The Augusta Courier

STRICTLY PERSONAL
By ROY V. HARRIS

On Thursday, May 8, 1958 an editorial appeared in The Augusta Chronicle. It was a short one, but it was very significant.

Here is the editorial in its entirety:

"SOUTHERNERS?"

caption of an editorial in The Atlanta Constitution.

"Pulitzer Prizes Went to Southerners This Year," says the

"It all depends on one's definition of a Southerner."

The principal Pulitzer Prize in journalism went to Harry Ashmore, editor of The Arkansas Gazette, and to the Gazette itself.

Both the editor and the newspaper won the two outstanding journalism prizes.

They are the "Southerners" referred to by The Augusta Chronicle.

Ralph McGill, in his column in The Atlanta Constitution, on May 6, 1958, said:

"Harry Ashmore, editor of the more-than-a-century-old newspaper, the Arkansas Gazette, and the Gazette itself, are each winners of annual Pulitzer prizes in journalism. These will be perhaps the most generally approved and applauded Pulitzer verdicts in our time. Everywhere it was recognized that during the grave days of crisis in Little Rock, he and the Gazette scrupulously observed, and emphasized, the best principles of their profession."

Now to sum it up in a few words, Harry Ashmore is the Ralph McGill of Arkansas.

The Arkansas Gazette is The Atlanta Constitution of Arkansas.

That's the reason Harry Ashmore and the Arkansas Gazette won the annual prizes in journalism.

Now, this prize business is somewhat of a racket. The radicals have organized a lot of organizations and different schemes for awarding one another prizes so as to lend prestige and dignity on the unsuspecting public and it falls for the racket.

One year it will be Ralph McGill and the next year it will be Harry Ashmore and the next year it will be another radical who wins the prize.

Now, the Atlanta Constitution brags about these prizes coming South and Southerners' winning them.

But, like The Augusta Chronicle, we can say:

"It all depends on one's definition of a Southerner."

Certainly, Ashmore and Ralph McGill are not typical Southerners.

There are some other things we call them.

Right now we would like to call them quislings.

The word "quisling" comes from the name of a Major Quisling of Norway.

He was a Norwegian, but he was a traitor to Norway.

When Hitler, during the second world war, marched his armies into Norway, Quisling surrendered his armies to Hitler and accepted him with open arms.

He became the chief of the Nazi-sponsored government in Norway.

after it was taken over by the Germans.

Quisling sold out his people and from that day since the word "quisling" has been synonymous with that of traitor.

Webster's dictionary says of the meaning of the word "quisling": "A traitor, esp. one who becomes the tool of the conqueror of his country."

Now, Ralph McGill and Harry Ashmore, as editors of two papers with long and great histories behind them, do not represent either Arkansas or Georgia.

They do not represent the sentiments of the people of either of these two states.

At a time when we are fighting for our existence and our civilization, they are seeking to undermine both Arkansas and Georgia and trying to surrender their respective states to the enemy.

Now, if this doesn't make both of them quislings, I'd like to know what it takes to become a quisling.

Harry Ashmore is a traitor to the people of Arkansas and Ralph McGill is a traitor to the people of Georgia.

Ralph McGill, who has time after time betrayed the people of Georgia and of the South, takes great pains to defend the quisling of Arkansas.

It is simply one quisling defending and bragging on another.

Both of them are advocates of race mixing.

Both of them would like to force you at the point of a bayonet to send your little girls to school with Negro boys and see them murdered, beaten and raped by the Negroes exactly as they are being murdered, beaten and raped in Brooklyn, New York at the present time.

That's what they are trying to do to you.

Harry Ashmore was directly responsible for Eisenhower's calling the troops to Little Rock.

It was Harry Ashmore who called the White House and insisted on the President's sending troops to Arkansas.

When Governor Faubus withdrew the National Guard from Central High School in Little Rock, the good white people of that city surrounded the schoolhouse and would not permit the Negroes to enter.

Then it was that Ashmore got on the telephone and insisted that federal troops be sent to Arkansas for the purpose of forcibly and at the point of a bayonet, put nine Negro children in Central High School in his own home town.

