St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1952-02-15
Notion Magazine:

Moore, who had led a long and
brave fight for Negro rights, was
bombed TO death in Minis, Florida.
He died as he was being rushed to
the hospital by his brother-in-law,
Master Sergeant George Simms,
Just returned from fourteen
months in Korea. II was Simms
who, in the middle Of the night,
found the bleeding and dying
Moore in the shambles of his home
after 1t had been bombed, not with
dynamite, but with nitro-glycer-
inc, or TINT. Even the white
folks" of Brevard County concede
that Harry Moore was "a good
law abiding citizen" The day he
died was, indeed, no day of tri-
umph for American democracy.
The NATION does not need to
indulge in any post facto express
sions of outrage over this latest
act of Florida violence. Two fine
pieces by StetsOn Kennedy mo
vember "a, December 22) and two
editorial comments December 49,
called the attention of NATION
readers to the increase of violence
in Florida and the meaning of this
violence. When on November 6,
Samuel Shepard, one of the Grove
land defendants, was murdered by
Florida sheriff, we wired Presi-
dent Truman, then vacationing in
Key West, urging him to speak
out against the rule of terror in
Florida, and suggested that he
demand action from his Attorney
General. Sending the wire requir-
ed no special insight. In a sense
Harry T. Moore was murdered be-
cause the rising tide of violence
was ignored.
But what is truly tragic about
the death of Moore is that even
now those who should know better
refuse to acknowledge the harsh
meaning of his death. For ex-
ample, the editorials in the New
York TIMES, and the HERALD
TRIBUNE of December 2S, with
their phrases about this creeping
sickness" and "faceless menace"
and about a wave of crimes
arising from racial bias" were
not only irratingly irrelevant but
clearly evasive.
The bombing murder of Harry
T. Moore was part of clear pat
tern of open force directed against
the struggle of racial minorities
to win full rights as citizens,
Moore was a symbol of this strug-
gle SO was John Lester Mitchell,
one of three Negro plaintiffs in
suit to win voting rights in
Louisiana, who was shot by a dep
uty sheriff on November 10. So
was the Reverend j. A Delaine,
chairman of the parents commit
tee in the Clarendon, South Caro-
lima, school case. whose home was
recently burned to the ground by
way of reprisal. These crimes can
not be understood as senseless
acts of depraved or prejudiCed in
dividuals. On the contrary, they
were essentially political crimes,
crimes deliberately committed for
purpose
The struggle for full civil rights
for Negroes, as we have pointed
out. entered upon new phase
with the filing of the suit which
sought to end segregation in the
public schools of Clarendon, South
Carolina. Coming in the wake of
series of important Clvil-rights
victories in the Supreme Court,
this suit threatened the entire edi-
flee of segregation and white SUI
premacy, since it involved, not a
few individual Negroes, but all
Negroes of school age IN almost
every Southern state, The Dixie
Gratis were quick TO see that if the
trend of which this suit was part
was not reversed. the existing So
cial pattern in the South would be
seriously undermined. II was not
| the crackpots but the Bourbon
leaders who voiced the first
threats and thereby revived the
always present danger of mass
| violence.
Governor James Byrnes of
South Carolina. remembered as a
not too successful former Secre-
tary of State. sounded the first
alarm. In Reconstruction days"
he said "a carpetbag government
tried to do il (force the South to
abandon segregated schools) and