The petitions will be presented to the city commissioners at an early date, Johnson D. McCall, attorney and former mayor of the city, has been engaged as counsel for the opponents of the public dance halls.
If the city commissioners fail to act favorably on the question presented, candidates for municipal office may be asked to announce their position before election day in April. In that event, the matter of public dance halls would be an issue in the city campaign, which is now just getting under way.
While the new fight on the dance halls had its origin in the Mecklenburg Ministerial Association, with every minister in the city, with two exceptions, signing the petitions, laymen also have taken on a part of the responsibility. A committee of laymen has given approval of the fight, and full plans were in hand when the matter was made public at the Sunday services of the local churches.
Cards were passed around through Sunday audiences, with the opportunity given for signature. These cards were in the form of a petition to the city commissioners to change the law so as to make the operation of public dance halls illegal.
Renewal of the fight to bust public dance halls recalls the stormy period of more than a year ago when delegatins fought out the question before the city commissioner. At that time the opponents of the public halls lost by a vote of two to one, with Frank R. McNinch, then mayor, and George A. Page, commissioner of public safety, voting to allow the halls to continue, while Arthur H. Wearn, commissioner of public works, voted to close the halls.
Since the fight of that time, Mayor McNinch has resigned from office, and his place is now filled by John M. Wilson. It is assumed by the leaders n the fight against the halls that Commissioner Page has not experienced a change of heart on the dance hall question and that Commissioner Wearn will be ready again to cast a vote to close the halls. It is not known that Mayor Wilson has expressed an opinion in the matter, and the anti-dance hall agitators expect to center their effort on the head of the commission.
Mayor McNinch and Commissioner Page declared they would not vote ot close the public dance halls while at the same time being compelled to allow private dance halls in the city to go unmolested. They took the position that many who dance are unable to gain admission into the private dance halls because of membership regulations and other restrictions, and they felt it unfair to cut off some while allowing others to participate in the dance.
The vote of Commissioner Page, who is a Methodist minister, caused a fight to be waged on him at a subsequent meeting of the Methodist Conference, of which Mr. Page is a member. He won the fight in the conference, however, and his name was retained on the list of ministers in good standing.
When the first fight was made there was no circulation of petitions, and the burden of the war was carried by the ministers, with a small delegation of laymen joining in as volunteer workers. Indications Monday were that the fight this time is to be waged in an organized way.
There are at present two public dance halls in the city, one operated for white people and one for negroes.
From the front page of The Charlotte News, Feb. 28, 1921
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