Cayton's Weekly

Cayton's Weekly PRICE FIVE CENTS CAYTON'S WEEKLY CAYTON S WEEKLY Published every Saturday at Seattle, Washington. U. S. A. In the interest of equal rights and equal justice to all men and for "all men up." A publication of general information, but in the main voicing the sentiments of the Colored Citizens. Subscription $2 per year in advance. Special rates made to clubs and societies. HORACE ROSCOE CAYTON. Editor and Publisher Entred as second class matter, August 18, 1916, at the post office at Seattle, "Wash., under the Act of March 3rd, 1916. TELEPHONE: BEACON 1910 TELEPHONE: BEACON 1910 OFFICE 303 22d Ave. South ANTI-NEGRO BIOTS As long as the white citizens of this country permit their prejudices against the colored citizens to assume a state of intolerance, which grows and grows until it becomes acute, there will be outbreaks between the two classes—race riots, if you please—of the kind that occurred in Washington, D. C., one day this week. From time to time, and more especially in the South and the near South, the white folks have shown their displeasure at the black folks trying to "act like white folks," and never lose an opportunity to try to put the breaks on the actions of the colored folks wherever and whenever it is possible for them to do so. In the most of the large cities they colonized them and then charged that the acts and depredations of the criminal ones were the sentiments of the entire colony, and when they set out to punish the criminals they operated against the whole on the theory. "All coons look alike to me." In every community the crimes of the colored folks are magnified, while their good behavior, if any they have, is minimized. The metropolitan daily papers completely overlook the good citizenry of the colored people of their respective communities, but hold up for public inspection and condemnation any crime that may be committed by any one of them. Most any day may be seen accounts of the police raiding places of vice, wherein so and so many men are arrested, and one, two or as many Negroes as happened to be caught are likewise arrested. In other words, the Negro is the only distinct criminal that is designated, he not even being classed a man. If the colored citizens make an effort to prove to the white citizens that it is a mistake to judge all of them by the criminal acts of one or more, no consideration is given to whatever they say to the contrary. It is generally considered below the dignity of a "wihte man" to attend meetings conducted by the "niggers," and that, too, whether such meetings be for the cause of patriotism or for their own class uplift. But last Tuesday evening a colored man of national renown lectured in the auditorium of the Y. M. C. A. of this city, preaching a better understanding between the whites and blacks of this country and yet not to exceed a half dozen white folks were present and not one daily paper condescended to reportorially cover the meeting that their great army of white patrons might read for themselves the efforts the colored man is putting forth to smooth out the differences between himself and the white man. Race riots even more violent than any that has as yet been reported in this country will disgrace this "land of the free" unless both white and colored citizens try to see the good instead of the bad in each other. As long as the white citizens teach their chil- SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, SATURDAY, JULY 26, 1919. dren that colored citizens are citizens by mistake and that they are invariably criminal at heart, and even when not actual criminals very undesirable citizens, just so long will the spirit of intoleration against the colored citizens fatten and grow strong among the white citizens and they will never lose an opportunity to resent the efforts of colored citizens acting like citizens and to prevent such, mobs of whites will endeavor to exterminate the masses of black citizens that happen to live near them. Good and considerate white citizens of any community make more commendable colored citizens of that immediate vicinity. There is no inspiration for colored citizens to be good citizens if they realize that the white citizens prejudge all colored men and women as "a damn bad bunch." Not long since three policemen of Seattle said to the editor hereof, "The average colored man is not only a criminal at heart, but a damn thief." That is not true and the average white man does not believe it, but he will neither publicly refute it or rebuke the white man for distributing such dangerous public propaganda. The next day after the policeman made the above assertion he, with others, were arrested for stealing and subsequently dismissed from the force, but his propaganda has continued to grow. If the white citizens of this country would but realize that the colored citizens are endeavoring to be like them and to be seen as they