AFRO at the scene; third blast Wednesday halts salvage
By Pauline A. Young and J. Robert Smith
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Joe Louis to begin tour of Italy
By Art Carter, AFRO war correspondent
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By Frank E. Bolden, NNPA war correspondent
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Convention deadlock broken by wire from FDR okaying compromise
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New York –
Declaring New York soldier ballot the simplest of all the states, Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican presidential nominee, charged today that “a group has been playing partisan politics with the right of the state’s fighting men to vote;” declaring, “it is time that this campaign of deceit backed by unlimited financial resources, was labeled and exposed,” he issued a prepared statement at his press conference.
It says:
Instead of helping soldiers to vote, they have distributed millions of misleading circulars designed to confuse both the public mind and the mind of soldiers.
Asks families’ aid
Accordingly, I urged all families and friends of members of the Armed Forces immediately to write to them telling them the truth about their right to vote in the state of New York.
The New York Soldier Vote Law is drawn to fit precisely Title II of the federal law. Every member of the Armed Forces will be handed a postcard. This is required of the Army and Navy by federal law.
All a soldier has to do is to sign his name and his home and service address on that postcard and mail it to the War Ballot Commission at Albany.
Indirect application
Even a letter or card to the soldier’s friends or parents will serve the purpose if sent in to Albany. The soldier will receive a full ballot with the name of every candidate for every office printed on it.
This is the simplest application form of any state in the Union and yet it meets the requirement of the State Constitution so every ballot will be both complete and valid.
130,000 received
Even before the government postcards have been placed in the hands of the men and women in the Armed Forces and almost four months before election, the New York State War Ballot Commission has already received more than 130,000 applications.
I have been urged, in addition, to approve the federal supplementary ballot for use in New York State. This is only a partial ballot for four offices and would be void and worthless under the Constitution of this state.
Houston, Texas –
Colored citizens all over the state voted, Saturday, in the Texas Democratic primary, the first since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that these primaries should be open to colored Texans.
No violence was reported as election officials obeyed orders of state and county officials to permit colored persons to vote if they had qualified by poll tax payments.
One precinct refuses
Dr. Lonnie Smith, a local dentist on whose case the 1944 Supreme Court decision was based, cast the first ballot in his precinct.
Only one precinct here was known to have refused to permit colored persons to vote, and affidavits are being taken preparatory to fighting this case.
Formed precinct convention
Colored voters here not only went to the polls Saturday but also organized a precinct convention, and at another were elected delegates to the Democratic county convention on July 29.
In Precinct 25, which is predominantly colored, 50-60 colored and three white persons attended the convention called by E. H. Harrison, union officials and 3rd Ward Civic Club vice president, who was elected temporary chairman.
Miss Lottie Wallis, white precinct election judge, was elected county convention delegate.
Mr. Harrison said that Miss Wallis was named because it was a precinct custom that the election judge be elected the first delegate and that the district was entitled to only one representative.
Heaviest vote in history
Miss Wallis said that in Precinct 25, which has 25-50 qualified white and about 1,000 colored voters, 400 votes were tallies as compared with 16 cast by white voters in the 1942 primary. This was its heaviest vote in history.
At the Precinct 48 convention, ten colored and ten white persons were elected delegates to the county convention.
2,627 vote in one county
M. L. O. Andrews, chairman of the Harris County Democratic Committee, said on Monday that colored persons cast 2,627 of the approximately 55,000 votes tallied in that county.
Mr. Harrison estimated that 9,000 colored persons in the county paid poll taxes this year.
By Carl D. Lawrence
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By Harry McAlpin
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That’s all, brother
The Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week adopted a postcard plank of 41 words on the race question. This is it, and for the sake of comparison, beside it are printed the Democratic plank of 1940 and the plank adopted by the Republicans:
1944 Democratic plank – Roosevelt-Truman (41 words):
We believe that racial and religious minorities have the right to live, develop and vote equally with all citizens and share the rights that are guaranteed by our Constitution. Congress should exert its full constitutional powers to protect those rights.
1940 Democratic plank – Roosevelt-Wallace (103 words):
Negroes
Our Negro citizens have participated actively in the economic and social advances launched by this administration, including fair labor standards, social security benefits, health protection, work relief projects, decent housing, aid to education, and the rehabilitation of low-income farm families.
We have aided more than half a million Negro youths in vocational training, education and employment.
We shall continue to strive for complete legislative safeguards against discrimination in government service and benefits, and in the national defense forces.
We pledge to uphold due process and the equal protection of the laws for every citizen, regardless of race, creed or color.
1944 Republican plank – Dewey-Bricker (108 words):
Racial and Religious Intolerance
We unreservedly condemn the injection into American life of appeals to racial or religious prejudice.
We pledge an immediate Congressional inquiry to ascertain the extent to which mistreatment, segregation and discrimination against Negroes who are in our armed forces are impairing morale and efficiency, and the adoption of corrective legislation.
