Cayton's weekly. [volume], December 15, 1917, Image 1

About Cayton's weekly. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1916-1921

Image provided by: Washington State Library; Olympia, WA

                
>^7 yf7
PRICE FIVE CENTS
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.
It is open to the towns and communities of the
state of Washington to air their public grienvances.
Social and church notices are solicited for pub
lication and will be handled according to the rules
of journalism.
Subscription $2 per year in advance. Special
rates made to clubs and societies.
HORACE ROSCOE CAYTON. .Editor and Publisher
TELEPHONE: BEACON 1910
TRAVESTY ON CONSISTENCY
There is no doubt but that the verdict and
the punishment meeted out to the riotous
members of the Twenty-fourth Infantry by
the court martial that heard the case were
in keeping with the law and the evidence
in the case, as there could be no denial on
the part of the soldiers of the charge. They
did get their arms and they did shoot up
Houston, Texas, and in doing so killed and
wounded a number of white persons, and
they did do so to retaliate on the white
citizens of that town, for at divers times
offering insults to them and often actually
abusing them; and the law says, persons
guilty of such offenses shall be hung by the
neck until dead. The conditions that moved
those men, thirteen of whom were hung last
Wednesday and forty-one sent to prison for
life, to commit that crime against the laws
of the land should have at least entered into
the consideration of the case, and though
guilty they should have been given prison
terms rather than the death punishment,
and this conclusion is reached, not by rea
soning from the view point of a colored
man, but from the view point of fair play.
Those colored soldiers did no more and not
a hundredth part as much as would have
white soldiers done under similar circum
stances. For example, suppose the citizens of
Tacoma should abuse and arrest the soldiers
at Camp Lewis and in short treat them as
did the white citizens of Houston the col
ored soldiers stationed near that city, Gen.
Irons to the contrary notwithstanding, the
Camp Lewis soldiers would burn Tacoma up
and the rest of the country would shout,
Amen! while they were doing so. Two
wrongs, we admit, never make one right,
but circumstances should always alter cases,
and those men having been sorely provoked
to desperation, in which they found them
selves on that fatal occasion, their state of
mind should have played a part in the
punishment awarded. Wherever the colored
soldiers are stationed they are always sub
jected to all the insults and humiliations
that the white citizens care to impose upon
them and they are commanded by their
superior officers to take it witHout resent
ment, but human nature can stand a thing
just so long, when it will rise up and de
fend itself, just as did those soldiers at
Houston. Those men did not mutiny, but
they did resent the accumulated insults that
had from time to time been imposed upon
them, and what fair minded man could
blame them. The uniform of the United
States of North America, if worn by a white
man. is respected by all citizens of this
country, but if worn by a black it is a
signal for any kind of insult the white
citizens are inclined to heap upon it. But
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, SATURDAY, DEC. 15, 1917
a few days ago and a colored lieutenant in
Vicksburg was kicked and cuffed by the
white citizens of that community and even
by the soldiers because he dared to show
up in that town, where his parents resided
and he grew to manhood, wearing the garb
of an army officer, and yet the authorities,
so far as the general public is aware, have
made no inquiry about it and the probabili
ties are, they will not. Suppose, if you will,
one of the Senegambion soldiers now fight
ing for France and England would be in
sulted by the white citizens of either of
those countries, the king of England and
the president of France would punish the
guilty rascals if they had to send an army
to do it, but in the United States the black
man has no rights that the white man is
bound to respect,, and if one white man
does condescend to respect his rights, such
an white man is ridiculed for so doing by
the balance of the white folks, though the
black man wears the garb of a soldier. The
final outcome of the Houston court martial
is no more than could have been expected
owing to the domineering influence the
Southern Democrats exercise over the pres
ent administration. In conclusion, permit
us for your edification to quote from an
ancient poet, which is as follows:
''Yet come it will, the day decreed by fate,
How my heart trembles while my tongue
relates,
When them, Imperial Troy, will bend
And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end."
The above we wish to aplpy to the South
