Along the Color Line

POLITICAL.

Objections to the proposed appointment of William R. Lewis, a Negro attorney of Boston, as an assistant attorney-general are being presented to Attorney-General Wickersham. President Taft’s intention to appoint Lewis was learned semi-officially at the White House several weeks ago. Booker T. Washington has called upon Mr. Wickersham to urge his approval of the appointment, and Speaker Cannon has opposed it.

President Taft said in his message: “I renew my recommendation that the claims of the depositors in the Freedman’s Bank be recognized and paid by the passage of the pending bill on that subject. I also renew my recommendation that steps be taken looking to the holding of a Negro exposition in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the issuing by Mr. Lincoln of the Emancipation Proclamation.”

There is only one feature of the apportionment matter which is apt to precipitate trouble, and that is the proposal to reduce the representation of the Southern States which have deprived a part of their population of the right of suffrage. Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and other Commonwealths below the Mason and Dixon line have imposed restrictions upon the Negroes which make it impossible for them to vote at any election.—Denver Times.

THE COURTS.

In Richmond, Va., Judge Goff, in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, decided that no deed conveying real estate could legally preclude the subsequent conveyance of any part of that real estate to persons of African descent. He held that any provision or clause providing that real estate shall not be acquired by Negroes is invalid and void, and that no such provision can be put into a deed. The case was argued for the Negroes by George J. Hooper and William L. Royall. A. O. Boschen argued for the other side. The decision of Judge Goff will be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. It is attracting wide attention and much comment among members of the local bar. The case was that of the People’s Pleasure Park vs. Worsham.

Having been defeated in the Supreme Court of New York, and that defeat having been affirmed by the Appellate Division, the colored Order of Elks has filed an appeal to the Court of Appeals and has filed a bond of the National Surety Company to cover the payment of any costs that may be awarded against it. The colored order was enjoined from using the name or the emblem of the white Order of Elks.

The verdict of $1,000 awarded George W. Griffin, a Pullman car porter, against Daniel L. Brady, brother of “Diamond Jim” Brady, was affirmed by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. Griffin was arrested by Brady on a charge of theft, and after proving his innocence sued his accuser.

Joseph Atwater, an Oklahoma Negro, filed in the Supreme Court of the United States at Washington his appeal from the decision of the Oklahoma courts which had refused to enjoin election officials in Oklahoma City from denying him the right to vote on Nov. 8th. The petition for injunction was based on the claim that the “grandfather clause” placed in the Oklahoma constitution by amendment was invalid, because it would deny the right to vote to a large number of Negroes in the State entirely on account of color or previous condition of servitude.

SOCIAL UPLIFT.

In New Orleans during the past year several drug stores have been opened, a Business League organized, the Pythian Temple finished, five churches erected and 400 teachers have attended summer normal schools.

Dr. Cyrus Townsend Brady, by a startling paper read before the Ministers’ Alliance at a meeting at the Y. M. C. A., awakened the ministers into a realization of the Negro problem, and for the first time in the history of Kansas City a movement was organized by the ministers to investigate and endeavor to better the condition of the blacks.

The highest average that has been made on the punching machine in the Census Office was attained by Miss Eva B. Price, a colored girl, during the last two weeks in October. The work on these machines is done on the piece basis, and during this period Miss Price earned $88. The highest up to this time that had been paid any clerk on this work during any two weeks was $85. There are about 500 clerks working on the punching machines, and it is 6considered very high for a clerk to punch as many as 3,000 cards in one day. Miss Price’s highest mark for one day was 4,200 cards. She accomplished this unusual average during the regular seven-hour day, and has never worked on extra time.

In Philadelphia prominent churchmen of several denominations participated in a conference on the American Negro question, held in the Central Young Men’s Christian Association, 1421 Arch Street. Bishop Mackay-Smith presided, and the speakers included such leaders in denominational affairs as the Rev. Dr. Frank P. Parkin, district superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church; the Rev. Dr. A. J. Rowland, secretary of the American Baptist Publication Society; the Rev. Dr. Edwin Heyl Delk, of St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church; the Rev. Edwin F. Randolph, of Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church; B. F. Lee, Jr., of the Armstrong Association, and James S. Stemons.

With the exception of the Bishop, these ministers and laymen are associated in the Association for Equalizing Industrial Opportunities, the purpose of which is to secure fair play for the Negro wage earner in the industrial world.

In Cincinnati the last of the $2,000 needed to start an institution for colored women similar to the Y. W. C. A. has been received by Miss Elma C. Leach, of the Elizabeth Gamble Deaconess Association, and the work will be prosecuted at once. The home will be opened on West Sixth Street, near Mound. Temporary quarters will there be provided for colored girls coming into the city for work and for girls who are found to be living in undesirable environments. A nursery will be established and theoretical nursing taught. Lectures will also be given.

