Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 31 March 1962 — Page 10
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Tfc* liub'Mapolis Recorder, Mar. 31,1962 EDITR.I ALS AND C(DMMENTS The Indianapolis Recorder, Mar. 31,1962
Human Dignity, Or Good Conduct
. . For dignity suppresses foes, And stifles petty wrongs; It plucks the thorn and gilds the rose, ^ And sings triumphant songs!" —Delores Smith According to the calendar spring is now with us, and over some areas of the land nature is beginning t0 1 adar 1 n tf , ?' ll dale with renewed arrays of verdure and flora. In a little while many glories of nature will be unfolding over any or all areas of the land. Otherwise in greater or lesser urban areas, villages, towns and cities one will begin to encounter, if at a distance, people loafing or loitering in streets, on corners and around unsavory places of public activity. This applies particularly to the areas of the community inhabited* predominantly by Negro people. Such people/ a myriad caravan, it appears, in their reflections of human dignity incite animosities rather than deflate or suppress antipathies. Again they vilify, or by their behaviour patterns detract from any manners of splendor exhibited by a rose or any triumphs realized in manifestations of the spirit of human dignity. Eventually reflections of the spirit of human dignity will stay the tide of animosity where the like meets the like. Again this is an era in which the spirit of human dignity should be reflected more largely in the activity of people herein .immediately concerned. But wherever three or more individuals congregate on a public scene one will encounter the foul-mouthed individual, loud or boisterous and uncouth to no end. Human dignify, encompassing fhe spirit of good conduct may figure in the fixed habits or life of any individual without regard to origin or birth and habitude. The most humble individual, from the most humble surroundings it free to portray the same spirit of dignity as the individual born or reared in the atmosphere of a king or prince. Fitting public behaviour, good conduct or good manners should not be obscured in reflections of ignorance or indifference to the feelings of other people encountered on any scenes. Loud vulgar language, boisterous actions or discourteous manners will not alleviate antipathies or stifle even petty wrongs. They will rather provoke a wide scale of misunderstandings. Fitting public behaviour or good conduct may not compare with the splendor of a gilded rose, plucked of thorns but \t will serve in sustaining or promoting goodwill of all people over our land. Finally the spirit of human dignity sustaining • xemplary conduct should be contemplated as a cultivated derke enabling all people or groups to live together with attitudes 3f respect one for the other across the entire community, any community or over our entire nation.
Good Eating, Or Frozen Meats?
The best fed people—per capita—over the entire world today live in North America in the general area north of the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. In keeping with their extensive facilities of production and for processing and transporting (domestic and foreign) food products the average householder enjoys a daily dietary variety unsurpassed or even equaled anywhere under the sun. The people per capita over our land, or the average householder, is one of the world's largest consumers of meat. This householder in keeping with the most modern methods of merchandising food products (supermarkets, etc.) has only to seleet a package (meat, etc.) from several scores on display including anything that walks, runs, crawls, swims or flies. But the package idea of the last two decades (frozen meats, etc.) has resulted in a wide deviation from the demand of other days for fresh cut meats. Contrarily, some very recent consumer reports indicate that housewives are pondering lately over the idea whether the dietary value, taste, etc. of the frozen product, particularly meats, is as good as the fresh product. One of the great food merchandising organizations of the land, and one of the oldest, has never ceased to stress the quality and taste of fresh cut meat products in comparison with the frozen products. This organization in recent times has invited housewives to sample processed meats, freshly cut, and compare these with the frozen product for taste. The experience of the organization in this course of things has been such as indicated that many housewives leaned toward fresh cut meat products. On this basis it might be said that the butcher, meat-cutter, of other days cutting meat on the scene may be on the way back and not out. Several trade periodicals in the food merchandising field note recently that there is an increasing demand for fresh cut meat. Again media exploiting the interests of the great meat packing organizations contend that there is no substitute for fresh cut meat. No matter which way the trend moves, we most likely concur in the idea that the people per capita, cfr the average householder over our land is the best fed individual over the entire world. Whereas in regard to dietary value, taste or opinion it remains to be proved whether the fancy of the housewife for frozen meat will decline or mount—where she has "time for everything, but no time for anything." r n
