POLITICAL.
The “grandfather” clause of the Arkansas
Constitution reads as follows:
“Section 4a. No person shall be
registered as an elector of this State, or be allowed
to vote in any election held herein, unless
he be able to read and write any section of the
Constitution of the State of Oklahoma; but no
person who was on January 1, 1866, or at any
time prior thereto, entitled to vote under any
form of government, or who at that time resided
in some foreign nation, and no lineal descendant
of such person, shall be denied the right to
register and vote because of his inability to so
read and write sections of such Constitution.
“Precinct election inspectors having in charge
the registration of electors shall enforce the provisions
of this section at the time of registration,
provided registration be required. Should registration
be dispensed with the provisions of this
section shall be enforced by the precinct election
officers when electors apply for ballots to
vote.”
This amendment has been voted upon and the
votes canvassed, but an official count has not been
announced, and probably will not be until just
before the general election in November.
The Hon. J. C. Napier will replace the Hon.
W. T. Vernon, of Kansas, as Register of the
United States Treasury. The Chattanooga
Times gives the following reasons for the change:
“It appears now that Vernon has outlived his
usefulness, since he could not help the administration
to stem the insurgent wave that recently
swept over the Sunflower State, and that his reappointment
was contingent on his success in that
campaign. It is learned from that day he was
marked for retirement.
“Tennessee Republican politicians readily recognized
the opportunity to make a master stroke
and impression on the Negro vote in Tennessee,
by recognizing one of their race with an important
office.
“Napier for eight years was a member of the
Republican State Committee, but the white members
fell out with him at the recent state convention
when it was believed that he had agreed
to use his influence with the Negroes in favor of
Patterson. Since he was deposed the committee
has been without Negro membership, and this sop
is held out to pacify the rebellious Negroes all
over the state.”
Senator Cummins, of Iowa, will introduce a
bill into Congress for direct primaries in selecting
candidates for President and Vice-President.
He says:
“To me the injustice is plain of permitting the
4,000 Republicans of Mississippi to cast 20 votes
in the convention, while Iowa, with 300,000 Republicans,
can cast only 26. It it right that
Georgia, with only 30,000 Republican voters,
should have exactly the same number of delegates
as Iowa, with ten times that number of Republican
votes? Every one recognizes that the Republican
party—such as it is in the far Southern
States—is composed almost wholly of Federal
officeholders and those who want Federal office.
It has been demonstrated time and time again
that the delegates to Republican national conventions
from these states are absolutely venal and
that they uniformly vote with the administration
forces, which purchase them by means of postoffices
and collectorships.”
The United Colored Democracy of the State
of New York has been organized for the coming
campaign. They demand a colored regiment in
the New York National Guard, and also colored
policemen and firemen.
J. C. Manning and the Progressive Republicans
in Alabama are fighting Mr. Washington’s political
influence in that state.
The newly elected Governor of South Caroline,
Blease, made his fight on a platform opposing
Negro education and prohibition.
The Negroes of South Carolina gained complete
control of the State Republican Convention.
The Hon. P. B. S. Pinchback, once Reconstruction
Governor of Louisiana, has been appointed
to the Internal Revenue Service in Cincinnati,
O.
The Colored Independent Political League has
decided to support the Democratic ticket in Ohio,
New York and New Jersey; the Republican
tickets in Delaware and West Virginia, and to
favor Senator Bulkeley, of Connecticut, and oppose
Senator Lodge, of Massachusetts. Local Independent
organizations are at work in New
York, Ohio, New Jersey, Utah and Missouri.
The National Executive Committee of the
Socialist party have appointed Lena Morrell Lewis
and George A. Goebel a committee of two to
investigate the condition of the Negro in America.
Suit has been brought in the United States Circuit
Court to compel the city of Annapolis, Md.,
to register colored voters. Annapolis by city
ordinance has attempted to nullify the Fifteenth
Amendment.
The Democratic platform in Missouri says:
“The Democratic party when it came into
power in 1871, took over the Lincoln Institute and
made it a normal school for the higher education
of the Negro teachers, and it has always made
liberal appropriations for that purpose and for the
education of the Negro school children of the
State. It never has and will not discriminate
against the Negro, either by criminal laws or on
the question of their rights of franchise, and it
deplores the action of the present chief executive
of this State in seeking to make political capital
by creating race antagonism.”
