The Augusta Courier

They are:

STRICTLY PERSONAL
By ROY V. HARRIS

The worst thing that could happen to this country would be for Senator John Kennedy to be elected President.

The Democrats, at Los Angeles, adopted his program for the country. In the field of Negro rights, Kennedy's program advocates:

1. Race mixing in every public school not later than 1963.

2. To eliminate literacy tests so that the illiterate Negroes can vote and control the nation.

3. To establish a Fair Employment Practices Commission to force every employer to employ a lot of Negroes and mix them with whites.

Every employer

And then, in his Labor Day speech in Detroit, Senator Kennedy added two other planks to his platform.

4. Sit-ins to force race mixing in the churches.

5. Sit-ins to force race mixing in the homes.

Race mixing everywhere - in the schools, in the homes, in the churches, in the lunch counters.

In this speech, Kennedy said the Negroes had a right to race mix sit-ins to force race mixing. He said they must stand up for these rights even if they have to kneel-in or sit-in to get them. And then he emphasized that he wanted all the Negroes to stand up when he talks about race mixing in the schools and in the churches.

Now, we have got an idea about what he means when he talks.

ARE YOU CONFUSED?

Many people were confused when they voted in a straw ballot on September 14th for free and unpledged electors. Governor Vandiver has indicated that he believes the people take to convince him that we were not confused when we voted for free and unpledged electors.

Governor Vandiver is a fair man and I think we should understand how we stand today. It doesn't matter whether you voted on September 14th or not. Now, there is one way to convince him. Let's let him know

Either write, wire or call the Governor now and let him know how you feel.

If the Governor, and eight other members of the twelve Democratic electors vote for Kennedy and Johnson, then, in the event their ticket wins, nine out of Georgia's twelve votes will be cast for the Democratic nominees. If they stand pat on this position, you will be forced to choose between Kennedy and Nixon.

The only question then will be which is the lesser of the two evils.

Let's convince Governor Vandiver that he should go with Senator Byrd instead of Kennedy and Johnson. And either vote for Herman Talmadge, Dick Russell or
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But what does he mean when he talks about race mixing in the homes?

Does he mean that you shall be forced to accept the Negroes in your home on a social basis or is it marriage he's talking about?

Regardless of which it is, both propositions are equally obnoxious.

Now, do you believe that any man should be elected President of the United States who tells you that he will use the influence and the powers of that office to guarantee such rights to the Negroes?

Now, Nixon is nearly as bad as Kennedy, but he hasn't yet gone to the point to where he advocates that Negroes march on your church and take over some Sunday morning. He hasn't yet gone far enough to advocate that groups of Negroes march on your home and walk in and sit down some night after supper.

He hasn't yet gone far enough to say that he will use the powerful influence of the White House to force these evils on you.

But John Kennedy has and this is what John Kennedy will do.

This Kennedy family has gotten filthy rich. The members of the family today are personally worth more money than the members of the Rockefeller family.

And that's going some. Old Joe Kennedy, the ambitious poppa of this bunch of juveniles, is rated as being worth more than five hundred million dollars.

They have accumulated wealth and now they are ambitious to accumulate honor and power.

They are willing to pay any price to get it.

It is the most ruthless clan that has ever been in America and if the White House and the powers that go with it, are turned over to them, they will do anything on earth to control the votes of the six big states which have the most influence in electing a President.

In these six big states, the Negroes hold the balance of power.

The Kennedy clan cares nothing for the country.

Now, this is what the people of Georgia voted against in Governor Ernest Vandiver's straw ballot on September 14, 1960.

The people of Georgia didn't vote for Nixon and neither did the Republicans in Georgia have any influence on the vote.

There aren't enough Republicans in Georgia to influence anything of any consequence.

The overwhelming vote of the people of Georgia on September 14th in favor of free electors was a vote of good Democrats who can't stomach the things that John Kennedy stands for.

Now, the Atlanta newspapers and Governor Vandiver claim that the people of Georgia were confused.

Since the election we have heard from thousands of these people who voted for free electors.

With indignation, they tell me that they were not confused. They tell me they knew what they were doing. They tell me they went to the polls for one purpose and one purpose only and that is to vote against the evils which we have depicted in this article.

I wish that Governor Vandiver could read some of the mail that I get and could hear from the people, even in the City of Atlanta, who went out and voted for free electors.

I was in Atlanta Friday, the 16th, and the morning of Saturday, the 17th.

Everywhere I went, people stopped me and told me that they wanted to let me know that they weren't confused.

