The Week

Those who have for many years been obsessed with the figure America cuts overseas will do well to ponder a by-product of the Supreme Court’s attempt to impose upon society doctrinaire notions as to the proper social relationship between the races. For years self-conscious Americans decried the availability to the Communists of photographs signalling “White” and “Colored” waiting rooms. Now, under the Ideologues’ Interracial Reform Act of 1954, the Communists can exhibit photographs of tanks riding through Southern streets, of cordons of soldiers brandishing unsheathed bayonets at their neighbors.

A federal court ordered John Kasper, “a Washington D.C. segregationist”—to identify him as the Associated Press does—to desist from interfering with integration of the Clinton, Tennessee, High School. Mr. Kasper nevertheless continued to oppose and to invite opposition to integration; whereupon the court ruled him in contempt, sentenced him, and off he goes to spend a year in jail. We shall be interested to hear expert legal opinion as to the legitimacy of the court’s injunction; for we wonder whether Mr. Kasper’s incarceration sheds light on the civil liberties of “segregationists.” Perhaps the American Civil Liberties Union will be able to clear up the confusion.

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Those who have for many years been obsessed with the figure America cuts overseas will do well to ponder a by-product of the Supreme Court’s attempt to impose upon society doctrinaire notions as to the proper social relationship between the races. For years self-conscious Americans decried the availability to the Communists of photographs signalling “White” and “Colored” waiting rooms. Now, under the Ideologues’ Interracial Reform Act of 1954, the Communists can exhibit photographs of tanks riding through Southern streets, of cordons of soldiers brandishing unsheathed bayonets at their neighbors.

A federal court ordered John Kasper, “a Washington D.C. segregationist”—to identify him as the Associated Press does—to desist from interfering with integration of the Clinton, Tennessee, High School. Mr. Kasper nevertheless continued to oppose and to invite opposition to integration; whereupon the court ruled him in contempt, sentenced him, and off he goes to spend a year in jail. We shall be interested to hear expert legal opinion as to the legitimacy of the court’s injunction; for we wonder whether Mr. Kasper’s incarceration sheds light on the civil liberties of “segregationists.” Perhaps the American Civil Liberties Union will be able to clear up the confusion.