EXPLOSION IN BIRMINGHAM

...The reaction to the sit-ins, he wrote, "has been new manifestations of fear, force, and terror punctuated by striking acts of courage...

...Nor is it a source of joy if you happen to be a Negro resident...

...The answer to either question is not easy...

...In one of those cases, the plaintiff testified that he had not been damaged by the advertisement even though he said it libeled him...

...It said: "Birmingham people do not see themselves in the image Mr...

...It all started quietly...

...But some of its citizens believe that the leaders may be wrong...

...Mob rule has not and we are determined will not take over...

...The Layman's Union is an organization which worked hard to get through the Alabama legislature a bill allowing churches to withdraw from their parent national headquarters under certain conditions...

...Certainly we have extremists—but what city does not have...

...It also raises the question of whether Birmingham was wronged...

...Among Northern newsmen, the reaction appears to be either that the Times was right or that the situation is too touchy to handle...

...Those who thought they had been libeled filed damage suits...

...Then Bessemer officials subpoenaed from the hotel where Salisbury had stayed a list of all the telephone calls he made while he was there...

...He says he has no hatred for Negroes...

...Newspaper editors argue that this will mean a decrease in newsgathering...

...Hardly anyone knew he was there...

...The Negroes want black supremacy...

...Some members of this group, which includes public officials in the Birmingham area, had expressed interest in knowing whether other Methodist ministers were contributing to Hughes' group...

...they think their city was badly slandered...

...The Post-Herald, the other Birmingham paper, ran the entire story with an editorial saying, "Fear and hatred do not grip Birmingham...

...Whether violence erupts in Birmingham then may depend largely upon Police Commissioner Connor...

...A Klan spokesman said earlier that fifty crosses were to be burned...

...Jones refused...

...It is hard to imagine that anyone would be unhappy with his lot in this prosperous steel city...

...We have a community where people, regardless of race, creed or color, live a good life...

...it also warned newsmen who go to Birmingham not to use hotel telephones...

...In mid-August, Howard Sullinger, a deputy circuit solicitor for Bessemer, announced that a grand jury had been called for August 29...

...When I asked a distinguished citizen what will happen on the day the first Birmingham white school is desegregated, he looked out the window for a long time, slowly shook his head, and said, "I don't know...

...Jones got on a bus and sat next to London...

...The Post-Herald has a star columnist, John Temple Graves, who says Connor has done a fine job "as Police Commissioner of the potentially key city in the integration crisis...

...In the first two cases tried before an Alabama state court, the juries returned verdicts of $500,000 in each case against the ministers and the Times...

...The nation's press, instead of being aroused by the harassment of the Times in Alabama, has chosen, with a few honorable exceptions, to ignore the situation...

...On the Tuesday before Labor Day, Hughes was served with a subpoena requiring him to bring his records, including those of contributors, to the grand jury...

...The jury's verdict was based obviously on the theory of punishing the Times and the ministers...

...The Federal Court in Alabama, however, held that the Times was "doing business" in Alabama when it sent Salisbury there...

...But the Ku Klux Klan and the Methodist Layman's Union did know of him...

...Holland had just arrived in Princeton for a conference on industrial development in the South when a friend handed him that morning's edition of the Times which carried Salisbury's story on Birmingham...

...One of them, a young Methodist minister, spent a long weekend in jail when he refused to give the grand jury the records of his organization...

...JAMES CLAYTON, an editorial staff member of the Washington Post, recently wrote a special series of articles for that paper on the Birmingham case...

...Similarly, any damage which the commissioners may have suffered probably came from the republication...

...He finds that some of the city's most reputable citizens are relieved to learn he is telephoning them from a booth so that the call cannot be traced...

...They cite what has happened to the Times in another series of cases in Alabama where the same rule was applied in a state court...

...Graves' general position on race questions is best illustrated by his calling the civil rights plank of the Democratic platform in 1960 the "Congo plank...

...He decided to fight the demand for his records...

...The apparent reason why they were sued, while the other signers were not, is that they live in Alabama...

...the city is spending heavily on Negro schools...

...He quoted one Negro as saying, "The difference between Johannesburg and Birmingham is that here they have not opened fire with the tanks and big guns...

...Hughes spent the weekend in jail before Sullinger issued a second subpoena the following Tuesday directing Hughes to testify but not requiring him to bring his records...

...In reply, Catledge said that Salisbury was a "reliable and experienced reporter...

