PORTRAIT OF A COMMUNIST
White, Walter
Portrait of a Communist By WALTER WHITE WHEN jail doors close behind him in the not distant future, Benjamin J. Davis. Jr., convicted Communist, will take with him into his cell a little part of...
...He abandoned career and the hope of affluence and comfort -and went to New York to join the Communists...
...White democratic politicians fawned over his father because his word went so far as political patronage in Georgia was involved...
...As far as can be learned he agreed, determined to resume making a career as soon as the case was finished...
...There was no doubt that Herndon was a dupe of the Communists...
...made many enemies by certain personal habits and by a kind of ruthlessness against his political foes and those who opposed his dictatorial reign over the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, young Ben seemed neither to know nor care...
...Jr., convicted Communist, will take with him into his cell a little part of you and me...
...His father was powerful and rich and Republican National Committeeman of the state of Georgia...
...With a wardrobe the envy of most of his fellow students, young Ben went through Amherst where, apart from snubs from a few of his mates, Ben's most vivid experience was being called a "nigger" and the inside of his mouth torn apart when he played football against Princeton...
...We know he was wrong because another Negro, a classmate of young Ben's at Amherst and Harvard, who was born just across the state line in Knoxville, did not lose faith and is today the first Negro judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals...
...Ben Davis was asked to join the defense...
...Young Ben knew poverty only visually as it affected others...
...Transition from the culture and erudition of Cambridge to such scorn for accused, defender and the processes of the law was too much for young Ben...
...His own home was modestly luxurious, a doting mother clothed him in the very best materials which Atlanta stores afforded...
...The individual in question is Dr...
...Back in Georgia young Ben turned his training towards taking over the power and responsibility of his aged and ill father...
...Apparently he was adjusting himself as best he could to the more restricted atmosphere of Georgia so far as Negroes are concerned...
...I had known Ben as a young boy in Atlanta, but had moved to New York some years before he returned there from Harvard...
...Ralph J. Bunche, who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize...
...He is the author of several books, including his widely acclaimed autobiography, "A Man Called White," two novels, "Fire in the Flint" and "Flight," and "Rope and Faggot—A Biography of Judge Lynch...
...If the family did not quite move in the best and quite rigid Atlanta Negro society because Ben Davis, Sr...
...But because he was gay, friendly, witty, and a good student, he was warmly admired both at Amherst and the Harvard Law School and at each school he made an excellent scholastic record...
...For you and I will also be guilty in proportion to the extent of our sins of commission or omission so far as the conditions which made Ben Davis despair of hope that he and those similarly situated would ever share the American dream of opportunity and equality...
...which his sheltered life had created...
...The trial itself snatched from young Ben's eyes whatever scales of ignorance of that fate and treatment Negroes charged with crime —particularly that most heinous one of a Negro daring to protest in Georgia against white injustice— WALTER WHITE, who was for many years executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, served on the U. S. delegation to the Paris sessions of the UN Assembly in 1948...
...For Ben Davis was born a Negro in Atlanta...
...One of Davis' classmates at Amherst and Harvard has also demonstrated on a world-wide basis that a winning fight can be made within the framework of democracy...
...II You and I know he was wrong in abandoning the fight within the framework of democracy for freedom...
...When Davis addressed the court, the judge turned his back in disgust and read a newspaper...
...Because his father owned one of the first automobiles for either whites or Negroes in Atlanta, young Ben didn't run into the troubles less affluent Negroes encountered on Jim Crow street cars...
...But before the bitter vials of wrath and scorn are poured again on the few like Ben Davis who despaired of democracy, it would not be amiss to remember Jesus' admonition, "Let him who is without sin . . ." And remembering, determine to prevent the creation of future Ben Davises by cleansing our way of life of the festering sores which make them...
...William Hastie fought the good fight and measurably moved forward the outposts of equality for Negroes and all Americans by his uncompromising fight in the courts of justice...
...Ahead lay at least financial security if not wealth, position in the community, home, marriage, family— the usual ingredients of normal life...
...The judge was openly contemptuous, calling the defendant and his lawyer "nigger" again and again...
...Unchecked and unrebuked threats of violence against Herndon and his attorneys filled the court room from beginning to end of the trial...
...But young Ben and everybody else knew that the brutal mistreatment of Negroes against which Herndon had protested was equally beyond all doubt...
...Suddenly the arrest of another young Negro, Angelo Herndon, charged with violation of an archaic Georgia law which had been resurrected to stamp out "insurrection" among Negroes, jolted young Ben out of his complacency...
Vol. 14 • November 1950 • No. 11
