RACE COOPERATION FOR HELP OF NEGRO

...It is manifest that the Negro teachers should be better educated than those taught...

...Bad feeling between the races was engendered...

...Martin continues, "that the first task was to bridge the gulf between intelligent white and Negro men and women...

...In some places in the South it is still impossible for Negroes to buy land at any price...

...John M. Gandy, president of the Petersburg Normal and Industrial Institute, Petersburg, Florida...

...After making a survey of the counties of the South having an appreciable Negro population, an attempt was made to bring together in each of these counties, a small group of not over six to ten white and Negro leaders as a permanent committee of counsel and cooperation...

...The Negro members are: R. R. Moton, president of Tuskegee institute...

...B. B. Mumford, Richmond, Virginia...

...Mob violence is not simply a question that involves the Negro race, but the entire structure of our society and civilization...

...Has Good Will of South MRS...

...Rumors and counter-rumors were cause of excitement and apprehension on the part of both races, resulting in frequent riots throughout the states...

...As a result of the findings of this committee, the business men in Memphis agreed to give two dollars for every one dollar given by a Negro, for improving recreation conditions for colored people in that city...

...Martin is a Southern woman— the author of the delightful Emma Lou stories...

...It was named Camp Verde, and it was and is the only camel camp that ever existed in these United States...

...Thoughtful citizens throughout the United States will follow with keen interest this movement for inter-racial cooperation...

...The colored people considered this division just and generous and almost to an individual lined up in favor of the issue...

...And it is the generally accepted practice in the South that Negroes are paid a lower wage than is paid the white employee for the same kind and character of work...

...It follows that in the absence of available high schools or normal schools for the colored people in the rural districts, the teacher, himself or herself, the product of the county grade schools, will be deficient in adequate standards...

...From Egypt they went back to Smyrna and loaded up to capacity with Asiatic camels and set out for home with 33 of the tall, awkward creatures in tow...

...T. W. Bickett, Raleigh, North Carolina...

...The spirit of the conference is voiced in a statement given out to the people of Atlanta, "We, a group of Christians, deeply interests ed in the welfare of our entire community, irrespective of race or class distinction, and frankly facing the many evidences of racial unrest, which in some places have already culminated in terrible tragedies, would call the people of our own beloved community to A CALM CONSIDERATION OF OUR SITUATIONS BEFORE EXTREMISTS ARE ALLOWED TO CREATE A CONDITION WHERE REASON IS IMPOSSIBLE...

...It was apparent therefore," Mrs...

...War Marked Change MRS...

...The Negro was drafted into the army, served overseas and was recognized for bravery...

...This caused another awakening of the South to the dangers of labor shortage...

...They immediately had struck off hundreds of handbills, signed by representative Negroes of the region, regretting the killing of Sheriff Hunter, who was known to be especially friendly to the colored people, and distributed these among the angry threatening mob...

...That this gulf is due to race prejudices, the after effects of reconstruction, the agitation of designing politicians etc., etc...

...It repeats that the Commission as now functioning in thirteen states, represents the most enlightened conscience of the South, white and black, and holds that it is the most philosophic step yet taken to promote justice and good will between the races...

...Isaac Fisher, editor of the Fisk University News, Nashville, and Dr...

...and comments further: "Mrs...

...Their activity has not sprung from any OUTSIDE pressure...

...In our larger centers of population the Negro must live and must labor in conditions that are unsafe and unsanitary...

...In this case the man later was found to be innocent, and the real offender, a white man, apprehended...

...The building is about to be erected...

...But in Egypt they couldn't obtain permission from the viceroy to export more than two, although they wanted 20...

...Many of these county committees have already shown their value in bettering their communities...

...How A Mob Was Dispersed "ADEPRAVED, drug-crazed Negro kill-ed the sheriff of Hopkins county, Kentucky' when this officer went to arrest him, unarmed and fearing no violence...