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THE HOPE OF FORMER VICTIMS OF ENSLAVEMENT
SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON
Christ—Center Of Our Faith REV. j. T. HIGHBAUGH, Editor
(LARGER LESSON: I Timothy 1:6. LESSON PRINT: I Timothy 1:12-17. TIME: 65 A.D. PLACE: Written From Macedonia: MOTTO TEXT: I Timothy 2:5) Our lessons for April, May and June will have to do with “Letters of Faith, Counsel and Courage.” Beginning at I Timothy and continuing through the Revelations, they will comment on Paul’s last years, Paul’s harmony of the Old Testament, the Ritual and the Priesthood of Our Lord, the seasoned boldness of Peter and the Venerable preaching and service of Jojcm and Jude. Two of these first lessons are Paul’s final messages to his son in the gospel Timothy. The first one opens the theme of the quarter with “Christ, Center of Faith.” Consider these approaches please: I. The Essence of our Faith, I Timothy 1:12-17. II. The Center of our Faith, I Timothy 2.3-7. III. Faith in Holy Conflict, Heb. 12:1-3. THE ESSENCE OF OUR FAITH. Our lesson opens by assuring us of the element of gratitude that goes with every believing heart. He assures them that he believes in Christ because He enabled him to believe. Phillips makes it much broader when he translates this twelfth verse as follows: “I am deeply grateful to Jesus Christ to whom I owe all that I have accomplished to appoint me as His minister. “Have you built a great chureh? You owe it all to Him. Has your class grown immensely? Thank Him, He enabled you for you as Paul were a blasphemer of His name.. You often persecuted and damaged His cause, all in unbelief. But in spite of us being
Unbelievers, revilers and spoilers of His church. He poured out His love upon me and put me in his service.’’ Faith like this is one which originates in the enablement of God, flows through a re*pentant heart and is assured of the divine purpose to save the sinful who believe. And let me assure you that this truth is a universal truth. It is true to the Negro. It is true to the white man. It is true to the rich. It is true to the poor. It is true to the ignorant and it is true to the learned. This is worthy of universal acceptance. THE CENTER OF OUR FAITH. We come now to the cardinal kernels of our Christian faith. I mean were one to ask the average Protestant his credal convictions he could say without wide variations, ‘‘This I believe.” Wheh our scriptures here are surveyed these basic beliefs emerge. Here are the basic truths of the Christian gospel: One God, Man’s Sin, One Mediator, The Man Christ Jesus, Ransom from Sin, and One Witness. Suppose we take a little time to talk of thee distinctive fundamentals. First let us comment on the doctrine of the One God. The essence of the patriarchal and prophetic persuasion was that there is one only one God and Jehavah is His name. True, that often the Israelites wandered otf at times but the core of the prophets’ message was to denounce their backslidings and call them back to God. Someway, also, the heart of our Christian message is to reveal sin as exceedingly sin-
ful. David said in the fiftyfirst Psalm, “Against Thee and Thee only have I sinned.” However, God has provided a mediator to make peace between God and man. That man and God are at variance with one another is quite apparent in that man is ever in conflict with God’s holy word. So God sent His Son to be a mediator between God and man. Now a mediator must hold sympathetic relationship with both parties at variance. Then he must justly move out all barriers of their peaceful fellowship for their future. This Jesus did for us. He bore our sins in His own body on the Cross and paid for our sins and the sin of the whole human family. Now He lives to make intercessions for us at the throne of God’s grace. By God sending His son as mediator, and Him dying on the Cross, He paid all I owed God in my stead at the throne and is now pleading fpr mercy and enablement for me to overcome sm within me. FAITH IN HOLY CONFLICT. Here He assures us that faith is not only a tool to enter the warfare, but a weapon of defense. In Eph. 6:16, He warns them to place faith as one of their first weapons of defense, ^.nd here in our text he says fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life. We are to flee ungodly lusts and follow after rigteousness, Godliness, faith, love and ho5ness, patience. We must be aware that we fight a defeated foe but that even still he is able to give us much trouble in a world like ours.
Things You Should Know
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7" WASHINGTON.. . . .©ORN APRILIB86:SON OF
Hegro Press Creedthe United State, at America ran best lead the world away from roeiol and national antagonism when if accords every man, regardless of race, color ee creed, his hitman and legal rights. Hating no man, fearing no man, the Negro Press strives to help every man in Jbe firm belief that all are hurt so long as any one is held back.
