The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-01-08
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1945, by King Features Synd

(COpyrlSHL, 1910, ny Mig + cdCuItS OyuulCdte)
NEW YORK.-Julus Adams the associate
editor of the Amsterdam News of New York,
one of the Negro journalists who went troop
ing with Governor Dewey last September, has
been trying to spell me out in friendly letters
to his audience of Negro readers.
1t appears that somehow some, if not most
of them have had an impression that these
dispatches at some time expressed
friendly attitude toward their race, which, of
course is nonsense and probably the result
of both sovenly reading and the Communist
propa ganda. l think it goes back to a time
about three years ago when l made careful
examination of some of the leading Negro
newspapers and found them not only trashy
but downright dangerous to Our Negro people
as we'll as to the whites with their deliberate
celebration and inflammation of news items.
These papers, which, incidentally, did not in
clude the Amsterdam News, were not merely
pro-Negro but anti-white, a propaganda which
l still hold partly responsible for the riots in
Detroit and Harlem, although all the social
takers of the Roosevelt following would try
to tell you that always in such troubles the
| thing is touched off by a mysterious gang,
probably Nazis, who come upon colored man
innocently waiting for street car and treat
him awful.
Another little popularity of theirs that I
touched upon was their brassy advertising of
line of luck charms and voodoo junk all OBJ
vious fakes, of course and an imposition on
the poor dupes who bought it. And didn't do
these publishers any particular good with their
clientele when 1 pointed out that such adver-
Using copy certainly was no compliment to
the intelligence of the Negro but little
the insulting side and an unintentional denial
of the proudest pretensions OF the race
Well at that the combined Negro press of
the United States with only a couple OF ex-
| ceptions presented me with great big house
brick at time, and the Communists got out
literature insisting that I had insulted the
mother of every Negro service man in the
armed forces. However, l just lit cigarette
and calmly walked away and year or so
later when the publishers of these papers
thought I wasn't listening, they passed reso-
luton disappearing such advertising and,
whether by resolution not decided to cool
off their treatment of the news. Otherwise
they were counting responsibility for lot of
trouble in which their own people would suf-
fer just as badly anyone else.
On net results, therefore, l should think
had done the Negro little favor in this case
but the offended colored publishers had the
last word to their public and to hear them
tell it had attacked and betlittled the Negro
race.
This brings us down to now when Adams
says I could help the cause of race relations
greatly by my pieces in the paper.
Well, that is something that any decent man
would like to do but somehow my constructive
and humane intentions do not always get over
to the customers and l hold off sometimes for
fear that something composed in a spirit of
sweetness and light may touch off massacre.
There was that incident of the Negro press in
which I thought l defending the Negro
against imposition and, instead, got hated
myself, and in similar case, years and years
ago. when I wrote deliberate and rather
80 hn 1ol
up our sports editor and said he resign
ing as coach at Notre Dame because no
money, no distinction could compensate the
pangs that he and his loved ones suffered from
such monStrous publicity.
Adams reports to his readers, the basis
of some visits we had on Deweys train, that
Pegler doesn't know the full Negro story, and
that agree to. But in talking with him and
Ralph Matthews, of the Afro-American, I did
take hope that the white people would take
down the heat of this situation by the degrees
necessary to prevent an explosion some day,
just by opening up some new lines of work
to them. 1t means more than the mere actual
jobs to the whole race of them when tele
phone company hires Negro girls as switch
board operators and when, by whatever pro-
cess, Negroes are up-graded to the status of
conductors and motormen on the car-llnes II
only in token numbers. 1t means that another
old bar has fallen and, if the people selected
for the Jobs are just reasonably civil the white
people who work with them lose that old
awkwardness which isn't really hostility at
ALL but strangeness, and they get acquainted
as people, Then other things being equal, they
get along all right
I know couple of papers have each taken on
a Negro reporter and, a foot in the door,
that will do but just wonder if the plaster
would fall and the floors buckle if colored
fellow should hang up his coat and start bat
ting out bang-up job of reWrite on some
city staff I doubt that but when l asked one
of Marshall Fields executives one day how
many Negroes he had hired on the city side
of his Chicago thing the guy said mot one
These two coored reporters told me some
thing that 1 had never thought of in that hght
before when they explained why they would
like to eat in the same restaurants with white
people.
Do YOU want to know the reason?
Because they get hungry, that is all. lhey
get hungry and except for few self-serVlce
places, they have to go all the way PACK 10
some colored section to get meal
Well this isn't going to solve everything
but l will be glad if it doesn't start civil
war because earnest though my desire TO 40
nv good deed 1 probably will find that nave
written ruthless and unprovoked attack on
whole race.
On TIEN CAV