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^[[1934]] The Dunbar News [[logo: NRA US WE DO OUR PART]] VOL. V NEW YORK, JANUARY 10, 1934 No. 19 Civilizing the Indian The American policy with the Indian tribes which occupied the territory of the United States before white men came has always been a simple one. We robbed them, murdered them, and then proceeded to "civilize" them. Of the three, the civilizing process has been by no means the least painful. Of late years it has consisted in a system of education for Indian children which took them from their parents at the age of seven, kept them in a boarding-school until they were eighteen, underfed and underclothed them, forcibly exposed them to the worst features of the routine of white public schools, and spared no pains, at any point, to stamp out their Indian culture and heritage. They were then restored to their homes, which had become alien to them, and were at the same time compelled to live generally separate and remote from the white civilization, only the least significant features of which had ever been presented to them. In brief, their traditions were destroyed and they were given nothing valuable to take their place. It was to be expected that when John Collier was appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs by President Roosevelt he would attempt to change this policy. Having spent a number of years in efforts to ameliorate the condition of the Indians, he at least knew what he would like to do for them. And the measure of his success so far is as heartening as it is astonishing. Curiously enough, he was helped by the necessity of rigorous economy in the administration of the Indian Bureau. It cost about $400 dollars a year to keep an Indian child in a boarding-school. Mr. Collier has instituted a system of community day schools for which the cost is less than half that – in some cases a quarter of it. The boarding-schools have not been entirely done away with. But whereas they formerly took all Indian children as pupils, they now only take special classes of children – orphans without homes, children with a definitely bad home environment, children without local school facilities, and high-school pupils desiring special vocational training not offered by local schools. The number of boarding-school children in 1931 was 21,677; by 1935 it is estimated that this number Will have been reduced to 13,660, and that at the same time about 65,000 children will be attending local day schools or public schools. And in the meantime most of the objectionable features of the boarding-schools that remain operation has been modified, and attempts are being made to bring the boarding-school into contact with the Indian community as much as possible. The community day schools are, of course, the most interesting feature of Commissioner Collier's educational program. Ideally it would be preferable to establish such a program of community education – which would be offered to and participated in by adults as well as children – over a comparatively long period of time and by slow degrees. The economic stringency, however, has made haste necessary, with the result that one of the greatest problems in the new program is finding suitable teachers, either Indian or white, as fast as the schools are built and equipped. Unlike the ten- or eight-month schedule of the ordinary public-school teacher, these teachers must be on the job every month in the year. The summer is the time when they teach the parents (Continued on Page 3, Col. 1) George Crawford - Symbol By WALTER WHITE Late in the afternoon of December 16th a courtroom crowded to its utmost capacity at Leesburg, Virginia, heard the ominous knock on the door of the jury room announcing that the jury had agreed on a verdict. Into the courtroom filed twelve grim-faced men. On either side of the judge, Virginia state troopers armed with sub-machine guns, pistols, tear-gas and vomit-gas bombs took their places. The clerk of the court, E. O. Russell, read the verdict – guilt as charged in the indictment, but punishment of life imprisonment instead of the death chair . . . [[image: photograph of 5 men captioned - Walter White, Charles H. Houston, Leon A. Sansom, Edward P. Lovett and James G. Tyson]] Crawford, a penniless, poorly educated ex-convict, guilty under the law and by his own confession of going with one Charlie Johnson to rob the home of a wealthy white woman in Loudoun Country, Virginia, in the course of which robbery Mrs. Agnes Boeing Ilsley and her elderly white maid were killed by Johnson, so Crawford alleges in his confession, stands as an extraordinary symbol. To Governor John Garland Pollard and the officials of Virginia, to the press, both white and colored with one or two minor exceptions, and especially to the counsel who defended Crawford unstinted credit is due. The fate of the defendant was far transcended by the issues of far-reaching importance involved in the case which may be briefly summarized as follows: The issues raised in the extradition proceedings, on which the late Judge James A. Lowell's decision granted a writ of habeas corpus, have profoundly affected the whole question of Negroes serving on juries in Southern states. Crawford's counsel contended that a state which violated one part of the Federal Constitution by illegally barring Negroes from grand and petit juries should not be permitted to appeal through another part of the same Constitution for the return of a Negro charged with crime who had fled to another state. Though subsequently reversed by the Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Lowell focused national attention upon the exclusion of Negroes in a way which had never before been achieved. Since Judge Lowell's decision was rendered five Southern states have placed Negroes upon grand and petit juries for the first time and the concensus of opinion among enlightened Southerners is that every state which now bars Negroes, in violation of the Constitution, must speedily reform its practice. This will