NOTES IN THE NEWS
notes in the news A Kind Word for the 87th It isn't often that we feel we can spare a kind word for the Eighty-Seventh Congress, but this is one of those rare occasions. In responding to President...
...The same kind of pressure brought on Udall by the power trust was also brought to bear on Seaton...
...The local NAACP, whose membership includes a majority of whites, is sharply divided on the issue—almost entirely on racial lines, with Negroes generally supporting release of the film and whites almost exclusively siding with the University's decision to remake it...
...The decision is to permit private utilities to transmit power from the $1 billion Colorado River Storage Project...
...These kids need food, clothing, and blankets . . . We can only do so much with our limited military pay...
...But they also recognize that "civil liberty is indivisible," in the American Civil Liberties Union's incisive phrase...
...But it has happened now and here is how: More than a decade ago, The Progressive urged the development of an American approach to the problem of Germany that we were to reempha-size many times thereafter...
...The vital importance of this right was never stated more clearly than when Justice Louis D. Brandeis emphasized from the bench of the U.S...
...But the reverberations in the community will not die down for many months...
...I have a pleasant little place of my own, with a spare room, a tile stove (with nine Swiss tiles), a set of rosewood chess men, and a wife I can beat at chess...
...The utilities lost this round in Congress and the pressure was again concentrated on the Secretary of the Interior, who had been given discretionary authority by Congress to make the decision...
...It worked so well that it is now accepted as an adequate, and cheaper, building material...
...51 The President has failed to issue his promised order prohibiting discrimination in housing in which Federal agencies have a financial interest...
...Agitators will tell them about your 36,000 tiles and my nine and about your 129 rooms and my spare room...
...Albert Perry, Co...
...But within the executive branch of the government, in those areas where the Administration functions without the further consent of Congress, there has been such a quickening of action that the Southern Regional Council, in evaluating this development recently, reported, "The events and policies of these months represent, in sum, a genuine turning point in American race relations...
...In summarizing the record of the Administration, the SRC includes these items on the plus side of the ledger: 11 Action by the Justice Department to speed integration of schools...
...Today, FPC is under increasing attack from progressives in Congress for this same failure even though the Commission has been completely restaffed by President Kennedy...
...In a signed editorial published in all the dailies of his shrunken empire, Hearst recently urged the creation of "an unarmed, united Germany" as "a sort of ward of the United Nations...
...Dear Mrs...
...But still...
...Negro and white alike, they share a deep common concern for the desperate housing needs of the Negro, and they have worked together in an effort to break down the barriers of discrimination...
...Geographically, you cannot take Germany out of the military arena, so why not take the military arena out of Germany...
...The vote confirming Woodward's appointment was taken without a roll call...
...The film has been placed under seal in the University's archives for twenty years, presumably with final disposition or eventual use to be determined then...
...The recorded conversations are being used as a script for a new film, to be made by reenacting the original scenes with actors in staged settings...
...The President recommended it in his budget for fiscal 1962...
...Actually, however, that portion of the book suggests the disarming of both East and West Germany as a prelude to unification of the two Germanys...
...and desegregation of railroad stations, achieved through persuasion by the Justice Department...
...However, the tenor of the SRC's appraisal, published in a booklet entitled "Executive Support of Civil Rights," is best summed up in its overall conclusion: "The Administration's use of executive powers has brought new vitality to the civil rights struggle, and new hope that America may soon overcome its old racial dilemma...
...A house with 129 rooms, 36,000 Spanish and Portuguese tiles, a nine-hole golf course, and a tunnel to the Bath and Tennis Club...
...What ultimacyl And I, on my part, shall be frank to say that if I pretended not to envy you, I should be a hypocrite...
...Both groups agree that the University's handling of the project from the beginning could scarcely have been more inept, and that the poor judgment and evident buck-passing of University personnel are inexcusable...
...No comprehensive legislation concerning civil rights has been proposed by the Administration, no special message to Congress has been devoted to the subject, and no broadside appeal has been made to the nation—although the President has mentioned the subject briefly on a number of occasions...
...The drift in the Federal Power Commission away from concern for the public interest is also causing alarm among observers who keep a watch on the consumer's pocketbook...
...We don't give a darn for publicity, but we want help, and you can do it...
...In his report to the President on administrative agencies more than a year ago, Dean James Landis cited the FPC as the worst example of the "dismal failure" of these agencies to protect the public interest...
...Some of these orphans—not all of them, of course—will live to grow up and grow up to be Communists...
