The Enterprise. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 192?-1930, 1927-07-29
Tacoma Editors Reply

The above explanation is very I'M
satisfactory. The undisputed facts
are that most of the delegates to the
Masonic convention here last week
stayed away from Colored Business
placed and gave business to Japa-
nese and whites. We are not fight
ing the Masonic Order-We want to
know why colored business didn't
get the business. No ifs and ands
we want facts. We have Brodhead
as our authority for what we said
The reply shows up nothing to The
contrary. If 5000 is all that the
committee could get spent among
colored folks after selling ball tickets
at 75c head to a crowded house,
its high time conventions went some
where else. Conventions are wanted
for the money they bring. Brod-
head said no chance was given him
to care for the delegates. True or
not-no reason has been given why
the delegates did not stop with him
first and let someone else have the
overflow. "If you amt goin' ter
drink in my saloon, what care /
where you git your liquor?" said an
old time bartender to a "stiff" he
was throwing out.
Nine or ten years ago, when J..
III. Ryan and two others were run
ming the Tip Top Hotel as clean,
respectable place, the same thing
happened when the Grand Lodge
met here. The Tacoma man, chair
man of the committee of arrange
ments, we are told by Mr.. Ryan, re-
fused point blank when asked to send
the delegates to the colored hotel.
One man met the train and persuad-
ed many of the delegates to go there
anyhow and they spent about 5000
in that one place. Colored ladies'
clubs met there and everything was
alright so long as it was free, but
hotel needed money and colored
trade went elsewhere. The hotel
went "bad" for want of better class
business. Everybody then jumped
up and down on the Zip Top.
Any Negro business will go bad
under. such conditions and that is
what we are trying to show. An
other item. Who printed the badges
worn around town here? A white
man, Klu Kluxer or what? Did
Ryan Press get the job, if not why
not? Ryan Press supports a col
ored woman-the Sumner man was
the one who raised the 'nigger cry"
some time ago about that county
printing.
Why haven't we a right to holler?
Negro business needs Negro support.
You can't say it is nobody's bust
ness what we do. II is somebody's
business. How would you have got
ten by with that Ball if somebody
didn't come to it? Every Negroes
money ought to be spent into an
other Negroes hands, if possible. Ne
gro girls will have to scrub floors in
the North End for a thousand years
to come If all Negroes continue to
patronize Japs, who never give us a
job. We care nothing about Brod-
head, nor the Malaga Hotel, it is the
principle of the thing. Getting an
cry will get us nowhere. Look the
facts in the face. No one can say
it looks good for all that money to
be spent among whites and Japanese
from Negro pockets, and Negro bust
ness left to get the scraps, if any
thing. Japs hire white girls not
black ones, for their front. .
If that had been Jap convention,
no Negro hotel could have got sin
gle delegate until every Jap barber
and laundryman had filled up all the
space between the curtain and the
front door and not then if white
hotel could be found.
Japs prosper for that reason. They
spend with Japs. We expect Tacoma
members Of such committees to look
out that all of the monies possible
to be spent by such a convention be
spent with Negro business. A Ne
gro supported Negro business will
support Negro girls and women
won't have to go without any except
the hardest kind of manual labor.
It's time large groups Of Negro men
begun to think Of something else
when they have convention besides
a "good time" Race conditions are