The Omaha Guide
A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ^
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 Match 3, 1879.
C- C- Gallowiy,_ Publisher and Acting Editor
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On Taxes
t
by RUTH TAYLOR
There is one sentence that has stuck in my memory ever
since I first heard it. “The fellow to be pitied In the tax
game is the one who has no tax to pay.”
Think of that when you try to figure out what you still
owe! Taxes are but a cheap price for what we enjoy.
What are they but the cost of our liberty?
No where else in the world are men as free as they are
here. No where else are the demands upon the people so
light. And—those demands WE SET OURSELVES.
Each one thinks his problems are the greatest. Each
one thinks that the current in which he lives is the whole
ocean. It is well that we pause and remember the suffer
ings of our brothers overseas before we complain of the
demands laid upon us. Men who htve lost everything have
nothing left with which to pty taxes. They are the ones to
be pitied.
Surely we don't any of us LIKE taxes. But this is OUR
country. Slaves do not pay taxes. They work at the be
hest and for the benefit of others. The conquered do not
pay taxes—they give tributes. Only free men are taxed.
Only free men can support the government thai Is their
■own.
“Never king dropped out of the clouds.” No tyranny
starts without someone paving the wav. Taxes are our in
surance against tyranny. Taxes are what we the people
pay for safety, for the rights of all men. A government of
the people, by the people—a yovernment of freedom—
needs the support of ALL the people. There are no priv
ilged few when it comes to taxes. The, right to pay for his
own government is the right of every free born man.
Freedom claims an active effort from each citizen—we
liave no individual rights that are not in some sense modi
fied by the demand for collective security anti collective
prosperity. The success of our efforts will be dependent
more upon our willingness to make sacrifices to back them
up than upon the perfection of any machinery. Taxes,
freely n adcheerfullv paid—are proof of our sincerity of
purpose.
Plain Talk...
(BY DAN GARDNER)
LETS STOP BEGGING THE W HITE MAN TO MAKE
I S HIS EQUAL; LET S MAKE OURSELVES EQUAL.
OUR BIGGEST FIGHT since pre-Civil War Days has
been for equality. We have asked for and campaigned
for all kinds of equality such as social equality, economic
equality, political equality, equality of opportunity, etc. In
some places we have made a dent in the solid wall of op
position; in others, we have been merely butting our heads
against stone. Weanwhile, the act of fighting for an ob
taining equality has developed into a well-paving business
career for many people, both white and colored and lately,
schools have been giving courses in race relations so as to
prepare more and more personnel for this flourishing pro
fession erected on the inability of people to forget racial,
religious and color differences and concentrate on bring
ing into being the brotherhood of man.
To date, no one has come forward with a suggestion that
perhps we hve been hitting the oapposition from the wrong
angle; that our technique may have glaring flaws in our all
out battle to better our condition. Our fight for equality
is based oi the assumption that the white man make us his
equal. From this standpoint, we have been praying to him
exhoring him over the decades to elevate us from the sta
tus of second class citizens—in those places where we are
rated as citizens—to the same plane or level with him. We
approach the problem on our knees, with the attitude that
we have done something wrong somewhere and that y+c are
now and have been begging forgiveness and requesting that
we be restored to a former level in rank akin :a that of
the ’’Great White Father.” On our contention, we act as
though we had committed some great crime and had fallen
from the good graces of the world.
This column doesn't agree that we should beg the white
man to make us his equal in anything, in me
Your RED CROSS
must carry on
1946 FUND CAMPAIGN
I---1
Editorial: “First, is YOUR House in Order Uncle?”
STS AWFULLY ^
TO SHARE OUR '
EALS WITH__
DPLES OF THE i
XJDOF YOU!^
"HP* M
FyES, DARLING-I WOULD
LIKE TO SEE EACH NATION'S ]
L HOUSE IN ORDER? 1
lie isn't likely to do so, and in the second place, it’s had
politics and equally had thinking. Let us make ourselves
as self-sufficient as possible, in spite of the. obsttcics that
have been placed in our path. We know full well the foul
vicious slavery and exploitation 40 which the wiiite man
subjected us to in tiis country for over 300 years. We
know full well the billions of dollars worth of free labor
the white man has stolen from us over that period at the
point of gun and sword. We know full well thar as a min
ority group here in the U. S., we are overwhelmingly out
numbered by the white men and would lose everything in
any so-called show-down or test of physical or economic
strength. But we do know that we have a God-given right
to assert the equality we were born with and which cannot
be taken from us in what we say and think.
