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Writings of John Robert Clifford Published in 1915 Editions of The Pioneer Press |
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| JUNE 6, 1915 | The harder I work the better my nerves
are, and although in my 68th year, I am as active as ever, and can shoot
with as much accuracy as ever, and I certainly would fight for my
country. I own as much of the Capitol at Washington; of the United
States and of the State of West Virginia as any other living man. This
fair land is no more to be blamed for prejudice and the hardships
thereupon attendant, than whiskey is for making drunkards, and in
fighting I would feel that for the second time I would be shooting
hatred to eternal oblivion, in the hope that a just God would make our
half freedom a whole manly one, and in His own time give the Negroes
their right to the billions of acres they cleared up as He has turned
the wickedness of slavery in a blessing for us all. ~J. R. Clifford |
| JUNE 12, 1915 | The present Republican city administration
should bear in mind that Negroes can sweep streets just as effectively
as they can cast votes. Then again, a large number of them pay taxes,
and in conclusion, it is not asking too much, when Republicans are
petitioned to do as well as did Democrats, the latter always giving the
brother in black a share of the work in office. Frederick Douglas, America’s greatest orator once said, “The Republican Party is the ship, all else is the sea.” Had he lived to see the bastardly making and Negro hating South in the saddle, determined to destroy the amendments, segregate, Jim Crow, and completely disenfranchise us with only a handful of Republicans in Congress, and were defeated by Northern, Western, and Eastern Democrats, with here and there a true born Southern gentleman, he would have modified that expression. Use parties only to kill prejudice – that’s fidelity to Lincoln’s principles – and they are God’s. ~J. R. Clifford |
| JULY 18, 1915 | That Martinsburg has plenty of fine and
fair minded white people has thoroughly been proven to our soul’s
satisfaction. Indeed we are pleased with this place of our choice to
locate forty years ago. During all of those years gone by, our aim has
been to so live as to fill a decent citizen’s place and if any one can
prove to the contrary and to make it known, we shall try to profit by
same. Our contention has always been that in every community the best
colored and white people should unite, as they do in Keyser, Harper’s
Ferry, and many other West Virginia towns, to the moral, religious, and
intellectual advancement of the youth. For certain it is, that the
better both classes be they better for any place. What can’t it be done
here? Surely there is work a plenty of the kinds mentioned. Our school
should by all means by made the best. If our charges against “Randolph”
Ramer are true, he is not fit to teach this school. In the face of these
ignored charges supported by a flat refusal to investigate, seems to be
a bad stand for the board of education to take, and calls for a unified
effort even if it requires drastic means and find out whether we are
“lying” or he is guilty. Will the fair and fine white preachers and
laity combine to bring it about?
~J. R. Clifford |
| JULY 24, 1915 | Prejudice and impolite Christians are the
devil’s walking and talking contradictions. Russia, a few years before
the Negro got his enslaved freedom, freed her slaves and gave every one
a farm. This government own more than a million acres of land and should
have been as kind to us, for we have been its unpaid toilers for 300
years and always true to the flag and never faltered on a battlefield.
~J. R. Clifford |
| JULY 31, 1915 | When a jitney bus line was started here
recently, colored would-be passengers were refused admission. The
Pioneer Press suggested two remedies. First was to bring suit; second
put jitney busses on the road. This has been done and now we have four
on the road and best of all, colored folk are keeping them busy. No
better way in this wide world to hurt caste than by smashing flat the
pocket books of Negro haters. It has made other owners of taxicabs
solicit and convey colored persons over the city to any place they want
to go. As in this case all others will work as well if competition equal
to there is pitted against their plans and plots of meanness to injure
us. Let such whites be treated as they treat us, and how would they
feel. To exasperate decent colored people by such cussedness is not only
trying, but kindles in their souls lasting fires of hatred, that man to
man never was by nature created to bear.
~J. R. Clifford |
| AUGUST 14, 1915 | This paper is at a loss to understand the
action of the first Republican Council of Martinsburg for the past ten
years. Mr. David Russler applied for and got license to open a pool room
but when it became known that colored persons were going to be allowed
to play there, the council compelled him to refuse to allow them to play
pool or have his license revoked. This same party hunts and hauls
colored voters to the polls on election days and could not win without
their votes. Do they suppose Negro voters are going to stand for such
slaps and not kick? They are like the rest of the human family. They
like resorts of that kind precisely as do the whites and there is plenty
of law to punish them and the owner if violations had been carried on.