The vote in Fulton County is certainly a good illustration of what happened in Georgia. The only daily newspapers they have in Atlanta are THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION and JOURNAL and they were dead set on the other side. Most of the radio and television stations were dead set on the other side.

There was no organization in Atlanta. There were no headquarters.

There was no literature to be distributed and there were no workers at the polls in favor of free electors. No money was spent on the campaign.

This is remarkable when you remember that approximately twenty thousand Negroes voted in Fulton County on September 14th.

Now, I find that these Negroes voted against free electors and these Negroes were not confused. They knew what they were doing.

Governor Vandiver could have had the privilege of walking down the street with me and hearing the people holler at me and tell me, "Roy I was not confused" his eyes would have opened with astonishment.

I was also in the main building at the capitol. I was in several of the departments across the street.

Every state employee I saw stopped me and told me that he wanted to let me know that he had voted for free electors and that he wasn't confused.

If Governor Vandiver would just check the state employees at the capitol, he would find that at least ninety percent of them voted for free electors.

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...electors and not a single one of his employees was confused.

THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, on Thursday, September 15, 1960, said:

"A large vote was cast for 'free' electors - free, that is, to deflect the state's Democratic electoral vote this November from the Democratic nominee, John F. Kennedy, to a person unknown."

...in the ballot box and labelled him "free electors" and they had a citizen standing looking in the box and labelled him "freedom of the ballot".

The little fat man in the box resembled the image they usually carry of me when they have a cartoon on me.

The citizen standing outside the box was saying "One of us has gotta go"

Now, we won and after we won, THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, on the next day, said:

"And the result, heavily weighted with confusion. The best thing for the Democrats to do with it is forget it."

Now, the day before, they were getting ready to throw free electors out by a vote of the people. When they didn't get that mandate from the people, they said there was confusion. Let's forget it.

We do not intend to let them forget it. Neither will the people of Georgia let them forget it.

We had no organization for free electors. We had no money to spend. We had no headquarters. We had no literature to distribute.

We made no telephone calls. We had no paid workers at the polls. We had no volunteer workers at the polls.

In fact, we had no workers at all. But without an organization, without workers, without literature, without any organized effort, the people took things in their own hands and rose up in their indignation and wrath against the evils which the Democratic Party and its candidates propose to give them, and registered in no uncertain terms their indignation and their repudiation of the party, the candidate and the platform.

Now, here is the reason there was a light vote. Governor Vandiver and eight of his colleagues running for elector stated that they were going to cast their votes for Senator Kennedy and Senator Johnson in advance of the straw vote.

Now, since the straw vote is over, people from all over the State tell me that they would have voted for free electors had it not been for the fact that they didn't think it would do any good. They thought the Governor was going to cast Georgia's vote for Kennedy regardless of how they voted.

Now, if the Governor hadn't taken this position, you would have seen a mighty outpouring of Georgia Democrats voting for free electors.

Now, since Governor Vandiver says he's going to ignore the straw vote which he called, we are right back where we started.

As a matter of fact, the vote in the electors now stands at nine to three. Three of these candidates for elector on the Democratic ticket take the position that they have a mandate from the people to cast their votes for a good Southerner who believes as we do and against Kennedy and Nixon both.

What we had hoped to do is this: To get Governor Vandiver and his eleven partners on this ticket to vote for Russell or Talmadge, or Harry Byrd, or some good Southerner, in the electoral college.

If the vote is close enough between Kennedy and Nixon, this would throw the election into the House of Representatives.

The Republicans are in a hopeless minority in the House. They can't put over Nixon.

If we could throw the election into the House, you would see a coalition between Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans voting for our Southern candidate and he would be the next President.

We haven't yet given up hope with Governor Vandiver.

I can't yet believe that Governor Vandiver is going to ignore the vote of the people on September 14th.

The same people voted on September 14th that elected him Governor.

If they were confused one time, they were confused the other.

I don't believe the people were confused at any time.

Now, here's one way we can convince Governor Vandiver that we were not confused: Sit down now and write him a letter, a post card, or send him a telegram, or call him over the telephone and let him know that you were not confused on September 14th, 1960, that you are not confused now and that you do not want Georgia's vote cast for John Kennedy and the evils that he represents.

Now, if we can't change his mind, then we are going to be forced to choose between Kennedy and Nixon.

That's the choice the people of Georgia should not be required to make because it is a choice of choosing between the lesser of two evils.

Unless the Governor does change his mind, we will have more to say in the future about the evils that will come to Georgia and the rest of the South if he forces us to make that choice.

Write, wire or call the Governor and do it now. Get everybody else to do likewise.