The Lexington standard. [volume] (Lexington, Ky.) 1892-1912, 1911-10-21


as It was In Cincinnati their brother,
General Samuel r. Carey. rivaled
Wendell Phillips in the bitterness and
eloQuence CT his abolition addresses.
Cincinnati rs the headquarters of
so long worked for the uplift of the
Negro.
Cincinnati is to-day the home of
Joseph Benson Foraker, thought by
many the most intellectual man in the
Republican party-the Fire Alarm
Foraker, the Foraker who braved
Pig Stick" Roosevelt in championing
the Negro troops in the Brownsville,
Texas, affair
Lastly, Cincinnati is the home Of
William Howard Taft, President of
the United States, the undoubted lead
er of the Republican party.
Surely, if anywhere within the con-
fines of the country there is a place
where enc would expect to find least
aversion between the white and black
man it would be in Cincinnati, and yet
| the fact is that nowhere is antipathy
between the two more pronounced.
| make this statement after more
| than twenty years of what l believe
has been discerning observation IN
/ every section of the country. The facts
to bear out the declaration are num-
mercus and most significant.
One of the most influential colored
men in Cincinnati is w. p. Dabney.
He is the editor of paper known as
The Union. Week after week he notes
the repugnanee existing between the
| two races. In the issue of June 3,
1911, Professor Dabney carried an arti-
Gle that detailed objection to colored
people occupying property recently
purchased beyond what ne calls "the
narrow confines known as Negro
lneighborhoods. He says:
Cincinnati is no exception to this
rule. Our ancestors fought in all the
wars. helped most materially in the
development of the country, and now,
as they strive to make themselves
good and useful citizens, find their
progress TO prosperity barred by the
malice, envy and jealousy of race
prejudice, which ever towers noun
tain high, seeking to thrust them back
as they strive to move onward and
upward"
Quotations might be multiplied in
definitely to the same effect from this
paper. But, take another Cincinnati
! colored paper, edited by an equally in
| f1uential and able leader of his race,
w. L. Anderson, the publisher of The
Pilot. In the issue of August Z, 1911,
he says:
1.-The Cincinnati baseball manage
ment has imported two players from
the Island of Cuba. Before con-
tract was signed, however, which
would make them permanent addi-
tons to the club, the players were
compelled to submit pedigrees show
| ing that they had no strain of colored
blood sauntering around in their sys-
tens"
The Cincinnati Republican organiza-
ton to hold the colored vote has
doled out a number of minor appoint
ments, most of them little better than
servile positions, like janitors and
messengers, with occasionally an as
sistant clerkShip, a court crier and
the like. At the same time it has al
most uniformly nominated on its
ticket for State Legislature colored
man. 1t is a matter of record in the
board of elections that although the
balance of the Republican legislative
ticket is elected the colored man is
defeated. This has happened at both
of the last elections for members OF
the Legislature. and the colored candi
date even in the Roosevelt wave OF
1904 ran behind. Republican politi
clans asked why they persist in nomi
mating a colored man sure to be de
feated, reply that while they lose one
Office out of a dozen they would lose
| III did ran nominate
Negro.
With some few notable and honor
able exceptions the attitude of Repub
lican politicians in Cincinnati TOWARD
the Negro is purely selfish, to win tn
, coIored vote, it being conservative.
estimated that there are fully 500
. colored voters IN Cincinnati. Thi
figure, by the way, is about the norma
Republican plurality in Cincinnati
"The black brigade saved u.s." ex
claimed a Republican office holde
when the returns showed in the mu
nicipal election of 1909 that the Re
publican candidate had won.
The Negro himself is becoming cor
scious of this selfish aud scornfu
a consideration of him by white Reput
lican politicians, and in the Fourt
ward, that includes much of Walnu
Hills around the old Lane Seminar
grounds, where there is considel
! able Negro population, they have non
) mated by petition Negro physical
l. for the city council to run as an ind,
e pendent against the Republican an
{ Democratic candidates. They clail
I that as they poll large vote in thi
e ward they are entitled to a Republ
{ can candidate occasionally, but hav
always been denied.