There is an old Jewish joke about a religious man shipwrecked on a desert island. When his rescuers arrive a couple of years later, they discover he has built three huts during his isolation. One is his home. The other two? “This is the synagogue I go to,” he explained, “and that is the one I don’t go to.” The joke is supposed to reflect the disputatious nature of Jews — you can’t put two in the same room without expecting an argument, you can’t even put one alone without the same argument. Since a joke makes you laugh, this one is supposed to reflect the lighthearted nature of the disputes — they never cause lasting pain. Jews argue with each other but, in the end, always love each other...

It must have been galling for the Republicans to see so many blacks voting for their own in the 2008 presidential election. The returns must have struck many Republicans as unfair, even undemocratic. Nothing else can explain the way the Republicans have allowed racism to stain their campaign against President Obama for a second term. No one likes to throw around so nasty an accusation, but I don’t know what else it is...

[OPINION] Historians are hailing accused 19th-century spy Alfred Dreyfus as a hero, not a simple victim of anti-Semitism. In 1899, a broken Alfred Dreyfus accepted a presidential pardon — and its implication that he had committed treason against France. It was a matter of life or death, for Dreyfus feared that he would not survive the notorious penal colony on Devil's Island, where he had been sent after a military court convicted him of betraying his country. Those who believed that he was innocent and had called for his exoneration were deeply disappointed. "We were prepared to die for Dreyfus," said poet Charles Péguy, "but Dreyfus was not." His decision to accept a pardon is one of the cornerstones of a long-standing French perception that Dreyfus is the model of a submissive victim. But on the eve of the 100th anniversary of his exoneration in 1906 and the official end of the tumultuous affair that convulsed France for a dozen years, that view may be changing. Indeed, some historians see Dreyfus the patriot, not Dreyfus the victim...

In Washington a few weeks ago, David Howard, a white gay man serving as the city's ombudsman, bemoaned the paucity of his budget. "I will have to be niggardly with this fund," he told coworkers, "because it's not going to be a lot of money." One of his listeners was shocked by the sound of the word and spread the news quickly that Howard had used an expression rooted in the hated epithet nigger. Blacks, who make up a majority of the capital's population, expressed their alarm and dismay...

Walk down the frenzied, color-splashed side streets of Nairobi where most people do their shopping. This is Africa, but for block after block, the signs on the dukas, as the shops are called, evoke India and Pakistan: Ganijee Glass Mart, Indian Emporium, Patel & Co., Shah & Sons, Ghela Manck, Hindustan Boot Co., Bombay Sweet Mart. Most of the shops of downtown Nairobi are in the hands of Indians and Pakistanis. Wearing Benares saris and Punjabi pants and Sikh turbans, these shopkeepers and their families, with their jet black hair, enormous black eyes and pale brown skin, living in a land run by African blacks, are the most visible evidence of the gravest minority problem in East Africa today. There are 350,000 Asians, as the Indians and Pakistanis are called here, among East Africa’s 29 million people. About half of them live in Kenya, a quarter in Tanzania, a quarter in Uganda. They are the shopkeepers, clerks, artisans and foremen of East Africa, resented and often despised by the Africans who feel cut off from the economies of their own countries. The Asians fill just those jobs and places that Africans believe they now have enough experience and training to take...

The white Afrikaner administrator swept his hand out to show the poverty of the Transkei in South Africa: the round mud houses with their thatched cone roofs, the green hilly land that produced only a pittance of corn during the year, the bony cattle that the Xhosa people refused to sell. “We have to succeed,” the administrator said with a weak, nervous laugh. “Our existence depends on it.” But so far, he and the other white officials of the Transkei are failing. The Transkei is the most advanced of the Bantustans, the word coined by the white supremacist government to describe those areas of South Africa it has set aside for black Africans. Under the theory of apartheid, the Transkei and seven other Bantustans, created out of 13 percent of the land, will some distant day become independent black nations and absorb the great bulk of South Africa’s black Africans. Whites, who are now outnumbered four to one, would then outnumber blacks in the rest of South Africa. Once in the majority, the whites say, they would have the moral and democratic right to run their own country — white South Africa. To implement the theory and justify it to the rest of the world, the white South African government is trying, though in a desultory way, to develop the economy of the Bantustans. As the Afrikaner administrator pointed out, the government has no other choice. Without vibrant economies, the Bantustans could not absorb more millions of Africans. The so-called white areas of South Africa would still be left with black majorities, and a powerful and rich minority would still have to hold down the black masses by force. This would expose apartheid as an immoral and impossible solution to the dilemma of South Africa...

