From the pages of The Banner

25 years ago

The Rev. Dr. Emmett C. Burns Jr., director of the Mid-Atlantic region and a candidate for national director of the NAACP, said he was the man for the job when he spoke to members of the Dorchester County branch, representatives of the other lower shore branches, and members of the Committee for Healing Racism.

After a welcome from George Ames, president of the Dorchester County NAACP, Dr. Burns talked about his more than 38 years with the organization. He noted the recently publicized strife among members of the national board, and said he expected his campaign to be a tough one.

“Grass does not grow where elephants fight,” he said. “I will be leading the charge, not worrying about internal politics.”

He then spoke with feeling of his good friend, the late Medgar Evers, who was his mentor in the 1960s, and for whom his youngest son, University of Maryland Terrapins basketball player Evers Burns, is named.

“It has been my lifelong ambition to go as far as I could with the NAACP, since the day Medgar Evers died,” he said.

50 years ago

A gift of $1,000 from Bishop John Wesley Lord, resident bishop of the Washington area of the Methodist Church, kicked off a project to provide recreation for the youth of community. The check was turned over to J. Warren Baldwin, president of the Frontiers Club of Cambridge, which is sponsoring the proposed youth center.

Plans for a youth center were discussed by community and state leaders at a conference held at the home of Dr. Edwin Fassett on Mace’s Lane. Dr. Fassett said following the meeting that the recreation center would be for the use of all the youth of the community.

Better recreation facilities for the community’s young people – in particular, those of the Second Ward – has been one of the points which Negro activists have stressed in recent session with Mayor Osvrey C. Pritchett and the City Council.

100 years ago

A representative from the Compulsory Labor Bureau has been spending time recently in Cambridge, and made about 30 arrests for alleged violations of the law. The Compulsory Labor Bureau has made it plain that the state, which is backed by the federal government, intends to enforce this law.

The law requires that all able-bodied male citizens between the ages of 18 and 50 years engage in some regular occupation. The agent made it plainly understood that working two or three days a week would not be accepted as evidence of complying with the law, but that able-bodied men must work six days.