are there might be fewer clashes—race riots, if you please—and less danger of government disturbances. All anti-Negro demonstrations in this country have their origin in color prejudice, though their immediate origin be in the criminal act of some colored individual. If in the South a colored man actually rapes a white woman, he is but resenting the criminal cohabitation of most white men with, perhaps, his own wife or daughter, and thus does crime beget crime. Now, brethren, let us reason together and endeavor to help each other out of the quagmires of intolerance and we will have a better citizenry irrespective of color or creed. RIOTS AND DEMOCRACY In spite of the publicity the leading editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has already had, it is being reproduced because it brings out the fact that color intolerance is wholly responsible for such cutbreaks and further points out that the great white nation of America had better clean up at home before trying to clean up abroad. The editorial says: "The race riots which have been going on for days in the capital of this nation must make interesting reading for the people of Europe, who look upon us, or at least our administration, as the bodyguard of democracy and the battlers for oppressed peoples. If they have accepted all that our spokesmen have said at its word value, they cannot be but puzzled that such things could be under the very eye of democracy's leader. If the world is to be made safe for democracy by the United States, democracy cannot very well hunt "niggers" on the streets of our capital, at least without setting the rest of the world a bad example. "The trouble in Washington is the old one. Some Negro committed an offense against a white woman, or at least is accused of an offense. But to the Lithuanian, the Savoyard or Turk it will be at once STATE LIBRARY, OLYMPIA, WASH. weekly 26. 1919. VOL. IV., No. 7 apparent that all the Negroes of Washington did not commit the offense, and the idea that, because a man is of the same epidermal tint as the offender he should be mobbed and bludgeoned, will not appeal to those Europeans the least equipped to reason. To the dullest it will be obvious that race antipathy is discerned at the bottom of not a few of the present and past super-riots in European wars, the emptiness of most of our perpetual peace platitudes will be their most impressive feature. "Making allowance for the Russian and Polish ignorance of local affairs and for the scrappy disconnected details of these race riots that will reach Russian and Pole, what will be their disposition when they receive our prtoests against the pogroms? Can they take the resolutions which we passed with so much solemnity seriously? Common sense tells us that they will think the same thoughts as we would if the situations were reversed. "Those who display so much enthusiasm for the legal forms of constitutions and covenants might well consider the facts of human nature as evidenced in these Washington riots. There is plenty of law to deal with the offending Negroes; plenty of law to protect the innocent Negroes. All the forms and all the officials are ready at hand. Still unmistakably the condition in Washington is one of anarchy, white against black. What do "men everywhere" say to this? Are there any yearnings audible? Soldiers and sailors who fought to make the world safe for democracy are conspicuous in the mobs, no doubt energetically beating up black soldiers and sailors who also fought to make the world safe for the same democracy. "Ho! Hum! What a funny world!" WHAT OF THE FUTURE Despite the fact this old world in its present form and fashion has only been in existence not to exceed ten thousand years, if that, yet scientists tell us that in some form or fashion it has been wagging along for millions of years, it having from time to time undergone physical changes, owing to convulsions from within and corrosive influences from without. During all those years of its existence, in one form or another, it has been fully peopled, who have lived and died just as they do of this day and age. Our religion teaches us, man being an infinite being, does not die, but lives always in soul, though the body, which is the home of the real man from the cradle to the grave, sickens and dies, when the soul, directed by an omnipotent hand, goes to a final home, somewhere in space. If that soul, during the life of the body, lives according to the directions of Christianity it goes to a home of everlasting happiness, and if not, it goes to a home not quite so inviting, but to whichever it goes the question is. If souls have been going to one or both of those imaginary homes as regularly as they are now doing, for all of those millions of years are not those homes pretty well jammed by this time? While thinking on this subject an idea came to our mind. May, perhaps, the souls leaving this world become