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

source. It is given race slant, for
example, by the big army generals
who sit around table in the War
Department and turn down re-
quests for experimental mixed
units of white and black volun-
teers; requests emanating from re-
sponsible sources such as Bishop
Bernard She'll of Chicago, who
came to his views on the race is
sue from observing the way mixed
groups worked together in the ath-
letic clubs of his diocese. In most
cases where war stories have
proved damaging to Negro morale,
the damage was accomplished be-
fore the papers hit the street.
When the crucial FEPC railroad
hearings into the glazing dis
elimination against Negro firemen
were cancelled, the damage was
accomplished as Paul McNutt an
nounced the cancellation. 1t was
foreordained the moment President
Roosevelt accepted the word of a
group of politicians and plausible
Southerners in Washington who
told him that righting a wrong
against a group of Negro railroad
firemen was going to hurt the war
effort. This is how stories get race
angled.
The race press has grown up to
fill a need as important to the
Negro as the hometown paper to
any white man. Since the World
War, it has become an important
implement of the Negro minority
in making it's pressure effective.
The glazing light of publicity
which the Negro press has focused
for twenty years on crimes like
lynching has been in good measure
responsible for their decline. It was
easier for white groups to get
away with these things when a
Negro could be swallowed up and
no more heard of him, except for
the muttered talk of his terrified
friends.
Everybody knows about the five
Sullivan brothers who were lost on
warship in the Pacific. We have
all seen their pictures, five fine
looking young white men. The
navy named a destroyer after the
Sullivans. Does everybody know
about the five Holden brothers who
died on the battleship Arizona at
Pearl Harbor? They were five of
nine brothers in military service.
1t, happened fifteen months ago.
read about it last week in The Chi
cago Defender. The Defender picked
up and headlined a brief Asso-
ciated Press story by John Moroso.
The details were obscure and it
took an AP reporter stationed with
the Atlantic fleet to dig up a story
that happened in the Pacific. The
navy doesn't make heroes out of
Negroes, nor do white newspapers.
How many white people know
who Dorie Miller is? The name
means as much to Negroes as Colin
Kelly's does to. white newspaper
readers. The Negro press has built
up more war morale with Dorie
Miller's story than official Wash
ington tears down in a month. He
was the Negro messman who quit
being a cook at Pearl Harbor and
grabbed a machine gun. With
bombs crashing, and terror and
excitement in the air, Dorie Miller
wanted to fight with a gun, like
everybody else. And he did, against
standing orders. The story was told
with approval in the white press,
along with the hundreds of other
stories that came out of Pearl
Harbor. At first the navy wouldn't
reveal his name. The Negro press
had to work hard to get it. Finally
Dorie Miller got a medal, and the
Negro people got hero they could
feel proud of.
When a nineteen-year-old gets a
Pho. from Chicago, they are
proud of him and want the de-
tails; when the body of a Negro
soldier, hands tied, is found hang
ing from a tree at Fort Benning,
they are enraged; when the first
Negro captain of an American
freighter takes her through the
submarines, they want to know;
when a radio show reveals Negro
in the character Of a self-respect-