NEGROES’ LOYALTY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4528, 26 January 1942, Page 3

NEGROES’ LOYALTY

STRESSED IN UNITED STATES In a plea to democratic America to enable its negroes to assume their rightful responsibility in the national defence effort, Mrs Mary McLeod Bethune, President of the National Council of Negro Women, was out recently with the declaration that, notwithstanding discrimination, the negroes in America were loyal to the fight against Fascism, says a correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor. Head of an organisation which numbers 800,000 women, and President of the Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, Mrs Bethune told a Regents’ meeting of Metropolitan Chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution in New York that her race fully realised that, for America in the world crisis, “ it must be ‘ all-out ’ or it is all over.” The meeting was arranged by the Ellen Harden Walworth Chapter at the Hotel Waldorf-Astoria under the heading, “ Sign Up for Defence Day.” Other speakers were Mrs Theodora Chan Wang, President of the Chinese Women’s Association; Senorita Olga Andre, Radio Chairman of the United Women of the Americas; and Princess Neioma White Cloud, of the Sioux Indian tribe (says a correspondent of the Christian Scence Monitor). Mrs Bethune said that negro women had “ set their minds toward the goal of defeat of Hitlerism,” but were “ not blind to the fact that the doors of domestic opportunity are not opened very wide to us.” “ It is true,” she continued, “ that negroes have not been welcomed into all phases of our armed forces. It is true that they are permitted to serve only as mess attendants in the Navy, and that our soldiers have been subjected to discrimination, indignities, and even murder. America has the dual task of defeating Hitler abrqad and Hitlerism at home.”