Complete apartheid reigns at the winery of fictional Jock Silberstein: white wine is bottled by colored girls in white uniforms while red wine is bottled by white girls in brown uniforms. Jock Silberstein is a creation of Etienne Leroux, an Afrikaner novelist who explores sex, evil and decadence, and sometimes treats Afrikaners and apartheid with mocking irony. By doing so, Leroux and André P. Brink, another Afrikaner novelist who is like him, desert the traditional way of the pastoral, patriotic and puritanical Afrikaans novel. The Afrikaner literary set in South Africa likes to describe the new novels of Leroux and Brink as "the renaissance in Afrikaans prose.” That’s overblowing it, but the novels do have significance, for politics as well as art. Afrikaner nationalists have long looked on their language, which comes from 17th-century Dutch, as more than a means of expression; to them, it is an end in itself. Using Afrikaans glorifies nationalism. Extreme nationalist Afrikaners, convinced that Leroux and Brink use it in a way that soils Afrikaner nationalism, now condemn the two writers as traitors to their culture. After the Boer War, Afrikaners, descendants of the early Dutch settlers, tried to avenge the humiliation and indignities of their defeat by intensifying their belief in the worth of their own culture...

The current clamor over South Africa and the Olympics can be stripped to one issue. Is there any hope left for peacefully drawing South Africa out of its racist isolation? Those who still have hope felt comfortable with the International Olympic Committee's decision last week to let South Africa take part in the Olympic Games in Mexico City this October. In their view, the decision strengthens the hand of those white leaders in South Africa who are trying to change the racial policies of their country, at least a little. But the decision is abhorrent to those who have given up hope. In their view, the decision strengthens the hand of a racist government that, no matter how flexible, intends to maintain forever the basic race laws and policies of South Africa. In South Africa, participation in the Olympics has become a major political issue. Prime minister John B. Vorster has been attacked in scathing terms by members of the right wing of his Nationalist party for making concessions on race to the Olympic Committee...

Natural Homelands Theory Doesn't Apply to South Africans of Mixed Ancestry - The theorists of South African apartheid, with all their rationalizing and moralizing, have failed to rationalize and moralize the place of the coloreds in apartheid society. The coloreds of South Africa are the people of mixed ancestry. One out of every 10 South Africans is classified as colored. Their skin color shades from yellow to tan. Their features sometimes seem Negroid, sometimes Asiatic, sometimes European. Their plight weighs heavily on those whites who feel the conscience of their country. "Even Verwoerd could not fit these people into his logic," says one influential leader of the ruling Nationalist Party, referring to the late Prime Minister Hendrik F. Verwoerd, who liked to indulge in long, logical expositions of apartheid. The theorists of apartheid claim that South Africa will some day be divided into a number of independent homelands, each for a different race or culture. But where is the natural homeland for the almost 2 million coloreds? Their coloredstan? There isn't any...

Encouraging Signs of Change - An outsider can fume about the cruelty and immorality of South African apartheid, but there's little he can do to change it. That cold fact about his impotence is hard for an outsider to accept, especially when his emotions are wrought by the sight of an uncaring and unfeeling government trampling on the rights and lives of little people, both black and white, for the glory of an abhorrent race theory. Yet unless one accepts the truth of his weakness, an outsider will look too far and too high and fail to see what few, minor but real ways are left for trying to change South Africa. The power of South Africa must be analyzed with cold logic, not emotion, and the possibilities for change must be analyzed the same way. Three facts about the South African situation must be faced. First, the white South Africans who oppose apartheid and speak in the same liberal idiom as many outsiders have little influence and less power. At the moment, their way offers no hope for the future. South Africans like Alan Paton and Helen Suzman are courageous, honest and exciting people who deserve their worldwide renown and respect...

