Newspapers / The Carolina Times (Durham, … / Sept. 6, 1941, edition 1 / Page 2
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^iBKTWO THE CARCMJNA TIME8 Cb Cini^0 PUBLISHED WEEIU.Y BY THE OAROUNA TIMES PUBLISHING CO. HT E. PBA»ODY St DURHAM, N. C. PHONES N-7iai or ^^7871 d M ■econd clau mater at the Post Ofice at Durham, N. C. unJer the Act of Marek 3rd, 1879. ■ If Smokers Soddenly Stopped Snoking, Carolina Would Be In A Hell Of A Fix L. E. AUSTIN, PUBLISHER .WnUAM A. TUCK. ManagriiiK Editor S. & WILUAMSON, News Editor CHARLOTTE OFFICE 420 1-2 EAST SECOND STREET SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $2.00—Ye»r, $1.25—6 Month*, The Platform of • THE CAROLINA TIMES indudes: Equal salaries for Neyro Teachers. Nerro pHicemen. Equal ^Qcational opportunities Neyro juryiaen. Higher wages for domestic swnrants. Full participation of Negroes in all branches of the National defense. Abolishment of the double-standard wage scale in industry. Gi«ater participation of Negroes in political affairs. Better Housing for Negroes. Negro representation in city, county, state and na tional governments. BETWEEN THE LINES iPBy Dean Gdrdon G. Hancock JAZZIFIED NBGRO SPHHTUAI^ Although I disagree with nearly “eleven-teuthp” of all that my good friend George Schuyler writes, I must never- titheless acknowledge my full ,accord with his suggestioji, that a moratorium be called on j Negro spirituals. For the long- I'cst I have been wearier with our I'Current denatured brand of spir- [itual that are radioed with dis- ^eoacerting frequency. That >rge Schuyler had the nervfe tackle this popular but irk- jme pasttime is gratifying; id makes it possible that there lay be others who are tired of ring spirituals from which very sweet note of' pathos and luty has been purged by a >rous process of “jazzifica- i." Mteny years ago I deplored the fact that these songs were be- ig denatured by singers who more at^ci^s to show their lusicianship ,t^n to really in- ■>ret the b(^ of the fathers. These songs sad and soul- wfaose ]]M^ty is self-reveal- ig and apij^tiog.. B”t they iMt^ become so “jaz- .iet ** toj^ that intelligent a-oea ar^i^ Revolting against II or rather against the way [ ti-^y -^re bei^ denatured and ed. What is evenu more tthetic, thisre are hundreds of songs noevr get on ^e air or on the concert stage, industrious Negro with PhD :^ns could go into the ites pr the Mississippi Ml move among the low- N’ ;oi s there and find songs . ;./vat bi^uty and pathos fc'.tr were popularized by the iebrated Fisk Singers of yes- ir. v.-'iy our artists persist ov’[ ' jnging these Bonus h :! le industry would re- 'd' lii - and thereby bring a lif t Jr ii the present over- jazzified sinrituals is to understand. If one de- to be eertaiB not to hear muBic at its best, let «n to dn ordinary radio re]»^edl]r-«fferinff Ne- ituah. . sight w^6‘ do^town in 1 chancfld tabe Btnn^ ^r near » eqr- tbuw vfere b group white wl^ h*d «hot» too* iB«9y ~ meaa ^lifBouri hW were aiog-' IdJWf Smti ClxfJr* tbef werf ’Loik, of owr fathcirs*. 4an«tttTPd jazzified tow*.- They were m!m* Mirxeot crop of Ne- wbo have th» Uut ve«f%a thMW for jazz and “swing” in full measure. That which was holy has been cast to the dogs; and pearls have been cast before swine. These white drunks were in funny mood, and chose to sing a few Ofl t)ur ^ ^ve^sung Negro *pirituals. *^hey were getting fun ouV^lf if ..because when bereft of tneir fjathos and beauty, these songs are funny. Nothing could be more ludi crous than a gang of drunken young white men singing“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. But Ne groes are fast making these songs ludicrous, by the sweet ness they sing out of them and the jazz they sing into them. These songs were not designed to show “art”; they were de signed to show the strivings and contrivings of a stricken j)eople. We have set these songs to mu^; our fathers set them to feelings that no mortal tongue can tell. There should be sacred seasons when these songs are: sung. These songs should characterize our Pass overs and not our “put-overs” when we are trying to “put- over” something on somebody. George Schuyler is right we need a moratorium on our jazzi fied Negro spirituals. With on ly remnants of beauty left, they are worth conserving. Instead of singing to death the few al ready popularized Negro songs ,why some of our artists do not go into the rural district near Augusta, Ga., and Savannah and really hear some spiritual singing? The best