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About The voice. (Lincoln, Nebraska) 1946-195? | View Entire Issue (May 15, 1952)
TIM® V@n<c@ PUBLISHED WEEKLY “Dedicated to the promotion of the cultural, social and spiritual life of a great people___ Melvin L. Shakespeare Publisher and Editor Business Address 2225 8 Street AMWer Ruble W Shakespeare. Advertising and Business Manage. Member of .he Associated Negro Press and Nebraska Press Association_ Entered as Second Class Matter, June 8, 1847, at the Poet Office at Lincoln. Nebraska, under the Act of March 3,_I87t____ l year subscription. $?50 Single WOT. .. .... .. Out of State 1 Year Subscription >2.50- Blngle Copy 10c_ IDITOUAU The views expressed In these columns are those at the writer and sot necessarily a reflection of the pottey of The Voice. -Pah. Good Neighbors The little (pop. 1,849) town 01 Fruita in the valley of Colorado’! Rocky Mountains, had always beer an all-white town. Because no Ne gro had ever lived there, few townspeople even knew of their Jim Crow ordinance forbidding Negroes to remain in town after sundown. Then the Minters came to Fruita. The Minters were Melvin Min ter, a Negro lumber worker from Ansley, La., his wife and ten chil dren (aged 2 to 17), heading for Yakima, Wash., where Minter had a new job waiting. One morning last month, as they approached Fruita in their pickup truck on( Highway 6, a car nosed out of a, side road. Braking to avoid a col-| lision, the Minter truck skidded, and overturned. Margaret, 14, was killed. Mrs. Minter was seriously injured. The other children were cut and bruised. Fruita responded to the emer gency. Townspeople sped to the scene in private cars to carry the Minters to a hospital. Mrs. Wilda Lahue offered them an unoccupied house she owned. “Here’s the key,” she said. “Use it as long as you wish.” Other womenfolk brought furnishings and food to stock the house. Cecil Schafer gave Minter a job as a laborer with his Schafer Construction Co. While ' Mrs. Minter was recovering ; women took turns caring for the i family. Fruita’s citizens paid $wr repairing the Minters' track, flor liheir hospital bills, and ftw Mar 'garet’s funeral. City Judge k L. Harris and Pv>lice CStuci Hecb Johnston were pal ieyrvr*. Then someone reossecafeeced ale town’s Jim Crew ardfertsoKV Vr one seemed to krj©w whc •passed it. or wbes ©c why Judge Harris: We jag wms's en force the bdl It's unconssfre tional." But there it was o© the law books. Finally, Mayor Lewis Moore called an emergency meet ing of the city council which voted unanimously to abolish the law. j Last week, with Mrs. Minter tome from the hospital but still under the care of Dr. Robert Orr, Judge Haris ripped the old law from the odinance book. The Min ters thought they would stajwin Fruita. “I never had such treat ment in my life before,” said Min cer. “Why would a man leave a place like this?” Letters to the Editor Dear Mrs. Shakespeare: I once read that there are three decisive stages in a person’s life; birth, marriage and death; per ClnxJuuL 3<juMl. ROSE MANOR STUDIO 1319 O Street Phone 2-2247 Portraits by Appointment George Randol, P. A. of A. ’** Prices reasonable Work guaranteed Every Item in Our Entire EAST WINDOW ■ I OFF CHEAPPER DRUG STORE 1325 "O” St. For Everything in HARDWARE Baker Hardware 101 No. 9th 2-3710 Call On Us for All Your Homo Decorating Needs —52 YEARS IN LINCOLN— l| 143 So. 10th 2-6931 Bring Yovr Prescriptions to HAL J. Bowers Terminal Drug Company j 947 O Street 2-8*85 b VANES C. OLSON, Suptrintendent • TATI ■ (•TOUCH •OCIITT Nebraska Counties (4) The history of Banner County like all of the southern half ol Nebraska’s panhandle, traces back through old Cheyenne County, es tablished by the legislature in 1867, and embracing all of the area included in the present coun ties of Kimball. Cheyenne. Deuel. Garden. Morrill. Banner and Scotts Bluff. The population was so scarce in - the region that such art arrange ment worked very well for a while Indeed* until 1STA. Chey ecwse Oxsnty remaintxi unorgan* aed *5*4 was simply attached to Uteceto Ctomty tor adaoinustrative &ux:yoeutt. to that year. hc*e\ee, coiaftty jfccwe.? a pe^xilation i'I 1W atru *» wtyatogat»ew a as «* yaJhftftlNtk l r $tf& tor xv^er* of Cheyenne CVutw? a^ev'xvd :>e cseatton of ..w> Wve-' azd Sevens Bluff col: of part of the area f'.'jjxraoed 33 shv original county. The sarsse ‘'Banner^ was chosen hesrajse .t expressed the hope of some of the new county's enthusi astic oilmens that it would indeed become the “banner county” of the state. The early whites in Banner County had been occupied almost exclusively with cattle raising, and much of the county consisted of free range land used by the larger ranches. In the