bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Straw Fire
Authors: Almeida Manuel Antonio De
Published: November 2023

Let us leave Leonardo bound for his destiny in the company of Major Vidigal and see what took place in the royal pantries after his arrest. Vidinha inquired here, inquired there, and then rushed like a bolt of lightning to the lackey’s quarters. The “broth” girl, caught unprepared on this occasion, was quite startled at the arrival of Vidinha, who, recognizing instinctively that here was the cause of her misfortunes, tossed her mantilla over a chair and began advancing upon the other. “I’ve come here,” she said, “to tell you right to your face that you are a creature with no feelings-” The girl, unable to grasp any meaning in all this, was dumbfounded, not knowing what to say in reply.was; but she did not say what she wanted. At last, without doing anything more, she went out, saying, “Ah! Did they imagine that it’d be left like this? At least I gave them a few words but good ones ... “
Reprisals
Authors: Almeida Manuel Antonio De
Published: November 2023

When Vidinha arrived home she found the whole family still in great shock and confusion at the lunacy in which she had engaged. When they saw her come in, the two old women threw themselves upon her and covered her with hugs and kisses and tears. But she was still under the influence of the violent emotions through which she had just passed and was unable to respond to those demonstrations of affection: She dropped onto a bench and spent some time in silence, not giving answers to the thousand questions that were addressed to her. That silence further intensified the family’s anxiety.guests’ heads. The two male cousins tried to restrain him, but they were unable to do so; Vidinha broke into tears; the two old women swore; some people tried to restore the peace while others added to the disorder. As a result, an infernal uproar reigned.
New Deviltries
Authors: Almeida Manuel Antonio De
Published: November 2023

e know not if it availed Leonardo that this was the first time he had incurred punishment, having previously maintained the strictest observance of all his duties, or if the very audacity of the deed won him more of the major’s sympathy. The upshot was that, aside from the laughter and mockery of his comrades and the anguished half hour he spent in the winding sheet, to the shock of everyone and especially of himself, nothing more happened. The major had thus held out a great proof of unusual benevolence. As a result, Leonardo went about for some days abashed and pensive, as though crushed by the weight of tremendous remorse. His comrades found this a great source of repartee with which to poke fun at him and did not give him a moment’s peace in their midst.
Introduction
Authors: Mahaffey Vicki
Published: November 2023

The broad background of this study is the twentieth century itself, throughout which people have seesawed between the impulse to idealize powerful images and an equally strong determination to resist their alluring and subtle power. Over the course of the century, the ideal images against which we typically measure both individual and collective value have emerged as both seductive and horrifying. These dominating ideals range from the individual to the global in scope; they include the notion of an impossibly “pure” or coherent self, the assumption of male superiority, the concept of a master race, and the ideal of an imperial nation. Such symbols of desirability—representative standards of what is ostensibly best and purest—swelled in power in the years preceding World War II, reaching their epitome in the glorification of the Aryan race; like the graven images proscribed in the Hebrew Bible, they gained numerous adherents, but they also provoked attacks from without and were subject to corruption from within. The insistence upon the authoritarian power of the master provoked the crudest genocide in the history of the world, but it also galvanized massive military resistance. In this book, I argue that ordinary objects of desire in literature correspond to
Introduction
Authors: Miller Nina
Published: November 2023

The aura surrounding the 1920s shows no sign of diminishing. Our post­ modern attention to modernism has moved most recently and conspicuously into the movies, where in an eight-year span we have had no fewer than five major Hollywood events: The Modems (director Allan Rudolph, 1988), Henry and June (director Phillip Kaufman, 1990), Tom and Viv (director Brian Gilbert, 1994), Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (director Rudolph, 1995), and Carrington (director Christopher Hampton, 1996). Lavish of intellect and emotion, determinedly on the edge, the modernists are Beautiful People enlarged by consummate articulateness.1 Critically speaking, they are ripe for literary gossip, as well as for the reconstruction of “background” for individual literary genius. But what of modernist self-consciousness itself? How does it go to shape the very nature of those “movements and circles” filling the scene? In exploring the work of modernist women love poets, I wanted to make self-consciousness-the aura of being a modern-part of the equation. Having once fixed my attention on it, I discovered my writers’ “aura” to have more than one source: not just a local self-understanding (and a nostalgic projection from the present), aura also enwreathed a wider construction of womanhood in this period.
Love in Greenwich Village Genevieve Taggard and the Bohemian Ideal.
Authors: Miller Nina
Published: November 2023

