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1955  THE NEGROES AMONG US  105

for life came ragtime and swing. Scores of white composers, from Stephen Foster to Dvorak, have freely acknowledged their melodic indebtedness to the Negro.

From Memphis W. C. Handy gave the world "St. Louis Blues," "Beale Street Blues" and many other great songs. In growing numbers through the years came such names as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Bill Robinson, Cab Calloway; and then the gifted favorites of today's boby soxers, Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey, Eartha Kitt, Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine. To the list must be added the actor-singers Ethel Waters, Todd Duncan and Rex Ingram, the dancer Katherine Dunham and countless others. Last year New York's Metropolitan opened its stage door for the first time to a Negro - the contralto Marian Anderson.

From the 1920's on, an increasing number of Negro writers have gained fame - Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, to name a few. The most widely read Negro of all time is, of course, Frank Yerby, whose Foxes of Harrow and other historical romances have sold more than 11 million copies.

In the field of sports the Negro has given us many champions. Outstanding Negro boxers in recent years have been Ray Robinson, Archie Moore, Jersey Joe Walcott and, greatest of them all, Joe Louis. In 1936, to Hitler's immense aggravation, track star Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Olympic Games in Berlin. In 1945 Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson for Brooklyn, making him the first Negro to break into major-league baseball. Today there are 23 Negro regulars in the leagues.

With the vote now restored to so many of them, Southern Negroes, like their Northern brothers, have been playing an increasing role in public affairs. Negroes have been elected, usually by more white than Negro votes, to city councils in such towns as Winston-Salem, Greensboro and Fayetteville, N. C.; Louisville, Ky.; Nashville, Tenn.; and Richmond, Va. They serve on elected Boards of Education in Knoxville and Raleigh. Across the nation some 40 Negroes serve in the legislatures of 16 states. Three are members of congress. Hulan E. Jack is president of New York City's Borough of Manhattan. Three are judges of the federal bench, and there are well over a score in the state and municipal judiciary.

Of all Negroes in public service today, the most distinguished, undoubtedly, is Ralph Bunch, Nobel Peace Prize winner, president of the American Political Science Association, long a high State Department officer and, today, Under Secretary of the United Nations.

For more than three and a half years the horror, disgrace and inhumanity of lynching have been absent from our land. And in the field of civil rights the most far-