The Omaha guide., 1946-03-23

MISSISSIPPI NEGROES SPEAK THEIR PIECE
RIGHT THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI
(BY DAN

The spark of freedom has apparently at long last touch
ed off a fire in Mississippi. Negroes have been more or
less vociferous in most of the southern states about their
rights, but not in Mississippi. The state that leads the ma
ton in ignorance, enforced peonage, reaction and anita
merlcan pogroms, is the state in which the majority Negro
population has been kept in abject submission and silence
by the cohorts OF BhbO, Rankin and Eastland.
Now, IN a statewide mass meeting sponsored by the Mis-
sIsslppi Education Council, the worm has seemed to turn.
The Council met to petition the Mississippi legislature now
in session for better schools, better pay for Negro teachers.
nine-months schools, consolidated rural schools, bus trans
portatiOn. a state university for Negroes wit hail the neces-
sary departments and other things.
Ii you know Mississippi, you also know that no Negro
raises his voice too loud unless he is openly inviting des-
truction or bodily harm. In the past, Negro Mississippians
have been heard vocally in prayer meetings, church con-
ventions, in oratorical contests and whatnot. but seldom in
making open demands on the entrenched white minority.
ook at some of these ''whereases'' embodied in ne resoIu-
tons making up the petition:
whereas the Negro is a citizen of the State OF tIississip-
pi, and therefore a citizen of the United States;
'Whereas, the Negro has always striven to do his full
duty as a citizen, both in peace and i'm war. to protect and
defend this nation;
Whereas, under the constitution Of this country. all cit
liens are entitled to equal benefits from and prosection of.
the law of the land;
Whereas, the Negro citizens of Mississippi arr TOO often
denied the equal protection of The law of this stare;
Whereas, the Negroes of Mississippi receive only one
tenth of the educational benefits accorded whites, and even
less, In many instances;
Whereas. the Negroes do 80 percent of the farm work
in Mississippi, but less than five percent of the agricultural
high schools Of Mississippi are devoted to the training of
Negro youth; .-. r~rY~-~-r-t -.
Whereas, there is an agricultural high school i'm prac-
tically every county in this state for whites, but only about
three agricultural high schools in Mississippi for Negroes;
Whereas, the Negro and white population in Mississip.
pi is about equal (the Council seems to be leaning a bit
here TO establish some point: Mississippi's Negroes out
number the whites, the ratio being about SO 70 4D.LG.l
yet more than 500 has been invested in Mississippi for
higher educational facilities for whites to every ST that has
been invested by this state for higher education of Negroes:
white teachers are paid about three times as much as Negro
teachers, and in some parts of the state. four times as much
though Mississippi was called upon to send a Negro soldier
to the war every time a white soldier was sent: Negro school
terms are much shorter than the terms for whites. and
worthwhile rural Negro school houses as a rule. non-exist.
emit"
Warming up to the subject, the Council went on record
as demanding full justice I'M the courts of Mississippi; re-
peal of the poll tax law and all other ''impedmensi TO a fair
untrammeled expression of the will of the people,
I'VE are citizens of Mississippi the petition states. Eve
love her clay hills and fertile valleys, but her discriminate
DRY record in the matter of the races has not been such as
to make hundreds of thousands of Mississippians Justly
proud of many of Mississippi's laws, nor the way they are
only foo often discriminatory administered. AS a result,
Mississippi is much the loser. Mississippi STANDS to lose
several hundred thousand Of her good Negro citizens with