Newspapers / Africo-American Presbyterian (Wilmington, N.C.) / March 26, 1931, edition 1 / Page 2
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The Africo - American Presbyterian CONSOLIDATED WITH THE SOUTHERN EVANGELIST Rev. H. L. McCROREY, D. D., LL. D Editor W. E. HILL, Associate Editor Rev. C. P. PITCHFORD, Business Manager. Devoted to the Educational, Mate* rial, Moral and Religions interests of our people in the South, and pub. lished at Charlotte, N. C., every Thursday. All questions arising under the various subjects above indicated are discussed from a Christian point of view. Each number contains the freshest and best news from the Southern field and from the Church at large. There is carefully selected raeding matter suited to aH classes of our people—the farmer, the me chanic, the artisan and the profes sional man. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION: Single copy one year _$1.50 Six months _ .75 Three months _ _j>0 Send all money by P. O. Money Order, Registered Letter or Bank Check, otherwise it might be lost and the sender alone will be respon sible. Entered at the Pestoffice at Char lotte, N. C., as second class matter, THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 1931 PROHIBITION Indulging in intoxicatin beverages works harm physica ly, economically and socially Therefore, the manufactur< sale, and transportation of ir toxicating liquors for beverag SSr?f,ifhouI« ^ P«>hibite. p?*?,118 the purpose of th -eighteenth Amendment- Ther< -‘•every legitimate ment USed for its enfo™ It is the duty of the Churc which contributed so much t< Sflu? ^if ad°Ption of th Eighteenth Amendment t nelp to preserve and make th Amendment effective. Neithe « ?tate nor the Church ca afford to sleep on the job or b be neglectful of its moral obi] gation in this respect. berry: O’KELLY In the passing of Bern O’Kelly North Carolina lost t useful citizen and the Negrt race one of its most loyal an< progressive members. Bern O’Kelly, as far as possible, iden tified himself with every move ment in the State which hat for its end the moral, intellect ual and industrial bettermen of his race, and the welfare o: the State in general. He wa unassuming, and a man o: poise and sound judgment. NEGRO TEACHERS COM PLETE PLANS TO CELE BRATE GOLDEN ANNI VERSARY Officials of the North Caroli na Negro Teachers’ Association announce a list of noted speak ers for their fiftieth anniver sary which will be held in Win ston-Salem, April 2, 3, 4, 1931. Among those who are to speak before the general sessions are Dr. Ambrose Caliver, Specialist in the education of Negroes, uince of Education, Washing ton, D- C.; Mr. A. T. Allen, State Superintendent of Public Instruction; Mr. N- C. Newbold, Director of the Division of Ne gro Education, and Mr. E. J. Coltraine, Superintendent of Salisbury Schools and President cf the North Carolina Educa tion Association. The section meetings will feature interest ing discussions as well as ad dresses by prominent speakers All meetings will be held at the Winston-Salem Teachers’ College except the Friday af ternoon session which will be held at the new high school on Cameron Avenue. It is to the credit of the en tire Negro population of North Carolina that their greatest professional organization has held forth for a half century and is able to measure its pro gress in terms of solid, con structive work. Prof. R- J. Boulware, a well known educator of Rock Hill, S. C., is dead. The funeral will be held today—Thursday. Prof. Boulware was an alumnus of old Biddle University. STATE TEACHERS’ ASSO CIATION Winston-Salem Teachers’ Col lege, Winston-Salem, N. C., March 18, 1931. Dear Friend: You will be -interested to know that the railroads have put on a very low Easter excur sion rate which can be used by teachers attending the meeting of the Teachers’ Association at Winston-Salem the first week in April. We finally succeeded in get ting- these rates on for April 1st and 2nd, as well as the 3rd and 4th, in order to accommo date our teachers in due time. The rate is one fare plus one dollar for the round trip, and in most instances will be cheaper than gasoline, but is great luck for those wh6 do not have au tomobiles. I know that you will want to bring this good news to the at tention of your teachers and to the attention of teachers in your community. Please give them the information about the low railroad rates as mentioned above We understand that more teachers than ever are planning to come, and we shall be expecting you and your teachers. Yours very truly, S. G. ATKINS, President. PS. Inquire at your railroad station about the rates and let me know if there is any trou ble. S. G. A. A TRAGIC DEATH (From The Roanoke, Va., Church News.) The tragic death of our friend and fellow townsman, Mr. R. A. Pindle, of the Pindle & Sons’ New Cleaning Plant, which oc curred Friday, February 25th, following an automobile wreck on the day before, while en route to South Boston, cast over the entire city a heavy gloom, which was accompanied with a deep feeling of grati tude for the miraculous escape of the other members of the party, y ? Dr. L. L- Downing, Mr. R. F. Tate and Mr. Pindle, together with the chauffeur in charge of Dr. Gardner Downing's car, were enroute to South Boston Thursday, February 24th, to attend the funeral of Rev. Abraham Kendrick, Presbyteri an minister of South Boston, when suddenly there