Nation's Growing Trade Leads to Close Contacts With Area's Black Officials - A white cab driver recently answered a call to the exclusive Langham Hotel in Johannesburg and was amazed to see the doorman lead a black man to his cab. But the driver shrugged and figured the Langham Hotel knew what it was doing. The well-dressed black man must be one of those foreign diplomats he had read about in the papers. The doorman instructed the driver to take the guest to the airport, and the cab quickly headed that way. A policeman stopped the cab a few blocks later. "Isn't this a first class taxi?" he asked, a euphemistic way of demanding why a white taxi had a black man in the back. The driver looked him in the eye. "This gentleman is a VIP from the Langham Hotel," the driver said. The policeman snapped back to attention and saluted. "Carry on," he said. The cab took its passenger on to the airport. This incident was hardly more than a prick in the enormous bastion of white supremacy and racial apartheid in South Africa. But it's worth recording simply because it could never have happened in South Africa a year or two ago... [This is one of a number of articles on South Africa written by Stanley Meisler, Times bureau chief in Nairobi, Kenya, his headquarters covering sub-Sahara Africa.]

The extraordinary growth of the South African economy is undermining the theory of apartheid and, in the long run, perhaps threatening its practice. The economy is doing this by drawing Africans into the big industrial cities and increasing their skills and wages. But, though the theory of apartheid is foundering under the impact of economic growth, there has been no change so far in the practice of apartheid. In fact, life for an African is as cruel as ever, in some cases, crueler. But, if the theory goes, can the practice stay for long? There are conflicting guesses about this. Some liberals believe economic prosperity will bring whites and blacks together in a way that will break down racial barriers. But others, more cynical, believe the white rulers of the country would rather choke the economy than let a barrier fall. In the meantime, the white politicians have promised the white voters both prosperity and apartheid and are busily juggling the economy and the race laws in hopes of keeping both, however contradictory they may be...

Economy of First All-Black Region Is Insignificant - South Africa is trying to justify apartheid by developing the economy of the Transkei, the first self-governing African Bantustan, but so far the economy of the Transkei is a bust. Under the theory of apartheid, eight independent Bantustans or tribal homelands, created out of 13% of South Africa's land, will someday absorb the great bulk of the country's black Africans. Whites, who are now outnumbered four to one, would then outnumber blacks in the rest of South Africa. Once in the majority, the whites believe, they would have the moral and democratic right to run their own country. But development in the Transkei, the pride of the South African government, is so sluggish and insignificant that it's hard to believe it will ever attract masses of African workers from the industrial towns of the white areas. The Transkei seems destined to remain a dull and poor rural area that young men yearn to leave behind...

Small, Group of White Nationalists Begins to Take More Liberal View of Race Policy - New ideas and fresh doubts have infiltrated some of the thinking of a small group of the white Afrikaner people who dominate the government and race policies of South Africa. This has enraged hardline Afrikaner white supremacists who believe the new thinking is subversive. A number of South Africans, particularly liberal critics of the government, see little significance in the new thinking and the controversy over it. In their view, the Afrikaners are enjoying a debate over minor racial issues while maintaining the rigidity and cruelty of apartheid. But other South Africans, particularly Afrikaners who look on themselves as enlightened, see excitement and ferment and new horizons in the new thinking. They believe it could change the racial policies of South Africa significantly and make the country acceptable to the rest of the world...