...The whole story is long and hopelessly snarled, but this, briefly, is the background: In August, I960, a young Negro lawyer, one of the leaders of the NAACP and other civil rights groups in Wisconsin, proposed to the University's Bureau of Audio-Visual Instruction that the Bureau make a film on racial discrimination in housing...
...A surprising number of young Republicans have volunteered for service though there is no salary—only living expenses and $75 monthly severance pay when they quit...
...You know what happened to people like you and me in Russia...
...Now, hardly a year afterward, the Peace Corps has become the most affirmative instrument of our foreign policy in the dozen countries in which its members are deployed...
...The letter is signed, "S-Sgt...
...Please make no mistake of our intent...
...Under the able direction of Sargent Shriver, one of the President's brothers-in-law, the Peace Corps has recruited a membership which, as Edward P. Morgan put it, has "such a blend of tender idealism and tough practicality that it fairly quivers with esprit and ingenuity...
...Invasion of Privacy It is important to point out that those urging release of the film recognized that invasion of privacy was involved...
...The Burlington, Vermont, Free Press, in an editorial favoring the decision, bluntly said it was "appeasement...
...But on January 17, 1961, Seaton gave his lame-duck decision in favor of distributing the public power over public power lines...
...That newfound best friend is a Negro...
...May: I have just read the recent article about Palm Beach in Look magazine...
...He hailed a new "pattern of cooperation" between private and public power and said that $27 million would be saved by his action...
...Those 36,009 tiles—your 36,000 and my nine—remind me that I was showing a visitor mine one day and he said, "Lenin said that 'the cobblestones are the artillery of the proletariat.' " A bit farfetched, that...
...The Colorado decision, standing alone, might be put down to a momentary slip from the Democratic Party's platform commitments...
...The committee which had promoted the project and the producer of the film were furious...
...The head of the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People promptly called out a picket line, accusing the University of, among other things, "film burning" and protecting bigots...
...The proposal was widely derided as "visionary liberalism" and denounced as pro-Soviet by those—the Hearst press among them—who wanted to harness the vast military potential of West Germany to the NATO alliance...
...The reason for this burst of statesmanship is not hard to find...
...We always hear how generous we Americans are...
...Yet the film was produced, using cameras concealed in a station wagon, and lapel microphones wired to small radio transmitters, with the conversations tape-recorded on the receiving end...
...life of an Administration is four years...
...Alex Radin, general manager of the American Public Power Association, has stated that the "letters of intent" are "vague in many respects" and "leave serious doubt as to whether the new arrangement will provide all of the benefits to the government and the consumer-owned electric systems that would have been made available from the all-Federal system...
...What one observer has termed the "widespread agony" centers around a motion picture made by the University of Wisconsin depicting a dozen or so on-the-spot cases of white landlords and real estate agents in Madison as they refused housing to Negroes because of racial prejudice or fear of unfavorable reactions from prejudiced neighbors or tenants...
...Creation of the film was turned over to a young motion picture production associate employed by the University, who was given a free hand...
...Expansion of opportunities for Negroes in civil service employment at higher levels, and, more important, "the transfer of emphasis away from technical non-discrimination and toward the actual recruitment and advancement of Negroes...
...The Peace Corps program is immensely popular...
...Asked why he had left a comfortable and profitable life on the farm, he replied: "I was just sitting there watching the world go by—and worrying—and this was the first time anybody had asked me to help...
...A year later a small committee organized for this specific purpose had raised the money from three donors, and the regents of the University had routinely accepted it to make a "candid" film on the proposed subject...
...only reenactment, the University insisted, would satisfy the basic criticism of the film...
...He later said he hoped privately the money would not be forthcoming...
...May, why I'm not complaining...
...Every one of these countries has asked for more—and fifty other nations are clamoring for their first contingent...
...territory would be to remove the hostile forces of East and West to points separated by the width of the country...
...In responding to President Kennedy's request for a greatly expanded Peace Corps, both houses acted with the speed and enthusiasm usually reserved for voting additional billions for armaments...
...A main purpose of neutralizing Germany politically and economically as U.N...
...a lot higher than I need to...
...Many of the "backers of the infamous natural gas bills" (which were designed to weaken the Commission's control over consumer prices) are on the Council, Dingell said...
...Their proposed solution was to mask out faces and house numbers, but the University argued that this was impractical technically, and— more importantly—inadequate ethically, since neighborhoods, houses, and distinctive clothing were readily identifiable...