was a blow out which blew off one of the tires of the car and caused the car to turn turtle, which al most completely demolished the same. Mr. Pindle sustained the greatest injuries and was hur riedly taken from the scene in an ambulance, ordered from Iyndhburg, which wltto Wbout fifteen miles away, and finally brought home. He suffered great agony and pain until the next day and died. Mr. Tate, Dr. Downing and the chauffer all sustained in juries, but narrowly escaped death. The most seriously in jured of those who escaped was Mr. Tate. At this writing friends will be glad to know that Dr. Downing, who suffered severely from the shock and from internal injuries, has re covered sufficiently \to be up and out again, although not well; while Mr. Tate is still confined but slowly improving. The chauffeur is practically out of danger. The accident occurred Be tween stations on the highway in a sparcely settled white neighborhood between South Boston and Lynchburg, but the neighors and. the travelers on the road rendered quick relief and showed great sympathy for the victims of the wreck. The funeral of Mr. Pindle took place Sunday, March 1, at 2:00 P. M., in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian church, Dr- L. L. Downing, the pastor, officiating. The funeral discourse was de livered by Rev. I. M. Gray, pastor of the Ebenezer A. M. E. church, assisted . by other ministers of the city. A delegation of students, in company with Miss Davis, in cluding a quartette from The Palmer Memorial Institute, of Sedalia, N. C-, were among the out-of-town visitors at the fun eral. This special delegation (Continued on page 3) THE HIGHLY EDUCATED NEGRO “GRADU ATES” FROM CHURCHES OF THE MASSES . One of the most striking evidences of the failure of higher education among Ne groes," says Dr. Carter G. “is their ‘^nation’ popular churches, largely Baptist and Methodist! The masses of the Negroes still belong to these churches, hut t. e more education the Negroes get the less comfort they seem to find ™,n these evangelical groups. These churches do not measure up to the standard set by the university preachers at Harvard, Yale, Columbia or v.'hicago. The large majority of Negroes returning as finished products from such institutions, then, are lost to the popular Negro churches forever. Most of the unchurched of this class do not become members of such congregations and those who have, tend to continue as com municants in name only. inis is sad indeed, for the Negro church is the only insti tution the race controls. With the exception of the feeble ef forts of a few of all but starved out institutions, the education of the Negroes is controlled by the whites, and save the dra matization of practical educa tion by Booker T. Washington, Negroes have not influenced it at all in America. In business the |ack of capital, credit, and experience have prevented large undertakings to accumu late the wealth necessary for the ease and comfort essential to higher culture. “In the church, however, the Negro has had sufficient free dom to develop this institution in his own way. It is not per fect, but it can be improved; and those Negroes who desert it in its struggle upward are unwise even if they are infidels. They are throwing away what they have to get something which they think they need. “The Negro church is the great asset of the race. It is a part of the capital that the race must invest to make its future. The Negro church has taken the lead in education in the schools of the race, it has sup plied a forum for the thought of the ‘highly educated’ Negro, it has originated a large por tion of the business controlled by Negroes, and in many cases it has made it possible for Ne gro profesisonal men to exist. It is unfortunate, then, that these classes do not do more to develop the institution. “I attended in Washington last Sunday one of the popular Negro churches with a mem bership of several thousand. While sitting there I thought of what a power this group could become under the honest leadership of intelligent men and women. Social uplift, busi ness, public welfare—all have their possibilities there if a score or more of our ‘highly educated’ Negroes would work with these people at that cen ter. Looking carefully through out the audience for such per sons, however, I recognized only two college graduates, Kelly Miller and myself; but he had come to receive from the church a donation to the Com munity Chest which he repre sents, and I had come accord ing to appointment to make an appeal in behalf of Miss Nan nie H. Burrough’s school. Nei ther one of us had manifested any interest in that particular church, and this is the way most of them receive any at tention from our talented tenth. “The highly educated .Ne groes will say that they have not lost their interest in reli gion; that they have gone into churches with a more intellect ual atmosphere in keeping with their new thoughts and aspira tions. And then there is a sort of contagious fever which takes away from the churches of their youth others of less for mal education. Talking with a friend from Alabama the other day, I find that after her fath er died and she moved to Wash ington she forsook the Baptist church in which she was a prominent worker and joined the Episcopal church which is more fashionable. I would not dare to make an argument in favor of any par ticular religion. Religion