Examining the bohemian poetics of Floyd Dell and Edna St. Vincent Millay, we come to recognize the degree to which bohemia as such is a construction in flux, variously and temporarily fixed in the service of a particular identity or self-positioning. While Dell is the more-or-less official Village historian and Millay its universally acknowledged icon, and while each of them has a special place in the given “material” of bohemia, even the rank-and-file Village writer has a subcultural space to construct in the course of asserting a literary self. For a variety of personal and cultural reasons, Villager Genevieve Taggard made the theory and development of bohemia’s utopian impulse her particular business. A public New Woman inasmuch as she published writing of contemporary gender relations, she was not, however, called upon to be a publicist for the Village. Perhaps as a consequence, her writing from this period is free to pursue a single-minded and highly personal exploration of the utopian possibilities of heterosexuality in the con­ text of bohemian values. Specifically, the privileged status accorded to ro­ mantic love in the Village gave Taggard full rein to delve into the dynamics of her own marriage as a means of arriving at a theory of (in Max Eastman’s famous phrase) “love and revolution.”‘
“Oh, do sit down, I’ve got so much to tell you!” Dorothy Parker and Her Intimate Public
Authors: Miller Nina
Published: November 2023

Through what conjunction of subcultural identity, publicity, love discourse, and poetic conventions did Dorothy Parker generate the singularly popular and critically acclaimed Parker verse? What cultural and imaginative negotiations allowed her to make love modern and herself a modern lover? Parker’s career in the twenties, continuous with that of the Algonquin Round Table, was significantly structured and even constituted by public­ ity. The genre of poetry, meanwhile, had a complex relation to modernist culture. To begin with, it was ubiquitous in the new newspaper “columns,” the “little magazines” of the Village and Harlem, and mass circulation journals of all kinds, from the Ladies’ Home Journal to Vanity Fair. Thus ephemeral and public, “verse” carried the meaning of cultural currency and circulation, at the same time that, as “literature,” it suggested the stability of cultural tradition.
“The New (and Newer) Negro (es)” Generational Conflict in the Harlem Renaissance
Authors: Miller Nina
Published: November 2023

The Dictionary of Literary Biography names Gwendolyn Bennett “one of the more active and promising authors of the New Negro movement” and Helene Johnson, “one of the youngest and brightest of the Harlem Renaissance poets.” Gloria T. Hull has likewise identified Bennett and Johnson as “the stellar poets of the (Harlem Renaissance] younger generation.”1 Yet for scholars and readers generally, it is Zora Neale Hurston who has come to define Harlem Renaissance women’s writing, despite the fact that her work (though invaluable) is more idiosyncratic than representative of the renaissance literary matrix. Ann duCille has argued recently that African American literary criticism itself has come under the spell of what she calls “Hurston­ ism,” “the utopian trend in contemporary cultural criticism that readily reads resistance in such privileged, so-called authentically black discourses as ... the folkloric fiction of Zora Neale Hurston, while denigrating other cultural forms for their perceived adherence to and promotion of traditional (white) values.”2 While duCille is concerned with the larger question of African American literary value, I would like to propose that an understanding of women’s writing in the context of the Harlem Renaissance in particular might also fruitfully put Hurston aside in favor of Bennett and Johnson.
“Exalting Negro Womanhood” Performance and Cultural Responsibility for the Middle-Class Heroine
Authors: Miller Nina
Published: November 2023

Having set out the larger terms of Harlem Renaissance discourse, we now turn our attention to women’s writing, with an eye to discerning strategic responses to complex subcultural imperatives. It bears repeating that women produced the renaissance as well as reacted to it, derived identity and value from its ethos as well as risked objectification through proximity to its icons. As the ensuing discussion shows, the enabling and constraining sides of this equation balanced out (or failed to) according to the ways generic and historical imperatives converged for individual writers. Chapter 8 explores the significant utopian potential of the lyric poem for renaissance women. By contrast, the space of narrative, pursued in the present chapter, emerges as almost claustrophobic in the ideological burdens it imposes. My point, how­ ever, is not to argue for a given ideological content to either genre but to discover the particular uses to which these forms were put by women writers of modernist Harlem.
“Our Younger Negro (Women) Artists’’ Gwendolyn Bennett and Helene Johnson
Authors: Miller Nina
Published: November 2023