R. S. Rutledge so resents this plank that he
has withdrawn from the race for nomination as
United States Senator.
The colored people of Cleveland, O., have
received twenty-three appointments to minor offices
to reward their support of Mayor Baehr, who
defeated Tom Johnson. Beside these officials the
colored people have a member of the Legislature
and a member of the City Council.
The Negroes of Atlanta prepared an elaborate
program on the occasion of Theodore Roosevelt’s
speech to them.
The Republicans have nominated Thomas
Briar, a colored man, to run for Congress in the
Fourth District of South Carolina.
In the twelve counties of the Eighth Congressional
District of Georgia there were only
392 colored men registered as voters. Even
these, however, very nearly held the balance of
power in the last Congressional election.
A press dispatch from Panama says:
“It became known to-day that Mendoza sent
a messenger asking Colonel Goethals to call at
the Presidential palace. The army man, by messenger,
asked if he was wished personally or in
his official capacity. Several other notes were
passed back and forth, Goethals finally going.
“When he reached the palace, Mendoza refused
to see him. It is said that the snub was
caused by Colonel Goethals drawing the color
line in the first place, Mendoza being a Negro.”
EDUCATION.
Miss Alice Byington has left Hampton Institute
$260,750.
New Orleans has four Negro schools with white
teachers and ten with Negro teachers. It has
been decided to place Negro teachers in the new
Thomy Lafon School Annex.
Tuskegee has received about $400,000 from
the Dolger bequest.
A Negro industrial school is talked of in
Pueblo, Col.
White Sawyer, a Missouri Negro, has lost
the suit in which he attempted to compel the
school trustees to transport his children. There
is only one colored school in his township and
that is six miles from his home.
An industrial school is to be founded in
Nicodemus, Kansas, a colored colony planted at
the time of the exodus.
A. B. Johnson, of Mississippi, states that in his
own county with less than 7,000 Negroes of school
age over 5,000 have never been to school.
Effort is being made in Washington, D. C.,
to remove R. C. Bruce, the colored superintendent,
for alleged incompetency.
In a talk to white Atlanta ministers a colored
preacher asked that influence be used to improve
public school facilities for the Negroes. He said
the Negro school children of Atlanta number
10,000 and he declared 5,081 of the number are
out of school. “The Negroes of this city pay
$10,000 for education of their children,” he
stated, “that the whites get free.”
The city of Chattanooga has refused to take
steps toward establishing a Negro normal school.
It is much needed.
H. T. Kealing, formerly editor of the African
M. E. Review, has been elected president of
Western University, at Quindaro, Kansas.
There are a large number of applicants for the
position of president of the Kentucky Normal and
Industrial Institute at Frankfort.
The colored Baptist Women’s Convention has
voted $15,000 to the National Training School
for Girls in the District of Columbia.
The Negroes of Georgia have raised $25,000
as a memorial offering at the quarterly centennial
of Morris Brown College.
The white boys of the Doolittle Public School
of Chicago have tried to get rid of the Negro
pupils. The result has been a good deal of
fighting.
THE CHURCH.
A colored institute in memory of Bishop
Dudley has been dedicated at Louisville, Ky.
The convention of the Episcopal Church has
authorized suffragan bishops. This will allow the
segregation of colored people under bishops who
will act as assistants to the regular bishops and
have no vote in the convention. The colored
people asked for missionary bishops who would
vote in the convention. Such bishops are to be
permitted only in case the bishop and convention
consent.
There is considerable interest in Southern
white churches over missionary and educational
work among Negroes. The subject was discussed
at a recent Bible institute in the University of
Tennessee and the Atlanta Constitution has had
several editorials.
Bishop John Wesley Smith of the African
Zion Church is dead.
Bishop T. N. Morrison, of the Episcopal
Church, says:
“I would impress upon those interested in missionary
work my belief that there is more of a
field for good and advantageous work among the
Negroes of the United States than among the
people of foreign countries and I will urge that
missionaries’ work begin at home.”
