North Carolina Newspapers

^ A/ » 1 ’#•. - ‘ -; •■ ,vi*Sr ;. V. X tt YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH, AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE."—John viil:32. - Svjfef! ..s&Svg r VOL. LVJL ” CHARLOTTE. N. CL THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1936. NO. 37. EXPECT GREAT THINGS OF YOURSELVES, YOUNG PEOPLE! By Miss’ Blandola Powell (Paper read at the recent Catawba Presbyterial Summer Conference). What would be the probable success of an animal tamer who went into a cage df fierce, wild beasts for the first time, full of fear, doubt and uncertainty ? What If he said to himself: “I will try to conquer these wild animals, but I really do not believe I can do it. It is a pret ty tough proposition for a hu man being to conquer a %ild ti ger from the jungles of Africa. There may be men who can do it, but I doubt very much whether I can." If he should face wild beasts such an attitude of weak ness, doubt and fear, he would very soon be torn to pieces. Bold courage is all that would save him. He must conquer with his eye first, and there must be a lot of winning, grit ty stuff back of the eye, for the slightest show of fear would probably be fatal; the least indication df fear might cost him his life. In fact, a man can not try with that determination which achieves unless he actually be lieves he is going to get what he is working for or approxi mate to it. How long will it take a' youth to be a merchant v^-io is always in doubt whether he will make much of a merchant anyway, and when he does not believe in his heart df hearts that he will ever be one? This is not the kind of mental atti tude (which makes anything worth while. The mind must lead; the pattern precedes the weaving of the web; the ideal must go ahead. We always face 4n the direetfon1** -our faith It is what we believe we can do that we accomplish or tend to accomplish. How long will it take a young man to make a fortune if he has not the slightest confidence that he will ever make money; if he starts out with the conviction v than only a tew can be rich ; that, most people are poor, and that he is probably one of the multitude? If we analyze great achieve ments and the men who accom plish them, the most prominent quality in evidence is self-con fidence The man with absolute faith in his ability to do what he undertakes is most likely to succeed, even when such confi dence seems to outsiders auda cious, if not foolhardy. It is not alone the subjective effect of this belief in themselves that enables such men to get great results; it is also largely the ef fect off self-faith on others. Ev erybody believes he can do the thing he undertakes. The world believes in the conqueror, the man who carries victory in his very appearance. When a man feels the sense of mastery, of having risen to his domain, he talks confidence, radiates victo ry. and overcomes doubt m others. . , . We believe in people who im press Ug with their power, and they can not do it when their minds are full of doubts and fears. Some win our confidence the first time we see them. We believe in their power because they radiate it. In every kind of work and business we are dependent on the belief of others that we can carry out our plans, can pro duce superior goods, can manage employees, can do any of the thousand things demanded by employers, or by the public. You will notice in a group of young ^people or [friends /with similar ability and education that one will step out boldly, while others are waiting for somebody to discover them. The world is too busy to hunt [for merit. It take« for granted that you can do what you claim you can until you show your inabil ity. to acKnowieage me ««-k ox ability, to give way to doubt, is to give failure such an advan tage. We should never allow self-faith to waver (for a mo ment, no matter how dark the way may seem. Nothing will destroy the confidence of others so quickly as a doubt in our own minds. Many people fail because they radiate their dis couraged moods and project them into the minds of those about them. Your own estimate of your self, yiour abflity, your stand ing, the weight you carry and of the figure you cut in the world wifi he pictured in your appearance, in your manner. If you feel very ordinary, you will appear very ordinary. If you do not respect yourself, you will show it in your face. If you feel poor, if you have a skimmed milk opinion of yuorself, you may bevery sure that nothing very rich WfU manifest itself in you. Whatever qualities you attribute to yourself, you will manifest in the impression you make upon others. On the other hand, if you con template the very qualities which you long to possess they will gradually become you, and you will express them in your face and manner. You must feel grand to look grand. There 'must be superiority in thought before it can be expressed in your face and your bearing. Freedom is essential to achievement. No one can do his greatest work when his mind is cramped with inability, fear or uncertainty, any more than he can do his physical work with his body in a cramped position. Absolute freedom is impera tive for brain