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About The voice. (Lincoln, Nebraska) 1946-195? | View Entire Issue (July 6, 1950)
Til© V@D€© PUBLISHED WEEKLY “Dedicated to the promotion of the cultural, social and spiritual UJe of a great people. * Melvin L. Shakespeare Publisher and editor Business Address 2225 S Street Phone 2-4085 it No Answer Call 5-7508 ftubie 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, llebraska under the Act of March 3. 1879 1 year subscription. J2.00 Single copy! — ... 5c » K TUTORIALS The views expi ernec in these columns are those oi the w. itei ano not necessarily i reflection ol the policy of The Voice. Pub. Etta Moten Opens Chicago Fair CHICAGO. (ANP). Miss Etta Moten, star of stage, screen and radio, Saturday, June 24, offici ally opened the new Chicago Fair on the lake front when she sang the national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.” This exposition, an industrial and scientific display of exhibits of the city’s leading firms and in dustries, is a successor to the Rail road Fair of the past two years. It is expected to be held each year —probably with a different theme. An unusual feature of this ex hibit is the integration of Negroes into the varied programs and ac tivities. John H. Sengstacke, pub lisher of the Chicago Defender, is a member of the fair commission. Miss Moten, besides singing at the opening of the fair, also is ac tive with the women’s committee and the civic music committee. The fair has no Negro exhibit as such—probably because no Negro business in the city is rich enough to afford the $100,000 that probably would be needed to sponsor such as project. Colored persons however, will be integrated into the various fair activities as a normal event. For example, the Illinois Bell Tele phone company is using two of its Negro operators in its exhibit, along with white workers. Other firms such as Interna tional Harvester and Walgreen drug stores that practice fair em ployment will utilize their Negro employes in their exhibits just as they do at work. The Chicago Park District, which is leasing the lake front area to the fair commission, will utilize its Negro personnel as guides and information experts. Mrs. Florence Burke Ellis, women’s chairman, has a Negro secretary. As assistant to Mrs. Alma K. Anderson of the civic music com mittee, Miss Moten will be active in organizing the weekly Tuesday programs. She will have a special Tuesday, Aug. 8 with programs in the afternoon and evening. “My program will be an inter cultural day,” Miss Moten de clared while discussing her activi ties with the fair. “I shall not limit it to Negroes alone, but I’ll also include other racial and cultural groups—Japanese, Chinese, Jews.” She has not completed her plans for Intercultural Tuesday, but she does have a skeleton program and performers outlined. The after noon will be devoted to children —Japanese, Chinese and Negro groups already have agreed to perform. The later program will include a iskit by the Negro DuBois Thea ter group, songs hy a Jewish chpral organization, an act by Japanese entertainers, a dance creation depicting the dance from creole to jazz by the Katherine Flowers troupe and several others. Enthusiastic over the idea of in tegration at the fair, Miss Moten said: “I hope the appearance of Negroes working together with whites at the Chicago Fair will encourage the passage of FEPC law's in various states, particularly in Illinois.” Although a number of exhibits will demonstrate democracy in ac tion a few will not. One happens to be Dixieland area, which left out Negroes altogether. By the time a protest was made it was too late to alter this attraction* but other groups took action to avoid a repetition of this in their dis plays. Another error that plagued other fairs in Chicago—especially the 1933 World’s Fair—has been avoided also. No eating place on the fair grounds will refuse to serve Negroes. Negroes also are included in the cast of the fair’s pageant, ‘‘Fron tiers of Freedom.” Editor McCray Fined $5,000 NEWBERRY. S. C. (ANP. John H. McCray, editor-publisher of the weekly Lighthouse and Informer, was fined a total of $5,000 and given a three-year probation here last week after pleading guilty to criminally libelling the character of a white girl. McCray was indicted along with Doling Booth, white Associated Press reporter of Columbia for stories concerning the execution of Willie Tolbert convicted of at tacking a white girl. McCray published an account of Tolbert’s electrocution and used a statement made by the condemned man on the night before his death last October Though he did not mention the victim’s name, the indictment charged the story “nonetheless defamed the girl’s character in the eyes of those who had been in the courtroom and who knew her identity.” Under state law, it is libelous to publish the name of an attacked victim. McCray’s plea of guilty came as a surprise. He had earlier won a change of venue from Green wood county where the indictment had been drawn. Only $3,000 of the fine has to be paid immedi ately. In addition, the sentence requires that the editor publish both his plea and sentence in his paper "within a reasonable length of time.” COPPLE BROS.