Tenth Mile

One of the main concerns of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America is a Commission on Race Relations. Last week this body published its tenth annual report, "The Tenth Mile Toward Interracial Peace." Concerned with all racial minorities but chiefly with Negroes, the Commission has this to report:

For nine years it has promoted Race Relations Sunday (Feb. 14 this year) in the churches. This year it completed a five-year trial period in administering the Harmon Awards for Distinguished Achievement among Negroes. Working with a small budget ($20,000 this year) it is in contact with some 80 Race Relations groups throughout the land, hopes to see one in every community where race problems exist.* During the past year the Commission has found, to its vexation, much discrimination in unemployment relief. Says the report: "The crucial situation between whites and Negroes was dramatically impressed upon America last year by the flare-up of lynching."/-

Departing point for the Commission's crusade against lynching was a Federal Council resolution in October'1930 urging that the churches study individual lynchings. This the Commission hopes to do by sending an investigator to the scene of each & every lynching.

Race relations are capable of being highly embarrassing to Southern affiliates of the Federal Council. Nonetheless the ommission seeks that every church shall at least indicate disapproval of discrimination among Negroes.

The Congregational-Christian Church and the Y.M.C.A. have passed resolutions to the Commission's taste. Last month he Methodist Episcopal convention in Atlantic City (TIME, May 16; June 6) "focused the matter more sharply. Nearly all the bishops stayed at the Hotel Dennis on the Boardwalk. Some six blocks away at Wright's Hotel (Negro) were Negro Bishops Robert Elijah Jones (New Orleans) and Matthew Wesley Clair (Covington, Ky.). There also, and in homes of Atlantic City friends, stayed the rest of the convention's 75 Negro members. Bishops Clair and Jones attended dinners and meetings of the bishops, held in private rooms at the Dennis. There was newspaper talk of embarrassments, complaints, discrimination. The convention was asked to resolve that never again should it meet in a place where the color-line is drawn. Despite protests that this would embarrass the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and perhaps delay reunion between Northern and Southern branches, the resolution was passed by a close vote.

If the Race Relations Commission has a gold star for the Methodists, it may well put a black mark by the names of two others. Last week, in the closing session of the Presbyterian assembly in Denver (see below), it was decided that the next meeting should take place in Fort Worth, Tex. Arose Negro Missionary Irvin W. Underbill Jr. to object against "any place where a Negro cannot be treated as a man and as a brother." He urged the other Negro delegates thus to go on record. Moderator Charles W. Kerr expostulated. The motion to meet in Fort Worth was put and carried with no further discussion.

Barnstorming the East last winter, in well-publicized concord, were the presidents of the Northern and Southern Baptist branches (TIME, Jan. 25). In Rochester. N. Y. a banquet was planned for them. By unhappy chance the banquet chairman was Dr. James E. Rose. Negro moderator of the Rochester Baptist Association. Learning of this. Southern Baptist President William Joseph McGlothlin excused himself regretfully. He was there not only personally, he explained, but as the representative of several million Southern Baptists.

*At its 23d annual meeting in Washington last month the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People announced a new campaign to combat Jim Crowism. Planned by Lawyer Nathan R. Margold of New York, a program was adopted to bring simultaneously "more than 100 cases in as many communities to test the right of States or of individuals to infringe on the social as well as the civic rights of Negroes."

/-Lynching in 1931: twelve Negroes, one white. Lynching so far this year: two Negroes, two whites.

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