Jazz-Bo

Several days before the Republican Convention in Cleveland, the Republican National Committee assembled there to decide contests between delegations. As usual, the chief contests concerned the delegations from the South where Negroes have a prominent part in the organization. And the Negro question was very significant-- for Negroes have been migrating northward, and to offend them might lose the Republican Party large blocs of votes in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York. In the first contest a delegation of two was accredited from the District of Columbia, one of the two a Negro. In a contest over the delegates from Mississippi, Perry W. Howard, a Negro, secured the seating of his delegation in preference to that of M. J. Mulvihill, Republican National Committeeman from that State. The most spectacular contest was over the delegation from Georgia. "Colonel" Henry Lincoln Johnson, who is National Committeeman from Georgia, brought a contest to unseat the so-called J. L. Phillips faction. It did not seem that he would succeed. Being a lawyer--a brilliant and able lawyer, according to Negroes who know him--he presented his own case. He paced up and down before the Committee for an hour, carrying on a running fire of debate with the Committee, with his opponents. Referring to J. L. Phillips, former leader of the opposing faction, he declaimed: "The contestants here are playing the tragedy of Caesar with Caesar left out. Where is the National Committeeman you elected at Atlanta? Can you answer in decency? "I will tell you where he is. He is on trial in the District of Columbia, charged with stealing $2,000,000 of money from the Government in this War profiteering." "What has that to do with the issue in this case?" inquired a Committeeman. "It has .this to do with it: they selected a man that no white man or black man in Georgia will stand for." The turning point came when Mr. Johnson presented a letter written by the late President Harding to C. Bascom Slemp saying it had been a blunder to recognize the Phillips faction instead of the Johnson faction. Mr. Johnson added that President Harding had told him last Summer: "That has been the blunder of my life. I'm going to set it right as soon as I get back from Alaska."

The Committee voted 22 to 14 to seat the Johnson delegation. But The Washington Post paragraphed ironically :

"Stop your laughing and talking

And get to walking

For thai big chocolate cake. . . .

"A letter from the grave helps Jazz-Bo spring some Georgia camp meeting stuff on the Republican National Committee, and Henry Lincoln Johnson, who eased himself in as National Committeeman in 1920, walks off again with the prize cake. 'Can he strut . . . that's what he never does nothing else but!'"