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The Pioneer Press
Editorials
by J. R. Clifford


January 7, 1911
If you want to make your boys and girls liars and thieves keep the best of everything locked up from them.

January 7, 1911
When one studies and reads between the lines he sees nothing in airships but intentional war, hence the ravages against their staying qualities. God and good men want peace, not war.

January 7, 1911
Judge Goff's decision in Richmond, Va., declared that discrimination as to property rights cannot be put into a deed against Negroes is like the man.

When a prisoner of war, and the South wanted one of its big men released, negotiations were started to free General Goff in exchange for him, but he said, "No, let me die for my country's cause," and stayed in that filthy prison and actually ate rats to live. He is a man:every inch of him. We know and love the man and have for forty years:twenty-eight of which he has been taking this paper. Just you Baltimore Negroes wait till he gets around.

January 28, 1911
Don't Be Scared.

To be cowardly often induces the silly fellows to try to do you harm. We have had notice to organize to prevent jimcrow and disfranchising scheme said to be on foot by some shallow headed democrat at Charleston.

Not a bit of danger of either happening, because there are too many bread-minded democrats there who would stand up like adamant against it. For another reason they will not pass, for it is well known that many colored people, sick and tired of the treatment of a certain class of republicans, voted for the change, and if treated as promised they would be, they would vote again. In the face of what is above said, the bills would be passed, Wm. E. Glasscock, one of the best governors in the United States would veto them, and the Negroes would unifically go back to their "first love."

May 13, 1911
The ballot is the black man's best weapon of defense in a republican form of government. Whever it is denied, those called freemen are the worst of slaves. It is claimed by the whites of the south that it is no good for that section for the Negroes to have this power in their hands, but Emerson said: "It cannot be good for the bee that is not good for the swarm." But as a rule, a contest between heredity and environment, the devil usually wins.

June 3, 1911
It does not pay for Negroes to boast of party affiliation any longer. Parties care nothing for you, only to use you. Your duty is to use them, and you should be no truer to them than you are to you. Take my word for it, that the greatest and noblest party that you can serve, is your own unflinching manhood.

June 3, 1911
The south has broke out anew in butchering Negroes. Their smoking blood will rise in future punishment, for if the voice of the oppressed is not heard at God's tribunal, then religion is fake, and our boasted civilization worse than heathenism. But justice is reserved for all who love God, and the ignorance of men works no delay in his righteous decrees. It did not in the emancipation of the slaves, and it will not in the getting of their full-fledged rights and liberty.

June 3, 1911
It is sheer folly to try to denounce men like DuBois. The race would be better off if it had more men like him. He it is, who utters soul-stirring thoughts that awaken shades of the necessary determination that alone make manly men. Oh for ten thousand like him. Our duty lies before us. Talk about rights? Who on earth ever had them his perfect satisfaction? Duties fearlessly done, make them, therefore, do your duty and do it well: "Do your duty:that is best. Leave unto the Lord the rest."

June 3, 1911
For twenty-eight years THE PIONEER PRESS has been a leader in this State and Nation for the grand and noble fight that is being waged for the amelioration of the condition of the Negro. THE PIONEEER PRESS was never known to lag or trifle in any matter where the interest of the race was involved. For this characteristic, THE PRESS should have the unswerving support and encouragement of Negroes everywhere. It contains reliable news, interesting editorials and clever special articles. It is safely recommended to you as the perfect newspaper for the home and family.

IT LEADS in the quantity of original matter which it furnishes it patrons.

IT LEADS in its spicy editorials and fearless sayings.

IT LEADS in its general, local and miscellany pages.

TAKEN all in all, we don't feel that we are exaggerating when we state that the PIONEER PRESS is one of the best all around weekly papers in this country today.

WE ARE not alone in making this statement, for some of the best and most prominent men of the United States have done likewise. These persons above referred to were not confined to one particular race, either, but to both.

THE PIONEER PRESS
Has the LARGEST city circulation -
The LARGEST foreign circulation -
The LARGEST domestic and general circulation:
The LARGEST county and rural circulation of any Negro news paper in the United States:
Has the LARGEST Anglo Saxon circulation:

WHY IS THE ABOVE SO?

BECAUSE it is the pioneer of this section in blazing the way for truth, honesty, piety and frugality and all other requisites that are necessary for the making of manly men and womanly women of all races.

BECAUSE it merits support and gets it is proof positive that people know a good thing when they see it.

BECAUSE of its unique and original qualities the PIONEER PRESS has a noticeable exclusiveness enjoyed by no other paper in the class wherein it circulates.