Windhoek Natives Prefer Hovels in Show of Enmity Toward White Regime - The place where Africans live is a filthy, weed-choked district of tin shacks made from flattened oil drums. The whites who run Windhoek want the Africans to move into a new comfortable, spacious township with neat brick homes that have running water and lavatories. But most Africans refuse to move. Their refusal comes from resentment against white paternalism, opposition to South African apartheid, and the determination to dramatize this resentment and opposition. The conflict could create an international incident that would embroil the United Nations. The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution more than a year ago that said South-West Africa, a former German colony, would be transferred from the administration of South Africa to that of the United Nations. But the United Nations has been unable to enforce the resolution...

Supremacy Founded on Pioneers, Might of Industries, Skin Color Privileges - To understand the psychology of white supremacy in South Africa, take in the monument outside Pretoria, fly over Johannesburg on a clear day and pick up a penniless, hard-luck white man hitching a ride on a quiet road. The monument, in honor of the Vortrekkers, lies heavily on the highlands overlooking Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa. It is an immense and ugly mausoleum with a cenotaph inside, a slab of South African granite that serves as the symbolic tomb of the leaders of the Vortrekkers. The Vortrekkers - the Afrikaans word for pioneers - were the 10,000 Dutch-speaking settlers who trekked north from the Cape of Africa in the 1830s and 1840s to try to escape British rule and found a land of their own. Their "great trek," as every Afrikaner school boy calls it, opened most of what is now South Africa to white settlement. The Dutch-descended Afrikaners, who rule South Africa, look on the great trek as a stirring and decisive moment in Afrikaner nationalism...

Alan Paton is probably the best known South African in the world. His novel, "Cry the Beloved Country," is still the window through which most outsiders see South Africa. But here in his homeland, he has little influence and no power. "When you have no power," he says, "you learn to live without it." He is 64, a red-faced man with wisps of white hair and a high voice tinged with shyness. He lives alone here in the high greenness of the hills overlooking the seaport of Durban. He likes to show visitors the kloof from which the village takes its name. It is a great rift in the hills, cut apart by the ancient waters of a river. The sides of the drop are steep and stony like a fjord. "You have a similar word in America but seldom use it. Clove. It comes from the Dutch. Our word, of course, comes from the Dutch, too." He is president of the Liberal Party which believes in gradually granting all adults the right to vote regardless of race. This would mean black power in South Africa...

In many ways world's first human heart transplant has the same meaning for South Africa that sputnik did for Russia. It is a moment of self-confidence and a chance to break out of self-imposed shells. While dedicating a new battery factory last week, the minister of mines and planning suddenly called on the crowd "to stand for a moment - just a brief moment - to pay tribute to the Cape Town team of doctors whose glittering achievement has reaped world fame for South Africa." The crowd rose and cheered and clapped and thumped. The incident reflected the intense national pride generated in South Africa since the University of Cape Town medical team completed the transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. The pride is even more intense than it might ordinarily be in another country because of the peculiar place of South Africa in the world and the feelings of its Afrikaner majority...

Motivated by Economic Self-Interest, They Are Trying to Organize Black Workers. A half century ago the white labor leaders of South Africa carried banners that cried, "Workers of the World Unite and Fight for a White South Africa." Now the white leaders of South Africa's biggest labor federation say the future of the trade unions depends on breaking racial barriers and organizing black African workers. This change of heart does not come from any mellow liberal thoughts. It comes instead from economic self-interest. In South Africa, the economic facts of life have enough force to change some attitudes about race. Since the economy of South Africa is whipped and whirled by change, rigid feelings about race could conceivably relax somewhat in the years ahead. The path, however will be neither smooth nor sure. The labor leaders, for example, failed in their attempt to lift the restrictions on organizing black workers. The government said no. Though changing, the Dutch-descended Afrikaner leaders of government are still too stolid to accept new ideas that seem too bold. But in this race-locked land, the attempt by the unions may have far more significance than the failure...

