California Eagle from Los Angeles, California • 4

STjC4 CltfM HAM Bfc ITS WAY ou 4 The California Eagle Thursday, October 15, 1959 BBautitlleaixe DBreandl alt ft aaL By Lester B. Granger orma Loren Miller Publisher The California Eagle stands for complete Integration of Negroes Into every phase of American life through the democratic processes. We favor: '1. FEPC on local, state and national levels. i 2.

Decent housing for all Americans. 3. Representation in Government. 4. Adequate old age pensions and social security.

5. Collective bargaining rights for all workmen 6. Development and encouragement' of Negro business. We oppose: 1. Jim Crow in all forms.

2. Communists and all other enemies of democracy. Published Every Thursday for Over 79 Years. 2101 West Vernon, -Corner of Van Ness AXminster 5-3135 07, Shtporiani fews paper American Legion Commander Has been directed to order end of discrimination by the 40 8 News. Item Jeff Student Planners Say Bess Loren Miller Says His On Goldwyn Porgy SAY IT ISNT SO! was the plea addressed to me the other day by a loyal Urban League member who had read Ted Poston's "leak of the de-cision of the trus tees of the National Urban Le a-gue to go through with the decision to present George withf the Leagues Equal Opportunity Award for 1959.

I had no words of comfort for her regarding the fact of the derision, because it had been made. But when I gave her the reasons compelling my boards decision, she went away convinced that it was the right one. But that didn't remove her feeling that the League was in for one whale of a lacing for sticking to its guns, principal or no principal. SHE DIDN'T HAVE TO WARN ME OF THAT. for.

I and every board member who took part in the. two-hour discussion knew that the farts motivating the board's decision would take a long time in becoming known to' the general public that is interested in the League. And some of that public still would be angry and unhappy even after the fact should be known -for this is the nature of public opinion when a group of people have been pushed around until they are mad enough to pop wide open. -MY BOARD'S DECISION WAS BASED ON TWO REASONS. both of them adding up to a matter or moral principal and an organization like mine that quits acting on, a basis of moral principal might as well go out of business, for it will be forced to do so in the long run anyhow.

Here were the two reasons: the Meany record oyer the past half-dozen years has been one of consistent, strong, leadership in the struggle to elim-inate racial discrimination within the lahor movement. He has irritated many people who feel that he should throw his weight around more; he has even more deeplysingered many who defend Jim Crow and all other aspects of racial discrimination and have threatened to secede from the labor movement if Meany doesnt lay off. George Meany has said to the racist faction in ju.tt so many words, publicly quoted on one occasion, Go to To the impatient actionists he has insisted that he knew what "he was doing, that gains were being rapidly made and that a brasher, tougher line would mean slow-up, not speed-up of the integration movement. Argue with this point of view if you like, the fact remains that the president of the AFL-CIO has received thousands and thou sands of letters from Jim Crow minded whites protesting against the moves toward elimination of all racial segregation. And every answer has been sent by Meany, telling his critics that theyd take it and like it.

THE OTHER REASON FOR MY BOARD'S DECISION was that when the actual transcript of the Meany-Randolph debate was examined, several days after the convention, it was very clear that what made a hundred Negro newspapers angry was not what Meany said, in its whole context, but what the daily press reported of what he said. Actually, as A. Phillip Randolph said to me and repeated in a radio interview, the difference between the two was a mat-ter of strategy, not. of principle. And Meany was opposing racial segregation in unions, not defending it as the press stories made it seem he was.

PHIL RANDOLPH DECLARED HIS CONFIDENCE WAS IN NOWISE SHAKEN in Meanvs courage or integrity in the fight against racial discrimination. Nor was he worried about the profanity used when Meanv challenged his right to speak for all the Negro union members in America." He laughed, "There was nothing racial in that. Everybody who knows knows that when he's needled he- blows off and I was needling him pretty hard. But after the flurry was over, we sat down like two friends and talked about our differences in approach; Ve both knew there was no difference in our convictions or obiectives." BUT AS I SAID TO OUR LOYAL URBAN LEAGUE MEMBER, that doesn't help us very much lust now. Bv the time that the real facts get around to most of those who are excited about what thpy have read or heard.

the League leaders will have been called everything but children of God and we know it. But what do you do wtypn a moral commitment, is involved? Do you run away from public criticism. or try to inform public opinion? And if you run. when do you stop running? And where can you hide? My board studied the record of the convention do- ate. and was convinced taht.

impoliteness or not sound or unsound defense of strategy with which many of the board disagreed Meany was still the same man with the same record who had been voted the Urban League Award many weeks ago. He still had the confidence of an overwhelming majority of the board. There was our moral principal, and I was and still am proud that my board. did not shirk it. Because when you run from criticism and thereby leave your moral principal, you'll find that you have run fom yourself the best part of yourself.

