Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 January 1960 — Page 8

The Indianapolis Retonler, Jan. 2,1960 EDITORIALS AND COMMENTS

New Year’s, 1960

The general public is supposed, come New Year's Day, to moke an idealistic and impossible list of resolutions. Editorial writers have something of an easier time of it. Tradition demands merely that they announce that THIS is the year when all mankind's problems will be solved, that the lion and the lamb will become bedfellows and that a surplus of plowshores and pruning hooks will follow the miraculous disappearance of spears and swords. Oh, once every decade or so, some editor makes like a prophet of doom and predicts all sorts of dire things for the ensuing twelve-month, but this is the exception. So as far as tradition is concerned, maybe this piece shouldn't be labeled an editorial at al|. For we do not plan to view the coming year through rose-colored glasses, nor yet with utter .despair. Certain desirable goals, certainly, are attainable. Others, while bordering on the idealistic, nevertheless, deserve our earnest efforts. In the first category would fall improvement of race end intergroup relations, an increased-civic awareness ' on the part of Negro Indianapolis, fuller support of the local NAACP, more frequent and more effective church attendance, greater cooperation with the Police Department (coupled with demands for increased bias-free service), more respect for person and property, re-doubled efforts toward youth betterment, establishment of scholarship funds for worthy students and more complete unity on the part of all classes in the struggle for first-class citizen- * ship. We expect no miracles, but we believe that, with community aid and insistence, the Police Department can be rid of men whose first consideration is race (perhaps by educating the offending officers), Negroes can find it easier to secure jobs commensurate with their training and ability, racial and religious discrimination can be dealt the death blow; a beginning can be made toward the elimination of ghettos, prostitution and other vices can bo greatly reduced and Indianapolis streets can be made safe from hoodlums and assorted malefactors. ;j It is probably too much to expect that Negroes will become concerned about being SUPERIOR citizens — leading the way in civic progress, establishing business enterprises, making worthwhile investments of time, talent and money and becoming politically articulate — in a city which has, to a great extent, denied them the privileges of ordinary citizenship. But we might as well join the tide of optimism. After all, it's a new year!

Negro Labor: A Wasted Resource At a special hearing the United States Senate's special committee on unemployment problems held recently in New Orleans, testimony was given by official representatives of seven Southern states. These hearings, conducted by Senators Jennings Randolph of West Virginia and Eugene McCarty of New Mexico, were concerned with basic causes of unemployment and under-employment and their effect on family life. After many speeches and much deliberation, the committee arrived at the oosition this paper has long held — that the American Negro — South and North — is a wasted resource. While some strides hove been mode in the matter of employment and improved social conditions, progress is extremely slow and we are still o long way from any proximation of equality. Training facilities — notably on-the-job training and apprenticeship programs are woefuly deficient for the Negro, making him a poor competitor for many of the more skilled and better paying jobs. Excessive juvenile delinquency and crime, sickness and desertions, in many cases, result from problems of employment. Unemployed Negroes add greatly to the public welfare burden, making it a simple matter of '.'enlightened altruism" for the public to rid itself of the bias for which it pays so dearly. Negroes, meanwhile must not sit and wait for the public to awaken. They must redouble their efforts to secure and make the most of all available training and prepare themselves for any break-through in the color line. American Negroes are Americans, too, and have a very real stake in the struggle to end our deplorable nationwide waste of human resources.

Women’s Groups In Mental Health We are encouraged by the increased interest of Negro groups and individual persons in the welfare of the mentally ill. On Teenage Day, Dec. 12, at the Wrapping Center, one of the largest groups to participate was a group of girls from the Attucks Tri-Hi-Y. Also present were psychology pupils from Manual High School. Gold Ladies in charge report being favorably impressed by the imaginative and attractive wrapping done that day, as well as the intelligent questions asked and interest shown in the volunteer program. , Mrs. Frances Hill, president of the Big Sister Club; Mrs. Marjorie McGuier, entertainment chairman, and' Mrs. Oscar Orr, a member of the Women's Council, were in charge of a Christmas ptfrty for Ward 24 of Central State Hospital. Entertainment on a monthly basis is a project of the Big Sisters, who have completely refurnished a word. Mrs. Jewel' Moore is chairman of the Metropolitan Missionary Chorus, a group of 34 singers who have been giving parties for the women's North Infirmary for four years. This season, in addition to providing presents for patients, they made aprons for the nurses on the ward. The 25th Street Baptist Church matrons work in the women's South Infirmary on the first Saturday of each month and recently gave their third annual Christmas party, with Mrs. Mary Evans as chairman. They furnish refreshments and magazines for the patients and have made new draperies for the ward. Another group which is active every month in Amicus Unit II. The group has provided Ward 12 with a television set. Mrs. Essie Crenshaw is party chairman. Union District matrons hove representatives fi;om 14 churches and have been giving Christmas parties for a number of years, according to /yVrs. Thelma Offett, president. The matrons donated 30 gifts to the Mental Heo'th Gift Lift. Mrs. Clo Woolridge is chairman of the Amicus class of Mt. Zion baptist Church which is in charge of the recreation, programs and refreshments for Ward 23 once a month. Each member supplied an extra gift for an individual patient to be given at the party. The Mt. Zion group gives a model party, with lots of activity and opportunity for patients to participate

