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About The monitor. (Omaha, Neb.) 1915-1928 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 3, 1918)
THE MONITOR ▲ Weekly Newspaper devoted to the civic, social and religious interests of the Colored People of Nebrasaa and the West, with the desire to eon t-lbute something to the general good and upbuilding of the community and of tha raca Published Every Saturday. Entered aa Second-Class Mall Matter July l. 1*1*. at the Post Offlea at Omaha, Neb., under the act of March 3, in. THE REV. JOHN ALBERT WILLIAMS. Editor and Publisher Lucille Skaos* Edwards and William Garnett Haynes. Associate Editors. George Wells Parker. Contributing Editor. Bert Patrick, Business Manager. Fred C. Williams, Traveling Representative SUBSCRIPTION RATES. *2.00 A VEAR: *1.00 6 MONTHS: «0c 3 MONTHS Advertising Rates. SC cents an Inch per Issue Address. Ths Monitor, 111» North Twenty first street. Omens Telephone Webster 4243 ____J AN OPEN LEiTER OF TH ANKS TO PRESIDENT WILSON nR. PRESIDENT: Please accept the grateful thanks of the thousands of Colored Americans of Nebraska for whom The Monitor has authority, primarily, to speak, and of its readers elsewhere throughout the country whose gratitude we take the liberty of voicing, for your long-awaited, eagerly desired, trumpet voiced call to our fair land, America, to exorcise the evil spirit of mobocracy by which she has been so long possessed. How anxious, sir, we have been for you to speak! How your silence and apparent indifference to the horrible, indescribable and almost unbelievable atrocities of which we, a loyal and law-abid ing people have been so largely and almost exclusively, the vic time, has perplexed, pained and grieved us! Our amazement at your silence has been indeed great, but greater than our amaze ment has been our dismay at the growing, undisguised and dan gerous discontent among our people, as lawless acts with in creasing fiendishness and frequency against us multiplied and you, our rarely gifted president, who with vehement righteous indignation anathematized barbaric ruthlessness across the seas, concerning these remained so strangely mute. Seemed we impa tient for some word of protest from you, sir? If so. it was be cause we knew the heaits and sentiments of our people. We knew the heavy burden placed upon you and we wanted a united and contented people to help you bear that burden. This it was im possible to do while they construed your silence—even though wrongfully—as condonement if not approval of the ills they keenly suffered. It was not to embarrass you that we importuned you to speak, nor from any sentiment of disloyalty, as you yourself must know full well, but because we wanted to knit the heaits of our people to you as the ruler of our nation in these times of peril and anxiety. You have spoken the words which we desire, and by that utterance have lifted a burden from our heaits and we sincerely thank you, and reaffirm our allegiance to you. our President, to our Country and to our Flag. fHE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE ON LYNCHING ~E are not ashamed to confess W that we have shed grateful tears of joy over President Wilson’s most impressive message apealing for the suppression of the lynching mania which has made our beloved country a stench in the nostrils of the nations of the world. For nearly thirty years we have longed and hoped and prayed for some chief executive of the nation to speak in courageous denunciation of this malignant evil. Always loathing it and marvelling at the moral cow ardice or most lamentable indiffer ence which seemed to seal the lips of broad-minded, merciful, kind hearted, justice-loving, Christian white men, with a few notable ex ceptions, we were filled with dismay and solicitude, after our entry into the war at the mounting tide of lynch ings, upwards of 300, including the East St. Louis horror, which by their frequency and indescribable brutality, threatened to alienate the affection and loyalty of our people to this the land of our nativity. We knew, both as pastor and editor, the effect these atrocities were having upon our peo ple. There was a growing bitterness, not merely because of these brutali ties which it was generally believed were carried on by the baser element of the several communities, but be cause of the acquiescent silence of those in 'authority from the president down, which seemed to condone, if not approve. The people believed and rightly so, that if our great presi dent would only declare his disappro bation of these barbarities at home as vigorously as he denounced ruthless deeds abroad, this rising tide of law lessness would be stemmed at home. He remained silent. The lawless ele ment of the land seemed to interpret his silence as approval of their deeds; as their multiplication testified. Our own group from whom the victims were so largely drawn reasoned, too, SILENCE GIVES CONSENT, and bitterness and resentment were at work. We deplored this growing bit terness, and implored the president to make it clear that he did not ap prove these deeds of blood, that he was not indifferent to our sufferings. This is what the united press of our people, our leaders and white friends besought the president to do. And at last, thank God, the president has spoken the needed word. And what a magnificent message it is. It leaves nothing to be said. It is a clarion call to the people of these United States to show ourselves to be a humane, justice loving, law-abid ing people. It iB an appeal that will be heeded. Coming from a man of southern birth, breeding and sym pathy, it means infinitely more than if such a message came from a man imbued with northern traditions. It will have a tremendous influence in suppressing that evil, which has been a blow at the heart of ordered law and humane justice, and imperils the very life and perpetuity of the republic. It will have an imponderable effect in enheartening our race in this coun try and steeling the arms of our sol diers who fare forth to fight for democracy since they will feel that their loved ones will be reasonably safe at home. We hail this message with joy, first because it is the message so long and sadly needed; and secondly because it places our president right where he as