In introducing her valuable 1989 anthology, Shadowed Dreams: Women’s Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, Maureen Honey explores the reasons for Romantic poetry’s evident aptness to the literary expression of African American women in the 1920s. After noting the largely forgotten fact that nearly as many poems by women as by men appeared in Crisis and Opportunity in the renaissance years-and to good critical response-Honey asserts that women’s embrace of an apparently white-identified aesthetics, and of such apolitical subjects as love and nature, was, in fact, a conscious refutation of black inferiority. Taking inspiration from the English Roman­ tics, renaissance women saw nature as a source of value in an acquisitive and industrialized white world, and the passion of love as elevating-in particular, as defying the slave-holding society’s assault on black emotional bonds. Drawing simultaneously on their peculiarly modernist faith in the power of art, women poets (like their male counterparts) believed that art would bridge the divided races and force a recognition of black worth.’ Gloria T. Hull’s Color, Sex, and Poetry-the 1987 study that launched the current wave of interest in renaissance women writers-takes a more materialist approach to this question of genre. Hull points out that “lyric poetry has long been considered the proper genre for women,” and, accordingly, the women of the renaissance “both kept themselves and were kept in their lyric sphere.”2
Reembodying the Self: Representations of Rape in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Authors: Moore Opal
Published: November 2023

I bring the dreaded disease. I encourage their children to open their hearts to the “dark” side. To know the fear in them. To know the rage. To know the repression that has lopped off their brains- -Toi Derricotte, “From The Black Notebooks” There Is, It Seems, a widespread movement afoot to assert the innocence of children even as we deny or sabotage that innocence. There is what appears to be a head-in-the-sand impulse to insist upon this innocence by simply refusing to acknowledge its nonexistence. Never mind the “mean streets,” never mind the high teen pregnancy rates and drug use, or the phenomenal school dropout rates, or spiraling teen suicide statistics-never mind these real dangers to childhood.
Paths to Escape
Authors: Susan Gilbert
Published: November 2023

Maya Ancelou has told in interviews how Robert Loomis, her eventual Random House editor, goaded her into writing autobiography, teasing her with the challenge of writing literary autobiography. Considering herself a poet and playwright, she had repeatedly refused Loomis’s requests that she write an autobiography until he told her that it was just as well: “He . . . said that to write an autobiography-as literature is almost impossible. I said right then I’d do it” (“Maya Angelou,” with Hitt, 2n).
The Church as a Worshiping Community
Authors: Wainwright Geoffrey
Published: November 2023

Jacques von Allmen, is “an eschatological game.” There are indeed several features of worship that make the comparison to a game appropriate. First, Christian worship is governed by the rules inherent in our being the redeemed creatures of God. Second, there is room within the rules for improvisation, since the “service” of God is in fact “our perfect freedom.” Third, there exist many well-tried moves, since the game has already been played by many generations of our predecessors in the faith. Lastly, worship, like any good game, contains its own purpose, which in this case is none other than “man’s chief end,” namely “to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever.”
Sacramental Theology and the World Church
Authors: Wainwright Geoffrey
Published: November 2023

IN THE LAST DECADE OR TWO OF HIS LIFE, KARL RA.HNER DETECTED THE emergent reality of a new era in the history of the church and, whether consequently or antecedently, in the history of the world. His idea of an incipient “world church” was prompted by the specifically Catholic experience of the Second Vatican Council, which brought together in Rome some two thousand bishops from all six continents. Rahner was a European, and more particularly a German-speaking European. His active ecumenism bloomed late; it was practically limited to contacts with Germanic Lutheranism, and it remained to the end rather bookish. For good or ill, my own cultural and ecclesial perspectives differ considerably from Rahner’s. I am a minister of the British Methodist Church, with whose maternal milk I took in a commitment to ecumenism in its classical Faith and Order form, including the goal of organic unity such as has been achieved or attempted among local and regional churches of different denominations in many parts of the British Commonwealth. I worked for six years as a missionary in French-speaking Equatorial Africa, and since 1979 I have lived in the United States. These differences need to be kept in mind as I seek to interact with Rahner’s concept of a world church, and more particularly from the angle of sacramental theology.
Divided by a Common Language?A Comparison and Contrast of Liturgical Revisionin the United Kingdom,the United States of America, and Australia
Authors: Wainwright Geoffrey
Published: November 2023

IN CHURCH AND LITURGY THE COMMONALITIES BETWEEN BRITAIN AND AMERICA are complex. The differences are complicated by independent developments and, particularly in the United States, by the intrusion of other-language factors. The ironies are subtle indeed. Moreover, the wit who spoke of Britain and America as two nations divided by a common language had not yet even heard of “Strine” (= Australian).

