Skip Joy-Riding, Jazz, Shimmy, and Help Repair the World, Dec. 3, 1920

Cut the jazz spirit and look life soberly in the face. There is too much jazz. Millions in Europe are starving and we jazz. Other millions are dying by the sword, the knout, the fagot and imprisonment, and we jazz. Millions in our own land are jobless and facing a hard winter without a store of fuel, clothing and food or the wherewithal to procure it. And still we jazz. In Haiti American marines ruthlessly murder those weaker people. In Ireland, the British shoot and burn the Irish for crying for home rule, while in England the Irish Sinn Fein apply the torch to British docks and factories in reprisal. In Mexico, in India, in Egypt, in Armenia, in Poland, in Austria, in Hungary, in Germany, in Russia and in nameless places thruout the world, hunger, unemployment, disease, violence and disorder reign ruthlessly. And still the jazz goes on. The farmers of the South are selling for three cents a pound cotton that cost them several times that much to produce; and the farmers of the West are burning for fuel corn that should go to help feed the starving overseas. And those who are going to be the ultimate sufferers from these terrible present day conditions and those who ought to be preparing themselves for the exacting duties of future citizenship are joy-riding, jazzing and shimmying along as if nothing at all mattered; as if they wouldn’t give a hurrah in Hattaras if it did. (From the editorial page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, December 3, 1920, W.O. Saunders, Editor. Photo from Wikipedia)