Results are to be seen on every hand. The white man,
walking and talking among u^ carries an air of condescen
sion about him that he is superior and that we concede him
that point. Collectively we have learned to cringe In the
presence of the white man. The average white man ex
pects it, especially if he has been trained' thoroughly in “A
mericanism” and that type of “Democracy” practiced in
the South. Even the whites who labor without pay in the
racial vineyard approach their tasks with vestiges of racial
superiority based on the knowledge that we are begging
for them to accept us as equals. And by the way, it ac
tually amounts to that: begging for the white man to accept
us as his equals.
Damn the white man. Let’s make ourselves equal. We
actually are his equal if we assert our claim. We are
physically his equal and in many instances, actually his
superior. We have the same ability to think, to invent, to
orate and to write as he does. Why should we ask him to
lift us up? Our philosophy should be one of pride of
race as the source of knowledge of our ability to compete
equally with any and all. We must close ranks 10 achieve
the unity of solidarity that will show to the world that we
are equal. Loose ends must be lopped off, even if they
hurt, maim or injure in the process. The single purpose
must emerge from the many which involve us and split us
into warring factional groups. We must learn as a race
that no man or race is our superior; that equality is a God
given something in which we all share, white and black.
We must early take pains to rid ourselves of those of our
leadership who are actually on the payroll of the white
man to keep us confused as to our real status or who sell
us out daily through the old dodge of finding out what we
want to do and slipping around to tlel the white man—at a
price, the same as a slinking Judas selling out Christ for 30
pieces of silver.
Released by Calvin'* New* Service
I wonder how many Negroes appreciate the tremendous
impact of Negro literature on the minds of tens of thou
sands of white Americans. By Negro literature, I mean lit
erature about Negroes, no tnecessarily by Negro writers,
studies like Myrdal's “American Dilema”, and Drake and
Cayton's “Black Metropolis”, and novels like “Black Boy”,
“Strange Fruit**, and Miss Petry's “The Street”. These
books are widely read. They are teaching a growing num
ber of white workers something of what it means to be a
Negro in America.
I would not say that any book could teach the white wor
ker to ‘know the Negro*. “Know the Negro is, in my opinion
a stupid phrase, as are many generalities. It assumes that
there is not the same complex variation among Negroes as
among ay nother group in our population. Moreover, it
has been my own experience that most of the p^ple who
‘know the Negro* are as stupid as the phrase. Frequently,
their contcat with Negroes i slimited to that of an employer
employee relationship to a Negro cleaning woman. Down
South the phrase has a double meaning, and, while few
white Soutliernors know what Negroes are really thinking, !
they do know the Negro in the sense that they know what to
do to keep Negroes in submissive patters of behavior.
But. if recent books about Negroes have not succetled in
teaching whites to ‘know the Negro’ they have taught a
great deal about the kind of lives capitalist America com
pels Negroes to live. They have taught the meanings and
conseqquenees of segregation. They have exposed the bru
ises Jim Crow inflicts on the human personality. In not a
few whites resentment is growing, not only because of the
ignomy and discrimination endured by Negroes, but be
cause they themselves have been discriminated and victim
ized an dbamboozled, and they are just waking up to the
involves counterfeit ideas and unfounded prejudices and
one is convinced that they are counterfeit and unfounded,
indignation is bound to follow.
Speaking for myself, I think Drkae and Cayton’s book
“Black Metropolis” doe3 the best job of getting into the
white worker’s mind and of cleaning out the cobwebs of
prejudic that have accumulated there. The authors of this 1
th efacts of Negro life among their reading audience. This
other is its amzaing objectivity and the simple convincing
streets and littered lanes of a Northern Negro community.
So thorough is the job that, although it was written mainly
to enlighten white readers to whom Negro ghettos are for
hidden areas, dangerous to walk in at night, few Negroes
ca nread it without improving!their knowledge or themselv
es.
Throughout “Black Metropolis” the economic question
is kept in sharp focus. Poverty, the job ceiling, economic
dependence, the struggle of Negro workers for industrial
status, the callous viciousness of property, etc.,—these
form the Gordian knot that must be cut. If it is not cut,
as Richard Wright points out in his introduction, if the un
rest continues to accumulate, the passionate longing for
human status will cease to be pent up and social explosions
of incalculable force may follow'. He reminds us that Hit
ler exploited the miseries of the slums that capitalism cre
ated, and that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that
out of the dry rot of American capitalist decay there may
crawl forth a gangster spirit to manipulate these miseries.
Drake and Cavton are not Socialists. They offer no
I Socialist solutions. Yet the logic of the facts they have ga-1
thered with such industry and present with such force, is
that the emancipation of Negroes from color-caste is bound
up with the emancipation of society from capitalist exploit
ation. “The logic of things will speak,” Marx wrote, and
if they do not speak through the mouths of men, they
speak through events and experience. Today, as Negroes
and whites share the rigors of a thousand picket lines,
they share also reflections aid thoughts. And these tend
more to the conclusion that the present social system offers
nothing to the toiling mass of mankind but continued in
security and incessant conflict and that it is the common
interest of all workers to bring about social conditions
wherein they can enjoy “the deep, organic satisfactions
necessary for civilized, peaceful living.”