...Uncle Sam As a Camel Raiser AWAY back in 1856 your Uncle Sam set aside $30,000 to spend for raising camels...

...The country Negro is often timid and backward in finding his best market...

...Heading the state organizations are ministers, attorneys, social workers, college presidents and a governor...

...Most illuminating and hope-inspiring are some of the examples cited of the good already accomplished: "As an example of how local inter-racial cooperation works, take the writer's own state of Kentucky...

...They believed that the great wheat-growing and rich corn states of today were a part of a great Sahara and they would need camels to cross it safely...

...And some of the thriving grain growers, cotton growers, dairymen, and fruit growers of the west are taking the lead in bringing out a new order in America which will be as hopeful and as democratic as that now established in Denmark...

...In those days the maps used to show the states of Kansas, Missouri and on to California as white and marked in the geographies in big letters, "The Great American Desert...

...The effect was immediate, for when these white men saw the attitude of the colored citizens, and were convinced they had no sympathy for the lawless element among their race, the mob quietly dispersed, and Hopkins county and the State of Kentucky were saved the disgrace of a lynching, and possibly the lives and homes of innocent colored people...

...Other women members are Mrs...

...that in eight hundred counties there is a group willing to sit down and TALK THINGS OVER...

...The number of cooperative dairies in Denmark has increased to 1355...

...The ship landed them at Indianola on the Texas coast...

...Statement of Case THE Inter-Racial Commission states its ow case: "All the members of the Commission on Inter-Racial Cooperation live in-the South, and have been throughout their lives intimately related to Southern institutions and Southern communities...

...All the milk producers of the country are entitled to membership in the Danish cooperative dairies and the proceeds are divided up in proportion to the quantity of milk delivered by each member...

...It is short-sighted policy also that is based on the idea that the planter gains where he makes it necessnry for his tenants to come to him for all of their food supplies...

...Negro tenant farmers suffer from the disadvantages of makeshift methods of accounting, and irregular terms of settlement with their landlords...

...What an interesting insight on the official and national conception of the geography of the continent...

...J. H. Cranford, Jasper, Alabama...

...Segregation in cities forces the Negro to live and play in unwholesome and unsanitary conditions...

...Going to the Board of Education it secured a statement that 18 per cent of the issue would be devoted to the colored schools...

...Prejudice fades before knowledge...

...Archibald Davis, Atlanta...

...Luke Johnson of Atlanta is director of woman's work...

...The Negro's handicap in farming is portrayed thus: "In the rural districts in the South fully eighty per cent of the Negro population is engaged in the different phases of agriculture...

...The instinct for recreation and play is natural in all races alike, and alike for all its wholesome gratification makes for better health, better morals, better efficiency, and greater contentment...

...This colored man has since brought in one hundred thousand dollars in shipments of chickens from his county, starting with a small flock...

...Everybody thought of this country as barren and desolate and useless...

...MeClure's Magazine is entitled to much credit for publishing George Madden Martin's most timely and valuable article...

...Housing conditions for these Negro tenants on many farms are deplorably bad...

...The found that they had paid on an average of about $75 for each animal...

...In some sections the danger is always imminent, in others probable, and in all possible...

...Recently the Inter-racial committee for this territory helped to put over a million dollar bond issue for the public schools...

...The inter-racial committee for Breathitt county, long known as bloody Breathitt, a group of whites and blacks working together, secured three acres of land and erected an adequate school house for the Negroes of Jackson, the county seat, the building costing seven thousand dollars...

...It sprang out of the desire on the part of Christian white people to meet the demands of social justice...

...Martin points out that the World War marked an epochal change in the Negro's citizenship consciousness...

...John Hope, president of Morehouse college, Atlanta...

...Robert Moton, principal of Tus-kegee Institute, who says: "It is not too much to say that if the Negro could in every case receive economic justice, a large part of what we call the race problem would be solved...