...Not All Good News However, in a section of its review entitled "Areas of Little Action," the SRC came down hard on the Administration for its failure to move, in the executive area, on several counts: f The government continues to grant large amounts of research funds to colleges and universities that practice segregation...
...He cited the creation by the Commission of a Natural Gas Advisory Council, to advise on natural gas policy...
...Proxmire was joined in his opposition by Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, home state of the appointee, and Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania...
...Sure as Shooting' Mrs...
...Many of those who argue for release of the film in its present form would condemn eavesdropping practices in any other instance...
...Compared with those orphans I'm living pretty high up on the hog (as you Southerners say...
...It was a young Republican, a wheat farmer from Montana now working to help solve soil problems in Sierra Leone, in West Africa, who best expressed the mood of many of those who enlisted...
...Hearst's conversion is most timely...
...Public power advocates who chart the complexities of White House politics are apprehensive that now that Big Steel has been subdued, the Administration will embark on an ardent courtship of some segments of business to prove it is not unfriendly to the business community...
...Peace corpsmen are helping in a hundred ways to improve life and quicken hope in the underdeveloped countries—in the areas of education, sanitation, irrigation, health, and housing...
...But the rebuffs, the insults, and the humiliations suffered daily by Negroes in their quest for housing have so exacerbated their frustrations that many of them, along with a number of non-Negro sympathizers, are willing to place ends before means by compromising the civil liberties principle involved if there is a chance their action might help break the brutal bonds of discrimination...
...Shades of Dixon-Yates The Houston Chronicle praised Udall's move as demonstrating "shrewd political acumen" and a "bit of placating" of the utilities by the Kennedy Administration...
...On February 3, 1961, Secretary Udall reaffirmed Seaton's decision...
...The Colorado project decision was particularly shocking because it reversed the direction established by Udall's predecessor under President Eisenhower, Fred Seaton...
...il Adoption by the Justice Department of a positive—and aggressive-policy of persuasion, which has been effective in several instances in preventing trouble over desegregation...
...What grandeur...
...Pretty visionary stuff for Hearst...
...f The Administration tolerates the continuing "national scandal" of a lily-white national guard in eleven Southern states...
...The producer, a member of the University staff, resigned in protest...
...Not that I'm too badly off...
...So you see, Mrs...
...The director of the Bureau insists now that he never intended to produce a film, described in the original proposal as a "candid" picture, using eavesdropping methods, and the producer's supervisor—who participated in some of the production work—has since declared he was "disgusted with the whole thing...
...Creation by executive order of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, whose chief mission is to enforce fair employment practices among private firms which hold government contracts...
...Kim Woon) is supporting it alone and from his own meager funds...
...The uproar in Madison began when the highest officials of the University, upon learning of the methods used to produce the film, decided to suppress it...
...What do you think...
...ident Kennedy's first fifteen months in office is his cautious, almost timid, approach in dealing with Congress, and in no area has this approach skirted the issues more glaringly than in the field of civil rights...
...rice in Pakistan, and another American volunteer in Pakistan so completely revolutionized a village irrigation system that the government promptly rushed him off to teach the method at an agricultural academy...
...Morgan tells of the son of a Southern county sheriff who is working side by side with his best friend in an engineering project in Africa...
...Turning Point in Civil Rights An obvious characteristic of Pres...
...They accused the University of violating its contract to make a "candid" motion picture about racial discrimination in housing...
...In the South," the SRC complains, "the Administration has had almost no goal except compliance with Federal law...
...It has proved a smashing success...
...Herbert May Palm Beach, Fla...
...The purpose of the film was to educate this Northern community to the urgent need to eliminate its discrimination practices by documenting the fact that racial discrimination in housing is so widespread that it prevents Negroes from securing decent homes...
...Clyde Ellis, general manager of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, called Udall's about-face "bewildering and naive" and charged bitterly that the public power systems and co-ops had been "sold down the river...
...Will they be satisfied then...
...The director of the orphanage (Mr...
...But the utilities never give up...
...This has happened many times before and will happen again unless something is done...
...From this point on there is considerable conflicting testimony concerning responsibility for the hidden camera technique...
...Appointment of a substantial number of Negroes "of recognized competence and distinction" to high-level policy-making posts...
...In spite of considerable detailed criticism, mostly of sins of omission, the Council gives the Administration, on balance, a commendable grade for its achievements to date in the field of civil rights...
...The director of the Bureau approved the idea, but said that $3,000 would have to be raised from outside sources to finance the project...