inhabitants of other worlds and as they fill up one another is created and prepared for occupancy, and so on ad infinitum. After all, may perhaps the Darwin theory is not half bad and as we go from world to world in ```markdown ``` a state of evolution we each time get nearer to Him, who directs the whole. If the multiplied millions of planets and other bodies that fly through space by fixed rules are not peopled, then of what use and purpose can they be? Whether man evolved from a mouse, a mole or a magot or whether he was always a superior creature is no nearer a solution now than in the past, but we are a believer of the latter and yet when questions in support of the former are put to us they are unanswerable. "When you were a frog and I a fish" may to the majority of us sound foolish, yea, assiniine, but hundreds and thousands of persons with bright minds believe that such a state of mind and body did exist, which by evolution through the ages has brought them to the present state. Who knows but what in some world beyond this to which the inhabitants of this will be sent after death that the state of mind and body are as far superior to the state of mind and body in this world and age as are ours over the fish and the frog. If the fish and the frog are without hope, then why do they struggle just as hard to reach a ripe old age as man? Every living creature runs from death, which must mean that each has an object to live for. Man has a hope of life everlasting, but has no visible evidence of it beyond his faith that there is. Man in his travel from earth to glory bases his faith of reaching his desired destination on the same theory and principal as did Christopher Columbus, who believed by going west he would come east. The mind of man points to a future life somewhere and if there be, it is perfectly natural to him, that those who do unto others as they would have them do to them in this life, will reach a higher stage of perfection than those who do not. But this is wandering from the original thought herein; are not the abodes of those through all the ages who have departed from this world, whether good or bad, if but two places, as our Bible teaches us, awfully crowded by this time, all of which prompts the question. Is not this world but a human breeding ground for other worlds? To look into the future is beyond human power, and so mysterious is the future that almost everything that is said about it is mere speculation. We earnestly pray to the God of Love to be like Him and yet the God of Envy seems to answer our prayers and the most of us are more like the latter than the former. Nothing of importance can come from this brief plunge into the future, and, perhaps, the most of you who take the time and patience to read it will wonder how long will it be before the writer is a patient at one of the state's health resorts, and you should not be blamed for so thinking, but. What of the future? will lead you into the same state of mind, if you try to solve it. SET HIM ON TIRE The usual well guarded and well worded sermon of the Rev. D. A. Graham of the First A. M. E. church of this city, was supplanted by a blood and thunder, hell raising hullabaloo sermon emanating from the Rev. M. W. Frazier, presiding elder of this district, last Sunday evening. Oh, yes, he took a text, but he must have hidden it away as it was not heard of after he announced it. As we listened to the reverend warm up to the situation and then get a little warmer and then explode to let off the surplus heat, we wondered when and where had we heard that stuff before, and after thinking and thinking it came to us, way down in the hills of Mississippi—forty miles from nowhere, in the jungles of the pinywoods, fifty years ago, when colored men went to bed hardened sinners and got up the next morning Christian enthusiasts with orders to go and preach My gospel. While there may have for a brief spell been some doubt of Rev. Frazier being of that type, that doubt was violently expelled, when in the midst of his explosions he broke out in song to the words of "The Lord is going to set this world on fire." etc. It was an exact duplicate of the sermons delivered by the emancipated colored preacher fifty years ago, when the A. M. E. church was battling for numbers. Rev. Frazier's sermon brought to our mind a prayer made by one of those overnight preachers for the salvation of the white man, which was somewhat as follows: Bless Mistah Patison from head to foot. Shoe his feet with the fiery gospel. Fill his heart wid luve fur his fellowman. Gib him de wings uv de monin' that when you call him he can fly away to the Pearly Gates. Snatch his heart out and wash it whit' an' clean. 