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BOOK REVIEW          PATTERSON

The allegation: "that the ILD was perfectly willing to sacrifice the boys for whatever was deemed to be the Communist Party's best interests" is a myth that has no substantiation in history.  The saving of the boys' lives was inextricably bound up with the unity of black and white in the battle for America, for change.  A Jew's life could not be saved in Hitler's Germany without the defeat of Hitler's forces and racism must be destroyed before the lives of black men are safe in the U.S.A.

Carter misses racism

Dr. Marvin Lynch in private conversation with Judge Edwin Hor-ton, states that "no rape occurred, but that the Doctor is afraid to say so in open court."  The rule of racism as a determining factor in the American way of life is established here but Prof. Carter does not put the matter so.  He ends a court scene of rampant racism with these words: "Conceivably, a local defense without the triple disad-vantage of being radical, Jewish and 'Northern' could have gained a compromise [for 9 innocent lads-WLP] such as life imprisonment but the jury's loyalty to its white caste could only be proved un-equivocally by a guilty verdict."
  Carter's treatment of Judge Edwin Horton, who sat in the second run of torture trials, reveals what racism had done to most of those who sat upon the bench.  The press on a national basis lauded the manner in which Horton conducted the case of Haywood Patterson.  But Prof. Carter quotes John Hammond as saying: "After the ILD had proved systematic exclusion of Negroes from the jury, the judge denied the motion to quash the indictment.  And he failed to end the trial when Wright (a prosecutor) made his appeal to bigotry and fear."  The myths of white superiority had turned those who accepted them or who feared to challenge them into objects domi-nated by fear.  Judge Horton was a courageous man but he too ordered a new trial for a man he knew to be innocent of any crime.  
  In the chapters that follow "A Cold Hard Vengeance," "The De-feat of Diplomacy," "The Compromise of 1937," "Forgotten Heroes," the "epilogue" and an essay on "Authorities," Carter closes the record of facts as he sees them.  He draws some conclusions.  "A Cold Hard Vengeance" is what its title implies, a record of the frenzied preparations for a "slaughter of the innocents."  It is really an in-terpretation of the Doctrine of States Rights in operation - the right of a state to treat its black citizens as it sees fit, to deny their relationship to humanity, mock their heritage of constitutional rights

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