rendering of Negro spirituals is by the Negro ruralities near the southern water coasts such as the Gulf and the Mississippi and Savan nah river basins. The current jazzified Negro spirituals are not sung to show the songs but the singers, and herein is the greater misfor tune. Those appreciative whites who make so much of Negro spirituals should be treated to some real spirituals that are spirtually sung instead of the jazzified stuff of which we hear such abundance over the radio. Having heard both types of Ne gro songs I am in a ]X)sition to know the difference between the real Negro songs and thefr jazzified counterfeits. I have heard Caruso and Far rar and Schumann-Heink in their palmy days and other cel ebrities of yester-year; I have lieard in person the present crop of »rti«ts both in this na tion and Europe; but I must ad mit that never have I had a greater thrill than when I h^d Negroes near Savannah and Au gusta, Georgia singing spirit- uals the spiritual way, in re vivals when t here was no thought of white men or sophis ticated Negroes listening in or| recording/' A\1i«n old friend Burton Crni- ge of Winston Salem was in my office the crther day, he offerctl me a cigarette. I declined it, saying that I luid quit amoking. “I wiih I could quit,” he remarked ia s rather quite too* as he struck hU match. This may look hk« telling tales out of school » since Mr. ('raige is higk up in RejmoWs Tobacco Company circles and such a remark puts him in the light of discouraging the use of cigarettes. But he knows that hundreds of millions smokers in the world are going to keep on smoking, and that there’ll be plenty of newcomers in the smok ers’ fold every year, and that well being of this state is so de pendent upon as it is upon to bacco smoking. , I I have set down in this column before, the fact that some of the most exalted persons in North Carolina have, by their total ab stinence from tobacco, failed to support the state’s most import ant source income to farmers here, is going to hav«{ any de pressing effect upon the market for tobacco. If I thought it would I would lay off the topic for fear of endangering the prosperity of North Carolina. For, there is i^othing else that the economic and the state’s most important should suddenly decide to follow the example of Josephus Daniels, Clyde R. Hoey, and Frank P. Graham, wouldn’t North Carolina be in one hell of a fix! Probably tTohn Sprunt Hill ought to be in industry. If smokers everywhere tlie list, too. He does smoke a cigar every now and then, but cigars do not figure to any xtent iu North Carolina farming and industry. 1 The state’s high placed non smoking fraternity received a hew member a year ago when W. D. Carmichael, Jr., came from New York t6 take the post of Univer sity controller. He i*: just a step farther away from the tobacco iadu.stry i^n Mr. Craige, being the son of a vice president of the Liggett and Myers Company. Frank L. Fuller the elder, of New York, father of the man of the same name who is an attor ney in Durham, retired recently from active duty after about 30 years of service as counsel for Liggett and Myers. In the early part of his career he did hia duty by North Carolina farming and industry, by smoking several hours a day. Then one night—this was when he was a lawyer in Durham, some forty five or fifty years ago—ho stopped, and hij has never smoked since.. The night he stopped was the night young Frank was born. What the significAnce of this was, I don’t know. I have heard that some fathers celebrate the birth of a child by getting cn a jag. People have different ideas about how to celebrate moment ous events. AVhile some celebrate by indulgence, maybe it is Mr. Fuller’s way to celebrate by abnegaition. Maybe he hoped this |)artieular act of abnegation would set in motion some ssrt of mystical current that would bufid up a tough fibre in tye son. P’or all I know, ‘the hope wa« fulfilled the son’s fibre may be tough, but if so, the toogkness hasn’t taken the f*rm of refusing to smoke. Ssmebody may say to me: “What about yoorseUt” Yoo you say you don’t smoke. Then you’re not doing anything for the tobacco farmer^ and tb« tobaoo workeri, either." Well, I figure I’ve done my share. If all the little clouds of sm«ke tkat ea^ie frOQi uy pipe in years past, out of Liggett and Myers’ Valvet tobacco, could be massed into one big cloud, it would make a pall over Nort#i Carolina a hundred feet thick. I’ll say this for Velvet: the pall would