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About The monitor. (Omaha, Neb.) 1915-1928 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 14, 1918)
SIMMONS THRILLS IMMENSE AUDIENCE. (Continued from Page if Chateau Thierry. While yop'Vrmy find much of courage and daring, I an nounce that nothing can be found of treason. Will Not Talk Politics. Upon all sides I hear the bither (Ty of politics. I am told that if that grand organization known as the re publican party had been in control of the government much of the shame visited upon the Negro and the Negro soldier would not now be a part of the history of the day. Upon that point I will not speak, except to say that all republican's are not Theodore Roosevelts apd that few democrats entertain hope of, h^veplj.' reward of earthly labors to improve the American Negro. When war came, and even before—a month oefore Remstorff returned to the pleasant paths around his castle on the Rhine—I announced that I was a Wilson lepublican for the duration of the war. I spoke for the race to which I was proud to belong. In the days of fear and hope that followed 1 and mine kept the faith When the President read my party out of government it was only then that I left his standard for my own. An I'nwise Speech. When I declared that partisans would surrender their politics but not their party I spoke for a unified na tion. Speaking for a one-party nation Mr. Wilson spoke unwisely and to the sorrow of all. I live in a one-party section of this country. That course is fresh with me. Let one party, what ever its name, control the affairs and the destiny of this nation, and then: “Goodbye, Columbia; farewell, sweet heart, farewell.” I will not speak of politics, but I will say that I know what party stood me on my feet and what party seeks to take me off my feet. I know what party gave me the ballot and what party took the ballot from me. I know what party wrote the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution and what party is always talking about rubbing it out. Why No Negro General. I am told that politics cut down our warriors. The fault is not altogether in either politics or the American white man. We put our own forward to speak for us, and what happened ? Instead of speaking for the people they spoke for themselves. Intrigue found a home • among them. This has always been * the story: Self above the common ■hepei looking out for number one. God help the numberless ones! The American Negro set his heart on the promise of a general of the breed riding at the head of his troops under the Stars and Stripes. But history still offers an unfinish ed page. We went into the war with out a general, and we came out with out one. Still, mark the hero am of the black phalanx fighting under lead ers who could not have believed them soldiers because they held them less than men. Young and Denison. The hottest partisan against the American Negro, even the banished kaiser of Mississippi politics, will not deny that their race, and their race : alone, stood between the shoulder straps of a brigadier general and the worthy claims of those genuine sol diers, Colonel Young for the regulars and Colonel Denison for the volun teers. Yet twelve millions of their own were first to answer each time Mc Adoo called for soldiers for the Lib erty loans. Sublime America. An ancient teacher is quoted as hav ing asked if aught could ever be sub lime. America is sublime, surpassing in behavior anything that romance speaks of. L “Bread, bread! We are starving!” Two days after the vanquished Huns had begun to recross the Rhine that was the cry from Germany. What happened ? With* American bread and American money Hoover set sail to relieve the i stalwart enemies of modem civiliza tion, who but the day before were armed to the teeth against all hu manity. The American Negro has never armed himself against civilization. He has never burned mighty structures to the ground. He has never cut the throats of babies, nor has he abused the women of a desolate country—ask Southerners who had fathers in the i civil war about that—nor did he de | stroy the precious accumulations of art. For two centuries he has cried for the bread of life and kindness. What has been the answer? The rope too often, and too often the torch. And i pulpits are parade ground for parlor j phrases, while preachers talk social 1 service language, forgetting an in junction that moved multitudes in earlier days: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these!" Old Glory Told the Story. Our hope is in Old Glory. Old Glory went along with the boys. Always present, she saw all and remembered all. Questions were put to her over there and she answered. Strangers inquired of her and she told the story. Old Glory told them that she was no stranger to the task of liberty. That was the day when black hands held her highest in the heavens, refusing to kneel under command, lest for the first time her folds should touch the