St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1946-01-25

OF old age, and outllVed useful
We need fighting blood in tn
veins Of our leaders in the trying
years ahead, and in their minds w
must have practical knowledge Of
things, not gushing theories, 4 lot
Of gIesswOrk and half-learned prin.
ciples.
There is a place for all things
and all people, and in our new lead.
ership we must fuse all elements
The social worker has his place; SC
does the business man. The preach
err must be heard as must be the
politician. The farmer should have
his voice and the carpenter and
mechanic must surely have repre-
sentation. The educator, the pro-
fessional soldier, the editor and the
athlete, as well as the musician
should be given their say. Some
Of our present confused difficulties
and cropping can be traced to the
elevation Of one particular cate
CORY to power with less or little
emphasis on what the others are
doing or can do. The preacher has
shared the reins with the social
worker and educator in the past;
today we find the politician also on
the drivers seat. But what Of the
laborer, the domestic, the so-called
small fry?
1t was an axiom for many years
that the only persons whom the
NegrOe masses would give an ear
to was a Negro preacher and a
white man. This, more or less, is
still true today, although social
workers made extrayagant claims
as they go about selling the white
public with philanthrOpic leanings
an estimate Of their influence and
strength with the great mass Of
us who are identified with common
labor and domestic tasks.
In the last 20 years, Negro pol
iticians have surged to the front
and WELD much influence where the
minister once reigned supreme.
Negro leaders, despite the work
of A. Philip Randolph, Frank Cross
waith, and few others, are COM
paratively new, but are on the ma
tional Negro horizon because of
today's highlighting of the prob
lens of labor. Musicians, both
classic and popular, have enjoyed
a certain prominence in our lead
ership affairs whether they knew
what it was all about or not; their
names looked good on letterheads
and throw-aways), because their
work has so much bearing on the
opinion whites have Of US. The
same goes for athletes, including
boxers with bashed-in noses and
caulihower ears and who speak out
of the side of the mouth in the gas
house accent commonly associated
with that line Of endeavor.
Through power politics, the
atomic bomb development, plus the
ability to organize and lead, the
white man is going into u period
of history where the sky seems the
limit to his ascendency. The chal-
lenge of the darker races as pre-
scented by Japan went up in the
tragic clouds Of Hiroshima. The
white mans planes, his tanks and
flame-throwers yank aside the
skirts Of immunity enjoyed by
jungle-living natives in Africa, the
Pacific, Asia and the comparative
safety the nomadic tribesmen Of
the desert have had over the GEN.
turtles. Today nothing is safe from
him. He is riding the pinnacle and
has warned that he brooks no chal-
lenge to his supremacy. The white
man has had no magic formula to
reach his present eminence. There
are no mumbo-ju jumbo combinations
that are a sure-fre incarnation to
bring about radical and immediate
changes. He got on top through
hard work, by the use of the same
mind that God gave US all. Today