the leader in a great moral cause belongs as the outspoken cham pion of justice, righteousness and law | throughout the world. NO TIME FOR OVERCONFIDENT E We have never for a single moment doubted the outcome of this w ar. We are going to win. That is certain. We are inclined to believe that the Berlin-ward drive of our gallant troops on the western front is really the beginning of the major offensive which will ultimately result in unfurl ing the standards of the allies above the imperial palace of Berlin. At the same time we must realize that no overconfidence in the prowess of our armies should make us insensible to the gigantic task which still lies be fore us. There must be no slacking in war preparations or in the loyal back ing up and suport of our troops. The nation’s every demand upon us must be willingly, gladly and cheerfully met. Temporary reverses and heavy losges must still be ours before vie tory is achieved. Overconfidence may invite disaster. AGITATION AND AGITATION Agitation for the mere sake of agitation is always oat of place and never more so than in times like these. But needed agitation for the correc tion of grave wrongs and for the en thronement of justice is always right and timely. In this category- belongs all of the : just demands the race press and re ligious and other leaders and numer ous friends among the white race have been making for the fullest participa tion of our people as American citi zens .in all lines of activity, and for the practice of genuine democracy here. __• THK DAWN! A. more and more the thoughtful race man or woman ponders upon the stealthy movement of events, the more and more is he or she mindful of a deep change that is permeating the whole of this nation. It is a some thing strange, a something which we have never known before; the gradual march of justice. Shall we call it the awakening conscience of the Ameri can people or shall we call it the im press of real democracy being forced upon us under the administration of ! democrats whose sense of responsi bility to the nation is something more than the regulation of dollars and the dealings of patronage? For twenty years under the repub lican regime our race has begged and plead and prayer for some voice of authority to declare our wrongs in the south unjust. For twenty years ; the republicans filled us with empty ! promises and whenever a case came ; before the supreme court, it sank i into oblivion upon some technicality. Six years ago the democrats swept I into power and we trembled—and i waited. We searched the pages of | congre.-s for the awful bills we i thought about to be passed against i us. and miracle of miracles to such I bills came forth. Somehow the ! tongues of the old southern fire j brands who used to march back and forth through the north under the old j republican regime, were stilled. In time the question of disfranchisement came up before the supreme court again and this time a democratic su j preme court. We felt we already j knew what it would say and we were i thunderstruck when the chief justice i read the opinion and said: “Dis I franchisement is unconstitutional!” A few weeks ago some Colored sol ] dier? raped a white girl near I>es j Moines and were hanged. They should i have been hanged, and none of us i felt any remorse. But when the press j told us that a white soldier in Texas j raped a Colored girl and that one morning the rising sun saw him hang | ing by the neck by court martial or i der, we gasped! For once in the his j tory of America we are beginning to | realize that there is not a law for I the white and a law for the black, I but law for Americans. And so I say that we are beginning I to see a light above the mist. We j hardly comprehend it in the swiftly moving events, but we are becoming more and more aware that it is there i and that it is something that we have never known before. Fear is giving away to content and content must eventually give way to enthusiasm. It is becoming plainer and plainer every day that the Colored man’s duty is the American’s duty and that the Ameri can’s duty is to stand by the admin I istratior. to the last. race ever became a great race and that all great races were pure races. I asked permission of the editor to answer and the permission was grant ed. 1 opposed him diametrically and claimed that every great race was a mixed race and that no pure race ever did become or ever can become a great race. I shook the facts from history as one shakes coal in a bag. I left no stone unturned; no race un forgotten. I treated every race known to ancient history and races that be longed to ancient history, but are unknown save to the scholar ami scientist. I built an argument that was to stay, and when I closed I in vited my opponent to answer. That w as two years ago and he has never answered yet. He never will now, be cause death has claimed him. But I mention this to prove to you how easy it is for prejudiced men to build theories and try to have men inhabit them when there is no one to knock their tenements to ruins. In our rambles down the halls of time I have given you a few facts with which you may claim the majesty of our blood, the greatness of our race, the potentialities of our people. Use them, study them and make them a part of your daily thought. “As a man thinketh, so he is,” and our race is the only race that can think of itself in centuries and centuries of greatness, of thought and of accom plishment- This boon may have been granted to the white races, but upon the fields of Europe they are wreck ing their chances forever. And go I am done for now. You may safely use all that I have writ ten. because it is all true. These articles have spread over the range of a Tew months, but the search to find them has ranged over continents and years. There were times when I was in despair and did not believe that I should ever find great authori ties to' back up the truth of my peo ple’s greatness, but I carried on the quest and in the end came the re ward. I have come to believe that whoever dreams a dream and hides it away in his heart to think upon for days and months and years, will some day find that dream a reality. Be fore the beginning you and I and the continents and seas and stars and worlds were all dreams in the mind of one