Atlanta Daily World

Hitlerism At Home
THE GROWING MENACE of Cossack-minded policemen in many of our Southern cities is infinitely more real, more terrifying to its black victims, than the thousands of words printed by our white contemporaries describing the horrifying cruelty and bestiality of Hitler's hordes in machine-gunning helpless women and children refugees fleeing the German armed might.
Sympathetic as we are to the plight of the Belgians, we cannot help but remind more how unsympathetic that these same Belgians were in dealing with helpless black women and children in the Congo.
Heart breaking as is the present plight of the Dutch nevertheless vivid in our minds is the desperate and unhappy plight of black victims of Dutch colonizers in South Africa and the East Indies.
REAL TERROR HERE
But this piece was not intended to discuss the European situation. President Roosevelt aptly summed this up with the meaningful comment: "These are indeed sad days." The President of course was speaking of the terror that is reigning abroad. We are living with a more real terror to us right here at home.
That terror is the ever present and constantly growing practice of autocratic police officers to wreak uncalled for and savage brutality against those numerically weak and politically helpless elements of the citizenry, who are ironically taxed that they may be given police 'protection.'
From recent actions of some of our police officers, Hitler is not the only one who holds a twisted meaning of the word 'protection.'
Every now and then these instances of police power seek public attention though most cases remain buried due to the real fear of victims that further exposure will retaliate.
NATION BRIEFLY SHOCKED
The nation was briefly shocked two months ago when it was disclosed a juvenile prisoner had been subjected to a hot iron torture by an Atlanta detective seeking to make him confess the theft of a $2.98 basketball.
Less stir was shown when it became public knowledge that a prisoner had been virtually lynched at the hands of police officers in an Alabama jail. The prisoner was not hung in the conventional manner of lynchers, but was unmercifully beaten with blackjacks, kicked and then shot to death.
These same Cossack police methods were employed by DeKalb county (Ga) police officers last week when they swooped like Hitler's Stukas dive bombers down on the humble residence in that section, to brutally beat a sleeping man about the head with blackjacks and then fire two bullets in his back when he attempted to escape.
A protest of his aged mother was silenced by one of the officers who sent a slug through her body. These little pieces of Hitlerism right here in America was deemed by the white press not of sufficient importance to even report.
MERCHANT IS KILLED
An itchy-fingered deputy in Tallahassee, Fla., sent three 38 calibre slugs through the sick-weakened body of a prominent merchant of that city when he didn't move fast enough in submitting to arrest.
This killing, too, took place in the merchant's own home.
A Fulton county (Ga) jury, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary finds an Atlanta policeman not guilty of brutally beating a cab driver, because he tipped off a fellow driver wanted by police, allowing him to temporarily escape.
These are but five instances of physical brutality perpetrated by officers in this so-called democracy against citizens of that democracy.
Far more cruel than actual physical acts, is the mental brutality these officers gleefully practice against not just a few, but all Negro citizens.
MENTAL CRUELTY FAR WORSE
This type of brutality is designed to "keep the Negro in his place," wherever that is. It comes in the forms of suddenly flashing glaring lights into the faces of peaceful citizens, of invading business places and ordering all occupants to "beat it on home," of swooping down on residences and arresting wholesale all occupants without the least provocation.
The practice hinges on the belief apparently held by most Southern police officers that Negroes are not citizens, not human, and are not entitled to the protection of the Civil rights provision of the United States Constitution.
Securing a warrant to search a Negro's home on pretext is an unheard of proceeding; holding Negroes in jail for days and days without filing any charges or permitting them to consult lawyers or contact relatives; a general plan of instilling fear and terror in the hearts of the Negro populace, all figure in this this cruel form of police brutality.
SOLUTION IN ONE WORD
Well, what are we going to do about it? a great many will ask. The solution is to be found cloaked in the only weapon left to a minority in a democracy; the ballot. Votes, votes, votes and only votes will call a halt to this blitzkrieg of Southern policemen on the rights and persons of those they are sworn to protect. They are the only thing that will bring democracy back to America's largest minority group so long deprived of it.