is but religion if the people live up to the faith they profess. I would say the same in respect to the Catholics and Episcopalians if the large majority of Negroes belonged to those churches. The point I want to make is that the ritualistic churches in to which these Negroes have gone do not touch the masses, and they show no promising fu ture for the intelligent Negroes since such institutions are controlled by whites who offer the Negroes only limited oppor tunity and then sometimes on the condition that they be seg regated in the court of the gentiles almost outside of the temple of Jehovah. “How an ‘educated Negro’ . can thus leave the church of his people and accept such jim crowism has always been a puz- ' zle to me. He cannot be a think- ' ing man. It may be a sort of slave psychology which causes this preference for the leader ship of the white man. Only last evening I heard Captain Claytor, one of the Negro offi cers of the World War, say that the troubles in France, re cently mentioned by Pershing, resulted, in a lajrgie measure, from their making unfavorable reports on one another, their failure to respect one another and co-ordinate their move ments, but as soon as a white officer took charge everybody fell in line and things moved on harmoniously. ‘The excuse given for seek ing the religious leadership of the whites is that the Negro evangelical churches are ‘fogy,’ but I would rather be behind the times and have myself-re spect than compromise my manhood by accepting segrega tion. They say that in some of the Negro churches bishoprics are actually bought, but I would rather belong to a church where I can secure a bishopric by purchase than be a member cf one which would deny me the promotion on account of my color. “And such is the history of the Negro in this country. The gap between the masses and the talented tenth is rapidly widening. I was only 4 years old in 1880 when the Negroes had begun to make themselves felt in teaching and, conse quently, do not remember the conditions then obtaining, but I have read the record of the times and have talked with per sons who participated in that effort. Invariably they say that the attitude of the leaders was quite different from what it is today. At that time men went off to school not to make money but to prepare themselves for the uplift of a down-trodden people. In our times too many Negroes go to school to mem orize certain facts to pass ex aminations for jobs. After they get these positions they pay lit tle attention to humanity. This attitude of the ‘educated Ne gro’ toward the masses results partly from the general trend cf all persons toward selfish ness, but it works out more dis astrously among the Negroes than among the whites because the lower classes of the latter have had so much more oppor tunity. “For some time I have been making a special study of the Negroes in Washington, and I try to compare their condition of today with that of the past. Now although the few ‘highly educated’ Negroes of the Dis trict of Columbia have multi plied and are in better circum stances than ever, the masses show almost as much back wardness as in 1880. I find here sometimes as many as two or three store-front churches in a single block where Negroes indulge in heathen-like practic es which could hardly be equalled in the jungles. The Negroes of Africa have not de scended to such depths. Al though born and brought up in the Black Belt of the South I never saw there such idola trous tendencies as I have seen under the dome of the Capitol. “Such conditions show that the undeveloped Negro has been abandoned by those who should help him. This is the outstanding shortcoming of the ‘highly educated’ Negro. In this respect our talented tenth has proved faltering to a sacred • ? a trust. The community taxes it self to educate the youth not that they may live selfishly but that they may lift itethqjr. climb. ■ “This very thought came out not long ago when I was talk ing with my friend, George E. Hamilton, a prominent lawyer and business man of Washing ton, who is very much interest* °d the uP,ift of the mass The educated white man/ es said he, ‘diifers from the ‘ed ucated Negro’ who so readily - orsakes the belated element of his race. When a white m»n spes a person of his own race tending downward to a level of disgrace he does not rest until he works out some plan to lift such unfortunates to higher ground, but the Negro forgets the delinquents of his race and roes his way to feather his own lest*, “But never mind, my ‘highly educated’ Negro friend. The social order in this country is io constructed that the Washer woman, the hodcarrier and the teamster will get their rights the same time you will. You are your brother’s keeper, and you will have to give an ac count of your stewardship at the bar of public opinion. l ain not pointing a finger of scorn at you. I am speaking also of my own shortcomings. I have been guilty of some of these very things about which I am complaining, but I have seen the error of my ways, and I am now trying to do better.” BRAINERD INSTITUTE NEWS The school continues in its work of tense and close appli cation to the things that stand for moral, physical and intel lectual development. The aim uttermost in mind to the thoughtful being is, no let up until the scholastic year is fin ished. Religious Services 1st. Sunday past, the regular .study of the Scriptures as indi cated by the Uniform Sabbath School lessons. 