But Beneath the Calm, Africans Harbor Deep Grievances Against Smith Regime - The African quarters of the towns of Rhodesia are quiet these days. But quiet can mean many things. A satisfied man is quiet. So is a cowed man. And so is the eye of a storm. An African businessman, guiding me through his shop, makes a point of this. "Just because a man keeps quiet does not mean he has nothing to say," he says, a tinge of bitterness in his voice. White Rhodesians, who defied Britain by declaring independence two years ago, like to boast about their support from Africans. According to the litany, Africans enjoy life under minority white rule in Rhodesia and scorn all left-wing agitation to change the course of human events. To test the truth of the litany, I have just spent two days visiting the African townships of Bulawayo, Rhodesia's second largest city. The townships are residential areas owned by the city and set aside by law for African workers...

Dispute Turns on Majority Rule by Black Africans - Two years ago Rhodesia declared its defiant independence from Britain. Since then, Britain and Rhodesia have locked in a war of sanctions, constitutional principles and legalisms, all so obscure and complex and tangled that outsiders and even insiders sometimes forget what the fight is all about. But the issue is simple. It is the dominance of one race over another, the resolve of Prime Minister Ian Smith and the quarter of a million whites to keep power as long as possible from the country's 4 million Africans. That is why it is pointless to ask a question like, Do sanctions hurt Rhodesia? The question has to be, Do sanctions hurt white Rhodesians enough to make them overcome their distaste and relinquish some power to the Africans? For the same reason, it is pointless to ask, Will the British government settle with Rhodesia? The question has to be, Can the British government, with all its commitments to independent Black Africa, afford to sign an agreement that fails to provide African rule in Rhodesia in the foreseeable future...?

New Draft Constitution by Smith Regime Expected to Perpetuate White Domination. The rebellion of 250,000 white Rhodesians against Britain is so dramatic it is easy to forget that 4 million Africans also live in Rhodesia. It is especially easy to forget in Salisbury, a modern city of 315,000 that looks like a city in the western United States, with new office buildings, crowded shops and wide streets. The Africans, who make up more than half the city's population, work at little-noticed jobs during the day and disappear into their townships on the rim of the city at night. The Negro presence in Salisbury is never obtrusive. Yet Rhodesia and Salisbury are part of Africa - a fact that may be decisive as far as Rhodesia's future is concerned...

New Kenya Immigration Bill Will Define Aliens' Rights, and Is Aimed at Indians - There are 358,000 Indians and Pakistanis in East Africa who face an uncertain and possibly tragic future. African jealousy of Indian success in business and the Asians' own past attitude of superiority toward the Africans has shaken the lives of the Pakistani and Indian traders since independence came to Africa. Two personal incidents underline their predicament. Five years ago, before independence, I cashed a check in a Nairobi bank and waited while an African apprentice clerk labored over the transaction. His Asian supervisor stood behind, impatient, scowling, sneering, shrugging - his every gesture telling me, "These Africans will never learn." Then I recently accompanied a young African into a duka, as rural Asian shops are called. The African sipped his soda and suddenly bust into a tirade. "Where is your money hidden?" he shouted at the Asian shopkeeper...

No Evidence of Any Effect on Congress - The historic civil rights march on Washington - massive and orderly and moving - has dramatized the wants of Negroes in America, but leaders still faced the task today of trying to turn drama into action. Speaker after speaker told the 200,000 Negro and white sympathizers massed in front of the Lincoln Memorial Wednesday that their demonstration was no more than a beginning. 'Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content,' said the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., 'will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.' Demonstrators and their leaders made it clear that one sign of progress, in their view, would be congressional approval of President Kennedy's civil rights bill...

The civil rights marchers may not see it all, but this is a city nerved by power, lined with marble, vibrant with areas of beauty and blighted by contrasting areas of squalor. It is a city of great monuments and slums, of complex law and petty crime, of history and lethargy. To the 100,000 or more civil rights marchers expected here Wednesday, Washington will be a symbol of national power, a capital where men and women petition for redress of grievance. They will gather at the base of the soaring Washington Monument, the center of a vast complex of greenery and marble, a monument that looks east to the Capitol, north to the White House, west to the Lincoln Memorial and south to the Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin rimmed with cherry trees. Then they will march a few blocks down huge avenues and across parklands to the Lincoln Memorial, a temple in the style of the Parthenon in Greece. These are the symbols of government and beauty and history that draw almost 5 million tourists to Washington each year. But Washington has other faces, too...