In a report the State Inspector of Asylums of Kentucky says that the buildings in which the Negro patients at the Eastern Kentucky Asylum are confined are a disgrace to the State. One is a cottage with basement and one story above. This building, he states, is in a very dangerous condition, likely to collapse at any time. It is simply held up with props put under it from time to time, and should a heavy wind strike it, it probably would collapse. In this building there are forty-two colored female patients. In the other colored ward building, which has a basement and two stories, the conditions are equally as bad. Both male and female patients are confined in this building, but are kept separate and distinct. The female capacity is thirty-two—there are forty-one patients; the male capacity is seventy—there are eighty-eight patients. So crowded is the building that a great number are compelled to sleep in the basement, which is very dark and damp and in rainy weather water collects therein. The inspector states that neither the Board of Control nor the officers of this institution are to blame, for they are doing everything in their power to avert a disaster.

COLORED COLLEGES.

Howard University at Washington, D. C., has this year 1,350 students. The college students number 347, of whom 167 are freshmen. Requirements have been raised both for admission to the college and medical school. The faculties include 110 professors, instructors and officers. The endowment amounts to $281,000. The medical school has received $55,000 in cash for tuition fees during the last two years. A new Carnegie library and hall of applied science have recently been added to the plant, and also a steam-heating plant.

Lincoln University, Chester County, Pa., has 136 students in the college and 50 in the theological seminary; all of these are taught by twelve professors and three instructors. The grounds and buildings are worth $250,000, and the endowment is a little over $600,000. Lately an electric plant has been added, and a new pipe organ.

Virginia Union University has 35 students in the college and 30 in the theological department, 120 in the academy and 40 in the grades. There are sixteen instructors. A special attempt is being made to get a new dormitory.

Wilberforce University has issued a statement which says:

“Though our existence was threatened in the past by poverty, war and fire, yet we have passed from a school with 52 acres of land, one building, a few small cottages, a primary department of instruction, two teachers and a handful of students, to three large united schools in operation to-day, aside from the military department. These are the college, the theological, and the normal and industrial schools, instructing in the following courses of study: Classical, scientific, academic, theological, music, English preparatory, military, art, business, sewing, carpentry, printing, cooking, shoemaking, blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, brickmaking and bricklaying, plumbing, tailoring, and applied mechanics and millinery. It has 350 acres of the best land in Ohio. It has now ten brick buildings, including four large halls, a $60,000 trades building, and a library costing $18,000, the gift of Mr. Andrew Carnegie. The value of the entire plant, with equipment, is quite $350,000. There are 32 teachers and an average of 400 students, and we could have over one thousand if we had accommodations for them.”

Mr. W. A. Joiner, formerly of Howard University, is superintendent of the State Department at Wilberforce.

7Atlanta University has 400 students enrolled. Fifty of these are in the college course, with 30 teachers and officers. There are 653 normal and college graduates. The plant consists of seven brick buildings, including a library worth about $300,000; the endowment is $75,000, and a special effort is being made to raise $60,000 this year.

Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C., has over 500 students enrolled, and applicants have been turned away. There are preparatory, normal and college departments, and classes in theology, medicine and law. Attention is also given to music and industries. The Leonard medical building has been enlarged and a hospital is being built; shower baths have been put into the gymnasium and other buildings enlarged. President Meserve is just completing his seventeenth year of service.

The Georgia State Industrial College is near Savannah, Ga. It has 86 acres and 468 students. The school curriculum includes literary and industrial work. Each student has to take a trade along with his other studies. The school depends entirely upon income from the Landscript and Morrill funds. Among its outside activities are farmers’ conferences and an annual State fair.

EDUCATION.

In South Carolina Governor-elect Cole L. Bleaze is opposed to the division of the educational fund of the State of South Carolina between schools for the Negroes and the white children. It became known lately that the future Governor is convinced that it would be good for the State if the educational fund is divided so that taxes paid by whites for educational purposes go for the education of white children, and that those paid by blacks be used for the education of Negroes.

“I am firmly convinced, after the most careful thought and study,” said Colonel Bleaze to-day, “that the Almighty created the Negro to be a hewer of wood and drawer of water. I also believe that the greatest mistake the white race has ever made was in attempting to educate the free Negro.”

The first report of the Louisiana Department of Education for the year ending July 1, 1910, shows that the total amount spent for the maintenance of the public schools by the State was $4,936,300.64. Of this amount colored teachers received in salaries $202,251.13, while white teachers received $2,404,062.54. There are 5,001 white teachers employed and 1,285 colored teachers. White male teachers received an average monthly salary of $75.29, and white female teachers received an average monthly salary of $50.80. The average monthly salary of colored male teachers was only $34.25, and of colored female teachers $28.67. The average length of session of colored elementary schools is 4.6 months. The average lengths of session of white elementary and high schools is 8.23 months. There are 9,771 whites enrolled in the high schools. No figures are given for colored students enrolled in high schools. There are 54,637 colored children attending elementary schools, and 128,022 white children; 75.9 per cent. of white educable children are enrolled, and only 45.3 per cent. of the colored children. The average monthly cost of each child based on average attendance, white $2.90, colored $1.21.

The colored people of Plateau have the credit of being the leading Negro settlement in Mobile County, Alabama, in respect to raising money to help educate their children. The patrons of the school have raised over $180 for their school this year, $144 of this money being raised Thanksgiving Day. They are buying a beautiful site for a high school at a cost of $900. Over $600 of this money has been raised, and they are struggling to finish it this present school term.