The twenty-sixth annual meeting of the Episcopal
Church workers among colored people was
held this year in the city of Cleveland, O.
SOCIAL UPLIFT.
A congress, which promises to be one of the
most influential of our time, is to be held in London
July 26-29, 1911, in the central building of
the University of London. The list of those who
have extended to it their moral support is most
imposing. Among the supporters, who hail from
no less than fifty countries, are over twenty-five
presidents of Parliaments, the majority of the
members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration
and of the delegates to the Second Hague Conference,
twelve British governors and eight
British premiers, over forty colonial bishops, some
hundred and thirty professors of international
law, the leading anthropologists and sociologists,
the officers and the majority of the Council of
the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and other distinguished
personages. The list of the writers
of papers includes eminent representatives of over
twenty civilizations, and every paper referring to
a particular people is prepared by some one of
high standing belonging to it.
The Rhode Island Union of Colored Women
numbers 12 clubs—one in Pawtucket, three in
Newport and eight in Providence. Each of these
clubs is doing excellent work in its own way,
striving to solve the problems nearest home. But
while the local club has its particular function,
the demands of the union upon each individual
organization is equally great. The work is
divided into four general departments—parents,
village improvement, hero and race library. One
or two members from each club is represented in
each department.
The Associated Charities of Lexington, Ky.,
are giving talks to colored people on consumption.
Mr. Booker T. Washington while in Europe received
much social attention. In an interview in
the Morning Post he said that the race problem
in the South is becoming more and more reassuring.
On landing in America Mr. Washington
announced that the Negroes in the United States
were better off than the poor classes in Europe.
A Carnegie Library for Negroes will be built
in Montgomery, Ala.
The need of a reformatory for Negro youth
is being agitated in Georgia.
Colored state fairs are being held this fall in
Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia and other states.
Governor Hadley, of Missouri, has appointed a
Negro tuberculosis commission consisting of six
Negro physicians and one lady.
That powerful Negro empires of great size and
some culture existed in the Sudan before the white
races entered Africa is the conviction of a French
scientist, M. Zeltner, who reports in La Nature
on the results of his archæological investigations
in the basins of the rivers Niger and Senegal.
Within a triangle formed by the towns
of Timbuctoo, Kayes and Bamako he located
fifty-two archæological deposits consisting
of ruins of unknown cities. M. Zeltner’s
most interesting finds were made in caves on the
upper Senegal. Here an abundance of runic
signs and drawings were found traced on rocks.
They were similar in character to those discovered
in South African caverns. The writings have
some resemblance to those signs found on ancient
ruins further eastward in the Sahara desert, and
are believed by M. Zeltner to be related to the
present Tuareg alphabet.
The discoveries made have yet to be thoroughly
studied. M. Zeltner thinks that the archæological
exploration of the African continent is yet in its
infancy and will doubtless yield surprising results
in establishing the advanced state of
development attained by the black races in early
times.—N. Y. Sun.
ORGANIZATIONS AND MEETINGS.
Clark University has held an interesting conference
on the East and Africa.
The subjects discussed were Turkey, Persia,
Bulgaria, Arabia, Egypt and Africa. Among the
speakers were: Dr. A. T. Chamberlain, on “The
Contributions of the Negro to Human Civilization;”
G. W. Ellis, F. R. G. S., on Liberia; the
Rev. L. P. Clinton, on West Africa; Professor
Frederic Starr, on the Congo, and E. A. Forbes,
on French Africa. Messrs. Ellis and Clinton
are colored.
Colored people in Ohio and Maryland have
held celebrations commemorating the issuance of
Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation
in 1863.
At the Appalachian Exposition, which is being
held in Knoxville, the Negroes have a special
exhibit and are conducting a series of celebrations.
During the summer the following colored organizations
have held annual meetings: National
Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, at Louisville,
Ky.; National Association of Colored
Physicians and Surgeons, at Washington, D. C.;
National Colored Baptist Association, at New
Orleans, La.; the Niagara Movement, at Sea
Isle City, N. J.; the Independent Political
League, at Atlantic City, N. J.; the Negro Business
League, in New York City; the Colored
Elks, at Washington, D. C., and the Grand
United Order of Odd Fellows, at Baltimore. It
is estimated that nearly 12,000 people attended
these various conventions.
