americans in the past, believes this alleged plotting could succeed, it shows that the government and peo ple believe that Colored Americans are most unjustly treated. “The Boston Branch of the Nation al Equal Rights League, meeting when the country is at war, realizing ts responsibility as a branch of the only nation-wide organization formed by and of and led by Colored citizens to oppose race and color discrimina tion, declares false all charges of dis loyalty. “Colored Americans would be less than human if they did not feel bit terly every bar from employment, from public accommodation, because of our race and color. Deep is the resentment against enforced segrega tion by city, state or the federal gov ernment, whether in the civil or mili tary service. But we have no thought of taking up arms against this, our country. “Let neither white nor Colored Americans seek to deny the truths of human nature. Soldiers of democra cies fight better than soldiers of au tocracies. The same men fight better if in time of peace they can sell their labor in the open market than if denied work because of race; fight better if public accommodation in peace depends on conduct and the price, than if it is denied for color; fight more eagerly than if in peace encouraged by posesssion of a free man’s ballot, than if represented by its denial; fight with more heart if in peace they have court protection than if their race means possible murder by the mob. “To the national government which Labor Situation Growing Critical North and West in Need of Southern Help and Begin Considering It Carefully; the War Has Further Effect. The North and West need' the Southern Colored labor, and need it very badly. Six months ago The Monitor undertook to help direct migration. It was expected that near May the demand would increase, and it has done so. Five thousand Colored men can find employment in and around Omaha today and another five thousand could' find employment in the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho and Minnesota. Letters come to us from all over the East stating the labor wants of different sections of the country. Beginning, next week The Monitor will publish the condition of the labor market all over the country for the special benefit of the many people of the race who are preparing to leave. It will be the only Colored newspaper of the United States that will give this information, and we believe that it will fill the greatest want of our race in the South at this time. Thousands are now ready to leave the South and do not know just where to go, so The Monitor intends to tell them where labor is needed most and where the labor market is not overcrowded. The Monitor does even more than this. In addition to directing persons where to go The Monitor will secure jobs for thousands before they leave the South. All persons desiring this protection need do is to send for applica tion blank, fill out and send as directed, and the position will be at once se cured and held for them until their arrival. The general minimum wage now is 25 cents per hour. The one pressing consideration is the matter of transportation. Thou sands of our people in the South who want to leave haven’t the fare, and the companies, imposed upon by labor agents, hesitate to advance transportation for any large number and run the risk of losing much money. The Monitor, however, is constantly forcing this issue to the front and thinks it only the matter of a few weeks now when transportation will be advanced and the laborers allowed to pay it back in small sums weekly. Labor agents fare badly in the South. Every one of our applicants com ing here has a story to tell of the watchfulness of the South in preventing emigration. But the South is helpless before The Monitor plan started six months ago. We have secured the names of hundreds who want to leave, who are leaving and who will leave as soon as we induce the industries to ad vance transportation. If there are places North for every Colored family in the South The Monitor will have them away from the South in the next five years, unless railroads refuse to carry them and the South refuses to let them walk away. The fofegoing shows how absolutely necessary The Monitor will be to the Colored people of the South for several years to come. It is the only paper in the country making such an effort, and can be absolutely relied upon for every labor notice appearing in its pages. SUBSCRIBE NOW! $1.50 per year. 75 cents for ft months. 50 cents for 3 months. Address, THE MONITOR, Omaha, Nebraska. calls us all to war, to our fellow Americans of every race variety, we would appeal in the name of fair play, of justice and humanity. We are all citizens of a common country. “There is need no longer of subjec tion of Americans to the race preju- ] dices of fellow Americans. In the presence of a common danger and a common obligation, with a war devastating Europe caused by racial clannishness and racial hatred, under Almighty God, let the United States of America and the people thereof give up race proscription and perse jtion at home. Let the door of the workshop, the school, the college, the civil service, the army, the navy, the nilitary school, the naval school, open alike to every citizen of the re public without regard to race and w ithout distinction of color. Let the right to travel, to vote, to have court Tiiotection, be free, without barrier or denial. “Give, Mr. President and all our governors, the same encouragement for volunteering or enlisting to white, to brown, to yellow, to black, Amer icans all, by vouchsafing the same (Contlnuel on Page 8) ADVICE TO PERSONS LEAVING SOUTH Don’t leave on rumors. Be sure you will find a job when reaching your destination. Pay no money to strange labor agents for jobs and tickets. Deal only through reliable firms. Ask every agent if he is willing to have you investigate his claims. Married men should leave first and :;end for their families after they have found suitable quarters for them. The cost of living is high in the North, but not quite as high as in the South. Clothing is much cheaper. Find if labor agents will look out for men after they arrive. The Moni tor will help you find room, reason able board, and be at your service whenever you need any help that it can give. Be careful of crowding into the larger cities. Many of these are al ready over-populated. Too much la bor in one place is always worse than not enough. Subscribe for The Monitor today and keep in touch with the labor con ditions all over the country. Colored Adors Score Triumph Appearance In Race Plays at Garden Theatre, New York, Pronounced Success MR. R IDG ELY TORRENCE Tells Why He Decided to Show New Yorkers Theatrical Ability of Negro Race. Mrs. Hapgood’s Colored company at the Garden theater, New York, has made good and is receiving columns upon columns of praise in the New York press. Mr. Ridgeley Torrence, whose plays the Colored actors are interpreting, believed that the Color ed actor was capable of things far better and greater than mere comedy, and with the support of Mr. R. E. Jones and Mrs. Hapgood he has proven it. Now that everything is a success from box office to art, Mr. Torrence tells in the New York Sun why he decided to show New York the histronic abilities latent in the Colored race. “When I was a little boy in Xenia, Ohio,” he says, “I was half conscious ly impressed wdth the beauty of the Negro’s voice, the charming laziness of his disposition, the vigor and beauty of his musical sense. Later, when I was devoting my time to the composition of poetry, I began more ,han ever to appreciate the value of these racial qualities. I discovered growing up within me a desire to make us of these qualities in some art form. Then one day, when I first ?aw the Irish Players acting plays that had been written about them and for them, I realized that the theater was the proper place for my experi ment. “The racial qualities I have spoken •>f are primarily theatrical qualities. The beauty of voice which the Negro possesses, as I believe, beyond any other race is a beauty which of course must be heard. His rhythmic sense, his feeling for physical line and pose, ire similarly things which must be ieen. These are theatrical qualities, and as such distinct from the charac teristics of lyric poetry, for instance, which in these days is meant chiefly to be read in silence. Finally, I found in the Negro an emotional richness, an immediacy of emotional expres sion, which is perhaps the first and most important of all the dramatic qualities. Drama, in the great ma jority of cases, is a thing of emotion al action. The primitive, direct, ex plosive emotion has always made the most appealing drama, or at least the most theatrical. When I considered all these qualities with which the Negro is endowed beyond most other men it seemed to me that the Negro w'as a creature of the theater. I have sometimes imagined that the Negro, other things being equal, might pro duce the greatest, the most direct, the most powerful drama in the world.”