work. We are certainly reminded m the Bible that it was through faith that Abraham, Moses and all! the great characters were able to perform miracles and do such marvelous things. There is no one other thing that is emphasized so much through out the Bible as the importance of faith. Faith is the great connecting link between the ob jective and subjective states. It is our laith thac enters the great within us, the holy of ho lies of our lives and touches the divine. Faith open* the door of the true source of life, and it is through faith that we touch infinite power. Our life is grand or ordinary, large or small in proportion to the insight or strength of our faith. Many people do not trust their faith because they do not know what it is. They confuse it with (fanfcy or [imagination, but it is Ihe voice of power within which puts us in touch with omnipotence. It is a spir itual faculty which does not guess or doubt, but it knows, for it sees the way out. which the other faculties can not see. It is knowledge just as real as the knowledge we gain through the senses. Faith is the great elevator ot character and hag a wonderful influence on the ideals. It lifts us to the heights and gives us glimpses ojf the promised land, It is the light of truth and wis dom. It is criminal to destroy a child’s faith in himself by tell ing him he will never amount to anythng; that he is nobody and that he can not do what others do. Parents and teachers little realize how extremely sen sitive young minds are, and how powerfully influenced they are by anything that suggests their inferiority or th^ir incom petence. It is faith that unlocks, our power and enables u& to use our own ability. It has been the great miracle worker of the ages. Whatever will increase your confidence in yourself in creases your power. Men who do great things in the world are always characterized by lsfrge faith in themselves, faith in their power, faith in the future of the race; while men who do little things are characterized by their lack of faith which makes them timid. As a rule man's greatest de ficiency is that of seif-faith. The majority are many times weak er in confidence than in any other faculty. A large percent age of those who are failures could have succeeded if the one quality had been properly trained in their youth. Doubt ,3s a great hindrance to efficiency. A man must be lieve he can do a thing before he can do it. He can do but lit tle while he doubts. A man whose purpose is backed by a high faith and a ldfty ambi tion, so that he finds neither comfort, rest nor satisfaction until he is successful will per form miracles, no matter what circumstances may conspire to hinder him. The very intensity of your longing to do a certain thing is an additional proof that you have the ability to do it and the constant affirmation that you can do it makes the achieve ment of it all the more certain. What you dream you can do, •think you can do or believe you can do, you will do. Many people do not come to themselves until they have re ceived a great, humiliating" de feat. Thia seems to touch a spring deep in their nature ssettfng free dynamic forces which enable' them to do mar vels, When a man who has got the right stuff in him has made a slip and feels that he is down and out; when he sees those who know him regarding him as a failure, calling him a “has been,” he makes a resolve to redeem himself from the dis grace and every red blood cor puscle in him helps him to make good. There is something in his very bearing which seems to say: “When I meet my next Waterloo I shall be a Wellington and not a Bonaparte.” SELASSIE TO ASK LEAGUE TO CREATE MANDATE IN ETHIOPIA London, Sept.—(ANP). — An appeal to the League of Na tions at its coming meeting to place Western Ethiopia under a mandate, administered by Great Britain, Sweden or Switzerland will be made in persbn by Haile Selassie, it was learned this week. This new move by the emper or to regain at least a part of hfis lost ilcngdom was decided upon after the return to Eng land of Captain Brophil of the Ethiopian Medical Corps, who flew to Ethiopia to report on the exact status of affairs for the League of Nations union and the Ethiopian association in London. According to Brophil, gueril la warfare against the Italian invaders is continuing and bare ly one-fifth of the country is directly under Fascist control. Last week a hospital ship car ried 450 wounded Italian sol iders through the Suez Canal. The aviator flew across the border from Malakal on the Su danese frontier five times. On each flight Italian war planes chased him. Message^ were uruugm, uum Gore to Haile Selassie by Bro phil. These messages /stated that the Galla and Amhamric chiefs are remaining loyal to the exiled emperor and would support him if he returned. Control of 50,000 square miles of Western Ethiopia with & population of 2,000,000 is claimed by two Galla chiefs. The Italians have not yet set foot in that area. Recently they petitioned the British .foreign oi lice to accept a league mandate over that section. The foreign office reply was guarded, inti mating it did not wish to stii up trouble with Italy in the present