Word: vann
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Minnesota to help Governor Elmer Benson (Farmer-Labor) stem the onslaught of Liberal Republican Harold Stassen (see p. 10), another to Pennsylvania to help George Earle toward the Senate, another to California to help Sheridan Downey; interviewed a series of political callers including dark-skinned Publisher Robert Lee Vann of the Pittsburgh Courier, supposed mentor of Pennsylvania's Negro vote...
Publisher Vann gave as his reason for thus switching allegiance the fact that his good friend and patron, Senator Guffey, had been demoted to No. 2 Democrat in Pennsylvania when David L. Lawrence was put in ahead of him as State Chairman. Beating the Jones-Earle ticket would restore Senator Guffey as Pennsylvania's No. 1 Democrat and patronage dispenser. At this announcement, Senator Guffey declared himself shocked and grieved. He said Publisher Vann's reasoning was "deceitful and dishonest." He professed his utter loyalty to the Jones-Earle ticket. He protested that it was "not through Guffey...
Fact was that Democratic strength in Pennsylvania's black precincts was not so badly jeopardized as it appeared. Publisher Vann is a smart Negro-born in the tobacco-market town of Ahoskie, N. C. in 1882, graduated by Pittsburgh University in 1906, from its law school in 1909, he grubbed at the law until he got stock in the Pittsburgh Courier for drawing its charter, later got control and built its circulation up from 50,000 to a peak of 187,000 by plugging Equal Rights, Joe Louis, Haile Selassie and Franklin Roosevelt...
...early as 1930 Publisher Vann sensed the changing political wind, shifted from Republican to Democrat. His subsequent rise under the wing of Senator Guffey lasted until two years ago when, at the Philadelphia national convention, Jim Farley learned that many a Negro preacher disapproved of Publisher Vann. Named in his place to lead the campaign of 1936 among Negroes was his distinguished friend, Lawyer Julian D. Rainey of Boston...
This affront rankled, but this year Publisher Vann's chance to get even is none too good. Half of Pennsylvania's Negro vote is in Philadelphia-out of his immediate bailiwick-and in Pittsburgh much of the Negro vote is on WPA where it cannot easily be weaned from the New Deal. One acute Pennsylvania observer last week declared: "If I had a penny for every vote Vann can swing without Guffey pressure on the WPA, I could go to the movies...