THE MOOD OF AMERICA

Thomas, Mary S. & Allen, Phil

THE MOOD OF AMERICA Notes on a Reversal for Human Brotherhood And the Activities of Professional Patriots The Ordeal of Koinonia Farm by MARY S. THOMAS IN Sumter County, Georgia, scene of...

...to do in the country what a settlement house does in the city—meet neighborhood needs as it can...
...This states an essential difference between Koinonia and some of the Johnny-come-lately attempts to capitalize on the Supreme Court's desegregation decision by seizing this moment for promoting test cases in other areas...
...They urged America, at this historic moment, to shed Marquess of Queensberry rules, referred to the Fifth Amendment as a "gimmick," pictured school teachers as being predominantly Communist or Communist dupes, and urged us all to suspect the patriotism of American club women who favor Communist China's admission to the United Nations or the Eisenhower-approved cultural exchanges with Russia...
...The camp, they alleged, would be a detriment to morals...
...Then follows a statement, well documented with Biblical quotations, of the religious basis of their belief in human brotherhood and the forgiveness ot enemies...
...The first hearing was set for a date two weeks after the camp's scheduled opening...
...Sawyer said the AAC had asked a group of Texas millionaires to contribute...
...His triumph in counter-conspiracy is still obviously the proudest accomplishment of his career...
...We are grateful for your many expressions of kindness and pray that we may be worthy of your friendship...
...They notified campers and staff, located another site, loaded two trucks with equipment and supplies, drove 300 miles, and, almost miraculously, opened Camp Koinonia at Monteagle, Tennessee, only three days behind schedule...
...From that moment a war was launched against Koinonia's sixty residents, of whom only fourteen are adult members...
...Sawyer told me that the AAC draws the line against seeking money from H. L. Hunt, the most notorious of the Texan McCarthy backers because, as Sawyer explained, Hunt is known to attach too many conditions...
...Sawyer also said the AAC will approach the Ford Foundation and the Coe Foundation as well as the Texas millionaires...
...This soft answer did not turn away wrath, for an economic boycott was, immediately imposed...
...We have nothing against you," dealers admitted, "but we'd lose business by dealing with] you...
...A third ad carried these signifi cant paragraphs: "It is true that a few of our bei kefs differ from those held by some people in this section...
...Dealers refused to sell feed, fertilizer, or petro leum products...
...We have no official connection with any othe organization...
...emerged as the principal ingredien of the "New Anti-Communism" at the AAC conference in Omaha...
...Its grading and marketing of neighbors' eggs has spurred local poultry business so that Sumter County now leads the state in egg production...
...They replaced a Negro neighbor's shack with a decent house, opened the farm's recreational facilities to the neighborhood, conducted an unseg-regated vacation school, and gave adult courses in farming, first aid, and auto mechanics...
...We do not now want to stir up controversy . . . but the people of this county are entitled to the truth...
...Using blanks for Public Eating and Drinking Establishments and Tourist Courts, he approved the facilities on essentials, but made minor recommendations (upon which Koinonia acted before the camp's opening date) and allowed Koinonia ten days for getting a permit...
...Carrying the load for this appeal were Dr...
...Equally impressive is its social outreach...
...The boycott continues...
...The Texans, he reported, put it squarely up to the AAC to get some "action" first...
...In addition to distrust of school teachers the AAC wants its 53 supporting organizations to get busy on the pamphleteering of high schools because a program of this kind would yield financial returns...
...At the final injunction hearing in mid-September, Koinonia was represented by an able Atlanta attorney...
...I, personally, can never accept such teachings, just as I am sure the majority . . . cannot, and for one, I would welcome Koinonia moving to a place well above the Mason-Dixon Line...
...These Con munists will pose as progressives, she told her audience, but it will be po sible to spot them when they get u in meetings and advocate cultural ex changes, trade relations with Red China, and admission of Red Chin to the U.N...
...An airplane corn-pany would not dust their cotton fields for boll weevil...
...Koinonia children are taunted and ostracized...
...Its efforts have so raised the local economic level that, even to the casual visitor, the area seems an oasis...
...Though we art a non-profit religious organization and are so classified by the Federal Government we pay into the treas ury of Sumter County a sizeable sum in taxes each year...
...These visits resulted in Jordan's being disqualified on a technicality from signing...
...Headlines in the Americus and other Georgia papers finished the job...
...Before Jordan got home from Atlanta, Governor Griffin had called the sheriff of Sumter County, asking who Jordan was and what he was up to...
...It calls itself "an agricultural mission enterprise...
...Thes themes, plus the assault on the U.N...
...Accredited by the American Camping Association and with one season's success behind it, plans looked promising...
...Bouscaran's attacks on America intellectuals brought repeated ap plause at the AAC sessions, but it was Philbrick who brought the house down with his recurring demand that the United States break off diplomat ic relations with Soviet Russia...
...To us," Clarence Jordan, its co-founder explains, "it's a matter of religious liberty...
...But fear has dulled the distinction and inspired an organized attempt to drive Koinonia out...
...We are not an agent of any outside group...
...We welcome visi tors and will be glad to answer questions about our way of life...
...2—Conspiratorial methods in a continuing effort to gather data on his own countrymen if they differ with the dedicated zealots of the anti-Communist Right...
