"White Man's Country"

Tennessee's chicken-necked Boss Ed Crump once found it convenient to play ball with Memphis' Republican Negro boss. That was when there was a Republican in the White House and the Negro boss had Federal patronage to dispose of. Since Roosevelt, there has not even been a Negro boss.

With the candidacy of Wendell Willkie, Negro political hopes revived. Big, coffee-colored Dr. J. B. Martin, a Memphis druggist for 30 years, president of a Negro baseball league and owner of the Memphis Red Sox, took over the leadership, organized Republican Negroes for a campaign. The Crump machine took one quick look and went into high.

Eleven days before the election, two uniformed policemen from Commissioner "Holy Joe" Boyle's police department arrayed themselves before Martin's store on Florida Street, two more went to the poolroom and restaurant of Negro Republican Elmer Atkinson on Beale Avenue. Anyone who tried to enter either place was frisked. Holy Joe declared that they were looking for dope. Negroes who protested were arrested, fined. Hundreds were searched and at least one hundred were run in for carrying knives with blades longer than the six-inch maximum allowed by law. Twenty colored kindergartners were lined up, pawed over by the Crump cops. Frisked in front of Atkinson's was Father Bertrand Kock, white pastor of Mrs. Atkinson's church. Police patted his Franciscan robe, made him take off his shoes.

To Negro politicians meanwhile went anonymous threatening letters. Crump cops spread through Beale Avenue, raided poolrooms, restaurants, hustled vanloads of Negroes off to the clink.

Atkinson gave up, closed the business he had run for 14 years. Said he: "For the past two weeks police haven't let anybody come in the place." Crump cops still blockaded Martin's drugstore. It was plain to everyone in Memphis last week that Boss Crump did not want any more Negro Republican bosses around. Growled Crump's Holy Joe: "Governor [Prentice] Cooper was right when he said, 'This is a white man's country.' "

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.