Muncie Post-Democrat, Muncie, Delaware County, 10 October 1924 — Page 3

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1924.

■*WE MUNCIE POST-DEMOCRAT

PAGE

Colored People Of Muncie Incensed At False Statements Made By “Imported” Lawyer

The colored population of Muncie is highly incensed over the attempt of a newly imported lawyer of their race named Claytor to lead them into the Ku Klux camp. Last week every colored voter in Muncie leceived a lengthy circular letter from this fellow ,who has been employed by the klux republican crowd to betray the members of his own race. The letter was addressed to “Editor Post-Democrat/’ The colored man who for money would assail the newspaper that has fought the battles of those who are oppressed by the Ku Klux Klan, is hardly worth considering seriously, but we wish to utter a solemn warning to our many colored friends that he is trying to sell you out to the Klan. He denies that he received one of the yellow checks that were passed out as bribes by the Ed Jackson forces at a meeting of colored men and women held in the Severin hotel at Indianapolis, “on the 28th of August, 1924.” Since the Post-Democrat referred to no date in charging Claytor with being in on the distribution of Klan funds, we assume that he must have refreshed his memory by referring to the date on his check. Our colored critic is somewhat confused in his rhetoric but it is nevertheless clear that he w r as doing his best for the white Kluxers who have put him on the payroll and paid the printing bill. In one place he declares that the Jews and the Catholics of the South have been lynching negroes for sixty years and are now calling on negroes for help. All this fellow needs is a white, peaked bonnet and a long tailed shimmy to make him a little better Kluxer than Clarence Dearth or Cotirt Asher. His reference to the appointment of

Walter L. Cohn ,a colored man, to an important federal position, is not especially impressive. Every colored man in Muncie knows that Cohn’s appointment was the result of a trade whereby the negro was given a fat job in exchange for the pigeon holing of the Dyer anti-lynching bill. This Klan-loving negro might as well cease in his efforts to mislead his own race. Their minds are made up. No colored man or woman in Muncie, can with honor vote for Ed Jackson, the Ku Klux candidate for governor, and the Ku Klux republican ticket in Delaware County. And in the matter of appointments, how many colored men or women are holding jobs in either the city or county administration? There is only one 1 —Bill Guthrie, court house janitor, an especial pet of Billy VvTlliams and his three Ku Klux county commissioners, who are candidates for re-election. Billy Sims, a coloied man, had a job in the police department, but he was fired because

of his color.

Ask any colored voter which one is really representative of their race William Guthrie or William Sims. Take it from us, the colored man. who holds a job under the local Klan administration, must do so by surrendering his birthright of loyalty to

his own race.

The colored voters of Muncie are going to vote the democratic ticket this year. They have always been republicans. They have voted the ticket solidly and made it possible for a

gang of hungry Ku Klux politicians to ha(1

keep their noses in the trough.

or offered, Colonel Deitsch said. legal battles, Judge William

“We don’t want any Ku Kluxers,’’ Thompson,

he explained. T would be willing to ! Eighty-four years old and as full of have aj company )of Methodists or pep as a two-year old colt! There’s Baptists or Catholics in the regiment not another to compare with him in —I am an Episcopalian myself—but the state of Indiana. As straight as the Ku Klux element has all but a narrow, possessed of astonishing ruined disciplne in the regiment and‘'yigor, a lightning-like wit and a hunit must get out and stay out.”—To- 1 dred horse power mind, Judge Thomp-

peka State Journal.

Stop Demonstrations By Klan and Italians Steubenville, O.. Sept. 27.—Prompt action of police and deputy sheriffs at Follansbee, W. Va., across the river from here, narrowly averted serious clashes there between members of the Ku Klux Klan and antiklan factions, who had planned rival demonstrations in violation of the

town mayor’s orders.

With the intervention of the West Virginia officers, both factions dispensed with their demonstrations, i Feeling in the town developed when j Mayor Dillar revoked a permit for I klansmen to parade. Several hours later the klansmen announced the parade would be held as scheduled, despite the mayor’s orders. The Sons of Italy which had agreed to postpone their annual jubilee, scheduled for today, forthwith announced they would parade and hold a demonstration in another part of the town. Sixty special officers patrolled the streets until both demon strations had been called off.