ground. The French tell that with pride. While children wept for joy and women wept for God, Old Glory told them that many years ago she was a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to Grant when, like Pershing, he fought battles for liberty. Old Glory told them that before she ever thought of tasks in distant lands she had broken' shackles over here, I handed the spelling hook to children | of slaves; etcctefl.aJtars where an auc tion blonk had stood, and years and ! years before she had protected 01 phans and widows in France she took women from the hands of de spoilers and gave boys and girls a father as well as a mother, and moth ers a husband as well a.s children. And if further inquiry was made, Old Glory told them how she stood l Douglass on the platform, made Washington, the slave, the teacher of Washingtons, the freemen, and that ! music might know her grandest strains, how she waved in answer to the harp in the witching hand of Dun bar. Having told strangers of the rise of liberty in the new world, Old Glory will tell us and all of the valor of our sons while on an errand in the old world. Much fo Be Told. What the Negro soldiers did on for eign fields has not been told to the full. The story in the whole will never be told. But the records are written. They are in Washington, and they are also in France. It is said that unless the scheme ! was wholly impossible, no Negro was allowed to win laurels without divid I ing them with otheis. I will not ad vance this as all of truth, for despite injustices against the Negro, deep down in his heart the American white man do is love justice, and, uninflu eneed by the cry of the demagogue, he will do justice. “Fair play” is his motto. Deeds of Valor. But there were Needham Roberts and Her.rv Johnson, above whom no hero of the struggle is to be placed. By thei? side I would, however, put Quentin Roosevelt. And there stands that black regi ment, every member of which had won a decoration. And Mike Sheehan, brave Irishman at the front, wrote a letter to Mike McDonough, brave Irishman keeping the home fires burning in a Pennsyl vania city, in which he celebrated “those brawny black men,” as he I called them. That was the regiment that handled the big artillery, the male guns in the Verdun sector. At each thunder of i the big gun a stalwart son of Booker ' T. Washington would step back, shake 1 his fist in the direction of the enemy, | and cry: “Now, Cap’n Kaiser, count | yo’ men." Then who will not celebrate that warrior from Mississippi who, against the inexcusable bitterness of his sena | tors in the congress, still loved the 1 place of his birth? k * * » A A AAA A A Map of Mississippi. “Where are you going, Sam?" his captain asked him, as Sam pulled out of camp early one morning without permission. “Jes’ cross here,” Sam replied. “For what?” asked the captain. “Well,” replied Sam, “it looks lak this thing is coming to a close, and since I ain’t goin’ ter carve my name on de Hall of Fame, I promise yo’ ef ohl Betsv hoi’s her edge I’m gwine ter carve de map of old Mississip* all over one of dose little kaisers.” ■ Who can ever forget that son of Georgia who met the thrust of bayo n.pt with the universal weapon of Afri can defense? Fe reached the neck of the Hun with a perfect stroke. “You I didn’t get me,” boasted the enemy. “I didn’t,” replied the shadowy | Georgian. “I didn’t, eh ? I jes’ dare you ter twis’ yo’ head. Jes’ twis’ it!” The Fourteenth Point. Recollecting the deeds of daring of sons of former slaves fighting against despicable thrones, I would inform Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson that we are content to concede them each their fourteen d'sputed points, together I with all of Europe, if they will agree ! to concede the American Negro the benefit of the fourteenth amendment I to the American Constitution. .Lincoln was murdered about that amendment, i For What Did He Fight? Twelve million Americans command ! me to inform civilization for what j they fought in the mighty struggle, i since th’> great have overlooked their | claim. I am bidden to be firm but calm in word. I am entrusted with the task I understand, because I have never offended God-fearing Amer icans. I am to be as bold as truth, with an eye single to the answer that expediency always makes to justice. I will go on. The French fought for Alsace-Lorraine, and got it. The Eng lish fought for democracy and got that. The Italians fought to rid their golden borders of the tread of bar barism, rind back to the mountains the Austrians were driven. The Belgians fought for the grave of Leopold, and having got it they are welcome to it. The American white man fought for glory, and glory is his beyond every figure 1 have named. And the Negro—for what did he ! fight ? Standing alone like a man in No Man’s Land, under orders from the American white man, the Negro fought to make a man’s name and a place to stand in every man’s land— the United States of America. Protecting