EVICTED FROM HOME.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20256, 27 July 1937, Page 9

EVICTED FROM HOME.

PREJUDICE AGAINST NEGROEB. How strongly the prejudice against Negro blood runs In the United States was shown In a Supreme Court ruling last month in which Mr and Mrs Joshua Cockburn, of Negro descent, were ordered to move out of a £4OOO residence which they had built for themselves at White Plains, New York. It was held that they had violated deed covenants prohibiting the occupanoy of this subdivision by Negro residents. The judge said that he knew of “no public policy which bars any group of individuals from contracting among themselves for * the exclusive enjoyment of their own private property”; that the covenant was of a precise character which violated no constitutional right; that, since the covenant did not define a Negro or specify any particular percentage of Negro blood, the applicability in the case was “not at all doubtful,” and that the claim of opinequity was not borne out by a plea for court protection in open violation of contract. Anthropologists supported the Cockburns’ statement that they were not Negroes within the meaning of the law, but the Judge speolfled that there could be no doubt Mrs Cockburn was “partly ‘coloured’ since she considered herself an octoroon," while the proof Indicated that her husband, Joshua, had “at least three-quarters Negro blood” and was “in every outward appearance what would be called in common speech a Negro.” The ruling cast no reflection on the character of either wife or husband, the Judge added, declaring there had been nothing to indicate they were “anything other than* an entirely respectable couple.”