P0S-DEM0CRAT

(Continued from rage one)

January, 1923, and had paid the bills without protest, but made the untruthful statement that the publisher

threatened him with an injunc-

tion suit, tying up the business of the

They hav7been'repaid for*this ser- -township if he .Heath, refused to or-

der the advertising.

Judge Thompson went after him,

vice by being made the victims of an organization which proposes to disfranchise and deport the negro. Fortunately there are not many colored men like Claytor in the state of Indiana. If there were we would be inclined to join the Ku Klux Klan.

son is the marvel of the legal world in eastern Indiana. CITY ADVERTISEMENTS Department of Public Works Office of the Board 212 Wysor Block Muncie, Ind. Notice of Improvement Resolution. Notice to Property Owners. In the matter of Certain Proposed Public Improvements in the City of Muncie .State of Indiana. Notice is hereby given by the Board of Public Works of the City of Muncie, Indiana, that it is desired and deemed necessary to make the following described public improvements for the City of Muncie, Indiana, as authorized by the following numbered improvement resolutions, adopted by said Board on the 7th day of October, 1924, towit: I. R. No. 1205-1924, For grading of Franklin Street from Twelfth Street to Thirteenth Street. I. R. No. 1206-1924, For paving of ' West Main Street from McKinley Avenue to Talley Avenue. I. R. No. 1207-1924, Paving the alley \ between Willard Street and Fifth j Street from Madison Street east to Blaine Street. I. R. No. 1208-1924, Paving the alley between Beechwood Avenue and Riverside Avenue from Reserve Street to Pauline Avenue. I. R. No. 1209-1924, Paving alley between Jackson Street and Adams Street from Nichols Avenue to Talley

Avenue.

All work done in the making of said described public improvements shall be in accordance with the terms and conditions of the improvement resolution, as numbered, adopted by the Board of Public Works on the above

A. | signed the deputation from the three (doubtful states and Slemp, who is charged with using his influence against the Negroes because of sympathy with the “Lily White” Repub-

lican factions in the South, has sought leaders of the

it is declared, to ascertain in advance the subject matter which

might be discussed.

The delegation had in mind to find Mr. Coolidge’s leanings on the Ku Klux Klan, segregation, and the al-

THREE

leged discrimination of the Civil Ser-j Howard, Negro Republican National vice Commission against Negroes. | Committeemen from Mississippi, who President Coolidge, it is charged, the Republicans count upon to hold is courting the Klan vote in prefer- their regular Negro vote in the North, ence £0 that of Negroes. Several a letter saying “President Coolidge in race, including former the year that he has been President, Assistant Attorney General William: has done nothing for our group that

F. Lewis, are working actively for John W. Davis and are winning much strength for the Democratic nomi-

nees, it is said.

Lewis has written to Perry-W.

is worth talking about, with or without an unfriendly Senate. He has done nothing that entitles him to the support of (any independent, welLthinking colored citizen.”

hammer and tongs, and after changing his story several times, he finally |

admitted that the only time he was : , , , . ,

, 1 named date, and the drawings, plans,

threatened was when the publisher 1 , . , n t ^ A 4t A ^ ! profiles and specifications which are

on file and may be seen in the office

WHOLE COiiKTY IN OKLAHOMA SEEKS PASTOR

Forty-Year-Old Minister Is Accused of Elopement With 14-Year-Old Girl.

Nowata, Okla.—Led T oy me gin's father, Nowata County lose in wrath today, over the reported elopement of Rev. Joseph E. Yates, 40 years old, with Georgia Fields, 14-year-old Sun day school pupil in Doctor Yates’

church, at Aluwee.

A. W. Fields, father of the girl, has sworn to a complaint in District Court here, charging the minister with abduction. According to the complaint, just issued, Doctor Yates, divorced only a month ago, took the girl away in a roadster two weeks ago. A statewide search is being con-

ducted for the pair.

