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FREEDOMWAYS          THIRD QUARTER 1969

NAACP was not the main enemy of the boys nor of the ILD.  But its adherence to legal action weakened the defense and objectively aided the enemy.  The facts show this but there is no accompanying analysis.  Reaction made much of the differences between the Na-tional Association and the ILD in order to conceal itself.
  In the chapter called "Alabama 1931" Prof. Carter cites with satisfaction that there was no mob lynching at Scottsboro.  He does not explicitly show that the white masses were guaranteed a Roman Holiday, the greatest mass legal lynching in the country's history.  To have exposed that demanded a showing that the defendants were "to have their day in Court" - and their moment in the electric chair.
  The vicious lie of the editor of the Jackson County Sentinel that: "the negroes were given every protection and every right of the law for defense" also had to be dealt with.  Carter's facts expose the lie.  But Carter gives no precise analysis of the reasons for it.  He lets the racists argue that it was fear of Communism.
  In the chapter entitled "Red on Black" the author deals with the ideological struggle between the Communists and the racists whose more that 300 years' record proves what they are.  He deals with the ideological struggle between the Communists and liberals who wanted the defense softened down and the racist courts to decide the verdict.  He equates the two.  But the first was waged to show the bankruptcy of the racists and the second  to bring under-standing to the people.
  Carter treats of the correct decision rendered in Powell vs Ala-bama.  He quotes the New York Times which said that "that de-cision ought to abate the rancor of extreme radicals while affirming the faith of the American people in the soundness of their institu-tions and the integrity of the courts."  The New Republic, the Na-tion and the Christian Century joined in praising the court's action.  
  But why did the Supreme Court decide on a technicality and above all, why did it remand the case to a new trial forcing the youth not only to sit in the deathhouse but to go again through racist tortures that marked the earlier trial.  Neither Carter nor the New York Times explains this.
  By what route can blacks reach the conclusion that a Court de-cision which threw nine innocent youths into the arms of terrorists "ought to abate the rancor of extreme radicals while affirming the faith of the American people in the soundness of their institutions and the integrity of the courts."  The opposite is true.

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