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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 23, 1978)
Page 18 Portland Observer Section 11 Thursday. February 23. 1978 ment and the compiler was J. Edgar Hoover, later to become head of the F.B.I. The report read in part: “At this time there can no longer be any question of a well concerted movement among a certain class of negro leaders of thought and action to constitute themselves a determined and persistent source of radical oppo sition to the government and to the established rule of law and order. “Among the more salient points to be noted in the present attitude of the negro leaders are. first, the ill governed measures in connection with lynching; third, the more openly expressed demand for social equality, in which the sex problem is not infrequently included..." As consequence of the wide spread riots that developed, a former employee of the Chicago Defender. Claude A. Barnett, established the Associated Ne gro Press, the first national Black news service, which he operated from 1919 to 1964. The attacks on the Black press were carried to the floor of Congress as well and there Con gressman James F. Byrnes - later to be Governor of South Carolina. Secretary of State and a member of the Supreme Court - placed the blame for “The Red Summer" squarely on the should ers of the Black press which he accused of inflaming its readers. The New York Times of August 26, 1919, reported: “Representative James F. Byrnes of South Carolina told the House today that the race anta gonism which flared up in Mr ash ington and other sections of the country recently had its inspira tion in incendiary utterances of negro leaders as disseminated through negro publications." Byrnes suggested that the publishers be prosecuted under the Espionage Act and if there was no law prohibiting the send ing of their publications through the mail, one should be enacted. Nothing came of the Congress man's suggestion, but over the next few months the government kept up a steady attack against the Black press, seeking to dis credit it. Stories alleging a Black conspiracy to incite appeared regularly in the nation's leading newspapers. Example: “Evidence is accumulating in the files of the government to show that the negroes of this country are the object of a vicious and apparently well fi nanced program, which is direct ed against white people, and which seeks by newspapers, pamphlets and in other ways to stir up discontent among the negroes, particularly the unedu cated class in the southern states ...A federal official exhibited to the Times a few days ago a recent copy of a negro magazine which is said to have a large circulation in sections where there are considerable negro publications." New York Times. July 28. 1919. "Russian Soviet interests ap parently are supplying funds for propaganda to stir up race anta gonism in the U.S., according to information now in the hands of the Department of Justice." New York Times, August 27. 1919. No such evidence was ever made public and there is a serious question whether such evidence ever existed, or wheth er the charges were manufactur ed out of an intent to so stain the Black press with the smear of subversion that it would be re duced to impotency or frightened into silence. If that as the strategy, it did not work. The steady drumfire of protest did not stop and the papers gained even more credibility by the sheer viciousness of the govern ment’s attacks. It was. however, a sad and trying period for the First Amendment. Efforts were also being made outside of Washington to muzzle the Black press, but these were more direct. It was not uncom mon for Black publications to be confiscated by southern officials, or for distributors to be beaten and ordered out of town. The Crisis received many letters at testing to this, including this one from a correspondent in Florida: “I would be glad to continue to serve you as agent and willing but you are aware of the fact that the crackers or Ku Klux will beat a colored man for giving the Crisis away in some sections of this country. I wish to stop here a little longer as I make good wages in railroad service...As long as I can stay in peace I decided I would discontinue for reasons stated above..." The Crusader received this letter from "somewhere in the South. Names are deleted for safety of the writer." “We here in the South are not allowed to sell Northern news papers. We have to slip the paper into the hands of our friends and 1 am trying to induce my friends to subscribe by the year for the Crusader. Every public school teacher is watched, also the Negro preacher." Given the attitude of the South toward the newspapers coming down from the North, and the fact that Blacks were still under the domination of whites in the South, it would have been ex peering too much to have the papers published in the South assume the same militant stance as their sister papers in the North. And in fact, they did not. It was a matter of survival. "Freedom of the (southern Black) press was minimal." Theo dore G. Vincent has observed in “Voices of a Black Nation - Political Journalism in the Har lem Renaissance", going on to note that it was dangerous for these southern papers to endorse anything considered controver sial. including the NAACP and trade unionism. It was in the North, in the large cities, that the militant press flourished but since they were widely distributed through out the South - despite efforts to keep them out - their influence did not stop at the city's edge. One of the leading weeklies of the period was Marcus Garvey's New World, the organ of his worldwide Black nationalist or ganization. the Universal Negro Improvement Association. The strong voice of A. Philip Ran dolph thundered from the pages of the magazine the Messenger. W.E.B. DuBois made the NAACP's Crisis magazine into one of the most influential maga zines of the times. And at the National Urban League. Dr. Charles S. Johnson began O,»;«or- tunity magazine which was to publish an astounding variety of articles, stories and poetry by some of the nation's most out standing Figures. There were other Black magazines published during this era, but only Crisis survives today. Mdpuu) nah vyud m m iw , oppotiuMiq A Kaliilf ÓÍ OwjOiL JOSEPH C JEREMIE >»*■ - l»4» 1 T IM I Of MAITIS MOST DISTINGUISHED U C IT I» NS WHO LIVED TO B I 9 9 - YEARS YOUNG IN I6B? H i FOUNOED THE FIRST NEWS- » PAPER EWRP«MT to IN HAITI Hf X t , BEGAN MIS DIP10- a .’ / MATIC CARURAS ’ a W CLERK AN t*» SERVED *S S Y -s A ™ . AS MINUTER OF STATE ANO Of WAR AHOAS A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE. 2 HIS COLORFUL LIFE HAD ITS UPS AMD DOWNS, HE WAS EXILED TWICE FROM HAITI FOR HIS POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OHCE DECORATED BY POPE PIUS XII AND WAS OHE OF THE SIGNERS OF THE CUBAN ACT OF INDEPENO ENCE ON HIS 9 7th BIRTHDAY , HE WAS PRESENTED WITH HA’ TIS HIGHEST HONOR - THE ORDRE D H O N N EU R ET MERITE - BY PRES.RAUL MAGLORIt PERHAPS HIS 3 GREATEST HERITAGE WAS BEING THE GREAT GRANDSON OF THE FAMOUS JEAN BAPTISTE POINT OU SABLE, EXPLORER WHO FOUNDED CHICAGO INIT79 JEREMIE AN AUTHOR OF 10 BOOKS WROTE 'H A IT I ANO CHICAGO PUBLISHED IN FRENCH IN WSO A RELIGIOUS M A N HE WOULD CLIMB 102 STEPS TO HIS CHURCHAT 9 6 / 8 Abbott t Simpson Roofing & Gnttors Mobil Poe’s Service C O M R L .K T K A U T O S IH v iC E 2 8 4 -3 5 2 7 5 5 2 0 N.E. Union Avo. 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