June 10, 1911
The eyes of the world are on war is proof positive because they are all actively and earnestly engaged in preparing for it. Mr. Roosevelt cautions this nation that the best and only way to have peace is to outstrip all nations in preparation for war. What can that lead up to but war? Well, let it come, for the world is already overcrowed with fools who will be foremost to rush to war, and be killed. Such are the causes of God's decree that "wars and rumors of wars" must we believe, and we believe it is essential as is law to punish and destroy the hooks and crooks of every section on earth where civilization reigns and fed on a fussy religion

June 24, 1911
If this nation would work and plan as hard to elevate its people as it does to fight other nations what a power it would be. The Panama Canal is being finished for that; as are our ships and submarine boats. The last two named are sure to be useful on that line, while the canal can only last for good for commercial purposes. Just the other day seven submarine vessel run 128 miles deep down under the water, a distance of 150 miles in 11 hours. With such underwater war power to strike and destroy from below and airships to drop bombs from the clouds, what sense is there to building so many battle ships to be destroyed in a jiffy by the means mentioned?

Better turn the time and money into elevating the human family on the basis that stock is to get at a proper starting point to good.

July 22, 1911
How long will the white man want to play master, and the Negro the slave? There should be Negro clerks at the polls on every election; mail carriers; policemen, a deputy sheriff, and last, but not least, a school commissioner. Just how much interest the school board has in the colored children is seen in the old-war time one story funky school house, with an old board fence fronting Martin Street, fit to keep bulls inside. Every ward in town has fine buildings and a grammar school when the get through the ward school, but give Negro children diplomas when the get through the one story Negro school.

June 22, 1911
One of the best things to teach boys and girls while young, is to get up early in the morning, and after washing and combing their hair, have something for them to do, and by all means teach them to do it well. To some, it may not be life of a bed of roses in their early days, but time will come, when, above other things, they will thank their parents most for having so taught them. There may be more, but we have one tot in our mind of this city, whose future we hope this community will watch:he is Mr. M. A. Snodgrass's boy, and we sincerely wish all other boys would try to equal him.

July 29, 1911
Unless the Republican party goes back to its old stand in defense of the American Negro, it will have no show to hold in the balance of elective power in 1912.

July 29, 1911
The Negro is coming, a fact which some willingly, and others reluctantly admit, and that is why we hear of so much intimidation, and such a number of scurrilous articles put in metropolitan dailies about him and his race whenever he does some little indiscreet things that would be noticed in no one save him.

July 29, 1911
Sometime ago Mayor Caskey was very much wrought up about, and seemed determined to make the citizens of this town keep their hog pens, outhouses, cess pools and other places of the same kind clean, which was quite commendable in him, but he should still look a little more sharply than he already has, and he will yet find considerable for his official eyes to see and cause to be corrected.

August 5, 1911
With Jim Vardaman and Hoke Smith in the United States Senate, that body will be occupied by two men who are a menace to the welfare of the whole country. This is so because they are constantly attempting to spread coercion, intimidation, murder and hatred where ever the happen to go, or be. Let them do their worst though, because all such creatures as they, are doomed to eternal oblivion unless they change their ways.

May 25, 1912
The editor of the Pioneer Press is what the word by prejudice's philosophy calls a black man, of which he is proud as any white man is for skulking in the shade when duty called him under the burning rays of the sun to be a man and he refused.

Likewise the editor is an honest Republican and has always been, but when he knows his color was changed by force of duty to this world, and that his color was fixed before he was a Republican, his duty is to fight and die for his color's rights, which he will do to the end of his life.

May 25, 1912
One of our strong writers, says: "The Negro has I fear little to hope for." That's true, but he has a great deal to fight for. Will he do it?

May 25, 1912
West Virginians seemed to greedy for political national convention glory even to think long enough of the contention of the State Librarian for a colored delegate, to even give an alternate. We wanted two or three. The rest may do as they please:buzzard is vomiting to us.

May 25, 1912
After March 4th 1913, it will be Mr. Wm. H. Taft, and he will have more time to play golf.

August 11, 1916
We see no reason why there should be a Negro Department connected with the Panama-Pacific Exposition. That is the trouble, now, there is too much segregation already, and why we should continue to advocate more in the face of present conditions, is a mystery to us. If the Negroes have anything that is worth while exhibiting at San Francisco, they should send it there like other American citizens, and stop this strictly Negro business, because it does no good from any possible standpoint.

September 16, 1916
Mr. Taft can't sugarcoat any more political pills for thinking Negroes to swallow in 1912, as he did in 1908, when he told them not to vote for Bryan, because, if elected he would appoint possibly four supreme court judges from the South, who would be inimical to our rights, and when elected did the very thing he pretended to fear would happen.

September 16, 1916
Away with that namby-pamby class, who, like those of olden times sought supplies of children's blood and had it inserted into their carcasses which had been poisoned by rotten conduct in hope to regain their lost strength. As they died because of the free sowing of their allowable "wild oats," so let this sentimental, namby-pamby class:chock-blocks to our going up the hill of life.

September 16, 1916
In regard to lynchings, burnings and wholesale murdering bring about threatenings mixed with prayers as the last resort, the limit is being reached. In its face, however, let these day philosophers philosophize, we shall deal with facts that the past has always resulted in, not theories, for be assured that as electricity has emancipated the mind from the body and given it wings, so will unific and manly contention against the wrongs that are piled on us, give us full-fledged men's rights.


African Americans

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