j The Omaha Guide |
| A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ^ I
[ Published Every Saturday at 2)20 Grant Street
^ OMAHA, NEBRASKA-PHONE HA- 0800
(Entered as Second Class Matter March 15. 1927
at the Post Office at Omaha, Nebraska, under
i Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.
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OUR HEROES
uy a„wUa "i'ayiOi
February is the month in which we celebrate the birth
days of two of our national heroes. Rut this year while
we pay honor to them, we also pay honor to many new
heroes who on land, sea, and in the air gave their lives for
that nation which George W ashington helped to found and
Abraham Lincoln helped to preserve.
What makes a hero? Not his background. Our heroes
come from every rank of life, class and creed. it is not a
question of birth-we believe more in nobility of ascent,
than in nobility of descent.
There is a eomon yardstick for heroes, one by which we
judge these new heroes, one to which Washington and
Linoo'n measured up in full. It is the willingness to put
others first, to give unstintingly of themselves in the cause
of right, and for the protection of the country they loved
and of their fellow Americans.
That their memory endured throughout the years is no’
just because of what they did for the nation but because
they clearly foresaw the course of events.
ashinfjton said: “My politics are plain and simple. I
think every nat'on has a Risrht to establish that form of
Government lind'-r which It conceives It shall live most
happy, provided it infracts no Right or is not dangerous to
others.*’
Lincoln said: “Our reliance is in the love of liberty which
God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which
prized liberty as the inheritance of all men in all iands.’’
Th«*se are the things for which we fought. Unless we
realize the ideals of freedom for all men, un’ess we see to
it that no basic Right is infracted we will have betrayed ALL
our heroes. Our honor of them will be a mockery.
The Lakewood Citizen has an excellent line which it
runs in the renter of a page containing; the names of hon
ored dead of that community.
“They ask no more enduring monument than final vic
tory.’'
Final victory is not merely the victory of war. It is the
victory of peace as well. The achievement of that victory
is our task. Don't let us fail any of our heroes—they did
not fail us!
OVERTONES
— (by A1 Heningburg
BROTHERHOOD W EEK:
I lie annual celebration of Brotherhood Week helps
even the most unchristian among us realize the great need
for friendliness wnioh always conies upon a nation after a
war. Men tend to lose moral and spiritual ground as they
try to overcome the effects that our boys too went out to
kill or he ki led. \\ idle we rejoice that the war would ap
pear to be over, we still remember that at Nagasaki %vas lo
cated the most important Christian center in japan. Yes,
you read correctly, we said WAS located at Nagasaki.
A tireless ami effective worker on the American scene is
Dr. George E. Haynes, of the Federal Council of Churches
of Christ in America. Soft-spoken, patient, and persuas
ive, formerly of Fisk University and one-time of the Na
tional Urban League. Dr. Haynes knows that tiie churches
of this country have not furnished enough greatlv needed
leadership. But he believes as do most other thinking
people that if there is a way out, the Church will come near
er finding that way than any other single institution.
BEVIM VERSES VISHESSKY:
Thousands of Americans sitting in comfortable living
rooms, reading their evening papers, or listening with half
their consciousness to newscasts, have failed to realize how
important to 1 HEM are the sharp words which pass be
tween Messrs. Bevin and Yishnisky. Many of the Negroes
who did the spade work in World War II. and their older
brothers who also did the dirty work in World War I. fail
to understand how significant is the power struggle reflect
ed in the discussion between these two men. liut histor
ians know that diplomats make wars, while common men
like you anil me f.glit them. There is none too -.ood feel
ing between the Soviet Union and the British Empire. It
was neither the elevator operators nor the owners of build
ings who suffered during the recent operators strike in
New Vork, it was the foot-weary men and women who work
NEBRASKA SAFETY PATROL
SAYS—
With the number of auto glide.*
or “scooter bikes” on our streets
and highways rapidly growing, it
is imperative that these riders
assume more responsibility for
their own safety.
In any competition between auto
glides and automobiles, the auto
glide is obviously at a disadvan
tage. In power, size, weight, and
speed, the automobile excels.
The Nebraska Motor Vehicle
Laws require that the driver of an
auto glide or scooter with less than
t*vo horse power, must be 16 yrs.
old. If the auto glide or scooter
bike is two horse power or over,
the driver must be 16 yrs. old and
have a Nebraska operator’s per.
mit or license
All auto glades or scooter bikes
regardless of horsepower, must be
titled and registered.
C. J. Sanders, Capt.
I
I
Editorial: “Saboteurs Of Democracy!”
in those buildings.
THE CASE APPROACH:
Representative Francis Case, of South Dakota, conies
from one of the most sparsely settled sections of the Unite
States. He runs a close second to Mr. Bilbo when you
consider how few votes are necessary to send either to Con
gress. He has always voted anti-labor, perhaps because he
comes from a neck of the woods where industry is practie
al’y non-existent. This man whose home-town number
fewer than 2000 persons presents a bill which, if it beconu
es law, will set the cause of organized labor in this country
back twenty years. The House Rules Committee, domin
ated by die-hard Republicans and southern Democrats, has
a’ready given the Case formula its blessing. All of which
shows the new low level to which our present Congress has
sunk.
