The Black Dispatch from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma • 4

EATURES OPINIONS EDITORIAL PAGE THE BLACK DISPATCH Published weekly in two editions the National Edition and City Edition at 324 Northeast Second street by The Black Dispatch Publish ing Company Oklahoma City Oklahoma Phone 7 4679 Connecting All Departments Entered as second class matter at the post office at Oklahoma Citv Oklanoma under the Act of Congress Match 8 1879 TERMS SUBSCRIPTION One Year $250 Six Months 160 Three Months 100 oreign (One Year) 800 Payable In Advance National Advertising Representatives INTERSTATE UNITED NEWSPAPERS Inc 545 ifth Ave New York City Murray Hill 2 5452 Thu pthhttlio sol rgjfanitbh (er tht huftnt ar rrtara as)areieited artidtr uali ragravinfi esd cthtr Mltriah utl tar fabtuatiaa MEMBER ASSOCIATED NEURO PRESS ROSCOE DUNJEE Editor An independent newspaper not bound by party label fighting for the political economic and social freedom of the Negro A Degree in Car Driving? Running true to form we learn those who plan graduate courses at Langston university have finally decided they will offer a course in automobile driving and we presume to this will be added automobile washing and greasing The theory of the overlords of civilization is that Negroes should be taught menial tasks A taxidriver and a car washer is there fore envisioned One of the vicious philosophies extant down in Dixie is that we will teach Negroes to do only those skills which they have opportunity to perform in this section This rule itself perpetuate a caste system Like father like son the Ne gro is to remain forever an untouchable The Negro should be taught in the school room the same type and character of course given to the child of any other citizen ollowing training we should leave it up to the re sourcefulness of the trained Negro to find employment A Negro in Oklahoma City who did not get past the fifth grade in school is a contractor and builder and worth more than a half million dollars Another whose formal training is limited operates a bottling plant We can easily visualize the lords of civilization looking these two successful men over in the raw and deciding they were nothing other than cotton field hands It should be recalled that Dr George Washing ton Cai ver was once traded for a horse before freedom came to the slaves Thinking solely in terms of current employment oppor tunities is the reason why we place so much stress down South on for girls and for boys We do not intend to convert the girls into anything but maids to work ip white kitchens and field hands out of the boys We give strenuous effort to the task of pre venting Negro youth from acquiring knowledge that will throw them into competition with skilled white youth Is it not a shame to talk about giving Negro teachers a unit of credit in car driving while in the same breath ignore Negroes who demand training in law architectural engineer ing zoology medicine and other allied graduate fields? ascism Not Communism We are pleased to know that Senator Glenn Taylor is going to appeal his Birmingham fine to the Supreme Court of the United States It perhaps will be the means of calling to the attention of the high court the undemocratic segregation laws of Birmingham and the South in general upon the validity of which the court must some day pass if we ever achieve a tree America Just think of it! or thirty six hours the Birmingham police terrorized a peaceful meeting being held by a minority group during which time they enforced laws which the police commissioner alleged do not permit a speaker to address white and black at the same time We ought to beam this story to Italy to let the citizens of Rome know what we do on our seven hills which converts the ancient Constantine and his attitude towards Jews in the ghetto into an incon sequential piker We are sure that Dr James Dombrowski of the South ern Conference for Human Welfare who was arrested during the session because he sat on the platform while Magistrate Joseph Rainey of Philadelphia delivered an address will follow the same course in attempting to secure an opinion from the Supreme Court on this unsavory and outrageous conduct of Birmingham police Magistrate Rainey following his address had to flee to the airport and take flight to At lanta in order to stay on the outside of a Birmingham jail cell Someone has said an ill wind that blows nobody Surely these eminent Americans who have been ar rested will be able to secure a hearing in court that no indi vidual Negro could ever have secured It means that at a very early moment the court is going to have to pass upon some very important questions relating to freedom of as sembly ireeaom ot speech and the right of local govern ment to supervise seating in religious temples All of these fundamental guarantees wore overlooked and ignored when Dixie and State Rights took over and supervised the Southern Negro Youth Congress last week The most heartening thing about this unfortunate inci dent develops in the fact that Birmingham had one young Negro minister who after the police had terrorized and in timidated all of the other pastors and auditorium managers decided to allow the youths of the Southern Congress to hold their meeting in his church It took real courage and reso lution to do this and doubtless local