The Omaha Guide

NEW YORK BOUND MARCHING CHOIR OF 60 BROWN BEAUTIES THREATENS HARLEM SUPREMACY

By George S. Schuyler

New York, Aug 23—When the Memphis delegation to the Negro Elks' convention hit Harlem on August 21, to stay a week, it boasted that history definitely will be made, for Harlem swing supremacy, hitherto unquestioned, will vanish before the warbling of the blues.

Long noted for 'doing up brown' whatever it undertakes, Beale St. is not only sending the biggest delegation, as befits the largest Negro Elks lodge in the South, but with it will be the famed Booker T. Washington High school Drum and Bugle Corps led by Prof. Blair T. Hunt. Considered the finest all-girl aggregation of its kind and composed of the prettiest brown misses along the Mississippi, it symbolizes the spirit of Beale street and its glamorous and melodramatic past. These 60 dusky debutantes will "send" New York by singing and playing along the line of march the Blues that have made Memphis more famous than its namesake on the Nile.

"Father of the Blues" to Lead

Heading the huge Memphis delegation with its blues-chanting choir and the celebrated Beale St Marching Club will be the patriarch of jitterbugs, famed W. C. Handy, composer of "Memphis Blues," "Beale Street Blues," "St. Louis Blues," etc., who started America on its way to syncopated supremacy. Robert R. "Bob" Church, millionaire Negro political leader of Memphis will ride in the limousine with Handy, as will Lieut. George W. Lee, Memphis insurance and author of "Beale Street: Where the Blues Began" and "River George."

Colorfully uniformed delegations representing Negro Elks from forty-three states will be in the line of march, but Beale Street swears that neither the lilies of the field the jungle birds with their gorgeous plumage nor Solomon in all his glory will compare with its chanting girls and colorful uniforms. Even Mr. Whalen's boys at The World of Tomorrow will be eclipsed, it is said.

Memphis Raises $1,800 for Trip

So proud is Memphis of its gorgeous all-girl drum and bugle corps that white and colored citizens have joined in raising $1,800 to pay the brown misses' way to Gotham. E. H. Crump, Congressman and Memphis political boss for whose early campaign Handy wrote the famous "Memphis Blues" has donated $500. Other white people of the city have contributed liberally while the Negroes have gone deep in their pockets to finance the trip.

Crump claims the average Northerner has no conception of the real Memphis Negro population and he believes these comely maidens in their trim uniforms singing the Blues on Broadway will make New York sit up and take notice, and be a good advertisement for the West Tennessee metropolis.

The 60-girl aggregation was scheduled to have arrived late in the afternoon of Aug. 21, and were to be housed at the beautiful Emma Ransom residence of the 137th street YWCA.