...It appeals to the South to get behind the movement solidly, upholding the local committee in each community, that its every possibility for good be tried out...

...Result of Conference AS a result of the Atlanta Conference an Inter-racial Commission was created...

...Of these forty per cent are functioning with fair efficiency...

...In Nashville, the club committee meets with a commtitee of Negro citizens for frank discussions of a program to improve the condition of the Negro...

...The effect of this policy is bad...

...Many of these Negro tenant farmers are ignorant and unable to keep their own accounts at all, while their landlords do not always take the time and trouble to keep systematic accounts themselves...

...Bishop R. E. Jones of the Methodist Episcopal church North, New Orleans...

...Then the trouble began, for neither Davis nor Porter knew anything about these great ships of the desert...

...The committee in Fayette county, working together, aided in securing a bond issue in Lexington for a hundred thousand dollar high school for the colored people of that city...

...To that end the commission has sought to bring together in every locality in the South, the strongest white and colored leaders of this type...

...He would have Uncle Sam use the camels in trade and to chase Indians...

...They inspected the zoos in England and in France to see just what camels looked like and to find out all about them...

...Without the responsibility that attaches to land ownership, the Negro farmer tends to become restless, indifferent, unreliable and unaspiring...

...Let any one interested observe, for example, the expending of public funds in communities where any proportion of Negroes live...

...These cooperatives comprise 80% of all the dairies of the country and in 1921 handled 2.9 million tons of milk out of a total milk production of 3.2 million tons...

...The colored members of the committee agreed to offer a reward for the arrest and conviction of the murderer...

...Martin's plea for race cooperation is based on the fact that "Any program of economic betterment that excludes or ignores the Negro, merely retards the economic betterment of the South as a whole...

...About 60 miles from the city a camp was chosen...

...Special permission to publish excerpts for this article has been granted by McClure's...

...The sudden change of conditions following 1 the Armistice created perilous situation in the South...

...Over all state committees and county committees is the Southern Commission on Inter-Racial Cooperation, with headquarters in the Palmer Building, Atlanta...

...At Corbin, Kentucky, a colored man was accused of seriously cutting a white man...

...Z. I. Fitzpat-rick, Madison, Georgia...

...The average man does not think so, and yet experience shows that in places where the danger seems leasts such things have occurred...

...And it has been made possible by a small group of colored people who are not too much embittered by the past to give their white friends this opportunity to prove that they are sincere in their desire to find the basis of lasting racial peace, and to safeguard to the Negro a fair day of full opportunity...

...John J. Egan, Atlanta manufacturer, heads the commission...

...Nor is it fair to expect him to meet the competition in life without his quota of ordinary common schooling...

...A mob immediately formed in Madisonville, and not only were there threats of lynching the murderer on every hand, but also to burn the colored section of the town...

...Finally they got 10 on condition that they would not ask for more later...

...Many planters still provide their tenants with nothing better than a one-room log cabin, or one-room box house, which is conducive to neither comfort, vital energy, nor morality...

...The most needy, as a rule, theirs are the needs last to be considered or met...

...Will W. Alexander, of Atlanta and R. H. King, of Atlanta, member of the international committee of the Young Men's Christian Association, are directors...

...The work of these cooperative committees Ts not work FOR colored people, but work WITH colored people for community betterment...

...Negro women and girls engaged in domestic service in cities and towns, the country over, too often are without adequate provision for their physical well-being and comfort, and without proper moral safeguards during the hours of their rest and recreation...

...At the moment, however, mob spirit ran high, and all the colored people of the town were herded together, put aboard trains, and sent out of the county...

...Negroes put two hundred and twenty-five millions into Liberty Bonds...

...This commission after much study of existing conditions agreed that: "Between the best white and the best Negro men and women of the South, there is little communication or understanding...

...private organizations such as churches, associated charities, child-caring agencies...