MR. TRIM AN NEEDS:
The Honorable Harry S. Truman has discovered that
being President of these United States is certainly no bed
of roses. The post probably looked attractive from the
dignified and isolated office of the Vice President, for
with a man like Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House,
a Vice President was about as unnecessary and unheard as
anything you can imagine. His recent clashes with Con
gress have made the President aware that he needs a new
alignment, and he is beginning to seek that support among
the same men who advised his predecessor. Mr. Truman
too, needs to draw about him brilliant men with “a pass'on
for anonymity.” Whether he has the personal magnetism
to attract such men is another question.
LEARN FROM CIO:
It’s no simple matter to go on strike in the dead of win
ter, and to find yourself in a picket line at five below,
with the wind whiping through you and past you all day
long. The kids get hungry, and the rent man comes a
round just as regularly as if Dad were working every day.
U hen you think of things like this, you realize that UAW
I CIO. and United Steelworkers of America, and other strik
ers are fighting a new kind of war for thfc rights of ALL
working people. One lesson that Negroes everywhere
should learn from this, is the fact that CIO leaders have
discovered that not enough men were registered voters.
Not enough in Cincinnati or in Detroit. Watch PAC go to
work, watch registration increase and watch Congressmen
begin to take heed.
_
I
About the Common Man *
(by Jl DAH DROB)
(from The Detroit Tribune, Sat., Febr. 2, 194b)
What’s your formula for ending race prejudice? Most
people who have thought about the problem, who believe
that it can be solved, have some notion of what ought to be
done to end this special curse of America.
My formula goes by the name of “association." Simplv
stated, it means that when the average prejudiced white
person has had to work alongside a Negro in some enter
prise or other, prejudices soon disappear in the startling
revelation tlita all human peings are pretty much the same,
after all.
, The difficult of this formula, as you cam see, is produc
ing the association. For, by and large the results of the
association are automatic. But getting the white person to
agree to tcork alongside the ISegro, or to live next door to
him, or to belong to the same organisation, if often next
to impossible.
During the war a special factor operated to force the as
sociation. This was the necessity of production. The
government officials in charge of manpower were often
aide to force reluctant white persons to accept Negroes as
co-workers. In many cases the union involved had an
anti-disrimination policy and helped provide the needed
push. „
In almost every case, where union. H ar Manpower Com
mission, or 1EPC succeeded in forcing workers of both
races together, the automatic cutting down of prejudice
began.
From here on out it looks very much as though the gov
ernment will not he playing a major role in this process
for some time. This is written as the Senate filibuster a
gainst FEPC gathers steam, and the prospects lor passage
of S. 101 look dim.
W HO W ILL GIVE THE PISH?
The filibuster comes at a time when the powers of the 1
wartime FEPC are at their lowest. Add to the starvatior
diet deer ed by Congress the reduction of its nut* ori'y by
the president, and you have an agency with little oppor
tunity to carry out its job.
Does th;s mean that all hop" of hr»W a**ocia'ion is
ended? 1 think not. It just means that nnt:l tee can gnt
a Congress that will adopt a permanent FEPC Imc ice must
continue tn plac" our reliance on other agene'es.
The chief of these is the union tha*. bans discrimination
For the immediate future that is the best bet for coniine
ing the pressure on reluctant white workers, and for put
ting them into the situation where they will be able to learn j
to get along with their Negro associates.
AH this came to the front of my mind r-v'cniiy when T j
met two good friends, one Negro and one white. One, the I
Negro, is chairman of the shop committee of t*je UAW
CIO local at the Crysler Highland Park plant. The other
is the president of the local, who was born and brought up
in Tennessee.
The history of their local, and its race relations, is the
best reason I have for pinning so much faith in the next ^
few years on the prejudice-busting possibilities of some
unions.
A CASE HISTORY
When I first met the Negro, L. McPherson, in the early
days of the war, he was the leader of the Negro employees
in the plant who had gone out on strike to force the com
pany to upgrade qualified Negro workers.
A more forelorn and isolated bunch of strikers you have
seldom seen. They were on a wildcat strike, and g >t no j
support from the union. They had been isolated in the
janitorial work of the plant and hail few friends among
the white members of their union.
Finally, it was agreed that Negroes would be upgraded in
the plant, and the strikers went back to work.
When I next met Mac he had been elected the chairman
of the plant shop committee, representing all the workers
in the plant, regardless of race, and regardless of skill.
This was all the more remarkable because I know one
young fellow a red-hot radicla, who three years ago had
been run out of that plant for arguing that Negroes had a
right to work on machines.
The couple of years of association between Negro and
white workers, doing the same work, side by side, had com
pletely changed the atmosphere of the plant, and had put
Mac in a position that he earned by his ability as a nego
tiator.
The President of the local, Bill Jenkins, came from
Tennessee. He is one of many UAW-CIO leaders who
came from the South, and who share with him a complete
lack of prejudice, which most of them learned from the
union.
You bet Pm for the union as a prejudice-buster!