Britain itself underwent the Reformation in an English and in a Scottish form, and later the Church of England was not able to contain the Methodists. Following the American revolution, the Methodist Episcopal Church, though unestablished, became the largest Protestant Church in the country. The American Anglicans owe more to the Prayer Book of 1549 than to that of 1552/1662, and they got their first bishop and their liturgical tradition by way of the small Episcopal Church in Scotland.1 Scots Presbyterians were the chief shapers of the Presbyterian churches in the United States.
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting August 1921
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Since the last report to the Board the following lynchings have occurred: July 23. Hattiesburg, Miss.: Casey Jones (white) convicted of the murder and sentenced to be hanged July 18, but whose case was pending before the Supreme Court, was taken from the County jail and hanged in the courthouse yard by a mob of about seventy-five masked men. August 3: Lawrenceville, Va.: One of two Negroes arrested August 2 in connection with the murder of a white man on August 1 was lynched. The other Negro was not molested. Tulsa Riot Case In response to a communication from the N.A.A.C.P. Committee in Oklahoma regarding the handling of the cases of the victims of the Tulsa Riot, in conjuction with the Tulsa Colored Citizens Relief Committee, the Secretary made it clear to our Committee that the National Office would not be responsible for the payment of any amount beyond what may be collected in the Tulsa Relief and Defense Fund. This letter stated: The National Office cannot enter into any agreement for the employment of counsel whereby it becomes responsible for sums which may exceed the receipts in the funds being collected for this specific purpose. The National Office can only take the position of giving assistance in this matter and that assistance will be all that is possible to give and will be limited only by the amount of money we are able to collect into the Tulsa Relief and Defense Fund. The Association must avoid placing itself in a position where it may have shouldered upon it a greater share of the responsibility than was its original intention to undertake.
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting of July 1925
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

The Sixteenth Annual Conference held at Denver, Colorado, June 24-30, was by far the greatest and most successful conference yet held by the Association. The local arrangements by the Denver Branch were perfect, every detail being looked after and carried through without a single hitch. Not only were the sessions and the mass meetings all that could be desired, but so were the entertainments. M. Reigel, State Director for Education, in his contention that the film is not moral, educational, or amusing. Mayor Davis of Cleveland has ordered the film seized at the opera house where it was to be shown. Upon appeal by the Griffith interests to the Federal Court, the right to show the film was granted but the State Supreme Court now bars it.
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting of September 1927
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Maurice Mays Case In August, I9I9, Maurice Mays, a young colored man, was arrested in Knoxville, Tennessee, charged with the murder of Mrs. Bertie Lindsey, a white woman. Al though the trial resulted in a verdict of murder in the first degree, the general papers and has resulted in a demand for the pamphlet by teachers, libraries, etc. Among the white dailies reprinting the editorial are the Beaumont, Texas, Enter prise; the Des Moines News; the Amsterdam and the New York Recorder. The Nation in an editorial of August 24 quoted from the N.A.A.C.P. lynching statistics. An evidence of the impression made by the Annual Spring Conference in In dianapolis was furnished by an article written by the art critic of the Indianapolis Star, referring to the Conference and urging that its good effect be followed up by support of colored artists. The work of two young colored painters of Indianapolis was then exhaustively dealt with by the Star’s critic.
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting of March 1929
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Richmond (Va.) Segregation Ordinance Newspapers of February 15 carried a dispatch to the effect that a Residential Segregation Ordinance had passed the Board of Alderman of the City of Richmond, Virginia, and was before the Mayor for his signature. During the month the Association has received clippings of its releases from a magazine published in England and from a German newspaper, the Weser Zeitung, published in Bremen. The Director of Publicity prepared a full-page advertisement for the Crisis calling attention to the $200,000 Twentieth Anniversary Campaign.
Is the Negro a Danger to White Culture?
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

In the following article Johnson reponds to John Powell, whose article raising issues of Anglo-Saxon superiority had appeared in the New York World. Johnson states here that the Ku Klux Klan is the extreme result of Anglo Saxon superiority propaganda. He further explains that the concept of Anglo-Saxon superiority is built on lies by shallow-pated dogmatists who spread their dubious theories of race inferiority. This article was written in December 1923. Is the Negro dangerous to white culture and to the white race? Is it true that ‘‘.Anglo-Saxon culture” is threatened by aliens? Is it true that ‘‘.Anglo-Saxons” are the only group fit for leadership, cultural and political. in America? Yes, seems to be the answer to these questions by the ‘‘.Anglo-Saxon Clubs” of which Mr. John Powell of Virginia wrote in the World of December 2. To the specific questions raised by Mr. Powell and the ‘‘.Anglo-Saxon Clubs” I am glad in response to the request of the editor of the World, to make reply, as Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as a Negro, and, primarily, as an American.
Achievements and Aims of the N.A.A.C.P.
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