be fragrant. Often I refject upon me change that has come about, in the last half century, in the way people in this region look upon cigarette smoking. In my boyhood, to smoke a pipe or cigar was res pectable, but to smoke cigar ettes w«s widely regarded as disreputable. In the 181)0’s Eben Alexander, professor of Greek in the Univer sity, was the only member of the faculty who smoked cigarettes. Maybe some of the others wanted to; maybe they did it on the sly, but he was the only one who dared to do it in public. He had a rare charm and was an inspir ing teacher, but some people at tached less importance to his fine qualities than they did to his smoking. I remember hearing one of his collegagues in the faculty express deep sorrow about the Greek professor’s “unfortunate habit,” and sometimM protests were heard from parents who said they didn’t want t'heir sons sub jected to such an influence. Mr. Alexander had had a more sophisticated career, land had greater. urbanitjf,_ j th^n most of the people around here in those days. He had been a student at Yale; he had traveled, and by the time I was old enough to know him he had been for four years United States Minister to Greece. It ha« been ^aid that the most sensitive nerve in , the human body is the pocketbook nerve, and this saying seems to find support in the progress of cigarette- smoking, in this state, from bad repute to respectability. Largely in consequence of the prophetic vision and the organizing and advertising genius of the late James B. Duke, the number of people with a financial interest in cigarettes has gr^wn enormous ly since the 1880’s. And the greater has become the number of peole with such an interest, the fewer and the fainter have become the voim of disapproval of the cigarette smoking habit. Within the memory of men stili not yet old, many pious North Carolinians were holding up their hands in holy hoi^oi.* at the sight WHAM w P-) % Vi teVi/S iT^Hj Xm oMt ycAti O.S. Tank PR0D0cr»0N ha^ rpach- EO A POiHT VWMICH HAHS >CH(&VeP ONLV AFTe-Pz. VwJe VEARS. '"h Herbert eALCUlATED FOR THI WEEK OF @ • sfpiuteeg fl... s.s^t septumm 9...5-.9V semueeK io...s-9f semeMSeK 11...5.96 sepTSMBen 12...5.37 seneMBOi a,..s-3n SemMIK l¥...S.39 aBPttMa&t 0...«.2* xpnmetR «...*.2o sePTBMOeit IO...A-I8 SCPICMSCR SEPTGM8CR 12...6-5 sfmemaen 19...*. 3 ssmimR ‘UlME CIVEtt fS STANDARD BUIOVA WATCH TIME . .. letOMtMMr SHCMLSNEMtlWj AUPBTF^OMmir ^rikt'ianu»Mcow«^)6irrs THE TOP ^ Of > ' ni'wr- *r0K/p"xmiooou pom/ wqm «W»FK)i SV FMM06 SCSrrKEY»>/«/4l BOAMUN "OHiUOl irUINK AS MUCH Of THB «/«fOASIEVEJeO(Of‘ THf MORT A turn KtKHNS TMT mOK Ht IS mCLIke010 Be MOOeST."-FICLDIHC of cigarettes, and sometimes the pulpit. All that multitude of peo ple who enjoy nothing so much as interfering with other peo ple’s pleasures—a multitude that exists in every era—found ci garettes a convenient target. After the cigarette smoking ha habit began to spread more and mere members o# the very ele- meii’t in North Carolina which mij^ht have responded most read ily to a moral uplift movement— that is, the farming element— became engaged in tobacco farm ing. People so engaged, vhose ^very livelihood depended upon the sale of tobacco for cigarettes, could hardly be expected to generate much ind?gnation against smok- izig. And besides the farmers, there were the mill workers. And then, in the cities and ^ towns, there were the merchants who sold tobacco products; and the solid citizens—bankers, law vers, doctors, and the rest—who be came owners of tobacco company stocks and bonds, and newspaper proprietors (like myself) who publis'hed tobacco advertising. And don’t forget, too, the* con tributions of the tobacco indus try to educational and religious institutions. Of course the old Trinity College and the present Duke University cojug quickly to mind; but the University here in Chapel Hill ond other state iiu stitutions also have a stake in cigarettes, because an important Part of the state’s tax revenue— the revenue which provides for the upkeep of the state institu tions—comes from the cigarette manufacturing industry and Irom other sources dependent upon the demand for cigarettes. try to discourage them in all the other little ways that they can be discouraged. Th government senses the necessity to create a more wholesome atmosphere around these youngsters and is trying Each of the President’s sons is in some branch of the govern ment’s military service—but in places of preferment. One of them is