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62 THE CRISIS

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"We ask for ourselves and all Negro clerks the 'equality of opportunity,' which is the slogan of this great American government to the peoples of all the earth.
   
"The practicability of putting into operation the suggestions of this petition is a matter for your serious consideration. The injustice is patent on the slightest investigation. It is un-American, impolitic and proposed not, as the petitioners hold, for the good of the service, but to inflict an unwarranted humiliation upon a class of loyal citizens who are of a different race. We hold ourselves amenable to the authorities and we ask this authority to protect us from being harassed by clerks promulgating such petitions as this, which is being done preceding a State or national convention of clerks, some basing their candidacy for election as delegates on this petition. See Mr. Ellis' letter in March Railway Post Office.
   
"We do not understand that politics shall enter into the operation of the civil service, but it is boldly announced that the political leaders of the now controlling party be invoked to use their power to further this scheme of discrimination. See Mr. Ellis' letter of December, 1912, Railway Post Office.
   
"We ask to be allowed peaceably to labor, receiving compensation for such, that we may provide for ourselves and our families without the ever-recurrent necessity of defending ourselves against such attacks, and this energy be devoted to perfecting ourselves in our chosen labor."
   
¶ The Negroes of Louisiana have been protesting against the reduction of the tariff on sugar.
   
¶ The Oklahoma legislature has defeated a bill requiring a voter to show a receipt as evidence that his poll tax has been paid before he could be allowed to vote.
   
¶ Of 14,000 colored people in Shreveport, La., only 39 are registered voters. "At any rate," says the News Enterprise (colored), "on election day each of the thirty-nine colored men was challenged as he entered the polling place. He was told that his name was not on the pollbook and that he must go to the courthouse, get a certificate and attach it to his ballot. This was done, and when the votes were counted it was perfectly easy to inspect the thirty-nine colored votes.
   
"And yet Booker T. Washington, colored, said the voting law of Louisiana put a premium on character, property and education."
   
¶ The Gazette, of Alexandria, Va., commenting on the fact that the Republican Federal government had been first to start the disfranchisement of the Negro by disfranchising all the people of Washington, D. C., is gleefully reminiscent of the scenes in and around this city during reconstruction days. We reproduce the following paragraphs from their editorial page without change of spelling or grammar:
   
"Expenses had been paid and on the day set apart for voting in the national capitol it was difficult to secure colored help hereabouts.
   
"Many aged darkeys of the 'Bob Ridley,' 'Uncle Ned' and 'Old Black Joe' type, whose visions had never up to 1865 went beyond the farm, were voted in blocks by the political characters that ruled the capital city at that time.
   
"The Republican party soon realized that while they desired to issue crow rations to the southern people, they wanted to eliminate it from their menu. Hence the action alluded to by Mr. Dockery."
   
¶ Senator E. D. Smith, of South Dakota, has introduced a joint resolution in Congress for the repeal of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Senator La Follette's bill, providing for the submission to the nation of a constitutional amendment if desired by the people or the legislatures of at least ten States, would, if passed, pave a way for Vardaman to attempt to accomplish the national disfranchisement of the Negro.

SOCIAL UPLIFT.
   
I WANT to refer to Mayor Blankenburg's truism that a colored man who behaves himself is the equal of a white man. The twin truism is that a white man who does not behave himself is not the equal of the colored man who does.-Henry W. Wilbur, at the conference of the N. A. A. C. P.
   
¶ At Winston-Salem, N. C., the city hospital commission has completed arrangements for the erection of a hospital for colored people.
   
¶ The colored people of New York are urging Governor Sulzer to sign a bill for a Negro militia regiment which has been passed unopposed by both branches of the legislature.

ALONG THE COLOR LINE     63

¶ The New York legislature has appropriated $25,000 to celebrate the half century of emancipation.
   
¶ The sum of $10,345 has been raised by colored women of Philadelphia for a branch of the Y. W. C. A. for colored girls.
   
¶ The Pullman Company has contributed $10,000 to the erection of a colored Y. M. C. A. in Chicago.
   
¶ The National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes has been incorporated in the State of New York. Professor E. R. A. Seligman, Mrs. William H. Baldwin, Dr. Felix Adler and William G. Willcox are among the directors. Mr. E. K. Jones remains executive secretary and Dr. George E. Haynes, of Fisk University, the national organizer. The new offices of the league are at 110 West 40th Street, New York City.
   
¶ At Milwaukee, Wis., the Booker T. Washington Men's Forum has been organized under the presidency of Dr. K. D. Kammack. This society celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of emancipation on May 29 and 30. It successfully fought the marriage bill in Wisconsin. 
   
¶ The colored citizens of Jacksonville, Fla., have begun the erection of a hospital and training school for nurses.
   
¶ A woman's exchange has been established at Bethel Church, Atlanta, Ga. The purpose of the exchange is to aid women to be self-supporting by sewing, making preserves and doing such things as women alone can do. The exchange will place these products on sale and will also conduct an employment agency.
   
¶ The Wheatley Literary Club, a women's organization, has been established at Seattle, Wash.
   
¶ The new Odd Fellows building in Atlanta, Ga., has been dedicated. The building is six stories high, contains forty-two offices, six stores and six lodge rooms. The cost of erection was $110,000.
   
¶ Colonel Moriarty, who had charge of the flood relief work at Cairo, Ill., said that his greatest trouble was to get white men to work and that colored men were willing and did all they could. At Paducah, Ky., Memphis, Tenn., Dayton, O., and other places, Negroes were ready and prompt in bringing succor to the unfortunate. At Dayton seven lives were lost among the colored people, but the destruction of property was very great. 
   
¶ The American Giants, a colored baseball team of Chicago, defeated a team of United States soldiers at Portland, Ore., 7 to 0.
   
¶ A white man of Richmond, Va., calls attention to the fact that there is "absolutely no place provided by this city or State" for the care of a 17-year-old colored boy in his employ who is afflicted with tuberculosis.
   
¶ Negro railroad men have formed a fraternal protective association. The association means to guard against attacks upon colored railroad employees, such as the full-crew bills which have been recently introduced into the legislatures of several States. 
   
¶ The proposed Douglass Park for colored people in Memphis, Tenn., will not, perhaps, be purchased by the city because of protests from white people that the opening of the park would mean the too frequent use by Negroes of the car lines leading to the park.
   
¶ The Oklahoma legislature failed to pass a bill for the establishment of a reformatory for colored youth.
   
¶ Negroes of Sedalia, Mo., are building a theatre.
   
¶ Colored people at Tulsa, Okla., are trying to raise funds for a reading room.
   
¶ The legislature of Missouri is considering a bill appropriating $130,000 for an institute for incorrigible Negro girls at Tipton.
   
¶ Oberlin is a suburb of Raleigh, N. C., peopled by well-to-do colored folk.
   
¶ Muskogee, Okla., has a colored population of 10,000. Negroes own a clothing store with stock valued at $35,000, and a millinery and dry-goods store of similar proportions. There are fifty groceries, four drug stores, one jewelry shop, a bank, two insurance companies and numerous other commercial and financial enterprises.
   
¶ The United Negroes' Association is negotiating for the purchase of a farm between Wappinger's Falls and New Hamburgh, near Poughkeepsie, N. Y., to be used as a Negro orphanage.