...Just a year ago, when President Kennedy proposed the initial legislation to Congress, it was greeted, in some quarters in Congress, with derisive outcries that the program would only mean "pouring more money down a rat-hole" to finance "beatnik do-gooders...
...Sincerely, &c, Theophrastus Such P.S...
...Should we sell what we have, you and I, and give it to the poor—tile by tile...
...How did the University come to make the film in the first place, and why was the picture completed, for all practical purposes, before the decision was made to shelve it...
...I'm not complaining—least of all when I read about the Sung Man orphanage in South Korea...
...There was scarcely a whisper of protest as the lawmakers granted the infant agency a total of $63,750,000, as compared with $40,000,000 a year ago, thus enabling the Corps to double its authorized volunteers to 10,000 by August, 1963...
...Public power spokesmen point out that Udall's decision was not based on firm contract offers but on "letters of intent" from the utility companies...
...After a number of consultations among the president of the University, other administrators, and several faculty members, it was decided the film was a mistake and the best thing to do was to shelve it...
...There the matter rests, uneasily...
...The Council, one of the most respected organizations working in the civil rights field, had much to say of a critical nature, not only on matters which would require Congressional action, but on several areas of action within the exclusive scope of the Presidency...
...I'd like to see your digs anyway...
...The hurts and bruises of Madison's "family quarrel" will eventually heal, and with the healing may come a recognition that it is morally wrong to seek the achievement of a civil right by violating a civil liberty and that a full respect for "the most comprehensive of the rights of man" will strengthen, rather than weaken, the struggle by all factions in the film dispute in their quest for full civil rights for those minorities to whom they are still so cruelly denied in the North as well as the South...
...The Dean Is 'Shocked' When the film was all but completed, it was shown to the dean of the Extension Division (within which the Audio-Visual Bureau operates), who is reported to have said he was "shocked" by and had been totally unaware of the technique used...
...5[ There has been no effort to amend the Hill-Burton Act, which permits Federally-aided construction of hospitals with "separate but equal" facilities...
...Republicans are not immune...
...Gratuitous insinuations cross the line in both directions...
...A Family Quarrel A well-intentioned effort to advance the cause of civil rights collided head-on recently in Madison, Wisconsin, with a fundamental principle of civil liberties, precipitating a family quarrel among the community's civil rights leaders that left them troubled, and tragically divided sharply along racial lines...
...They have displayed a remarkable inventiveness that has endeared them to native populations...
...Its evaluation is clearly influenced by the "new spirit" that pervades the Washington scene, and the consequent confidence that further action will be forthcoming—expressed in the Council's hopeful comment that, after all, "the...
...nip them in the bud, so to say...
...Perry to stay away from them and let them freeze and starve now...
...The Peace Corps program may, in the long run, do something to us, too...
...The dispute arose over production techniques: The film was made with hidden cameras and microphones, without the knowledge of the property owners or their agents, a method which qualifies as invasion of privacy and which civil libertarians classify as comparable to wiretapping...
...That may be true, but it's not evident here...
...Strange Bedfellow We can't recall an occasion when we have found ourselves bedded down with a member of the Hearst clan on a major issue...
...I'd like to visit you and have a good talk and, maybe, work something out...
...The Wisconsin Civil Liberties Union, the University faculty, the Board of Regents, and both Madison daily newspapers approved the University's decision...
...Supreme Court that the citizen's right of privacy is "the most comprehensive of the rights of man and the right most valued by civilized men...
...Proxmire presented a powerful case in the Senate that Woodward could not meet either standard because of lack of adequate experience and a record that shows a "conspicuous lack of sensitivity regarding conflicts of interest" and a tendency to vote against consumer interests...
...A boy from California invented a way to improve the processing of...
...If the Administration should indeed follow such a course, it might deal a severe blow to the REA co-ops, the power districts, and municipally owned plants—the so-called "preference groups" under Federal power policy—which are deeply engaged in a desperate battle to reverse a decision by Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall that has left them stunned...
...The University responded with a proposal, acceptable to the donors who had financed the project, but not to the promoters and the producer of the film, to remake the film, using the actual script developed in the eavesdropping scenes but reenact-ing them with professional actors to avoid revealing the identities of the persons photographed and taped in acts of discrimination recorded live in the original film...
...Retreat on Public Power The President's devastating victory in the recent showdown between the Administration and Big Steel has not been an occasion for unrestrained jubilation among those concerned with checking the thrust of still another major basic industry—the power trust...