The community owes a vote of thanks to the Mens Club of Wil-shire Boulevard Temple, to Principal Sam Hammerman of Jefferson High School and to Opal Jones of Avalon Community Center for a pioneer experiment they will sponsor next week end at Camp Hess Kramer. Fifty Jefferson students, selected by students themselves, will repair to the Camp to consider their own problems and come up with some answers to the questions that, bother them. It seems to us that the people involved are tackling the so-called youth problem in the right mariner. Theyre letting the youngsters take a hand in planning for themselves. Many well intentioned efforts misfire because adults sit down and 'come up Avith cut and dried solutions which solve nothing.

Jefferson High is a school with a proud tradition in our city. Many of our leading citizens went there and graduated from it and were satisfied that the students who attend Jefferson theise days have the same qualities that their predecessors had. Were sure that students who attend the three day conference will benefit from the experience and that the. decisions they make will benefit themselves, their school, and the community. out-of-date racial outlook that pervades it.

Dialect. was eliminated on the simple, and simple minded, theory that if the characters didn't dis." "dat" and yall the social content would be profoundly altered and brought up to the atom age. It isnt that easy; Charleston's Catfish Row. and Charleston's and Heyward's attitude toward Catfish Row. didn't grow up because its inhabitants used dialect.

Dialect was the sympton, not the malady. The movie suffers from the schizophrenia that afflicts the book. The first half is pure racial corn, distilled from the. minstrel tradition; after inter-mision the show assumes a measure of dignity and feeling. Gershwins music and the general high level of thfe acting make the movie palatable, but leave it Porgy.

It is stale beer served in exquisite silver, goblets to the accompaniment of beautiful music. If you can keep your eyes on the silver and your ear tuned to the music you can forget the stale stuff youre sipping. But not for long. The stuff is still Porgy." and as for Porgv, Ive had it. Road to Reaction The Supreme Court's refusal to review the North 'Carolina pupil placement law is a pretty good indication that it is going to go along with this kind of legisla- tion which is obviously designed to slow desegregation down to a snails pace.

Under the placement laws, school boards are given the right to assign pupils to various schools and although the law forbids racial discrimination as a fector in placement it is plain that race has been the prime factor thus far. Under the North Carolina law, for example, only a dozen Negroes have been assigned to what that state still regards as white schools. The; few Negro pupils w'ho are admitted are isolated and become easy targets for hoodlums who try to terrorize them into returning to Negro schools. At the rate progress is being made under the placement laws, desegregation will be delayed from 50 to 100 years. Dont Desert Unions and in Hollywood, was a clown and a gibbering and guffawing in dialect.

The Negro was fixeji in the popular mind as' a rapist 'at worst and as a happv-go- lucky neer do well at best. Contrived Novel Heyward accepted the stereotypes of individuals and Situations that- had grown to toward roes but. even through that haze: he saw that, individual Xpgroes were human beings. His book is a ron I rived piece of business, a sort of" showcase in which he puts on display almost every possible stereotype of Negro life and character crap game, the i i the. illiterate Sportin L-if.

the picnic, -sexual and evp.n Porgy and Bess themselves. Heyward never" rose abop the southerners cardinal-article. of faith that the Negro's shortcomings. and his strong points for that matter, are rooted; in racial traits. What he larked in understanding he atoned for in the compassion a d.

sympathey for unfortunates with whom he peopled Catfish Row. The result is an uneven book. At one moment his characters are pure, blackface cast in the mold of popular racial beliefs and. lifted bodily from the minstreLshows. the novels and the short stories of Heywards times.

At the next they are errant, stumbling human beings. Love That Porgy Americans clasped Porgy to their emotional intellec-tural bosoms because it fitted in so jneatlv with their idealization of the Negro as a simple! happy fellow, filled with song and Hsince and devoted to sex. dice and knives in about equal proportions, and hecause it, eased their, guilt feelings by enlisting their sympathy and forgiveness for social, misbehaviour that was. after all. traceable to race.