'Noint his head with the oil of luv' and den set him on fire.' The amens were numerous in that church, but Patison did not appreciate the remembrance. This self same preacher crowned that rather touching prayer with a sermon that rocked that little church like a small boat at sea in a storm. He reached his climax by telling of the angels and archangels flying from cherubin to cherubin and to emphasize his climax, he holding services in a squatty log house, he jumped up and caught one of the joists and swung himself from joist to joist shouting Glory! Glory! as he went. The clerk of that little church recorded the names of a great many new converts before that service closed just before sundown that hot Sunday in August. But to the point, such sermons are all out of place today and it is a burning shame to license such men to preach. WHERE DOES HE STAND Senator Jones made a masterly talk before the Young Men's Republican club, the banquet hall being packed to the yerv doors, in defining his attitude on the Marseilles treaty, but after he had finished, those who hung upon his every word and sentence were still in more or less doubt of his true attitude toward the treaty. While he made it clear that he was strongly in favor of the points of the treaty in question being amply safeguarded, yet he did not say at any time that he would not vote for the treaty unless they were. The Shantung part of the treaty was, in his opinion, most reprehensible and he denounced it in unmeasured terms, but Senator Jones did not once say, "I will not vote for the treaty unless that clause is eliminated." And as with that feature, so with all others that he objected to. There should be a treaty following the war, but the one that is now proposed is mostly wrong and unless the Wilson administration consents to its modification it should be defeated by the senate. This country should not be a party to any international pact that will in any way involve it in quarrels and disputes with European powers taking up for the other fellow. Uncle Sam should not assume unto himself the duties of police protectorate of jarring European countries. ALHAMBRAS BEATEN AGAIN According to Hoyle, Duthie's baseball aggregation has bested the Alhambras team and the latter is not entitled to ask for another game with the Duthies. Last Sunday's game was a hard fought one and seemed more like professionals than amateurs, the score being 2 to 1 in favor of Duthie. If, however, the Alhambras could get another game it is more than probable they would win as they have grown better every day since they first took to the diamond. It is safe to say that there is not another local team in the Northwest that can do to the Alhambras what the Duthies have done, beat them two straight games. Just a little more practice boys and hold fast to all you get and at the close of the professional season you will be able to run Brewster's cellar bunch into the bay. LONG DRY SPELL If the senate ratifies the action of the House of Representatives and the same meets the approval of the president, and he is too much of a politician not to do so, the United States will be under the most drastic "dry law" that has ever been placed on the statute books of this or any other country. The country seems to be in a "dry" state of mind just now and the argument of the "wets" to the effect "we are being robbed of our personal liberty" will not cause any great change of heart among the "drys." Strong drink has been the downfall of too many men and women in this country to move the majority to permit further indulgence in the vile stuff and so a long dry season is promised. That there will be evasions of the law goes without saying, just as there are evasions of all laws, but that the law will lessen the drink habit is evident from the fight that the wets are making against its final adoption. It is a stubborn fact that the minority has rights that the majority should respect as long as those rights are not of the nature that fosters self-destruction. Neither crime nor crime producers should be tolerated in law abiding communities, even though a strong minority favored one or both. Strong drink as has been used in this country is a crime producer and personifying it strong drink is therefore a criminal and the majority has the same inherent right to throttle the strong drink criminal that it has to throttle the murderer or the rapist. PICKENS PLEASED PEOPLE It would be stretching a point to say the lecture of Prof. William Pickens was either an oratorical feast or a literary outburst, but no mistake would be made to pronounce it an old-fashioned love feast between man and man that moved one from laughter to tears as he told a story and made a point. His lecture was a conglomeration of wit and humor that would have made a comedian and a trajedian combined look to his laurels. At times he verged dangerously close to the field occupied exclusively by the late Ernest Hogan, then he would instantly shoot off into the realm so admirably filled by the late Dr. Booker T. Washington. Prof. Pickens is to be congratulated for hanging heavily on the good