The Chicago Defender, a black weekly newspaper, asked Johnson to restate the aims and purposes of the NAACP after its sixteen-year history. In 1925 Johnson eagerly accepted this opportunity, and in the following article he answers the question, “What has the NAACP done?” In spite of sixteen years history of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, together with what it has accomplished, and the clear statement of its purpose, there are still people who ask “What has the N.A.A.C.P. done?” These questions may spring from ignorance or from intentional blindness. I therefore eagerly seize the opportunity given by the Chicago Defender, to restate for the great public reached by this newspaper, not only the aims and purposes of the N.A.A.C.P. but to call to mind a few of the achievements which justify the enormous labor which has been and is being expended in the work of the Association. I think it only necessary to state the aims of the N.A.A.C.P. to make it clear that it is absolutely necessary for every Negro in America that those aims be realized. What are those aims and how have we thus far realized them? The N.A.A.C.P. set out to establish, safeguard, and fortify the fundamental citizenship rights of every colored man, woman and child in America. It demands justice in the courts, equal opportunity for education of colored with white children, and equal and fair deal for the colored workman on the job. In any public place the N.A.A.C.P. demands that the Negro shall have exactly the same accommodation and courtesy accorded to any other American citizens. It wants the Negro respected as men and women, his gifts and achievements acknowledged, to the end that the United States Constitution may be made something more than a scrap of paper and there be in America democracy in fact as well as in name.
The Militant N.A.A.C.P
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Johnson, in this essay, discusses the NAACP’s role in abolishing lynching. He also points out that while lynching is the most sensational work of the Association, there are numerous other accomplishments. He makes the spe cific point that there is undoubtedly no phase of race relations that the NAACP has not profoundly affected. This essay was written in 1929. It seems hard to believe that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has been in existence nearly twenty years. This spring it is to have its Nineteenth Annual Conference. When it was begun, as a small committee, in New York, following the terrible race riots in Springfield, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln had lived, it faced a very different condition in this country from what now prevails. Discrimination, dis franchisement, lawless attacks upon the Negro were at their height, and few if The work of the N.A.A.C.P. is conducted on a ludicrously small budget, eighty per cent of which is made up of small contributions and membership fees from one to five dollars paid in by Negroes. The white people who are taking part in its work do so, not merely to benefit and advance the Negro, but because they realize it is a work essential to the principles and the life itself of American democracy.
Leadership and the Times
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

As a speaker at the NAACP Annual Conference in Detroit, Michigan, in January 1937, Johnson offers a speech on leadership in which he argues that business leadership, political leadership, educational leadership, social leadership, and spiritual leadership are being called into question. The complexities and characteristics of leadership are numerous, he asserts, especially since with each generation the demands for changing leadership are imperative. He pays tribute to the effective leadership of NAACP Secretary Walter White, who is the recipient of the Twenty-third Annual NAACP Spingarn Medal. I am going to talk to you for a few moments about leadership. But in these turbulent times, in this age when fundamental ideas of civilization, of society, and of life are shifting so rapidly, a discussion of leadership in traditional terms is archaic. Who in this day rises on a platform or stands on a street corner to talk about leadership, except to criticize, discredit, and deride it? Indeed, the discrediting.
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting of May 1954
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Philip Murray Award On May 12 the Philip Murray Memorial Foundation presented the Association a grant for $75,000 in a ceremony held at the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace. Formal presentation of the award was made by Walter Reuther, president of the C.I.O.. The check was accepted by Arthur B. Spingarn.
The Negro on the American Stage
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Influenced greatly by James Weldon Johnson, Walter White developed a strong literary interest and ultimately became a successful writer of both fiction and nonfiction. An active participant in the Harlem Renaissance, he published two novels during the height of the literary movement. Like John son, he believed that African Americans have been abundantly endowed “with the stuff of which drama is made “In this essay, written in 1932, he offers an assessment of African Americans’ influence and status on the American stage.
Reds vs. the Freedom Train
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

The NAACP, White argued, was one of the most concrete roadblocks in the Communist Party’s path. It was typical of certain Communist forces to vilify the NAACP leadership through campaigns of falsehoods. The Association stood up to the Communists by empowering its board of directors and staff to revoke the charter of any NAACP branch that fell under the influence of the Communist Party. In the following New York Herald Tribune article, published in 1946, White discusses the Communists’ order to its followers to discredit the Freedom Train. The Communist Attack on the Freedom Train seemed so unbelievably silly when I first read it, I was certain that some enemy of Communism or some very smart Freedom Train publicist had concocted the diatribe. Even after authenticity of the secret directive to Communist units signed by the chairman of the “National Educational Agitation and Publication Department” had been admitted by the Communist Party; I found it difficult to believe any person or group could make himself or itself so ridiculous.
White Hails Film on Anti-Semitism
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