working for $31 a month, and none of them peels potatoes or engages in those menial jobs that soil* hands or pATUEDAjjq SEPTEMBER 6 Pertinent Facts? I Sy DU. IHJS W. DYER | The Cmistltutton Protected by the Sanctity of the Oath In forming tht government under the Constitution it was necessary to grant large powe):^ to the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the ad ministrative Kovernnjcnt, To prevent any abuse or preversioii of their power, every official of the government is bound by the sanctity of the oath to be abso-*» lutely loyal to the Constitution. The full meaning of this loyalty is expressed in the Constitution in the very word o f the oath that that the President is re quired to pronounce, in taking the oath: ‘1 do solemnly sw^r thit I will faithfully execttte the office of president of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, PRESERVE protect and defend the Consti tution of the United States." In substance, this is the oath that every judge, every Congress man and every other official of the federal government must take. ' In interpreting the meaning of “preserving and defending” the Constitution, Chief Justicc Hughes said recently that the judges of the Supremo Court are under obligation to inter pret the will of the people as expressed in the written Con stitution; that they have no right to regard anything else, in giving the meaning of the Constitution. The commandment ags^inst taking the name of the Lord in vain has reference to the viola tion of the sanotity of an oath. The extreme seriousness! of this immorality is emphasised in the fact that this is the ouly 00m- ' mandment that carries a ^nal- ■ ty for its violation: “The ,Lord will not hold him guiltless. that taketh His name in vain." to do something about it. Fred-*cause backaches. And that's not erick H. Osborn, a New York corporation executive and social scentist, and fitted for the job, has been named chief of the army's morale branch, and com missioned to i>ep up the lads in every way possible. He will find lots of w%ys and, with, the help of the people, he ought to show results. But his job is being made harder by some of the higher- ups who have a bigger stake in the outcome than some of us smaller fry who are called upon to dip an oar. The White House family could work wonders in this respect, with just a little calm consideration. saying that any one of them does not merit the recognition he gets. He probably rates the badge he wears. But just the same it is not lost on thousands of buck privates in the rear ranks who, justly or not, resent it. And it is not calculated to bolster morale, as Gen. Fred •Osborn probably will find. For every time Eleanor urges moth ers to take it on their chin and encourages their sons to buck up and take it, there'll be the incliniation for some of them to say, “Oh, yeah!” And that will be bad, very bad.—.Statesville Landmark. WHATTHEYSAY A lot is being said about Army morale these days. Of would it be better to say the morale of the draftees? For the regiflars a*e professionals, and such are supposed to be on their toes all the time, not giving a hang about anything. They are in the army from choice. It is their work, their job, and they make the most of it. The draft” s on " ne other hand are subject to many emo tions. They have left their good jobs, most of them; they have sweethearts at home and other loved ones, and they have other plans that have to do with their future. Naturally they are restless and uncertain, and add to the fact that they are not sure wliat is in store for. thpm, and not entirely sold on the need for patriotic sacrifices, and you know very -good reasons why it is necessary that they be bolstered in every little way th^t is possible. Certainly it is not good for what ails this coun* The fascinating side of newKy, r paper life is. what appeals tm. « thdse *«vho kfta^ Httle, or notlF- ^ * in about iti to * • « • The optimist is the business man who sends out a flock of circulars, asking prospects to send cash in advance. m m m We never worry about what other pepple thing about what « « * Big business needs very little help from the average citizen; it is powerful enough to take care of itself. * • • planting kudzu for temporary pastures. OVER THERE THEY CLICK HEELS--* OVER HERE WE JUST CLICK* mnmmKf
The Carolina Times (Durham, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Sept. 6, 1941, edition 1
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