things that the colored man has accomplished and achieved rather than the misfortunes that have from time to time befallen him. He, however, touched those misfortunes lightly and then only to cinch a point. He held his audience as no other colored speaker has ever done before in Seattle, but he seemed to have permitted his comedy to encroach a little too much on his seriousness. He doubtless has adopted this mannerism to bring out his points so that he will neither irritate or tire his audience. White audiences do not take kindly to colored lecturers telling them of their shortcomings and colored audiences tire of the lecturer that does not tell the story and the whole story of their wrongs in this country and he has adopted a happy medium. Prof. Pickens could have floated off into an oratorical strain that would have taken his hearers into the realms of the stars of the seventh magnitude, but this more simple method of leading his audience into his way of thinking had a more salutary effect. He SANDERS & COMPANY LOANS NEGOTIATED 1003-1004 L. C. Smith Building Office Hours From 8:30 A. M. to 5:30 P. M. Seattle, Wash. Elliott 4662 Phone East 179 Calls Made Promptly Day or Night PENN UNDERTAKING CO. FUNERAL DIRECTORS and EMBALMERS H. Alfred Lewis, Funeral Director 1215 East Marion St., Seattle Embalmer and Funeral Director 1216-18 Jackson Street Office, Beacon 103; Res., Main 5610 --- is not the scholar that is DuBois, nor the logician that is Kelly Miller, and not the dramatist that is James Weldon Johnson, nor is he the organizer that was Booker T. Washington, but he is a lecturer with whose talk you never grow tired. OUR MILITARY TRAGEDIES When a court-martial of the United States army tried, convicted and ordered hung a number of colored soldiers at Fort San Houston before the president of the United States had time to stay the proceedings, the colored citizens all over this country and probably a majority of the white citizens denounced the proceedings as drastic, yea, even brutal, and especially under the circumstances, but militarism was the autocrat of the land and the unfortunates being black men the matter was hushed up. However, embolden by that piece of barbaric brutality, the autocrat went from bad to worse until he made the shades of Nero hang his head in shame. Now comes Senator Chamberlain, a Democrat of Oregon, who has started an investigation of the acts of this military autocrat, who, it is said, committed some of the most dastardly crimes that has ever before been recorded in military circles. Speaking to the proposed investigation the senator said: "The fact that already the clemency board has reduced the sentences in the aggregate from 28.000 years to 6.700 years, is proof positive that the sentences were out of all proportion to the crimes committed. These six thousand years ought to be wiped out or placed at an irreducible minimum. "I want the people to understand the terror inflicted upon our young men by these sentences and also the cruelties practiced against them. "The Spanish inquisition was not a mark to some of the cruelties practised against these soldiers in France." Let's hope that some way will be found to bring every criminal wretch among those military autocrats to justice and they each be given life imprisonment. EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS Apparently Shantung is to be the reef on which the world's ship of state is to go to pieces, and to which we say, Amen. A still was found by an officer of the law, but no one was there to claim it and we surmise that, like Topsy, that still "jest grown up." It's a long lane that has no turn and the Negroes have begun to fight back and if his oppressors do not back up then it will be a war of extermination. It looks very much like that the telephone strike that ended a few days ago will begin in a few days more. If the packing house thieves do not watch their step they stand a fair chance of getting the stripes of Uncle Sam minus the stars. There has never been any doubt in our mind that Mooney did not have a fair and impartial trial, but even at that we think him as guilty as is a mangy dog of the disease from which it is suffering. With Senator Poindexter out for the Republican nomination for president, and Mayor Hanson likewise endorsed, the state of Washington will soon be the cynosure of all eeys. "It was just like that crazy Clarence Blethen to put things in Senator Jones' mouth that he did not say. History will repeat itself, and again the rule will be, "Saw it in the Times? Damn lie." The child of a dope fiend mother was born a dope fiend and from birth suffered all the agonies of the damned until a narcotic was administered and if that is not proof of the sins of the parents are visited upon the children then it's almost. Neither the Jews of Seattle nor that long list of vice-presidents at that recent mass meeting held to put the fear of God in the