Minneapolis Spokesman

David Lawrence Twists The Truth

Since the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing public school segregation un-Constitutional, the Northern "High Priest" of U.S. segregationists has been David Lawrence, syndicated columnist and editor-publisher of the U.S. News World Report, weekly magazine.

Lawrence has wasted no opportunity to state the case, weak as it is, for race segregation. He remains the lone national figure in journalism in the north who favors apartheid-Dixie-U.S. style.

Lawrence's column has disappeared from many leading papers in the north because of his completely one-sided position on the race question and his frequent failure to stick to the facts in stating his views. His magazine is used to win northern support for race segregation in the U.S.

In his March 23 column appearing in the Pittsburgh POST-GAZETTE, Lawrence again repeated the half-truth he has used time and time again against the U.S. Supreme Court decision, in which he has ascribed to unknown lawyers the view: "segregation may be morally wrong but the court gave "psychology" rather than legal reasons for reversing the previous court decisions." The "previous decision" was of course the plessy vs. Ferguson decisions of 1896 which established the "separate but equal" doctrine. The South never attempted to fulfill the "equal" provisions but massively practiced the "separate" part of the ruling.

The Pittsburgh POST-GAZETTE did not let racist-slickster, subtle white supremacist Lawrence get by with his specious criticism of the Supreme Court without challenge. At the end of his column the editors said: "The court cited psychological evidence but it is not factually accurate to say that it omitted legal reasoning in its opinion."

In other words the POST-GAZETTE editors were saying that Mr. Lawrence was dealing carelessly with the truth to put over his oft-repeated point that the school decisions were the result of sociology rather than legal premises.