reprisals will be visited upon him for so doing White men so frequently in moments of crisis announce white free and twentv Ne groes must somehow find a way to discover whether they are free and It appears the Rev II Douglass Oliver pastor of the Alliance Baptist church Birmingham his this view of the subject We have an idea that if the Lord Jesus Christ were to arrive in Birmingham today and sought out a place to wor ship he would be arrested by Birmingham police unless he took the precaution to enter temple through a door marked for Jews In the language of Judge Rainey just before he fled from the rile community America needs to fear is fascism not Glory Glory Hallelujah! You know the old stirring pre civil war hymn body lies in the grave but his truth goes marching Slowly and gradually the Supreme Court of tne united states is gravitating the nation toward abstract right and justice for which John Brown gave his life The Supreme Court last Monday went a long way towards blasting down the walls of proscription when it knocked the props out from under vicious restrictive covenants that 'have denied ownership and occupancy of property to minority groups Truly though John body lies in the grave his truth goes marching on But the Supreme Court must go a step further before justice has been done in this country The dignity of the individual has not been preserved until the court reaches out to strike down all forms of law and custom that would deny utter freedom of movement in transportation and in all pub lic places including the schools To draw a line beyond which one American may pass but not another is discrimination per se and this is the issue that stands out today before the Supreme Court like a sore thumb I The same rule that would allow the Negro to move free ly into the ownership and occupancy of residence should also apply to schools theatres trains and eVery public facility These are public rights which should be the common property of all We cannot have genuine democracy and brotherhood in America until the Supreme Court of the United States interprets constitutional guarantees to mean exactly what is suggested here Reaction has already started reading interpretations into dicision One group alleges the decision was ren dered solely for the benefit of Negroes and that other minori ty groups are still without the pale because of certain lan guage employed in the decision But you can write this down: restrictive covenants are not worth a dam so far as third parties are concerned so long as the courts refuse to take airy action in the matter A and may still covenant not to sell to but if A violates his contract the trouble ends in the racket that A has with The boys are dead Like the snake they are still wiggling even though their head is smashed They may sue one another but no one else The law of contract will grant them this right but the courts in the name of the state cannot do what the 14th Amendment says the state cannot do This is the important thing It is the opinion of the Black Dispatch that all of those who have been deprived of their property under court orders previous to the Monday decision may now sue those who dis possessed them and secure either their property or the equiva lent We have written the national office of the NAACP re garding such action and will be prepared in just a few days with the answer to this query Rest assured every legal method will be adopted to secure restitution for those who have been unconstitutionally denied property rights in this community The importance of following the instructions given in this column some months ago can be readily seen We said then that those having suits in court regarding their property clouded with restrictive covenants should keep their cases on appeal Most of them did Several let their property revert Those who had the good judgment to perfect appeals need have no further worries regarding their title to the property in question We predict that Negroes desirous of buying propery in the sectnd ward Oklahoma Citv will as the years go by be able to purchase same at greatly reduced prices because of the notable decision of the courts Monday This will be true of property values in every urban center in American where Negro and white districts border The opportunity for natural expansion will also lower rents The Monday deci sion will go a long way towards solving the housing problems of Negroes of the United States It may take another twenty years to do the job but we are sure that in the years to come the Supreme Court is going to decide that it is unconstitutional for individuals to covenant with another not to sell property to a particular race group or persons of certain religious faiths The Su preme Court left this undemocratic gap down in its decision but the Black Dispatch does not believe citizens have the right to contract to perform acts steeped in contempt and hatred for other American citizens So long as our nation fails to attack the evils in racial exclusiveness and chauvinism it will always remain a long distance from genuine democracy 0 The Witch Hunt Helps How would you like to be convicted of a crime based upon the fact that ten years ago someone found a letter in the highway not addressed to you but written by a party whose signature was in no way identified but in which