critical state of inter national affairs. THE gALL JOHNSON CHOIR By Earle Wingart la The Charlotte News The* Southern part of any country is usually the cradle of its music and the home of its singers. It wag so in medieval France when tile troubadors of Provence sung their lays. The minnesingers of Germany in the Dark Ages strolled from petty court to petty court along the Rhine and South of it. It is said that the purest Chinese music bame from the Southern provinces. This affinity between music and warmth still exists. From the South cjf Russia come the Don Cossacks with their puls ing, semi-barbaric rhythms. The clear voice of Kirsten Flagstad first rose in the South of Nor way. While from our own South comes the great body of Negro folk songs, called by crit ics “the first important music indigenous to America.” The North Preserves It It remains for the cold, schol arly North* by arduous re search, by the comparison of sources and the compilation of texts, to preserve in its most authentic form what the South haa produced. Only rarely does a fusion of sections take place by which the best originals may be presented in thi spirit that gave {them birth. Although much had been written about them, and although they were still sporadically sung in cor rupt versions throughout the South, for over fifty years the Negro spirituals were unknown to the general public. It was left for Hall Johnson- a Geor gia-born Negro, studying music in New York, to give these songs life in the manner and spirit of their origin. Symphonic Folk Songs Eleven years ago Johnson was trying as others had before him, tiMneorporate Negro folk music into symphonic form. The result was not gratifying; be tween the melody as it was sung in the South and its ap pearance in a symphony some thing jyas lost. That something was the human voice and the passionate belief of the people who sang. Hall Johnson was musician enough to realize , this and earnest enough to do some thing about it. No singer him self. he found eight Negroes in New York who loved the spirit uals as he did. These eight formed the orignial Hall John son choir. After the first ap pearance of this group, eight mbre people asked to join. More and more volunteers were ad mitted until the choir attained its present strength of three hundred voices. The 'Size \)f the (group now permits Johnson to obtain the effects he formerly sought through orchestration without sacrificing the essential camp meeting feeling of the songs. Tall, six foot two, and thin, Johnson directs his choir as a leader directs an orchestra. He uses no balton but conducts with his long, expressive hands and arms. Every member of the choir must know the four hundred songs that make up the repertoire. Between per formances the cfioir rehearses from ten to six, six days a week. In addition, each singer must study his part before re hearsal. The Hall Johnson Marti This intense cultivation bears fruit. Today “Negro Spiritual” and “Hall Johnson Choir,” are virtually synonymous. As the North and South had united to start the choir, so have they united to enjoy the music. In addition to forming an im portant integral part of “Greer Pastures,” the choir has toured the country as a concert group. For the last year? the; have given concerts with the New iork Philhairmonic at Lewisohn stadium. Appearing with the Philadelphia Sympho ny at RJoibin Hood Dell, the choir broke attendance records: for the first time the S. 0. R, sign had to be put up. BY THE WAY By Unde Billie Tradition has it ' that the name Edisto came down' from a man named Eddie, who oper ated a store near Edisto Beach in the days when traders, trap pers, adventurers and. explor ers of all types werelin quest of their game up and down the Edisto River and through the dense swamps on either side of this river meandering amidst many muddy streams, and then on the South s of Edisto Island into the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, it seems, that Edisto Island took its name from Edis to River. But Edisto is the modern spelling of “Audust which was the official, title of the Creek Indians who resided on the banks near the Edisto Sounds. The title means “water sprinkler.” No doubt it came about because at every" impor tant declaration of war by the Creek Indians against another tribe, the Audusta,. in the pres ence of all the warriors, took water from an earthen jar — water from the Edisto, of course—, and sprinkled' it to ward the sky: and the act was accompanied with these words: “May you thus spill the blood of your enemies." Then a fire: was kindled, and when the blaze was quite bright, the Audusta (medicine man, or prophet) took water and extin- j guished the blaze, saying: “May you thus destroy the lives of your enemies.” This “watersprinkler” Audusta) medicine man in power and in must have been more than a fluence; he must have been in the confidence of his tribe as a real prophet; for, the town in which he lived wips their chief town or ^capital. And, therefore, as the Audusta was located in it, it was named for him. (Edisto Island (Twenty Years ago was emancipated trom sea island, long-staple cotton by the advent of the