The Monitor
A Weekly Newspaper Devoted to the Interests of the Eight Thousand Colored People
in Omaha and Vicinity, and to the Good of the Community
The Rev. JOHN ALBERT WILLIAMS, Editor
$1.00 a Year. 5c a Copy. Omaha, Nebraska, September 18, 1915 Volume I. Number 12
Democracy Taught to
World by Negro Race
Jethro, the Ethiopian Father-in-Law
of Moses, Originator of Popular
Representative Government.
MOSES MARRIED COLORED WIFE
Sociologist Milholland Boldly States
That American Republic Found
ed on Statecraft of Negro.
John E. Milholland of New York is
visiting in San Francisco, Cal., ami
Pauline Jacobson, a special writer on
the San Francisco Bulletin, secured a
page interview with the noted sociol
ogist, in which he sets forth his idea
of the debt the white man owes to the
Negro. He declared that disfranchise- I
ment of the Negro is ingratitude to a
race which has done much for human
ity, and that lynchings of blacks is
indefensible in regions where white?
control all the courts.
• Mr. Milholland said that while look
ing up the evolution of representative
government he had coma upon the
debt which the white man owes the
Negro race for all that is worth while
in a democracy. "It i3 not kings
which threaten a democracy,” said he,
“but lackeys. I had seen two repub
lics crushed out in the Boo/ war. I
saw the spread of lackeytam both in
this country and abroad. Were we
fast losing that most priceless herit
age-liberty? I found myself wonder
ing who first said: ‘Proclaim liberty
throughout the land and unto all the
inhabitants thereof.’ I thought it was
an utterance of Jefferson. I began to
trace it to its beginnings. 1 founl
that I had to go hack and back-back
of Jefferson and Thomas Paine,
though both of these men had elabor
ated the idea magnificently; hack of
Bunker Hill and Runnymede; of the
Magna Charta of King John; of Hamp
ton and Cromwell; of Mirabeau and
Danton and Rousseau; of Aristotle
and Plato and Pericles. Jefferson had
written it, but he had cribbed it from
here—-Leviticus 25, v. 10:
‘‘‘And ye shall hallow the fiftieth
year, and proclaim liberty throughout
all the land unto all the inhabitants
thereof.”
But it was not Moses who first pro
mulgated the idea of democracy It
was not Moses, the great lawgiver,
the man of transcendent gen:ui an!
accomplishment, who first imparted
the secret of self-government, the anti
dote of tyranny. Moses knew little
about it. He knew only the king busi
ness. He had been brought up at the
court of the Pharaohs. What he had
seen of human government was a re
morseless despotism, the will of one
man backed by the black mag c of
priestcraft and the brutality of mili
tary strength. He had probably never
heard of any other form of govern
ment.
Haskell & Pullman’s Famous Dog "Umpie’’
Now, Will You “MUF”?
Democracy Comes from Ethiopia.
“Who was if. then? Why, the Ethi
opian priest of Milian, his own father
in-law, Jethro. In the imperious re
quirements of a local situation, Jethro
saw the foundations of the American
republic, and every effort toward dem
ocracy that the world has seen
throughout the intervening years.
“Moses sat, as he had, perhaps, seen
Pharaoh sit at Memphis, listening to
the complaints of the families and the
individuals that came to him with
their grievances, petty or serious, and
the tribes with their large questions
of dispute. He listened with heroic
patience, wasting his genius of states
manship upon the petty misunder
standings of a household.
“He bore ail this nerve-torturing,
mind-narrowing process witli charac
teristic meekness, knowing no other
way, seeing no means by which he
could escape the burden without be
coming disloyal to his position as
leader of the host.
“But where Moses could not see,
Jethro had clear vision. ‘What is this
thing thou doest to the people?’ Jethro
asked one evening. ‘Why sittest thou,
thyself alone, and all the people stand
by thee from morning unto even?’
"Moses answers humbly, ‘The peo
ple come unto me to inquire of God;
when they have a matter they come
unto me, and I judge between one and
another, and I judge between a man
and his fellow, to make known unto
them the statutes of God and His
laws.’ Such conscientious devotion tc
duty! Such simplicity of consecra
tion! But it doesn’t blind Jethro, the
man of color, to the commonsense of
the situation. He answers with almost
brutal boldness:
“The thing that thou doest is not
good. Thou wilt surely waste away,
both thou and this people, for the
thing is too heavy for thee. Thou art
not able to perform it thyself alone.”
Jethro Outlines Representative Gov
ernment.
“ ‘Harden thou unto me,’ said old
Jethro, ‘and I wilt give thee counsel.’
He proceeds now to tell Moses that he
laws, and show them the way and
laws, and show them the ways and
wherein they must walk, and the work
that they must do, but that all must
be done through organization, through
representative government.
“ ‘Provide out of all the people able
men,’ says Jethro, “able men!’ There
is your representative government!
There is your delegated authority—
Exodus 18, v. 21. And these shall be
rulers of thousands, and rulers of
hundreds; rulers of fifties, and rulers
of tens.’ Decentralize government
immediately! Distribute your author
ity! There is the foundation of rep
resentative government. Do you get
me?
Instead of one judge, 100 and 1,000
according to their ability and the re
quirements of the situation, and these
will take care of the ordinary affairs
(Continued on fourth page)
Colored Citizens
Gain School Facilities
Taxpayers of Jacksonville, Fla., Carry
Fight for School Funds to
Court.
SECURE A FAVORABLE DECISION
Will Receive Appropriation of $215,
000, An Increase of $100,000.
Jacksonville, Fla., Sept. 17.—The
Negro school children of Jacksonville
will be provided with additional facil
ities to the extent of three new grad
ed school buildings and a new high
school building, ^fhich is to be the
equal in every way of the high school
building for white children. This is
the outcome of the fight made by
Negro taxpayers to secure a large
proportion of the funds accruing from
the $1,000,000 bond issue recently
voted by Duval county for educational
purposes.
The Board of Education appropriat
ed for the Negro schools only $115,000
of the million dollars voted, and this
was to be used in improving the grad
ed schools only, renovating some of
the old buildings. No provision was
made for a high school. Led by Capt.
J. W. Floyd, one of the largest tax
payers, a movement was started and
Attorney I. L. Purcell and other legal
talent employed to secure an injunc
tion.
Sale of Bonds Stopped.
Purcell argued the case before the
court and was sustained in every con
tention. The court’s decision tied up
the sale of the bonds.
The Board of Education held a
meeting and reconsidered its former
action. Resolutions were passed pro
viding for three additional graded
schools at a cost of $5,000 each, and
a high school building on the present
Stanton school site to cost $85,000.
Every facility will be provided and
the equipment is to be identical with
that of the high school for whites.
Besides, three other of the schools
for Negro children are to have added
to the curriculum a domestic science
course with special teacher for the
same. There will, therefore, be ap
propriated for schools for Negroes in
Jacksonville, $215,000 Instead of the
intended $115,000.
fcPEAKS GERMAN TO
GERMAN CONFERENCE.
_i
St. Joseph, Mo., Sept. 7.—Thursday.
September 2, the Rev. J. B. F. Shaw,
president of the Meriden Institute,
Meriden, Miss., appeared before the
German Methodist Conference which
was in session here, and delivered an
address in interest of the Freedman’s
Aid Society of the Methodist Episco
pal Church.
He spoke !n German and it was the
first time in the history of the confer
ence that it had heard an address in
j tthe German language by a Negro.