2nd. The Christian Endeavor Society at its regular hour showed in its readings, clip pings and versatile discussions “The Many Important Ideas” found in John 3:16. The meet ing was conducted jointly by Miss Willie /Johnson iand Mr. Otto Boyce. social uvenis Saturday a group of young lady students gave a birthday social in honor of Mrs. Lila J. Brown and Miss Berenice A. Allen, two teachers whose natal days came together. The members of the faculty and some outside friends were in vited guests. The occasion was not only pleasant from a social view point, but educational from the program rendered and witnessed- The delicious adden da served satisfied, and invoked commendation for the hostess es, the young ladies. Tree Planting The 1931 graduating class made history for itself by planting a “Class Tree” on the campus on the 21st inst. The entire school assembled on the school lawn as an audience- The class rendered the following program in planting the tree: Negro National Anthem, As sembly. Reading, “A Tree,” Miss Dai sy A. Davis. Presentation of Tree, Mr. G. Bernard Allen. Response on behalf of School, Dr. J. D Martin. Music, “Trees,” Graduating Class, 1931. . Dramatization of Song, ‘Trees,” Miss Carrie A, Har pei> Planting of Tree, Class of 1931 Benediction, Rev. J. W- Ma nonev. Visitors Among the many visitors noted on the school campus during the past .week, special mention is given Mr. and Mrs. Higsbee, of Marquette, Mich., Prof, and Mrs. R- W. Boulware, of Harbison Institute, Irmo, S C., and Mrs. T. W. Parson, of Troy, Pa They each looked closely into the physical plant of the school and indicated their interest. BERENICE A. ALLEN. Friends in Charlotte deeply sympathize with the family of Mr. R. A. Pindle in his untime ly death. > * LUMBERTON NEWS t ———— 4 By H. Eustace DuBissette •The meeting of the Young People’s League which con vened at Bethany, this city, was a brilliant success. Prof. J. E. Bryant, President of the League, made the welcome ad dress, to which every one re sponded by taking active part in every phase of the meeting. Rev. 'F. C Shirley had charge of recreation. His manner of handling this important part of the program brought everyone present to childhood reminis cences. ,The discussion 'Jperiod was active and inspiring. On Friday, March 13, under :he management of Mrs. Ga zin, a play was rendered by the jtudent body of Redstone Acad jmy in the school auditorium, rhe play was well atended. It appeared as if Mrs. Horace Manning, an imposing widow, jecame outraged because her laughter, Marie, fell in love with Jerrie Higgins, a poor but promising law^epr Through a stroke of good fortune Jerrie received the favor of Mrs. Man ning. On Monday, March 23, a court play. “I Was Accused of Murder,” was given by the Lumberton Dramatic Club in the auditorium of Redstone Academy. This was a murder tnal in which Elizabeth Wade was accused of murdering her common-law husband. The pro cedure was thrilling, dramatic and highly instructive. Both plays were for the benefit of the New Bethany. The Impression Every first and third Sunday are our regular preaching Sun days. Our pastor, Dr. J. H. Hayswood, after Sunday school, delivers a very interesting ser mon, and on Wednesday morn ings we have our regular Bible lessor The impression made upon me in church activities and school work shall remain with me forever. Like a scar the impres sion may be forgotten but the mark remains. The Iforceful and direct simplicity of the ad ministration of Redstone Acad emy has created an obedience among the student body which cannot be excelled. Throughout the student body is that broth erly spirit which makes one feel at home. The time is not far distant, when, if I am for tunate enough t6 graduate, I shall say good-bye to dear old Redstone, rendering many thanks for the knowledge im parted to me and the Christian impression it has stamped upon my heart, soul and strength. STUDENT CORA L. SHAW, Senior Class. WELCOME SPRINGTIME j Pear springtime with your skies so blue And the sun rays flashing through, It’s hard to tell you how much we do. Put oh! my dear, we welcome you. Of course, we hate to see old winter go, With the dew, frost, and drifts of snow: Tell her that we love her, too, 'Put oh! dear, we welcome you.. We appreciate what old winter did. She held us close and kept us hid, Was nice to us, that much is true, But oh! dear springtime, we wel come you. We as all children do, Want to join hands and welcome you, Gather your fruits and flowers, too; Springtime dear, we welcome you. We hopte you are glad to come To join us in our games and fun, Yes. the fun has already begun— €ome. come, dear springtime, come. STUDENT ADDIE JONES, SO. VA. PRESBYTERIAL The Southern Virginia Pres byterial will be in session with the Presbytery of Southern Virginia, April 7-9, 1931, at Russell Grove Presbyterian church, Amelia, Va. We hope there will be a full representa tion of churches and societies, with young people. ■ Please remember the Presby terial contingent fee MRS. M- S. KENDRICK, Pres. MRS. S- J. H. DILLARD, Sec. The Cosmopolitan Club met with Miss Beulah Moore at her spacious home in Washington Heights, recently.
Africo-American Presbyterian (Wilmington, N.C.)
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March 26, 1931, edition 1
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