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144

THE CRISIS

went into their rooms and returned with their automatic Winchester rifles and revolvers, and opened a continual fire on those who sought to take their lives. This momentary battle was so spirited that three were killed instantly and eight or ten of the members of the mob were seriously wounded and several have died since from their wounds, and the surviving members retreated in fast order. A few days after this battle Starr and Davis gave themselves up to the officers of the law, and as popular sentiment was so much in their favor the officers refused to incarcerate them. The old saying that mobs are usually made up of cowards who are willing to take life but unwilling to give up their own is a true axiom."
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VAGARIES OF PREJUDICE.

The Clanmorgan-Collins suit in St. Louis has received much attention in the daily press, but it is sufficiently curious to be summarized here. Cora Clanmorgan married John Collins last August. In June the young husband, who is only nineteen years old, sued for annulment of the marriage on the ground that the wife had Negro blood. Though the percentage of Negro blood is very small, it appears that the Clanmorgan family known by many people not to be entirely white. The laws of Missouri forbid the marriage of whites with persons of Negro or Mongolian blood. Mr. Clanmorgan said that he had opposed the marriage of his daughter but that the young couple had eloped. The case is further complicated by the fact that there is a new-born baby.

Mrs. Collins' sister has been active in the Christian Science Church in St. Louis, where she had been accepted as white. The papers report that a meeting was held to consider the case and that it was decided not to ask Miss Clanmorgan to retire from such positions as she held. The two youngest Clanmorgan children are at white schools.

The St. Louis Republic reporter after a long description of the case remarked that "much sympathy was felt for the Collins family," though he went so far later as to observe that some persons extended a portion of that sympathy to the wife. The Clanmorgans have lived in St. Louis for over 100 years.

¶ As the direct result of the agitation of the Collins-Clansmorgan case six members of the senior class at the Christian Brothers' College notified Brother Justin, the president, that they refused to accept diplomas or participate in the commencement exercises, June 23, if a diploma was given to Albert Wilkinson, a colored boy. Brother Justin announced that Wilkinson would receive his diploma publicly, and that the others might attend or stay away, as they pleased. All the boys but one gave in. Wilkinson has been an honor student. He is very light, and some of the teachers did not know he was colored until the six boys made their protest. There was no objection to him whatever until the Clanmorgan case came up.

¶ A Denver physician's automobile ran over a colored man and injured him badly. He was taken in the car and driven to four hospitals. He was refused at all of them though he was thought to be dying. Finally the owner of the automobile took him to his own home.

¶ Application to admit a Japanese girl to the public schools caused a split in the Memphis School Board. It finally resulted in the passage of resolutions declaring that the Japanese are not of the white race, and therefore will not be permitted to share the same privileges in the public schools as white children.

¶ A correspondent signing himself "Protection" writes to the New Orleans Times-Democrat: "While escorting a lady friend to the railroad train one morning during the week past, I was brought face to face with a condition that it would seem could not exist in this Southland of ours, and yet, it was painfully apparent does exist, to the disgrace it would seem of our State legislatures of the past. I refer to the fact probably undreamed of by many of our citizens, that Negros are allowed free access to the Pullman coaches of our railroads and by payment of the regular far can occupy seats in these coaches for as long journeys as they care to take, the fare also entitling them to a berth, if the journey be at night."

"Protection" gives a lively description of the horror of the "lady friend," and appeals to the "chivalry and fearlessness" of legislators to "take up the fight for the sake of women and children, their own mothers, wives and sisters." It is a "vital point," he says.
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PERSONAL.

Theodore Cable, Harvard's colored athlete, who broke the university's record for the hammer throw on April 30, competed with twenty-two Harvard and Yale athletes in the international meet with Oxford and Cambridge in July. Cable is twenty years old, weighs 185 pounds and is 5 feet 8 1/2 inches in height. In his freshman year at Harvard he won the hammer event in the freshman meet against Yale with a throw of 117 feet. His athletic ability is not confined to the hammer, for he won places at Harvard both in the sprints and the hurdles.