The Common Defense
(by Rev. William C. Kernan)
TRUE CHRISTIANITY
Everyone who is familiar with the subversive movement
in this country knows how some unscrupulous persons
have tried to throw the cloak of Christianity over their
anti-Semtic propaganda. Genuine Christians, clerical and
lay. have always condemned this blighting deception.
Most recently Mr. Jack Wyrtzen, President of the
YOUTH FOR CHRIST movement, made the following state
ment, on the radio, “On several occasions of late, it has
b~**n brought to my attention that the YOU i ii FOR
CHRIST movement has been accused of being anti-Semtic
and I felt led tonight to make a statement that might settle
this issue once and for all in the minds of the general pub
lic.
“Frankly, we believe that one of the greatest evils we of
\OUTH FOR CHRIST must keep from gaining ground in
America is the vicious and depraved doctrine of anti-Sem
itism which has brought so much misery to the world. This
godless ami un-Christian hate movement was exploited by
the Nazis to divide the people of Europe and to finally en
slave them. ar, devastation and moral bankruptcy was
the result. e in America must be on guard against the
peddlers of this poison if we want to keep America not only
free aid safe but also Christian. With all the vigor at mv
command I say that anti-Semitism is a menace to our coun
try and our religion.
DO'S AISD DOiSTS:
■Ti ll. ... i—
7my pear, your
' HAlR loor^ lovel
'ER,I4 IT REALLY
■-—, YOUR'S ?
\
p-o.ru**
Don't continue to drink catnip, fill your glass with the
Milk of human kindness.
Will You Stand By?
Abraham Lincoln admonished the people at the end of
the Civil W ar. In the words of the Great Emam rpaior;
“Let us strive to finish the work we are in: to hind up
the nation’s wounds, to care for him who sh(dl have
borne the battle, and for his widmv and for his orphan
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and
lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Lincoln could see, as we do now, the stirrings of other
interests. Money and jobs and the newest inventions de
mand attention, once the fighting has stopped.
But war doesn't leave an area we can build a fence a
round ami forget. This war left us with the atomic bomb.
It left us, too with the soldier who must spend yeary months
learning to get along with a paralized back . the veteran
who must eatch up somehow with the years he lost while
patrolling the Pacific. the MP who must walk the streets
of Berlin carrying a sub-machine gun.
W e, as individuals, cannot stop the* business of life to
help all these men; but their happiness, and ultimately
ours—depends on making them available.
During March, the American Red Cross will appeal for
support of its annual Fund Campaign. It appeals on the
basis of continuing need for services to the armed forces,
and the veterans, with added emphasis on the need of ad
vancing its health, safety ami disaster preparedness pro
gram. Your eontributions will be your way of standing
by when the ned is great.
STAND BY!—W ON’T YOU?
State’s'Youths Offered Awards
NATIONAL JUNIOR VEGETABLE GROWER3 OPEN
SIXTH CONTEST WITH $6,000 IN SCHOLARSHIPS
Nebraska town and country boys and girls art- entering
competition for college scholarships in a nationwide con
test of the National Junior Vegetable Growers Association,
Paul R. Tuttle of Vermillion, vocational agriculture instruc
tor and junior growers’ central states chairman, announces
Outlining the sixth annual vegetable production and
marketing project in which awards of 86.000 have been
made available by A& P Food Stores, Tuttle said:
“Working with the soil is an education in itself, and the
contest is designed to give awards as an incentive to effic
ient gardening and marketing. Size of project is not a fac
tor, since contestants are scored on efficiency, improve
ments in methods, leadership in community and school
activities, and sores attained in a study course."'
Scholarships to be awarded in 194-6 include 8300 to the
national champion, a 8200 scholarship for each of the four
regional winners, 8100 checks- to 33 sectional winners and
the remainder of the award money in lesser awards within
each state. The contest is open to all boys and girls be
tween 12 and 21 years of age,
Complete details and entry blanks can be obtained from
county agricultural agents, F. F. A. leaders, 4-H Club a
gents, vocational agriculture instructors, or by writing to
Paul R. Tuttle, Vermillion, Ohio.
18 MONTHS WITHOUT AN ACCIDENT
The Omaha Branch of the Fruehauf Trailer Company
has set an enviable record in the Annual Safetv Contest
held by the company as announced by R. H. Montgomery,
Branch Manager. Records for a period of 18 months
show 107.142 man-hours worked, with no time lost for ac
cidents. This is a perfect feeord and congratulations are
in order.
%
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