Released by Calvin'* New* Service
My survey is far from complete—it’s just a sampling—
but I'll go out on the limb to say that the striking workers
of this nation have the solid support of the Negro press.
This support varies in degrees. A few Negro papers are
unbecomingly timorous. But most of those I have read
evince a warm appreciation of the strikers' point of view
and are correspondingly hostile to the workers’ plutocrat
ic exploiters.
This attitude contrasts sharply with that of capitalist
newspapers generally. W here the metropolitan dailies are
not hysterically demanding dascistic laws to outlaw strikes,
and arguing the corporations’ case while posing as cham
pions of the “public”, they are slyly disparaging. A few.
a very few. affect mild sympathy for the str.kers nut water
it down with large tears for the “suffering public.”
Why this contrast? The Negro press is commercial. It
is owned y capitalists and operated for profit. Compared
with publishers of the big dailies, its capitalist-owners are
to be sure, “small potatoes.” But that doesn't explain
anything. Some of the most vicious traducers of the strik
ers are small-towTi capitalist sheets.
Actually, the pro-striker sympathies of Negro newspa
pers is a phenomenon which grows out of the larger part
icipation of Negro workers in industry. It reflects a grow
DO’S AND DON’S:
} CONTlUC.V-*r-rW,'>'~~__
Dii! you write that letter in pencil? Do write the next
one in ink it gives the letter a h.tter appearance.
ing consciousness that the struggle against prejudice and
discrimination is related intimately with the s;ruggle of
workers against wage-slavery exploitation, and It I^as a
significance that goes beyond the present wave of strikes.
This is wl.at I mean: Not only in America, but through
out the world, things are shaping themsehen for a show
down fight between those who live without working and
those who work without living. If vo.' hold your ear to
the ground, you can hear the muffled roar of this revolu
tionary force. It is the demand of the workers that soc
iety put an end to the insane/ paradox of p’enty. It is a
protest against a system which destroys what it calls “sur
pluses” while men are ill-clad, ill-fed, and ill-housed. It is
a new awareness of the unmitigated evil of a society which
allows the socially operated instruments of toil to he owned
privately, and which, through private ownership, vests
despotic power over the many in the hands of a few.
The minority of Negroes who possess wealth have an in
terest, a CLASS interest, in preserving the evC-spawuing
capitalist system. On the other hand, while they possess
wealth they are denied many of. the privileges which ordin
arily accompanies it. For. while the Negro community
also is divided along elass lines, the white world doesn’t
recognize the divls'on. “For white only” is an Injunction
that excludes the Negro who is well-to-do as affectively as
the plantation field hand. Money may buy luxuries, af
ford idleness, pay the wages of servants, but it can’t pur
chase the favor of Jim Crow, and this fact rangles in none
so bitterly af those who have the money to offer. For
good or ill, their escape from the indigniteis and humili
tations of race and color prejudice hinges on the escape of
all who share them. H
This brings us back to the movement of working elass
emancipatoin to which the struggle against race discrim
ination and prejudice is inseparably linked. Fractically,
the few Negroes who may be described as capitalists—busi
nessmen, publishers, bankers, etc.—have ultimately to
choose between a society which gives them status within
the circumscribed sphere of the Negro community and a
social system wherein affluence is general, hence no dis
tinction, but wherein also inen of all races and color
mingle freely and live in harmony. To choose the latter
implies that the Negro capitalist rises above his immediate
elass interests—as the Negro press is doing in a sense in
supporting the strikers today—and stands with the useful
producers, the workers.
In all great social upheavals there are men who rise in
tellectually and morally above the material interests of
their class. Some of the most devoted supporters of the
bourgeois revolution were nobles for whom the revolu
tion meant the end of special privileges. And we may ex
pect that in the revolutionary struggle that is shaping, a
few enlightened men will detach themselves from the ramp
of property and join the embattled workers. If the views
currently expressed in the Negro press mean what they
seem to mean, the enlightened men of wealth who cham
pion th proletarian cause will include many Negroes.
YMCA EMPHASIS ON YOUNG MEN,
AND RETURNING VETERANS
AH Sorenson is heading the 1946 YMCA Enrollment
Week, according to an announcement by C. W'. Mead,
President, and Winslow Van Brunt, Chairman of the
Membership Committee. Sorenson was the unanimous
choice of the “Y” officials.
He has been active on the Youth Program Committee
of the “Y” and while Chairman of the Rotary Boys’ Com
mittee, he helped extend the YMCA Boys’ Community Work
through the assistance of the Rotary Club.
Sorenson has picker! the following men as his Generals
anrl Airies and met with them Monday to plan the strategy
of this camnaiim. The Generals anti Aides are Roy Pratt,
Henry Windheim, Harry Trustin, Ed Garvey, Albert Stell
ing, Cletus Haney, C. W. Minard, Wilson Walters and Jim
Ainscow. Advising these leaders will be Bob Hall, Murray
Champine, anrl Kermit Hansen.
“One thing we know for sure,” said Sorensen, “our em
phasis will be on the young men and returning veterans.”
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