"We never
claimed it to be
authentic"

THIS was the casual remark of the executive secretary of the Mississippi White Citizens Councils to Attorney General Eugene Cook of Georgia, whose office had distributed an inflammatory racial intermarriage leaflet (text supplied by the Mississippi WCC) in the official envelopes of the Georgia State Law Department.

The White Citizens Councils flooded the South with tape recordings and mimeographed texts of an alleged speech made by a nonexistent "Prof. Roosevelt Williams" at an NAACP meeting which was never held. In this imaginary speech the Phantom Professor tells his listeners that the ultimate aim of the NAACP is intermarriage.

NAACP Secretary Roy Wilkins last winter denounced this alleged speech as

"an obvious fake," pointing out that the NAACP has not and never has had any person on its staff by that name.

The fraud was exposed Sunday, September 2, 1956, by the Columbus, Ga., *Ledger-Enquirer*, which editorially denounced its circulation by Attorney General Cook as a "terrible public disservice." Cook was also lambasted September 6 in an editorial in the *Atlanta Constitution*.

Faced with this expose, Attorney General Cook now says that Robert P. Patterson, executive secretary of the Mississippi White Citizens Councils, told him: "We never claimed it [the speech] to be authentic."

But read the story as set forth in three of Georgia's leading daily newspapers—see next following pages. . . .

# Cook Disclaims Part in Release Of Council Text

Atty. Gen. Eugene Cook has disclaimed responsibility for distribution by his office of a White Citizens Council report, purporting to be the text of a talk on interracial relations made by a Negro professor to an NAACP chapter.

In reply to a Sunday editorial in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer charging that the report was "spurious" and "trashy, inflammatory" propaganda, Cook said in a letter to the editor of the paper:

"We received copies of this purported speech from a segregation group in Mississippi. When I read the alleged text I personally doubted its authen-

ticity and filed it away in this office.

"Without my knowledge one of my staff members assumed it was authentic and proceeded to distribute some of the copies along with a compilation of our state segregation laws."

THE MIMEOGRAPHED sheet mailed by the law department of the NAACP—Below is an excerpt from a taped speech by Roosevelt Williams, a professor at Howard University (for Negroes) in Washington, D.C., delivered at a meeting of the NAACP in Jackson, Miss." The purported extract dealt with personal relations between

white persons and Negroes. The Ledger-Enquirer said it had made inquiries at Howard University and found that there is not now nor has there ever been a "Prof. Roosevelt Williams" there.

COOK SAID he had stopped distribution "as soon as I discovered it was being sent out." He said he telephoned Robert P. Patterson, executive director of the Mississippi Citizens' Council at Greenwood, Miss., and quoted Patterson as saying "we never claimed it (the speech) to be authentic" and that he got a tape recording of it "third or fourth" hand.

Reprinted from
Atlanta (Ga.) Journal
September 5, 1956

EVERYONE is deploring violence and ex-
tremism in the school desegregation campaign.
A favorite theme of many people and publica-
tions is that Negro citizens and their organiza-
tions are "stirring up trouble between the
races" and "creating racial tensions and ill-
feeling."

The "Roosevelt Williams" lie, the spreading
of it in an organized, deliberate fashion by the
White Citizens Councils, and the connivance in
this vicious, inflammatory fake by the office of
Attorney General Eugene Cook of Georgia is

but one example of the way in which certain
white persons and organizations are "stirring
up trouble between the races."

Negro citizens and their organizations have
simply asked, in a quiet, orderly and dignified
manner, that the U. S. Supreme Court ruling
against segregated school systems be observed.
For asking this, they have been slandered,
threatened, and their small children menaced
by mobs.

Which side is "stirring up trouble"?

Which is "extreme"?

OCT. 1956

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF
COLORED PEOPLE

20 West 40th Street

New York 18, N. Y.