the women of France from the invading foe, by command of the government of his native land, the Negro fought for protection for his own women in Dixie, Holding his gun without a tremor and aiming it without a fault, the Ne- , gro fought to hold the American bal- j lot without a sigh and mark it without a single fear. Any hand good enough to pull a trigger in defense of the American ballot is good enough to put a cross mark on that ballot and have it counted. Riding the angry waves of the ocean in search of the tyrant of the modern world, the Negro rode against the in humnnitv and indecency of the “Jim Crow” car, the shame of America. He fought to give milk to babies in bleeding Belgium so that he might ask his country to show mercy to his babies “where the cotton and sweet ;xitatoes grow.” He fought for a chance for his chil dren in that land whose boast is that Alfred E. Smith can rise from the slums of the East Side to the gov i ernor’s chair at Albany without the aid even of a grammar school cduca | tion. He iought to give liberty to Ger ; mans so that he might have liberty in Alabama and show himself worthy of it. The American Negro fought for a kind word from the American white man, whom he has never failed and to S whom he is the only friend not bought i with gold. The Negro fought to have his name j called by the foreman of the factory before that of a single stranger who sought these shores as a rock in a weary land long after the genius of | the American white man and the Ne I gro’s hold on the mercy of God had J made this the land of freedom, if not of the free, and the home of fighters if not of the brave. The great triumph of the American nation will be the end of lynching. I tremble to think of his humiliation if some member of the Peace Conference at Versailles should ask President Wilson for a schoolmaster’s disserta tion on tho«psychology of lynching. Whom does the white man lynch, or ; allow to be lynched? The Negro, you say, the least among men in power and wealth; that man who cannot an swer in kind, and would not, thank God, if he could. No; that is not true. Who, then, is the victim, you ask. I will tell you. The American white man lynches the memory of George Washington. He lynches Thomas Jefferson and the immortal Declaration. He lynches the august body that drew the Constitu tion, Time’s most remarkable docu ment. He lynches Sherman and Grant and the glory of the name of Lincoln. -* i: • ,* Lynched Bunker Hill. He lynches the Emancipation; and maybe many would like to lynch that ' instrument from the story of human progress. He lynches the honor of the name that stepped from the May flower. He steals from Bunker Hill ( its title, robs Valley Forge of its gran deur, and takes from Appommattox | all that gave it place in the annals of ; liberty. He does more than that. He lynches . innocence from the eyes of children, virtue from the brow of women and honor from the hearts of men. He lynches his nobler, his better self, and robs the human mind of the gold of conscience, and with the rope of mur der he strangles that religion that | stepped in glory from the thorns and nails of Golgotha. Do I complain? No. not at all. Time is still the voice of God. But I will inquire, how is it that my government, the greatest the world ever saw, can cross the ocean, and with the bayonet teach law and order, while law nor order can claim a home in Wftiston Salem, East St. Louis and Sheffield, U. S. A. ? I might inquire again, how is it that my sons can be commanded to cross the ocean and cut down the oppressor and end his oppression while their kin | suffer the heel of the oppressor and feel his oppression at home? Is con gress able to levy taxes to carry for ward war for liberty while unable to ! levy order to carry forward liberty? j I would appeal—I would appeal to North and South alike to end. as a crown to the great victory, the curse of the mightiest and the noblest land of time. Lest I am misunderstood I appeal, not to men, but from Fort Sumter to Gettysburg. The cassars of the world being dead or dying, I stand on the unmatched record of the Negro soldiers and ap peal from the President, silent in the White House, to God, who speaks from the heavens. The war is over. No longer the bugle and the drum. The flag is furled on fields of blood. Back to the hearts that sent them, white boy and black are returning. Arm in arm they left on the crusade of freedom. Arm in arm they will return. By dictates of wisdom higher tfcan man our sons took themselves to distant fields. Hands for the whole; hearts for the maimed; love for all. Kings Gone Down. Kings are gone down. Thrones are overturned. Liberty got her promised hearing. The temple of peace rises on the ashes of deserted fields. Mercy W’ipes away the tear of sorrow, and the great of earth are gathering to pencil a new map and define again the rights of men. The crownless kingship of Lincoln takes the sky, and the Stars and Stripes is above land and