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About The Omaha guide. (Omaha, Neb.) 1927-19?? | View Entire Issue (Nov. 12, 1932)
-■——-—.-- - ■■■ ■ , ■ — -■ _^_ —• W " Za*,rrttoi,TCW'*r’ ILLUSTRATED FEATURE SECTION—November 12, 1932. B^UE E,BBON r,c™N m:EE ,N 1 —.-_:...- .. — - .."""■ -— , REMINISCENCES” CHAPTER SIX. — THAT COSMOPOLITAN CLUB DINNER. I MEET THE REPORTERS. By MARY WHITE OVINGTON I have spoken of the Cosmopolitan Club, an organi zation made up of white and colored men and women for the discussion of present day problems. While it was small, numbering about thirty members, for a moment it achieved fame. Its doings were reported North and South and East and West. Especially did it reverberate in the South. It gave a dinner. In 1908, New York was becoming a restaurant city. The boarding-house was giving wray to the lodging-house, and countless people were going out to their meals. A restaurant would rent one of its rooms to an organization for the evening, thus giving the diner a free hall in which he could hold a meeting and talk of anything he chose. One of the favorite New York places at that time for groups with more ideas than money was Peck’s restaurant on lower Fulton Street. This the Cosmopolitan Club se cured for a given night and proceeded to sell tickets. The tickets went well, for the speakers advertised were prominent men. Among the whites were, Os wald Garrison Villard, of the Eve ning Post, Hamilton Holt of the In dependent. John Spargo, brilliant speaker for the Socialist party. Among the Negro speakers were, William H. Ferris, later one of Gar vey’s foremost workers, and the Rev. George Frazier Miller. Dr. Owen M. Waller presided. „ The coloved people who went to the dinner for the mcst part vere the old-fashioned group, living in Brooklyn, that I have attempted to describe. A few were Socialists, but the majority believed that the best thing that had ever been said re garding the rights of individuals was said by Jefferson in the opening be the Declaration of Independence. They would be satisfied if they could get as good a chance in America as the white man. The whites were of various ideas, people like Villard of old-time abolition heritage. So cialists, radicals, social workers, trends of members of the club. I doubt if there was more than one person there under thirty. It was a soDer garnering. We had singularly good speeches. Kennedy's “Servant in the House" was being acted, and more than one referred to the Christ who figured as the servant. With the exception of Spargo's and Miller's Socialist ap peals, no panacea was offered. Holt was the only person to mention mis cegenation and the i to dismiss it. The beauty of human brotherhood, the thought that all men can work together for good, was the dominant word. I have never heard Oswald Garrison Villard make a more mov ing spiritual appeal. As we went out, we said to one another, that it had been good to be there. Now while this was the spirit of thr meeting and of the club, a few members were up to mischief The president of the Cosmopolitan Club was Andre Tridon, a Frenchman, and delightful pagan. He and one or two others had invited reporters. When they appeared and wanted to take a flashlight picture, Mr. Villard told me that trouble was ahead. I refused to allow the picture to be taken and then forgot about the re porters. They were recalled to me the next morning! The story went over the country The dinner as the white press saw it Negro and white had sat down to gether in a restaurant in New York and talked miscegenation. No speech was given any space except the few remarks that Holt made when he gave the four possible solutions of the race problem, one of them mis cegenation. But the speeches were not the real news. The news was the dinner its'If, and the report ers had industriously gathered the names of the guests, especially of the women. By the time the story got thoroughly drenched in their imagination the gathering became a meeting of voluptuous white women and smirking Negro men. As all the newspaper writers were men, there was no remark made of the presence of Negro women by white men. The white men were called fools, but the white women were rated lower than that. Editors throughout the country gave their opinions. We have bitter contempt,” the Richmond Leader said, “for the whites that participated in it and illustrated that degeneracy will seek its level.” “This miscegenation dinner was loathsome enough to consign the whole fraternity cf perverts who participated in it to undying in famy,” said the St. Louis Despatch. Burleson of Texas, said that the affair was "unbelievable, abhorenl and inconceivable.” Tillman raised the bloody shirt declaring: “Tins incident, trivial in itself, only marks the rapid pro gress we are making toward the inevitable catastrophe. I have con tended for yea. that existing con ditions can have but one end, bloody conflicts.” The longest and most picturesque account was by Judge rT’homas N. Norwood in the Savannah News. Sometimes the judge was funny. He told of the two Desdemonas, one either side an Othello, who told his exploits in the Spanish American War. Mrs. Sterling, a woman then about seventy, was described