...If they don't exist, our county and city officials and every law enforcement agency in the county have been libeled and slandered...

...But by making the ministers a party to those suits along with the Times, the plaintiffs were able to block the Times from transferring the cases from the state court to a Federal court...

...But there are other things about Birmingham which have changed since Salisbury arrived there last March...

...But last year, in a speech at Selma, Alabama, he said: "Yes, we are on the one-yard line...

...Birmingham lawyers who have looked into the indictment and the civil libel suits point out some unusual facets...

...They show, he said, "that the mighty and glorified Times wears only the mask of fair news reporting...

...He learns that other citizens and public officials are not available to him when they discover that he wants to talk about the racial situation there...

...The attitude of Southern newsmen seems to be that Birmingham was right and the Times has its licks coming...

...Perhaps the biggest of all...

...During the next month, there was a series of behind-the-scenes discussions...

...Do we let them go over for a touchdown or do we raise the Confederate flag as did our forefathers and tell them . . . 'You shall not pass' . . .?" Those were his closing remarks in a speech in which he said the Negroes "don't want racial equalization at all...

...Corporations have been held subject to suit in any jurisdiction in which they commit a wrong...

...Then a grand jury in nearby Bessemer began its own investigation of what had happened...

...the economic level of Negroes there is higher than in any other Southern city...

...A reporter for a Northern newspaper or magazine is even less welcome there now than he was before...

...On May 4, the Times published a front page statement prepared by two leading residents of Birmingham, William P. Engel and Mortimer H. Jordan...

...He invited Salisbury to testify, but Salisbury declined on the advice of his attorneys...

...Equally disturbing to a newsman has been the reaction of the United States' press to Birmingham and the New York Times...

...Then it used an hour to deliberate on what it had heard and to draw up and vote upon a forty-two-count indictment of Salisbury...

...Now a countersuit against several Alabama officials—including the Governor—has been filed by the ministers in an effort to block prosecution of the remaining libel suits and restrain the state from taking more of their property...

...you wish to keep things between the races precisely as they are today...

...Birmingham first learned of what it now calls Salisbury's assault when it read in the Birmingham News of April 13 a column which E. L. Holland, Jr., editor of its editorial page, had written from Princeton, New Jersey...

...Holland was floored...

...The commissioners complained about nineteen specific statements in the story, several of which are quoted above...

...To understand these questions, it is necessary to review the events of the past year...

...London was fined $30 and costs...

...Backing Connor strongly in his actions as Police Commissioner are both Birmingham newspapers...

...The Times promptly protested that it could not be sued in Alabama...

...He was quoted as saying, "If conditions as described in the Times articles are found actually to exist, our grand jury will do all it can to remedy those conditions...

...An affidavit in the court files says that one witness was told on August 25 by Sullinger's office that he was to be a witness "with respect to a proposed indictment of Harrison E. Salisbury for criminal libel...

...In those cases, the Times and four Negro ministers were sued for libel allegedly contained in an advertisement which the ministers signed and which the Times printed...

...Salisbury was apparently indicted under a statute making it a crime to publish something which tends to provoke a breach of the peace...

...If the Times discovered any inaccuracies in the story, he added, it would correct them...

...They feel that if it caves in to the demand of the Negro for equal rights, the fight for "the Southern way of life" will be over...

...When seven young Negroes attempted a sit-in at four downtown stores last summer, they were arrested with a show of force...

...Projected to its logical extent, this ruling means that any newspaper is subject to suit in any locality to which it sends a reporter...

...Comparatively few readers of the New York Times are likely to know any of the Alabama officials, yet the civil libel suit claims they were damaged both personally and politically...

...The News says Connor attempts to enforce the law fairly...

...This had been a general rule which applied to both corporations and individuals to avoid the hostility of juries in a jurisdiction to which a person or a corporation might be a stranger...

...Every channel of communication, every reasoned approach, every inch of middle ground has been fragmented by the emotional dynamite of racism, reinforced by the whip, the razor, the gun, the bomb, the torch, the club, the knife, the mob, the police, and many branches of the state's apparatus...

...Immediately after Hughes testified and was released, the grand jury began its deliberations and returned its indictment...

...London then testified he struck the Negro after the latter 'balled up his fist' and put his hand on the white man's leg," the Post-Herald reported...

...Newspapers had assumed that they could be sued only on their home grounds—where they are published or mainly circulate...

