Atlanta Daily World

SAY BIG REPUBLICAN VOTE WILL AID 2 PARTY SYSTEM

By PAUL DELANEY

Speakers at trail's end of the long campaign urged Georgians to vote for the Richard Nixon-Henry C. Lodge ticket in today's election at a rally at Big Bethel A.M.E. Church Monday night. John Wesley Dobbs, Masonic leader; C. A. Scott, editor-general manager of The Atlanta Daily World, and Rev. William Holmes Borders, pastor of Wheat Street Baptist Church, said that it would be in the best interest of the nation and the Negro if Republicans were elected. The three called on all responsible citizens to vote.

"Republicans have done everything that has been done for us," stated Dobbs. He said that Republicans were responsible for the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments and for the freeing of the slaves. He said the three amendments are the only ones of the Constitution written especially for the Negro.

Scott predicted that if Georgia votes Republican in the presidential election today, a Republican governor will be elected in the 1962 gubernatorial race. He said that a vote for the Republican Party is a vote against the county unit system. If the state goes Republican, he stated, the unit system would be ended.

The editor reiterated his position that the two major issues in this campaign are peace and prosperity and who can best handle the interracial situation. He said that this is the most crucial election since 1860.

Scott also hit unpledged electors that Georgia Democrats sponsored. He urged Negroes not to vote blindly or emotionally.

Borders, in a very brief statement, said that he told his congregation Sunday how he was voting in a sermon. He urged support for the Nixon-Lodge ticket.

RELIGIOUS ISSUE

Dobbs hit Massachusetts Democrats on the religious issue. He said that Negroes do not have jobs in Boston; that there are not as many Negro policemen in Boston as there are in Atlanta. He blamed this on the Catholic Church (Massachusetts has a very large Catholic vote).

Dobbs said that he is a member of a Masonic order that has certain secrets. He said that under Catholicism, he would have to divulge these secrets to a priest. He praised Abraham Lincoln as one of the three greatest men that ever lived (Jesus Christ and Gandhi are the others). He said that a Negro Republican vote "would show them we believe Republicans are fair and just."

The Masonic leader said that he could sympathize with the Negro Democrat in the north because he can belong to the party

NOT IN PARTY

"But in Georgia," he said, "not one Negro has been invited to join the Democratic Party - not even Mr. Walden or M. L. King."

He said that he could not understand how any self-respecting Negro could vote Democratic.

Scott said that he did not think the religious issue should be injected into the campaign, but that it is a legitimate issue. He said it is not necessary to go back a hundred years to note Republican progress. He said the last eight years under President Eisenhower have been progressive. He emphasized the importance of every single vote, saying it is possible for one to make the difference in the election.

THEY WANT NIXON—In this photo, taken during one of the last campaign jaunts of Republican candidate, Vice President Richard Nixon goes from side to side in the throng shaking the hands of well-wishers, who are simply trying to show how fervently they want him in the White House, along with Henry Cabot Lodge.

Voters are expected to go to the polls in record numbers today, following the candidates' record-breaking tour of every section of the nation. In center of photo is Mrs, Pat Nixon, who accompanied her husband on most of his tour for the Republican ticket.