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NEW NEGRO OPINION NEW NEGRO OPINION OFFICIAL ORGAN OF NEW NEGRO ALLIANCE 2001 Eleventh Street, Northwest Phone: Decatur 4237 EDITORIAL STAFF FRANKLIN THORNE - Editor WILLIAM H. HASTIE - Associate Editor ISADORE WILLIAMS - Associate Editor DUTTON FERGUSON - Associate Editor BERTHA McNEIL - Associate Editor HOWARD FITZHUGH - Business Manager RUDOLPH RENFROW - Advertising Manager MELVIN BARKER - Circulation Manager THE FIRST LADY IN THE CARIBBEES To some of the more sophisticated Americans Mrs. Roosevelt's current trip to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico may just be another junket, a trip to the land of eternal summer conveniently arranged int he middle of the worst winter we have known for many years; but to the islanders themselves it must mean a great deal more. Her coming will be understood by them as a promise that the step children of Uncle Sam are at last to receive the consideration from their government and our government which has been denied them. Mrs. Roosevelt has proved in other matters that when she sees a situation that needs correcting, she does not rest until she has placed the full force of her personality and position into the struggle to right the wrong. The abject poverty and economic prostration of these islands must have made a deep impression upon the socially minded First Lady. Her influence can be of greatest value in correcting them. It seems not too optimistic a prophecy that the islands will not be disappointed. A New Deal across the Caribbees has lots of possibilities. The persons who would put monkey wrenches in the works are less numerous and less powerful than within the United States proper. We are admittedly passing through a period of social and economic experimentation, not by choice but by necessity. In our West Indian possessions is to be found the perfect laboratory for the establishment of a planned social and economic order. ON SUCKERS The sucker has been shown a new way to spend his money. The device is a machine like a steamshovel, enclosed in a glass case. the sucker inserts a nickle and the works start. The beam of the machine moved downward over an inviting array of watches, cigarette lighters, vanities, etc. If the jaws at the end of the beam pick up one of these trinkets, the catch belongs to the sucker. But this happens very, very rarely. The prizes are partly buried in a pile of candy and there is little chance of their being pulled out. In one U Street establishment it is said that two such machines do a business of $100 daily. Who said depression? - the same sucker when he was asked to spend his money for some worthwhile cause. But I have yet to hear a sucker say he can't afford a sucker game because of the depression or any other cause. It is just the nature of the animal to take a beating. Probably there is nothing that can be done about it. The late lamented prohibition experiment has taught us that laws are not effective in such cases. Up in New York they have a scheme that sounds pretty good. A grand lottery is being planned, under government supervision. Of course, it is not called a lottery. All those who like to take chances may come up, pay their money and get a ticket. After a few million dollars are in the till, the lucky numbers will be drawn. The winners will become officers of a big charitable corporation, and will receive fat salaries. The money of the non-winners will be used by the corporation to relieve distress in the city of New York. Don't rush folks, there will be enough changes for everyone, and the sucker line starts on the right. We will all be there. Alliance Secures Another Job Reuben Scarborough, of 224 Hollywood Place, Northeast, a member of the New Negro Alliance, has been appointed as a clerk in a chain store at Dean Avenue and Forty-eighth Street. Mrs. Scarborough is a graduate of Armstrong Technical High School, and has shown a particular fitness and aptitude for business. This marks the first job secured by the Alliance in the Deanwood section, but the organization is promising its members in that area more results to follow shortly. A new branch of the New Negro Alliance was recently projected in the organization of a group interested citizens at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Spiller, of Twenty-third Place, Kingman Park. The group plans to organize a separate district and initiate some Alliance programs in the Kingman Park area. A mass meeting is scheduled for the near future. Watch for the date. Persons and Affairs... B William H. Hastie I don't know when I have been so enthusiastic about a group of athletes as I am forced to be about the colored freshmen who have been the bright lights of the indoor track season which has just ended. It has been an unfortunate fact that very few of our colored athletes in the years past have had training and capable of instruction in their specialties during high school. If a boy could run or jump, or handle a basketball, or kick a football he just went along more or less like Topsy, developing his native talent, but without that kind of instruction which would cure his faults before they became too much a part of him. When the athlete reached his last year in college the chances are that he would just be learning the technique of his particular sport or event. It is not just coincidence that there have been no great Negro pole vaulters, or swimmers, or tennis players. These sports require a maximum of form in addition to native ability. Very few of our young boys have had any chance to learn that form. But with more skilled coaching in high schools, particularly in the large cities throughout the land, our boys are going to college more skilled in athletics than ever before. I shall mention only four youngsters who have made their mark in the indoor track season, but I challenge anyone to point to any past season which has produced such a freshman crop. Out on the west coast there is Cornelius Johnson. You will remember him as the Los Angeles high school boy who at the last Olympic games tied for first in the high jump. By the way, I am told that the most spontaneous ovation of the entire Olympic games came when this 16-year-old