COMMENTS EDITORIAL PAGE OPINIONS I » I < I I THE OMAHA GUIDE Published Every Saturday at 2418-20 Grant Street, Omaha, Nebraska Phones: WEbster 1517 or 1518 Entered aT Second Class Matter March 15. 1927, at the Poatoffice at Omaha, Neb., underAct of Congress of March 3, 1879. " TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION $2.00 PER YEAR Race prejudice must go Ihe Fatherhood of ».<>d mid the BfOtltSf' hood of Man must prevail. These are the only principles which will •tai.d the acid test of good. All News Capy of Churches and all Organirations must be in our •ffico not later than 5t00 p. m. Monday for current issue. All Adver ting Copy or Paid Articles not later than Wedneaday noon, preceed (ng date at issue, to insure publication. _ NEGR OHEALTH WEEK j PUBLIC HEALTH Mo«t communities have Health Hoards whose function is to generally protect the health of the municipality by such activi ties hs, regulating building don*tru<-tk>n to a»«ure ventilation, dr#mag» and plumbing; to oontrol the siale of drugs and foods and thereby prevent the marketing of impure or dirty foods pro ducts and the sale of foodtv in unsanitary stores or restaurant; the supervision of street cleaning and the inspection of schools and other institutions. Good health is man’s most important possast-don. The world today, with its thousands f opportunities, offer a boundless outlet for all form of useful ambition*. To take full advantage of these opportunities one, must have « sound mind and body free from the drain of disease germ*. Health authorities have for years waged a courageous and relent Ie»s fight tp eradicate and isolate disease* g«rn»s, in spite of their efforts, there is a notable amount of neglect in the* observance of everyday precautions which are necessary for a long and useful existence. While the economic status is a factor in many the mope familiar duties of the homo, new occupations in factory und office are open to you. In many fields you may now domjpejte With men I But only if you possess good health—a vigorous body and a clear brain—can you expect to undertake the new and trying work suc cessfully. No matter how thoroughly you are trained, such train ing will be of little Value topless tit (icgts upph a foundation of good health. Goo high federal office and has assigned numerous oth ers to important departmental positions. Grover Cleveland, after scour ing the country, selected a Ne gro Democrat for the position of Recorder of Deeds for Wash ington, D. C., hut. was unable AN OPEN LETTER Omaha, Nebr. April 5, 1937 Mr. E. M. Jacobberger, 2601 N. 49 St., I Omaha, Nebraska. Dear Mr. Jacobberger: Some ,t4me ago, 1 wrote you in regard to what we are enti tled to—something we are pay ing for and not getting. Do you ,think that it s out of the question to ask for a part of what our tax money is being used for—to help make your salary! Too, our voters help* to get you your position. I I am entitled to conddera 'tion and deserve an answer, whether I get it or not. 1 am sure some of us pay niore taxes '.tjian you. I am a heavy tax payer, idiiat is why T am asking for this consideration. Perhaps it has been an oversight on your part as to why you have over looked answering my last let ter. T ean only know by hearing ing from you. I am not seeking .tdiis position for myself. T have iny job, but we have men who should receive it, and should 'receive the same consideration 'as others. What profits a man whose jto persuade a Democrat senate I to confirm him. Woodrow Wil son nominated a distinguished Negro as register of the treas ury, but was compelled to with jdraw his nominee because of ! the stubborn resistance of south 'em senators. Indeed, ij became | the avowed policy of both the Democrat and Republican ad ministrations not to nominate a Negro for a confirmatory of fice because of the difficulty in leaping th<> senatorial hurdle i The Minister to Liberia, and a municipal judgeship in the Dis trict of Columbia formed the on ly exceptions since the days of Ilarding. President Roosevelt, however, has made the custom ary Negro appointees and secur ed their unanimous confirma tion at the hands of a Demo cratic senate. | The appointment of Judge jllastie breaks new ground and is the first Invasion by the Ne gro of a federal judiciary. Ilis appointment was nut due to po litical activity on his part. Here stubborn opposition might have been incurred, bull none was forthcoming. Judge Has'.ie pro bably lias never voted in his life, or controlled or influenced a single Democratic vote, lie was appointed as nn attorney in the interior department and rendered such efficient service of a legal character that the president felt justified in pro moting him to the federal bench The fact of hits appointment and ! his unanimous confirmation by the Senate speaks louder .than words of President Roosevelt's policy and purpose concerning the colored element of our pop ulation. The clear intention of Presi dent Roosevelt .to give the Ne gro consideration as a factor in the government equation has robbed the Republican party of i.s chief political dynamic. The scare crow of southern hostility and Democratic unfriendliness has gone with the wind. Com para/vqly speaking, the bal ance of advantage now falls on the Democratic side of the fence The mVthod of the New Deal indicated in Mr. Roosevelt ;s first campaign and demonstrat ed iu his first administration, has effectively weaned the Ne gro from his one-sided adher enee to the Grand Old Party of days gone by. In .the future the raw vote