That a systematic and organized crusade on idleness among members of the colored race is to be continued was indicated at the meeting of the Texas Negro Law and Order League at Houston, Texas. In a forceful address calling the attention of the members of the league to many vital questions affecting the welfare of the race President John M. Atkins stated that the time was ripe for sending literature over the country urging all Negro parents to look to the moral training of their boys.

For the purpose of urging every colored resident of New Orleans to contribute $1 per annum to be used in educating Negro children, a poll tax association among the colored people has been formed. A meeting was held Wednesday night and a citywide campaign with this object in view was planned. Circulars will be printed, stating the reasons for the movement, and the leaders of every Negro organization in the city will be asked to prevail upon his respective membership to see that they pay their poll tax.

Strong addresses were delivered before the Mississippi Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church by Professor D. C. Potts, president of the Mississippi Industrial College, and Dr. F. M. Williams of the North Mississippi Conference. Professor Potts gave a detailed report of the work done at the institution and declared that the enrollment at this time of the year far exceeds that of any previous year. He stated that the property was conservatively valued at $150,000 and congratulated the Negroes of Mississippi upon giving so much for the education of their own children.

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THE CHURCH.

There are now five Negro priests in the Catholic Church in the United States; three are in the Order of St. Joseph, one is a member of the Holy Ghost order, and the fifth is attached to Archbishop Ireland’s diocese in St. Paul, Minn.

On Sunday afternoon, October 30, the societies of the Holy Name of the Roman Catholic Church made a big demonstration in Washington, D. C. One feature of it was the parade, with several thousand in line, including delegations from Baltimore and other nearby places. There were many colored men in line, but there was no semblance of “jim crowing.” Each marched with his own parish members of whatever color. There was a full share of colored mounted marshals and two of the six bands were colored, but the colored bands were not leading colored contingents.

This was in striking contrast to the action of the local committee of the World’s Sunday School Congress here last May, which barred the few colored delegates from the parade altogether, while in other places they were segregated as far as possible.

Two thousand Negro Baptists have been meeting in Little Rock, Ark.

The M. E. Conference at Nacogdoches, Texas, opened by singing “And are we yet alive!”

ECONOMIC.

During the last few days Negroes, generally known as “freedmen” from the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, have paid over $50,000 to the commissioner to the five tribes of Indians at Muskogee for land. The “freedmen” were allowed to select enough land to bring their allotments up to forty acres, paying for it the appraised value of the land. This appraisement was made by the government several years ago, and is about one-fourth of the actual cash value of the land now. The Negroes were given this preferential right to buy by a special act of Congress and their right expired December 1, which caused the rush.

A colored church in Atlanta has opened a labor exchange.

A number of Omaha colored men have incorporated the International Railroad Safety Pipe Coupling Company. It will manufacture the Harris coupling for cars. This aims at enabling coupling of steam air brake and emergency pipes without compelling a man to go under the cars and risk being crushed. The appliance is made to go under the Janney coupler. A. H. Harris of Denver is the inventor, and an Omaha foundry is making the castings for railways to try out.

Attorney-General Foy of the Province of Ontario, Canada, has included the name of Delos R. Davis in a new list of king’s counsels for that province. Mr. Davis is a colored barrister before the Amherstburg bar of long standing, and will do honor to his new title of “K. C.”

It required 55,000 enumerators to take the census; of these 1,605 were Negroes, and 1,295 of these Negroes were in the Southern States. Secretary Nagel said, a few days ago, that he had not heard a single complaint against them. Ten years ago there were no Negroes at all taking census in South Carolina, but this year 131 colored were employed.

ART.

The playing of Miss Helen Hagan at the concert of the Second Company, Governor’s Foot Guard Band, has been the subject of much enthusiastic comment during the past week. Many of the best musicians of New Haven were present, and their opinions constitute for Miss Hagan a “judgment of her peers.” Miss Hagan is a “prize student” of the Yale department of music and has been heard several times in concert work accompanied by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Her playing has always brought down the house. On the occasion of the Foot Guard concert she appeared twice upon the program in solos by Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Schumann and MacDowell, and responded to vehement demands for encores with compositions by Grieg and Mosznowski.

Although Miss Hagan is not yet twenty years of age and was graduated from the New Haven High School only last June, she has gone a long way up on the road toward being a successful concert artist.—New Haven Register.

William E. Scott has returned to Indianapolis from Paris, where he went nearly two years ago to continue his art work. He was born and reared in Indianapolis. He began his art studies under Otto Stark, while a student at the Manual Training High School. After graduating he became assistant teacher of art in the high school, which position he held a year and a half. He entered the Chicago Art Institute in 1904, won some cash scholarships and became proficient as a mural artist. During his last year’s attendance at the institute he did the mural decorations for five of the public school buildings of Chicago. For a short time after graduating from the institute he was engaged in special work in illustration, after which he went to Paris and studied under P. Marcel Beareneau and later under H. O. Tanner. He exhibited three paintings last August in a Paris salon, and traveled over England, Holland and Belgium before returning here.

Both of the persons mentioned above are colored.

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