VOICE FROM THE GALLERY

,<\r v -.v r *

THE FIGHT FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN 1960 SHOULD BE A FULL-TIME JOB

BETWEEN THE LINES

By Doan Gordon B. Hancock for ANP The Pouplation Explosion Interpreted

In 1798 there, appeared on the horizon of economic literature An Essay on the Principle of Population by one Rev. Thomas R. Malthus, an English clergyman, whose close ccntact Rith the hungry masses led him to the serious study of pop-

ulation.

His work has * become a classic and its fundamental thesis that tal thesis that p o p u lation tends to outrun the food supply has never been sue cessfully con troverted.

HANCOCK

Because his outlook was pessimistic, there have arisen many economists who sought to discredit his findings and conclusion. but without success. THE CURRENT TALK about population explosion is but ihc vindication of this economist who wrote more than a hundred and fifty years ago. As a student of economics, this writer has been Malthusian in his populational outlook but has always looked askance at the birth-control remedies proposed as an answer to the ques tion population “explosion” raises Many years ago tHe Hearst newspapers had a celebrated columnist, the late Arthur Brisbane. who once wrote that all of the people in the world could be placed on Long Island. and enough food raised iju the state of Texas to feed them. That was another way of saying that there w'as room in the world for billions and billions of people then unborn. THE REAL TROUBLE, then is not that at present the world is over-populated, but that the means of subsistence are not properly distributed. If it wore possible to distribute more equitably the means of subsisthenee available the populations would not be in a state of “explosion.”.* It is explosive because some are getting too much and some getting too little! Moreover, this nation has made a fetish of the high standard of living. We have made obsolescent the ideal of plain living and high thinking and have idealized the notion of plain thinking and, high living and have eommepded such ideals to the world through oux example. The high living standard which we have set before the wmrld does not answer the deeper questions the souls of men have asked, are asking now and will ever ask. THE MISERY OF mankind is not so much a matter of overpopulation as a matter of inequitable distribution of wealth. The ratio at which this world's wealth is distributed is the crux of the situation ajnd if this could be properly adjusted the world could clothe and feed billions more than now live up the earth. Improve tile lot of the masses to. a stage of decent living and the population automatically checks itself, so the ques tion arises why we do not ap ply this method of checking the population instead of going directly at. matters of dipseminatoig birth control propaganda and teachings. When we go in for birth

control we are tampering with the biological balance instead cf adjusting the matter of wealth distribution, which is the real cause of our present population uneasiness. The late Dr. Norman Himes of Colgate University was lecturing before my classes in economics at Virginia Union and was advocating the dissemination of birth control information. We differed sharply on whether to approach the matter fiom the indirect way of finding another ratio of wealth dislributicn, or go in for the spread of -birth control information, the direct way. He admitted that the chances of getting another ratio of wealth distribution were so remote that the direct approach would be more hopeful. My Opinion then as now is that we ought to deal with the cause and not the effect. IT MATTERS LITTLE whether wgjiave three billion people in the world as of now. or ten bilhon as of tomorrow; we run into the- same trouble unless men become brothers with the live and let live spirit, of the Golden Rule of the lowly Nazareue. Moreover, if we study the birth control movement and its advocates we find that at its heart is the white supremacy ideal. The white supremacists know that the multiplication of the colored peoples with

their low living standard will in time take over the world if allowed to go unchecked, as against the whites with their higher living standards and lower birth-rates. With the white supremacists it is far easier to recommend birht control than to readjust the ration of wealth distributicM. Birth control is also the line of the plutocrats.