this party who wrote the letter talked to another person about you Every unsolved crime in the world could be solved in this sort of way if such improperly identified documents were ad mitted as evidence for all your enemies would have to do would be to write a letter to someone else drop it on the highway stating in the letter to another unidentified party that you were the individual who murdered committed arson or stole jewelry out of a grave Whether you like that sort of testimony or not it is this type of spurious evidence that was presented last week be fore the secretary of state by the enemies of the Third Barty movement in the state in attempt to prove that Dr A Shadid temporary chairman of the Progressive Partv of Oklahoma perjured himself when he swore to a non Com munist affidavit sometime ago Edward Box attorney for a protestant against the new party actually brought into the inquiry a letter purported to have been written ten years ago by one Communist to an other in which Shadid's name is mentioned It appears that the letter (tc years ago) was found somewhere between Cushing and Diumriglit and the party (unidentified) sent the letter to Attorney General Williamson who in turn for warded it to Milt Phillips who at that time was the state commander of the American Legion The next piece of evidence was a card (unidentified in any way) which attempted to show enrollment of Dr Shadid's daughter in Commonwealth college Mena Arkansas This school is alleged to have been a Communist institution and is now closed To the credit of the court of inauirv this cmpstionable and dubious sort of blackmail intimidation and fraud was not admitted but it forecasts what is going to happen to a num ber of innocent people in the United States who from time to time sponsor unpopular causes and thus become victims of witch hunting Dr Shadid was running for congress ten years ago and this shady questionable letter got into circu lation then He was not born in this county but has been here from the time he was a little tot His nlace of birth gives opportunity for his enemies to classify him as a for eigner But Dr Shadid is not a foreigne or more than forty years he has been a naturalized American citizen and has not only written a half dozen books on medicine but has or ganized and onerated for many years a hospital at Elk City He is not a flv by night politician but an American citizen who has patriotic desire to sunport high ideals in govern ment That is why this vear he is supnorting and the Third Partv idea If Dr Shadid is not a substantial citizen we would like for someone to suggest what it is neces sary for him to do to achieve that end" Surely in the field of medicine he has made this land a better place in which to live and what else other than this is it necessary for him to do to justify citizenship? But the witch hunt is on The intolerants and the fascists who insist upon the status quo are determined that they will rule or ruin History is repeating itself Between 1790 and 1845 more than a million foreigners came to the United States and during the decade between 1845 and 1855 more than three million more entered They were the daddies of the gang who stand around now talking about the bad influence of foreigners Most of the folk who came were raw material unskilled similar to the average Negro who leaves the South and goes North today Those were the days when we talked about the Irish It was when that first million arrived we passed tne alien and sedition laws in an attempt to keep Thomas Jeffer son from securing the votes of these new citizens History has been kind to the Sage of Monticello for in those early years of the republic we called Jefferson an infidel and a Com munist Jefferson stood for the rights of the common man He therefore became persona non grata with tjiose who at that time thought in terms of establishing a roval family in this country And then when the civil war came we damned Lincoln calling him a Republican and every conceivable and disgraceful name because Lincoln like Jefferson interested himself in the problems of the masses Lincoln was shot to death because he talked the language of the poor and lowly Today we vent our spleen upon Henry Wallace and all who lend aid and succor to his standards The effort to smear and slur everyone in Oklahoma who supports the Pro gressive party is nothing more than the age old device and trick of reaction Lincoln was black Wallace is red Be hind this sort of a smoke screen human selfishness dodges the real issues raised by the distinguished Iowan and former vice president There ought to be some way to prosecute men and put them behind prison bars who wilfully attempt to destroy the character and life time reputation of leading citizens simply because they do not agree with them on public questions We need a new political party in the United States that will represent the interests of millions of poor working people who wnt better homes jobs education and health It is this truth reaction seeks to hide when its raises great hula boloo about foreigners Rods and radicals Humanity reacts in an unusual way to persecution The Alien and Sedition Laws elected Jefferson and in time cruelty and malignity brought success to the Republican party Who can say that the wilful attempt to destroy the good name of Dr