Leon Reporter, Leon, Iowa
Thursday, August l5, l90l

'The Emancipation Day Celebration was a Success'

The emancipation day celebration of the colored folks held in this city Tuesday was the biggest kind of a success and without doubt attracted the largest crowd that was ever in Leon. The Gallatin colored band and the Gallatin colored ball club came in Monday afternoon accompanied by a large delegation from northern Missouri. The Cleveland K.P. colored band arrived on the early train Tuesday morning, and the boys were not stingy with their music as one or the other band was playing nearly all the time. The parade at l0:30 was a good one. It was headed by the Gallatin band followed by a carriage in which rode Hon. Nelson Crews, of Kansas City and Robert Caldwell one of the managers. A body guard of six young ladies on white horses followed them, after which came many floats and advertising wagons gotten up by the business men of the town, the Cleveland band, ball clubs and last but not least, Ben Williams and his pack of hounds. The parade over, the vast throng crowded to the park where a band concert was rendered and patronized the merry-go-round, striking machines, etc., with which the streets were filled.

After dinner there was more music by the bands, the program being opened by an address of Welcome by Mayor Woodard which was responded to by a minister from Perry whose name we did not learn. V.R. McGinnis delivered a splendid short address, and there was a splendid recitation by Miss Ethel Caldwell, as equally good a paper on "The Progress of the Negro" read by Miss Bertha Pugh. Hon. Nelson Crews, the colored orator from Kansas City, made the principal address. He is an educated and fluent orator and his speech was enjoyed by as many of the large crowd as could get within the sound of his voice. It might have been better if he had not touched on politics, but being an ardent Republican he had to laud McKinley and Roosevelt as the agents of prosperity and the Republican Party.

Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
"With permission from the Leon Journal Reporter"
January 28, 2003