Voice Of The People Nobody's Good — Or AM Bad — Reader Points Out To the Editor; The conflict between the two world ideologic-* is threatening world disarmament. If the worst does come it is anybody’s guess as to w f ho will get flic blame Only a genius would have the audacity to % praise one side and condemn ' the other Every resident of a capital state must know' that qnider capitalism an honest man has but a little chance of success. Crooks are the only ones who can survive under the banner of capitalism. Under capitalism the law is so crooked that I have recourse to it only as a last resort. An honest supplicant would seek redress at the law only under severe compulsion. I will let those who are acquainted with its merits and demerits make an appraisal of communism. Nobbdy but a dummy w r ould maintain that the one system is all good and other all bad. George Maxwell. 860 W. 101 h.

Share The Road

The moment you take your eyes oft the road is the most dangerous one, says the Indiana Traffic Safetj Foundation.

Mid-Century Decdde More Promising Than Rewarding

By Andrew W. Ramsey

The 10-year period just closing has been one of the most promising and, at the same time, one of the least rewarding in the recorded history of homo sapiens. The decade has seen the color problem in the United States given more conceal than any previous decade since the Civil War, and has been highlighted by organized resi stance of colored peoples all over the world to the RAMSEY continued domination of the < American and European white man. The 50’s have been more notable for the definition and delineation of the race problem in the United States than for its solution. Although there has been an amelioration of the status 6f the Negro in Aiperican society, he remains at the end of the decade as he was at the beginning—a half citizen. THE SUPREME COURT decisions of 1945 and 1955 relative • to school desegregation have given much assistance to the Negro’s efforts to gain first-class status but the integration wdiich has been so much on everybody’s lips has been putative rather than demonstrably real. Hundreds of Southern school districts remain as segregated as they were at the beginning of the century, and, in the North as well as in the South in most places where desegregation has been brought about by fiat or voluntary action, a large portion of the Negro children still attend segregated schools due to the evil of residential segregation. Fair employment practices have been slow' to take hold in most of the United States and, while there have been encouraging improvements in the employment status of Negroes throughout the country,

the fact remains that the Negro continues to be the last hired and the^first fired as* at the beginning of the decade. Of the 40,000 types of employment in the United States the Negro is employed in only slightly over 300 and, for the most part, the Negro is still the hewer of wood and the d. awer of water. IN SPITE of the general improvement in the housing occupied by Negroes, most Negroes in the United States coniinue to live in ghettos, and during the decade the condition tended to grow worse as the hegria of the whites to the suburbs left room in the city for the expansion of the Negro ghettos, The result of this suburbanitis has been an enormous increase, percentage wise, of the Negroes in most of America’s urban centers. - This trend, if continued, could give the balance of political power to Negroes in a dozen or more of the largest cities and more than triple the number of Negroes in Congress. The increase of the inumber of Negroes in Congress from two to three during the decade Is attributable to this population trend. Negroes have made their greatest advance in the areas of life pre-empted by the federal government. Segregation in the armed forces, begun in the 40’s, became an accomplished fact in the 50’s, and Washington, DC., the nation’s capital, got rid of the grosser aspects of racial discriminatic’.i. NEGROES GAINED more in the way of their basic rights in Washington than perhaps in any other city in the land. Hotels and restaurants, which formerly maintained a rigid color bar, opened their doors to people without regard to color, and the District schools did perhaps the most effective job in the nation of ridding themselves of the stigma of segregation. Police brutality and the denial of the civil rights of Ne-

groes continued to be a blot on the nation’s record in the Nortjr as well as in the South, ahtT the Negro t r aveller could not be certain where he could find a bed or a meal along America’s crowded highways. It was still just as dangerous for Negroes to try to vote in many states as it was for them to attempt to live outside the ghetto in Indianapolis. And, speak:ng of Indianapolis, some changes were made during the fateful 50’s, but in a larger sense the more it changed the more it remained the same. THE CITY'S SCHOOLS were integrated in that Negro children attended the schools formerly closed to „ them but the shifting of population caused at the end of the decade a greater number of all-Negro schools than at any time in the city's history. There was also a token integration of teachers, with Negro teachers being assigned where there was a large influx of Negro children. ^And, with the exception of a"“ couple of high schools, there was no assignment of Negro teachers to predominantly white schools, nor were the positions at the central office generally, open to Negroes. ' Jobs in banks and insurance companies and, except in. a few instances, sales positions in the department stores were closed to N^roes Politically, Indianapolir*N e g r o e s were treated to a first in that they had a Negro judge, but at the same time they seemed barred from the city council by a sort of gentlemen’s agreement on the part of the two political parties. In general, at the end of the decade, Negroes were still second class citizens everywhere^ in the United Slates but with the difference that there was a more unanimous and more intelligent resistance to it. And the end of the decade gave promise that the 60’s w'ould see a real break through of democracy.