Shadid and the wanton arrest of Senator Taylor in Birmingham is not making votes for the Wallace ticket? and Workers The CIO is rendering another fine service down in the Panama Canal Zone in helping to economically liberate 17000 Negro employees of the United States victims of the rankest sort of discrimination The Committee on Civil Rights referred to the plight of these West Indians and South Americans in its recent report to the chief executive Many otherwise well informed people do not know that the government of the United States down on the isthmus has a and system of paying employees The Ne groes are the employees while the whites arc Whites working in this area get better salaries live in better homes and in every way are recognized by federal agencies as being above the level of the blacks and the CIO is attempt ing to do something about this ugly situation on the theory that workers should secure equal pay for identical services A great deal of the suspicion generated in the Caribbean and in South America regarding the United States has de veloped out of the discriminatory treatment that has been visited upon Latin Americans and Negroes who have for many years been the hewers of wood and drawers of water in the Canal Zone Here is one point where President Tru man could clear up a little matter of civil rights with the mere issuance of an executive order This question came up for discussion before the Sub Committee of the Senate Committee on Appropriations quite recently and Thomas Richardson testifying for the United Public Workers of America presented some very ugly facts He discussed items in the Army appropriation bill showing the government contemplated building 99 apartments for laborers costing $1613700 or $16000 per unit and 181 apartments for workers costing $754000 ap proximately 1000 per unit Witness Richardson gave the committee a complete breakdown on the slum area in which the government of the United States forced these black laborers to live It follows: Most family quarters in the Panama Canal consist of two rooms to serve as bedroom kitchen dining room living room etc An entire family from two persons on up to six or eight lives in two rooms Li the average 12 family building there is one male toilet room with two toilets and one toilet room with two toilets for the entire building There are also a few buildings where there are com munity sinks serving a number of families Electricity is provided Tenants must pay extra for this plus 25 cents per month refrigerator Gas is not provided amily quarters are completely unfurnished Tenants supply their own furniture linens radios refrigerators hot plates or stoves Male bachelor quarters for employees provide two men living in each room each of whom pays per month plus extras for electricity The room is furnished with two single beds one chair one dresser and one table supplied by the Panama Canal The condition of the furniture is from poor to fair "Silver" female bachelor quarters are provided with two women living in each room each of whom pays $650 per month Otherwise conditions are the same as male bachelor quarters except that the con dition of the furniture is somewhat better Almost without exception Government housing is down right atrocious The buildings have been unpainted for many many years are falling apart need repairs badly and are definitely of the worst type of slum housing that exists in the Uinted States A good estimate of the quality of this housing may be obtained from the state ment made by a group of visiting United States congressmen in Decem ber 1946 Tn describing housing for employees who are white United States citizens working in the Panama Canal they stated that the housing was Since housing is a thousand times better than housing some idea of the deplorable condi tion of the quarters maintained by the United States Govern ment can be obtained To make matters worse half of the Panama Canal em ployees as well ns all employees employed by the Army and Navy in the Panama Canal area are not provided any Government housing at all These people must live in the Republic of Panama where rents are sky high and where the slum conditions are even worse than in the Government quarters nanama Canal workers who live in the Republic of Panama pay $25 per month for single rooms Docent apartments in better sections of the cities in the Republic of Panama run up tn $70 and $80 per month There are no figures available on the rise in cost of living in the Canal Zone as are available in the United States through the cost of living index of the United States Bureau nf Labor Statistics How ever Congressman Albert 1 Engel (R Mich) chairman of the Sub Committee of the Appropriations Committee of the House of Repre sentatives which handles appropriations for the Panama Canal stated to the UPW CIO that in his opinion the cost of living on the Canal Zone while lower than in the United States would show about the same percentage rise as took place in the United States between 1940 and 1946 This is a reasonable conclusion inasmuch as most items sold in Panama Canal commissaries are imported from the United States and would reflect the increases in wholesale prices and shipping costs It should also be borne in mind that there has been enormous inflation in prices in the Republic of Panama where