And God made the races, you know. -They were asked to love Porgy and forgive Bess and they did and still do but they were not badgerdd or asked to take up arms, against, the racial discrimination that created Catfish Rows. No hook; no poem, no play, no opera and no movie ought to be judged on social content alone. There are other yardsticks. The characterizations of a novel, the structure of a play, and the music of an opera must be weighed in whatever judgment is made.

Im as certain as? I can be that a beautiful and sensitive novel could.be written that, would, in effect justify and apologize for. Apartheid in South Africa or Nazism in Germany. I can't see -why the author should complain if the social content of such, a novel were taken to task-. And if the novel ultimately, served as a basis for ah opera which retained the essential content I don't think I should be asked to love it just because the music was beautiful or the acting was excellent, or even superb. 4 Stale Beer Goldwyn Porgy and Bess is tied down to its source the book.

The social content of that book, which shines through the" movie, is as out of date -as high, button shoes. Obviously, the producer tried to salvage the', human' material from Porgy the book, and attempted to jettison the Made It Although it hardly qualifies as a journalistic scoop. I want to report that I finally got around to see- i ing the movie version of Porgy and Bess. The art-ing is good. the singing is excellent; the music is touched with -Gershwins and the sets and costuming are the best that money (spoiled G-o-l-d-w-y-n ran buy.

There really isn't much more to say, but I have a column to write. Frankly, Ive had it as for as Porgy goes. I read the book when it was published away back there in the dim 20's; I saw the original Broadway play; I was on hand for the first night in 1935 when the opera opened in New York; I sat through the WPA versions of the play and the opera; I had a look when it was revived a few years ago and now Ive seen the movie. In between times. Ive read my share of reviews of the hook, the play, the opera, and the movie ranging from lyrical praise of- Porgy as a great piece of Folk Art to outraged condemnation of it as a slander and a canard on Negroes.

35 Long Years Thirty five years of this steady diet have convinced me that neither the book, the play, the opera, or the movie are as good, or as bad, as they have been described. Theyre out of date. Du Bose Heyward saw with sensitivity and sympathy, the lives and sufferings of a group of Negroes trapped in a dead end street hv the discrimination and seg-regationLof a southern town the southern town of Charleston. South Carolina. He set out.

to portray their reactions and their adjustments to a situation in which they -had so little of human dignity that they didnt even have family names: Porgy wasn't Porgy Jones and Bess wasn't Bess Smith: they were just Porgy and Bess. You cant make heads or tails out of Porgy, as a book, play, operator movie unless, you dip into a little history. When Heyward wrote, southern Negroes were voteless and helpless; northern Negroes, were excluded from unions and industry: segregation was on the upgrade everywhere; two score Negroes were lynched every year; Varda-' man and Biease shouted obscene racial epithets In the Senate and nobody called' them to book. Leopard Spots Literature about Negroes was wallowing around in the depths of Thomas Dixon's The Leopard's Spots in the field of the novel; the caricatures of Octavius Roy Cohen's short stories were the prize offerings of the Saturday i Post. Book shelves were stocked with learned tomes proving" that Negroes were sub-human and that hopes- of racial reform were baseless.

The stage and screen, were worse, if possible. Birth -of A Nation was being hailed as a Great Screen Epic; the minstrel show was steady fare in the provincial heaters and the Negro actor, on Broadway Let Negrbes Vote or Halt Trials, Miss. Told Kuchel Sees Senate Row U. S. Sen.

Kuchel foresees a real Donnybrook" on civil rights when Congress convenes next January. It will be a long drawn-out talkathon and filibuster," Californias senior senator said at the Statler Hilton. But. I am sure an effective bill will be passed. who is the Republican senatorial whip, said he considers we now have two Democratic parties in this country South and North.

The latter, by and large, favors civil rights legislation, and. he feels, will join with Republicans in bringing it about. He denied civil rights was defeated at the last session by a deal with southern Democrats in return for their support of labor legislation. CALIFORNIA EAGLE Tha. Important Newspaper 2T01 W.