“He wields some strange power j over her,” the father declared when j obtaining the warrant for the minis- | ter’s arrest. “Georgia never disobeyed | her father and mother before. The | pastor never had courted her, never ■ had asked our permission to marry > our daughter, and apparently enticed ^ her into his car and sped away. “I shall do all in my power to place | him in the penitentiary under the | state laws relating to abduction.” 1 A note, delivered to the parents by

a small boy, read:

“This is to notify you that Georgia 1 and I have been married a week. We had a special license issued in Tennessee and were married secretly by my brother, who has a right to marry anywhere in Southern Methodism. Telegraph us in Muskogee after 6 o’clock tonight. If you forgive us we will return home immediately.” The note, delivered yesterday, gave the worried parents the first information about their missing daughter, who has not been seen for two weeks. At the same time word was received from Judge Grosman of Independence, Kan., stating he had issued a license on September 17 to Mr. Yates and Georgia. The judge said the girl gave her age as 18 and the pastor as

34.

1 The license had been returned to his office, the judge said, from a min ister in South Coffeyville, Okla., stating he had advised the couple not to use the license obtained in Kansas in an Oklahoma ceremony. The father has conducted a search at Muskogee and other points in the state, but has not found a trace of the minister or bis daughter.

CITY ADVERTISEMENTS Department of PubDc Works Office of the Board 212 Wysor Block Muncie, Ind. Notice to Contractors and to the Pub-

lic:

Notice is hereby given to the public j and to all contractors, that the Board ; of Public Works of the City of Muncie ! in the State of Indiana, invites sealed : proposals for the construction, in said | City, according to the respective im- ) provement resolutions below mentioned, and according to the plans, profiles, drawing and specification thore- : for on file in the office of said Board ; of each of the public improvements ! herein below described, towit: j I. R. 1199-1924, Local sewer in j Gharkey Street from Lake Erie & \ Western Railway’s right-of-way to I manhole in Powers Street, j I. R. No. 1200-1924, Cement sidewalk ' on west side of Beacon Street from I Fifth Street to Sixth Street. I. R. No. 1201-1924 Local sewer in Ninth Street from Ffankiin Stree* to

210 feet east.

of the Post-Democrat threatened to sue the township if the bill was not

paid.

The disgusting part of the trial was the effort made by Warner and Hunter, Heath’s attorneys, to carry the glad news to the jury that the PostDemocrat is an anti-klan newspaper. They both knew that several of the jurymen were klansmen, and sought to arouse their prejudices by this unethical and unlawyerlikp proceeding. But their dishonorable efforts to destroy the Post-Democrat did not sit well with the jury. It took them but a few minues to decide the matter and a judgment for the entire amount was rendered. When Harry Kleinfelder, witness for the Post-Democrat, was cross-ex-amined, he was asked by Hunter, “You’re a Catholic, are you not?” Dennis Cleary, former City Clerk, was asked if he was not of the “same religious faith,” as Kleinfelder. Hunter asked these question after Kilgor and Heath had whisi^red in his ear. Being a stranger to both of them he had to get the information of their being Catholics from Brother Heath and Brother Kilgore, the twg gentlemen who came into court to tell the judge and jury that they knew more about the politics of the Post-

Each bidder is also to file with the

Board an affidavit that there has been Democrat than the editor did himself, no collusion in any way affecting said T j ie Post-Democrat now stands bid, according co the terms 01 Sec. 95, alone as the best democratic news-

of saiif Board of Public Works of the City of Muncie, Indiana. The Board of Public Works has fixed the 28th day of October, 1924 ,as a date upon which remonstrances may be filed or heard by persons interested in, or affected by said described public improvements, and on said date at 7:30 o’clock P. tvi., said Board of Public Works will meet at its office in said City for the purpose of hearing and considering any remonstrances which may have been filed, or which may have been presented; said Board fixes said date as a date for the modification, confirmation, rescinding, or postponement of action on said remonstrances; and on said date will hear all persons interested or whose property is affected by said proposed improvements, and will decide whether the benefits that will accrue to the property abutting and adjacent to the proposed improvement and to the said City will be equal to or exceed the estimated cost of the proposed improvements, as estimated by the City Civil Engineer. BOARD OF PUBLIC WORKS By Mary E. Anderson, Clerk. Advertise on Oct. 10-17-1924.