In the following article, Walter White praises producer Darryl Zanuck and his film company for its courage in presenting a sincere depiction of anti Semitism on the screen. He expresses his desire to see African-American life portrayed in a more honest and positive light on the big screen. This article was written in 1947. Wendell Willkie would be proud of the film company of whose board he was chairman for the courage it has shown in making “Gentleman’s Agreement” the most forthright expose of anti-Semitism yet to appear on the screen.
Moral Advance Seen in Report by Committee on Civil Rights
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Walter White called President Harry S. Truman’s report by the Commission on Civil Rights the most uncompromising and forthright declaration by a government agency on racial bigotries to date. This committee was formed in response to the “bloody summer” of 1946, when lynchings and mob violence against African Americans escalated. In this article, White praises Truman for establishing the Committee on Civil Rights to address these atrocities. He wrote this article in 1947. Today Americans who look to the future, Lloyd Morris asserts in his just published “Postscripts to Yesterday,” display no serenity, are opposed with an increasing dis enchantment with the social order and are plagued with a growing conviction of deterioration of the “moral atmosphere.” There is, unhappily, a tremendous volume of evidence to support Mr. Morris’s pessimism. But there is also evidence that the moral conscience of America not only is not entirely moribund, but in some respects is more percipient and courageous than it was in 1896, the year to which Mr. Morris looks back with nostalgic reverence. The most striking proof of this is the report of President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights. That document is notable in two respects. It is the most uncompromising and specific pronouncement by a governmental agency on the explosive issue of racial and religious bigotry which had ever been issued. It is equally remarkable in that, for the first time, distinguished representatives of industry have spoken out on the subject.
Fate of Democrats in 1950 Seen Hinging on Stand on Civil Rights
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

In this article Walter White reminds Senate Democrats running for reelec tion in 1950 in states where the election will likely be close that labor, minority groups, and other voters will hold the balance of power. The can didates will be judged by their actions on civil rights. White expresses no confidence in the reactionary Republicans that they will bring about needed change. The political complexion of the Senate in 1950 may possibly have been determined by a small meeting in New York on February 5. Representatives of twenty-two national organizations played a decisive role in giving Democrats control of both Senate and House of the Eighty-first Congress. These organizations bluntly served notice that “no other recourse will be given us except to give control of the Senate in 1950 to the Republicans” if the Democratic Senate leadership allows that party’s civil rights pledges to be nullified by blustering Dixiecrats. That such a threat can be fulfilled and is no idle boast is evident on examination of the politically powerful groups which spoke. Organized labor was represented by both the American Federation and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, women’s and Negro organizations were there. With the exception of the Americans for Democratic Action, none of the powerful bodies could be classified as “professional” political ones. They spoke for millions of in dependent voters who, during the last sixteen years, have taken away from political machines the deciding of national and local elections.
Fifty Years of Fighting
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Perhaps one of the most valuable signs of progress in the NAACP struggle for civil rights was that little time was spent on the issue of lynching during 1950. This progress represented a true change in the pattern of race realations in America. In the following essay, White discusses the five major campaigns in the struggle for freedom in the first half of this century. It is a fascinating, heartening, discouraging experience to celebrate the Pittsburgh Courier’s fortieth birthday by looking back to compare the status of civil animalism and racism, the breaking forever of illusions of white moral or military superiority, and embarrassment to the United States in its new position of world leadership. No longer can the United States get away with telling other peoples what they must do as long as denial of civil rights to its own citizens confront Americans in every international conference. Thus a new and immensely potent drive has been added to the battle for human justice to all Americans irrespective of race, creed, color, or national origin.
N.A.A.C.P. Forty-fifth Annual Meeting Speech
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

In 1954 the Supreme Court charted a new course for American school children-moving the nation away from the “separate but equal” pattern, toward the democratic goal of integration and equal opportunity. The historic unanimous decision handed down on May 17 concluded “that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” The Court declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently un equal.” It held that “the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.” In the following remarks, Walter White praises the attorneys, both living and dead, who brought about this legal victory. He discusses other accomplishments of the Association as well as the struggle ahead. White gave this address in January 1955. The year 1954 marked one of the eight great epochs of the history of the Negro in America, in the unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court out lawing segregation in tax-supported education. The eight epochs-some high, some low-began with the landing of the first Negro slaves in Jamestown, Va., in 1619; the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln in 1863; the Supreme Court decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896; the founding of the N.A.A.C.P. in 1909; the coming of age politically of the Negro in 1931 when organized Negro.
Roy Wilkins (August 30, 1901-September 6, 1981)
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