A month ago, three college educated Negroes received promotions in the Dallas, (Tex.), Post Office. What pushed them ahead — ability or the color of their skins? The promotion of the three set off a tempest in Dallas and in Washington. Some critics cried discrimination against whites. This Dallas controversy may be a harbinger of things to come, for tempests like it may brew again and again in the Negro struggle for better jobs and better conditions. Representative Alger, Republican of Texas, who represents Dallas, says the promotions there show that, “in a direct appeal to racial prejudice and in an effort to submit to threats of violence, the administration has ordered that Civil Service procedures be ignored and promotions made strictly on the basis of race." Clarence Mitchell, Washington representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, dismisses this argument. “The Dallas promotions.” he says, “were just one of those things where the Government is trying to correct an inequity.”

Negroes have less chance than whites to get a high-paying job in the North, but most employers and unions deny this stems from racial discrimination. Negro leaders generally contend it does. In Chicago, for example, they say that hardly anyone downtown hires Negroes as office workers, store clerks, or skilled craftsmen. "The Loop of Chicago looks like a snowstorm at 5 o'clock," says Hamp McKinney of the Urban League of Chicago, "with only here and there a little brown speck in it." But employers and unions say that situations like this are not caused by racial discrimination. They say there are not enough qualified Negroes to fill the jobs available. Negro charges of job discrimination have flamed into one of the most searing problems in the North, where almost half of America's 19 million Negroes live...

President Kennedy asked members of Congress on Wednesday to look into their hearts and help end "rancor, violence, disunity and national shame" by passing the most sweeping civil rights bill since Reconstruction days. And he told them to stay in session this year until they do so. His proposals drew a favorable reaction in Congress. But Southerners served notice of a filibuster and threatened to tie up his entire legislative program. Liberal forces in both parties praised the proposals. But key Republicans who may hold the balance of power took a cautious approach. The President's plea came in a special message that accompanied a bill brimming with weapons against racial discrimination in stores, hotels and other public places, in schools, in jobs, in polling booths. He asked for a law banning discrimination by any privately owned enterprise that serves the public. He asked power for the Attorney General to start school desegregation court suits on his own. He asked for a massive program to train unskilled Negroes and others for higher paying jobs. He asked for the right to withhold Federal aid from a project when local officials discriminate against Negroes. He asked for much other legislation. And, in a real sense, he may have asked for one of the great legislative battles in American history...

More than 2000 Negro and white demonstrators marched through Washington on Friday in a civil rights protest that had the air of a happy summer outing until they met Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The confrontation with Kennedy seemed to dispel the pleasant, friendly, almost festive atmosphere that had prevailed during the hot afternoon. The demonstrators grew angry because Kennedy kept them waiting in the hot sun for about a quarter of an hour and, when he arrived, Kennedy grew annoyed as he spied some home made signs charging racial discrimination in the Justice Department. Kennedy, standing on a rostrum at the door of the Justice Building, denied this. "Any individual can come here and get a job if he is qualified," he said. At the end of his speech, there were more cheers than boos. Despite this mutual irritation, the demonstration contrasted sharply with other racial protests that have erupted through out the Nation. There was no violence...

President Kennedy outlined a broad legislative program on civil rights Tuesday night and asked the American people for help in ending racial discrimination and in stemming “the rising tide of discontent that perils the public safety". The President spoke to the nation after Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama had bowed to federal pressure and stepped aside so two Negro students could register at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In his radio-television talk, the President cited the Alabama crisis in making his appeal and outlining his legislative program. He said he will ask Congress next week for legislation that would: 1. Prohibit stores, hotels restaurants and theaters from discriminating against Negroes 2. Allow the federal government to take a more active part to court suits aimed at desegregating public schools 3. Allow Negroes to take advantage of their right to vote. But the President said that legislation alone would not do the job of insuring that the U.S. Constitution is color-blind...