boy cleared the bar at 6 ft. 6 in. to equal the best performance of the day. Coaches who have seen Johnson say that he has more natural ability than any jumper who ever lived. How high will he go, as he gets his full physical development and perfects his form, no one will prophecy. The sensation of the midwest is Jesse Owens of Ohio State. Last year he established himself as the greatest school boy sprinter and broadjumper ever wear a spiked shoe. His greatest feat of the winter season was a record-breaking broad jump of 25 ft. 3 3-4in. which will go into the books as a world's record indoors, taking the place of the mark established by DeHart Hubbard in his day of greatness. there is another Pollard at Brown, Fritz, Jr. It will be too much, perhaps, to expect him to romp through Yale and Harvard football teams the way the peerless Pollard of almost twenty years ago did, but from all reports, he is a first-class football player and as a freshman this winter he has been a sensation over the hurdles, as his record as a high school boy in Chicago indicated he would be. He will be beaten over the high sticks very few times in the next three years. At Columbia is a freshman named Ben Johnson who promises to be the class of Eastern sprinters for the next few seasons. In the A.A.U. championship meet a couple of weeks ago he was at Metcalfe's shoulder when the big boy who is champion of them all equalled the world's record for the 60-yd. dash. It is of the interest that Owens was third in this race and the white intercollegiate champion, a teammate of Johnson's by the way, was fourth. Watch Johnson for the next four years. If he enters the special sprint race at the Penn Relays next month, he ought to win it, and from then on I just can't see any sprinter in training in the east beating him. Has such a quartet ever come up from high school in one year? Perhaps it would be unkind to suggest that such performers are always products of unsegregated schools where the best of training, equipment and competition is to be had. THE PROGRAM OF THE NEW NEGRO ALLIANCE To improve the economic and civic status of the Negro through: 1. The securing of positions which will increase the earning capacity of our group. 2. The securing of opportunities for advancement and promotion in positions secured. 3. The uniting of the purchasing power of the Colored people to be used as a lever in securing economic advantages. 4. The creation of bigger and better Negro business through increased earning power of Negroes, through a better business outlook resulting from contact and experience with successful businesses of the other group, and through the stimulation of businesses now run by Negroes to higher levels of efficiency and service. 5. The concentrated support of all businesses which employ Negroes or in which Negro capital is invested. 6. Research and investigation which will discover and thoroughly analyze the possibilities for Negro Business and Negro labor in new fields. DePriest Gets Nearly Fifty Signatures In his determined fight to bring the barring of colored citizens from the House restaurant, to the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressman Oscar DePriest, of Illinois, immediately began securing signatures of members of the Lower House to "investigate by what rights the Chairman of the House Accounts Committee can discriminate against colored American citizens in the House restaurant." Early this week, it was reported from the office of Representatives DePriest that nearly fifty signatures had been attached to the petition to bring the matter before the House in session for a "show down" vote. According to the rules of the House, 145 congressional signatures are required to bring such business to the floor of the House for a vote. The DePriest resolution had been previously presented to a House committee. With the alleged "pigeon-holeing" of the matter, after the required thirty days for consideration, Mr. DePriest sought the signatures. PETITION SIGNED TO REINSTATE RELIEF SWINDLER (Continued from page 3) diversion of property of the United States is punishable by a fine of $5,000 to $10,000 for imprisonment from five to ten years or both. Investigations by the Emergency Relief, following Mrs. Barnes complaint, showed her charges of short-weight by Keyser to be true. The woman's grocery slip called for four pounds of cheese. The former store manager gave her four half-pound packages of the food. Like amount was given an Emergency Relief officer, who during the investigation, appeared with grocery slips calling for the same amount of food. Oppose Use of "Nigger" in Time Magazine On Tuesday of this week, a member of the editorial board of THE OPINION, official organ of the New Negro Alliance, sent the following letter objecting to the use of the term "nigger" in the current issue of Time, a weekly magazine: Mr. Henry R. Luce, Editor, Time, The Weekly Magazine, 350 East 22nd Street, Chicago, Ill. DEAR SIR: Time for March 12, 1934, page 11, National Affairs department, carries and alleged Associated Press "cover" of the conversation which Farm-Mortage-Postponed Sylvester Harris, colored, Columbus, Miss., farmer, was supposed to have had over the White House telephone with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. I seriously doubt that during the conversation Mr. Harris referred to himself as "a nigger down here in Mississippi." Further, as a journalist of some experience, I know the tendency on the part of pressmen to give traditional local color and insulting colloqualisms to whatever human interest story they build around poor, half-educated colored American citizens. The national edition of The Pittsburgh Courier, a leading colored newspaper, for March 10, 1934, says in part: "in talking to the President, Harris said he did not refer to himself as a 'nigger farmer in Mississippi,' as the Associated Press misquoted him." On page 30 of the same issue of Time, "Stepin' Fetchit," a colored comedian appearing in "Carolina," was described in your magazine as a "cornfield nigger" dressed up as a butler. Many of your hundreds of thousands of readers of Time, both white and colored, have regarded the clean, terse and (Continued on page 4)
