The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1920-10-30
A GREETING TO THE OLD SET
TIERS ASSOCIATION.
BY ]. D. Bowser.

~ - ~ pO"pOl
Dear old Timers-The idea OF a per
sonal Conference with the two hun
dred and more members of our Asso-
citation who for two or three score
years have contributed your share in
the upbuilding of this great City was
suggested to me on reading in local
| paper that perhaps our oldest mem
Der, Mrs. Flora Waldon, aged "a, in
tended to cast her vote for the first
time on Tuesday, November 2 next.
At once my mind wandered back to
that March 20, 1860, when the passage
of the Fifteenth Amendment to the
United States Constitution conferred
! upon Colored citizens the right to
vote. l thought, too, of the fifty years
that had gone by before the same
political party had decreed that the
right of suffrage should not be denied
to any person on account of sex.
thought of the remnant who were
in at the birth of Negro Emancipation
and manhood suffrage who are still
living in Kansas City, and whom it
would do my soul good to know. that
the, too, had gone to the polls, and,
like Mrs. Walden, had cast their first
ballots for that grand old part which
made universal suffrage possible. and
back of it freedom itself, turning the
auction block into a school house and
the whipping post and slave pen into
Universities and happy homes.
The roll of those | know might
seem to belong here, the octogenarions
like Mrs. Mary Madison, Mrs. Martha
Johnson and Mrs. Eliza Rome, must
not be omitted. Then l should be glad
to know that our good friend Napoleon
Railey, a lusty lad of So, had chaper-
oned each of these venerable women
to the polls.
But, what of that much larger num-
Der of survivors of past generation
who like mself have rounded out their
allotted days OF three score years and
| ten and other uncounted years
Among whom Willis Brown, Mrs.
! Sarah Fields, Carl H. X. Stewart, Mrs.
Julia Logan. George w. Payne, John
B. Morehead, Rev. Deemer Washing
ton, Mrs. Jane Kane and Mrs. Kate
! Jordan?
Listen, comrades! Do you recall
what great events have transpired in
this country since you and came upon
the stage of action? Do you realize
that we are older than that infamous
fugitive slave, law which made hunt
ing ground for the return of runaway
slaves of all the land from the Ohio
River to Canada? Older than the re
peal of the Missouri Compromise
which made slave territories possible
of Kansas and Nebraska? Older thar
the Dred Scott Decision which decided
that a Negro had no rights that 6
white man was bound to respect anC
could never be made a citizen? Old
er than Uncle Toms Cabin, which die
more to convert the Nation TO the
enormity of the slave power than al
other books or literature ever writ
ten? Older than the Republican party
itself, which was organized for the
express purpose of putting away all
these Democratic adobinations and OF
making true the Declaration of Inde
pendence that all men are created
free and equal? Older than John
Browns Martyr done at Harpers
Ferry when all but his twenty-one fol
lowers, two of whom were his sons
and five black men we're crucified
that we might enjo the rights of free
men and do We not hear reverberat
ing through the walls of memory the
dying echoes of the slave drivers
lash as it cut deep into the quivering
flesh of some helpless slave mother,
whose babe had been torn from her
! breast and sold upon the auction
block? Do we not hear as esterday
the baying of murderous blood hounds
on the track of some Eliza as she
leaps from ice floe TO ice floe in the
chilly waters of the Ohio? And do We
not remember that then as now there
were waiting on the other side Judas
Iscariots with black skins ready for
few pieces Of silver to betra runa-
way slaves back to their cruel Mas
ters?
And do we not rejoice in this crisis
OF our country's history that we have
no birthright TO sell for political
message of pottage? That we wear no
party collars, bend under no party
yoke. That no party. no organization,
has any deed or trust on what little
brains we have. And aided by our
long memories of how the privileges
We enjoy were vouchsafed to us we
have no intention to kiss the hand
that through all these turbulent years
has struck at every measure of the
liberties we enjoy, and even now has
revived the Klu Klux Klan 70 prevent