boll weevil; for white and black people in Edis to Island — John’s Island, though the largest, came second to Edisto Is,and in the sea island, long-staple product — were slavey t-> what was com monly called “long cotton.” Every Negro who had a small front or back ; ard or ;a foot path leading to his 6-foot well, thought it a nne Dusiness iuea to plant it in “long cotton.” And thi& sfronit yaSrd or back yard farmer sold his long cotton in the seed: he did not produce enough for a ginner to fire up his gin to gin it. They, of course, sold to the buyers from Charleston and elsewhere here searching th© islands for long cotton, who paid the highest price for cotton in the seed. The large planters—they are called farmers in the upper part of South Carolina, but down here a planter was (not now. for all are about financial ly down and out) an aristocrat —sold the long cotton directly to European markets some times (at one dollar ^a pound; and those not so well to do aris tocrats placed their cotton with the cotton factors on Broad and Market Streets in Charleston;! and they would sell it for them to European markets. A few “B. N.’s (to use Dr. G. W. Long’s abbreviation for “big Negroes”) placed their cotton with Charleston factors to sell for them. But'nobody, neither white nor black, knew really what the shrewd factors got or what their-cotton fetched on European markets. If they said they ‘‘sold it for so much” and “here; take that is thipe,” that was the last word. . But God’s boll weevil broke up such Ananias and Sapphira transactions among Charleston’s long staple cotton factors; two committed suicide and three Jost their miinds and died in'the asylum in Columbia; one is in a church home, living on the church now; one is .driving a milk truck; mid others who are living, and are hanging on by weak toe-hold, seem to .have in their minds what one said to me fly© years ago: “I wish we were dead.” And he died just two years ago. And yet the fool says in his heart, there is no THE PRESIDENTS LABOR DAY MESSAGE Washington, Sept. 5. — In a Labor Day Message to Ameri can workers today > President Roosevelt outlined as a nation al objective the achievement of “a national economy whose fac tors are so finely balanced that the worker is always sure ofa job which will guarantee a liv ing wage.” The text fj£ the President's statement follows: “I send hearty Labor Day greetings to America’s work ers everywhere. I feel that there is cause for ‘rejoicing among wage earners as labor’s annual day approaches. Labor Day is a da* on which it is nat ural for us to take account of stock to see where we stand with respect to those vital problems which affect so profoundly the lives and destinies of the na tiotf a. workers. We have made progress. We must continue to move forward. "Employment and weekly pay envelopes have increased steadily during the past three years,s stjfSnuflated i by «thjpl spending of the federal gov ernment in useful ways. This increased buying power of the wage earners and farmers has resulted in increased sales by merchants, more orders for fac tories, and rising profits for in vestors. "We have witnessed signifi cant. changes during the {past few years, changes which ne cessitate special reconsleration of basic problems with a view to finding a new approach to their solution. Our aim must be to achieve and maintain a na tional economy, whose factors are so finely balanced that the worker is always sure of a job Which yill guarantee a living wage. By a living wage I mean a wage which will insure the worker and the worker’s depen dents a living in accordance with American standards of decency and self-respect. The wage earners of America do not ask for more. They will not be satisfied with less.” MRS. MARY McLEOD BE THUNE ACTIVE IN NEW JOB Washington, D. C., Sept. — (ANP-.— Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune, President of Bethune oOokman College, and active politically these days as direc tor, Division of Negro affairs of the National Youth Administra tion, addressed 7,000 people in the Amphitheatre at Chautau qua, New York, August 29th, on “The Negro in the United States.” She emphasized the aspirations of the Negro for in tegration and participation in the various federal, State and local programs for economic and social welfare and for a share in their administrations. She indicated the immense pos sibilities for the program of the National Youth Administra tion. Mrs. B'ethune’s address followed speeches delivered by President Roosevelt and Nor man Thomas and preceded an address by Governor Landon. Mrs. Bethune plso (addressed two other Chautauqua meetings at the Hall of Philosophy on the subject, “Interracial Co-op eration.” Mis. Bethune’s Chautauqua .address followed her appear* ance’ |>efore the vast assem blage of the National Conven tion of the Independent Benev olent Order of Elks off the World at Brdoklyn, New York, ap pearing on the jflatform with [Governor Lehman and Mayor LaGuaTdia, of New York City, and . later she spoke to Daugh ter, Elks representing an organ ization o|f 100,000 women, j Mrs. Bethune spoke to the [ members of the Annual Oon i i (Continued on page 4)