1901 Born to William and Mayfield Edmundson Wilkins on August 30 in St. Louis, Missouri. 1906 Upon his mother’s death, moves to St. Paul, Minnesota, to live with his uncle and aunt, Samuel and Elizabeth Edmundson Williams. Enters Whittier Grammar School. 1915 Graduates from the eighth grade. Enters the Mechanical Arts High School. 1918 Becomes the editor of the Logwheel, the high school newspaper. 1919 Graduates high school as salutatorian. Enters the University of Minnesota in the Department of Journalism. 1920 During college sophomore year, joins the staff of the Minnesota Daily, becoming the newspaper’s first black reporter.
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting of April 1963
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

In protest against the arrest of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others who have been fighting discrimination in the State of Alabama, the Secretary, on April 15, wired Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, urging Federal intercession and citing a specific law-in U.S. Code 242-which “makes it a crime under Federal law to deprive any U.S. citizen of constitutional rights under color of state law.” The Association also joined other organizations in protesting racial policies of several chain stores in Birmingham with demonstrations in major cities through out the country. Picket lines were set up on Saturday, April 20, in front of Wool worth, Kress, Green and Newberry stores in New York, Philadelphia, San Fran cisco, Los Angeles, Flint, Detroit, and thirty-five other cities. Other organizations joined the picket lines in some few cities including the Transport Workers Union, UAW, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, CORE, ACWA, Negro American Labor Council, ILGWU, and the Retail Warehouse Department Store Union.
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting of September 1963
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Following the brutal beating of Rev. Harry Blake, president of the Shreveport, La., Branch on September 22, by police, the Secretary on September 24, wired the Attorney General urging “immediate and adequate Federal presence in Shreveport and full support of legislative authority of the Attorney General of the United States to protect American citizens “Law enforcement officials, including the Commissioner of Public Safety, invaded the Thirteenth District Auditorium where a memorial meeting for the victim of the Birmingham September IS bombing had been held. Police harassed several persons in the neighborhood and effectively prevented them from attending the meeting. One teacher was struck on the porch of his own home. To avert further violence, the Association temporarily suspended night meetings and demonstrations.
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting of December 1963
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

On Friday, November 22, the Executive Secretary sent a wire to Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy on behalf of the Association, expressing deepest sorrow on the tragic death of President John F. Kennedy. The Secretary also wired President Johnson following his oath of office ceremony. Following the assassination, radio, television, and newspaper reporters began calling for comment by the Secretary on the impact of the tragedy on the anti bias drive. He [the Secretary] issued the following statement at the time: The assassination of President Kennedy is a grim tragedy reminding us anew of the depth of hatred that some Americans are capable of harboring. The President’s consistent commitment to and espousal of basic human rights for all earned the undying enmity of fanatic and loathe some bigots ...
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting of April 1964
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

“Letter To Senators” Campaign-As a result of the Association’s campaign for letters to Senators in support of the civil rights bill, New York Senators Keating and Javits have reported a reversal in the trend of mail they have received. Last month these two Senators reported receiving mail 10-7 against the bill. On April 1, they reported that during the last week in March they received a total of 3,450 letters in favor of the bill, but 1,398 opposing it, better than two to one in favor of the bill. The Executive Secretary had sent letters to all branches of the Association urging them to write their Senators and get their friends to do so urging passage of the civil rights bill.
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting July and August 1964
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

During the months of July and August the Secretary continued to fill speaking engagements, make appearances on television and radio, and prepared articles for various publications; in addition to his administrative duties. On July 2, he attended the White House ceremony at which the President signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964; spoke in Detroit July 4 at the Japanese. On June II the Secretary wrote to the seventy-one senators-twenty-seven Re publican and forty-four Democratic-who voted June IO to invoke cloture, thereby ending the seventy-four day Senate debate on the civil rights bill. Death of Senator Clair Engle On July 31 the Secretary wired Mrs. Claire Engle on behalf of the officers and members of the Association, extending deep sympathy in the death of her hus band. The Secretary stated: He will be remembered for countless service and evidences of personal integrity, but for none more so than his personal appearances in June 1964 to vote for cloture on the civil rights bill and then to vote for the bill itself.
Report of the Executive Director for the Board Meeting of October 1964
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Immediately following a tour of West Coast branches (see September report), on October 2, the Executive Director* left the same day for a two-week vacation, returning to the office on October 16. Speaking Engagements On returning to the office he filled engagements as follows: October 16, Camden, N.J., for the Camden Branch in connection with its membership drive; October 18 in Orangeburg, S.C., at the South Carolina State Conference closing mass meeting; October 20 in Purchase, N.Y., for Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart where he was cited as a “Leader, patriot, and man of faith,” and where he received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws; Detroit, Mich., October 21, to confer with the branch officers on financial problems; October 24, Washington, Pa.,
Report of the Executive Director for the Board Meeting of the First Quarter 1973
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Speaking Engagements On January 7, the Executive Director attended [a] meeting of the Special Contributions Fund Trustees, and later that evening attended the Association’s Fellow ship Dinner in New York City; on January 8, attended annual meeting of the Association, and the Board of Directors meeting in New York City; attended staff meeting on January rn; testified at hearing of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare against [the] President’s nomination of Peter J. Brennan as Secretary of Labor in Washington, D.C., on January 18; was honorary pallbearer at funeral services for Elmer Carter on January 19 in New York City; attended memorial services for President Lyndon Baines Johnson at City Hall in New York City on January 24; and on January 25, attended funeral service for President Johnson in Washington, D.C.; on January 29, attended annual meeting and annual dinner of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
The War against the United States
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