...Anthony Bouscaran, professor of political science at Marquette University...
...A unique social experiment indigenous to the South, this religious community faces persecution primarily because its members are naive enough to practice what millions of Americans profess: human brotherhood...
...Koinonia has led the neighborhood's fight for telephones and paved roads...
...Koinonia's response was an adve tisement in the local paper: "We deeply regret that [this] deed . . . brings reproach upon our whold city and county...
...Quite frankly," as Executive Secretary W. C. ("Tom") Sawyer of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, put it, "we've got to get it down to the high school level to convince these responsible financial leaders in Texas that we are getting enough action to warrant their putting money into it...
...Inglis argued the American Communist Party's decision to liquidate its front groups means that CcH munists now will infiltrate existfiS women's organizations...
...Founded in 1944 by Southerners, Koinonia's purposes are: to live in koinonia (a Greek New Testament term), a community of shared work and worship where each member "gives a life and gets a living...
...The technique was to fan resentment against every American attempt to work with our Western allies or to cooperate with the U.N...
...Bouscaran is a fairly frequen speaker in Omaha...
...Koinonia Farm, however, remains undaunted...
...When these failed, shots were fired into the community and an attempt was made to ambush Jordan on a lonely road...
...Many of us are voters and participate is elections...
...Textbooks on government should be overhauled, Bouscaran maintained "The small band of anti-Communist professors do retain a precarious foot hold within the academic commun ity," he said, as he urged his audiena to become more active to head of the betrayal of America by it intellectuals...
...The Fathers of this nation , . . sought to preserve and perpetuate their new-found liberty by writing into the Constitution: 'Congress shall make no law respect-,ing the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' "We pledge ourselves to respect the rights of those who differ with us...
...At their recent nationwide conference in Omaha, delegates failed in these objectives because the principal speakers of the closing sessions reverted to the original McCarthyite type of approach...
...He believes that knowing the words will put alert, patriotic Americans on guard against those whose standards of patriotism do not completely parallel his own...
...We have a grea host of professors who over a long period of time have been affiliated with units of the Communist appara tus...
...Meanwhile Koinonia was planning its inter-racial children's camp for 1956...
...Folks think we're too liberal on the race question, but we're only following our consciences, not trying to force our views on anyone...
...Now the state tax commissioner is seeking a way to revoke Koinonia's status as a non-profit religious organization despite recognition of such status by the federal government and a letter on file from the state commissioner's own department accepting the federal government's classification...
...Within four day Koinonia Farm's roadside market war dynamited, causing damage esta mated at $3,000...
...Impelled by a strong sense of its mission, its members feel that they must continue their work fa the area...
...It was their inter-racial camp that started trouble—trouble best understood in the light of an incident in April, 1956, when two Atlanta Negroes (one a Korean war widow), who needed night courses for advancement in business, sought Jordan's signature, as an alumnus of Georgia's State University System, on their applications to Georgia State College of Business Administration...
...He emphasized he would use this technique in two ways: 1—In a cloak-and-dagger offensive against Russian imperialism in the eastern European satellite states...
...in particular and international relations in general...
...THE MOOD OF AMERICA Notes on a Reversal for Human Brotherhood And the Activities of Professional Patriots The Ordeal of Koinonia Farm by MARY S. THOMAS IN Sumter County, Georgia, scene of MacKinlay Kantor's Andersonville, Koinonia Farm is fighting for its life...
...Bouscaran insisted that "there are Communist educational institution and actual Communist units on coe lege campuses consisting of both fac ulty and students...
...We want you to know . . . that we in no way blame you, the people, for the unkind ac tion of one or two...
...Again Koinonia tried to speak to 3 the community by advertising in the] local press: "During fourteen years in tlui county we have made no public declaration . . . [because] we wanted simply to live our own lives under God...
...He coupled his advice that we participate in a counter-revolution with a complete rejection of "the State Department's striped pants diplomacy and its tendency to play according to Marquess of Queensberry rules...
...Philbrick, who undoubtedly displayed a great deal of personal bravery as an infiltrator of Communist fronts, showed himself poorly qualified to lead a more intelligent, better-directed campaign against the ideas of Communism...
...They participate in civic affairs, and, until evicted for their beliefs on the race question, were active in a local Baptist church...
...The following day an injunction was filed, restraining Koinonia from holding its camp on the grounds of public health...
...Buyers stopped...
...Being held on a farm, the children might see pigs being bornl This got publicity, caused consternation, and brought a crowd to the hearing...
...Though the AAC began its Omaha meeting on a note of restraint and objectivity, it ended the two-day sessions with an all-out appeal for more suspicion, especially against school teachers and against those who believe in the exchange of visitors between Russia and the United States...
...Beginning with 440 worn-out acres located 150 miles south of Atlanta, near Americus, Koinonia has demonstrated that new farming methods, crop rotation, and erosion control can reclaim exhausted land...
