The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-12
Members of Race Now Operate
 Thirty-two Banks
JIM CROW LAWS IN SOUTH
The Largest Tax Payer In the County In Which Washington and Lee Were Born Is
 Negro.
BY FREDERIC ]. HAsKIN.

have P banks with total capitaliza-
 lion of over S350,O0O. and deposits amount
 Ing to oyer $2000,000 Fifteen years age,
 according to Booker T. Washington, there
 were only two negro banks in the coun-
 tfy' one in Richmond and the other in
 Birmingham. The records of the treasury
 department show but one failure of a
 negro bank. Eleven of the 91 negro banks
 are In Mississippi, and nearly every one 1 ol them has been organized during the l Nardaman administrations One of t5e l banks IS in the home town of the gov
 ernor. It is said that the negro bank in 1 blrmlngham has number of white de- 1 posltors and some white borrowers. There
 was lire in this bank some time ago, 1 and when it seemed that the safe could 1 not be opened in time for business next
 morning, the white bankers offered to 1 lend the negroes what cash they needed l to resume business
 Negroes of New York are preparing 10 ] start big department store and fl is | said that there will be $1 GOO, coo behind the
 enterprise. The company backing it al- ready has a number of apartment houses 1 owned or leased, is conducting depart-
 ment store in Baltimore, a grocery store
 in Plainfield, N. J.. and a banking insti-
 tution Tn Georgia. negro company 1 contemplates building theatre in Wash | ington which will be devoted exclusively l to negro performances.
 The largest taxpayer in Westmoreland l county, Virginia, the county that gave | birth to George Washington and Robert E. Lee, is a negro. He is also one of the largest exporters of logs in the world. His
 name is w. H. Johnson. He is also post
 master at Baynesville, having been ap- pointed to that position over a Confeder- ate soldier upon the recommendation of Representative William A, Jones. the -dean of the Virginia delegation in Con gress. Johnson has the respect of all the
 white people of Westmoreland county, and on more than one occasion has car
 ried letters of introduction from the
 Washingtons and Lees who still reside in Westmoreland.
 The greatest religious work that is now being done among the negroes is said to be that of the Catholic church. There
 are more than 100000 negro Catholics in the United States, which is more than one out of every 10 members of the race.
 A writer who has travelled extensively through the south and has studied the subject at close range, says that the Catholic missionary work among the ne- groes IS proving a great agency for their moral uplft There are two orders of 1 colored sisters in the United States. One | of these is the Colored Ssterhood of the l Holy Family of New Orleans and tbe | other the Oblates of Providence whose
 mother house is in Baltimore. The latter 1 order has representatives in Washington, 1 St Louis. Leavenworth, Havana and at | Old Prevalent, in the Caribbean sea In | l7S7 the negro Methodsts of the United | States separated from the white church and organized one of their own. Their | first preacher was Richard Allen or dained in 1799. John Stewart negro was the first missionary of the Methodist church, having been commissioned to
 work among the Indians There are now three negro Methodist denomina tions. one | independent and one each under the pa tronage of the M E. church and the M 1 F.. church south
 An official of the Library of Congress who has been noting carefully the charac- | ter of books called for by negro readers. says that they have no taste whatever 1 for fiction, nor for history. He says that l the vast majority of them call for works l on psychology and natural history A l blind negro boy has distinguished himself 1 by reading every book in the National l Library for the Blind. The negroes of the i United States have written some 2o0O 1 books, and have about 150 regularly pub II negro publications are in the shape of weekly newspapers, and are published in | the south. A perusal of the negro news | papers and magazines shows that they magnify every incident where negro l shows to advantage over the white man.
 In all their literature they refer with
 pride to the fact that this man or that of their race did not have the color line drawn against him.
 The negro journals tbrolphout tI,
 south are advising their male readers to brush up for the railway mail service examinations. They point ou that this is the easiest branch of the service to get into and that the wages are good The uAsmber of negroes who are taking
 the examinations for the mail service is monthly increasing. There are dormi-
 tories at the ends of the principal runs 1 and the white clerks are up against a situation where they have either in many
 cases to sleep in beds that the night be- fore were occupied by negroes or go out and pay a hotel or boarding house bill. There complaints from every branch of the railway mail service on this account. The white clerks are seek ing to induce the postoffice department to establish Jim Crow mail route somewhere, where all the clerks are to be negroes. They point out that this would remove the cabse for friction that . exists, and at the same time would give
 the government an opportunity to test the relative merit of the two races as postal clerks, since careful check is kept upon each railway postoffice.
 Just now the negroes of Georgia are
 much wrought up over an attempt to
 prevent the negro Eks from further using
 that name as a secret order Court pro-
 ceedlngs have been instituted, and first blood has been drawn by the white Elks
 It seems that the negro Ielks originated
 Tn Cincinnati, where a negro got hold
 of an Elk ritual through Il member of
 the lodge, and gave it to another coiored man across the river in Kentucky. This
 man organized d culored ledge in Gin
 tinnati in lSi9. and from tnls the order has grown. A writer in d magazine fols
 coiored people says that 1T the white
 people are victorious in tlis case tho colored MasoGs, Odd Fellows and other orders will also feel the blow
 The supreme court of the United States
 has not only keid that the "Jm Crow
 car laws as enacted bS >the states are
 constitutional but that the railroads
 may provide such regulations without the
 sanction of state laws. In one case the
 supreme court held that a steamboat
 company has just as much right to sep
 arate the races as it has to separate
 the sexes. It held that a steamboat
 company had the right td set aside rooms
 for the exclusive use of women and
 others for men, and that likewise it could set aside rooms for the separate
 accommodation of the races If beld that