St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1943-05-07

ing human being, they want to
thank the director; when the Presi-
dents valet goes into the navy they
want a bigger story than The New
York Times or The Richmond
Times-Dispatch can give them;
when young 1t. Maria August,
RN, of Atlanta, arrives in North
Africa with thirty white nurses,
they want to know; when William
Thaddeus Coleman, brilliant Har-
ward law student, goes into the
army they want to read about it.
All these things affect them in
their personal feelings as Negroes,
and make them furious or proud.
Why? Because they are a Jim
Crowed minority who, brought here
long ago against their wishes, have
never been allowed to feel that they
were just the same as other Ameri-
cans. When they achieve the in
tegration into our national life for
which the race press is crusading,
then the race press as it exists to-
day will have served it's purpose,
and must either disappear or be-
gin to operate from a non-racial
basis. But this change cannot be
achieved by pious lectures from
white newspaper editors. A funda-
mental change in the attitude of
white Americans has got to pre-
cede it. When the white Southern
editors state fatty that the Ne
groes must always expect to be
segregated in the South, then these
editors must always expect to be
confronted by a segregated Negro
press.
When a squat little redneck,
with none of the graces he says
are inherent in his race, gets up in
the Senate and proposes that
100000 people who for three
centuries spilled their sweat into
the American earth-be torn away
from it and sent to the fever coast
of Africa, Negroes want their
press to call him a liar, a thug
and a cheat. They don't want him
handled with calm disdain, as The
New York Times might handle him.
They know what he is. They want
to see it in print, or as near to it
as possible under the libel laws.
When they put out ten cents for
their weekly budget Of current
reading they also want the details
of spicy Negro divorce cases and
bloody crime stories. White critics
have hammered this aspect of the
Negro press as though they have
never seen the white newspapers
which built up calculations in the
millions by featuring sex and
crime. And in fairness it should be
pointed out that it is not these
stories but political news which
the race press features. The Negro
press goes out to cooks, servants,
elevator boys and truck drivers.
Not exclusively, but almost so: IS
per cent Of the race are classed as
laborers. They are fighting their
way up, but what they have been
able to win as a group, against
the odds, in the fields of educa-
ton, money and mores, is not high
when looked at from the white end
Of the telescope. They wouldn't
buy a black New York Times if
one were available. AS a matter of
fact, there are few Negro news
papers-when things like drive.
courage, purpose and reliability
are taken into consideration with
The Times Wanted thoroughness
and propriety-that would rather
read than The Times. More than
one white man has picked up a
Negro newspaper to scott and re-
manned to read, and to read with
a sense of discovery. Rose Wilder
Lane, author Of Free Land" and
other books, who never saw a
Negro until she was fully grown,
took look at the race papers be-
cause such a controversy was be-
ing raised about them. The hard
hitting, fighting columns were a
new experience. She became an
avid reader and finally a columnist
herself. She writes a column in
The Pittsburgh Courier and she
has never enjoyed any writing
more than this.
CONTINUED Next Week.