...The closing paragraph of his column in the News set the tone for all that has happened since: "That headline [in the Times] says worlds: 'Fear and Hatred Grip Birmingham.' This is the big lie...

...Yes, we have isolated cases of violence—but what city does not have such . . .?" It spelled out some pleasant facts about Birmingham: Negro teachers earn slightly more on the average than white teachers...

...The Times has appealed those verdicts but because the ministers failed to note an appeal promptly in the first case, some of their personal property has already been seized by the Alabama court to satisfy the judgment...

...The newspapers generally agree...

...Others think it is good politics to whip the New York newspapers as an Eastern influence seeking to desegregate the schools...

...As the nation changed from a collection of communities with great individual pride and some prejudice into a solidified country, the courts relaxed the rule...

...you can overlook some of the events that occasionally make the Birmingham newspapers...

...Turner Catledge, the Times' managing editor and a Southerner by birth, retracted nothing...

...I wish I did...

...Our backs are to the wall...

...The Times has carried the matter to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals where it now rests...

...The fight between Birmingham and the Times turned to the courts...

...The city which Salisbury had written of was not the city they know...

...To many newsmen and observers generally, it must be conceded, the situation between Birmingham and the Times is so ridiculous as to be mere horse opera...

...Most of the newspaper editors who are aware of this ruling find in it baleful consequences...

...Connor called the stories "a cheap attempt to smear our city and state...

...The ministers all testified at the two trials so far completed that they did not know their names were to be a part of the advertisement, which was signed by many persons active in the civil rights field...

...The grand jury listened to testimony for six days, hearing most of the people to whom Salisbury had talked...

...Salisbury has drawn of them...

...The political leadership of the city has taken the position that segregation is Birmingham's way of life...

...As the case reached the United States Supreme Court on an emergency petition late that Friday, the grand jury asked that Hughes be arrested for refusing to answer its questions...

...Explosion in Birmingham by JAMES CLAYTON One of those phenomenal events in American journalism which surprises almost everyone connected with it took place last spring and summer in Birmingham, Alabama...

...But the new rule has never been applied to newspapers on the grounds that they do not come within the judicial language of "doing business" in a particular state unless they are doing a major portion of their business there...

...Both were arrested and convicted of disorderly conduct...

...To Negroes and to whites who are trying to change the segregated pattern of Birmingham life, these are examples of what they can expect...

...Lawyers and court spectators," the Post Herald said, "took up a collection to pay London's fine...

...Only recently has the press begun to tell its readers that they must face the day when schools will either be desegregated or closed...

...These people say that he wrote of a city they know, a city where the races have existed separately, never equally, but always peacefully, in the past...

...In the next few months, these things happened: ^| The city commissioners of Birmingham and its neighbor, Bessemer, filed multi-million dollar libel suits against the Times...

...London asked him to move on the ground that there were empty seats in the rear where Negroes customarily sit...

...It is hard to imagine from "The Club" that Birmingham could be a city of fear and terror...

...If you believe in segegra-tion as a way of life...

...But among some Birmingham residents—not all of them Negroes— there was appreciation for Salisbury's stories...

...Their question is how long Birmingham will stay that way...

...Its citizens and its officials protested...

...The fight whipped quickly through the Alabama courts, with Hughes losing on every score...

...With the exception of the Washington Post, which sent this writer to Birmingham last fall, no one seems to display much interest...

...Yet no one can point to any breaches of the peace which the New York publication of his stories provoked...

...Jones was fined $100 and sentenced to 180 days in jail...

...They might as well make up their minds they're not going to 'sit-in' in Birmingham...

...Another pointed out that any breach of the peace which might have occurred was probably provoked by the republication of the stories in the Birmingham papers...

...During this week of hearings, however, the spotlight moved from Salisbury to a young Methodist minister named Robert Hughes...

...f Almost all of those to whom Salisbury had talked during his brief stay were subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury...

...Its leaders are sure they can keep them that way by keeping the Negro "in his place...

...To many of Birmingham's residents—those who sit in "The Club" and watch the city from its calm and placid residential districts—the reaction expressed by Holland and Connor was the reaction they felt...

...He has not returned...

...Led, or mis-led, by its politicians, Birmingham has begun to believe that desegregation can be postponed, perhaps indefinitely, by just saying that it will never happen...

...One lawyer called the indictment "silly...

...The story which had so upset the city was a grim and stark one...

...The second issue of freedom of the press arose when Birmingham began to react to what Salisbury had written in the Times...

