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88    THE CRISIS 

men and women in the city, to the pastors of the various churches, to the ministers' unions, etc. As a result of the public sentiment aroused colored men are now eligible for membership in the Providence Y. M. C. A. 

Newark: 

The Newark Branch held its first meeting at the Bethany Baptist Church, October 8, with Mr. Villard and Mrs. Butler R. Wilson as speakers. A gratifying number of new members and subscribers to the CRISIS were received. The officers of this Branch are: Rev. Joseph R. Waters, President; Mr. R. W. Stewart, Secretary; Mr. John S. Pinkman, Treasurer; Dr. W. R. Granger, Chairman Executive Committee.

Kansas City:

The Kansas City Branch has gained an encouraging victory in persuading the Mayor to veto an ordinance which was railroaded through the city council of Kansas City, Mo., to prevent a colored Baptist College from locating in a white neighborhood.

Shreveport:

The Shreveport Branch which was recently organized, held a mass meeting at the C. M. E. Temple on August 28 at which Prof. William Pickens was the chief speaker. His address aroused great enthusiasm. The Branch has sent a protest to the Governor of Lousisiana asking to end the mob law in that state where several lynchings occurred within a week without a semblance of investigation.

Tacoma:

Memorial services for Samuel Coleridge-Taylor were held by the Branch at the First Congregational Church on September 27. This is one of the largest white churches in the city and was filled with a cultured white and colored audience. The memorial sermon was given by Dr. Marshall Dawson, minister of the Ethical and Unitarian Societies.

Mrs. Mabel Davis and choir gave effectively several folk songs. Mrs. Asberry in an interesting talk compared African folk music with European folk music, illustrating by piano selections from Negro melodies as transcribed by Coleridge Taylor.

The following came to us Christmas Eve from a lawless section in Louisiana near the scene of the recent lynching of two Negroes:

 "Please enclosed find $1.00 as a Xmas present to be spent in any way that will help the cause of the association. There are hundreds and hundreds of dollars spent by the poor colored people here this week for Xmas turkeys, so I will do without my turkey and spend my dollor for the good of my Race. My prayer to your national association is to think of us and help us to be a thinking people. I am thinking I would be hung if some man with the so-called power at his back could read this letter. Here at this point I stoped writing and thought over the letter and I see nothing in it but good-will to all men and hatred to non. So if my neck goes, let it go, since it goes for rite.

"I think if this world will be a good world your association is one of the ways that it will be made better. You can't make the Negro good without making his surrounding good. I am classed as an ignorant man. I have never gone to school but one week in my life, but I can see where the national association is a blessing to the world. I haven't a dollar that is too good for this cause, in fact I haven't but fifty cents, but I mean that I can't ern a dillor that is too good for this cause."

DEAR SIR:

I read with much interest in the December number of THE CRISIS a letter to you, graphically describing the terrors of Negro-haunted city streets to unprotected womanhood (white). This frightful condition, which has been mentioned once or twice before in discussing the race problem, is always cited concerning some city conveniently distant from the wicked opponent.

I, too, live in Washington and am out almost every night till ten or twelve. I usually come home alone, and frequently walk. My walk takes me through both a well-to-do and a poor colored section. one the innumerable occasions during the past six years, when I have so rashly risked being the "next victim," I have never once been molested, nor have I even seen anything which could frighten the most timid.

If the writer of that letter has an address less vague than Washington I would be glad if you would forward this letter to her.

Sincerly your,
ANOTHER WASHINGTON WOMAN.
 


THE DEBTOR-A Story
BY MAYNARD HOLBROOK JACKSON

IT was Christmas time. "At last!"-the words came in a sudden burst of joy and then in a subdued whisper-"At last!" And Jean Lesage covered his wrinkled, old face with his huge, rough hands and bowed where he was, hidden by the tall cane,-bowed to thank the Virgin for this answer to a half century of prayers ; wept with long, deep sobs; then laughed.

He was unusual picture-this old man-tall, still straight, his great head covered with a thick shock of hair as white as the neighboring field of cotton, his wrinkled, brown face lighted by a pair of black eyes that bespoke suffering and perseverance,-even victory. Now his face shown with a deep-souled happiness that overshadowed his proverbial good nature. His outward characteristics only bespoke the wonderful beauty of the man's soul, tried and proven by the white heat of slavery and the insidious institution of peonage. The world in its vast expanse would give up very few Jeans who have the spirit of Christianity so truly, so deeply developed that they could have looked upon their tormentors with less than hatred-active, vindictive, hatred.

Jean had decided to disgrace his slave fathers, nay more,-to sell his soul, for his chance had come to get the ever-elusive gold. Father Pierre carried a bag in his cape pocket, for had he not given Jean's sick child a few cents from it that very morning? And now Jean had deliberately planned to steal the charity bag, to rob the Lord. After all, none seemed to care for his troubles and to sympathize with him-unless it were Barbette and the "Mother Mary." So it was that honest, old Jean freely doomed himself to perdition, to the unpardonable sin, for a paltry bit of gold. The priest would come that night to see the sick child, Marie; then he would get the bag; he could feel it in his hands already, even stood smilingly weighing it, feeling the golden pieces.

It had not be without effort that old Jean had come to his decision. He had carefully weighed the two issues-weighed them with great precaution, and he had taken his choice. Nor was it because Hell was not a reality to him; he believed most vividly in the sea of fire and brimestone and dreaded most definitely the life of everlasting punishment. In fact, Jean had always planned to spend eternity in the land of golden streets and great white thrones and had long been an ardent devotee of the church. The decision had been deliberate. The choice included the damnation of his soul as well as the bag; Jean knew it and chose the bag unflinchingly.

The life of Jean Lesage had been one of awful struggle against debt; not the sort of debt that causes business worry out in the great, open world or takes away a man's houses and lands; but debt that reaches out cold hands for the body of its victim, puts chains of iron upon him and, with him imprisoned by fens and bayous, drives him to work with a cudgel; debt that enslaves his wife and prostitutes his daughters. If Jean had been out in the big world, he would have done some wonderful thing but, as it was, he had struggled through all his life against one probelm-the fact that he was a debtor.

Old Jean was a Creole, a Negro; his mother was a slave of pure African descent; his father was her French master. He and his mother had been sold when the father found another favorite and when freedom came they were upon the Lesage plantation, far down into the rich Mississippi delta, which smiled with almost extravagant bounty.

Probably the most vivid memory of Jean's life was the time, a few years after the war, when his mother died and left him, a youth of sixteen summers, to face the world and win from it a paltry existence. She had so often called him at twilight, the tasks all finished, the shadows playing through the wisteria vines that covered the cabin porch and then falling across the uplifted face of the eager boy, making strange lights come and go in his longing eyes, and there told him the story of their existence, always finishing: "Jean, boy, you aint no slave;" and he could not forget it. Yet he had often asked himself wherein a man profited by freedom if he were a slave to debt?

When the glad word came to the Lesage place, a year after the Emancipation Pro-