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The following letter was addressed to the New Orleans Daily States by Mr. W. O. Hart:

Louisiana Governors.

New Orleans, La., April 19, 1917.

Editor Daily States

Dear Sir:—Recently your paper published a very interesting account of many governors of Louisiana at one time being in the Cosmopolitan Hotel, but in giving the names of the ex-governors you omitted three, William P. Kellogg, P. B. S. Pinchback and General Joseph R. Brooke.

Kellogg while never elected was inaugurated in January, 1873, and served a full term of four years, having been upheld in office by President Grant.

Pinchback, who was elected President of the Senate when Oscar J. Dunn, elected lieutenant governor, died, in 1868, became acting governor on December 10, 1872, when Governor H. C. Warmoth was impeached and served until the inauguration of Kellogg, January 13, 1873.

There are now on the statute books ten laws passed at this extra session and which bear the approval of Pinchback; they will be found bound with the Acts of 1873, pages 37 to 50.

Pinchback's title as acting governor was upheld by the Supreme Court of Louisiana, in the case of Morgan vs. Kennard, decided in March, 1873, and reported in the 25th An. Reports, page 238, which was a contest over the office of Justice of the Supreme Court between John Kennard, appointed by Warmoth, and P. H. Morgan, appointed by Pinchback, and the judgment was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Kennard vs. Morgan, reported in 92d U. S. 480. The opinion was rendered by Chief Justice Ludeling and concurred in by Justices Taliaferro and Howell, and Justice Wyly dissented. The case was tried in the Superior District Court before Judge Jacob Hawkins who decided in favor of Morgan and this judgment was affirmed by the Supreme Court.

Judge Kennard was appointed to the Court on December 3, 1872, vice W. W. Howe resigned; Morgan was appointed on January 4, 1873, and at the end of the litigation took his seat as a member of the Court on February 1st, serving until the Manning Court went into office on January 9, 1877.

After the eventful fourteenth of September, 1874, when General Emory took charge, he appointed Colonel (now Brigadier General retired) Joseph R. Brooke, military governor of Louisiana, but he only served one day, because President Grant disapproved of the appointment and ordered General Emory to reinstate Governor Kellogg.

W. O. Hart.


In the January number of the South Atlantic Quarterly Gilbert T. Stephenson, Judge of the Municipal Court of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, writes on the subject, "Education and Crime among Negroes." Although he accepts as facts certain unreliable statistics concerning the criminality of Negroes, he nevertheless presents the subject in a liberal manner. His following conclusion is interesting.

"All the available statistics and the unanimous opinion of men in a position to know the facts would seem to be proof that education—elementary or advanced, industrial or literary—diminishes crime among Negroes. The alarming high rate of Negro criminality is as much a condemnation of the community in which it exists as of the offending Negroes themselves. Having discovered that the Negro school is, at least, one institution which successfully combats crime, the community cannot afford to withhold its active interest in and generous support of its Negro school. The more money spent in making such schools responsive to the special needs of the race, the less will have to be spent on crime, and if it comes to a question of cost, it is cheaper in the long run to maintain and equip schools—Negro schools, even—than police departments, courts, jails, penitentiaries, and reformatories; for the school, properly conducted, makes the Negro a greater asset, while the court finds him a liability, and nearly always leaves him a greater liability to the community."


Some interesting articles in various publications are: "Problems of Race Assimilation," by Arthur C. Parker, in the January number of The American Indian Magazine; The Cavalry Fight at Carrizal, by Louis S. Morey, in The Journal of the United States Cavalry Association; The Present Labor Situation, in the January number of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences; Physic Factors in the New American Race Situation, in The Journal of Race Development, by George W. Ellis; and La Independencia de Tejas y la Esclavitud, by Senor V. Salado Alvarez, in the Cuban journal La Reforma Social.

Other such articles in this field are: Germany's Ambition in Central Africa, by Emile Cammaerts, in the October number of The National Review; The Present System of Education in Uganda, in the July number of Uganda Notes; The Gold Coast: Some Consideration of its Structures, People, and Natural History, by A. E. Kitson, in the July number of the Geographic Journal.


The arrangements for the biennial meeting of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History have been almost completed. A majority of the members of the Executive Council desire that it be held on Wednesday, the twenty-ninth of August, and have so ordered it. The program has not yet been made up, but several persons of prominence have promised to attend and speak. Among these are Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, Dean Kelly Miller, Professor George E. Haynes, Dr. R. R. Wright, Jr., Mr. Monroe N. Work, and Dr. Thomas J. Jones. Two of the important topics will be Some Values of Negro History and The Negro in the World War.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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