To Ethiopia

The appointment of Addison E. Southard, Kentucky white man, as first U. S. Minister to Abyssinia (Ethiopia), was reported last month contemporaneously with a meeting in Washington of the Republican National Committee, upon which sits many a Negro. Last week the Pittsburgh Courier (outstanding U. S. Negro weekly) inveighed against "the eminent politicians of the Negro race" and commented sharply on Mr. Southard's appointment:

"Why, the Negro man on the street asks, wasn't some Big Negro chosen instead of Mr. Southard? Wasn't a Negro sent to Liberia as Minister?" Well, why not a Negro as Minister to Ethiopia?"

Besides the fact that Addison E. Southard was well fitted for the post, having lived before at Adis Abeba (Ethiopian capital) as a U. S. consul, travelers thought they knew other reasons why a white man and not a black man had been sent to Ethiopia.

Despite their name, the Ethiopians do not consider themselves racially homogeneous with aboriginal Africa. Color varies In Ethiopia, from a pale olive among the northern inhabitants, through deep brown in the central part of the Kingdom to chocolate tints and true black in the farthest south. Ras Taffari, prince regent, is a black southerner but of the special superior blackness of the province of Shoa. Slim, short, wiry, Prince Ras Taffari considers himself super-Negroid.

Moreover, Prince Ras Taffari is of a turn of mind no less inquiring than Rasselas./- He would, guessed travelers, desire as envoy from any other state, a representative of that state's dominant race. Ras Taffari would want to learn about China from a Chinaman, not a white man; about India from a Hindu, not an Anglo-Saxon; about the U. S. from a Caucasian, not a Negro.

* William T. Francis, appointed July, 1927 (TIME, July 25).

/-Philosophical hero of Dr. Samuel Johnson's famed novel. Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. Curious about the world outside his realm, Rasselas stole away and explored with his sister and a poet. He saw much, envied little, went home.