Colonial Front By A. J. SIGGINS British Journalist for ANP President Eisenhower, on his Grand Tour is everywhere greeted by cheering crowds: “Mwenya robo kapa” as the Wa-Mwani sailers’ home-coming shanty goes, it means the “Cloth bringer has come ”) Truly the President is expected to live up to his name as the biggest cloth-bringer ever. Mr Dillon U. S. Under-Secre-tary of State for economic affairs, has completed talks in London: an overhaul of the Marshall Plan and aid to backward undeveloped areas have been discussed, among other matters. Mr. E. Black, of the World Bank, may send a small group to India to study her needs. USA. IT APPEARS is being tsolated by dollar discrimination. But what has happened is that U.S.A. is being pulled back by the Gresham Law'. Now' the top strata are wondering how to create purchasing powet for their too-highly-priced commodities. ^ Just like I said they would. And my plan was designed to meet such an occasion. In U.S,A.’s New’ Deal they gave the stuff away, primed the pump, and boosted the national income

back.

But that was a trifling domestic matter compared with what has to be done now. Too many forward nations have accumulated too many commodities, too iruny productionary plants and too much ntoncy and both workers and employers have never had it so good. They’ve got the lolly and the goods, but markets are too far beneath their level to reach. The Recorder is open Each Evening Until 8 P.M. For Your Convenience

SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON

Pioneers for Christ By The Union Baptist Alliance REV. J. T. HIGHBAUGH, Editor

(LARGER LESSON: Acts 13. LESSON PRINT: Acts 13:1-4. 13-14. MEMORY VERSE: Luke 24:47i. Off we go on the westward march of the good news of Jesus Christ to the Roman

Empire.

This is no small task and nly a very special type church

do it.

oru:

can I I!

IS YOUR CHURCH A MISIONARY CHURCH? (Acts :20-30, 13:1-4). Let us peck into the church at Antioch and see w’hat traits it possessed 1 It majored Jesus as Lord and the Holy Spirit as His embodiment. The Word of God as spoken and lived by Jesus w-as final. Is your church so

oriented?

2. Antioch dared to be learners, disciples. Do you attend Sunday school, the Training Union or Pastor’s Training

class?

3. Antioch cared and shared. Arp you willing to share your preacher with other needy sections of the world? 4. Antioch viewed all races, all classes and all levels of culture simply as people w r ho

free from prejudices of race and class? 5. Antioch fasted and prayed for the unfortunate. Do you attend prayer meetings? Do you pray every day? New reread these five questions and answer. Is your church a missionary church? WHAT IS THE HEART OF YOUR GOSPEL? (Acts 13:1441). As Paul moved into Antioch of Pesidia. what was his central message? Jesus was presented as fulfillment of Israel’s need of a Savior Christ. Jesus was presented as full sacrifice for the sins of the world. Jesus was manifested as Lord of the church. Through Jesus, forgiveness of sins and eternal life W'ere offered to those who believed. Our modern missionary movements are often detoured into fine social service work such as housing, better streets, needed Christ. Is your church day nurseries, eta, Or in a health program, hospitalization or family welfare ventures.

Often me miss altogether hte needs of the soul. WHAT BASIC RESULTS CAN YOU REPORT? (Acts 13:4-12, 42-52). Probably the first major achievement of these tw’o trail blazers for Christ W’as the courage to sacrifice eld friends and break old ties to form new ones for Christ. How dauntless were these first preachers! They went from one village to another carrying the gov) news. I never see such fonvan! march action without thinkirf. of Barring Gould who wroti his great hymn for his children’s choir at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. “Baniabus and Paul could join in a universal chorus singing: Onward. Christian soldiers Marching as to war. With the Cross of Jesus Going on before. Christ, our Royal Master, * Leads against the foe. * Forward into battle See His banners go.

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Things You Should Know

UNCLES

The FIRST NEGRO CATHOLIC ^ PRIEST IN THE U.S.A./—ORDAINED IN BALTIMORE CATHEDRAL BY JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS, ON DECEMBER 1% 1891 / couT/#e-*r*i. fertT-cs/t-er—

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