The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1920-09-04
Lessons From Two Recent Deaths
BY c. A. Starks.
Lesson No. ~. j. Mattjoy.

Lesson No. ii. j. Mattjoy.
Said the more than clever Mark An
tony: 81 come to bury Caesar, not to
praise him. The evil that men do
lives after them, while the good is oft
inferred with their bones. So let it
be with Caesar" Aand so, here. let
it be with Mattjoy Also let it be un-
to praise Mattjoy. but neither do we
come to censure him. With those who
have Joined that innumerable cara
van We war not. 1t would be COW
ardly for us to attack those whom
death has rendered powerless to de-
fend themselves. So the motive here
is something deeper than spleen or
hate, it is the lesson of Truth which
proceeds out of every fact or incident
whether we see it or not
The lesson of Mattjoy's short career
here seems to teach us how dangerous
it is to have any Negro to profession
ally become a part of a dirty political
machine which has for it's main pur-
pose the intimidation of the good citi-
zen and voter. There is such a per-
nicious machine in this town which is
part of the hateful SYSTEM of op-
preston that we all know so well. 1t
is this system, then, that We should
bear down upon with eternal ven
geance. True, men make the system
but the system becomes so powerful
that the system makes the men. such
as they are. Mattjoy, along with scores
of other Negroes. was merely a part
of that system. He was only a type
of many. Different, possibly, but no
worse For while in measure he
represented an individual brutal force,
others of the system were more sub
tie, insidious, working with the poison
of corrupt money and artful hypoc-
risy, all according to their personali-
ties and the constituencies power be-
hind them
And this is the thing that has put
pain in the hearts of good men, taken
away the smile of the community and
abashed it with frightful intimidation.
@hioO ltb 10 llON llldh6 luO lllSldht Vi
imagining that we are the only vic
Tins of the hated system This thing
we speak of is more after the order of
the octopus-many and underhanded,
grabbing with its wary tentacles the
throat of the body polite. The whites,
therefore, have suffered along with
the blacks. When the stencil of filth
permeates the atmosphere all the SEN
sitive nasal organs within the radius
will note the repulsive air. But let
lis also remember here that this or
ganized frightfulness that all have suf-
fered is not originally the product of
any set of Negroes, but from the other
| fellow.
Mattjoy, we say, was a type, prob
ably the most pronounced of his own
group here, rivaling his prototypes of
the other race. But his death renders
merely an ameliorated situation of a
very bad condition. The fact is that
we are not afraid of the dead, but we
are of the living. We are afraid of
those who have the power and inclina-
tion to plot against the public welfare.
In the death of Mattjoy the system
merely loses unit, but the system
remains. What the good people of
both races should do at this hour, for
it is the striking time, is to dedicate
themselves upon the cross of the trag-
ic event to the emancipation of the
community from the ever-menacing
presence of evil. There are others
who would be as brutal as Mattjoy if
they had the nerve. These we should
be able to crush in the very incipiency
of their assumption of brute power.
The next man who begins to earn a
reputation for these same methods
should at once be denounced. This
will possibly save another like trag-
edy.
We end this article with the same
quotation with which we began: "The
evil that men do lives after them,
while the good is oft (ah, too oft ,
inferred with their bones"