Pathfinder Magazine – Page 10 – Old Magazine Articles

A Racial Dust-Up in Harlem (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

One of Reverend Martin Luther King’s most poignant observations involved the sad fact one of America’s most segregated institutions was the church. This article is about the New York Episcopal Archdioceses and their efforts to remedy that in the early Thirties:

All Souls Episcopal Church is in Harlem, New York’s ‘black belt’. This once lily white congregation has been engulfed by the spreading colored population. Opposition to negro parishioners reached a point when an element of the white vestry asked the rector, Reverend Rollin W. Dodd, to resign…

‘The Tenth Man” (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

This is a light history of the African-American people; weak in some spots, informative in others, it’s greatest value lies in telling the story of Blacks in the Thirties.

Because the colored race comprises almost a 10th of the population of the United States, sociologists sometimes refer to the Negro as ‘the Tenth Man.’ As such, he is little known to the other nine. Yet there are 12,500,000 colored persons in the nation – black, brown and some so white that 10,000 pass over the color line every year to take up life as whites.

Origin of the Term ”Jim Crow” (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

The first three paragraphs of this article explain the 19th Century origins of a moniker that represents the most hideous institution born on American shores. The term in question is Jim Crow – a sobriquet that came into use decades before the American Civil War but was refashioned into a synonym that meant institutional racism. The article goes on to recall one African-American Congressman and his fruitless efforts to clean up Jim Crow.

White Primaries in Georgia (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

On January 29, 1947, the Georgia House of Representatives approved the Democratic white primary law – which was intended to exclude any African American in that state from voting in state primary elections.

June 6, 1944 (Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)

That was the way D-Day began, the second front the Allies had waited for for two years. It came like a shadow in the English midnight… The Nazi news agency, DNB, flashed the first story at 12:40 a.m. on June 6, Eastern wartime. Before dawn, British and American battleships were pounding shells into Havre, Caen and Cherbourg, high-booted skymen of the [88th] and 101st U.S.A. paratroop divisions had dropped into the limestone ridges of the Seine valley and landing barges filled with American, Canadian and British infantrymen nosed up to the beaches along the estuaries of the Orne and Seine rivers.

‘Korean Pearl Harbor” (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

The first surprise attack came at night. It was mounted by reckless fighters, who swarmed into battle on horseback and afoot after [American] bugles had morbidly sounded ‘taps’. The Reds pounced on two combat regiments of the American First Cavalry Division and the South Korean First Division. Hundreds of civilians, caught by the flaming machine gun and mortar fire, were mowed down. In U.N. casualties, it was the one of the costliest engagements of the war.

No, Joe Biden, U.S. Relations With Germany Were Bad Before W.W. II (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

During the Presidential debate of October 22 (2020) Vice President Biden remarked that the American diplomatic corps made nice with Hitler up until the German invasion of Poland – the attached article from 1939 refutes this statement:

Eight months prior to the day when W.W. II would commence, diplomatic relations between Berlin and Washington got ugly; the carefully controlled German press declared that matters between the two camps were at their lowest point since 1917. Hitler’s diplomats demanded apologies and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee clarified the American position by stating that the American people have a general dislike for Fascism. The Department of the Navy announced that it was expanding its presence in the Atlantic.

Reform The Banks! (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

Eight months before the Congress passed the Glass–Steagall Act (aka the Banking Act of 1933) this unsigned editorial appeared in a Washington-based news magazine pointing out that the economic downturn in the country had created a need for such legislation.

Click here to read another 1932 article about the banks.

The Hat Superstition that was Reliable… (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)

As far as superstitions and clothing are concerned, hats seem to be the one garment that has the most unfounded and irrational precepts attached to their existence. Plentiful are the dictates pertaining to where hats should never be placed or worn – these superstitions existed centuries before the Second World War, but for one citizen of San Angelo, Texas, he had his own beliefs where hats are concerned and some believed that, as a result, he was able to save the lives of 56 American servicemen…

A Hollywood Star Before the Committee (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

Larry Parks (1914 – 1975) was an Hollywood movie actor. His career arched from bit player and supporting roles to top billing before his career was virtually ended when he admitted to having once been a member of the Communist Party USA; his candor soon led to his being blacklisted by all the Hollywood studios.