The National Managers’ Protective Association is an organization to encourage the progress and promote the welfare of all connected with the Negro stage. Three of its chief duties are; first, to see that Negro players be encouraged in every way to entersperse their acts with clean, worth while offerings in songs and new material; secondly, to agree to such arrangements that the booking exchange, will give acts contracts that will be played as given, eliminating lay-offs, with shortest possible jumps, and salary in keeping, and thirdly, to arbitrate all complaints of managers, actors or agents, and see that a just settlement is given the parties, each case to be decided upon its merits. The officers of this organ are as follows: President C. H. Turpin, of the Booker T. Washington Theatre, St. Louis, Mo., Vice-President, E. B. Dudley, of the Dudley Theatre, Detroit, Mich., and Secretary-Treasurer, T. S. Finley of the Lyceum Theatre, Cincinnati, Ohio.
The Theatre Owners’ Booking Association by its own name implies what its chief duties are, and it is only necessary to say that the rapidly increasing numbers of theatre managers who are joining this association in order to be assured of regular and best plays being booked for their houses, vividly shows the necessity and value of such an organ. Its President is Milton Starr, Nashville, Tenn., Vice-President, C. H. Turpin, St. Louis, Mo., Secretary, W. S. Scales, Winston-Salem, N. C., and Treasurer-Manager, S. E. Reevin, Chattanooga, Tenn.
A most recent organization along these lines is known as The Actors’ Legion with headquarters at Cincinnati, Ohio. Its membership is to be composed of actors and actresses.., and one of its chief duties is to see that matters of importance to performers will be speedily and properly adjusted. The writer was not able to get a list of the names belonging to the officers of this body.
Tony Langston, born in Detroit, Michigan, (fortunately several years after Noah’s Flood and a few years before Volstead’s Drought) and today living in Chicago never very far from nor out of sight of “Dear Old State Street”, is without question the most popular Colored theatrical writer not only in America but throughout the world. He writes the widest variety of subjects of any present-day penman in that line and is read by more than one million people each and every week. Nine years ago he entered the establishment of the Chicago Defender by way of its back door and on a salary less than the devil (printer’s) himself receives. To-day, he (Tony, not the devil) walks in and out the front doors of this firm as the highest paid writer in the history of Colored journalism.