...Wherever this habit of conference between the leaders of the races has been practiced, racial peace has been easy to maintain, and many community improvements beneficial to both white and colored have been made...

...She quotes Dr...

...A similar plan was recently adopted by the Memphis Chamber of Commerce...

...This means that in eight hundred of the thousand counties of the South, have been found a little handful of white men and colored men who desire to cooperate and work out together this and that concrete trouble...

...What more baffling and discouraging to the self-respectins: Negro (ban his knowledge of all this...

...But it represents the most enlightened conscience, and the mutual good will of the South...

...The color line holds in industry...

...Even the Congressmen believed this to be true, so they voted this money for the use of the army to get across this "desert" to the smiling shores of California...

...He planned to bring the camels from India and start a colony of them in Western Texas...

...The War caused the Negroes to migrate North in unprecedented numbers...

...They are the last to be given paved streets, the last to be considered in all respects that make for better living conditions...

...Over one-half of the households of the country are now united in the various cooperative societies and by far the largest percentage of these are to be found in the rural communities...

...There are eight women on the commission of which Mrs...

...In most of the states the governor cooperated in creating the state commission...

...In the hope of finding some way of dispelling the rising "race suspicion and hatred, and if possible, make what threatened to be a national calamity, contribute to permanent improvement in the relations of white and black Americans" a conference was called at Atlanta...

...The article concludes: "The purpose of this article is to bring the plan of the Commission on Inter-Raclal Cooperation to the attention of the country and especially of the South at large...

...civic agencies such as the press and public service corporations...

...J. D. Hammond of Islip, N. Y., director of the Southern Publicity bureau...

...The editor observes that Mrs...

...In the cities, the country over, the black man is the first laborer to be discharged, the first to have his men and girls engaged in domestic service in wages cut, the last to be re-hired...

...The Negro was subsequently arrested, tried at Madisonville without any disturbance whatever, convicted, and electrocuted...

...Since the committees are without authority they must rely upon the various organizations already functioning, and which are, or should be, concerned with race relations, such as city or county boards administering health, education, recreation, streets, sewers, and lights...

...There is no more important work for local Inter-racial committees than preventive measures to be taken against the possibility of mob violence in their communities...

...It has been planned in frank open counsel of white and colored leaders, THE HOME FOLKS...

...The average dairy has about 150 members and from 800 to 1000 cows...

...After telling Congress about the plan and receiving permission to spend the money, he sent Captain D. D. Porter to the Far East to buy camels...

...These are known as Inter—Racial committees...

...The Negro vote in Louisville two years ago, defeated a bond issue for the betterment of the Louisville University, an institution from which colored students are excluded...

...In many cases he would be in a position to solve his own problems.'' Economic Wrongs In Industry THE Negro's economic wrongs in industry are touched upon, as follows: "Human misfortune beats more mercilessly Upon those who are already unfortunate...

...This the Tennessee Inter-racial committee calls self-development in a local community...

...Yes, sir, he did...

...Precarious and unhappy in many ways is the lot of the Negro child in the small town community...

...The inter-racial committee of Graves county, whites and blacks working together, assisted materially in creating sentiment making possible a high school for the colored people of Mayfield, Kentucky, the building costing twenty-five thousand dollars...

...The service of these men and women to the commission has been voluntary...

...Commercial clubs in a number of cities of the South have undertaken the improvement of relations between the races...

...They have been actuated solely by a desire to serve in relation to a national problem, recognizing that in the adjustment of race relations in America, the South must bear the major responsibility...

...A Nation's Milk Distributed OVER ninety per cent of the total milk production of the kingdom of Denmark is handled by cooperative dairies...

...The commission believes that race hatred and force will only complicate race relations in America more seriously, and that the only alternative to these is to be found in the counsel and cooperation of men of character, intelligence and good-will...