We pledge the establishment by federal legislation of a permanent Fair Employment Practice Commission.
Anti-Poll Tax
The payment of any poll tax should not be a condition of voting in federal elections and we favor immediate submission of a Constitutional amendment for its abolition.
Anti-Lynching
We favor legislation against lynching and pledge our sincere efforts in behalf of its early enactment.
At first glance, it is evident that the 1944 Democratic plank is less than half as long as the other two.
In addition to its brevity, it is so general that it does not use the word Negro or colored. The party states its belief in equal rights and a vote for minorities as expressed in the Constitution, and adds that Congress should see that these rights are protected.
In 1940, the Democrats were far more specific in promising colored people (they used the word Negro then) legislation against discrimination in government service and in the Armed Forces. At that time, they also promised enforcement of all laws without regard to race, creed, or color.
By contrast, the 1944 Republican Convention plank, adopted in the same Chicago Stadium just a few weeks previously, not only condemned race and religious prejudice, but pledged (1) an investigation into mistreatment and segregation of colored people in the Armed Forced and legislation to remedy it; (2) a permanent Fair Employment Practice Commission; (3) a constitutional amendment to abolish poll taxes, and (4) a federal anti-lynching law.
While the Democratic Convention substituted general and almost meaningless phrases on the color question, it was quite definite and specific on other matters.
For example, it favored (1) the opening of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration and citizenship; (2) legislation guaranteeing women equal pay for equal work with men; (3) self-government for Alaska, Puerto Rico and Hawaii; (4) a vote for the citizens of the District of Columbia; (5) use of an international armed force to prevent future wars, and (6) a constitutional amendment on equal rights for women.
Why, then, was the Democratic Convention so definite and sure on those six issues mentioned above and so mealy-mouthed on the issues affecting the progress and welfare of colored people? Why did it say something in 1940 and little or nothing in 1944?
The answer is: the South. The Southern delegates who stand for segregation and white supremacy, came to the convention united upon the program of eliminating the “colored” plank altogether.
They did not succeed entirely but they did “cut and carve” the plank until it bears no relationship to the party’s stronger stand of 1940.
All told, the 1944 Democratic Convention plank is not only disappointing to colored Democrats, it is unsatisfactory to colored people.
Certain it is that the great Democratic Party which bid openly for the colored vote in 1940 has withdrawn the glad hand in just four years.
Unable to prevent the renomination of President Roosevelt, the South ganged up on Vice President Wallace Friday night in Chicago so that the 1944 ticket is Roosevelt and Truman.
In the interest of party harmony, Mr. Roosevelt, who cast Garner aside in 1940, fed Wallace to the wolves in 1944.
To the credit of the liberal Mr. Wallace, it can be said that he went down fighting.
His dramatic challenge, “The future belongs to those who go down the line unswervingly for the liberal principles of both political democracy and economic democracy regardless of race, color or religion. In a political, educational and economic sense, there must be no inferior races. The poll tax must go. Equal educational opportunities must come. The future must bring equal wages for equal work regardless of sex or race,” electrified the convention and stunned the white-supremacy Southern delegates.
The answer of the South, led by Maryland, Delaware, Alabama and South Carolina, was to switch their votes from their favorite sons to Truman. In this, they had the help of machine bosses of Chicago, New York and Jersey City who opposed Wallace for his tie-up with the CIO labor unions.
Altogether the South had a couple of field days in Chicago last week. So far as the convention itself was concerned, the New Deal was held in check. The South had one foot in the saddle.
Lt. Maceo Harris of Boston leads B-24 to safe airfield in Italy
By Max Johnson, AFRO war correspondent
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By Master Sgt. W. A. Johnson
Somewhere in France –
Since D-Day, colored soldiers here have been making vital contributions to the fight for victory as they perform their manifold jobs amid dangers from artillery and shellfire, bombs and exploding mines.
Along the shorelines, DUKWs (2½-ton amphibian trucks), manned by a driver and his assistant, shuttle supplies between the cargo vessels and the central point ashore where the cargo is transferred to waiting trucks.
The convoys of trucks, loaded with men, food, ammunition and equipment, protected by anti-aircraft artillery units, proceed along the road to the ordnance depots which receive, sort, store and issue supplies to the units.
Ammunition protected
The ammunition depot, operated by Tech. Sgt. M. C. Darkins, whose wife, Mrs. Beulah Darkins, is a Baltimore schoolteacher, is carefully concealed and protected by the barrage balloons which prevent strafing and precision bombing.
Also seen along the road are Signal Corps members repairing disrupted lines of communication and establishing new ones. A Red Cross flag indicates the location of a dispensary operated by members of the Medical Corps.
All of these men, the engineers who repair the bridges in record time, and others, when questioned, declare one thought foremost in their minds: the end of the conflict and a speedy return home.