...Throughout the report, even in its critical sections, runs the theme that the most important accomplishment of the Kennedy Administration is the creation of a new climate, "a deep change of attitude and motivation," that has greatly multiplied opportunities for action on civil rights at all levels of government and in society generally...
...The description of your home—"the ultimate in Palm Beach luxury"—enchants me...
...Nevertheless, those opposed to releasing the film support the University administration's decision on the ethical ground that the film constitutes a flagrant invasion of privacy...
...Friends who have worked together for years on improving the civil rights climate find themselves on opposite sides of the film controversy, their motives questioned, their sincerity doubted by those on the other side...
...We proposed that the United States take the initiative in calling for a reunified Germany that would be unarmed and neutralized and whose security and integrity would be guaranteed by the United Nations and the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries...
...Representative John Dingell, one of the staunchest liberals in the House, recently blasted the FPC for reaching "a new low in its record of disregard for the consumer...
...What should we do...
...51 The Office of Education has failed to pursue a positive policy of aiding school districts in the process of desegregating...
...Rising to register his opposition to Woodward, Senator William Prox-mire, Wisconsin Democrat, pointed out that the FPC, as Dean Landis had noted in his stinging report, is badly in need of "qualified and dedicated" members...
...When we got to the orphanage, we found the little children cold and hungry and crying...
...Now, after all these years, William Randolph Hearst, Jr., editor-in-chief of the Hearst newspapers, has come out for precisely the same approach...
...The most recent appointment to the Commission, for example, Harold Woodward of Illinois, is said to be the choice of Senator Everett Dirksen, the reactionary Illinois Republican...
...The President intervened to advise Congress that "Federal transmission lines are necessary...
...If the FPC persists in its disregard of the public interest, it would scarcely be surprising to see Dixon-Yates back in town...
...They pursued the fight in Congress with such intensity that on June 15, 1961, Chairman Clarence Cannon of the House Appropriations Committee said, "The power trust is making the most carefully organized and most determined fight against these transmission lines that I have ever seen since I have been in the House...
...If wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping violate the right of privacy in any instance, these practices violate that right in all cases...
...An Interstate Commerce Commission regulation effectively eliminating segregated facilities in bus stations throughout the South—"an outstanding gain...
...Perhaps," Hearst allowed, "but remember that the most constant threat to world peace is the nose-against-nose contact of the free and Communist worlds in Germany, which makes any idea worth consideration...
...And sure as shooting...
...No one concerned with civil rights has voiced any disagreement with the film's purpose...
...Many of those opposed to the original film clearly have a genuine understanding and appreciation of its supporters' deep emotional involvement...
...Here's a letter about it in the Los Angeles Times: "We just found out that the children of this orphanage didn't get any food today...
...Further Republican insistence that such an approach to the problem of Germany represents a "diabolical conspiracy of surrender on the Left" would necessarily indict their dear friend and devoted supporter—not to mention one of our most impeccable Right-wing patriots —William Randolph Hearst, Jr.—as an arch-conspirator...
...A member of the Commission itself, Howard Morgan, recently wrote a stinging dissent to a decision of the other four members in which he charged them with authorizing a "political gamble" by a private power company to head off a public power proposal in the Northwest...
...Among the principal Republican charges leveled at The Liberal Papers (See Editorial on Page 3) was that the book advocated the "pro-Soviet" and "surrender" policy of "demilitarizing West Germany...
...It is argued, ironically, that he was influenced by the fact that Udall would soon take over and issue just such an order, so Seaton beat him to the punch...
...In February of this year Udall announced that the privately owned transmitters would be interposed between the publicly owned power generators and the publicly and co-operatively owned distributors...
...You weren't with 128 rooms, nor / with a piney-wood chess set...
...In Colombia, for example, a member of the Corps, short of steel, tried bamboo to reinforce concrete...
...Such a course, we felt then and feel today, would remove Russia's historic and understandable fear of a united, armed Reich bent on aggressive recovery of her lost territories...
...N, 1st Battle Group, 5th Cavalry, APO 24, Korea...
...What then...
...But it is deeply disturbing when considered in the light of other developments in the Federal Power Commission...
...And I'm worried...
...And, he went on, "with a united Germany, why not make Berlin the headquarters for the United Nations Organization...
...It might be better to tell Sgt...
...We are not asking for continuous support, only for someone to show these children that somewhere someone cares for them...
...A number of persons in the community, most of them Negroes, rallied to the support of the committee and the producer...
...what if they are insatiable...
Vol. 26 • May 1962 • No. 5
