further believe, largely because of the “paper curtain" which the northern press has placed around the South; "all they print is the gory stories." "Lay your case before the American people," Senator Eastland recently assured the convention of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation in Jackson, "and you will be surprised to find how similar their opinions are to those of your own." And so the massive resisters have decided to tell the rest of America "just the honest story," "with no Bilbo business."

This southern campaign to convert the North, East, and West will not be of the order of magnitude of a Billy Graham crusade, but it is well-organized and well-financed. Some States have already allocated public funds to propaganda bureaus which are pouring out pamphlets and "fact sheets" on the shortcomings of the Negro and the Supreme Court. Over the great seal of the State of Louisiana, the joint State legislative committee, headed by Senator W. M. Rainach, who speaks for the Louisiana White Citizens Councils in the legislature and is a leading candidate for Governor next year, has printed as a full-page advertisement in the New York Herald-Tribune a message addressed "To the People of New York City" on "The Position of the South on Race Relations." (See p. 11.) The committee subsequently "distributed several thousand tear sheets of the ad to key officials, publications, and organizations throughout the United States," Senator Rainach says, "and after running out of all the tear sheets except a handful, we reprinted the ad in mail sheet form and distributed several thousand of these sheets also."

Senator Eastland is urging that the other defiant States go and do likewise. Citing the Herald-Tribune ad as an example of the wise use of public funds, Eastland told the Farm Bureau convention that "the southern people have got to lay their case before the Nation, and we must use our tax money to get the job done."

There are leaders in all six bitter-end States who agree. Out of Alabama has come a new "Putnam Letter Committee," headed by James E. Simpson, leading Birmingham Dixiecrat and lawyer for some of the biggest of Alabama's "Big Mules." The committee's purpose is to publicize a beguiling "Dear Mr. President" letter, signed by Carleton Putnam, a northerner who has spent many years as an airlines executive in the South. The Putnam letter, has already been published as a large ad in the New York Times and is to be placed in newspapers all over the country. Arguing that the Court decision in the school case is personal opinion, not law, and that equal protection under law is not a right in the United States but a social privilege, the letter declares:

"Neither the North, nor the court, has any holy mandate inherent in the trend of the times or the progress of liberalism to reform society in the South. In the matter of schools, rights to equal education are inseparably bound up with rights to freedom of association and, in the South at least, may require that both be considered simultaneously. (In using the word 'association' here. I mean the right to associate with whom you please, and the right not to associate with whom you please.)"

The Putnam committee raises funds privately for its promotion. But Florida Legislator William H. Reedy shares Eastland's view that such projects are public business. He proposes a program of southern aid to Federal education on the southern view, to be supported by appropriations of $1 million per year from each State participating. "The South must sell its ideas the way Hollywood producers sell starlets," Reedy says. And the Conference of Southern Governors has invited him to its next meeting to discuss details.

(Georgia's Senator Richard Russell is for educating the rest of the country to southern problems, too, but he would let those on the receiving end pay for the privilege. He promises us a bill this year to provide Federal aid to southern Negroes who wish to move to States with smaller Negro populations in order "to give each State an equal share of the race problem.")

The funds the South is willing to invest in enlightenment of the North are supposed to yield dividends this very year in the form of aid toward passage of the Smith bill to curb the Supreme Court.

First introduced in 1955, H.R. 3—which would repeal the longstanding doctrine of Federal preemption and place primary jurisdiction in the State courts unless specifically withheld by Congress-passed the House last year by a large majority of southern Democrats and conservative Republicans (241-155). In the end-of-session confusion the Senate defeated it by only one vote. Representative Howard Smith (Democrat, of Virginia) has reintroduced H.R. 3 in the new Congress and because of his position as chairman of the powerful Rules Committee should be able to push it it through the House again, even though

the measure has lost supporters because of Republican casualties in the November election. For the same reason the new Senate should be more opposed to passage of H.R. 3 than the old, but the foes of the Court are also vastly more determined.

The Smith bill of itself is an important southern objective, as a symbol of antagonism to the Court's leadership in forcing the segregation issue in the most direct way since Reconstruction days. But even should passage fail again, a close hard-fought decision would be worth the price of the propaganda effort required to produce it. A lengthy battle over the Court curbing measure in advance of consideration of new civil rights enforcement legislation-which southerners could easily manage with their command of traffic through their com mittee chairmanships--would contribute to their larger objective: preventing the Congress from adding the force of its approval to the position of the Court on desegregating public schools "with all deliberate speed."

At all costs the massive resisters must prevent reenforcements from reaching the judiciary, which stands today as the lone leader in the new Reconstruction. The murmurs of encouragement to the courts which have risen faintly from the Department of Justice and the ill-calculated relief offered by the President in the Little Rock affair hardly qualify as major assists. Congress, in effect, has remained neutral. And it is imperative for those who defy the Court to keep it that way. Lyndon Johnson helped a lot by taming the new Senate a few hours after it walked into his cage, and so leaving the filibuster in good working condition. But a hard-fought, even if finally losing battle to punish the court for its recent conduct would offer invaluable opportunities to make sure that Congress does not suddenly decide to get behind the Supreme Court. In the midst of debate and back-stage maneuvers there is always room for wheeling and dealing. When the vote is close, trades can sometimes be made which change other close votes on other days. In such a situation the South's polished professionals would surprise everyone if they walked out of the cloakrooms without a stack of IO U's payable when Federal enforcement of school desegregation became the question before the House.

If the States which shout "Never!" can prevent the 86th Congress from passing legislation supporting the Court, they will be free to attempt the next huge step in their plan for total escape from the toils of the new Reconstruction: Persuade the reformers to give up. Historically, this is not so farfetched as it sounds. The ephemeral historic importance "of such earlier landmarks as the fugitive slave law of 1850, the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 1875, the 14th amendment of 1867, or, for that matter, the Volstead Act of 1919-all of which were in some degree nullified by events or public sentiment should remind us," Vann Woodward, the leading historian of the American Reconstruction period remarks. "*** how precarious are the fortunes of American statesmanship when it operates against the mass opposition of a significant section of the country."

"Reconstruction," Professor Woodward observes, affords the most extreme example in our history of an all-out effort by the majority to impose its will upon a recalcitrant and unwilling minority region. *** In spite of the relative weakness and helplessness of the resistant South, in spite of the determined idealism of the northern reformers *** the fact is that the great experiment ended in disillusionment and default. The gains made on paper were never fully implemented in practice, or they were eroded away by compromise, concession and “interpretation." Apathy and indifference replaced the original idealism of the reformers. It was the will of the defeated, discredited and for a time, helpless South that prevailed in the end.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Helen Fuller, a southerner by birth and education, has just returned from a survey through the Southern States. This is the third of several interpretive reports.

(The following material was submitted for the record by Will Maslow, general counsel, American Jewish Congress :)

ASSAULT UPON

FREEDOM

OF ASSOCIATION

A Study of the Southern Attack
on the

National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People

AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS

15 EAST 84TH STREET

NEW YORK 28, N. Y.

1527

This study was prepared by the Commission on Law and Social Action, SHAD POLIER, chairman; LEO PFEFFER, director.

Acknowledgment is made to JOSEPH B. ROBISON, BENJAMIN MINTZ, and SPENCER RICH of the Commission staff for the research and writing of the study.

A publication of the Department of Public Affairs, WILL MASLOW, director.