President Kennedy outlined a broad legislative program on civil rights tonight and asked the American people for help in ending racial discrimination and in stemming "the rising tide of discontent that perils the public safety." The President spoke to the nation after Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama bowed to federal pressure and stepped aside so two Negro students could register at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In his radio-television talk, the President cited the Alabama crisis in making his appeal and outlining his legislative program...

The Jewish War Veterans called on state and national authorities yesterday to join in stamping out "terrorist activities" directed at Jews and their institutions. Benjamin H. Chasin, national commander of the veterans' organization, said Sunday's dynamiting of Jewish centers in Miami, Fla., and Nashville, Tenn., "clearly indicates a conspiracy reaching across state lines." In telegrams to Gov. Frank Clement of Tennessee, Gov. Leroy Collins of Florida and U. S. Attorney General William Rogers, Chasin added: "State and federal agencies should join in stopping what appears to be the beginning of organized, nationwide terrorist activities. Urge you use fullest powers at your command to find those guilty of perpetrating this outrage. Swift and dynamic action is the only deterrent to the state of anarchy. We offer you our fullest support." Anti-semitism has been creeping into the southern segregationist movement for several years. It has ranged from inflammatory literature to the weekend bombings...

The balding, stocky white man pointed a finger excitedly. "You newsmen are missing the real story," he said. "The negroes don't want integration any more than we white folks do. Why don't you talk to them. Pick out any group. You'll find out what I know." The Associated Press followed the suggestion of the man in the angry crowd at Central High, the school kept segregated by Gov. Orval Faubus and the National Guard. But the results did not show what the segregationist said he knew. Nineteen negroes were interviewed, some in their homes, some at their jobs. They were rich and poor, with elegant furniture and threadbare rugs. Some spoke with college accents, others mumbled. A few were grandmothers, two were old maids. One man shoveled dirt for a plumber, another headed a large school...

Twenty years ago, the late Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-Miss), powered by two ideas, stepped into Congress. He had decided to resettle Negroes and save cotton. His first plan, to ship American Negroes to Africa, grabbed headlines all over the nation and made Bilbo the symbol of white supremacy in the South. The symbol grew so large it overshadowed the soundness of his second idea. But out of the plan to save cotton grew four regional research laboratories. These scientific centers now save American farmers, especially those of the South, millions of dollars each year...

Booker T. Washington School, created in a spirit of goodwill about 36 years ago, has bloomed into a difficult spot in the social landscape of this community. The Supreme Court’s recent decision to outlaw racist segregation in public schools has prompted the local National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People to renew their effort to make the 17th Avenue building a mixed institution...

The Supreme Court's decision yesterday to outlaw racial segregation in the nation's public schools probably will not affect Booker T. Washington School in Middletown, R.H. Snyder, president of the Board of Education, predicted this morning. 'I can't see how the decision would affect the school in any way, "the president stated. 'School boards in Ohio have a right to set districts. The problem is a districting one in Middletown..

DESPERATE AND TENSE, the Southern segregationist swings hard, not looking at his club. As he battles for a way of life, he grabs whatever he can, and too often at hand is a weapon tinged with anti-Semitism. The fervent battle against Negro rights in the South has brought with it a subtle but powerful spread of hatred for the Jew. Few segregation groups have policies that include anti-Semitism. Most openly avow the opposite. But their criterion for propaganda is only that it attack the Negro and help keep him separated. This has left the field open for the hate drummer. He has discovered that his literature and speeches, filled with anti-Jewish sentiments, will be used as long as anti-Negro remarks are included too. For example, Robert B. Patterson, executive secretary of the Mississippi Citizens Councils, once issued a list of organizations from which segregationists might obtain reading material. “Some of these groups are anti-Semitic,” wrote Patterson, adding: "However, all of the religious groups, including the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish - have been pushing the anti-segregation issue and it is time for all of us to speak out for separation of the black and white races, regardless of our race or creed." But Patterson’s comments were too blatantly unclever...