Panama Canal employees spend at least a portion of their income Tn addition half nf the employees of the Panama Canal all employees REEDOM OR ALL OREVER of the United States Army and the United States Navy in the Panama Canal area live in the Republic of Panama and pay Republic of Panama rents which have risen substantially in contrast to rents in the United States which have been virtually stabilized The UPW CIO has queried its own members in the Panama Cana! on the rise in cost of living and their universal reaction is that the cost of living has risen far more than 50 per cent since 1940 in the Panama Canal HOW SAE ARE YOU IN AMERICA? I 'i When John Jones a Negro veteran of the war was beaten to death by a white mob in Minden Louisiana it was one of six lynchings in 1946 Six lynchings a remarkable low record compared to the sixty four mob murders of 1921 Says the Committee on Civil Rights: Committee believes that the striking improvement in the record is a thing to be devoutly thankful for but it also believes that a single lynching is one too Jones and his companion Albert Harris were released from jail by a deputy sheriff who turned them over to a white mob Both were beaten Jones was beaten to death ive men including two deputy sheriffs were rought to trial and acquitted The grim fact is that it is al most impossible in the South to bring lynching cases to trial com pletely impossible to gut a convic tion The Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice meets a solid wall of resistance in every erase The Justice Department has no separate staff of investigators for this work is trying to en force laws that are vauge in ap plication To remedy this condition the Committee calls for more concrete legislation laws with teeth in them for a ederal anti lynching bill for more severe penalties for private persons and public officials who interfere with the Constitutional and legal rights of others MAIL BAG CONDEMNS CHOCTAW COUNTY AIR Soper Oklahoma May 1 19 18 To The Editor: I am one of the directors of the Choctaw County ree air board which organization is a public body created by Statute and sup ported in part by public taxation'At a called meeting of the Board held in Hugo today it developed that there had previously been some dissatisfaction expressed on the way that the exhibits of the Negro patrons of the air had been handled Because of the fact that I am a new member of the Board it had never occure to me that the Negroes had been forced to exhi bit their prcdi'cts in a class by themselves and that the whites Indians and other non Negro pa trons were 1 prived of that degree of competition offered by the Ne groes Six lynchings in 1916 and un measured thousands of beatings the innumerable indignities visited upon millions of our fellow men the shadow of fear that makes it impossible to got a Southern Ne gro to testify against a white man Says Mr Hoover: arro gance of the white population of that county was And elsewhere he says that was seldom that a Negro man or woman was incarcerated who was not given a severe beating which started off with a pistol whipping and ended with a rubber Negroes are the minority group most sinned against but others too have lost their personal safety without legal redress Jehovah's Witnesses beaten by police Southern prisoners farmed out to serve as virtual slaves of private persons Eskimos and In dians to prison in Alaska Mexicans getting stiffer fines and severer sentences than others friendless boys the "third persons of Japanese de scent from their care fully tended farms and orchards on the Pacific Coast it is a de grading record! ear is the one emotion domi nating the hearts of unfortunates who may have been created equal but who do not have the same rights as other men Labor unions too have suffered violence at the hands of police and injustice in the courts Hence they are fighting side by side with minority groups in the struggle for civil rights The meeting today was for pur poses in no way related to tl question of racial matters and the matter of the Negro exhibitois came up near the close of the meeting and when I ignorantly and innocently suggested that all exhibitors be permitted to enter their exhibits in whatever class the exhibit belonged in without reference to the race of the exhi bitor The other directors gave me a short history of their lives and concluded by stating that they would never consent to the Ne groes and non Ncgroes exhibiting in competition with each other Since the air Board is a public body and is regulated by Statute it occurs to me that Negroes should go into court and obtain an Injunction against the officers of the air to prohibit them from setting the Negro exhiits off in a class by themselves I appre ciate the fact that in comparison with other injustices done the Ne gro this is indeed a minor mat ter But if the Negroes are uru willing to give battle on minoi matters they can never expect vic tory on major ones If no local Negro can be found who will cooperate in testing out this practice of our air Board then I in niy capacity as a tax paying white citizen will gladly cooperate on the grounds that I and others like myself are being deprived of the true measure of competition as contemplated by the Statute creating the public ree airs Very truly yours Matthews Soper Oklahoma Make.