lean ing amorously against a very black West Indian. Young girls (one young Western girl was present with her mother) dressed in decollete, drop ped their heads on black men’s shoulders. Worst of all was “the high priest ess, Miss Ovington, whose father is rich and who affiliates five days in every week with Negro mtn and . dines with them at her home ii The Cosmopolitan Club dinner as j it actually was Brooklyn on Sunday?. She could have had a hundred thousand Ne groes at the Bacchanal feast had she waved the bread tray. But the horror of i. is she could take young white girls into that den. This is the feature that should alarm and arouse Northern society. “But our horror over the deca dent women only equalled by our amazement to see editors of papers that hitherto have been considered decent, and a reputable writer for magazines, in that witches’ cauldron on that black ni;. it.” Thus spoke our enemies. We who were present said little. I saw more Importers the week after the event than I had seen before in my whole life, but I could only give my mild version of the afTair. The Eve ning Post carried a letter or two and the independent a short editor ial. There were a few days of hub bub and the dinner’s news value was over. my nain anw aaaress were in me paper, I had been one of the speak ers, and I came in for the most publicity. My mail was very heavy. My address had been given at the Hotel St. George, Brooklyn, where I went from the Phipps tenement for my week-end. As I entered the foyer, I felt conspicu 3. I re member the mail clerk, Taylor, a colored man, and how considerate he was when I approached the desk. He had my mail in h.s hand that I might not be obliged to stay in the lobby an extra moment. He said nothing but I felt his sympathy. Tlie mail was of all sorts. A few friendly letter's, congratulating me, letters from Negroes regretting what I was going through, and the rest showing contempt or scorn. Some were threatening. That was rather jolly. One is complimented to feel that one may have endangered one's life for a cause. Some were very se vere, but dignified. The bulk were illiterate and nauseatingly obscene. I was smothered in mud. Like so many of the women of my class I had led a sheltered life. That mail, entirely from the South, taught me much. It did not endear me to that section! When I read of a lynch ing today I think of those letters and know the men who engineered it. 1 had one letter from the South that I loved. It came from a man in a little town of Maryland. It was written in a scraggly hand and was only a few lines. “I am a white man,” it said, “but I glory in your spunk in standing up for what you -:-1 6 When I read about a lynching, r today believe to be right.” Among all the newspaper editor ials, I am inclined to think the Louisville Courier-Journal made the sanest remark. The reporter for the New York Times had written that he had not seen any "story.” The Courier-Journal said of the dinner: “It is not altogether improbable that the reporter for the ‘yellow’ journal was guilty of more or less exaggeration, but according to the canon of journalism there was ma terial for a story. The ueflnition of news that obtains in every city room includes the unusual. It is unusual for white and colored people to dine together jn North America. It is futile for the defenders of the mix ing-of-the-i'iaces-dinner to quarrel with a reporter for takipg notice of the unusualness of the event.” Looking back on it now this com ment seems to me correct. It was unusual for white and colored to ditto* together in public in New York and since the reporters were invited to see this, they made the most of the occurrence. But the dinner accomplished one important thing. The dining of white and colored together in New York ceased to be news. The next year a : mailer but simi lar dinner took place and the pa pers did not notice it. Of recent years dinners have been given by so many organizations, to so many dis tinguished colored people, at which the races have been about equal in number that no reporter would bo. her to men :~>n that black and white sat down together. We at the Cosmopolitan Club' were pioneers. We suffered the no toriety of pioneers, but \ did a good piece of work. In 1931, a com mittee of prominent New Yorkers gave a dinner to James Weldon Johnson at the Hotel Pennsylvania. I sat next to Carl Van Doren, and as he looked at the list of he din ner committee he said, “This is the most distinguished list of names I have ever seen on a dinner invita tion." I studied the people at the tables, white and colored side by side, and felt as though I were turn ing the pages of "Who’s Who,” find ing not only writers and artists but men of affairs. Mr. Villard came over to speak to me between two courses. "You and I can’t be discouraged sn this race question,” he said. “The world does move. Think of the Cos mopolitan Club dinner.” (To Be Continued) t__ _ ' I ROYAL ROMANCE CULMINATES IN FRANCE.—hTs Royal Highness Prince Kojo Touvalou-Houenou of Da homey, Africa, with his.new bride, the former Mrs. Ro berta Dodd Crawford, singer, from Chicago, 111. They are shown in Paris after the wedding. At the left ia J. A. Rogers, AFRO correspondent.