will, in all probabil ity, be more evenly divided be tween the rival parties, if, in deed, the GOP is again to ac quire the status of a rival. in > » > > > I I I » t -T—“ An Echo From My Den By S. E. Gilbert As 1 sit here in my den with pen in hand, meditating as it Were, I feel disposed to point out, some little known and rare ly considered facts nnent the job perhaps pays him small wages? You may wonder how he can balance tjhe scale to get more benefit from his job. The nnswer is that every man must improve his own job, and im prove himself. He balances the scale with the maximum bene fit, to himself. This is one of the oldest trialhs. Do your job well and it will pay well. A job well which Will give you comfort and security. A job for wages alone and support in doing it, will never be anything but a job. 1 am working for the pub lic; one must take into consid eration the balanced scale by considering all, especially those whose support he is getting. To make a balance, both sides must be considered, and as it has been, the scale of justice has not been balanced. When they are equal in proportion on each side, everyone will get justice. That Is the only thing that should be done. Hoping .that the oversight was not intentional, I remain, Yours very truly, (Signed) G. B. Lennox, M: D: GBL-DR. j Negro purchasing power. This ip a subject on which even the scientific experts of the great advertising agencies are woe Ifully ignorant: and for the most par^ thte sales directors of na tionally advertised products hold stubbornly to ideas of the I Negroes’ buying power that are u mixture of hearsay, prejudice and inaccurate estimates based on inferred social status. As a result Negro newspapers and magazines suffer and manufac turers lose millions of dollars in sales which they might rea sonably hope to gain if a little more realistic intelligence was applied to consideration of this field. The fact that the Negro in Omaha and the surrounding territory spends over $15,000 000 annually would appear to be proof positive that the so-ealled Negro market is far from neg ligible. I,t is estimated that in normal times the annual pur chasing power of the Negro in Omaha, amounts to $25000000. And )whnt) does the Negro buy? He buys food and cloth ing, automobiles and radios, furniture and household arti cles, cosmetics and tobacco, ci gars and cigarettes, and we sus pect wines, beer and liquors. But whether he buys a Ford in preference to a Chevrolet, Pon tiac, Plymouth or Dodge, and whether he buys Camels rather than Chesterfields, Old Golds or Lucky Strikes, and whether he buys Listerine or Lavoris, should be of some concern, so Jt seems to up, to those who seek ~ ME LIVE ' A REVIEW By ROBERT L. NELSON International Negro Press LET ME LIVE: The Autobiography of Angelo Herndon, New York, Random House, 1937, 409 pp., $2.50. “You may do what you will with Angelo Herndon. You may indict him. You may put him in jail. But there will come other thou sands of Angelo Herndons. If you really want to do anything about the case, you must go out and indict the social system.” Angelo Herndon This was Angelo Herndon’s an swer to Judge Wyatt when in 1932 he was convicted of "attempting to incite _ to insurrection,” under a Georgia state law, first passed in 1861, to prevent slave insurrec tions, and revised in 1871 to in clude “any attempt to induce others to join in combined re sistance to the lawful authority of the state.” It is well known that Herndon as a boy of nineteen was arrested twenty-four horra after he had taken part, before the Atlanta Courthouse, in a demon stration by a thousand Negro and white workers who were asking for adequate relief; that he was kept in jail for eleven days with out any charges being brought against him; that finally Com munist literature found in his room gave the authorities an op portunity to invoke against him an old law passed during the Civil War to prevent insurrections of slaves; that he was imprisoned for more than two years and then released on bail; that unless the Supreme Court cf the United States now reverses his indictment he will be doomed to eighteen years on the Georgia chain gan. Angelo Herndon reviews these facts in his autobiography, “Let 'fie Live’’ which has just conie from the press. He reviews also the circumstances which led to his |M>ing part of that demonstration |>efore the Atlanta Courthouse, in June, 1982 — circumstances which liegin with his birth as the son of a coal-miner, in Wyoming, Ohio. His earliest memories are of poverty. “Get an education, Angelo. Lift yourself above our condition.” This was impressed upon Angelo even before he started to school. They were his father’s last words to him. He took seriously the trust put upon him and worked well in school. But his schooling stopped when he was thirteen, his father having died when the boy was nine. Most of Angelo’s “educa tion,” therefore, has been in coal mines, in labor camps and in jails. Between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, he had experience in coal-mines, doing work far beyond his years, receiving almost nothinj for it; learning about labor agents labor camps, and discrimination. When he was seventeen he hap ; pened to see a leaflet announcing ! a meeting of the UnemploymerJ ( Council. That was in Birmingham) ■ Herndon attended the meeting: and for the first time realized thal the "same vicious interests tha' were oppressing Negro worker were doing the same thing tt white workers, that both black and white worker could solve theii problems