and because God dreamed, we are. I "wish to thank the many friends both far and near who have written me, unknown to them though I may be. for their kind words of appre ciation for these efforts. I am only too glad to have been the one to bring them home to all so that the truth may not remain hidden longer. Our race is a great race and it numbers more souls than all other races thrown into one. Upon us the orb of day has shone and left its mark and it is a mark of pride and glory and greatness. Ours is a great fraternity. The Children of the Sun and no great er challenge have we to give the world thar that of the Moor, when he said: Mislike me not for my complexion. The shadow’d livery of the burnished sun, To whom I am a neighbor and near bred. Bring me the fairest creature north ward born. Where Phoebus’ fire scarce thaws the icicles, And let us make incision for your love, To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.” SKITS OF SOLOMON Draftees Well, they've done it. Unk Sam has taken out his roster and looking down the list has said: "Colored boys, come on!” and the Colored boys have answered: “Coming, Unk! For two months we’ve been practicing the right step, left step, goose step and lock step and we’re ready to eat up a regiment of bodies now.” Not a one fell down. The circus grounds look as dusty as the parade grounds at Camp Funston. Every evening for the last steen days the boys have been practicing every stunt from hiking over the French mountains to learn ing how to capture a nest of German machine gunners with their teeth. So effective has been their training that everybody in the neighborhood wakes up in the middle of the night yelling “Left Face! “Oblique, March!” “Squad Halt!" One husband remarks that his wife hauled off one night last week and hit him so hard, in the neck that it was three hours be fore he could find his voice and ask her what she hit him with. Her re ply was that she didn’t remember hit- ^ 1 ting him, but that if she did she must have been practicing military science with the boys. And when they get ready to march away there won’t be any slouches. They will walk down the street like men who have seen service. That’s the way the Colored boys in this draft are putting things across. They are going to fight. They may not whip the whole German army, but it is corsets to catfish there’s going to be a piece of the German army that will scatter around for souven irs. And boys, send a souvenir back. We don’t care what you send. A helmet or gun or skull or pair of ribs or leg or ami will do. just so its a souvenir. The Children of the Sun By George Wells Parker We have been a long way together, you and I. We started out on our travels with ten thousand years ago, and have come down to the age when the old world closed and the new began. Our quest has been for one thing, the vindication of our blood and I believe that it has been vindi cated. I believe now that we look back upon the long range of cen turies gone by and watch them glow against the horizon of time, our hearts will beat a little faster and a little warmer when they recollect that the past, the whole great past, be longs to us, The Children of the Sun. They were our peopde who stood upon the threshold of time and looked first upon the stretch on eternity. They were our people who first learned the mysteries of agriculture, the wonders of the crafts and the blessings of society. They were our people who wondered at the enigmas of being, traced stories among the stars, sang hymns to the sun and talked about God- They were our peo ple who first builded beautiful cities, cut statues from stones, spanned rivers, harnessed floods, planted gar dens, reared palaces, dedicated tem ples and tried to make earth the ret rospect of paradise. They were our people who first conceived the ideas of the moral code, wrote laws, estab lished seats of justice, and punished wrong. They were our people who first wrote books and music and carved pictures. They were our peo ple who first discovered what civili I zation was and passed it on to men i and nations struggling in the dark. Ancient history is our history, an ! cient glory is our glory, ancient hon ! or is our honor. Let us then begin j to write for ourselves a new name, a name that shall make men pause and wonder and think! A few years ago a great scholar wrote an article for the New York Sun, the gem of journals. In this article he maintained that no mixed ---- God speed you, boys, on your way ^ to Berlin, via Camp Funston and Camp Dodge. Your city and your country stand solidly behind you. Buy War Savings Stamps Thomas Kilpatrick & Co. Reasons Why the Alamo Barber Shop Is the Leading Shop of the City ISergt -Major E. W. Killingswortl At 0. T. Camp Pike, Ark. Six Chairs » I R. C. Price At Home on the Job if First, we are giving the people what they want. Second, the man- j[ agement has used discretion in getting the best barbers obtainable. The .Alamo barber shop hasn’t waited to see what others could do, but has stepped in the lead and given to the public things unheard of in Colored 1 shops in this city. The Alamo barber shop was the first to hail the public attention to a reading and rest room. The shower bath, which no shop is com Iplete without, would never have been given to the Colored population had it not been for the Alamo barber shop. To avoid confusion over who may happen to be next we use the number system. No matter howr high or low everyone is dealt with justly when their turn comes. A system adopted by the Alamo barber shop. Experience has taught the manage ment that a fatigued barber is not the best barber; to keep the barbers fresh and in good trim at all times the shop is provided with stools so arranged to the height of the barber, it is convenient to rest at will wdiile at work. Never before known in the history of the city. We lead, others follow. We advertise and don’t knock. We will be glad to have the most fastidious give the place a thorough inspection and see if this is true. The Alamo barber shop has done more to further the barber business and bring to the people their very needs, than all the shops put together have ever done. 1 * iKillingsworth & Price, Props. ! V C. B. MAYO, Foreman. Phone Webuter 5784 2416 North 24th Street et-tw. ,:- -T - ■ --