sea. See my country first among all nations! I have none to speak for me. I obeyed the command, “Go and make the world safe for democracy." I Through tears of women and sighs of j men I would ask if my country is now j safe for me. Through me no offense j must come. Hope offers the balm in words that are sweet. Therefore, I will ask God ! to open the door of the titled and the ; great at Versailles and inquire if the j American Negro is free at last, or is j he to be alone, the lonely slave of the world ? A Nettleton Shoe! THE GENTLEMAN’S CHOICE A good quality souvenir clothes brush with every pair of shoes. Also a fine line of Boys' Shoes. M. S. ATKISSON 503 South 16th Street. Iler Grand Building. ^mMH I ---BUY A HOME $50 Cash, $20 Monthly 3856 Leavenworth St. 7 rooms, newly papered and painted, new electric light fixtures, bath room and toilet, large lot on paved street and car line; one-half block from school. House is va cant; can move right in. See it today. 2417 Maple St.—5-room cot tage, modem except heat, large rooms, floored attic; large lot on paved street; Vi block to 24th street car line; fine neighbor hood; now vacant. Can move right in. See it today. Price $2,500. Very easy terms. G. B. ROBBINS REAL ESTATE, RENTALS, FIRE AND TORNADO INSURANCE Telephones: Douglas 2842; Webster 5519. v%%vv# ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ ♦ v ♦ *The Christmas Store for Men* V ..— t — . ♦♦♦ In which one finds the things men care for. It has ceased to be difficult shopping for men’s gifts. No doubt need arise if it comes from PHILIP’S DEPARTMENT STORE. *♦* A •** $ “Easy to say, but not often accomplished,” you may say. Very true, in ^ %* the average store, but here you’ll find a different situation. See for ♦ %♦ yourself: *♦* V SILK SHIRTS are “regulation” now. They are a definite paid of the haber V dashery every well-dressed man demands. We offer such patterns as are ♦ %♦ individual, dependable in quality and precise in fit—Manhattan, Eagle, V Arrow, Earl & Wilson. V MUFFLERS — Silk ones, woollen ones, also knit styles — all with silk V y fringed ends. Plain shades, stripes, plaids, figured patterns, bordered ef- V y fects. For evening wear, reefers of heavy silk in black, white and gray. ❖ GOOD NECKWEAR—A bit better than he might ordinarily select for %♦ himself, that will make a real gift. Hand-framed silk knit scarfs. V Ideas can scarcely be more diversified than our Christmas Stocks. *♦* ♦v* Hence Their Demand for Gifts. V y The attractive Bath Robe is as pleasant to wear and as convenient as V ♦% it is good looking. Sufficient to say that in no foimer season has our show a ing been so large and varied. Make selections now, before the best are «,% X gone. $5.95, $6.50, $7.50 to $10 V _ t IPhllip's Dept. Store! $ > THE FASTEST <5ROWING STORE IN OMAHA *♦* -./iui; Our Motto: “Best Merchandise.” V 4935-37-^9 South Twenty-fourth Street, South Omaha. Tel. So. 1869 ♦!**M44X44^H4^^4H44X,^*XwK4<44H44J44H44X44t44J44W44544*44H44J44i4*> ! tot f,>‘ ■■■ ALHAMBRA \ 24th and Parker. THE HOUSE OF COURTESY 24th and Parker Sts. FRANKLIN 24th and Franklin Streets SATURDAY— Gale Cain in “THE RED WOMAN” A Good Western SUNDAY— Norma Talmadge in “DE LUXE ANNIE” Also Bunco Billy in a Western Feature —— i Diamond 24th and I^ake Sts. _ Every Wednesday “WOLVES OF KULTUR” ■1 Every Friday A GREAT SURPRISE FEATURE Every day a good picture. A goose and two chickens will be given away Christ mas. Come and win a prize. ItllDTItTIIDTI I I I I I • * ~ ‘ DR. JAMES W. SCOn j Expert Masseur & Chiropodist | N. E. Cor. 12th & Famam Sts. ♦ t r-— .—" MELCHOR-Druggist The Old Reliable Tel. South 807 4826 So. 24th St. * . . o .— *.* * * * OPEN FOR BUSINESS * ^ -THE i Booker T. Washington HOTEL Nicely Furnished Steam Heated Rooms, With or j Without Board. 523 North 15th St. Omaha, Neb. Phone Tyler 897 The Moon CAFE GOOD HOME COOKING MEALS AT ANY HOUR 2605 N St. Tel. South 2962 - \ Harry Norman PROMPT Taxi Service AT ALL HOURS Pool Hall and Hilliard Prrlor in Connection. Phone South 2962 2603 N St. South Omaha. Arbor Garage Fire proof block with steam heat. Repairing and storing. Will accommodate 50 cars day ✓< and night. Connection taxi service. Business at 2506-08 South 32d Avenue. Tel. Harney 3371, Omaha. C. R. Boyd Colored Prop. Petersen & Michelsen Hardware Co. GOOD HARDWARE 2408 N St. Tel. South 161 ... . | CLASSIFIED ADS CAPITOL BILLIARD PARLOR . Cigars and Tobacco. ( Barber shop in connection. All kinds of choice candies, chewing gum and soft drinks. Service to our guests our specialty. Athletic and baseball headquarters. Webster 1773. 2018 North 24th St. Charles W. South, Prop. BLACKSMITHS J. W. STAPLETON South 2571. 5825 South 23d Ft. DRUG STORES ~ THE PEOPLE’S DRUG STORE ~ Douglas 1446. 109 South 14th St. ADAMS HAIGHT DRUG CO., V 24th and Lake; 24th and Fort, ^ Omaha, Neb. ” *■. 1 ‘ COLORED NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES - FRANK DOUGLASS Shining Parlor. Wetrster 1388. 2414 North 24th St. ■ ■ / . . *