The Omaha Guide

'YOU WILL WIN', GOV. HASTIE

Washington, D.C., April 12—Governor William H. Hastie of the Virgin Islands today told 120 delegates to an interracial conference at Howard University, sponsored by the Youth Division of the NAACP, that "what you are doing is going to win within your lifetime... and you will be able to pass on to your children a much better America than it is today."

Governor Hastie spoke at the final session held by the enthusiastic young delegates from NAACP youth councils and college chapters, representing twenty states, north and south and midwest, who met here on April 10 to learn lobbying techniques and to press for action on progressive legislation. He said that since they were talking of today and tomorrow he would give them a few footnotes about yesterday. "The work that is being done in connection with legislation, the political methods and techniques as I see it, is something that was going on in this country seventy-five years ago," the Governor declared. "It was easy in those days to forget what was going on in the south, but today we want to fight the battles and see that they are won."

The Governor went on to outline the fight for equality in the 1870's. He concluded, "You know that the efforts of 1870 were strangled by force and violence, but I do not think that this time we will be strangled and there is no way of stopping any young people today throughout the country. I think that what you are doing is going to win within your lifetime and I think that you will be able to pass on to your children a much better America than it is today."

The NAACP Howard University Chapter and Washington, D.C., Youth Council acted as hosts to the conference. Mrs. Ruby Hurley, youth secretary of the NAACP, led the delegates to Capitol Hill where conferences were held with senators and congressmen on the importance of supporting the NAACP legislative program. The NAACP program strongly supports FEPC, housing, rent control, additional appropriations for school lunches and federal aid to education, and just as strongly condemns poll tax, lynching, jim crow travel and filibustering.

Greeting the delegates, Dr. Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, congratulated them on their interest. He declared that the NAACP is a great organization "which since the civil war has taught the people and their friends to fight indignity and injustice. It is the one organization which has taught the people how to aim clear for the things which we want and how to go after them."

Dr. Johnson praised Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP, and Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, one of the founders and present director of special research, and the late James Weldon Johnson, for their foresight and leadership in the development of the Association.

Calling upon the young people to act wisely, Dr. Johnson said, "We have learned how to support the NAACP because we are now in a decade in which we must put forth every conceivable effort to see whether democracy can be made to work." He concluded by pointing out that "from every point of view in regard to the Negro race the NAACP is a focal organization with supreme significance."

Speakers at the first session were Leslie Perry, administrative assistant and Clarence Mitchell Jr., labor secretary, both of the NAACP Washington Bureau and Dr. Booker T. McGraw, deputy special assistant to the Administrator of the National Housing Agency. Mr. Perry presented the NAACP legislative program and discussed the status of bills in which the Association is interested. Mr. Mitchell discussed the new FEPC bill known as the National Act Against Discrimination in Employment, which was introduced in the Senate on March 27th by Senators Irving M. Ives (R., N.Y.), Leverett Saltonstall (R., Mass.), H. Alexander Smith (R., N.J.), Wayne Morse (R., Ore.), Dennis Chavez (D., N.M.), James E. Murray (D., Mont.), and Francis J. Myers (D., Pa.).

At the evening session, George Weaver, director of the CIO Committee to Abolish Discrimination and Mrs. Katherine Shryver talked about techniques of lobbying. In an impromptu skit a typical delegation—from the audience visited a "senator" and applied what they had just learned.

On Friday morning groups kept appointments with Carroll Reece, Chairman of the Republican National Committee and high placed senators and representatives. In the afternoon each state delegation tried to see its own senators and representatives.

Youthful delegates were shown another aspect of the nation's capital when one of the delegations went to visit Gael Sullivan, executive director and vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, in the Mayflower Hotel. Staff employees at the Hotel attempted to force the delegates to ride the freight elevator. Upon the refusal of the delegates to ride anything but the regular passenger elevators, the hotel's manager was called. The manager supported the elevator operators and it was necessary for the young Negro delegates to ride up to Mr. Sullivan's suite in the freight elevator. Mr. Sullivan expressed regrets when informed of the incident but warned the youthful delegates not to "demand" anything lest they lose some known "friends". The delegates then were carried back to the lobby in the freight elevator.