ALONG THE COLOR LINE

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Last fall in the handicap games he took first place in the 220-yard low hurdles. This past winter he won second place in an indoor broad jump competition with a leap of 20 feet 7 inches. Mr. Cable is a good violinist as well as an athlete. He is partially working his way through college.

¶ Dr. Burt C. Wilder, of Cornell, the great authority in this country on the brain, has just received a handsome loving cup with the inscription: "To Professor Burt G. Wilder, from a group of colored citizens of Ithaca, N.Y., in appreciation of his services to the race and his unfailing courtesy and friendliness to the colored people of Ithaca."

Dr. Wilder said his first definite association with the Negro was as a student at Harvard under Prof. Jeffries Wyman. During the Civil War his observations of the physical and moral courage of the colored troops had convinced him that they could be not only efficient soldiers but worthy citizens, and the publication of these records will be his first duty after retirement from university work.

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MISCELLANEOUS.

¶ Vardaman, of Mississippi, can always be relied on for entertainment of a melodramatic nature. In his capacity of white man's champion he recently paraded through the streets dressed in white linen in a cart drawn by sixteen white oxen and surrounded by attendants also arrayed in white. Various fair ladies who believe that the Negro should be kept down threw white flowers at the gentleman and the populace generally had an entertaining time.
¶ Governor Blease, of South Carolina, is having history written to suit himself. It is a disputed point whether or not the Federal army fired Columbia in 1865 when the city was burned. The author of the history of South Carolina which is to be used in the public schools said there was some doubt about it, but Governor Blease said there was none in his mind and ordered the offending paragraph changed. The author of the history obligingly did as he was told and his text book has been adopted.
¶ "Chocolate" is the stage name of a colored clown in Paris who has delighted that city for twenty-seven years, while in his spare hours he has gone to hospitals and amused sick children. He is now retiring and at a meeting in his honor he will be decorated by the French government.
¶ Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy in Lincoln's cabinet, felt that he owed his life to Chester Stanton, his colored body-servant, and on his deathbed requested that the man should be buried beside him. Stanton died a few weeks ago and was duly buried in the Welles plot in Hartford, whereupon a reporter in search of a sensation sent out dispatches to the effect that the "exclusive" owners of cemetery lots objected to the internment to such an extent that they would remove the bones of their own relatives from the pernicious contact. This silly story, of course untrue, was quite widely circulated and believed. Only the New York World, among the papers that printed it, was honest enough to investigate and contradict its own dispatch.
¶ At last 250 colored children of Memphis have seen the Zoo. For four hours they were permitted to look upon the wonders of that white sanctum, the park, in which colored folk may not walk, though they have always the simple pleasure of paying taxes for it. There were "special deputized executors of the law" to see that their conduct was seemly. As nothing desperate occured, the children may go again some day.
¶ It may safely be said that the colored Georgia convict by the name of Neal has established a record for honesty. He was convicted of assault with intent to murder in 1909. His offense consisted of pointing a gun at another, and the jury recommended Neal to mercy. The judge felt that the recommendation was not justified and sentenced Neal to imprisonment on two counts, four years for one and one year for the other. By mistake the man was liberated after having served one year. He presented his case to Judge Edwards and said that he did not know what to do about it but felt he ought to serve his full time. The judge told him to go back to prison, but was so much impressed with the man's honesty that he has petitioned the Governor for a pardon saying that he himself was mistaken in not accepting the jury's recommendation to mercy.
¶ Mrs. Isabelle Worrell Ball made an address, in presenting a play to a colored social settlement in Washington, and said: "If the United States government were to pay ten cents a day to the descendants of the slaves, who tilled the soil in the South during the eighty-seven years that slavery existed in this country, it would be indebted to them more than $11,000,000,000."
¶ Life, the humorous weekly, becomes serious in speaking of several recent cases of Negro-baiting in New York. "New York," it says, "is a cosmopolitan city. It should have more cosmopolitan manners. It is quite intolerable that light-complexioned voters should regard themselves as clothes with congenital police powers for the regulation of voters whose skins are dark."