We say boldly that he Democrats would not have done that, and after time
to reflect the Republicans should be ashamed of their action in this
matter. ~J. R. Clifford |
| AUGUST 21, 1915 | If a person could and would kill the Son
of God, who died that mankind might live forever, and in the face of the
act, make great pretensions and bold declarations of his love for his
Father, what would and should a sane man think of him? On the same
hypothesis, how can the white men of the South who have raped, and
disgraced millions of colored women boast of loving their own women to
that extent, they must and will kill in and out of court on allegations
of wrongs to them? It’s the hottest lie out of the infernal regions, and
the poor Northerners have listened to its cunning seduction until they
have believed these infamous lies, gone back on the Negroes whom they
boasted they freed, and whose wives, mothers and sisters, “went down
South,” taught them, lived with them, and associated with them for years
and not one was ever insulted, as was true of the South’s women who were
protected and cared for by their slaves. One who lies can have no love
for truth. The Southern white man has made the Southern white woman his
pinnacle on which to preach the gospel of purity in order to make the
world condone their lynching – when in reality deep rooted prejudice is
the cause and Frank’s foul murder will work out good results. Mr. Slaton
spoke in California as he would not have done in his home state, for he
is afraid of the mob that took Frank’s life. Southern officials should
be the last to palliate lynching by spectacularly appealing to their
dying love for the purity of their womanhood. These virtue blatherskites
have that state blood you can’t tell who is who and which is which. A
state that legislates 10 year old girls into factories; makes the age of
girls 10 years for lustful consent and permits girls of 12 to be
“industrial slaves,” ought to have its lips silenced with paralysis.
However count on this one fact, that the great Ruler of the Universe is
just, and will work things out right in due time. ~J. R. Clifford |
| AUGUST 28, 1915 | We all agree that Booker T. Washington is
popular in this country. So has Giles Jackson been, but he is at the end
of his race, Booker isn’t far from his. The editor of this paper would
rather be right and popular with God than have millions of dollars and
be popular with the Negro haters to whom Booker is always playing his
discordant fiddle. The music has helped to make hundreds of our people
suffer and many others dance or dangle from trees, and now, he is
meddling in Haitian affairs. The best thing for the colored people of
this country is for America to withdraw her troops and let Booker go
over there and settle matters.
~J. R. Clifford |
| SEPTEMBER 18, 1915 | You are right. Kill it dead as Hector. The
absurdity of a railroad company compelling American citizens to ride in
stinking parts of cars, where roughs may drink, curse and smoke, and the
finest ladies be subjected thereto, and that in the state of West
Virginia. It is and has been done by the Norfolk and Western for years,
and by allowing it, it has gone a step further and built a “nigger
waiting room” in Shepherdstown and Charleston Town. Not only petition
the Public Service Commission, but refuse to go into the provided
pigpens and the slave-huts at either station above named, and if you are
forced in the huts or stinking apartments of cars, come to us, and we’ll
fight your cases free of charge. As it doesn’t pay to keep a cow that gives a pail of milk and kicks it over, it doesn’t pay to accept and endorse a speaker whose speech takes on the same fault. Dr. J.W.E. Bowen can be called an educated person, but his “Play Ball” talk delivered here the evening of September 7, was on Booker T. Washington’s toadyism to get the South’s endorsement. We would have Mr. Bowen to understand that manhood is greater than education, and that our peoples’ worst foes are among the educated in letters who lack manhood. The lack of it, with such lettered characters, always gets the upper hand of them when speaking to their own color, if whites are present, to say things to please them. If they only knew what fair minded white people think of them, they would stop it. ~J. R. Clifford |
| SEPTEMBER 25, 1915 | The man who says that colored women are
devoid of virtue and have no regard for purity of character, is an
individual absolutely without any compunction of conscience whater. Of
all the women in the world, no class of them anywhere are more to be
commended for their love of chastity than are those of our race. This is
true, too, in the face of the all too patent fact that every means known
to the wily and unscrupulous libertine who filches the virtue of all the
women who succumb to his iniquitous cajolery is used to destroy the
priceless heritage of true womanhood. ~J. R. Clifford |
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