ECONOMIC.
Baltimore is aroused over the fact that the
Negroes are buying property on McCulloh
Street. They are proposing to pass an ordinance
which provides that, within a section specified, it
shall not be lawful for any white person to move
into or begin to occupy any house as a residence
in any street in which a majority of the bona fide
residents are Negroes; and, on the other hand,
that it shall not be lawful hereafter for any
Negro to move into, or begin to occupy, as a
residence, any house in a street in which the
majority of bona fide residents are already white
people. There is further provision that it shall be
unlawful hereafter for any person to open, or
cause to be opened, any new streets to be used
for residences, without first declaring in the application
for a permit to build whether the houses
are to be built for and occupied by whites or
Negroes, and the building inspector is to issue a
permit accordingly.
It is to be noticed that this ordinance does not
interfere with any residence heretofore acquired.
The invasion of Negro property owners is put
down as a reason for the failure of Baltimore to
grow faster in population.
A similar question has arisen in Kansas City,
Kan., where the Mercantile Club proposes to cut
off threatened Negro invasion by having the state
buy the property for parks and boulevards.
In Richmond, Va., a colored syndicate is about
to buy property near a park. This is said to be
viewed with alarm at the city hall and the city
is urged to buy it.
In St. Louis a new Civic Realty Company is
seeking to organize public opinion and social
ostracism against persons who sell property to
Negroes.
The Baltimore News has sent a correspondent
through the South to see how the Negro ghettos
are arranged there.
Most of the cities say that “public opinion”
keeps the Negro population segregated and intimate
that mob violence is ready to enforce this
opinion together with social ostracism for the
white seller of the property. In Alabama disfranchisement
is said to keep colored folks “in
their places.”
An ordinance for the physical separation of
white and black residents is being urged in
Atlanta. Negroes are not to live in white settlements
“except as servants or tenants in the
rear.”
The Central Labor Union of New Orleans,
La., has written a letter refuting the statement
that increased pay of Negro laborers has decreased
their efficiency.
J. H. Grant has a $20,000 Negro shoe store in
Memphis, Tenn., and is trying to establish a
chain of such stores in various Southern cities.
It is charged that the Barbers’ State Board of
Examiners of Missouri refused to license colored
schools for training barbers.
The advice given the Negro to go South in
the Negro Business League has given rise to
much comment. G. W. Crawford, in the Evening
Post, strongly combats the idea. “The
Negro question in all its troublesome aspects
must be nationalized,” he says.
BROWNSVILLE.
Attention has been called to the fact that the
25th Infantry, which has recently been so warmly
commended for work in putting out the forest
fires, was the same regiment some of whose members
were dismissed without a trial for alleged
but unproven crimes at Brownsville, Tex.
SCIENCE.
A paper read before the British Association
for the Advancement of Science and quoted in
Current Literature has an excellent statement of
the physical status of the Negro, placing him
high among the races of the world. The paper
concludes that in many points the Negro is
more highly specialized than the less pigmented
races of mankind, while in others he is more
primitive. It says that all earlier human races
were probably colored.
A Negro physician of Stanford, Ky., has
patented a car-coupling device.
Professor Wilder, of Cornell, reports the case
of a white man with an intelligent brain of
about one-half the average weight. This is further
evidence that mere brain weight is no indication
of mentality.
ART.
Carl Diton has sailed for Europe to study the
piano.
Clarence White, the violinist, is giving a series
of concerts throughout the country.
Mr. Joseph Douglass is making his regular
concert tour.
Theodore Cable, of Harvard University, has
been admitted to one of the college musical
societies as a performer upon the violin.
Denver is planning a theatre for colored
people. One is in operation in Washington,
D. C. There are scores of moving-picture
shows opened recently for colored patronage in
the border states.
New York is becoming an art center for
colored people, especially in music and acting.
It is the headquarters of Bert Williams, Cole
& Johnson and Will Marion Cook. One of
the latest and most interesting developments is
the Clef Club Orchestra of one hundred and
thirty musicians, under James Reese Europe.