~| MOTORS NEW A USED CARS 2231 R 9t. t»5ti*inT0AS0*' SuptrmtenJtnt It need hardly be said that the way in w'hich we celebrate the Fourth of July in this age of automobiles and firecrackers bears little resemblance to the way in which the great Ameri can holiday was celebrated in old Nebraska. Where we get in our cars to drive as fast and far as we can—or perhaps go to the races or a commercial celebra tion—the pioneers gathered to gether for a picnic dinner, a round of patriotic speeches, and the enjoyment of locally-fur nished entertainment. I recently came across a good account of one of these pioneer celebrations in Samuel C. Bas sett’s History of Buffalo County, published by the S. J. Clarke company of Chicago, in 1916. Originally appearing in the Buf falo County Beacon, it describes a Fourth of July picnic of 1872— the first ever held in the county. The setting was Henry Dug dale’s Grove, on the banks of Wood River about four miles | east of Gibbon, which had been “carefully cleaned of underbrush and fitted up with seats, swings, rostrum, etc.” Participants were the Sunday schools of Gibbon and Wood River Union. According to the newspaper ac count, “the day was ushered in by the booming of a big cottonwood log and the ringing of bells.” It was, “one of those beautiful days only to be seen in Nebraska.” After arriving at the grove as best they could, the celebrants as sembled according to the particu lar Sunday schools to which they belonged, and, headed by their superintendents’ marched into the grove, displaying banners in scribed with such mottoes as “E Pluribus Unum” and “God is Love.” They enjoyed a full day’s pro gram. In the morning, there were exercises consisting of prayer, song, the reading of the Declara tion of Independence, and an ora tion. After a picnic dinner, there were musical selections and an other address. The local editor concluded his report with the following: “It would have taken a great stretch of the imagination to have pic tured to the mind the scene which actually took place on the Fourth at Dugdale’s Grove. Not less than five hundred children assembled and sang praises to God where eighteen months before the wild Indiaps roamed at pleasure and herds of buffalo occupied the very grounds the picnic was held on. It shows with what a bound civiliza tion has advanced over the prairies of Nebraska within a short period of time. May the children who took part in the first celebration of our national holiday in Buffalo County live to see many more such.” Were the editor able to witness the grandchildren of those chil dren on the 1950 Fourth of July he hardly would be able to be lieve his eyes! I---:---— • • • 1®J|JoWH tet yo« O'SHEA-ROGERS MOTOE CO. 14th at M 2-6851 t Tan Troop May Be In Action! By L. C. Smith TOKYO. (ANP). Thousands of Negro troops in this area have been alerted for possible move ment and action along with mixed and all white ground and six units pending the outcome of the North ern Communist advance into South Korea below captured Seoul. Three colored units were sched uled to return to the United States and to take station in the First Army area. These movements were cancelled along with all planned changes of all kinds. Negroes are stationed within 330 miles of the actual fighting it was learned. There are quartermaster and ground force units in and aroound Itazuke Air Base which is southwest of the tip of South Korea. In Toyko, which is 720 miles from Seoul, a detachment of the 517th Military Police company, the 60th Truck Transportation com pany, and other small units of the 24tfi Infantry regiment are sta tioned. In Gifu is the bulk of the 24th Infantry regiment with the Eighth Army along with the 77th Combat Engineer company and the 8029 Composite Service company. In the southernmost point of Japan, Kyushu, where the 52nd Field Artillery battalion and the 619 Ordnance company are stationed, less than 600 miles separate these men from action. At Yokohama, with another part of the Eighth army is the newly arrived 40th Anti-Aircraft Ar tillery brigade. In Nara is the veteran 159th Field Artillery battalion. The air fighters from Itazuke have already seen action against the Northern Korean air might and the invading tanks. It has not been learned, however whether the strike was an integrated one for the American force. It ts passible that with more grave de velepoments and depending on General MacArthur’s estimation of the danger oo Korea, that Negro troops on Okinawa to the south and as far north as Hokkaido, Japan, will be pulled into the fight along with the other troops. Military experts have said that in the event South Korea is over run, the Korean Communist armies will swing westward and strike at Itazuke rather than swing across to China. Subscribe to The VOICE—Your subscribtion helps make this pub lication possible. 7 WALLY’S USED CARS ISO North £Oth LINCOLN, NEBRASKA Phone 2-5797 > . : t When You Buy a New Gas Range There is no special and costly installa tion job to add to the price, it is as am i 5 ■ pie to install as it is to use. ShZ (i’l&i Company' ' •*” '