Several weeks ago a large Negro weekly carried pictures of two Howard medical students in physical combat. Two or three "snaps" of the fight that started over the use of a certain instrument in Freedmen's clinic were featured and large type explained in detail the means used by each of the young Negro doctors.

Last week the same weekly featured "shots" of a Philadelphia free-for-all fist fight, staged by women angered over some neighborhood fray.

It is most interesting to note that for the past two years this paper has been very active in the Anti-Epithet War waged by citizens, newspapers, churches and schools against certain firms that were guilty of slandering the Negro Race.

When Will Rogers uttered that remark, on his Good Gulf programs, that was "heard around the world" last fall, this newspaper was instrumental in collecting thousands and thousands of signed protests that were forwarded to the Good Gulf Company, and that drew from the famous cowboy comedian a public apology via press and radio.

When the Pepsodent Tooth Paste Co. began to get careless about how its advertising copy was prepared and what was said concerning the American Negroes, this same paper was loudest or as loud as any other paper or institution in demanding respect for Negr o buyers or a country-wide boycot by Negro buyers and the objectionable copy never appeared in print again.

In view of these outstanding accomplishments it is difficult to understand just why the Negro newspaper would continue to feature pictures week after week that portray, to the reading public, fighting young doctors in Negro hospitals, Negro women with wh ite husbands and free-for-all fist fights carried on by Negro housewives.

This photographic display will no doubt increase circulation temporarily but the well-known history of another Negro weekly that tried that same policy should serve as a warning to all other Negro sheets. The standards of the Negro reading public are on an upward trend, and therefore not in a mood to support newspapers more interested in circulation than journalism. Furthermore, those responsible for the newspaper in question should know that destructive publicity as well as a vulgar epithet is detrime ntal to the race.