only, and we wish to be understood as not
classing the average white man of the
North with the white man of the South, for
the white man of the North almost without
exception, is for fair play for the black man
and in the North the black man gets, for
the most part, just as square a deal as the
white man. We long to see the time come
when that section of this country known
as the South, will be wiped off of the map.
Though the black folk of this country
are the recipients of multiplied thousands
of insults by the white citizens, yet they
are even more loyal than the white citizens
themselves and about the same time the law
was hanging the colored soldiers for hav
ing resented some of their many insults, a
colored woman in New York was giving
vent to the following patriotic utterances:
"We American citizens pride ourselves
on patriotism. The love of our country has
been instilled into our very lives from birth.
We, as colored citizens, have the highest
love of patriotism, and we are sending our
sons and contributing our means as freely
as any American born citizen that ever
lived.
"I believe that every colored citizen's
prayer went up in union on last Wednesday
for the boys in the trenches, not as colored,
but as one inseparable out of which God
created us all equal.
"Let us continue to pray to Almighty
God to clear up this chaos. No man can
say when or where the war will end, but
one thing we know, that God will bring
everything out in His own time and that
every ploud has a silver lining. Possibly
this war will end the dread monster strong
drink, which has claimed as many victims
as war."
In the past Tacoma may have been a
most excellent nerve-quieting resort, but
its a nerve-wracking community at present.
If Chief Beckingham was guilty of mal
fesance in office then in our opinion Mayor
(Jill was a particepa criminia and if Becking
ham was slaughtered for a Roman holiday.
Gill should he similarly punished. It's a
new mayor and not a new chief that Seattle
needs most.
BECKY IS THE GOAT
History will repeat itself, as may be seen
in Seattle's recent cry for a moral renova
tion, which thus far has only resulted in
making a goat of the chief of the police.
About eighteen years ago Seattle under
went a moral renovation even more violent
than the present one and the rotten mayor
ality administration at that time, all of
which deserved life terms in the peniten
tiary for the part each and every one of
them played in the criminal modus proced
ure, but the whole affair was compromised
by making a goat of the chief of the po
lice—Billie Meredith—who became so in
censed at the treatment handed out to him
by the mayor and his henchmen, that he
went out on a man hunt for any of those
who were instrumental in his downfall,
which resulted in him losing his own life.
Now, Chief Beokingham has been made the
goat of the Gill administration just as was
Meredith of the Humes administration,
but lets hope history will not further re
peat itself, and Beckingham lose his life
trying to retaliate on his enemies. The
moral condition of this city has simply been
rotten and doubly rotten ever since Gill
took office the second time. It was in a
similar condition when the citizens recalled
him and nothing will purge it of its rot
tenness until Gill is disposed of.
Channcey Wright, without doubt the most
successful restaurant operator Seattle or
the Northwest has ever seen, is dead, and his
family and friends mourn almost without
comfort his untimely demise. "In the midst
of life we are in death," wrote an ancient
philosopher and that truly was the case of
Chauncey Wright, who suddenly died while
in the very hey day of life. After casting
about, Chauncey Wright found his calling
and he proceeded to push it to perfection!
In Seattle he was the restaurant king and
the string of magnificent eating houses that
he owned at the time of his death and the
financial success each of them was proving
to be, all demonstrated the assertion that he
was the king of the business. Eminently
successful men are the ones that we should
hold up for emulation and it matters not in
what line of business they made a success.
He who wrote, "the good' die young" made
no mistake, when applied to Chauncey
Wright, especially when viewed from a busi
ness standpoint, which is the only one the
general public generally view it from.
We have our suspicions that the road
builders of King county are feeling a bit
shakey these grand jury inquiry days.
There may not be a "nigger in the wood
pile," but a whole lot of us really think
there is.
More colored persons have been found
guilty and sent to prison for the East St.
Louis riots than white men and yet that
bloody riot was precipitated by organized
labor and its sympathisers for the express
purpose of driving the colored folk out of
the community. Here is another case of
"hell if you do and hell if you do not."
VOL. 2, No. 27