These facts are a matter of record and it was on Ashmore's urgent appeal that Brownell and Eisenhower acted and it was upon information furnished by Ashmore that they reached the conclusion that they must act.

Newspaper people from all over America poured into Little Rock.

The Arkansas Gazette carried flamboyant headlines over stories about the happening at Little Rock and stories of how the paratroopers dispersed the mob.

The truth of it is that the paratroopers had difficulty with only two people.

Both of these people were at least two blocks from the schoolhouse.

One of them was stabbed with a bayonet because he failed to move as fast as the paratrooper thought he ought to move.

The other was clubbed over the head with the butt of a rifle standing on a friend's front porch blocks away from the school talking with his friends.

The paratrooper went on the porch and ordered them to leave.

This man refused to leave and was clubbed over the head.

Yet, in the mind of Harry Ashmore, and from the stories that he printed and sent over the nation, this was the action of a mob.

Now, Harry Ashmore has been rewarded by the enemy for being a quisling to the people of his own state.

This reward comes for the betrayal of his people and for the sole purpose of encouraging other so-called "Southerners" to betray their people in time of crisis.

This country has never engaged in a war yet without there appearing in our midst traitors.

The same thing has been true of nearly every country in any war in which it ever engaged.

We are at war today.

The people of the South are fighting for their civilization.

They are fighting for the lives of their children.

They are fighting for the control of their schoolhouses.

They are fighting to pre-
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serve and keep their homes inviolate. They are fighting for our very civilization.

It is true that we are not fighting with bombs and bullets. We are fighting in a legal manner with every means at our command. We are resisting the illegal and unconscionable attacks by the Supreme Court of the United States, by the federal courts and by federal bayonets.

We are determined to win this fight and to rid ourselves of those court decrees and of federal troops.

On the success of our fight depends the civilization of the South and the civilization of this country.

Upon the winning of this war depends the future of this nation.

Now, while we are so engaged, these quislings undertake to sell us to the enemy.

Now, Ralph McGill will not say in print that he is advocating and encouraging the mixing of the Negro and white children in the schools of Atlanta, Georgia.

Harry Ashmore hasn't the nerve or the courage to openly advocate the same thing in Little Rock, Arkansas.

But, both of these quislings aid and abet the enemy in every manner they can. They defend and promote one another and they cry "the law of the land" and that we have got to live by the Supreme Court decisions.

A Supreme Court decision never has been, and never will be, the law of the land.

The lawmaking power is vested in the Congress and the Congress alone.

Yet, these quislings use every weapon at their command to try to force the people of the South to accept the enemy.

If the enemy ever takes over Georgia and Arkansas, Ralph McGill and Harry Ashmore, like old Quisling of Norway, will direct the government set up by the enemy.

They are not representative of the South, but are quislings seeking to sneak the enemy in the back door.

Ralph McGill claims that I am an extremist because I oppose race mixing.

He claims to be a moderate.

He also says that the NAACP that wants to mix us all up together all at one time, is extremist.

Now, if the NAACP and people like you and I are both extremists, and Mr. McGill has a moderate position, what is his position?

It would have to be in between these two extremes.

Now, as best I can determine from reading his pusillanimous writings, he thinks we ought to do it a little bit at the time. For instance. his kind of moderates say we ought to mix in one grade this year, another grade next year and finally all get race mixed.

He doesn't advocate the same amount of murder, beatings and rape as they have had in Brooklyn in one year. He just wants to start murdering, beating and raping one class a year.

Now, that position may be one of moderation, but if it is, I can't understand moderation.

We think we have a moderate position. We have proven over a period of one hundred years that the only way the two races can live together in a state of peace, harmony and mutual helpfulness and without bands of Negroes murdering, raping and beating white people: and without bands of white people murdering and lynching Negroes is for us to maintain our pattern of segregation.

We are opposed to bands of Negroes murdering, beating and raping white people. We are opposed to bands of white people murdering, lynching and beating Negroes.

The object of this dissertation is to show you the kind of folks who are being honored as "Southerners"

Now, you may call them Southerners if you want, but we feel like The Augusta Chronicle. It depends on your definition of a Southerner and that's not what I call these quislings.