eighties, however, homesteaders began to come in, and by the time the county was organized, much of the land had been taken away. The homesteaders, however, found the sonally I can add another, that of being thought worthy enough to be nominated the Voice’s Mother of the year. Words simply cannot express the sincere thanks and humble elation which fills my heart to overflowing. May God continue to bless all Mothers everywhere. Sincerely, Mrs. Osceola B. Nathan SKYLINE ICE CREAM STORES 1433 South St. Phone 3-8118 1417 N St. Phone 2-4074 All Products Manufactured At Main Plant Skyline Farms So. 14th St. SMITH Pharmacy 2140 Vine Prescriptions — Drugs Fountain — Sundries Phone 2-1958 The Nebraska Typewriter Co. 125 No. 11th Lincoln 2-2157 Royal Typewriters Mimeograph - Duplicators Dictaphones - Clary Adders Sold * Rented - Repaired going tough and many of them moved away. The first population figures re turned for Banner Courtly were those of the census of 1890. In that year, the county had a population of 2,435. This was the highest it’s ever been. By 1900, the popula tion had dropped to 1,114. It jumped up again in the early years of the twentieth century, and by 1930 had reached 1,676. It went down to 1,403 in 1940, and ‘ the 1950 census shows 1,321. A number of villages—or, at least combination stores and post of fices—were started in the county’s early days, but only one remains, I Harrisburg, the county seat, with a population of about 100. I In Banner County is located the highest spot in Nebraska, an ele jvation of 5.340 feet, just inside the Wyoming line, about midway be tween the north and south bound aries of the county. The high ta blelands ef the county posed a serious problem for the early set tlors. with some ef them having to dig JtXt feet and more to secure w a t er. Today the lands of Banner County support some of the state’s finest wheat fields, and wheat is by far the county’s leading crop. Trial of Officials Continued from Page 1 Konovsky, chief of police; Theo dore H. Wesolowski, fire marshal, and Nicholas Berkes, town attor-, ney, on charges of conspiracy to* keep a Negro from moving into Cicero. Also Police Sgt. Roland Brani, and Patrolmen Frank Janecek and Frank A. Lange as well as San- , dusky, Konovsky and Berkes on a : second count of depriving Harvey < E. Clark, Jr., of his civil rights, i Clark is the Negro who tried to i move his family into an apartment at 8139 W. 19th St., in Cicero, but eventually was rebuffed by a mob of whites. He managed to move his household property into the apartment, but never lived there. On the night of July 2, the mob sters surrounded the building, eventually destroying all of Clark’s property and forcing white fami lies in the building to move. It took the Illinois Natiopal Guard to quell the violence after city police failed to take action. Minister Named Moderator of j Presbytery LOS ANGELES, CaL—(ANP)— The Rev. St. Paul Epps, pastor of jthe Bel-Vue Community church here, recently became the first Negro minister to be elected mod erator of the Los Angeles Presby tery of the United Presbyterian church. As moderator, he will have titular supervision over all of the United Presbyterian churches in the Presbytery, a territory that includes all of Southern Cali fornia. He also will convene all Pres bytery meetings; preside at all or- * dinations and installations of min isters and will be the fraternal^ representative of the Presbytery at meetings of other church courts and conventions. Rev. Epps has been in the Pres bytery for five years and has been active in the youth work of the Presbytery. A Cook county grand jury in dicted three Negroes—although no Negroes took part in the violence —including Clark’s attorn ejr, George Leighton and three white persons including Konovsky. All the indictments except the one against Konovsky were thrown out of court. Konovsky eventually was found not guilty when a Criminal court judge directed such a verdict. Under count one, the defendants are accused specifically of con spiring to prevent any Negro from ever moving into the town of Ci cero, particularly into the build ing involved in the riot. The count lists 15 different acts beginning March 31, 1951 and climaxed by the riot which began July 12,1951. Count two, charges that the de fendants violated the 14th Amend ment of the U.S. Constitution by depriving Clark of his property without due process of law and also denying him equal protection of the law in connection with his right to lease property. Clark, his wife, and two chil dren now live in the Michigan Boulevard Gardens apartments. Where Your Furniture Dollar Buys More 1532 O Street Shurtleff's Furniture Co. 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