...Ruth Inglis, an anti-Communist writer from New York, and Dr...
...The Coa| munist conspirators," she said, "an going to send their agents into sud organizations as the YWCA, churc groups, women's clubs, and others to numerous to mention...
...But when the prosecuting attorney requested more time for preparing his case, the hearing was postponed...
...It has introduced improved strains of livestock...
...to reconcile conflicting social groups by indomitable good will...
...Cotton gins and peanut butter factories would not buy their crop...
...Bouscaran drew fewer than 150...
...In 1953 he spoke at the first Freedom Congress con vention, one of the shriller predeces sors of the All American Conference In September of this year Bouscaran keynoted the unsuccessful attempt to place the Constitution Party on the Nebraska ballot...
...When the judge announced to a packed courtroom that the hearing would agan be postponed, anger and disappoin ment mounted...
...One suffered such physical abuse that he had to be sent to school in another state...
...They will neither recant nor leave...
...Star speaker of the conference was Herbert Philbrick, FBI counterspy and author of I Led Three Lives...
...They admit that 'a few of our beliefs differ from those held by some people in this section.' This is quite an understatement, for it is those 'few beliefs' which make for the entire rejection of Koinonia...
...But the right to differ is a precious American heritage...
...Before the second hearing four local citizens, employing an influential law firm, asked to intervene in the case...
...All the official proposals of the AAC (but not all of the speakers at the Omaha meeting) put the group squarely in the camp of resurgent isolationism...
...taking Koinonia's eggs...
...But nine days before camp was to open the county health inspector appeared...
...Among other projects, it needs money for the pamphleteering of high school students about communism, on the assumption that scarcely any American public educational institution has adequate information on that subject, or the subject of the "True American" government...
...We believe the citizens of this county will give us the same consideration...
...They sponsored a work camp, entertained foreign students, struggled to reclaim alcoholics...
...Unveiling the 'New Anti-Communism' by PHIL ALLEN Omaha THE All American Conference to Combat Communism (known by its adherents as the AAC) hasn't quite succeeded in showing us the picture of the "New Anti-Communism" we are told it sought to present—a picture of responsible men and women dedicated to the fight against communism but resolved to be more constructive, less vituperative, more coherent, and more respectful of the U. S. Constitution...
...After two hours the suit was dissolved, since camp season was over...
...The AAC cared less, judging by the meeting, about helping the people of Hungary and Poland than it did about whipping up public resentment among American citizens of Polish and Hungarian descent against the U.N...
...Philbrick is proud of his ability to brief laymen on the sort of words and phrases a Communist is likely to use...
...The All American Conference made it clear, too, that it expects to rely on Texas oil money...
...It was Philbrick who referred to the Fifth Amendment as a "gimmick...
...These men present distorted pro Communist viewpoints and write textbooks read by students and lay men alike...
...Overnight Koinonia became, in local circles, an agent of "outsiders" trying to instigate a Lucy case in Georgia...
...Sawyer assured the delegates at Omaha that the 53 supporting organizations couldn't be expected to put up enough money to provide complete backing for the work of the AAC...
...For ten years Koinonians used a farm truck as a school bus for the district's Negro children...
...Nebraska law re quires that a party must have more than 700 persons in convention as sembled to qualify for a place on the ballot...
...These 53 organizations include the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Amvets, Lions, Kiwanis, Elks, Knights of Pythias, Fraternal Order of Eagles, Marine Corps League, Disabled American Veterans, Catholic War Veterans, Jewish War Veterans, Spanish American War Veterans, Gold Star Mothers, Panhellenic Association, Interfraternity Conference, and National Education Association...
...Frank" was Francis McNamara, editor of the VFW's Counterattack, and author of a recent article in the Elks magazine on why the Attorney General's list must be maintained as a useful instrument of federal, state, and local governments...
...Koinonia ignored the calls, replaced the signs, shopped around for insurance, and continued its policy of friendly approach...
...He made it clear, for example, that he still believes in the conspiratorial method...
...But Koinonians were not to be defeated...
...It began with malicious rumors, anonymous phone calls, the tearing down of Koinonia's roadside market signs, and the cancellation of insurance policies...
...Will you tell about this Fifth Amendment gimmick, Frank...
...One citizen responded to this with n ad of his own: "If [Koinonia's last advertisement] was an attempt to make the good people of Sumter County sway from their way of thinking or bow their heads in shame, then I am sure I speak for the masses when I say the result was not reached...
...Willing to sign, but eager to forestall violence and prevent a "Lucy case," Jordan first interviewed the president of the Atlanta Division of the University of Georgia System and ultimately the executive secretary of the state board of regents to see if the students might take the desired or equivalent courses without risking violence by standing in the registration line...
...At the first hearing Koinonia, unable because of prejudice to secure legal counsel, appeared to defend itself...
...Philbrick said when someone in the audience asked why the FBI didn't use its vast files to jail the Communist suspects who have infiltrated industry and government...

Vol. 21 • January 1957 • No. 1


 
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