...It was then that the first freedom of the press issue developed...

...A small but tough man, Connor has been a city commissioner for nineteen of the last twenty-three years...

...A few days later, when his report on life in Birmingham appeared in print, Birmingham exploded as if he had set off a bomb...

...Salisbury wrote of a city where race relations are so delicately balanced that even a minor wave of sit-ins sends "convulsive tremors" through its structure...

...The officials called upon Salisbury to come to Alabama to stand trial...

...A reporter for the New York Times slipped in and out of the city within forty-eight hours...

...Salisbury cited many instances of violence and brutality to back up his statements...

...that the face behind the mask is one of bigotry and hate...

...Over the years, a new concept has slowly evolved...

...This was denied when Salisbury claimed a privilege granted newsmen under Alabama law not to reveal their sources of information...

...They feared that he might be arrested on a warrant for criminal libel if he went back to Alabama...

...The Birmingham city commissioners filed their civil libel suits against Salisbury and the Times in Federal District Court in Alabama...

...These are the things one can document about Birmingham's reaction to its encounter with the New York Times...

...There is no doubt, however, that some Birmingham residents think both the indictment and the civil libel suit are justified...

...Salisbury has done his damage, Radio Moscow please copy . . ." A day later, Birmingham learned what Salisbury had said under that headline...

...The purpose, according to the Birmingham newspapers, is to give Alabama Methodist churches a way out if the Methodist church hierarchy ever pushes for desegregation...

...They also objected to the headline and to such statements as that mail had been intercepted and telephone lines tapped...

...He had won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting from Russia, Catledge noted...

...Hughes had been working quietly in Birmingham for two years on interracial projects—so quietly, in fact, that many of the residents did not know he existed...

...Eleven young men and women and two ministers who were convicted of trespass in other sit-in demonstrations each received sentences of 180 days in jail and a $100 fine...

...A grand jury in Bessemer indicted the reporter, Harrison E. Salisbury, for criminal libel...

...Birmingham's newspapers, and its political leaders, clearly look upon their city as the hope of white supremacy in the South...

...Two days later, the first of several libel suits was filed...

...But below the level of comedy, the situation has raised some fundamental questions about freedom of the press...

...But if you think something is wrong with segregation as a guiding principle of life and if that is a matter of conscience with you, Birmingham is not so delightful...

...Shortly after the libel actions were filed, the attorneys for the Birmingham commissioners demanded a list of all persons to whom Salisbury had talked in Alabama...

...To him, to some other Birmingham natives, and to most visitors, the city is running up a dead-end street...

...Birmingham is a delightful city to live in—if...

...There have been no corrections...

...The real question in Birmingham is not what happened last month or last year but what will happen in the future...

...This gave them the telephone numbers of his contacts...

...Its streets and sidewalks are as quiet and safe today as are those of the average industrial city...

...The mighty has fallen into the mud—and the once good gray Times has turned yellow...

...He said that Birmingham's Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Conner was elected in 1958 on a race-hate program...

...To all of this, Holland responded, "An amazing recital of untruths and semi-truths, employed to justify the conclusions obviously implanted in the writer's mind before he ever crossed the Mason-Dixon line, has provided the nation with a picture of Birmingham maliciously bigoted, noxiously false, viciously distorted...

...This raises the question of what a city does when it thinks it is wronged by a newspaper...

...When the libel suits were eventually filed, these were items upon which libel was alleged...

...Many lawyers, including many in Alabama, do not think that any jury outside of Alabama would have returned a verdict for more than a few dollars, if anything...

...There were no witnesses...

...Whites and blacks still walk the same streets," he said, "but the streets, the water supply, and the sewer system are about the only public facilities they share...

...Two weeks later, the Times printed a letter from Birmingham's three commissioners demanding a retraction...

...On the same page, the newspaper reported: "Crosses were burned at five white grammar and high schools last night...

...What will happen eventually in Birmingham no one knows...

...On September 1, while the grand jury was meeting on the Salisbury case, the Birmingham Post-Herald told the story of a twenty-year-old Negrq named Oscar Jones and a twenty-four-year-old white man named Mack London...

...After a long and careful hearing, the District Judge ruled against the Times, and ordered the cases brought to trial...

...It is apparently the first indictment for criminal libel in Alabama in twenty-five years...

...Police Commissioner Bull Connor said: "We don't care what the Democrats and Republicans say in their platforms about sit-ins...