STORM RAGES

of the Act of March 6th, 1905. (Acts 1905, p. 219.) All such proposals should be sealed, and must be deposited with said Board before the hour of 7:30 o’clock in the evening of the 21st day of October, 1924, and each such proposal must be accompanied by a certified check payable to said City, for t-ie sum equal to two and one-half per cent. (2 1-2 per cent) of City Civil Engineer’s estimate which shall be forfeited to said City as liquidated damages, if the bidder depositii\g the same shall fail duly and promptly to execute the required contract and bond, in case a contract shall be awarded him on such accompanying proposal. Said Board reserves the right to reject any and all bids. BY ORDER OF THE BOARD OF PUBLIC WORKS. • Mary E. Anderson, Clerk. Publish on Oct. 10-17-1924.

paper in the whole world. Its democracy is a matrer of court record, decided by twelve men good and

true.

The voters of Centre township will now get to settle the original bill plus about five hundred dollars court costs and attorney’s fees, thanks to a bonehead trustee who doesn’t even know enough to select a lawyer who can advise him properly. Warner went on the witness stand himself, an unusual thing for a lawyer to do, and when cross-examined by Judge Thompson he pompously declared he once told the editor of the Post-Democrat that the publication “was not even a newspaper.” Pressed by Judge Thompson, Warner blushingly admitted that the publisher responded by asserting that he “was not even a lawyer^’ and that bet still goes, as she lays? Attorney Hunter made^ himself as

crontinuerl from Pag:* 3 truth will make us free.”

One)

Washington, D. C.—Indignation among Negro leaders at the Coolidge administration was raised to a higher pitch today by word that the President, through Secretary Slemp, had refused to meet a delegation from Indiana, Ohio and Maryland, which wanted to learn his position on matters affecting the Negro race, including the Ku Klux Klan. An appointment with President Coolidge was requested on behalf of the delegation more than a week ago Secretary Simp told local Negro leaders acting for those in the states named, that Mr. Coolidge’s schedule was filled, but that he would call by telephone and assign a time later. Yesterday Mr. Slemp was questioned by four Negro employes of the government, who wished to protest to

Fights the Klan In National Guard

popular with the jury as a bile on the the President against segregation in neck by calling the Post-Democrat the departments, as shown by the letpet names, such as “scandal sheet,’’ ter of Frank White, treasurer of the and “pettifogging newspaper.” Poor United States, ignoring his Negro fellow, he didn’t know we had been subordinates in his Defense Day orthrough the war and had become der. Mr. White’s letter was publishthoroughly accustomed to the exple- ed in The World this morning.

tives and maledictions of the unrighteous, the ungodly and those with the

St. Louis, Mo.—Lieut. Col A. E. Deitsch, regular army instructor in

the First regiment, Missouri national restricted vocabulary,

guard, here the last three years and The crude investive of this rather recently elected colonel of the guard, wild-eyed Hunter must have been has announced a re-organization of wearing on the jury. Contrasted with the regiment to get rid of the Ku the palpably crude and unethical tacKlux Klan element.’’ One of his tics of theSe two lawyers, |^io have

first acts was to demand and recere added so materially in reducing Cen- Slemp had told them he saw no posthe resignation of Major Clarence tre Township’s bank roll, one could sibility of granting them an inter-1 The resignation of ether commit* not help trat admiro the- tactics of that view at some later time, sioned officers had been demanded skilled old warhorse of a thousand Meanwhile, no date bar been as-

“Slemp a “Lily White.”

Unable to see the President, iney left a memorial which Mr. Slemp said he would call to Mr. Coolidge’s attention. They reported to representative Negroes in the capital interested in drawing out the President on the race question that Secretary