have a most far-reaching effect upon the administration of justice so far as Negroes are concerned. A second and equally significant development of the Crawford case is the fact that here was a Negro, guilty of a horrible double murder (the law clearly classifies as guilty one who participates in a robbery in the course of which murder occurs even though he himself did not actually commit the murder), tried in a Southern state, defended by Negro counsel and saved from the electric chair. Every person in the courtroom left it with profound respect for the ability of defense counsel headed by Charles H. Houston, dean of the Howard University Law School, Leon A. Sansom, Edward P. Lovett and James G. Tyson, all of Washington. The brilliance, militancy, fairness and dignity with which the case was handled by both the prosecution and the defense create a new high-water mark for the handling of a criminal case charged, as was this one, with all of the explosives which in the past have led to unjust conviction or lynching. Finally, credit should be given for the excellent work in the rendition proceedings by J. Weston Allen, former attorney-general of Massachusetts, and Butler R. Wilson, veteran Negro attorney of Boston. Defense counsel in the course of the motion to quash the grand jury indictment and in the motion to dismiss the petit jury panel clearly established that there are Negroes meeting all the statutory requirements for jury service in Loudoun County and that they had been illegally excluded. Both Judge McLemore and State Senator Cecil Connor of the prosecution unmistakably indicated that one of the results of the trial would be an ending of this practice. The conclusion of the Crawford case in this fashion marks one of the most distinguished victories for justice to the Negro yet won. The repercussions of the case, especially in the manner in which it was handled by defense counsel who fought tenaciously and militantly even though it was discovered on the eve of the trial that the defendant had not given his counsel all the facts, will greatly affect the administration of justice to Negroes not only in Virginia, but throughout the South –The Crisis, January If helpful service to one's fellow men be the dominant motive, then the greater the legitimate profit one makes the more will he be applauded. Criticism and resistance come when the service motive disappears from sight and the profit motive dominates all. A very large part of the revolutionary spirit now abroad in many lands would be quickly quelled could the mass of the population be made to feel quite certain that in transacting the greater business of the world the service motive comes first and the profit motive is subordinate to it. – President Nicholas Murray Butler in his annual report to the trustees of Columbia University. The First Reader For the last year or so I have been hearing about the photographs of Negroes which Miss Doris Ulmann took on a trip to a plantation in the Carolinas. It happened to be the home of Julia Peterkin, who has written with such frankness and such sympathy of the Negroes of swamp and field in her inimitable books. Later I learned that Mrs. Peterkin intended to write some descriptive paragraphs for the photographs. That seems to have been the beginning of this extraordinary book, "Roll, Jordan, Roll," which comes to us today with new tidings of Negro life on a Southern plantation and with photographs so extraordinarily real and affecting and so well printed that the book stands at once in a class by itself. Far from a collection of paragraphs describing photographs, this turns out to be a highly important contribution to the study of the Negro – written by the lady of the plantation, whose eyes are uncommonly clear and whose writings, rational and sunny and poised, are so different from those of current Southern authors. These are my glad tidings – a book to excite the interest of scholar and artist, of the lover of fine writing and the student of history and economics; a book filled with individual portraiture, sidelights on character, both eccentric and humdrum, and with sage conclusions drawn from a lifetime of observation. It is the best Christmas news I can give you. Beginning with general observations about the characteristics of Negro life on the old Southern plantations, some of it still existing in the somnolent air of a land too poor to be bothered by depressions, Mrs. Peterkin proceeds to identify the people – the foreman who watches the welfare of the flock; the house servants; the field laborers; the preacher; the fisherman; the asparagus cutters; the Negroes who pray, dance, sing, drink raw liquor brewed in stills, get in trouble with the judge and the law – a whole gallery of Gullah Negro life. "The oldest person in this part of the world is one of the poorest in this world's goods, but one of the healthiest and happiest," writes Mrs. Peterkin in describing "Uncle," who was 39 when he went to war with his white master in 1861. "Up to a few years ago he would have butted a lot of these young upstarts to death for their no-manners ways, but now he just pays them no mind, for he has learned to be 'long-patienced.'" "Uncle" came from Africa, but he respects only "bredded" folks and thinks Mr. Roosevelt is the second coming of Christ. "Black children are more dependable and capable than white children of the same age are ever expected to be. All girl children and many boy children learn to sew and cook, wash and iron, sweep and scour. Boy children are taught to ride, drive, wash and iron, sweep and scour. Good manners are important and 'unmannersable' people despised." Here are stories of worship, or marriage, of petty thieving and robbery, of anger and forgiveness, holidays and church festivals – and some of the chapters in themselves complete short stories. Here is a clear statement of the indebtedness of the Southern whites to the Negro – not only in the matter of loyal service but in influence. It is generally said that the Negro apes (Continued on Page 3, Col. 1)