Vernon Ave, Los Angeles 8, Calif, AXminster 5-3135 44 LOREN MILLER Publisher tion. We think hes right on that score. The Negro workman needs the protection of strong unions and he cant keep his foothold in industry unless he joins the union of his industry and takes an active part in its affairs. Our own experience is that the Negro -union member is pretty, slack about attending meetings and playing an active role in union affairs. Too often, he gripes about conditions that he could cure if he shouldered his fair share of union obligations.

Unions are far from perfect but wages and working conditions of Negroes, as well as other workmen, will retrogress rapidly unless union strength is In a reasoned and sober statement on his differences with AFL-CIO President George Meany, Phillip Randolph describes the revolt against segre- gation and discrimination in American unions as a moral revolu-. tion. He says, correctly enough it seems to us, this moral revolution is destined to shake up the AFL-CIO just as the revolution involving the conflict between industrialism and craft unionism stirred it to its depths. While Randolph insists that there must be no slackening in the fight against racism in the union he adds a word of caution to the effect that Negroes should not desert the union movement in or frustra as voters in Mississippi was not their own choice. We cannot assume, Judge Rives wrote, "that Negroes, the majority class in Carroll County.

has en masse, or in any substantial numbers, voluntarily abstained from registering as electors. We do not feign surprise because we have long known that there are counties not only in Mississippi, hut in the writers home state of Alabama; in which Negroes ron-the majority of the residents but take no part in government, either as voters or as jurors. "Familiarity with such a condition thus prevents shock, but it all the' more increases our cohcern over its existence. The Goldsby case is sure to have effects throughout Mississippi, not only in Carroll County. The recent report of the Civil Rights Commission said that 11 Mississippi counties had not a single Negro voter registered in 1955, the most recent year for which statistics were available.

Negroes made up 109.000 of these counties' 000 population. Furthermore, the Commission reported, in exactly half of Mississippis 82 counties, fewer than 1 per cent of the Negroes of voting age were registered. In the whole state the Commission found, only 22.000 registered Negroes, and only. 8,000 of them were estimated to have paid their poll taxes. Elect Schlessinger (Continued from Page 1) Negroes there constitutionally void.

In Mississippi, jurors are chosen from lists of registered voters. Carroll County, with the population more than half Negro, has no Negro voters. Last Jan. 16, the Fifth Circuit held Goldby's conviction void. It said the bare fact that Carroll County had no eligible Negro voters, and hence no.

Negro jurors, was sufficient to prove the systematic exclusion" of Negroes from juries. The Court of Appeals gave Mississippi eight months to try Goldsby before a constitutionally constituted jury If po trial was begun within that time, it intimated that it would order Goldsby released. -In the petition for Supreme Court review, Mississippi's Atty. Gen. Joe T.

Patterson said the end result of the Goldsby case, if the decision was not reversed, would be to render all Negroes immune to successful' prosecution for any and. all crimes in the district where Goldsby was tried, If all members of any face voluntarily refrain from seeking to become qualified for jury service ovpr the years, as in the instant case," Patterson wrote, we know of no legal means by which they can become so qualified, and we are sure that this court would not suggest that Negroes will be coerced against their will to become qualified jurors. The opinion of Judge Richard T. Rivers for the Fifth Circuit held, however, that the failure of Negroes to register Thursday Vol. LXXIX Oct.

15, 1959 No. 31 The 56th Assembly District will hold a special election next Tuesday to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Seth Johnson and we hope its voters will choose Philip J. Schlessinger for the job. Mr. Schlessinger is a teacher at Los1 Angeles City College who has given a great deal of time and effort to community and civic activities in his district.

He missed election last fall by a narrow margin. Schlessinger is a Democrat wrho has been berated by his opposition for his support of Gov. Pat program. Frankly, we cant think of a better recom mendation for a candidate than support of the governors program and we suspect that readers of the Eagle share that view. Schlessinger is going to need every possible vote in order to win next Tuesday.

There are four other candidates in the race and the prize will-go to the person getting a plurality, of votes. leaders are throwing their full weight behind Wolfrum out of the belief that other candidates will split the vote and permit their man to slip in. We urge every 56th district voter to go to the polls on October 20 and cast a ballot for Schlessinger for assembly. GRACE SIMONS Executive Editor P. WALLER.

Jr. Adv. Mgr, EDWARD ABIE" ROBINSON Circulation Mgr. CALME RUSS Office Mgr. BAY AREA REPRESENTATIVE E.

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