A WHITE SLAVE-OWNER AND A SLAVE WOMAN./WHEN FREED HE SET OUT AS A MIGRANT WORKER A EDUCATED HIMSELF; IN 1861 HE STARTED AS THE
ONLY TEACHER IN A LEAKY OLD CHURCH BUILDING, (AN UMBRELLA OVER HIS DESK WHEN IT RAINED^THATBECAMETUSKfG§§ INSRlUlt/
VCHCI FROM THE GALLERY Wanted: White Christians * By Andrew W. Kamaev r
o;,
One of the mpst repeated legends of Western civilization is that of Diogenes going about the streets of Athens in broad daylight with a lighted lantern looking for an honest
man.
A modern Diogenes might engaged in a similar goose chas£, going through the streets of Indianapolis looking for a white Christian. The implication of that statement is not that Negro Christians could be found in abundance or that Indianapolis rates low in church membership among
whites.
It is the private observation of this writer backed up by the observations and studies of others more c o m p e tent in the field that the so-called white Christian is the tragically self-deluded figure in modern
society. ANDREW W. The late RAMSEY
Richard Wright
put it this way: “A deeply conscious victim of white racism could be strangely moved to compassion for that white man, who, having lost his mystic vision of a stem Father God, a dazzling Virgin and a dying Son Who promises to succor him after death, settles upon racism. What a
poor substitute.”
The current practice of white church members of selling or abandoning their temples when the neighborhood starts to change its racial complexion, the fact that Sunday schools are everywhere more segregated than the public schools and the fact that more than ninetynine percent of so-called and self-styled American Christians worship racially segregated congregations tend to substantiate the accusation that the American white man even while his church membership is growing refuses to accept Christianity. THE BACKWASH of racism spread abroad into Asia and Africa by missionaries who were unaware of the fact that they were doing so has a-
larmed the leaders. Sent off to deal with the heathen before they had ever got to know u££ll even one individual who was not white and holding oq to the instruction on race which they had received at their mothers’ knees they are not to be too harshly condemned if they went to Asia or to Africa to play white god to the •simple-minded natives! But this backwash has caused concern for many of the leaders and thinkers among the white church members. In conventions and assemblies they have passed pious resolutions condemning racial separateness in their denominations. But as the Italians say, there is a whole sea between saying and doing. Most of the church leaders and bleeding heart Christians who favor integration in general belong to churches which are segregated and which flee the proximity of Negroes or other non-whites. These leaders do practically nothing to stop this unchristian practice. Nor do they discourage the flight of congregations to the lily-white havens of the suburbs nor insist that the congregations take along the religion of the Nazarene with them. A few leaders, more troubled than the rest, have taken cautious steps to remedy the situation caused by the exodus from the inner city of white congregations faced with worshiping in a neighborhood which is racially mixed. For instance, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) whose international headquarters is located in Indianapolis has decided in its county, state and international governing assemblies to fil It he breach left by the vacating churches by setting up interracial congregations in the abandoned houses of worship. But the leadership has counted without its membership. One of the two pilot projects planned for Indianapolis has run into deep difficulty and unless some white Christians are found soon the other can be counted a failure even before it starts. HE FIRST project was to be with the abandoned worship house of the Hillside Christian Church, 1731 In-
gram- The church union of Marion County and the State Association of Christian Churches purchased the building which is in a neighborhood which is fifty-two per cent white. From January to date, an attempt has been made to find a white minister willing to undertake the job of building a mixed congregation in the neighborhood and of getting the former members Who liye in the vicinity of the church to agree to take membership in a racially mixed congregation. To date, no members and no minister. A Negro minister would be hired, but it is the feeling of the leadership that in that a, event certainly no whites would participate. * To this writer it seems strange that in a city where missionaries are trained and sent to minister to the needs of black folk in Africa, missionaries cannot be found „to minister to the spiritual needs of Hoosier blacks and whites. It seems that of the 54 Christian churches in the country, many of whom send missionaries to Africa, Asia and South America, there should be enough members imbued with the missionary spirit to transfer their membership to a new congregation which is not steeped in the anti-Christian poison of racism. Incideritally, a survey has indicated tha^ many Negroes living in the area would welcome the opportunity to worship in a church which gave credence to the brotherhood of man. the* core of the Christian doctrine. THE TRAGEDY is not that if white Christians are not found, Hillside Christian Church will have to be abandoned. Rather it is that if church people, both Negro and white, continue to reject this brotherhood, the Christian church as an institution will vanish from the earth to be replaced by a faith which is in step with human nature and the findings of* science. In the meantime our Diog' enes. is still looking for white Christians!
BETWEEN THE LINES
The Nations Embezzlement Business By DEAN GORDON B. HANCOCK >
existed, they
GORDON HANCOCK
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CL0Arfr/Y£/YTHi.
