Atlanta Daily World

As one moves along Richmond's famous Monument Avenue, one is struck by the monument to Stonewall Jackson, who was mortally wounded in the battle of Chancellorsville during the Civil War. In one of the fiercest engagements of the war, one of the soldiers said of Jackson, "There he stands like a stone wall," while shot and shell and Hell in a hundred forms raged about him. The name Stonewall stuck: and it is by this name that he will be remembered by posterity.

President Truman's stand on civil rights is some of these "stonewall" stands. While lesser souls are dilly-dallying and quibbling and quarreling and quaking amid uncertainties and expediencies, Truman stands like a stone wall. In so doing he is giving this nation its most dramatic lesson in statesmanship and moral brilliance. Truman the politician has been supplanted by Truman the statesman. Truman the successor to the immortal Roosevelt has become Truman the Great in his own right When an inspired history of our great nation's presidents is written Harry Truman will tower among them like the lofty peak of a mountain, majestic, in its pristine and imposing beauty.

Without the historic ancestry of the Roosevelts and minus their Harvard background training, Truman has commanded the respect of mankind because he was strong in the strength of a moral conviction that civil rights are the heritage of all elements of our nation, Negroes included. Today he is paying with his political life for his courageous stand on the civil rights issue. But the political life he is giving will be found in greater abundance when posterity accords him the immortality that lesser men would deny him.

We are being treated to the sorry spectacle of two Republican candidates, Taft and Eisenhower, sacrificing a great principle for political gain. Both Taft and Eisenhower are willing to sacrifice Constitution and the future of minority groups if they can only win the Republican nomination which carries with it the seeds of national calamity. Expediency as formula for political success will not regain the lost prestige of this nation.

One of the calamities of current times is this self-same loss of prestige by the United States which fed the hungry and clothed the naked and sheltered the homeless in the uttermost parts of the earth. Our great nation should today be the envy of the nations. Instead we are being "used" by the nations while down in their hearts they despise us. Why this moral debacle? Why do nations have this subtle hatred of us in spite of our endless philanthropies and benevolence? Why do we of all nations have to buy our friends who refuse to stay bought for any length of time? It is because of the thing that Taft and Eisenhower are offering the people-expediency above principle.

Taft and Eisenhower know the justice and righteousness of civil rights, but they lack the honesty and the courage to openly advocate civil rights, as they pertain to Negroes. Only through civil rights do Negroes pose any problem. While Taft and Eisenhower sell their souls-and scar them as well-over the titanic issue of civil rights, Truman comes out and takes the stand that will send him down in history as one of the moral stalwarts of his generation. In fact, Truman's is the most positive voice in these critical times.

Truman is a great blessing to our nation as he stands unafraid and undeterred and undismayed before the puny taunts of men like Taft and Eisenhower who are willing to "play-ball" with the dixiecrats. Trumanism is the only hope of redeeming the sacred name of our nation among the peoples of the earth. The call of the hour in this nation is not for candidates of expediency, but for moral courage which Truman is evincing in this critical hour of our nation's history.

"Stonewall Truman is a moral redemptionist. Hear ye him! The fate or fortune of Trumanism will determine the fate or fortune of our great and mighty nation!"