heart of the Roumanian government, for its mistreatment of the Jews living therein, have had a single word of condemnation of the Bolshevists of the South for burning colored men and women at the stake, nor for precipitating bloody anti-colored riots, though the gruesome spectacles are almost of a weekly occurrence. The Jew, who wanted the United States government to punish Roumania for murdering Jews, was not moved from a humanitarian standpoint, but from a selfish one. He has no interest in any other human being except a Jew and will let you know it on short order, and for those vice-presidents, they were there as a matter of policy, and by no means because they were really interested in what befell the Rumanian Jews. The move on the part of the ladies to pull their dresses down and also button them up this summer means less of them appearing in person on our streets. Owing to the seeming impossibility of convicting a woman who shoots a man, the prosecuting attorney of King county is saving the county trial money by filing a temporary insanity charge instead of a murder charge. Uneasy lies the head that wore the crown and all because Holland has decided to surrender to the Allies one Bill Kaiser. A lawyer has tried to make Henry Ford say that he (Ford) is an "ignorant idealist" and the lawyer has been so persistent in this that he (the lawyer) has made a jackass of himself, but some lawyers frequently do this. An address delivered by a colored man of national repute which had for its object the forming of a better understanding between white and colored citizens of this country, drew a two-column write up in the Tacoma daily paper, but drew an absolute blank in Seattle. This is but another sample of the different ways the dominant class of citizens of the two cities have in giving the weaker class an absolute square deal. For the past week the Eastern Star has enjoyed the novelty of being the Western Star which has hovered about Seattle. The hot weather to the contrary notwithstanding, Wesley L. Jones has set his senatorial boom, which he has every hope will hatch some time in the near future. In our opinion, Judge Allen is guilty of no crime, the indictment of the grand jury to the contrary, and he was only indicted to save others. THERE IS NEITHER EAST NOR WEST Lord Bacon said, "The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs." It is important for the American people to know as much as possible about what their wards, the Filipinos, are like. To help them attain this end, Jorge Bocobo, dean of the College of Law in the University of the Philippines, has made a collection of proverbs, handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation, of the Filipino people. Most of them suggest that human nature is pretty much the same on both sides of the globe. Here are some of them: Bravery—A hero is braver for his wounds. It is too late to withdraw when you are already wounded. Caution-A fish is caught by the mouth. Repentance never comes first. Courage is of two sorts; one goes forward the other retires. Haste creates delay. Haste creates delay. There is a snake in every jungle. Character—Whichever side a tree leans, there it falls. 'Tis easy to be born, 'tis hard to be a man. He who is raised in ease is usually desti- tute. Choice—He who is hard to suit will choose the worst. Compensation—You laugh today, I laugh tomorrow. way to misfortune. Merit—The quality of gold is known by rub- Thrift—Easy earning means quick spending. Truth—A liar loves to take an oath. Whoever believes everything said has no mind of his own. Disdain—You may dislike, but never despise. Fault-finding—The fault-finder has the biggest faults. Fools—A wise man's joke is believed by a fool. Working early is better than working hard. Forgetfulness—He who is happy is forgetful. Friendship—Let us fight, then be friends. Good Deeds—Good deeds are more precious than gold and silver. Kindness is a great capital. Gratitude—Kindness is with kindness to be paid, not with gold and silver. Home, Love of—The pain of a finger is the suffering of the whole body. Honor—Even the poor love honor. Break your head, but not your word. Hope—It may be more mud, but above it. Hope—It may be mere mud, but above it is a piece of heaven. I should not grieve over my misfortune, for what muddy water did not become clear? Hospitality—Though my house is small, my heart is large. industry—A sleeping shrimp is carried away by the current. A laxy dog does not get even bones. Work put off ends in nothing. He who is always preparing to do something, never does anything. The Grand Opening of the ATLAS POOL HALL Is Announced, with BOB DISHMORE, Proprietor, M. C. HARRIS, Manager Every Accommodation 1212 Main Street Seattle You Are Welcome To Spend Your Leisure Moments at the GREAT NORTHERN POOL AND BILLIARD HALL Cigars, Tobacco and Soft Drinks. Courteous Treatment BOYD & WILLIAMS, Props. 1032 Jackson St.