1

“Imported” Lawyer Sends Out Misleading Letter To The Muncie Colored Voters

EDITOR POST-DEMOCRAT: DEAR S T R:—I hope you will not consider me presumptous in thus writing you relative to your issue of the Post-Democrat of September 26, 1924, under the headline “The Delaware Klan After Colored Vote,” and you took the time among other things to say the following, to-wit: “Things began to hum in Muncie immediately after the arrival home of the colored fifteen dollar patriots. A debate yas arranged in Whitely on the question: “Resolved, That the Colored Voter should vote the Republican Ticket in 1924, the same as Usual.’ The affirmative was taken by a newly arrived colored attorney named Claytor, who recently moved here from Indianapolis with the idea or reorganizing the colored population. Claytor was among those present at the Indianapolis meeting when the fifteen dollar checks of the grand gobbler were so generously passed around.” As your headline was not necessarily expressive of your private viewsfc but rather the views 6f your pocketbook, I deem it not only fit and proper^ but also a matter of duty to inquire into what seems to be a sinister attack on the Republican Party in general and myself in particular. Now I will defy any,man black or white, gray or grizzled, dead or alive, that will tell me that I received a check for any amount while in Indianapolis on the 28th of August, 1924, but had I received it, it would have been no more than you, and your so called democrat tricky bunch holding a meeting in a certain coal yard in the city on the 22nd of September, and promised to pay a few colored men the sum of three dollars ($3.00) per day to get out and register for your negro-loving party, and to pay one colored man two hundred dollars ($200.00) with the promise that he would deliver Whitely, and to pay him one hundred and twenty-five dollars ($125.00) to make a trip to Louisville, Ky., after a car of whisky for your negro-loving party? That’s the way Heflis, Caraway and Tillman from the South would have your party to do. Now, Mr. Editor of the Post-Democrat, I notice that you said that the Democrats had denounced the Klan. Do you know that there is in the city of Muncie a number of men of youj party (the Democratic) that belongs friend Mr. John W- Davis, a man from my home town in West Virginia— to the Klan, and also on the National Democratic ticket? And your good I happen to know more about him NOW than you will tell to my people in the next hundred years. He, like all other democrats, are negro haters— the father of the Jim-Crow law in West Virginia; and has always favored the rules of the South, namely, lynching and burning human beings; segregation ; peonage; inequitable division of taxes for educational purposes; Jim-Crow car laws; and hostile legislation at every opportunity. So, Mr. Editor, why don’t you tell my people the truth, as you claim to be their friend ? The men and women of my race who contributed to your recent Defense Fund demand the truth, but you are not the man to tell them that for more than sixty years past the negro has been lynched by Jews and Catholics of the Southland, but the tide has changed and the Jews and catholics are crying to the negro for help. Did THEY help the negro? No, that is not your purpose, Mr. Editor; but what you want is to get my people in the party that fought to keep them in slavery, and that now would and do deny them the right of the ballot box. I will admit that you have some good men in the Democratic party but when they go to Washington they must vote with the solid South on all questions concerning the Negro. Mr. Editor, I am a Republican, not only because of the epochal events of those wonderful days of the ’60’s, but because the Republican party has given my people representation since the days of Fred Douglass. We have an Assistant Attorney General of the United States since the Taft administration, except when the people elected Wilson and HE gave the Negro NOTHING! Do you not know, Mr. Editor—I am quite sure you do so it is unnecessary for me to enumerate, as these matters are fresh in your memory, but I must call your attention to the following recent incident: The Hon. Walter L. Cohn, an honored member of our race received an appointment under the present administration to a Federal position in the good old state of Louisiana. After President Coolidge had sent his name in to the Senate the second time, for what reason? Because those Southern Senators said that Cohn was personally objectionable to them. And for the first time in the history of the American Senate. Cohn’s name was forwarded back the THIRD time by President Coolidge and the Southern Senators were outnumbered by one vote. Cohn is a colored Republican. And do you not know, Mr. Editor, what the Republicans did for the Negro this past June at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohm? They recognized the Negro delegates from all over the country. We have three negro men and three negro womn NOW as members of the National Republican Committee, and a number of other important positions. Now, Mr. Editor, what did the Democrats do when they met irr National Convention in New York City? Not a single Negro man or woman was there as a delegate, and furthermore, there never will be one, as every sensible man well knows. The following remark is what one of your good Southern Democrats made on hds way to the New York Convention: “The Republicans had met in Cleveland, Ohio, with its Negro men and women delegates, but we White Democrats are going to meet in New York and there won’t be any negro women wh there.” And for that reason and for a thousand others no negro should vote a Democratic ticket. Do you not know, Mr. Editor, that men of my race fought, bled and died across the deep blue seas in France under a Democratic administration and came home to the Southland, were lynched with their uniforms on. simnlv because they refused to take them off? I fought in the Flanders fields of France, Mr. Editor, and would do so again should my country call, but you Southern and Northern Democrats did not appreciate it, and for that reasr/ I am a Republican, because I have fought for my rights and by going to the polls November 4th, 1924, I will be voting for my Race of the Solid South by voting a Republican ticket, and should I become crazy then I might vote with you and help you to keep my people of the South in slavery. Assuring you of my high regard, because of your frankness, I am Yours respectfully, JAMES H. CLAYTOR.

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