Press: Fishhook

All that Associated Press is to white readers, Associated Negro Press is to Negro readers of 112 papers which print ANP news, about half the U. S. Negro press. Last week one of ANP’s three African correspondents sent a dispatch which every white news agency missed:

“ACCRA, Gold Coast, W. Africa—Recently, the village of Wekumagber, about 20 miles from Great Ningo, was stirred. . . .

“A party of fishermen put out to sea; later, the men in one of the canoes sighted a shark and immediately anchored. . . . Presently a shark swallowed one of the bait, but in pulling the shark managed to cut the line. Subsequently, more than 20 lines were cut in this manner, which proved a source of great mystery to the expert fishermen.

“At last, however, the shark was caught, but as it was being hauled in, the fishermen were shocked speechless with surprise —for at the end of the hook was not a shark, but a Lagosian woman whose long, wet hair was matted about her face. She was a fish hooks seller in the village . . . and part of her body was sharklike, the other part human. . . .

“She was given a sound whipping and confessed that it was her practice to cut people’s lines and sell to them again the hooks which they bought from her.”