One year after the Brown decision, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decree reaffirming the constitutional principle that racially segregated schools are unconstitutional. and it turned over to the lower federal courts the responsibility of seeing that local school boards moved with “all deliberate speed” to abide by the ruling. The reaction to this decree varied across the nation. School districts in Mississippi declared that they would defy the Supreme Court. Other school districts-in Poteau, Oklahoma; Fayette County, Kentucky, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee-desegregated without friction. In the following article, published in the Crisis in December 1955, Roy Wilkins discusses the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 1955 decree. On May 31, 1955, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decree in the school segregation cases, reaffirming the constitutional principle in its 1954 opinion that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional. and turning over to the lower Federal Courts the task of seeing to it that local school boards made plans and took action with all deliberate speed to abide by the ruling.
The Meaning of the Sit-ins
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

On February 1, 1960, in Greensboro, North Carolina, four African-American students at North Carolina A&T State College took a bold step by staging sit-ins. The sit-in action spread to other colleges: Michigan State University, University of Washington, Howard University, and others. A majority of the protests were organized and led by NAACP youth members. Most of those arrested were defended by attorneys provided by local NAACP branches. In addition, branches, NAACP officers, and members provided an appreciable portion of bail monies. In the following address, Roy Wilkins speaks before the City Club Forum of Cleveland about the meaning and results of sit-ins on April 16, 1960. Since February 1, 1960, the so-called race problem has taken a fresh and dramatic turn. Beginning on that date in Greensboro, N.C., a wave of sit-ins by Negro college students at lunch counters of variety stores has swept across the South, from Florida to West Texas.
In Back of the Busing Issue
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Roy Wilkins proclaimed that the busing issue was never the real issue. The real issue, he argued, was desegregated quality education. In the following article, written in August 1972, he discusses what he believes to be the real issues behind the highly charged question of busing. Not much more can be said on the highly emotional topic of busing children to school for the purpose of aiding the desegregation of the public school system. Except that busing is not the real question, but only the excuse behind which forces, for a variety of reasons, move against the real issue: Desegregated quality education. This. said the Supreme Court in 1954, belongs to every child, irrespective of race, color, or place of residence. In this election year, many politicians in Washington are busy passing legislation to curb busing. They are getting their votes on record against busing so that the folks back home will vote for them next November.
Integration the Only Way
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

When Roy Wilkins wrote this article in 1975, he believed that many African Americans had wandered off the path of integration in search of a quick panacea. In this essay he counters the “go-it-alone” theory. Nearly every day some evidence appears that more and more black Americans who have wandered off the path of creeping progress in search of a more speedy resolution of the race’s destiny are returning to the fold. They have found out their men, no matter how dedicated, need help and cooperation. The “go it alone” theory has been tried and it won’t work, at least for now. At one time it was thought the magic of black alone would be sufficient. Black was added to every enterprise and although some blacks, here and there, made some extra money by taking advantage of a fad, and although some egos were twisted unrecognizably, it was found, after a brief time, that in few instances was the race advanced. Truth to tell, integration is the only philosophy that goes anywhere under the present circumstances where there is a minority of ten to ninety. Until black people build up their retail field. reduce their number of household domestics, improve their land-holding class (farmers and non-farmers) find a way to employment in all brackets, fight their way to good solid education and are housed freely in all kinds of neighborhoods, they might as well forget going it by themselves.
The Last Career
Authors: Heinz Donald
Published: November 2023

St. Jerome once referred to someone as pregnant with his own death. This metaphor invites reflection. Of what are the dying to be delivered? The art of dying may be thought of as the art of a good delivery. “Deathing” has emerged as an analogue of birthing, with accompanying Lamaze-like techniques and the participation of a coach. The substantial something to be delivered after the pregnancy of dying is the final form of the life we have lived. Death presents us with the urgency, nourished by our own anxieties about meaning, guilt, and finitude, to deliver a completed story. The gestation of dying is the time for life review and story completion.