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About The voice. (Lincoln, Nebraska) 1946-195? | View Entire Issue (June 22, 1950)
T&® V@8c® PVBUSH ED WEEKL Y “Dedicated to the promotion of the cultural, social and spiritual iife of a great people.” Melvin L. Shakespeare Publisher and Editor Business Address 2225 8 Street Phone 2-4085 XI No Answer Call 5-7508 Ruble W. Shakespeare............Advertising and Business Manager Dorothy Greene .......Office Secretary Mrs. Joe Greene.Circulation Manager Member of the Associated Negro Press and Nebraska Press Association ..Entered as Second Class Matter, June 9. 1947 at the Post Office at Lincoln, I lebraslta under the Act of March 3. 1879. 1 year subscription.$2.00 Single copy.5c EDITORIALS The views expressed in these columns are those of the-writer and not necessarily i reflection of the policy of The Voice. - Puh. Justice To All Races Is Moving Again The Des Moines Register. In three historic decisions, the Supreme Court of the United States this June knocked three more holes in the crumbling edi fice of enforced racial segrega tion. True, it did not blast the whole edifice at one swoop. That would have been bad law and bad social science. But no one North or South, can miss the implication in these three unani mous decisions: Jim Crow is on its way out, and no filibuster in the senate can stop it. The 1896 decision of the Su preme Court, upholding the first Jim Crow laws, was the work of a discouraged generation—the generation which had Won the Civil war and lost the peace. It took at its face value a paper pronouncement of “separate but equal” accommodations—and for more than half a century this whole great country pretended not to notice that there was nothing “equal” about it. We pretended not to notice that we had abandoned equal justice under law and equal op portunity in one whole segment of American life. All of us knew better, but we kept up the pre tense because we were discour aged, and we didn’t want to try any more. The men who fought the £ivil war and saw its bungling after math were running the country in the 1890s. The men who saw the bungling aftermath, but who knew the war only as dad’s or grand dad’s oft-repeated reminiscences, ran the country from the 1900s to the 1930s. Only in the 1940s and ’50s was a new start possible. This new start is a many pronged one. It began where the discouraged men of the 1890s said it would have to begin—in the hearts of individual men and women. Hitler’s savage racism and his modern salesmanship and ad vertising techniques—all of them with American roots—brought us up sharply. What was this evil thing we had tolerated in our midst so long? ^ In north and south, new atti tudes and new ways of doing things appeared — imperceptibly at first, then with slowly gather ing momentum. Older voluntary organizations in the field of human relations were revitalized, new ones were PARRISH MOTOR CO. The home of clean used care. 120 No. 19 St. , I_ --- .——— "■* formed by the score. They saw; that “education”—the panacea of' the 1890s—was not enough. There had to be research and education and action. States and local governments began to act. Southern cities added Negroes to their police forces. Northern states passed fair employment laws. Mayors appointed human relations com mittees. Prosecutors and judges took a, little broader look at the meaning of “equal justice under the law.” Action at the federal govern ment level has remained largely abortive so far, on the legislative side. But great progress has been made on the federal administra tive side. Civil service and the armed services are becoming in terracial. Both major parties are competing to present the appear ance of being the “civil rights party.” Southern diehards continue to filibuster against federal civil rights legislation, but the federal courts are beyond their control. They blame this change in the complexion of the courts on “court packing” by Roosevelt and Truman—but it would have hap pened anyway by this time. Scoop up any random sampling of lawyers today, north or south, and their attitudes on human rights and race relations are quite different from those of the 1890s. Only by the most relent less and brazen white-supremacy court-packing could the decisions of the 1880s and ’90s have been maintained nowadays. The three historic decisions of June, 1950, simply put us back in the main stream of American progress. The generation of dis couraged cynicism has passed. The failure of the post-Civil war “reconstruction” has been lived down. We are on our way again. CALL 2*7331 by IANES C. OLSON, Superintendent • TATI Hlsrt>aiCAL SOCIITT Young men of today, who ride tractor-powered, multi-row culti vators, have little conception of the problem of cultivating corn in pioneer Nebraska. It was a far more difficult and time-con suming process than it is today. During the early years of set tlement, the standard implement was the one or two shovel walk ing cultivator, pulled by one horse, and capable of cultivating only one side of the row at a time, making it necessary to make a “round” in order to cultivate one row. A new type of walking culti vator, introduced in the early seventies, doubled the acreage a man could cultivate in a day. It was drawn by two horses and its shovels were so arranged that the row could be straddled and both sides cultivated at the same time. Riding cultivators were used in the United States as early as the Civil war, but very few of them reached Nebraska until the eight ies, and they were not generally adopted in the state until after 1900. Actually, many of the older farmers, raised in the school of long hours and heavy toil, looked askance at the riding cultivator. Some of them felt it made a man “soft” to use one, and that sit ting down to work was an evi dence of laziness. The younger generation had no such precon ceptions, however, and took read ily to anything that made work easier. Under such conditions, it is lit tle wonder that a pioneer farmer had to be careful not to plant more corn than he could culti vate. The Nebraska Advertiser, published at Brownville, and al ways alert to the problems of agriculture, sounded just such a warning in its issue of May 22, 1862. Under the heading, “Cul tivate Thoroughly,” the paper stated: “Our readers will pardon us for a little gratuitous advice, now during the corn planting season. bo not plant more than you can thoroughly cultivate. Corn will stand drouth much better if thor oughly plowed. Some think that frequently turning up the moist earth causes it to dry sooner and deeper, but experience does not confirm this theory. Nothing but the most thorough cultivation in this country can keep the weeds down. Last year weeds we pretty easily destroyed, but two and three years ago many fields got a seeding that will take ‘nine years to eradicate’.” A copy of your April 27th is sue of THE VOICE has just come to our attention. We ap preciate your constructive and informative handling of the news items about the Lincoln Urban League. We, too, take great pride in the work that our local af filiate is rendering to its com munity by providing the inter racial leadership to solve its racial problems effectively. We believe that you will want to share with us the satisfaction that the achievements of our lo cal leagues in 58 cities last year demonstrated again the sound ness of our principles and meth ods. We advanced one step nearer the goal of equality of opportu nity for all. We thank you for your interest and co-operation. 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