only by a united effort j against the common enemy.” Hd' was then ripe for the suggestion! that Communism provided that “united effort.” His activities thereafter among the coal-miners and the share-croppers of Alabama and his evident affiliation with the Communist Party brought him in disrepute with the police; and more than one attempt was made prior to the Atlanta incident to indict him. He served more than one jail sentence, although they were each of short duration, since no charge could be found against him. “Let Me Live” contains an ex pose of the prison system in the South and especially of conditions in the Fulton County jail, in Georgia, for Herndon tells of the lack of sanitation and medical at-< tention, of unpalatable food, of deliberate tormenting by the jail ers, of a corpse left in his cell for twenty hours, etc. When after twenty-six months under unbeliev ably vile conditions he was re leased on bail, he was not as overjoyed as one might expect. He knew that nothing had been really solved: “One great truth I discovered at the moment of my freedom: That as long as there will be men rotting unjustly in foul prisons, neither I. nor anyone else, can ever be free.” Whether or not one agrees with the underlying philosophy of this work as pointing the way out, one cannot fail to find it a moving indictment of the society in which we live. It is not Herndon who is on trial but a system in which such evils as he describes can flourish. He asks to live; but his request is for more than that. He, like many others who work, would like a larger reward for his labor; but he also pleads for a world in which “justice, enlightenment and humanity should be practiced among men." This book serves to dramatize the oppression of work-i ers, Negro and white, the evils o£ antiquated systems of law that permit such abuses as the chain gang, the dehumanizing effects of poverty and ignorance, the com mon cause of labor. It is not Herndon alone, but many others who are saying with him, “We will fight on until we have secured not only social equality, but every kind of equality. To this end 1 will dedicate my life until the day I die.” ( to expand the market for these and similar products and should ’endeavor to find the doorway to this Negro market through the columns and advertising space of the Negro newspapers. ' i , Wild Dreams 11 By Dr. Wesley Jones .1 " ,, <> »...... ....... . . . . ... The disease commonly called night mares, was observed and de scribed by any of the ancient wri ters on medicine and was called incubus by the Romans. Roman mythology tells of incubus who was a demon who went around at night and pounced on people as they Dr. Wealcy Jones slept. This demon fortunately jot away just as soon as the victim was awakened. Because of the sensa tion of weight or oppression that frequently accompanies a night mare, superstition attributes the visitation to the agency of demons or evil spirits- By various authors dreams charaicterized (by .tjerrors have been attributed to a bad con science. Beyond a reasonable doubt it is true that people who retire having lhad rrfental disturbances during the day, as fear or anxious ness concerning some things in which they are (jeePly interested oftim.es suffer nightmares. This be ing true, few of us have failed to have the experience of an agonizing dream or nightmare- We may re call the stifling sense of oppres sion, feeling that we can’t breathe and helpless paralysis of -speech and movement. The mental reaction is that of abjected fear coupled with a futility of one’s own efforts Sometimes on waking, the individ ual will notice that his heart is racing, his breathing is rapid and he feels exhausted. The common explanation of this phenomenon is an indigestible meal such as mince pie, highly seasoned foods a« barbecue or tamalies or some other foods indescretion. Mo dei-n medicine looks upon night- > mares as a combined physical and emotional phenomenon- However, the digestive setups cannot be re garded as the only causes of fear ful dreams. There are a large num ber of people who eat very heavily and sleep as soundly as anybody else, also if this were true we could prove it by either having people eat heavy meals and produce night mares and conversely eat nothing and prevent them. The real cause of this condition must be due to fear, dread and terror and should be sought in the emotion- Again ir. nervous children we have the same conditions manifested. It is obvious that any deep mental impressions made upon a child may linger in the sub-conscious mind and give rise to exhibitions of fear in the dream state. Compelling obedience by frightening children with threats that “The goblins will get you,” may bear fruit in disturb ed sleep and frightful dreams While night tJorAirs In dhikiren may not have the same basic ori gin as night mares, yet they sim ulate closely the nightmare sym ptom complex. By some writers they have been attributed to the acid in the system. People who are victims of night mares must recognize that while the stimulus may lie in the diges tion or in some other part of the body the principle symptoms are due to disturbed mental or emotion al state- The reasoning mind is as leep, hence the sub-conscious mind handles the reins and drives the sleeper over hurdles of tesrror ridden experiences. It is therefor*' necessary that the victim should sleep with someone else in order that he might be arouse if these conditions come on and very light j meals should be eaten after four o’clock in the afternoon.