Embezzlement in this nation of ours has become big business, according to Norman Jaspan, quoted recently in the Associated Press. Says Jaspan, “We are rapidly becoming a nation of embezzlers.” Jaspan is president of a management engineering firm that has been in business for the past 38 years and ought to know wjiereof he speaks. According to Jaspan, his firm alone turned up employe thefts totalling $60,000,000.00 and says he, “When our engineers made surveys of the systems where no suspicion of dishonesty dis cover e ti fraud in more than 50 per cent of the as-
signme n t s
He continued, “one of the most disturbing factors is the lack or absence of ethics in graduates of many of our outstan ding schools of
learning.”
And it was pointed out that employes steal more thati a billion dollars annually and that because of the stealing that is going on, more than 260 firms fail every year and the purchasing cost to the ultimate consumer is increased by 15 per cent. IT IS GENERALLY conceded that ours is the most criminal nation pf modern times and embezzlement is only one facet of mir national weakness. With embezzlement becoming an art, there are indications that we are rotting at the core. Just a few years ago the nation was stunned to find that cheating on examinations in our great universities and colleges was routine, and brow-raising at such revelations was not universal, showing that in many quarters cheating was taken as a matter of course. For a long time stealing by Negroes has been frowned upon, but stealing by whites has been taken lightly and so the indulged whites are making a career of embezzlement. This writer remembers well the customs of thf Old South where the Negro who stole a chicken w*s called a rogue, but the wh|te man who stole and broke a bank was called
id
was made to look less criminal because it was committed by a white person. This double treatment of crime by Negroes and whites may have some influence on the current dangerous situation. To clamp down on a Negro who steals • some small article and smooth-over whites who wreck banks with their embezzlements is to lay the foundation of future trouble. So long has the Old South sown to the winds by this dual treatment'of dishonesty that the whirlwind is about to catch up with a nation that adopted its tactics. When a rough, uncouth country youth entered college he was known as “Old Jim Gillett” but after four years in college he had the name “James Gillette” engraved on his diploma. The latter name was fancier for a college graduate. Then today we are in an era of changing the names of things. For instance, a liar was known of old as a liar Today he is known as a “prevaricator.” Old-fashioned noise was known as noise. Today it is known as “cacophony.” IN A FORMER generation our departed were known as dead, today they are “deceased.” The old-time rogue was known by that name; today, he is an “embezzler” or a “kleptomaniac.” Sin of yesterday was known as sin, but today it is known as “social deviation” or “social pathology.” “Delinquency” of which we hear so much today is nothing but old-f»sh-ioned devilment. Imprisonment is now known as “incarceratiop” and so on. But it is just as well for us to know that changing the names of things does not change the things themselves, and so as our white contemporaries take over large-scale stealing and call it embezzlement it does npt change the horrible nature of the practice. There are indications that unless this once great country of ours straightens up and flies right, we are in for great tribulation and the time to censure Negroes for a given crime and gloss over the whites for committing the same crime, is not now. Our backs, are against the wall. Communism is knocking at the door. We need experts to help us solve our problems such as the embezzlement problem who can measure arms with the experts the Old South has sent to Con-
gress to head off the Negro as he aspires to full citizenship. What does it profit the Old South and the nation to hold the Negro down and let Russia run away with the world? Our embezzlement business is big and ominous. Voice Of The People ADMONITION ON CHRISTIAN LIFE To The Editor: How tfan we live a Christian life? We can live a Christian life if wc seek ye first the Kingdom of God because straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life. Therefore I say unto you: “Take no thought for your life. What ye shall eat, what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat and the body, than raiment? Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Therefore if you can put your trust in God and keep it with diligence, you can build a solid foundation beneath you. Joan Baker
More Ambulance Service Planned At General A plan to extend Marion County General Hospital’s ambulance service was announced recently by the county Health and Hospital Corporation board of trustees. The plan calls for immediate purchase of one used ambulance and authorization for the hospital to buv one new vehicle. This would increase the ambulance fleet from five to seven. Atty. Frank R- Beckwith, president bf the Yankee Doodle Civic Foundation and one of the early endorsers of the plan, acted as spokesman for the petitioners. Beckwith’s group recommended the adoption of the Detroit (Mich.) plan under which teams of law enforcement officers cruise their beats in huge station wagonequipped with cots, first aid kits and the like who, instead of calling for an ambulance^ transport the sick or injured person im mediately from the scene to thi hospital.