...Martin has known the Negro in the 'black belt' of Mississippi, In Louisiana and Florida, in the rice-country of Carolina and has lived 'side by side with him in rural Kentucky.' The black man, she holds, has two worst enemies: 'the over-zealous advocate who claims too much for him, and the execrable creative wearing a white skin who says, 'I hate a' nigger.' " Mrs...

...The record of the Danish milk cooperatives is only a part of the great achievement of that remarkable country in running industry, commerce, banking and farming for the service of the many rather than the profit of the few...

...This was attempted by the commission by building from the bottom...

...Race Cooperation For Help of Negro Worst Enemies of Black Man are Over-Zealous Advocates Who Claim Too Much for Him and Those Who Deny Him Chance By BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE MCCLURE'S for October published a notable article on the race question by George Madden Martin...

...On the general commission, including representatives from thirteen Southern states, are five Negroes out of a total membership of fifty-eight...

...There are about nine hundred thousand Negro farmers in this section...

...The facts are ugly, and they are against us...

...We do not believe that there is any one statement which we may make, or any one act which we may perform which will solve all the supremely difficult and delicate problems that face us, but we are confident that by CONFERENCES CONDUCTED BY LEADERS OF BOTH RACES, COMING TOGETHER IN THE SPIRIT OF JESUS CHRIST, THERE WILL BE AN ATMOSPHERE OF MUTUAL CONFIDENCE AND WISDOM out of which shall come plans arid enterprises for the righting of wrongs, and the creation of fair and just opportunities for even the least of our brethren...

...If Danish farmers can carry on their important work cooperatively there is no reason why American farmers can't...

...Yet the Negro farmer's prosperity is the country mer-chant's prosperity An Inter-racial committee in Tennessee moving through the farm bureau for better markets for the Negro farmer, reports the case of a young colored man appearing at a local farm bureau: "'Can a man like me on the outside have a look in here?' "He was told that any farmer who had anything to sell was welcome...

...That as a result, white people in the South, in spite of frequent claims to the contrary, have been kept from a knowledge of aspirations and capabilities of the best class of Negroes...

...Martin states her general conclusion as to the value of this racial cooperative movement: "All of the colored people do not have confidence in the movement, nor do all the white people subscribe to its aims...

...There are now eight hundred committees in eight hundred counties of the South...

...This state ranks high in illiteracy...

...This is the record for 1921, according to a report received by the All American Cooperative Commission...

...The Inter-racial committee for this county later secured the indictment of some thirty members of the mob, and the ringleader was sent to the penitentiary...

...The Inter-racial committee for Jefferson county, Kentucky, moving through the park commission, has the promise of two play grounds and a swimming pool for colored people in the congested Negro district of Louisville...

...And the system of farming with such Negro labor as the planter may obtain from prisons and through the courts by payment of fines and fees for the offenders, the system of peonage, works injury to all around, to white and black...

...Better Living Conditions the Memphis territory, the Chamber of " IN Commerce at the request of the local Inter-racial committee working according to program through already existing agencies, appointed a committee to inquire into better living conditions for the colored people in Memphis...

...And the best Negroes have grown farther and farther away from the best white people, and there is a tendency with the Negro people to a loss of faith, not only in the Southern whites, but in whites in general and their civilization...

...W D. Weather-ford, Nashville, and Mrs...

...A young man by the name of Jefferson Davis, who had a good imagination, first thought of the plan...

...These county inter-racial committees in turn were asked to cooperate with the State Inter-Racial committee made up in each state of leading church men, business men, lawyers, and others interested, who would guide the work of the local committees...

...They sent along with Porter, Major H. C. Wayne, but it seems he knew little more of the animals...

...The colored members of the Inter-racial committee got together and called a conference with the white members...

...The result is that the disadvantage of the doubt in such cases falls on the Negro farmer...

...They are leaders in various phases of Southern life, legal, educational, industrial, agricultural, church and civic...

...The Negroes of the community paid their proffered reward, refusing assistance from their white friends, who, moved by their upholding of law and order, wished to help them...