Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1924-04-03
SOME FACTS AND SOME FAKES
BY MRS.

a PERSONAL acquaintance with Wash
~ ingtOn City was novel and instructive
one to a plain north Georgia woman,
beginning in November. 1875, and coming
along down the forty-nine years which we
know have come and gone since that date.
My first visit to the White House was on
| certain Saturday in the late winter of
I1875-76 to attend Mrs. President Grants
reception given to the public. We had to
get in line and crowd in and around several
rooms before we reached the hostess. There
were all sorts of folks and all sorts of colors,
! from AnglO-SaXOn to Acknowledgements, being
Japs and Chinese. / stood for little while
by an elegantIy-dressed woman and heard
somebody ask her, "HOWs the SenatOr?"
She. was quite as fair-COmplected and, I
must say quite as good looking as many of
the visitors. She was Mrs Senator Bruce,
of Mississippi the wife of the only colored
senator who has occupied a seat in the
United States senate. She and her husband,
I was informed, were both educated at ODER
lin college, in Ohio. 1 never question since
that time the ease and aids by which quad
room women could reach good and polite So
cety at the capital Hon. Charles Sumner
broke with General Grant because Hon. Fred
Douglas, cOloTed was not invited to dine at
the White House feast given to various rep
rssentatives from abroad, Haiti included, and
the Haitian with a darker complexion than
Douglas. This is fact. When Sumner died
Hon. L. @. G. Lamar made a demonstration
with eloquent eulOgy on Charles Sumner,
and our Dixie shOuters made business of
cussing Grant ~dyed-in-the-woOl lover of
the colored politicians. How about the
fakes?
The first time 7 attended church in Wash
ington was DR.. Newman's church, where the
president attended. We had to crowd into
a pew where a white man felt obliged to
put his arm around colored brothers neck
to make room for ourselves. This is fact.
Our people were on tip-tOe, that Grant
u1 al n hn
ored variety, but when Grover Cleveland
went in the White House he entertained
Douglas and his white wife, as his weekend
guests. This is a fact, but it was not elab-
GRATED in the south, except in Hon. Tom
Watsons JeffersOnian. | called to see Hon.
w. J. Bryan at the secretary of states office
on the day before he resigned from Wilson S
cabinet. l had to wait awhile AS l recol-
Iect, there were a half dozen of his official
aides who were brothers in black, and sew
eraI asked me if they could be of service to
me- 1t would have been deemed a fake
story at home, but it was fact in reality
in the national capital.
I was in Washington when the colored
municipal judge, Robert H. Terrell, ap-
pointed by President Taft, was reappointed
by President Wilson. The white citizens
held a mass meeting to protest, and a sena-
tor from Mississippi attended and spoke at
that meeting. I read the speech in the next
mornings paper. The senator was named
Vardaman. This is a fact This fight on
Vardaman may have been a cruel fake, but
the Mississippi voters turned down Varda-
man for protecting white supremacy in the
District of Columbia. This is fact
I was in Washington when General BeIk-
nap was impeached, because his wife was
presented with some extra spending money
by post traders who had been appointed by
her husband as secretary Of war. The en-
tire amount has been lately set at $40, 600.
My recollection makes it nearer 100000 all
told.
1t was really a movement prosecuted by
General Hazen and General Garfield to elect
Mr. Blaine to the presidency-but failed.
Here were fakes-alsO facts. Take your
choice. l there. [ heard it, [ was
there in $780, when Governor COlquitt APP
pointed Governor Joseph e. Brown to the
senate after the resignation of United States
Senator Gordon. 1t occurred during the adj
ministratiOn of President Hayes, who was
succeeded by Garfield and Arthur. We had
no Democratic president until March 4,
1885. Somebody has said the general was
so grieVed by old COnfederates wanting Of
fetal positions he felt obliged to resign.
Maybe so, but there are facts as well as
fakes in many things of that sort, and Re-
publican presidents generally took care of
their own lame ducks, also Democrats.
was in Washington when Vera Cruz was
taken by American soldiers, in the early
part of the Wilson administration. How
cannot tell, but it goes without saving it
petered out without any martial glory to
anybody. The facts have never been well
explained, but the fakes are rully in evil
dence
The senate investigation of oil leases has
abated, and the senator's are arrayed against
the attorney general, which has taken it's
place, and they are spending untold thou
sands on witnesses who have no character
to spare and in hearing what dead people
are supposed to have said, by those who
have no reputation to defend, and this oc-
ours on the floor of the greatest Legislative
body in the known world. Certainly fakes,
if not facts! And such as this is swallowing
up millions of the taxpayers money; and
this occurs in a land where courts and
judges and juries and sheriffs and jails are
thick as leaves on Vallambrosa." We have
the same sort of camoufage going on in our
Georgia legislatures. We had two fake leg
isIatures last year-1923. Two actual facts.
They amazed the people of the state; to use
General TOOmbs' saying, they "fatigued the
| peoples Indignation" But few rose up tC